Search:post

Melts In Your Mind is the mercurial new LP by Healing Force Project, aka Italian producer Antonio Marini.

An amorphous, shapeshifting, intangible proposition, Melts In Your Mind represents Healing Force Project at it’s most fluid and alchemical yet, a melon-twisting amalgam of jazz, dub and acid house tropes mulched and rearranged in inimitable style. Seemingly live and erratic polyrhythms, liquid basslines and expressive roving keys combine with kitchen sink sample hits and rogue licks for a thrilling, constantly shifting, alive sound. It’s music that’s difficult to grasp on first or even fourth listen, and as such continues to reward on repeat. Rather than going somewhere, tracks just go, rarely repeating motifs but riffing on, digging into and working out.

Behavior Of Waves sets the scene discretely enough, a simple bass refrain that is eventually overcome with an urgent rhythm that stumbles over itself into a post-dub cavern. The title track resembles a scramble of disparate earthly sounds - lurking synthesizer, restless popping drums, West African balafon and a muted vocal sample - sucked into the same swirling black hole and dropped into another dimension, completely cohesive. Equator acts as loose-limbed palette cleanser, an unmoored drift gently driven forward by an insistent snare roll and improv piano stabs. Inharmonious Layer stands out on the record for being less reliant on samples and by it’s relatively predictable unfolding, a queasy acid lope from the darkest corner of a deviant dancefloor, while on Diaphonization Marini flexes his aptitude with drum sampling, a bouncing excursion in sampled loops interrupted by unironic jazz cliches, the product of an omnivorous lover of the genre’s high and low. Melts In Your Mind closes on the droning tambura, ethereal pads and scattered rhythm of Two Waves In The Dark, a suitably metaphysical and ultimately peaceful resting place for a record that challenges perceptions from the outset.

Marini has released records as Healing Force Project on Firecracker, Berceuse Heroique, Bedouin and most recently Beat Machine Records. He’s based in Treviso, Italy.

Melts In Your Mind was written, produced and mixed by Antonio Marini. It was mastered by Chris Wang. Art and design by Ginji Kimura.

Top notch hard-rock / proto metal by post-Atomic Rooster and pre-Hard Stuff band BULLET, featuring the explosive guitar & vocals of JOHN DU CANN (The Attack, Andromeda, Atomic Rooster) plus bass player John Gustafson (Quatermass, Roxy Music, Ian Gillan Band) and PAUL HAMMOND (Atomic Rooster) on drums.

Their legendary studio recordings from 1970-71, now for the first time on vinyl.

*Gatefold sleeve with detailed liner notes and photos.

RIYL: HARD STUFF, CAPTAIN BEYOND, URIAH HEEP, DUST…

“…gritty sounding, blues based power trio built around John Du Cann’s unlimited arsenal of crunchy guitar riffs and scorching solos…”
Ryan Sparks (Sea Of Tranquility)

12" + 7" !

Mind Maze is, amazingly, Trees Speak’s fifth album to be released on Soul Jazz Records in the space of little over two years– an output matched only by the intensity of their music created during this short time.

The first pressing only of the album comes with a bonus seven-inch single containing two tracks that are not available on vinyl anywhere else.
As with all their previous releases, ‘Mind Maze’ is a mind-boggling tightrope walk across an array of musical influences that seamlessly create the unique present-day world of Trees Speak.

The band’s sound is characterized by a combination of German krautrock motoric-beat rhythms, angular New York post-punk attitude, 60s spy soundtracks, psych, rock, jazz, and 70s synthesizers and vocoders. There is also a cosmic spatial awareness to their sound; both personal inner space and galactic outer space, as well as a wilful pushing of sonic boundaries.

Trees Speak are a musical duo based in Tucson, Arizona, composed of Daniel Martin Diaz and Damian Diaz. Their music is heavily influenced by the cosmic magic of the natural desert landscapes of Arizona, creating a unique and captivating sound that is both experimental and innovative.

Here you will find the myriad sounds of 1970s German electronic music (everything from Can to Cluster, Popul Vuh to Tangerine Dream); 1980s New York post-punk and synthcore (from No Wave to Suicide); John Barry’s 1960s movies, John Carpenter’s 1970s horror. You will also hear the influences of French and Italian progressive rock (Magma, Goblin) as well as cosmic, new age and experimental space soundscapes …. an almost endless list of diverse influences that ebb and flow like an ocean of sound, in the process creating a truly unique soundscape that Trees Speak have made wholly their own.

The name Trees Speak reflects their interest in the concept of using future technologies to store information and data in trees and plants, with the idea that trees communicate collectively. This interest in nature and technology, combined with their passion for experimentation, has led Trees Speak to create a truly one-of-a-kind listening experience that is both unique and engaging.

If you ever wanted to hear Can, Neu!, Destroy All Monsters, Pere Ubu, electric eels, John Cage, Liquid Liquid, Tangerine Dream, Suicide, Laurie Spiegel, Art Ensemble of Chicago, John Barry, Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company, Sun Ra, Stockhausen, John Carpenter, Electro-Acoustic and Musique Concrete and Mars in one band - then this is it! Trees Speak are a band that defies categorization and offer an eclectic listening experience, both exciting and memorable.

The two bonus tracks (‘Seraphim’ and ‘Orpheus’) included with the album give us a further window into the complex mind maze of the group - two stunning acoustic tracks that explore a distinct early 70s sound of Yes, Argent and other progressive rock accolytes.

Montreal duo Bas Relief present a collection of rough-cut IDM and pitch-corrected emo on Insulary, a five-song EP out June 2023 on Brooklyn imprint Quiet Time. Written and compiled long distance from threads of bass music-inspired alt pop and guitar recorded in isolation, Insulary is the duo’s first substantial release since 2018. Granulated microglitches fill out the digital drum arrangements, calling on influences Baths and Loraine James, overlaid with warm piano progressions, melancholic guitar loops, and collaged vocal production.

These self-reckoning, forlorn vocals form a patchwork narrative, hazed like a shapeshifted memory, long reconfigured with each conjuring, coherence inconsistent but still there. Recurring dreams find home among recursive passages, self-referencing lyrically and with samples churned through plugins, recorded on loop until you fall upon the most satisfying aha! moment and lock it to the grid. At certain moments all the pieces combine to reminisce in sentimental shards of Porter Robinson or The Postal Service, while never straying from Bas Relief’s own vernacular.

Visiting the past in person simply by walking the routes you took in a life long past, that reenactment of memory, that attempt to capture that which you can’t – it might even be a future – is a central bolt of Insulary’s lyrical content. It’s sentimental, it longs for some past which might not even have existed, and it’s hopeful too, never capitulating to traditional structures in its embrace of unusual stylistic combinations. Insulary – brim-packed with fragments of drum and bass, uptempo electronica, and emo – is but a preview of Bas Relief’s exciting near future

Back in 2011 when I was tentatively looking for a second release for my fledging record label Clay Pipe Music, I stumbled upon a mysterious MySpace page by a group called ‘Tyneham House’, the page was decorated with artwork by Rena Gardiner (who was unknown to me at that time) and the music was an otherworldly mix of field recordings, Mellotron and acoustic guitar. It turned out that Tyneham was promised to Glen Johnson’s Second Language label, so I offered to do the artwork, and in January 2012 the two labels co-released it on tape and CD in a cardboard box with a handmade booklet of my illustrations.

In 2016 Clay Pipe reissued it on 10” vinyl, in an edition of just 300, which has since become sort after. The new 2023 pressing is on blue and transparent marbled vinyl, with a reverse board cover and inner sleeve, and the booklet of illustrations has been given a complete redesign. Frances Castle 2023

The pastoral, wistful yet ineffably disquieting music of Tyneham House is made by artists who wish to remain anonymous here, save for their eponymous title. The musicians are happy, however, to let it be known that these recordings have been around for some years (many of them complied from old cassettes) and that they take inspiration from the 1960s/’70s/’80s work of the Children’s Film Foundation – a body who really ought to have made a film about this mysterious West Country curio. At least now we have its endlessly poignant soundtrack.

The small village of Tyneham, on the beautiful Isle of Purbeck, in Dorset, was once a thriving little community – that is until the British Government requisitioned it for training manoeuvres and other ‘strategic purposes’ in the run up to WWII. This was supposed to be a temporary measure, but the area remained in military possession long after hostilities had ceased, causing distress among former inhabitants, many of whom were farmed out to prefabs in nearby Wareham and Swanage.

Tyneham was characterised by its red telephone box, a tiny parade of shops – Post Office Row – and a grand country pile which stood about half a mile away from the village: Tyneham House. The army removed the building’s oak panelling and ornate decorative details and promptly set about using it for target practice. So great was the shame expressed locally about the damage inflicted upon one of Dorset’s grandest houses that the powers that be decided to grow a copse around the remains of the structure to give the impression that it was no longer there. Despite this, a substantial part of the structure remains intact, including its Saxon hall.

Land access around Tyneham was opened up in the 1970s, but admission to the house remains strictly verboten. Those who’ve been found around the premises, especially anyone wielding a camera, have felt the full weight of military trespass law. Tyneham today is regarded as a nature reserve by some – as a national embarrassment by others. It’s still a political hot potato, in Dorset at least.

Contagion Vapors was recorded between May 2020 and March 2021, in tandem with 'Transgressive Transmissions'. Both albums have been released by Castles in Space, however they feature completely different sonic energies.

Caught up in the first wave of pandemic doom/gloom which resulted in a bizarre creative bloom for Patrick, both albums have unique sounds anchored in the immense Patrick R Pärk/Kösmonaut discographies. This one is definitely a Kösmonaut record, however.

Patrick’s Contagion Vapors is a vaporwave sonic adventure which
soothes the worn soul like an icy balm with its motorik repetitions and sonic patterns and swirls.

Uncharacteristically upbeat and always positive, the album was a personal exercise in not becoming consumed by COVID isolation and misery. Major influences were Patrick Cowley, Cybotron, Automat, Cluster, and Harmonia and the entire album was recorded / mixed in the midnight witching hours over the course of only 2-3 days.

Ever prolific, Patrick is currently deep diving hard into post Y2K New Age conjurations with his massive Galactic Mirage project which should see another CD box set later this year. There's also some forthcoming Teeth Of Glass vinyl coming from Library Of the Occult later this year and plenty of Patrick’s self released "chrome sonic babies" in between.

Sonic chaotic, tender terror. On New Stone, Lithuanian producer Kamile Rimkute a.k.a. Caline with C dazes and uplifts us with her reflective post-modern electronics. This album is a personal long-term project in the making, one of auditive self-expression, treading across themes such as adventure, love, discovery and grounding.

The album is driven by Kamile's interest in futuristic boundary-crossing music and intersectional feminism, as well as her studies in Sonology. With an advanced skill for composition, sound synthesis and her knowledge on the totality of sound, she claimed the means of production, as New Stone is all produced, mixed and mastered by herself.

New Stone was recorded in a period of two years that started in 2020 and incorporates highlights of her landmark livesets ever since. New Stone is full of concocted emotion that sustains and releases through her trademark of stark contrasts - triplet-driven, jolted yet angelic atmospheres - resulting in a tangible, body-driven sound.

Interweaving her vocals near the final salvo, this album marks the end of a creative cycle and start of a next, allowing her personal touch to seep through her art more and more. Embarking from home ground, stepping on a new stone.

The Blood of Heroes is a amalgamation of artists re-envisioning worlds first created in the Rutger Hauer film by the same name. In “Nine Cities”, the trilogy is completed. The first self-titled album depicted the PRESENT post-apocalypse as depicted in the film. The second album,The Waking Nightmare, showed the world during the actual apocalypse in the PAST that led to the times in the film. This third album is the FUTURE – further past even post-apocalypse – “Nine Cities buried deep underground” – what had survived, and how did these cities evolve beyond the world-ending criteria of their creation and burial? Past the film inspired storyline, we have for the first time in many years, 2 members of the original Napalm Death collaborating with each other: guitarist Justin K. Broadrick is joined by Scorn beat master Mick Harris. With Submeged on bass, and Enduser on keyboards, the frame is set. Joined by all the artists depicted below, including returning vocalist Dr. Israel, and Fear Factory’s Burton C. Bell, this cast is full of surprising interactions, all masterfully mixed by Dadub’s Daniele Antezza. Original artwork is an extended booklet by Khomatech; these Nine Cities are a world of their own, illustrated by one of the masters of fantasial art.

With distorted arpeggiated synthesisers and cold metallic drum-machine patterns, William Wiffen from Yorkshire invites you to his sonic warzone. Höga Nord Rekords proudly presents RED (Rapid Ear Damage), a stripped and harsh take on postpunk, motorik and EBM. With haunting and reverbdrenched synthesizers, Wiffen’s new project sometimes resembles acts like Two Lone Swordsmen in their dirtiest moments.

RED is not a wholesome and pleasant experience. Heavily modified vocals, used more like an additional instrument, breaks through the distorted, hard, backbeat, contributing to the feeling of being trapped in a mental slit trench or bomb shelter: no light coming in – only sound. Set the controls for the heart of the void.

INTOXTC is the first EP under Ash Luk's post Minimal Violence alias,Infinity Division. Like a phoenix rising, he continues his ascent through amelodic dystopia simultaneously channeling nostalgia and violence. No stranger to Never Sleep after our //ZOO release and playing live shows for the club night for many years. 'Visions' has ID howling over eerie pop lubed melodies, jungle breaks which all come together to form a new age in crossover music. Sounding like nobody else and completely blows the doors off the"Hyperpop" stigma associated with this kind of bravery. 'Thirteen' shows the club some trance fever dreams whilst 'Something Dreamy' breaks the whole fourth wall in its unashamed hands in the arrangement and palette. Leading the charge is 'T-INT' - a HUGE orchestral noise rhythmic workout and shows the sheer volume that this producer can materialise. Leftfield break up a mosh pit in NYC's CBGB and find Ian Curtis still dancing.

Bingo Club demands no rules for entry. Everyone knows your name. The hours are endless and the dress code remains
unspoken.
Martin Rousselot opened the doors to the Bingo Club at the dawn of the 2020's. Joined by Neysa Barnett, Vassili
Yatchinovsky, Marie-Paule Bargès and Emile Larroche, Bingo Club puts down its signature sound-stamp and juggles with
styles of different kinds; if five songs throb to the clank-clank of New York trains, five more drift lazily like Marseille's sailspotted waves.
Group signifiers and visual tropes are reduced to a molten wash of melodies and images that, whether heard or seen, unite
kindred spirits.
Whether as a duo or as a soloist, in English or in French, a warm mix of soothing voices is blanketed by soft rock
instrumentation. The videos are filmed with an analogue camera across the four corners of the globe.
A first EP, "Separated," released in 2020, sees a collaboration with Al Carson (Weyes Blood, Ariel Pink, Jessica Pratt...). In
2021 the single "Someday," featuring Annie Lime & Jonas San, comes out. In 2022, Bingo Club presents its debut album «
Better Lucky Than Beautiful », produced and mixed in Paris at Studio CBE by David Mestre (Sebastien Tellier, Chassol, ...).
The album is a collection of ten songs, written in different times and places, like a musical travel diary or sound-postcards.

CALAMITA = KARKHANA members TONY ELIEH, SHARIF SEHNAOUI and Lebanese drummer MALEK RIZKALLAH join forces with the Egyptian singer AYA METWALLI - the result is the improbable meeting between free jazz / improv, punk rock & Oum Kalthoum!

CALAMITA is the "rock project" of SHARIF SEHNAOUI and TONY ELIEH, two of the most active musicians on the Lebanese experimental scene (among others projects, both are members of the "free Middle Eastern music" collective KARKHANA). SEHNAOUI comes from a jazz and improv music background, ELIEH is primarily a rock musician and founding member of the Lebanese post-punk band THE SCRAMBLED EGGS whose work in the last decade has covered many directions from pop-rock to plain experimental. They are joined by Lebanese drummer MALEK RIZKALLAH (WHO KILLED BRUCE LEE, ex THE SCRAMBLED EGGS). As trio they develop instrumental pieces that draw their inspiration from artists as diverse as Tony Conrad, Last Exit or Oum Kalthoum.

AYA METWALLI is an Egyptian singer/songwriter, composer and sound artist currently based in Beirut. Grown up in Cairo, her father would play non-stop Oum Kalthoum songs on road trips to the beach and Aya's mother; known to have the most beautiful voice in the family, she always sang at home and at family gatherings, so long before Aya was able to form her own music taste, immense amounts of Arabic classic songs and melodies already settled in her subconsciousness …

After her first EP "Beitak" in 2016, Metwalli (named "a musical enigma" by The Guardian) started to integrate more experimental and eerie sonic excursions into her avant-pop, so the collaboration with CALAMITA feels like a natural or logic step.

The roots for "Al Saher" ("stay awake") were laid when SEHNAOUI and METWALLI first worked together in "Night", a dance piece by ALI CHAHROUR which included a wide collection of Arabic songs and ancient poems, later Sehnaoui invited her to work with CALAMITA. The four met in a recording studio in Beirut, using songs by "The Voice of Egypt" Oum Kalthoum as starting point.Together they aim to fully revisit the song format and explore the possibilities of classical Tarab songs, extracted from their origins and reframed within the music of the twenty-first century. The result is a mix of various styles and influences that often seek to stretch the contrasts to towering extremes - animprobable blend between free jazz & improv, punk rock & Oum Kalthoum!