Buscar:ghost and tape

‘Empires into Sand’ is the first album of new material from Normil Hawaiians in 40 years. The group first refined their sound during the early 80s, hitting on a pastoral experimentalism that drew on ambient drone, motorik impulse and post-punk pep.
‘Empires into Sand’ came together in the familiar manner of their original three albums, with improvisation and nuance informing the blueprint of the tracks. It was with the official release of this last record ‘Return of the Ranters’ (originally recorded in 1984/85, but then unconsciously shelved) in 2015 by Upset The Rhythm that led to the group reconnecting with the intention of playing music together again. Normil Hawaiians played a launch show for that ‘lost album’ and followed that up with more concerts, including an appearance at Supernormal, a residency at the Edinburgh Festival, gigs at Cafe OTO. They were even chosen by Richard Dawson to perform with him in London.
Throughout this time, Normil Hawaiians revisited their original songs for live performance. However for a group always so interested in evolving their sound, it came as no surprise that they shirked at the idea of a faithful retread. The band pushed their songs into new inventive dimensions, still progressive at core, but now imbued with a cosmic uncanny. A cinematic approach that was always quietly present has come to the fore. The quaint weirdness of folk song, the humanity of communal practice and the group’s ecological mindedness have all found a place in Normil Hawaiians’ current sound world.
When Normil Hawaiians write and record music they prefer to gather in a remote location and live together for a while, such is their communal ethos. Being far-flung across the UK, the Family Hawaii (numbering seven key members) decided to encamp to Tayinloan, a small village on the west coast of the Kintyre peninsula in Scotland. They set up their own studio in an isolated, windswept house overlooking the sea and started the tape rolling. Noel Blanden from the band explains the process neatly: “we set up and began playing, slowly and patiently, allowing the music to take its own shape based on where we were staying and our ongoing friendship. We recorded for days, capturing everything. A lot of new and rich ideas began to emerge”.
Normil Hawaiians took their time to develop these threads at their own pace, allowing songs to mutate and settle over months. Simon Marchant deftly produced and recorded the album whilst also performing in the band, this marked the first time the band had total control of their own sound. The last few years has seen the band reconvene in Herne Bay, Faversham, London and Leith to record new parts, constantly responding to the changing form of these quietly spectral songs of defiance.
‘Empires into Sand’ incorporates samples from old rehearsals and live music into the new finished pieces, this is in continuum with their previous records. Snippets of sound from the static of short wave radio and satellite transmissions also embellish the work. In fact the whole album is stitched together with interludes, creating an acutely immersive 45 minutes. ‘Exiles’ opens the album amid swirling atmospheres, synth flights and recordings of Vilnis Egle (father of Zinta Egle from the band) retelling his experience of fleeing his home in Latvia during Soviet occupation in 1942. George Bikandy also features on this track talking about his flight from Syria in 2014. ‘Ghosts of Ballochroy’ is a winding river of a song featuring a lively discourse in Scots courtesy of Rodney Relax. There’s a commitment to truth telling present across this hopeful album populated with angels, incoming tides, long shadows and the rose-washed sun. “From our broken windscreen, we feel the breeze” soars Guy Smith triumphantly over the driving beat of ‘Waterfalls : Bedford 330’. ‘Big City Sky’ flutters and sparkles with rapid synth runs, tape-looped drums and Jimmy Miller’s commanding vocal. With ‘In The Stone’ Zinta’s melody is deliberately jagged and blunt, exaggerated by octave-layered vocals and interjections from Guy.
This is thought-provoking, boundary-bothering music. Honest in intent, a solidarity of vision. The album’s title is derived from a poem by band member Mark Tyler, who sadly passed away during the recording process and the transience of life is felt heavily throughout. Noel best coins the group’s wish for the album: “we wanted to create an album that acknowledges our history and also reflects who we are today. We remained true to ourselves and we wanted to make something beautiful without removing the edges.” ‘Empires into Sand’ certainly does that, it’s an echo from the past, an echo from the future.

Kata No Wadachi is the latest album by Banetoriko, the solo noise project of Tamaki Ueda. Her first release both on An’archives and on vinyl, it follows several albums for the Neurec imprint – 2017’s Beside the Sluice and 2022’s Yorioto Hogiokuri – and several other cassettes and CD-Rs. With Kata No Wadachi, the Banetoriko world, inspired by the Yokai (“strange apparitions” – supernatural figures, ghosts, spirits) of Japanese folklore, is at its most resonant yet.

Recorded across 2022 and 2023, the three tracks on Kata No Wadachi have Ueda performing in a particularly elevated manner. Her sound is highly tactile and grittily sensuous, the better to capture the ritualistic repetitions, and hypnotic methodologies, core to Banetoriko. The scrape and scratch of Ueda’s self-made metal instrument, the Banetek, gives these improvisations a unique throb, even as their mood, of introverted focus and elaboration of minutiae, gestures towards broader histories of noise and abstract art. Kata No Wadachi evokes, to some degree, the urban ritual noise of the likes of The New Blockaders, Organum, or Ferial Confine; elsewhere, the abraded, rough-housing textures bring to mind the eighties tape works of Hands To and John Hudak.

Ueda embraces the dream evocation that’s possible when loops of blurred texture collide with the gnaw and groan of energised metal, while mantric, dissociated vocals, and the oppressive weight of deep breath, gather around these compositions like a ghost’s shroud. While she’s been making noise for some time, since the nineties, Banetoriko was formalised as a project in 2011, while Ueda lived in Los Angeles. Relocating to Osaka in 2021, she’s carved out an utterly unique space for herself in Japanese noise, and her music contains an absolutely elemental vibration. Framed beautifully with poetic liner notes by Aurélien Rossanino, Kata No Wadachi is an oppressive, yet quixotically blissful trip.

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Manhattan Fire is a collection of demos from prolific Brooklyn outfit The Men, revealing early versions of the tracks that would go on to make up their 2023 LP New York City – described by Pitchfork as “an unpretentious garage-punk racket … summoning the snottiest ghosts of the city’s punk past.”

Recorded in mono and with a drum machine by founding members Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi over lockdown in late 2020 – before being shelved for the full-band, live-to-tape affair of the final LP – Manhattan Fire shows a new side to those songs that's even more primitive and rough around the edges, as well as previously unheard tracks that never made it onto the album.

repressed !

10 Year anniversary edition, recut and remastered from the analogue tape masters from Bazza's Alchemy Mastering in London; focusing and enriching every finite detail. This EP features 2 new pieces of sonic meditation residing somewhere between space and time, somewhere in the cosmos.

With the title track, "Beyond Starlit Sky", vaporous atmospheres emerge from the distance, while ghostly apparitions and analog modulations rise to the surface of a truly hypnotizing rhythm, submerging the mind deep into an analog world. With the "Live" version a mixture of themes from "Fading Lights" and "Beyond Starlit Sky" find an engaging syncopation, resting somewhere in the ether. Those who loved Echospace's "The Coldest Season" on Modern Love will have plenty to adore here, timeless in all senses of the word.

A Paris resident of Minsk origin, Lina Filipovich’s ‘Music for an imaginary dancefloor’ explores the liminal space between club music and something altogether weirder, elusive, and abstract. Nervous, varied and amplified by various delays, the LP was written from improvisations on analogue synthesizers between June and December in 2022.

Atonal drones and atmospheric textures convey imagery of charcoal skies and silk tapestries; an idealised parallel world untethered from reality and bodies, towards something more ethereal – floating freely in red carpet lined corridors.

“In my previous works, I used pre-existing sounds to create new pieces. I was interested in the appropriation and decontextualization of materials from various traditions and contexts. However, in this album, I don't deconstruct; instead, I attempt to co-write with the machines, relying on their aesthetics and my imagination.”

Lina's LP trickles down the spine, pulse-raising and gooseflesh on tender skin, analogous to the aftermath of a sweaty fever dream. Speaking the language of spirits in the allure of the dark.

Press release by Asmi Shetty

repress !

Following acclaimed singles from Powell, Blood Music, Shit & Shine and Prostitutes, the next release from Diagonal is a landmark. It marks both the London label's first full-length album release, and the return of abrasive and furiously funky hip-hop deconstructionists Death Comet Crew, one of the most quietly influential underground acts to emerge from the creative melting pot of 1980s New York.

Ghost Among The Crew documents the group's return to studio operations for the first time since the 80s, as well as their first ever full-length studio album. It's a remarkable trip: a consolidation of their early feral disassemblies of hip-hop and electro, but also broader in scope, chewing up and spitting out fragments of soul, jazz fusion, punk and industrial music.
Death Comet Crew were founded in New York City in 1983 by Stuart Argabright, a founder member of post-punk/industrial mavericks Ike Yard and the mind behind Dominatrix and later Black Rain. Their sound, then as now, was a singular proposition: urban in mood, exploratory, often compellingly danceable, yet confrontational. It emerged from the interweaving talents of the group's varied members: guitarist Michael Diekmann (of Ike Yard), bassist Shinichi Shimokawa (later of Black Rain) and Nick Taylor aka DJ High Priest, frequently joined by the late, great hip hop artist and graffiti writer Rammellzee. Having recorded two studio EPs - 1985's At The Marble Bar (featuring Rammellzee) and its follow-up Mystic Eyes - the group disbanded barely a year after forming. They left behind a reputation for their incendiary live performances, several recordings from which were gathered on crucial 2004 compilation This Is Riphop.
The musical climate that first birthed Death Comet Crew was one of fertile cross-pollination of styles. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the seeds of modern day urban musics - hip hop, punk and post-punk, no wave - were taking root in the streets of recession-struck New York City. Argabright recalls dancing at the downtown Mudd Club around 1980 to a bold mixture of styles, with DJs cutting from synth-pop and post-punk to funk, soul and early hip-hop: Bowie and James Brown next to Run DMC, Ultravox and Gary Numan. Indeed, the names of his New York contemporaries operating around the same time - the likes of Liquid Liquid, Run DMC, Afrika Bambaataa, Arthur Russell, ESG, Swans, Sonic Youth, Bill Laswell and more - have since been inscribed in modern music history.
With previous projects Dominatrix and Ike Yard having recently become inactive, in 1984 Argabright formed Death Comet Crew as a means of exploring new sonic avenues. He'd been experimenting with tape, recording and procesing the sounds of his surrounding environment and dialogue from films and TV. Joined by Shimokawa, Diekmann and Taylor, and using drum machines, turntables, spidery guitar and bass, the group assembled a scrambled collage of rhythms and sampled voices. Their live performances were, in Argabright's words, "aurally violent, sharp-edged, downright lacerating", hacking gleefully away at hip hop and electro's rhythmic frameworks. Rammellzee joined the group to vocal 1985 debut EP At The Marble Bar; his MC turn on highlight 'Exterior Street' is all the more remarkable for having been entirely freestyled in the studio. When Death Comet Crew reformed in 2003 for a string of live shows, he continued as an active member of the group, touring and working with them during the recording of Ghost Among The Crew, until he sadly passed away in 2010.
After reforming, Death Comet Crew began writing and recording new material. Now, following on from their just-released Galacticoast 12" through Citinite, Ghost Among The Crew - its title a homage to Rammellzee - hones the group's abrasive early experimentations while tripping into bold and astrally minded new territory. Alongside the core quartet of Argabright, Diekmann, Shimokawa and Taylor are new voices, including Rapscallion (a friend of Rammellzee's), Jessica 6/Hercules & Love Affair singer Nomi Ruiz, and Carolyn 'Honeychild' Coleman. Its eight tracks are steeped in the impulsive spirit of electric Miles and the deep space romances of Sun Ra, and possessed of an enigmatic yet undeniable pop edge. But equally they're pricked with urban paranoia and dread, traits that have long been hallmarks of Argabright's musical projects.
'Me Czar Of The Magyars' opens the album in a twist of tension like the turning of a ratchet. Its taut electroid shudder is paired with machine gunned cymbal hits and a voice telling of "wormwood and opium dens" - the sound of being teleported from everyday city streets into the astral plane, where every sensory input is heightened and the promise of danger or pleasure lurks unseen around every corner. Later, Coleman's lyrics pay tribute to Rammellzee on the sci-fi funk of 'Deep Space Woman'. 'Let The Clubs Ring' melts lounge bar organs and frazzled guitar into freakishly unstable shapes, while 'Drag Racing' matches its title, rocketing along frantically atop clattering drums. 'Moons On Titan's Seas' is halfway interlude pause for rest, like an exotic cocktail in a bar orbiting some as-yet-undiscovered new world. These varied strands are somehow all summarised in album closer 'Ignition Spark', which sets Ruiz's vocals alongside Taylor's and Argabright's. The zone the trio inhabit in this final track exists in perpetual push-pull between contemplation, memory, intrigue and violence, a decisive opening of a new chapter in Death Comet Crew's history.

As with all Diagonal releases, the initial vinyl pressing will be packaged in unique, specially designed artwork.

Culled from three 1985 gigs in the UK during a transitional and transcendent time in the band's story, Sonic Youth's `Walls Have Ears' appeared as a 2LP set in 1986, not just a live album but an artful tapestry full of live experimentation with songs, between-song tape segues, darkness, humor and audio verité on par with elements of side B of `Master Dik' to come later. With a bit of complexity to the situation of the release itself. But that's a different story. Deleted as quickly as it appeared then, it's now issued for the first time officially under the band's auspices. In this 2LP set brimming with primitive classics like "The Burning Spear", "I Love Her All The Time", "Death Valley 69" and "I'm Insane" (uncredited on sleeve), segues and live guitar changes ooze together threaded by Madonna tapes and vocal loops off the board. The first two sides of `Walls' are massive, cavernous, with newly-drafted drummer Steve Shelley in tow taking on past tunes and unveiling "Expressway To Yr Skull" in glorious form. They tear it up especially on one trash-fi excerpt of "Blood On Brighton Beach" (actually "Making the Nature Scene") from a legendary outdoor gig November 8th where Moore, Gordon and Ranaldo's guitars treble-blast dissonant shockwaves over the black-stoned beach of Quadrophenia fame. The record's second slab spotlights an April 1985 pre-Shelley gig supporting Nick Cave at London's Hammersmith Palais and was one of the final appearances live of Bob Bert, again featuring some molten takes on "Brother James", "Kill Yr Idols", "Flower" (Iisted as "The Word (E.V.O.L.)"), "Ghost Bitch" and others. The emergence of the Jesus and Mary Chain in the world gave Brit scribes a lazy and easy parallel, addressed here with a wink with the inclusion of "Speed JAMC", another offstage tape interlude playfully scrolling through one of that band's songs at fast-forward. This document remains an essential representation of some lean and mean years of the quartet's throttling march out into the world in the mid eighties. Coloured vinyl, one red, one yellow LP.

Heavyweight vinyl LP version comes with full colour inner sleeve and free download card
Designed by Julian House

"The Carrier is a succinct distillation of folk-rock magnificence." SHINDIG

"The Carrier an impressive package all round, and one that could easily end up on a few Album of the Year lists." - WE ARE CULT

Large Plants started as a solo project for Jack Sharp, the singer and guitarist for Wolf People. It was spurred on by a writing frenzy during the lockdown of 2020 when Sharp played and recorded all the parts for what would become the debut single, La Isla Bonita and the first album The Carrier. In summer of 2021 the tracks were mixed by songwriter Chris Cohen (formerly of Deerhoof & Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti).

Large Plants’ songs are immediate, heavy psychedelic rock belters filtered through a haze of analogue tape flutter. Sharp’s voice has an eerily distant and delicate tone that lends a strong folk sensibility to the album; like the scent of winter mornings and fresh soil mixed with the whiff of petrol. Though the songs are generally three-minute gems, they are lyrically more like ancient ballads; peopled with tragic youths, witches, lovelorn troubadours and femmes fatales.

Sharp is now touring Large Plants as a four piece along with Ed Taylor on drums, Ollie Taylor on bass and Joe Wooley on guitar with dates booked so far at OSLO, Hackney -17th April and The Betsy Trotwood, Clerkenwell 5th May

Bullion ist Nathan Jenkins, ein Produzent und Songwriter der elektronischen Musik, der Künstler, Genres und die britische Subkultur miteinander verbindet. Seine Credits reichen von Carly Rae Jepsen, Ben Howard, Nilüfer Yanya und Avalon Emersons Durchbruchsalbum „& The Charm“ bis zu Platten für Westerman und Joviale. Bullions gefeierte Solo-Veröffentlichungen sind bei Young, The Trilogy Tapes, Jagjaguwar und seinem eigenen Label DEEK Recordings erschienen. Es ist ein kreativer roter Faden, den Bullion auf seinem neuen Überraschungsalbum „Affection“ verknüpft - ein warmes, gelegentlich schräges und wunderschön umgesetztes Pop-Album. Bullions Musik war schon immer schwer zu fassen, aber absolut unverwechselbar - und auf „Affection“ ist es ein großes Vergnügen zu hören, wie dieser kompromisslose Ansatz zum Teil durch Weichheit verstärkt wird. Das Album fragt laut nach der Bedeutung von Intimität in der Beziehung zu anderen und zu sich selbst. Nathan wendet auf Bullions neuestem Album an, was er seinen Künstlerkollegen schon seit Jahren im Studio ans Herz legt: offen für Abenteuer zu sein. „Affection“ betritt einen emotional präsenteren, oft verspielten Raum, mit den Kollaborateuren Carly Rae Jepsen und Charlotte Adigéry, die Songs zieren, in denen Gefühle Vorrang vor festen Bedeutungen haben. „Rare“ zum Beispiel entstand während der Sessions für Jepsens jüngstes Album in Toronto: hohe Energie, die sich schüchtern gibt, um etwas "tief im Herzen" auszudrücken. „World_train“ ist ein exzentrischer und brillant schräger Blickwinkel auf Bullions Liebe zum Pop, der mit seiner Lokomotivkraft eine verlorene Vergangenheit inmitten der Unsicherheiten des Alltags heraufbeschwört. „I can hardly understand what it takes to be a real man'", singt Bullion. „…and nobody can“, bestätigt Adigéry. Dennoch, Verbindungen - verpasste, eingebildete oder immer noch mögliche - umhüllen einen Großteil von „Affection“, mit der Panda Bear Kollaboration „A City's Never“, die entstand, nachdem Noah und Nathan zur gleichen Zeit in Lissabon lebten, sich aber nie wirklich trafen. Für Bullion geht es bei der Bereitschaft, andere in seinen Songwriting-Prozess einzubeziehen, sowohl um die Öffnung der Welt des Albums als auch um die Verbesserung des Werks und der Person. Durch die Vermischung von Beobachtung und Introspektive entzieht sich der Avant-Pop von Affection jeder Kategorisierung. Die Texte des Albums sind ebenso unaufdringlich und hingebungsvoll wie neugierig auf alternative Möglichkeiten des Seins. Nathan hat seinen Sound gemeistert, aber das Leben - mit seinen Erwartungen, Widersprüchen, Impulsen und Sehnsüchten - bleibt unkontrollierbar. „Affection“ ist ein unaufdringlich kraftvolles Streben nach einer mitfühlenderen Form des Vertrauens.

Bullion ist Nathan Jenkins, ein Produzent und Songwriter der elektronischen Musik, der Künstler, Genres und die britische Subkultur miteinander verbindet. Seine Credits reichen von Carly Rae Jepsen, Ben Howard, Nilüfer Yanya und Avalon Emersons Durchbruchsalbum „& The Charm“ bis zu Platten für Westerman und Joviale. Bullions gefeierte Solo-Veröffentlichungen sind bei Young, The Trilogy Tapes, Jagjaguwar und seinem eigenen Label DEEK Recordings erschienen. Es ist ein kreativer roter Faden, den Bullion auf seinem neuen Überraschungsalbum „Affection“ verknüpft - ein warmes, gelegentlich schräges und wunderschön umgesetztes Pop-Album. Bullions Musik war schon immer schwer zu fassen, aber absolut unverwechselbar - und auf „Affection“ ist es ein großes Vergnügen zu hören, wie dieser kompromisslose Ansatz zum Teil durch Weichheit verstärkt wird. Das Album fragt laut nach der Bedeutung von Intimität in der Beziehung zu anderen und zu sich selbst. Nathan wendet auf Bullions neuestem Album an, was er seinen Künstlerkollegen schon seit Jahren im Studio ans Herz legt: offen für Abenteuer zu sein. „Affection“ betritt einen emotional präsenteren, oft verspielten Raum, mit den Kollaborateuren Carly Rae Jepsen und Charlotte Adigéry, die Songs zieren, in denen Gefühle Vorrang vor festen Bedeutungen haben. „Rare“ zum Beispiel entstand während der Sessions für Jepsens jüngstes Album in Toronto: hohe Energie, die sich schüchtern gibt, um etwas "tief im Herzen" auszudrücken. „World_train“ ist ein exzentrischer und brillant schräger Blickwinkel auf Bullions Liebe zum Pop, der mit seiner Lokomotivkraft eine verlorene Vergangenheit inmitten der Unsicherheiten des Alltags heraufbeschwört. „I can hardly understand what it takes to be a real man'", singt Bullion. „…and nobody can“, bestätigt Adigéry. Dennoch, Verbindungen - verpasste, eingebildete oder immer noch mögliche - umhüllen einen Großteil von „Affection“, mit der Panda Bear Kollaboration „A City's Never“, die entstand, nachdem Noah und Nathan zur gleichen Zeit in Lissabon lebten, sich aber nie wirklich trafen. Für Bullion geht es bei der Bereitschaft, andere in seinen Songwriting-Prozess einzubeziehen, sowohl um die Öffnung der Welt des Albums als auch um die Verbesserung des Werks und der Person. Durch die Vermischung von Beobachtung und Introspektive entzieht sich der Avant-Pop von Affection jeder Kategorisierung. Die Texte des Albums sind ebenso unaufdringlich und hingebungsvoll wie neugierig auf alternative Möglichkeiten des Seins. Nathan hat seinen Sound gemeistert, aber das Leben - mit seinen Erwartungen, Widersprüchen, Impulsen und Sehnsüchten - bleibt unkontrollierbar. „Affection“ ist ein unaufdringlich kraftvolles Streben nach einer mitfühlenderen Form des Vertrauens.

The 3rd installment of Razor-N-Tape's Family Affair series is back and hotter than ever! Now an annual end-of-year tradition, Family Affair Vol. 3 features a heavy hitting 5 track sampler of standout tracks from the full compilation.

The A side features two spanking new remixes of RNT material — Ezel’s dub of Cor.ece & JKriv’s Possibly Impossible takes the track into classic & soulful house territory, while Bruce Leroys flip fellow brasilian artist Guinu’s Amanha into a mid-tempo afro stomper.

The B side starts with boogie-funk bomb Better Than Her by JKriv ft. Saucy Lady & Tortured Soul on vocals. Kim Ahn delivers the deep & sensual vibrations of In The Stars, and Cody Currie rounds out the EP with Ghost, a funk live instrumentation heavy UK broken beat jazz-dance serving.

With gorgeous art lovingly designed by The Myno, in true RNT style the collection is a lovely listen from beginning to end, and naturally boasts some serious dance floor heat!

Previously unreleased LP by two former Swell Maps, Epic Soundtracks & Jowe Head from 1981. A classic 12" single, 'Rain Rain Rain' b/w 'Ghost Town' was released by Rough Trade in 1981, but the duo ran oiut of funds to mix the LP, which has now been mixed by Jowe Head from the recently rediscovered original master tapes. Many of these pieces are intense rhythmic pieces, partly influenced by their emerging interest in African music, particularly the Burundi drumming style. They were also excited by some of the No Waqve sounds coming out of New York at the time, such as The Contortions, and Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, as well as the current German records by DAF, SYPH, Holger Czukay .

Utilising a mammoth bank of saxophone samples, Shmuel Hatchwellpresents his new alias hoyah with an engrossing album captured in tape and digital form on Bruk.

The process leading to Set + Setting started out with a need for limitations to provide some focus for long-serving sound engineer and producer Hatchwell. He set out the following guidelines to accompany the overarching idea of 'set + setting':

No 'beats'
Saxophones are the voice
Stay away from the computer for as long as possible

Hatchwell took a deep dive in search of every saxophone sample he could find, threw them all into his MPC and then proceeded to weave together a variety of pieces. The focus on a particular instrument brings cohesion to the album, but equally the limited sound inspired freedom to experiment with other techniques and tools. At times one or two sax voices sound naked and undisturbed, while elsewhere you might only hear jagged shards or distant ghosts as they pass through aggravated processing.

Beyond the sound itself, the name hoyah was born with the flippancy of the 21st Century and ratified by ancient tradition. After the music had been made, After the music had been made, Hatchwell plucked the name out of thin air as a play on the TikTok meme 'can I get a hoya,' and subsequently discovered on a dive into his Jewish heritage that in old Hebrew hoyah means, 'to be, become, come to pass, exist, happen, fall out.' This distinction between Jewish concepts and modern political conflations is important to Hatchwell, who finds himself consistently having to separate Judaism from the situation in the Middle East and its ongoing genocide.

Subtly calling to mind the understated cosiness of real-life sax players like Sam Gendel as well as the fragmented sample manipulation of Matmos and Tim Hecker's approach to processed noise, hoyah's debut album absolutely manifests an idea and musical practice as something new and intentional

Milky Clear Vinyl

Driven by lust-fueled limerence and drifting far from conformity, Butterflies Don't Go Away captures Majesty Crush's transient, yet subversive mark on the landscape of American shoegaze to come. Tracked between 1991-1995, the quartet reimagined the collapse of the American rust belt as a late-night, nail biting fever dream/revenge fantasy. This deluxe 2xLP compiles their Love 15 album, singles, EPs, and rarities, all remastered from the original tapes, with thorough annotation and visual documentation in a 24-page booklet. An immortal transcendence if there ever was one.

Prolific outsider artist Andrew G. Thomson - aka AyGeeTee - brings his unique sonic language to Kit Records, with a frenetic peep into a sprawling archive of unreleased work.

About You mutates through elastic synthesis, torporific loops, dislocated percussion and the splattered voices of AyGeeTee's backing group, The Actress Pets.

What begins life as a dervish of repurposed instrumental fragments ('Today's W'), ghosts into mantric pop irreverence ('Troubled Dinghy'), burnished orbits of guitar ('Sweetness One') and shuddering avant rap atmospheres ('Raiders').

Recommended if you like Carl Stone, Odd Nosdam, Shit and Shine.

About You is pressed to a very limited run of 50 tapes, with artwork by Andrew.

First compiled as a double CD in 2002, Moon's Milk (in Four Phases) is a suite of four EPs that Coil released seasonally via their in-house Eskaton imprint across 1998. The line-up for these sessions were John Balance, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, Drew McDowall, and William Breeze. Recorded primarily at their home studio in Chiswick, London on the eve of a permanent relocation to the small seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, the collection has long loomed as a pivotal and pinnacle work in the group's discography, but has never been officially reissued, or repressed on vinyl. Time has only ripened its tapestry of regal strangeness. Arranged sequentially in tribute to the equinoxes and solstices, Moon's Milk captures Coil at a revelatory crossroads, leaning deeper into improvisation, spontaneity, and sound design. "Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull" initiates the proceedings on Spring Equinox, a two-part netherworld organ séance woven from vocal drones, cathedral keys, seasick strings, and opiated undertow. From there, Summer Solstice skews lighter but no less incantational, with Balance embracing his voice-as-instrument across lucid dream torch songs ("Bee Stings"), purgatorial spoken word ("Glowworms/Waveforms"), sultry chamber pieces ("Summer Substructures"), and falsetto ravings ("A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)"). Autumn Equinox exudes more of a pensive and twilit mood, from the Rose McDowall-sung folk ballad "Rosa Decidua" ("I hear your voice sing near to me / I've put away the poisoned chalice (for now) / And lie down amongst the flowerbeds") to hall-of-lords hallucination "The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant" to the liminal string-plucked classic "Amethyst Deceivers," featuring excellent alien guitar by Breeze layered with Balance's oft-quoted couplet: "Pay your respects to the vultures / For they are your future." The album's final chapter, Winter Solstice, is its most swooning, remote, and ceremonial. Opener "A White Rainbow" stirs strings, layered choral vocals, and shivering rhythm into an imploding burial hymn. "North" oscillates bleakly, a ghost in the machine murmuring opaque prophecy ("This black dog has no owner / This black dog has no odour"), while "Magnetic North" is its inverse, a guided meditation of gently flickering software and surreal chakra poetics ("Red rose filling the skull / Yellow cube in the lower pelvis / Silver moon crescent below the navel"). The suite fades to grey with a traditional English carol ("Christmas Is Now Drawing Near"), rendered like an executioner's song by Rose McDowall's doomed, beautiful voice. The Dais box set includes the entirety of the rare Moon's Milk Bonus Disc CD-R / 2019 Threshold Archives Copal CD, which includes three collaborations with Thighpaulsandra. This material is as rich and intoxicating as the previous four phases, ranging from electro-acoustic singing bowl rituals ("Copal") to dissonant electronic recitations of visionary Angus MacLise poetry ("The Coppice Meat") to ominous classical melancholia ("Bankside"). Once again, Coil confirm the vastness of their confounding, infinite alchemy, explored and refined across decades of experimentation - both sonic and bodily. From postindustrial to post-everything, theirs is an art untethered, in the wilds of its own design.

If there ever was a monicker apt for describing an artist’s behavior, that is Ghost Lemurs. Manifesting spottily in compilations and limited edition tapes, then returning to the shadows without much fanfare, the project has indeed demonstrated a ghostly behavior and a nature as puzzling as the animal it takes its name from. Wombs And Alien Spirits represents now their most public outing, one in which the duo of visual artist / producer Kareem Lofty and Daniele Guerrini (better known as Heith and as Haunter’s co-founder) are happy to showcase all the discoveries in a process of musical and spiritual research begun in 2019. Described by the artists themselves as an experiment in mediterranean psi-trance, the album makes use of an incredibly diverse number of traditions, sonic sources and techniques of musical experimentation, keeping its psychedelic intentions central to the whole creative endeavor. Moments of meditative relaxation are brought to unsettling new levels by cavernous basses and spaced out drones, while tight polyrhythms bring beautiful granular melodies to a sidereal ceremonial dance. As beautiful and captivating as it is, Wombs And Alien Spirits remains as chimeric and unrestrained as any previous effort by the two artists. It’s a type of folk music devoid of a specific homeland, but resulting from the authors’ heritages, simultaneously divided and united by the mediterranean sea, injected with all the trajectories of their personal journeys. It ends up sounding profoundly human and uncannily inhuman, tapping into the undiscovered alien element at the beginning of the experience of life. Genre: Electronic / Experimental Listen:

Three years on from the desolate beauty of their debut, Quindi Records is proud to present the second album from Dead Bandit. The ghosts of their past endeavours still haunt their guitars, but on Memory Thirteen the duo's delicately dishevelled Southern gothic feels tonally distinct from their prior outing.
Dead Bandit is Ellis Swan and James Schimpl - the former a noted solo singer-songwriter from Chicago with a penchant for eerie, witching hour murder ballads and the latter an accomplished Canadian multi-instrumentalist with a bias towards heartworn, roaming soundscapes. Their instrumental collaboration has an open, lyrical quality which says as much as any spoken line, and on this album they've especially embraced the power of contrast as we're guided between scenes, sometimes within the confines of one track.
'Peel Me An Orange' is especially instructive in this regard, beginning as a blown-out paean to sonic degradation and the acute sense of hopelessness it projects, only to yield to a lilting tape loop of twanging guitar before entirely widening out in an emphatic burst of post-rock optimism.
Post-rock isn't noted for its banal cheeriness as a genre, and Dead Bandit aren't about to lay down feel-good drive-time anthems, but the sense of pulling at extremes of energy and introspection show Swan and Schimpl to be testing the emotional limits of their weatherbeaten sound. The cautiously sentimental mood of 'Blowing Kisses' hints at the hard-won light which can be encountered while pointedly driving into darkness.
Sometimes noise is a subtle device - a looming bed of unease under the forthright pluck of Swan's distinct guitar tone or the cracking round the edges of a beaten up drum machine. On 'Memory Thirteen' the distortion on the bass becomes a central figure in its haggard waltz, while 'Staircase' and 'Perfume' leave the signal wet until the delay feedback becomes the body of the riff. Either way, the sound is never left untouched as Swan and Schimpl grow more comfortable in their exchange, blurring their respective sonic languages as they expand their shared vocabulary to create an album of depth, difference and devoted distortion.

Culled from three 1985 gigs in the UK during a transitional and transcendent time in the band’s story, Sonic Youth’s The Walls Have Ears appeared / disappeared as a 2LP set in 1986, not just a live album but an artful tapestry full of live experimentation with songs, between-song tape segues, darkness, humor and audio verité. It’s now issued for the first time officially under the band’s auspices.

The ’85 shows were the second time the band appeared on UK soil, Brits now getting juiced to the mythos of the emerging guitar-slinging American independent underground; an art / punk band from NYC sporting casual attitudes and tees sporting Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and Prince made some good press copy on top of their bludgeoning stage appearance. Paul Smith of the newly-founded Blast First label acted as an overseas diplomatic envoy for Sonic Youth through their SST years as well as issuing their classic 1988 Daydream Nation outside the USA. However the Smith-produced ‘bootleg’ of their ’85 UK gigs surfaced much to everyone’s surprise, just before EVOL was to be released. It turned out to be a marker of the group’s dissatisfaction that ultimately led to the release’s deletion, and the band and Smith parting ways after Daydream.

In this 2LP set brimming with primitive classics like ‘The Burning Spear,’ ‘Death Valley 69,’ and ‘I’m Insane’ (uncredited on sleeve), segues and live guitar changes ooze together threaded by Madonna tapes and vocal loops off the board (somewhat a necessity for distraction until the band had a full fledged stage crew to prepare guitars). The first two sides of Walls are massive, cavernous, with newly-drafted drummer Steve Shelley. SY tear it up especially on one trash-fi excerpt of ‘Blood On Brighton Beach’ (actually ‘Making The Nature Scene’) from a legendary outdoor gig November 8th where Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo’s guitars treble-blast dissonant shockwaves over the black-stoned beach of Quadrophenia fame.

The record’s second slab spotlights an April 1985 at London’s Hammersmith Palais and was one of the final appearances live of Bob Bert on drums, again featuring some molten takes on ‘Brother James,’ ‘Flower’ (listed as ‘The Word (E.V.O.L.)’), and others. This document remains an essential representation of some lean and mean years of the quartet’s throttling march out into the world. (by Brian Turner)