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"Ring ring! AGITPROP HOTLINE!!, this is Goblin Daycare speaking from Istanbul, Turkey. How may we radicalize you?

Up-and-coming egg punk rascals Goblin Daycare’s long-awaited second release is here and it’s ready to overload your brain with its lo-fi alien soundwaves. Self-recorded and produced by Mama Goblin, AGITPROP HOTLINE!! is the perfect follow-up to their critically acclaimed debut Q: EP? A: EP!!.

But this time around, everything is turned up to 11 and somehow, even more over the top.

Supercharged guitars, over programmed drum machines, earworm synth melodies, growly basslines, shrieking vocals, stupid-yet-fun samples… Made up of 10 short-but-not-so-sweet bursts of unadulterated lunacy, this album clocks in at a whopping 15 minutes. Like all good things, it ends in the blink of an eye. So don't blink. Instead, dial in and let AGITPROP HOTLINE!! mesmerize you.

LP, 2024 Repress - half speed mastering
"The 50 best IDM albums of all time"
Pitchfork

"A liquidy headbox of aural shapes, whose forms hardly change yet seem to encompass infinite viscosity within them, like rainbow pools of oil on water"
Wire

"Before IDM became a nation of Aphex and Autechre cosplayers, the genre was less defined by aesthetics than by a shared ideology. Here was a loosely connected axis of post-rave kids, united by little more than a shared willingness to subvert the tools of their techno idols and create sounds that hadn't previously been imagined. No record of the era better embodies this find-a-machine-and-freak-it ethos than Islets in Pink Polypropylene, the otherworldly debut by British producer Anthony Manning."
Pitchfork

"It’s refreshing to hear an all-electronic album that sounds so organic yet so totally alien."
Fact

"One of the UK’s first post-rave ambient records proper; sharing much more in common with Autechre’s Amber or AFX’s Selected Ambient Works Vol. II - which were both released in that same year - than anything else before or around it."
Boomkat

For fans of avant everything innovative and experimental music.




About The Album>>>>

The whole album was composed and realized on the Roland R8 drum machine. It followed the same process as the Elastic Variations pieces, with the major addition of many, many hours of editing.

Each piece was composed as a series of patterns, of varying lengths ( 5,6,7 bars long ). The stock R8 sounds were embellished with one of several ROM sound library cards ( mostly the Dance card, number 10 ).

These patterns were created by tapping out a rhythm, then, in real time, using the Pitch slider as the pattern looped, to create improvised melodies for each of the pattern's voices.

The rough version of each piece was built by stitching the patterns together as a song, listening to each addition over and over, to make sure the melodies flowed into each other in a vaguely coherent manner.

Once this initial rough structure was in place I set about fine tuning every single note.

The R8 doesn't allow you to assign a pitch to a note in the conventional sense. It's not possible to assign a pitch of Middle C to the first note of the first bar. Instead, it assigns a numerical value to a note's pitch, between -4800 and +4800 ( I think those numbers are correct - that little screen is seared into my memory ).

If you restrict all notes within a piece to a multiple of, say, 400, you therefore create the possibility of a sort of scale. For multiples of 400, you have a total number of 24 permissable notes. However, most of the percussive sounds, when pitch shifted, only sounded 'good' over a reduced range.

The first editing step was to go through the entire piece, and change every note's pitch to its nearest multiple of 400.

The second step was to draw out the entire piece on graph paper, the Y axis being pitch, X being time. This drawing gave me a visual sense of a melody's flow. It was easy to see too many notes clustering around too tight a pitch range for instance, or a single note straying way down into the lower register while all others at that point in the melody were in the upper.

Once these first 'clearing-up' edits were complete I could set about re-writing elements that didn't sound right melodically. Often this meant stripping out whole chunks of superfluous notes, to reveal a cleaner melody line, then shifting its shape slightly. If the flow of the line of dots on the graph 'looked' balanced and sweetly sinuous, then often it sounded so.

This entire process took many weeks per piece. Weeks of doing almost nothing else. Listening. Re-drawing. Re-writing. Listening. Round and round and round. When I could hear the whole thing in my head, from beginning to end, and nothing seemed to jar ( too excessively ), I knew it was done, time to move on.

I imagine it's very similar to the process of stop animation. Your days are filled with painfully tiny incremental changes that seem to be getting nowhere. Then, slowly, a shape, narrative, starts to appear. Then, all of a sudden, somehow, it's done.

When all the pieces were complete the R8 was taken into Irdial's studio where some simple effects were added, each voice recorded individually for clarity onto 8-track tape and mastered onto an ex-BBC half-inch tape deck.

Then I slept. And vowed never to do it again.

*****

And the title ?

Soon after finishing the pieces I happened to read a magazine article about Christo's "Surrounded Islands" installation with the music playing in the background.

There was something about a particular cluster of words within a random sentence that seemed pleasing and somehow appropriate.

"Islets in Pink Polypropylene" seemed to make as much sense as anything else.

The Guardian wrote “the Canadian songwriter has one of the all-time great singing voices in popular music, an intensely romantic Chet Baker-ish instrument that seems to float with piercing direction, like a paper aeroplane thrown hard through mist.” With Uncut describing his songcraft “as delicate and lovely as a rare orchid” and Record Collector praising the album’s “sublime alien balladry” such are the accolades that have accrued throughout Chenaux’s unique and consummately uncompromising solo music for well over a decade now. Delights Of My Life opens a new chapter for the singer/guitarist and formally introduces the Eric Chenaux Trio, with Toronto-based musicians Ryan Driver on Wurlitzer organ and Phillipe Melanson on electronic percussion. Driver is a longtime collaborator, appearing on several of Chenaux’s solo albums (even embedded into the very title of the 2010 masterpiece Warm Weather With Ryan Driver). Melanson has a long list of involvements that include Bernice, Joseph Shabason, and U.S Girls, and a recent release with his Impossible Burger project on Chenaux’s own experimental label Rat-drifting, but this marks the first fulsome involvement between the two as players on a recording. In many ways Delights Of My Life also picks up right where Chenaux’s previous album left off, in its subversions of a classic, timeless jazz-inflected balladry, while the interplay of the trio formation indeed unfurls many new delights. Recording together at Chenaux’s spartan home studio in rural France, Driver’s harmonically warped organ and Melanson’s electroacoustic sampling and percussion hold time in newfound ways. Where previously Chenaux relied on a freeze/sustain pedal and minimalist rhythmic triggers to generate both pulse and chordal foundations, Melanson now paints timekeeping with expressive and intricate colourations, through live deployments of fluid sampled percussion (including orchestral timbres like timpani, kettle drums, and woodblock) that blur the boundaries between acoustic and electronic. Driver also ramps up his role in the song arrangements (prefigured in his support playing on Say Laura), teasing out chords and melodic filigree on Wurlitzer that percolate more prominently with Chenaux’s signature fried guitar solos and succulent singing. Both trio members add dulcet backing vocals, most notably on the 10-minute tour-de-force of fuzzed and ring-modulated swing “This Ain’t Life” that opens the record. All seven songs on the album groove and sway, simmer and sparkle, like nothing in the inestimable Chenaux discography to date. Chenaux’s tunes have the uncanny ability to sound like jazz standards; songs you feel you’ve heard before, though certainly never quite like this. Yet these are of course all originals, compositionally and interpretively, bent through an inimitable avant/out-music lens. Delights Of My Life conveys warm familiarity, shot through with the exuberantly experimental subversion and playful, even mischievous, iconoclasm that continues to mark Chenaux as defiantly, virtuosically, and genially one-of-kind

Jacken Elswyth is a London-based folk musician, banjo player, and instrument builder. At Fargrounds is her third solo album, her first for the Wrong Speed label and the latest in a rich catalogue that repositions the spectral, vulnerable sound of the banjo away from its familiar role as signifier of the past and onto lands brave, new and unexplored. “The living wood is imbued with qualities that require engagement and understanding. Working with cherry, oak or walnut involves naming it an equal partner. The parallel, synchronous transformations of wood into instrument, of growing tree into resonating sound, musical tradition into musical flourishing, lie at the heart of Jacken Elswyth’s practices both as an instrument builder and as a creative musician. One might consider her primarily as a worker in wood, but whose craft and fields of expression are absorbed by those transitional and interim processes that manifest change. The traditional tunes included here have been cultivated and maintained by generations of players and collectors, pruned, grafted, and shaped over time. However, in this setting, their long-established forms seem to morph and shift. They audibly accrue unique qualities, blossoming and swelling into new modes of being, bright-stepping arrangements unfolding with a liveliness hinting at practices of ritual and community. Meanwhile, other pieces, creative cornerstones of this collection, appear fluid, partially formed. They suggest not the cultivation of new growth from established stock, but instead the actions of something on the verge of taking form. Working with raw elements of melodic and tonal abstraction, they illuminate the process of emergence and evolution. In this context, the title At Fargrounds is telling. It suggests a point set at some distance from any centre of human concerns, a liminal space in which the cultivated world encounters the world of other living things in their living state. Here, the innate strangeness of the maintained environment–vast lawns, sculpted hedges, vacant playing fields–encounters sprawling vistas of driftwood, dense thickets of brambles, stony hillsides. Across a full century-and-a-quarter, long-standing rural and pastoral musical traditions, at some distance from their origins, have been preserved, nurtured and re-shaped under the folk revival. Placed here, these artefacts now sit in alignment with unvarnished documents featuring the raw elements of sound-making. Their working-together is achieved through a universally-applied interest in musical growth and development. The juxtaposition and combination of these elements gives evidence of new, emerging approaches to community and social music: familiar, known, yet charged with an alien vitality”–CWK Joynes. “...she knows how to knit atmospheres, and does so to especially powerful effect during Scene 4b’s three minutes of stunning bowed banjo, yearning with longing and dread, while showing off her talent, curiosity and range”–Jude Rogers review of Six Static Scenes (Guardian Folk Album Of The Month July 2022) "Jacken is an emotive player with high technical ability. Further, she builds banjos and other instruments, and that intimate knowledge of the bones and fibres holding everything together means that her playing has very few cracks" - Foxy Digitalis

Originally released in 1990, Royal Trux's 'Twin Infinitives' is being re-issued in all its (yet to be translated) alien glory, by Fire Records. A dismantled overture that sprawls out over two records, an avant-garde masterpiece that was the spark for Drag City Records and generations of new sound seeking musicians. Hailed in the same immortal breath as Beefheart's 'Trout Mask Replica', the Velvets' at their frenzied peak and Ornette Coleman at his most avant-garde, the duo of Pussy Galore's Neil "Michael" Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema recorded 'Twin Infinitives' while imbibing all kinds of mind-altering substances to create an inadvertent blueprint for what the duo was building with moog's, guitars and melodicas to name a few ingredients. It is the legendary second album from the masters of the genre mashup - long before "genre mashups" even existed. Arguably, the term "mashup" was coined to describe what Trux, as they subconsciously scrolled through the radio stations of their lives. The album's chaotic sound and offbeat construction laid the foundations for a string of Royal Trux albums that spiralled between genres, tunings, and noise. Through the 90s they would re-invent the rock 'n' roll ethic, straddle alien surf music, re-align boogie rock, not to mention 80s hair metal, and confound critics by their wildly meandering and courageous rites of passage. Remastered as part of a career spanning catalogue deal with Fire Records. The infamous and influential duo of Jennifer Herrema and Neil Hagerty will be delving into the archive with a comprehensive reissue series, unearthing the vaults and revisiting what made them such a compelling benchmark for their contemporaries and imitators. Reawakening their prolific output within a new monochrome vinyl series covering 1988-1993, they begin with their seminal deconstructed rock masterpiece Twin Infinitives. "Sounding like a subway ride inside a television inside an earthquake inside the end of the world and a pounding death rhythm of apocalyptic now." Pitchfork Ltd Double Silver Vinyl, Monochrome edition artwork, DL card.

"Origins Of The Deformed" von EMBRYONIC AUTOPSY ist ein Album für Fans von brutalem Death Metal, wie er sein sollte: Krank, heavy und unbarmherzig! Zu den Gastmusikern auf dem Album gehören James Murphy (ex-Death, ex-Obituary, ex-Testament), Jack Owen (Six Feet Under, ex-Cannibal Corpse, ex-Deicide) und Terrance Hobbs (Suffocation).
Guest-musicians:
- James Murphy (ex-Death, ex-Obituary, ex-Testament): Guest guitar solos on "Orgies Of The Inseminated", "Cleopatra's Spawn" and "Carnivorous Abortion"
- Jack Owen (Six Feet Under, ex-Cannibal Corpse, ex-Deicide): Guest guitar solos on "Dissolving In Acidic Afterbirth" and "Dripping In The Vaginal Nectar"
- Terrance Hobbs (Suffocation): Guest guitar solo on "Carnivorous Abortion"

High Roller Records, reissue 2024, black vinyl, ltd 250, gatefold, 16 pages A4 booklet, Original cassette transfer, audio restoration and mastering by Patrick W. Engel at TEMPLE OF DISHARMONY in October 2023.

High Roller Records, reissue 2024, black vinyl, ltd 250, gatefold, 16 pages A4 booklet, Original cassette transfer, audio restoration and mastering by Patrick W. Engel at TEMPLE OF DISHARMONY in October 2023.

Unio Mystica: Absorbed from my room onto a triangle ship, by an alien wearing blue scaled bio-armour, to travel instantaneously across vast folds of time & space. The alien occupied the pinnacle of the triangle, the other two points by myself and an unknown human female, respectively. The ship, at least for this type of journey, was powered by harnessing the coalescent, universal force of LOVE. This truly hierogamic union acted as a sort of inter-dimensional transcendence driver, which allowed us the defeat of all material boundary and therefore, time itself. It was a keen insight into the ultimate conciliation: that love permeates and binds together an otherwise cold and hostile universe. And perhaps it was not an "alien" but an angel. Angels are traditionally understood to be preternaturally photonic (of a type), lacking physical densification, and which manifest themselves as various imaginal forms in the human psyche... What is known: the starship is ours; a portal of two souls combined. - personal log, entry #3073, 07/14/2017

"French duo Human Rebellion make their debut on Alienata´s Discos Atónicos label with Polymorph, a 4 tracker killer EP in which we will find the perfect combination between techno, acid, electro & breaks.
Dark atmospheres and heavy beats topped with irresistible basslines, mesmerizing arpeggios & sci-fi textures straight out their analog studio.
Modern sound inspired by the powerful & punchy sound of the early 90’s electro-techno!
We are pleased to welcome Patrick & Charles to the Discos Atónicos Fam!

My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, ANOHNI"s sixth studio album, expresses a world view by shape-shifting through a broad range of subject matter. Through a personal lens, ANOHNI addresses loss of loved ones, inequality, alienation, acceptance, cruelty, ecocide, devastation wrought by Abrahamic theologies, Future Feminism, and the possibility that we might yet transform our ways of thinking, our spiritual ideas, our societal structures, and our relationships with the rest of nature. On her first full album since 2016"s HOPELESSNESS, she explains the creative process was painstaking, yet also inspired, joyful, and intimate, a renewal and a renaming of her response to the world as she sees it. "Some of these songs respond to global and environmental concerns first voiced in popular music over 50 years ago." ANOHNI"s approach since her last record has shifted from someone tasked with challenging global denial, to an artist seeking to support others on the front lines. "I learned with HOPELESSNESS that I can provide a soundtrack that might fortify people in their work, in their activism, in their dreaming and decision-making. I can sing of an awareness that makes others feel less alone, people for whom the frank articulation of these frightening times is not a source of discomfort but a cause for identification and relief. On "It Must Change," ANOHNI soulfully describes systems in collapse with a note of compassion for humanity: "The truth is I always thought you were beautiful in your own way // That"s why this is so sad." ANOHNI"s voice is sensual and smoothed, selectively reaching to the edges of what it can contain. "We"re not getting out of here // No one"s getting out of here // This is our world," she murmurs. A portrait of legendary human rights activist Marsha P. Johnson taken by Alvin Baltrop features on the cover, reflecting a 25-year relationship with the memory of Johnson that ANOHNI has held space for in the presentation of her own work. Elsewhere, the album artwork states "IT"S TIME TO FEEL WHAT"S REALLY HAPPENING". In some ways it feels as if she is reaching across her life"s expression, and has found a moment of unique composure, wearing her long exploration of disarming intensity, with the maturity of a painter carefully choosing her colors. "I want the work to be useful, to help others move through these conversations we are now facing, to move with dignity and resilience through this bitter dawning."

Pianeti Sintetici presents AI-37, entitled ‘Space Opera’. Conceived by Italian artist Davide Perrone, the Pianeti Sintetici (“Synthetic Planets”) project hypothesises the creation of future synthetic worlds as told through sound. Although split across two parts, the album is a singular organism that narrates a journey of boundless cosmic exploration. A sonic tapestry woven of intergalactic atmospheres, Space Opera’s imaginative sound design contributes to a richly spatial and haptic experience.

Taking place in the dimly lit crevices of deepest space, a swirling pool of chemical abstractions and extraterrestrial transmissions spumes out from the darkness. Elements weave through broad washes of drones and scintillating textures, contrasting a sparse backdrop with dense and multilayered passages. Composed with the use of modular synthesisers and intense audio manipulations, ‘Space Opera’ comes to life as an entity that transports the listener on an immersive journey into the mysteries of alien worlds. 

The Slovenian label Cogo is back for another unmissable 4-tracker vinyl compilation with the heaviest hitters in the scene who represent the most artistically driven hypnotic techno to date. Jeroen Search, Border One, ORBE, and Tonske all lend a hand to provide an understated and deep vibe to this release full of music actively attempting to remove your mind to otherworldly places hitherto unknown.

Jeroen Search kicks off the release with ''Observer'' expertly drawing you in with a very simplified but polyrhythmic staccato synth and kick combination that slowly builds with modulating and swirling pads until it reaches a climax with a tightly regulated drum track and disorienting LFO sequenced synth patch.

Border One continues the theme of the release of minimalistic aesthetics with ''Contour'' featuring polyrhythmic ideas and evolving dissociative synths. The release culminates in a very simplified and restrained drum track that opens up the doors to a massive sonic environment where you're lost completely within the music, sitting somewhat awestruck by passing elements unfolding in front of your mind's eye.

Not to be outdone, ORBE takes a different tact with ''Wolheim'' by introducing the groove elements first and bringing in his deep understanding of setting the sonic stage with his signature atmospheres and scintillating synth hits. The track also echoes the thematic choices previously laid down by Border One and invites you into this strange alien world full of sonic curiosities and audio biology.
Tonske buttons up the release with ''Droid''. A track that has an overall sense of pulling the sonic environment toward you while you travel as a listener in your mind's eye. Outward synth blips are constantly coming from the outer periphery into view as if they are passing stars while traveling forward at a deliberate and determined pace.

While she was still a member of Nasmak, one of the leading bands of the Dutch ultra-movement, Truus de Groot started Plus Instruments in 1978 with herself as the sole member. When the project evolved, she found a wide range of rotating collaborators like Michel Waisvisz, Lee Ranaldo and James Sclavunos. Plus Instruments was about freedom and the live performances were largely improvised. The sound minimal but captivating. The music always came from within, but De Groot was also triggered by bands like Red Crayola, Suicide, DAF, Wire, Per Ubu, Devo and the No Wave scene in NY. She was always experimenting with primitive multi-track recording and whatever crappy gadgets she could find. Always looking for a gritty, dirty sound and bizarre overtones.

At a young age she travelled to New York and began to immerse herself in the nightlife of the city that never sleeps. Here she found true creativity, passion and expression. The club scene was alive but highly competitive, so this fearless Dutch girl would just knock on promoter’s doors to get gigs booked at places like CBGB’s, Peppermint Lounge, Underground and the Pyramid. De Groot eventually settled in the United States and never stopped experimenting with sound. In recent years she reinvented Plus Instruments and led the group into new territory.

The recordings for this LP were made by De Groot at home and the music is experimental, minimal, industrial but also playful, sounding nothing like most of the later material. 14 tracks in total of which 7 are taken from the elusive and impossible to find self-released debut cassette as ‘Truss Plus Instruments’ which was sparingly distributed by Nigel Jacklin and his legendary Alien Brains fanzine in 1980. The remaining 7 tracks are from the same period (1979-1980) and were carefully selected from the vast archive of De Groot. We are glad to present this anthology that serves as a long overdue testimony to the formative phase of a unique female pioneer of electronic music.

“There goes my TARDIS!” Demon Records celebrates David Tennant and Catherine Tate’s partnership as the Doctor and Donna with two audio-exclusive stories, read by the actors themselves. In Pest Control, read by David Tennant, the Doctor and Donna face monstrous insects and a ruthless robot exterminator when the TARDIS is lost in battle on a distant planet. The Doctor sets off in pursuit of his craft, while Donna finds herself accepting a commission in the Pioneer Corps. Something is transforming soldiers into monstrous beetles - and she could be the next victim. In The Forever Trap, read by Catherine Tate, the duo find themselves imprisoned in a complex of luxury apartments in space, and neighbours to a terrifying assortment of aliens. Deadly mobs wage battle in the corridors and on the stairwells, and the travellers must cross their paths as they search for the ultimate authority. Who, or what, lies at the heart of the Edifice? This stunning box set, with an illustrated lift-off lid, features 6 x 140g vinyl LPs - three in Transparent Red and three in Transparent Yellow - each housed in a unique inner sleeve. A four page booklet features sleeve notes by authors Peter Anghelides and Dan Abnett, who reflect on the process of writing for the Tenth Doctor and Donna, and how they regard the stories 17 years later. Now for the first time on vinyl, accompanied by original sound design and Murray Gold’s Series 4 arrangement of the familiar theme music, these two high-octane adventures are a reminder of the excitement, humour and magical wonder of Doctor Who

The phenomenal three-piece band includes members of Oranssi Pazuzu, K-X-P, Grave Pleasures and Aavikko


Svart Records is proud to release the debut album, I, from Haunted Plasma, a powerhouse of futuristic synth in symbiosis with the super violent atmospherics of kosmische Black Metal. Haunted Plasma is “man meets machine” in a cybernetic wasteland, set to a conceptual backdrop of William Gibson and Phillip K. Dick style mind-melt. The highly evolved creatives at the heart of Haunted Plasma’s sound, cite Terry Riley, Massive Attack, a contemporary take on Krautrock hypnosis, psychedelic Black Metal and 90s Techno, resulting in an orgy of mutant sound.



The phantoms at the beating nucleus of this unearthly machine are Juho Vanhanen (Oranssi Pazuzu, Grave Pleasures), Timo Kaukolampi (K-X-P, Op:l Bastards) and Tomi Leppänen (Circle, Aavikko, K-X-P), transmitting a music form evolved from a life of redefining sonic boundaries in their respective projects. Also featuring guest vocals from Mat McNerney (Hexvessel, Carpenter Brut, Grave Pleasures/Beastmilk), Pauliina Lindell (Vuono, Dust Mountain) and Ringa Manner (Ruusut, The Hearing). Haunted Plasma promises an extraterrestrial experience from some of the foremost contemporary musicians at the heart of the Finnish heavy and avant-garde musical underworld.



Haunted Plasma reveals:

“We are liberated futurists, embracing free-form and natural composition, mirroring the merciless forces of cosmic creation. We have a motto to stay true to our feelings, to spawn a sound that’s never been heard before. Servants of music. Energizing, radical and pure”


The first single from Haunted Plasma’s cascading debut, Reverse Engineer, is a creepy, slowly erupting, synthetic nightmare, of a downloaded being waking up in the wrong future. Ghostly vocals demand the listener to “give us what we want” in an Orwellian glimpse into the current dystopia we live in, where information is controlled, and thoughts are bought and sold. As McNerney intones the words “technology of power” he describes the threat of a malevolent and omnipresent artificial intelligence, as much as describing the oppressive and electromagnetic sonar pulse of Haunted Plasma’s sound itself. Psychedelic guitar hypnosis from Vanhanen snakes around Kaukolampi’s molten and morphing synths, while Leppänen’s uncanny man/machine rhythms pull our strings and animate their other-worldly mechanisms. Have a look at the official visualiser of "Reverse Engineer" on the Svart YouTube channel here


Culminating in the full-blown fast Krautrock of the final self-titled track, oozing with blistering noise elements and enigmatic vocals from Ringa Manner, the album's journey reaches its zenith, taking you to unknown territories on a Kubrikian space trip. I is a rare record of talented musicians coming together to create a completely new sound, which is entirely their own, boldly glowing, where no light has shone before. From the dreamy psychedelia of Echoes to the discombobulated Spectral Embrace, Haunted Plasma is a willful force of deliberate sound contortion.


Whether you want to give in to Haunted Plasma’s sound or not, you are being watched, you are being recorded and your every move is monitored. Haunted Plasma will enter your system on the 31st of May 2024. Turn on your phantom circuits and be prepared for an interdimensional excursion into Haunted Plasma’s alien dreams.

The debut album from Haunted Plasma will be packaged in a beautiful tip-on sleeve, swirling fog artwork, complete with 12” booklet and pressed on 3 exclusive vinyl colours: 300 copies on Standard Black Wax, 500 copies in Amber + Black Smoke and 200 copies of Svart exclusive Turquoise/Black Marble. The album will also be available on CD and digital platforms.

Following the release of Eric Chenaux's last album Say Laura (2022), The Guardian wrote "the Canadian songwriter has one of the all-time great singing voices in popular music, an intensely romantic Chet Baker-ish instrument that seems to float with piercing direction, like a paper aeroplane thrown hard through mist." With Uncut describing his songcraft "as delicate and lovely as a rare orchid" and Record Collector praising the album's "sublime alien balladry" such are the accolades that have accrued throughout Chenaux's unique and consummately uncompromising solo music for well over a decade now. Delights Of My Life opens a new chapter for the singer/guitarist and formally introduces the Eric Chenaux Trio, with Toronto-based musicians Ryan Driver on Wurlitzer organ and Phillipe Melanson on electronic percussion. Driver is a longtime collaborator, appearing on several of Chenaux's solo albums (even embedded into the very title of the 2010 masterpiece Warm Weather With Ryan Driver). Melanson has a long list of involvements that include Bernice, Joseph Shabason, and U.S Girls, and a recent release with his Impossible Burger project on Chenaux's own experimental label Rat-drifting, but this marks the first fulsome involvement between the two as players on a recording. In many ways Delights Of My Life also picks up right where Chenaux's previous album left off, in its subversions of a classic, timeless jazz-inflected balladry, while the interplay of the trio formation indeed unfurls many new delights. Recording together at Chenaux's spartan home studio in rural France, Driver's harmonically warped organ and Melanson's electroacoustic sampling and percussion hold time in newfound ways. Where previously Chenaux relied on a freeze/sustain pedal and minimalist rhythmic triggers to generate both pulse and chordal foundations, Melanson now paints timekeeping with expressive and intricate colourations, through live deployments of fluid sampled percussion (including orchestral timbres like timpani, kettle drums, and woodblock) that blur the boundaries between acoustic and electronic. Driver also ramps up his role in the song arrangements (prefigured in his support playing on Say Laura), teasing out chords and melodic filigree on Wurlitzer that percolate more prominently with Chenaux's signature fried guitar solos and succulent singing. Both trio members add dulcet backing vocals, most notably on the 10-minute tour-de-force of fuzzed and ring-modulated swing "This Ain't Life" that opens the record. All seven songs on the album groove and sway, simmer and sparkle, like nothing in the inestimable Chenaux discography to date. Chenaux's tunes have the uncanny ability to sound like jazz standards; songs you feel you've heard before, though certainly never quite like this. Yet these are of course all originals, compositionally and interpretively, bent through an inimitable avant/out-music lens. Delights Of My Life conveys warm familiarity, shot through with the exuberantly experimental subversion and playful, even mischievous, iconoclasm that continues to mark Chenaux as defiantly, virtuosically, and genially one-of-kind.

This will be available on ltd edition pink vinyl, with only 250 copies pressed.

We are delighted to welcome the incredible Masal to the Up In Her Room family! Masal is a collaboration between Al Johnson and Ozlem Simsek. Ozlem is a Turkish multi instrumentalist whose middle eastern background is entwined with her western studies in classical music. Al performs psychedelic electronic music as Alien.

As Masal they weave harp, Theremin and electronics into a beautiful aural journeys. Having worked with legends such as Andy Bell & Mark Gardener of RIDE, and Sonic Cathedral, plus enjoyed radio play from the wonderful Simone Butler of Primal Scream on Soho Radio, and Mark Riley and Stuart Maconie on BBC 6 Music, we are very excited for you to see what the pair have been cooking up.

‘The Galloping Cat finds this unlikely pair of “neurodiverse nature lovers” collaborating on six meandering tracks of psychedelic grooves, electronic weirdness and motorik basslines mostly wordlessly exploring themes of self-discovery – and it’s stunning.

Sonic Cathedral – March 2023

The Galloping Cat is a work of compassion and tenderness. It’s also surprisingly funk (see ‘Dying Days’ and ‘Dokuz’) with Al revealing hitherto undiscovered Clyde Stubblefield-style chops behind the (digital) drumkit.’

Even Butterfly’s Make A Sound – March 2023

"Palm Reader", das zweite Album der Texaner HIGH DESERT QUEEN, strotzt geradezu vor roher Kraft und dem Donnern von gefühlt 666 heißblütigen Dieselpferden. Der Langspieler steckt voll von coolen Vibes, packenden Leads und jeder Menge Desert-Feeling. Dabei liegt der Fokus der Wüstenrocker auf großartigen Songs, statt sich hinter Genre-Zäunen zu verstecken. Diese ungezähmte Attitüde fand den Zündfunken für ihre sprudelnde Energiequelle auf der letzten Tour. Als die Band nach sechs Wochen auf Europas Straßen und Bühnen mit den legendären FATSO JETSON nach Texas zurückkehrte, hatte sie sich von deren allabendlichen Improvisationen und Jamsessions inspirieren lassen und zahlreiche Ideen notiert. Trotz Jetlag konnten es HIGH DESERT QUEEN kaum erwarten, mit neuen Aufnahmen zu beginnen. Dabei konzentrierte sich die Truppe weniger darauf, wer bestimmte Parts wie einspielte, sondern sie erlaubte sich Unvollkommenheit und ließ den Click weg. Frei von künstlichen Schranken begann ihre Musik so frei zu fließen wie nie zuvor. Schon bei der ersten Studiosession nach der Tournee entstanden gleich drei neue Songs. Die Band aus Austin, Texas hat den musikalischen Jackpot geknackt, und "Palm Reader" ist der schlagende Beweis dafür. HIGH DESERT QUEEN waren schon immer etwas anders und viel mehr als nur eine weitere Desert Rock Band. Von Sänger Ryan Garney und Gitarrist Rusty Miller im Jahr 2019 in Houston, Texas gegründet, rekrutierte das Duo bald darauf Schlagzeuger Phil Hook (MONTE LUNA) und zog 2020 nach Austin um. HIGH DESERT QUEEN wurde von Anfang an das Zeug dazu nachgesagt, die dümpelnde Wüstenrockszene wieder in Schwung zu bringen. Ihre vielseitigen musikalischen Einflüsse, die von Grunge bis Funk, sowie von Old School Metal bis Doom und vielen weiteren Musikstilen reichen, boten eine ideale Grundlage für neue Ideen und die nötige Verjüngung des Genres. Ihre donnernden Verzerrer-Hymnen kommen mit einer gesunden Portion Groove und eingängigen Melodien daher, die massiven Anschub durch eine seltene emotionale musikalische Intelligenz erhalten. Der frisch geprägte Sound ist dennoch eng mit dem reichen Erbe des Wüstenrocks verbunden - was in ihrer Stilbezeichnung "Texas Desert Rock" ein Echo findet. Mit "Palm Reader" vollziehen HIGH DESERT QUEEN den nächsten Quantensprung ihrer rasanten Entwicklung. Die Texaner haben die perfekte Balance zwischen den kräftigen Wurzeln ihres Genres und dem pointiert-eigenen Ausdruck gefunden. Angetrieben von Geist und Kraft der live gespielten Musik, rockt dieses Album hart und ehrlich!

The Slovak band Shallov releases their new track "Refrain" on the experimental label Weltschmerzen just one year after the release of "Coexist". Two tracks that both span more than 10 minutes in length, work together as one coherent audiovisual art piece and are out as an EP on 10" vinyl. Music videos do not only visually supplement both tracks but they are equally autonomous art pieces.

The visual feature of the music pieces is highlighted by the vinyl's cover painted by Slovak artist Michal Fízik. The previous back cover carries a photograph which served as an inspiration for the painting while the current back has been created via AI reinterpretation.

The musical component of Refrain is based on a repetition building into a hypnotic trance, gradually disintegrating so it eventually ends in a monumental climax. It contrasts the band's previous work as well as the track Coexist which uses rather neverending rhythmic variations, and a changeable vibe and atmosphere.

The concept of the visuals in Coexist is a result of a collective fusion between the theatre director Adam Dragun, Viktor Ori and dozens of other participating non-actors. The video depicts individualistic egoist actions shaping a contradicting and incomprehensible totality of the world which ultimately seems to be alienated to everybody.

Refrain is an introspective journey leading to the dissolution of the individualistic experience of human existence. The video's concept, direction and production was conducted by the visual artist and performer Jak Užovič who also tends to inter-media art and object installations.

As Shallov and Jak Užovič explain the track's conceptual background: "The idea of owning one's own body and mind is an unnatural way of looking at ourselves imposed by the dominant paradigm. It's a blind ideology - the view of a body as a machine or a commodity is incomplete and represents a materialistic utopia which is being systematically internalized. We're not a community that acts right or wrong, our intentions are determined by an ideology which pretends not to exist - our relations are relations of masters and slaves, of domination and exploitation. We are a society bound by these features and even though we refuse to admit it, the world presented to us is only a legend we're striving to keep alive at all costs, while believing that there is no alternative. Our quality doesn't stem magically from the inside, on the contrary, it's determined by the conditions within which we interpret it through collectively shared fictions. We don't get to know our consciousness through ourselves, but we recognize it through others as they create and form us."