Sophia Oscillations
Mission to the Sun's sophomore album, Sophia Oscillations, is an immersive journey through the dark corners of post-industrial music. The Detroit based duo continues the sonic exploration started on their debut album Cleansed by Fire, while delving deeper into themes of isolation and lost communication. Christopher Samuels’ synths, samples and rhythmic programming is accented by Kirill Slavin’s haunting vocal delivery as the listener receives intersperse audio recordings from the outer reaches o…
One From Then Another
*300 copies limited edition* Phil Todd's existence as Ashtray Navigations began in the mid-1990s. Since then, it has been everything from a fully-fledged group to a solo endeavour that's embraced ur-drone-orientated noise, sprawling psychedelia, crude electronics and the more lysergic realms of the avant-garde. Amongst many other things. On One From Then Another, however, we are presented with two lengthy pieces (the first of which is broken into two sections and clocks up almost 30 minutes in t…
Blooming
First LP from Donna Candy, the bass-vocal-drums trio trawled from the sub genres of experimental rock and busy pushing to the front of heavy music. Nu metal bass riffs, switch-pitched fuzz vocals and big, splashy drums layer over unsettling narratives and extreme loops to bring a bit of the pit to the dancefloor.
Begun as an off the cuff party band with the idea of finding a live sound that would fit between 4am trance sets, the trio soon found themselves addicted to the euphoric sludge they cre…
Al Saher
Calamita = Karkhana members Tony Elieh, Sharif Sehnaoui and Lebanese drummer Malek Rizkallah join forces with the Egyptian singer Aya Metwalli - the result is the improbable meeting between free jazz / improv, punk rock & Oum Kalthoum!
Calamita is the "rock project" of Sharif Sehnaoui and Tony Elieh, two of the most active musicians on the Lebanese experimental scene (among others projects, both are members of the "free Middle Eastern music" collective Karkhana). Sehnaoui comes from a jazz and i…
Boh Sampler
*200 copies cd-only limited edition* ‘BOH’ was a short-lived fanzine from Den Haag. ‘BOH' - short for Binnenlandse Ontwikkelings Hulp. The editors were active in various bands, and the fanzine published one compilation, 'Boh Sampler'. The fanzine is all in Dutch, and 'BOH - de Komplete Uitgaven van de Binnenlandse Ontwikkelingshulp’ reprints all of these, without a translation. Foreword by BOH boss Jos van Vliet and an introduction by Wally van Middendorp, of the Minny Pops. Book design by Studi…
Rockgarage Compilation Vol. 1-2-3-4
Here is the unmissable sound document from one of Italy's earliest Eighties underground fanzines! Back in the day, Rockgarage was the fruit of the work of a bunch of young music enthusiasts from the Venice area. All already active in the local free radios scene, tired of life's monotony and willing to put all their energy and creativity into a different project. A new sound magazine based on quality content and high musical profile. A total of six issues were published between 1982 and 1984 alon…
Filth
2023 stock* “This is all slabs of sound, rhythm and screaming/testifying. What more do you need? In a way, it was a reaction against Punk (and just about any other music you can think of), and the conservative notion that 3 chords were somehow necessary. I used to deny it vehemently at the time, but No Wave (I “hated” that scene too, for some reason I can’t remember now) played a big role as the germ from which this music grew, along with The Stooges and Throbbing Gristle, of course. I wanted Sw…
Leaving Meaning.
*2023 stock* "leaving meaning. is the first Swans album to be released since I dissolved the line up of musicians that constituted Swans from 2010 – 2017. Swans is now comprised of a revolving cast of musicians, selected for both their musical and personal character, chosen according to what I intuit best suits the atmosphere in which I’d like to see the songs I’ve written presented. In collaboration with me, the musicians, through their personality, skill and taste, contribute greatly to the ar…
The Seer
*2023 stock* “The Seer took 30 years to make. It’s the culmination of every previous Swans album as well as any other music I’ve ever made, been involved in or imagined. But it’s unfinished, like the songs themselves. It’s one frame in a reel. The frames blur, blend and will eventually fade. The songs began on an acoustic guitar, then were fleshed out with (invaluable) help from my friends, then were further tortured and seduced in rehearsals, live and in the studio, and now they await further c…
No/On
*In process of stocking* Debut album from this London based group whose contemporary take on a guitar-driven post-punk sound equally inspired by early '90s grunge is energised by ferocious melodies and an impulsive charge rarely found right now. With two brothers, Aaron and Hayden Brown, serving as both the main songwriters and lead vocalists, Blue Statue focus on existential malaise, mental health issues and other such concerns in a setting that's accessible and angry yet augmented by an openne…
The Meaning Of Blackness (More Decorous Than Duty Having Become Faster Than Everything A Smile That Was Never Birthed Into The Light)
Keiji Haino considers this live album as an integral work that cannot be separated. We suggest that you enjoy the whole album without interruption and turn the volume up to the maximum.
The Prey And The Ruler
"The first time I witnessed Senyawa was in the early 2010s. We shared a bill at the MonaFoma festival in Hobart. Some memories hold strongly in your mind and Senyawa’s performance that day did just that. It was a monstrous portent of things to come. A promise, in sound, of the energetic force that has since come to mark them as one of the truly unique and visionary musical pairings from South East Asia. This project, The Prey And The Ruler, finds its root in the unsteady months of mid 2021. As t…
The Binding Third
The legendary Lebanese trio of trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj (Karkhana, Johnny Kafta), guitarrist Sharif Sehnaoui (Calamita, Karkhana, Johnny Kafta ) and bassist Raed Yassin (Praed, Praed Orchestra) celebrates their 20th anniversary with The Binding Third on Unrock.
They still create acoustic improvised drones that range from insistent, chiming resonances with emergency alarm bells to low, thrumming hums but with growing intensity. Avoiding conventional technique, A Trio manages to create sounds like m…
Phonography
The first time I heard R. Stevie Moore was when The Residents played me goodbye piano - which would have been sometime in early 1978. Soon after that, I got in touch with him to import some copies for Recommended - followed over the years by many of his other releases. Phonography was Stevie's first, and a masterpiece. Terminally idiosyncratic but with all the compositional qualities of great pop. R Stevie Moore is a gifted songwriter and marches to his own drum - as this strange and compelling …
Bob's Drive-In
A set of twisty, forty-ideas-a-minute, niftily arranged, irredeemably eccentric, but strangely brilliant songs that skip blithely across genre borders - from Nashville through the Miskatonic by way of the Beach Boys… even the production values range across the history of recording, sometimes switching inside a single song; so it’s a high-information ride - but still engagingly listenable. So far so good: another crafted, dense, idiosyncratic studio album. Now comes the twist. Finished with his …
13 Songs and a Thing
The latest collection of twisting, turning instrumentals and songs, and another instant classic. If you didn't venture down this way yet, now is a good time to start. In a category of one, Bob Drake undermines musical, technical and production norms with a breathtaking amalgam of broken rules and unimaginable musical logic.
The Skull Mailbox (and other Horrors)
The strangest so far. Mostly songs; a lot of acoustic instruments, a lot of unidentifiable sounds, a lot of fragments borne on a wind from somewhere else; bizarre picking interludes, humour (maybe) and snatches of incandescent playing. You can't pin this one down; it's full of twists and turns and a geometry that doesn't quite add up. Seemingly casual, there's not an ounce of fat on it, and the production - or anti-production - is, on repeated listening, quite extraordinary. Impressive.
Little Black Train
Thinking Plague, Hail, EC Nudes, 5UU's bassist and mixmaster with his second solo CD. Fast and furious country picking meets weird fragmentation and fast cut compositions. Guitars, Bass, Drums, Violin and odd unidentifiable noises all flawlessly performed, recorded and mixed into a single organism of musical strangeness. One of a kind.
Itsunomanika
Paolo Angeli and ex-After Dinner/Volapuk violinist/singer Takumi Fukushima present an integrated, complex and largely composed programme of deft, focused pieces that make the most of their not inconsiderable individual talents and instruments; mostly sounding like a much larger ensemble. The sonorities of Paolo’s extended, customised, prepared giant Sardinian guitar doing extraordinary, and sometimes chameleonic, work as bass, chord accompaniment, melody instrument, viola/cello, and even percuss…
S'Û
An amazing record. It’s beautifully recorded and almost impossible to believe that such a layered and polyphonic music, with chords, percussion, lead lines, bass lines, harmonies, string sections and sometimes voice could all be produced by one person in real time, without overdubs or loops. But it is. The instrument, a specially designed and augmented Sardinian guitar (almost the size of a cello) is equipped with motors, pedals, individual string mic’ing, and extra appendages; and of course the…