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Psychedelic music can be many things, but not many are quite like Fomies brand of the genre. This Swiss five piece throws some punk rock a la The Dead Milkmen into the mix and describes themselves as:
“Great followers of the D.I.Y., FOMIES is a garage-fuzz band mainly inspired by obscure records badly recorded in weird places.”
For fans of: Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Harvey Rushmoore & The Octopus.

Northern soul is in the news again, as once more this most resilient of dance floor cults is discovered by a new generation. For four decades now Ace Records has been a natural home for the music and using that experience we are bringing you our first ever all classics collection of some of the scene's greatest hits. All on one LP.

The recordings featured on this release are tried and tested, often in the hot forge of the scene's earliest day, when new discoveries were coming thick and fast, and only the strong survived. These did.

So we have 14 tracks which filled floors in Wigan, Blackpool, Cleethorpes, London's 100 Club and many other legendary venues. From West Coast Mirwood and Kent/ Modern label classics by Jackie Lee, Bobby Garrett, Mary Love and Danny Monday, to the big City Chicago soul of Darrow Fletcher via the super rare recordings by Rita & The Tiaras and Little Ann, which are now accepted standards of the scene.

This is an album for the beginner, those who want to know what all the fuss is about, or those older hands who just want to relive some exceptional memories.

Wild ecstatic vocals, distorted electric guitars, rocket bass, and the amphetamine beat! // Unlike anything else, this is THE high life music you've always wanted // Ceremonial music played with abandon and extreme intent, honoring the living and dead alike // Recorded on location in SW Madagascar by Maxime Bobo // “Tsapiky music from Southwest Madagascar features wild ecstatic vocals, distorted electric guitars, rocket bass, and the amphetamine beat! Unlike anything else, this is THE high life music you've always wanted - ceremonial music played with abandon and extreme intent, honoring the living and dead alike. In Toliara and its surrounding region, funerals, weddings, circumcisions and other rites of passage have been celebrated for decades in ceremonies called mandriampototse. During these celebrations – which last between three and seven days – cigarettes, beer and toaky gasy (artisanal rum) are passed around while electric orchestras play on the same dirt floor as the dancing crowds and zebus. The music, tsapiky, defies any classification. This compilation showcases the diversity of contemporary tsapiky music. Locally and even nationally renowned bands played their own songs on makeshift instruments, blaring through patched-up amps and horn speakers hung in tamarind trees, projecting the music kilometers away. Lead guitarists and female lead singers are the central figures of tsapiky. Driven as much by their creative impulses as by the need to stand out in a competitive market, the artists distinguish themselves stylistically through their lyrics, rhythms or guitar riffs. They must also master a wide repertoire of current tsapiky hits, which the families that attend inevitably request before parading in front of the orchestra with their offerings. This work, a constant push and pull between distinction and imitation, is nourished by fertile exchanges between various groups: acoustic and electric, rural and urban, coastal or inland. What results during these ceremonies is a music of astonishing intensity and creativity, played by artists carving out their own path, indifferent to the standards of any other music industry: Malagasy, African or global. Recorded live on location by Maxime Bobo, this vinyl LP includes a 4-page full-color insert with detailed liner notes plus photos of the musicians and surroundings.”

Edinburgh-based three-piece funk band High Fade are set to release their debut album 'Life’s Too Fast'.

Capturing the raw, on-stage energy that has been the driving force behind High Fade’s meteoric rise was never going to be easy, but that’s exactly what Harry, Oli and Calvin set out to do with a clear creative vision to record their album live at the iconic RAK Studios in London.

'We recorded in RAK Studios, with the desk built for the Rolling Stones in ‘76, with the same cigarette burns still on the faders. It instantly had a vibe of raw energy and liveliness to it that matched the way we wanted to record - live.' – Calvin

The result? 'Life’s Too Fast' – a blistering 10-track debut from one of the UK’s most exciting bands that manages to deliver the same tight, groove-laden funk rock that has put the group on the radars of Jack Black, Cypress Hill and Rage Against the Machine’s Brad Wilk, has seen them tour with The Cat Empire, and tick off iconic venues including Glastonbury, Jazz Cafe, and Boomtown Festival.

'We decided to record the album live rather than through the normal single track overdubbed method – we felt this would help to fully convey the band’s power, sound and energy across to the listener! More like we’re playing a gig and having it recorded – it was a tough process, but we went about it in the best way for both us and the audience, to ensure they’re getting the most authentic High Fade sound and experience possible.' – Oli

Having spent much of the last three years on the road seeing to a punishing tour schedule, 'Life’s Too Fast' is a chance for the band to stop and take stock, to reflect on their whirlwind success, and create an artistic milestone that demonstrates who High Fade are today. 'It’s the most accurate representation of what High Fade is, what we sound like, and who we are' explains Harry. Telling a clear story that matches their own experiences over the last few years, the album is a snapshot taken by a band who are accelerating towards real success and recognition.

'I’m glad we finally have a body of work that we’re proud of and feels like a collection of songs that nicely represents where we are right now. It’s organised chaos and shows that we like to play, but can also write a catchy tune.' – Calvin

Launching into proceedings with the effortlessly uplifting 'Take Me To The Floor', every track is a demonstration of the band’s technical prowess and broad sonic palette. A forward-facing selection of completely original material, the album also gave the band the opportunity to re-imagine fan-favourite 'Sharpen Up' as a stripped-back cut that reflects the band’s current lineup.

'Honestly, I kinda feel like I could explode with excitement about getting it out for everyone in the world to hear because it has been a long time in the making! A culmination of what all the singles have been working towards! I guess the album represents us and the direction we’re taking the music, it represents us as a trio and the gel that is High Fade.' – Oli

Electronic music at its best offers a tantalising glimpse of the future, capturing the moment of conception where new worlds and genres are brought into being. Amsterdam-via-Berlin label Q1E2 (standing for “quality first, ego second”) embodies this expansive promise on their new various-artists compilation, a thrilling speed-run through the cosmic outer-reaches of contemporary club sounds that highlights the work of essential emerging producers from around the globe.

Milan producer Jack Bags opens the proceedings with “Natural Thing”, an astral deep-dance immersion with zero-gravity synthesizer pads and skeletal dub percussion that echo out through the void, sensuous vocal samples arriving like scattered transmissions from the stereo of some long-lost spacecraft. datSIM’s “Influx” races through kaleidoscopic sci-fi spacescapes, presenting a futuristic reimagining of UK bass sounds with dextrous organ melodics and widescreen atmospherics. Mike Riviera and Marco Ohboy bring us back down for a more earthly kind of ecstatic experience, cranking up the humidity and coaxing out the endorphins with the appropriately-titled “Euphoria” - a rugged, rave-adjacent heater that cleverly rearranges elements of classic house and garage into a decidedly modern club workout.

Elsewhere there’s a distinctive undercurrent of jazz flowing through the compilation, mapping out thrilling new evolutions of the music on and off the dancefloor. Dr Sud’s mesmeric rhythm excursion “Zaffiro” unfurls like the coils of a cosmic serpent, tessellating percussion and slinking subs tracing intricate beat geometries. A Soft Mist Production’s “Upside Down Rainbows” settles in for the afters with smoked-out soulful atmospherics, syrupy vocals curling and turning in the air like smoke vapors from the last vestiges of a still-lit cigarette. The Rabbit Hole’s “Tail Groove” closes out the proceedings with a surprising bait-and-switch - opening on lustrous lounge piano that could have been comped straight from a Bill Evans record, the track quickly gives way to interstellar bass ‘n’ breaks. The producer’s canny use of cello licks adds a grounded, organic feel, jazz futurism that recalls Photek or LTJ Bukem’s sampling experiments.

Taken together, the label’s new compilation provides a snapshot of a scene in constant evolution, taking the temperature of the modern electronic scene and finding it to be in rude health.

Written by Matthew Fidler

'It begins with a shoebox of mysterious provenance, full of recordings from the Vendée department on France’s western seaboard: songs of love and war, life and death, played out on land and sea. Songs passed down and sung by ordinary men and women, gracefully delivered with the poetic economy which unites the folk song of all peoples.

Next it takes a group of contemporary musicians to make selections from this treasure trove and sing these old songs anew; to sing them for their beauty, of course, and to reclaim the people’s tradition from those who would seek to exploit it for nefarious political ends. Who better for this task than Tartine de Clous, a singing trio from Vendée’s neighbouring department of Charente-Maritime, who burst into national and international consciousness with their debut album "Sans Folklore" in 2015? The result of their shoebox rummagings, the new album "Compter les dents", recorded in 2019 and finally seeing the light of day, is bound to delight old fans and win them many new ones.

Time makes many’s the alteration, and "Compter les dents" finds 'les garçons' - Geoffroy Dudouit, Thomas Georget and Guillaume Maupin - in a different state of being from their debut release. The trio, friends since youth, have certainly matured between albums, as one would expect; consequently the newer performances are more considered and poised, unfolding with a patient confidence. A relaxed domesticity prevails, something to do with the fact that the album was entirely recorded chez les amis, in contrast to the first album, which was mostly recorded at live performances in bars and night-spots across France.

Lending gravitas to the grain of their voices we mark a deepened richness, doubtless born of the various vicissitudes of daily existence which these gentlemen - and we too as citizens of this turmoiled globe - have weathered in the intervening years. Not too dissimilar, in fact,
from some of the vicissitudes detailed in those old Vendée songs. Plus 'ça change', right?

There’s a greater complexity and subtlety to their unique three-part harmonising, too. Their voices mesh in even stronger - almost telepathic - 'fraternité' than ever before: now commanding and mighty as a full-rigged counter-vessel, now gentle and lulling as a mother’s
cradle-croon, or as the whisper in a lover’s ear.

Three legendary figures of French traditional music, now sadly departed, preside as tutelary spirits over Compter les dents. They are: the late Claude Flagel, musician and ethnomusicologist; and the late Jean-Loup Baly of the well-known 1970s band Mélusine. Most of the album was recorded by Claude in the Brussels home he shared with his late wife Lou Flagel. The album is dedicated to the memory of Jean-Loup, Claude and Lou.

For the first time there are several guest instrumentalists working their magic to expand the Tartine de Clous sound. Jean-Loup plays a characterful accordéon on the song ‘La Veuve'. The other guests are: Maurice Artus (voice), Robert Thébaut (violin), Quentin Manfroy (piccolo, contrabassoon), Marceau Portron (cigar box guitar). Their contributions add even more conviviality to that which the trio of singers already share, a sensation which will doubtless be shared by those who happen to find a place in their lives for "Compter les dents".'

Liner notes by Alasdair Roberts.

Remastered!

RainboWarriors Vol 1 is the first compilation from the Warriorecords label, curated by Rebeka Warrior.

15 original tracks by 15 artists from all horizons and, for the most part, from the queer scene, grouped under the same Dark and New Wave banner.

Capturing phantom drones behind dusty beats and haunted twangs, Ellis Swan and James Schimpl return for their third album as Dead Bandit. Locked into a musical language unique to their collaboration, the duo once again put us out to pasture across broad sonic plains, drums flapping like loose fence panels in the prairie breeze and bass rumbling like distant thunder. True to their previous two records, Swan and Schimpl keep the strung out guitars at the front of what they do, whether playing a naked, desolate strum or running six strings through disruptive effects processing until they're barely recognisable.
But while there are details of disturbance when listening to Dead Bandit's self-titled record up close, the wider impression is a smoother, more direct affair that toys with post-rock complexity and matches it with the emotional weight of melodic simplicity, gentle grooves and conscious arrangements. 'Weeds' offsets its languid fuzz guitar with shimmering sustained notes before settling into a patient, heavy-hearted composition charged with heartbreak leads pealing out in the middle distance.
By comparison, 'Glass' has a smoky, half-hidden backroom quality. Its brushed whisper of a beat, lingering guitar drones and subtle sub bass come on like a dub wise flip of a sad-eyed country ballad. The mood maintains on 'Half Smoked Cigarette', which captures the grey sky sullenness of post-punk and reframes it in the seductive isolation of rural America. While there's a thickness to the sound on these most direct of tracks on the album, there's also fragility inherent to the sound world Dead Bandit have been shaping out over these past few years.
'Buttercup' swaps sadness for sinister undercurrents, once more drawing on fulsome low end to fill out the sparse threads of instrumentation up top. 'Pink' finds a steady momentum for its own brand of brooding mystery, the sharp end of the beat bringing focus to the many-layered approaches to the guitar which roundly define the Dead Bandit sound. There's an even clearer direction mapped out in the vintage drum machine pulse of 'Koyo', all the better to carry swirling effects treatments and moody melodic figures. Even in these ominous climes there's space for plaintive, endearing hooks which land as the most direct phrases in Dead Bandit's musical lexicon to date.
The fundamental sound across this album holds true, but Dead Bandit are never bound to a singular practice. 'Lucien's Bitters' strikes up a pronounced drum machine beat which comes on like 90s downtempo, and it feels like a natural vessel for the heavy, shoegaze tinted lament of the guitars. At every turn, Swan and Schimpl prove their affinity for all kinds of approaches, and yet the end product is a deeply cohesive, immediate listen that shows just how clear their creative vision really is.

Das brandneue Studioalbum des brasilianisch-dänischen Garage-Rock-Duos! The Courettes präsentieren stolz ihr drittes Album, Back In Mono. Es ist ein Meilenstein in ihrer bisherigen Karriere. "Spit 'n'Snarl Garage Rumble-meets-Phil Spector Pop", der die Band in Bestform zeigt - großartiges Songwriting, Spector-esque Arrangements, mit weiteren Nuancen, Einflüssen und Produktionsqualitäten, die ihr Garagenrock-Rezept ergänzen. Vierzehn wagnerianische Teenie-Tragödien-Meisterwerke - es ist, als wären The Ronettes und The Ramones zu einer wilden Party in die Echokammer der Gold Star Studios eingeladen worden. Fuzz-Gitarren, laute Drums, trashige Pianos, Jingle Bells, Tamburine und dreiminütige Dancefloor-Garagenkiller, bei denen eine Wall of Sound die Songs aus den Lautsprechern schmettert! Produziert und aufgenommen von Soren Christensen in den Starr Sound Recording Studios in Dänemark und abgemischt vom Top-Produzenten und Wall of Sound-Liebhaber Seiki Sato in Japan.

2026 Repress

MOLA's music is the unadorned antithesis to a rosy world. She celebrates herself to death, pulls you into her inner chaos and does without the usual romanticising transfiguration of the merciless disorientation that catches up with you on the way home after the last cigarette.

MOLA knows better than anyone that she is a border commuter - and she has never made a secret of it. Perhaps it was fate that the course of events abandoned her shortly after her birth in Erba, Italy, in Germany's most austere metropolis. In Munich, where flying free and falling free are a little more complicated than in the cesspit of Berlin, where one would naturally place Isabella Streifeneder and her music if one didn't know better.

Temporarily reduced to intimacy, then escalating into iconic 80s "Purpel Rain" pathos, MOLA illustrates the emotional chaos that the inner dialogue of left and right brain triggers in her. Unconventional pop music that bundles the nonchalance of great soul anthems, the grace of the Italo-disco of the eighties and the ingenuousness of lascivious hip-hop bangers instead of trying to sound modern by force.

MOLA celebrates defeat, exposes life lies, criticises adulthood, documents radical mood swings. She balances along the abyss in her ball gown, jokes about things you don't joke about, praises and curses intoxication and love - "Vino Bianco no longer tastes like dolce vita, it only tastes like losing".

You can now see MOLA supporting Fatoni, Roy Bianco & the Abbrunzati Boys, Mayberg and Kaffkiez in a flurry of strobe lights after sold-out "nothing breaks me" shows in Munich, Cologne, Berlin & Hamburg. In addition to a festival season that couldn't have been more beautiful, they finally have a big tour of their own coming up for their next album, which will see the light of day in September.

After more than 40 festivals "Snow in Summer" on well-known stages like Lollapalooza Berlin, Rocken am Brocken, Puls Open Air, but also as support for Udo Lindenberg at the Hermann-Hesse-Festival, "Life is Beautiful", the darned second record, sounds almost cynical, ironic or simply naive? In the end, it doesn't matter, because when you are overcome by this spontaneous feeling that is far removed from any rationality, you don't ask any questions. It tastes like the melancholy of a summer in its last breaths, like the last drink of an uncompromisingly insane night.

There is sweating, pogoing and feeling together. Even where it hurts.
You are not just an onlooker or a silent spectator, but part of this empowering feeling of "we".

Dogman is the fifth studio album by American rock band King’s X, released in 1994. The album was produced by Brendan O’Brien (who had recently worked with Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots and The Black Crowes). Dogman was considerably heavier than previous albums and marked a transition in the band’s sound. In 1999, Doug Pinnick reflected, “For me personally, the Dogman record is what King’s X really sounds like. The self-titled record was a step and an eye-opener and after that we could just make our music.”

The Official “Forever” Versions of Less Than Jake’s first full lenght album, Pezcore and Losing Streak are here! There have not been many pressings of "Pezcore" over the career of Less Than Jake. Now, with a fresh look to the classic "Pezcore" art, this special 30th anniversary version will celebrate the history of this seminal album for years to come.

Rats on Rafts descend further into the brooding wasteland on their new album ‘Deep Below’, a darker, slower, eroded sound from the Rotterdam band. Highlighting different shades within the monochrome landscape compared to their previous, more colourful albums: they dive deeper into their psyche, questioning our relationships with nature, religion and each other. Echoes of The Cure, Cocteau Twins and Slowdive seem present yet so many different influences make up an album that only they could create. It sees Rats on Rafts coming of age whilst raising their heads from the underground. Forever drifting into new territory, ‘Deep Below’ is certainly their darkest and most cohesive work to date. True to their analogue recording process, the tape machines, reverbs, echoes and vital new ingredients: the Soundcraft 1s mixing desk (Used by Lee Perry) and the eerie sounding Eminent String Ensemble synth all amplify the authentic sounds of the 1980’s without sounding like a relic. ‘Japanese Medicine’ is a haunting minor chord piece driven by debris of icy chiming guitars, galloping drums and waves of lush synths. lyrically it gathers memories of teenage friendship, littered with cigarettes, life-changing records, punctuated with the dark thoughts and the demons they summon up. Though the band have kept the songs relatively slow-paced and sparse, deeper ruminations of mortality and alienation creep through the cracks. ‘Nature Breaks’, the most propulsive song on the record, thematically locks into this notion, as Fagan meditates on human impulse in the face of abject survival, and how those situations often unlock one's true self. You may conclude Rotterdam’s Rats on Rafts relationship with the past is complicated. ‘The Moon Is Big’ (2011) ‘Tape Hiss’ (2015) and ‘Excerpts From Chapter 3’ (2021) are truly gripping analog timestamps of a band refusing to give in to the supposed ‘progress of the world’ instead forging their own way each time. ‘Deep Below’ is Rats on Rafts’ most minimalist work since their 2011 debut. Where the latter album was fuelled by a brash bravado, these recordings meditate on sentiments of doubt, loss, and ageing. “One of the great contemporary European rock bands” Louder Than War

From a club-friendly chrysalid onto deploying his wings as a full fledged pop artist in recent years, Saint Petersburgs Kito Jempere has enjoyed a journey unlike any other and his newest album, Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness live-documents the chameleonic changes / game-changing paradox experienced this year between his life both as a musician and as a family man.

Better known for his work as a house producer which has earned him accolades from prominent dance music outlets throughout well over a decade of intense work both into and outwith the limelights, Kito has for all that never been focussed on writing solely discoid material, throwing as much effort over the years into multi-faceted parallel ventures, far and apart from strictly dance floor-oriented functionality. Yet, from this partition between various projects and mindsets, this is through a radical shift towards downtempo pop and out of the 4x4 loop that Kito got to fully assert himself as a musician, embracing the rejoicing variety of tone and mood of his tender loves, secret and not. The movie Ive never made but have the soundtrack for, Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness is the fruit of change as much as change itself. A return to the simple means of his young self, his old trusty guitar from his late teens serving as the backbone to Killer Line and Love Myself But I Cant Make It Love, and the natural development to last years Green Monster, which
initiated these deep tectonic movements in Kitos approach to his art, PTCPTC is an intimate trip down the kaleidoscope of his present life. Joined up by an impressive cast of artists, including Jimi Tenor, Adam Evald and Hard Ton, Kito didnt just bin his old persona, he took it back to where it belongs. From the low-slung emotional folk of the opener, Killer Line, to the eerie flamenco-jazz hybrid Before Music Dies. via the broken soulfulness of Put Love Into Your Heart and anthemic 80s balearic breaks meets coastal synthwave vibe of Sounds of Love, the album pulsates with a refreshingly genre-unbound vision. To the naive, laid-back sonic bokeh of Footsteps,
succeeds the left-of-centre cinematic narrative of In The Countryside, which includes some fun nods to fictional brands taken from Tarantinos imaginarium (Red Apple cigarettes) or other movies like High Fidelity, after Nick Hornbys eponymous novel.

Freed from gridlocked programming and impersonal tropes, PTCPTC showcases a wide array of songs, beats, grooves old and new, some dating back to 2018 and improvised sessions with his 9-people Kito Jempere Band, all of which were finished within the same timeframe and with this all-inclusive momentum in mind. Through the epic synths of Absent Ascent. in revamping the universal classic Over The Rainbow with Celebrine, on the appeasing ballad Shorespotting feat. Evald or in the waves-ready closing cut Lovers, Jempere tells a tale of hard-earned emancipation and life-affirming freedom.

From a club-friendly chrysalid onto deploying his wings as a full fledged pop artist in recent years, Saint Petersburgs Kito Jempere has enjoyed a journey unlike any other and his newest album, Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness live-documents the chameleonic changes / game-changing paradox experienced this year between his life both as a musician and as a family man.

Better known for his work as a house producer which has earned him accolades from prominent dance music outlets throughout well over a decade of intense work both into and outwith the limelights, Kito has for all that never been focussed on writing solely discoid material, throwing as much effort over the years into multi-faceted parallel ventures, far and apart from strictly dance floor-oriented functionality. Yet, from this partition between various projects and mindsets, this is through a radical shift towards downtempo pop and out of the 4x4 loop that Kito got to fully assert himself as a musician, embracing the rejoicing variety of tone and mood of his tender loves, secret and not. The movie Ive never made but have the soundtrack for, Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness is the fruit of change as much as change itself. A return to the simple means of his young self, his old trusty guitar from his late teens serving as the backbone to Killer Line and Love Myself But I Cant Make It Love, and the natural development to last years Green Monster, which
initiated these deep tectonic movements in Kitos approach to his art, PTCPTC is an intimate trip down the kaleidoscope of his present life. Joined up by an impressive cast of artists, including Jimi Tenor, Adam Evald and Hard Ton, Kito didnt just bin his old persona, he took it back to where it belongs. From the low-slung emotional folk of the opener, Killer Line, to the eerie flamenco-jazz hybrid Before Music Dies. via the broken soulfulness of Put Love Into Your Heart and anthemic 80s balearic breaks meets coastal synthwave vibe of Sounds of Love, the album pulsates with a refreshingly genre-unbound vision. To the naive, laid-back sonic bokeh of Footsteps,
succeeds the left-of-centre cinematic narrative of In The Countryside, which includes some fun nods to fictional brands taken from Tarantinos imaginarium (Red Apple cigarettes) or other movies like High Fidelity, after Nick Hornbys eponymous novel.

Freed from gridlocked programming and impersonal tropes, PTCPTC showcases a wide array of songs, beats, grooves old and new, some dating back to 2018 and improvised sessions with his 9-people Kito Jempere Band, all of which were finished within the same timeframe and with this all-inclusive momentum in mind. Through the epic synths of Absent Ascent. in revamping the universal classic Over The Rainbow with Celebrine, on the appeasing ballad Shorespotting feat. Evald or in the waves-ready closing cut Lovers, Jempere tells a tale of hard-earned emancipation and life-affirming freedom.

Die schwedischen Rocker Devil's Cigarette präsentieren ihr Debütalbum 'I Wanna Be On TV'! Beeinflusst von Rock-Ikonen wie The Stooges, MC5, The Beatles, The Hives, The Soundtrack Of Our Lives und The Hellacopters, kreieren Devil's Cigarette eine einzigartige Mischung aus energiegeladenem, düsterem und rasantem Rock 'n' Roll.

The Soul Album is the fourth studio album by American soul singer-songwriter Otis Redding, released in 1966. It features Redding performing songs that he co-wrote, as well as covers of songs by such musicians as Sam Cooke, Eddie Floyd, Roy Head, and Smokey Robinson. Guitarist Steve Cropper contributed guitar on the album and is also credited as the co-author of three tracks. The Soul Album shows Otis Redding moving from strength to strength in a string of high-energy, sweaty soul performances, interspersing his own songs with work by Sam Cooke ("Chain Gang"), Roy Head ("Treat Her Right"), Eddie Floyd ("Everybody Makes a Mistake"), and Smokey Robinson ("It's Growing") and recasting them in his own style, so that they're not "covers" so much as reinterpretations.

Continuing our quest to get all of the classic early AMT albums released on vinyl, we turn to 2004’s 'Mantra Of Love’, and with the help of Makoto Kawabata’s studio wizardry, we’ve made it possible.

This latest instalment in the ‘Acid Mothers Temple Vinyl Archives - First Time On Vinyl’ series (as with the three previous SOLD OUT releases in the series) have all been meticulously put together with the help of Makoto Kawabata with the original CD artwork recreated for these vinyl editions from archive photos stored in the vaults at the Acid Mothers Temple in Osaka, Japan and the original audio remastered by James Plotkin.

Here’s what others had to say upon it’s original CD only release back in 2004 …

“Acid Mothers are strong folk. You'd think they'd tire quickly, all tucked away on their island, strewn about on tree roots while baking their lungs and throats to a knotty green tinge. But instead of waltzing through life like hippies, they manage to not only tour and put out records every year, but also to fill those albums with 30-minute jams and assorted freakouts. And while evil jam bands would fill that space with guitar work taken from the Classic Rock Manual of Clichés, Makoto Kawabata and company assault listeners with frighteningly dense walls of white noise, psychedelic swirl effects and, yes, even guitar solos-- albeit ones that are more Merzbow or Keiji Haino than Gary Rossington. Truly, AMT's endurance and threshold for cosmic lashings are both worthy of admiration.

But how much AMT can you take in one sitting? If there's anything this band has taught us-- via records such as 2002's Electric Heavyland and the ferocious Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O-- it's that they're not afraid to reach for the upper regions of consciousness. On Mantra of Love, they offer two titles over the course of one hour, never faltering along the way, and it's as if we listeners are just brief visitors passing through a never-ending, spontaneous group trip. For all I know, Kawabata has hundreds of hours of this stuff on his hard drive-- at any single moment, this record's sheer volume of sound is a clamor to behold. However, if you aren't dialed into that the particular space AMT inhabits (for me, it's the mystical fire-baptism standby), you might not hear their glorious noise for all the, well, glorious noise.

"La Le Lo" begins as a lengthy psychedelic ballad sung by Cotton Casino (who doubles on "beer & cigarettes"), who is accompanied by her own ghostly backing vocals. The band is playing a mantra as Casino waxes earth-mother stylings to the moon. The serenity is broken by a patented AMT rave led by Kawabata's electric sitar (!) solo. Ace rhythm section Tsuyama Atsushi ("monster bass") and Koizumi Hajime hold things together, as does the generally decent recording quality (not a given for these guys), but the real money is in effects-- lots and lots effects. Much like France's Richard Pinhas or AMT's countrymen in Les Rallizes Denudes and High Rise, the band understands the collaborative power of solo + overdriven Moog sirens and screams. And, also like those artists, Acid Mothers can go on all night if need be. About 25 minutes into this piece, any hell that hadn't already broken loose gets its due, and the band speeds to a fiery climax before winding down into glimmering astro-ambience.

The second track, "L'Ambition dans le Miroir", also begins as a minor ballad featuring Casino's haunting solo vocal. The Mothers set her up with a faux-blues drag and a thick buffer of synth-rays; when Casino actually enters, she fights for airtime with an array of falling stars and cosmic dust. However, this time there is no overwhelming solo to power the comedown. Casino intermittently coos in the background while droning horns keep the auxiliary pixie haze from evaporating. As they showed on In C and La Novia, AMT are more than adept at creating calmer storms-- listeners just have to catch them in the right light. Mantra of Love doesn't necessarily capture the most inspired moments in their canon but as usual with this band's records, it's rarely at a loss for moments of horror or grandeur.”

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. : Cotton Casino - Vocal, Beer & Cigarettes - Tsuyama Atsushi - Monster Bass, Vocal, Cosmic Joker - Higashi Hiroshi - Synthesizer, Dancin' King - Koizumi Hajime - Drums, Percussion, Sleeping Monk - Kawabata Makoto - Guitar, Bouzouki, Electric Sitar, Violin, Hammond Organ, Speed Guru