Consistency and continuity are what make the backbone of Water Damage. The Austin-based psych/drone-rock collective consists of noise rock veterans and experimental musicians from bands like Marriage, Expensive Shit, USA/Mexico, Black Eyes and Swans, some of whom are in their third decade. Water Damage functions more as a commune with variable line-ups from five to eleven people, usually with multiple bassists and drummers. Even though they are often compared to Tony Conrad’s collaboration with German krautrock legends Faust, Outside the Dream Syndicate, their understanding of motorik rhythm comes mainly from later Fugazi albums. That’s why their albums’ titles, like 2022’s Repeater or 2023’s 2 Songs, nod to the post-hardcore band from…
Category: psychedelic rock
Moundabout, the duo consisting of Gnod’s Paddy Shine and Phil Langero (of Los Langeros, Damp Howl and Bisect) release their third album, Goat Skull Table, being a spell for passing between worlds. The album opens with a spectacturaly intense invocation, chanted by Langero, against a background of disturbed electronics which sound like the kind of noises ghost hunters wish they could record: the throbbing of a psychic helicopter, string glitches from the other side, lurching music propelled against its will by malign forces. Langero summons dark spirits in a voice haunted by strange elisions and sudden emphases, as though he’s not in control of what he says. “Come back goat, to this rotting crooown!” he leers. It’s truly terrifying – which is quite an achievement,…
Fuzz, the California based trio of Ty Segall (vocals, drums), Charles Moothart (vocals, guitar), and Chad Ubovich (vocals, bass), present their latest release Fuzz’s Fourth Dream on In the Red Records. This is the band’s first release in four years and is a collection of singles, unreleased demos, and rarities.
“I lived in a four-bedroom house in San Francisco that housed anywhere from six to ten people at a time,” Moothart explains. “Friends were always crashing when they were between spots, on tour, or just couldn’t make it home. It was a chaotic space, but a space that was cherished by many. Chad frequently crashed on our couch when on tour—surrounded by ashtrays full of cigarettes and joint roaches; beer cans and spray paint cans.
On Back to Hermetics and Martial Arts Vol. 1, Belgrade-based collective The Cyclist Conspiracy take the listener on an extraordinary world tour of sound, blending the music of three continents and countless cultures into an engrossing cinematic dreamworld. Previous albums have showcased the troupe’s inspiration from Greek rebetiko, Balkan music and North African beats. Those influences are still very much present on Back to Hermetics, but the Conspiracy’s palette has broadened, and they show mastery of every style they tackle.
The Cyclist Conspiracy is named for a book by fellow Serb Svetislav Basara, in which a clandestine Brotherhood meets in dreams and meditates on the bicycle in order to gain secret knowledge. Members of the band refer to…
From a very early source tape, “Apparition” has been given the sonic overload it desperately deserved and even boasts a couple of bonus tracks from the time.
The Legendary Pink Dots are an influential, staggeringly prolific group led by enigmatic frontman Edward Ka-Spel. Emerging from the early-’80s post-punk underground and sometimes categorized as industrial due to associations with bands like Skinny Puppy, the group’s music is nearly impossible to pin down, drawing from Krautrock, ambient, folk, synth pop, and numerous other styles.
Apparition originally came out in 1982, the same year as their album Brighter Now. The first edition was a cassette only on the band’s own…
While group names can often be random, Nusantara Beat has chosen one that encapsulates its ethos. Nusantara means all the islands that make up Indonesia and dates back to when kings wanted to unite the whole archipelago.
Today, it means unity, many cultures coming together as one. Accordingly, Nusantara Beat mix the rhythms and music of the Indonesian archipelago into one sound.
The Dutch group are well-placed to explore these sounds on their self-titled debut. Bassist Michael Joshua was born in the Indonesian province of West Java and moved to the Netherlands aged 15 while the other five members are of Indonesian heritage. Their musical starting point is Sunda Pop, which in the 1960s blended traditional…
Essentially the forerunners to Badfinger, the Iveys landed on the Beatles’ Apple label in mid-1968 after the latter group’s personal assistant, Mal Evans, encouraged them to submit tapes to Paul McCartney. Their bright, melodic, and harmony-filled pop/rock sound immediately drew comparisons to the Beatles and to the work of McCartney in particular.
The group’s roots go back to Swansea, Wales, where they’d first gotten together in 1963 under the name the Wild Ones, with Pete Ham on vocals and lead guitar, David “Dai” Jenkins on rhythm guitar and vocals, Ron Griffiths on bass and vocals, and Terry Gleeson on drums. They became the Iveys – picked for a street in Swansea, as well as an expression of admiration for the Hollies…
A remastered and expanded 4-CD box set of ‘Sea Dream’, with unreleased demos, live material, and new archival content.
…Sea Dream was a collection of previously unreleased demos and recordings made by the late Randy California and his band Spirit. Originally issued in 2002 as a double CD version and unavailable for many years.
The ‘Sea Dream’ suite was a project Randy had been working on since the late 1980s and this work was the basis of the original release which was greeted with praise from Spirit fans. For this new edition, Spirit archivist Mick Skidmore has located new master sources of the original material and has also enhanced this release by the discovery of an additional 2CDs of wonderful,..
Last year’s EP gave a beautifully brilliant glimpse into the world of Magic Fig. The Bay Area band boasts a handful of familiar names that have been swirling around the indie pop arena; members of Whitney’s Playland, The Umbrellas, Almond Joy, Healing Potpourri, and Blades of Joy. Such a stacked roster brought with it expectations of breezy strums and pop hooks, but the band slipped free of their indie pop past to embrace prog, Anglican folk, and Canterbury psych instead. On their debut album, Magic Fig only deepen their devotion to the psychedelic swirl. The band plays the prog card from the very first moments on Valerian Tea, backing up Inna Showalter’s soaring vocals with dreamy blossoms of mellotron and a burbling rhythmic ripple.
Avant-garde DIY project Kling Klang are one of the most exciting acts emerging from Liverpool’s underground scene right now. Toying with a concoction of experimental sounds, the collective has spent the last four years reinventing itself through the melodies of frantic keys, bassy electronica, buzzing synths and gothic arrangements.
Originally founded by Joe McLaughlin, Amy Corcoran and Peter Smyth, over the years, King Klang has shape-shifted its lineup and is currently composed of Part Chimp members McLaughlin and Jonny Hamilton, alongside a selection of other contributors.
Half Life, explores post-punk through a different lens. In a tracklist of ten beautifully…
Bergen-based group Kronstad 23 are the latest trailblazers from northern Scandinavia: a creative force exploring the boundaries of musical genres, including but not limited to: psych rock, jazz, post-rock & scandinavian folk music.
The group of young players follows the footsteps of Motorpsycho, Elephant9 & El Paraiso’s own Lotus, Fra Det Onde & Kanaan, carving out their path through the musical landscape in seemingly effortless ways. One minute you’re floating on cosmic Pharoah Sanders waters, the next you’re ascending on electrified if-Tortoise-played-Allman Brothers-style jamming.
The band describes their approach as: “Sommermørket is an escape from inhumane technology and politics in search of something…
Matt Berry release a box set of his recent album, Heard Noises, featuring 10 remixes and four additional songs from the sessions. Berry’s 13th long-player, Heard Noises became his first to make the Top 30 on its release in January, reaching No 22. Guests on the album include Kitty Liv of Kitty, Daisy And Lewis, Sax Appeal bassist Phil Scragg, Eric D Johnson of Fruit Bats and Orange Is The New Black actor Natasha Lyonne.
The box set features a remix LP, with reworkings by Sean Ono Lennon, Andy Votel, Tennis, ex-Skint Records head Midfield General, Rodeo Clown, Brian Kehew, Project Gemini and – in their first remix for 25 years – Moog Cookbook, aka Brian Kehew and Roger Manning. Further remixes by Ono Lennon and Project Gemini are included on the…
Nebulous, experimental psychedelia with an emphasis on being heavy as shit, the latest from Italian group Citrus Citrus isn’t afraid to spiral into the sonic cosmos or mine a good n’ doomgaze-y riff, and take its time while doing so (only a single track is less than three minutes long, and this is a whole album).
The rather borderless, almost style-agnostic feel of the music could be chalked up to the record having being written and recorded all in one go, while the band was holed up in a studio outside of the small commune of Montello (population: 2,668), taking the time out not only to draw inspiration from their surroundings but also to meticulously construct their jams, adding in elements of shoegaze, punk, garage, space rock, and…
Hyloxolos is the expansive and surprising new psych-rock supergroup featuring Dave Harrington (Darkside), Peter Matthew Bauer (The Walkmen), Dylan Carlson (Earth), avant-garde instrumentalist & drummer Dylan Fujioka (Meatbodies) and Otis Bauer (Trench) on bass.
This album, like the founding of the band itself, was birthed last year over an intense 48 hour period of writing and recording at 64sound in Los Angeles with engineer Tyler Karmen (Bat for Lashes, Devendra Banhart). The massive walls of sound, rolling swells and long, winding passages unfold deliberately, in heavy, kaleidoscopic waves. These six tracks are the sound of an inspired group of strangers cleaving something new out of the ether on arrival. The first notes of…
When it comes to Kadavar, two things are certain. Firstly, nothing is certain, and secondly, whatever they come up with results from an impressive creative flow.
It took Kadavar five years to release a new album, “I Just Want to Be a Sound”, which hit the shelves in spring this year. The wait for the next record is substantially shorter, as Kids Abandoning Destiny Among Vanity and Ruin is released six months after the previous album. The title Kids Abandoning Destiny Among Vanity and Ruin is a kind of wordplay, leading to the acronym “K.A.D.A.V.A.R.”. In a sense, we are facing a self-titled album, and while I wouldn’t say it’s a new start, the latest effort does echo some more familiar sounds compared to the rather melodic…
Made up of an all-star roster (Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum, and Gregory Uhlmann), Los Angeles-based quintet SML assemble their recordings from a hybrid of live and in-studio performances.
Small Medium Large introduced their style of fluid, groove-heavy improvisations, and second effort How You Been continues in the same direction, but feels more assured and deliberate. The group’s members have clearly become more in tune with each other, and their chemistry is tighter and stronger. There’s a more natural flow to the rhythms here, as well as a bit more studio polish, making the tracks sound closer to planned-out compositions rather than jam sessions. They’re able to balance blippy, off-kilter…
EarthBall is a collective from Vancouver Island, Canada, which fully improvises their sessions and performances, veering from unhinged psych-rock to noisy, chaotic free jazz.
Outside Over There is their third official album for Upset the Rhythm, not counting several limited cassettes. It arrives mere months after Actual Earth Music, Vols. 1 & 2, a live album featuring recordings from a gig opening for Wolf Eyes, and a date at London’s vaunted avant-garde venue Café OTO that featured legendary improvisers Steve Beresford and Chris Corsano as guests. Outside Over There is a hair-raising, face-peeling effort that bombards and nearly suffocates. It’s loud, raucous, and messy, with even the record’s quieter moments being highly unnerving.
Circles Around The Sun returns with Interludes For The Dead: Volume 2, ten years since “Interludes For The Dead,” the music that resulted when Neal Casal was asked to create the set-break music for the now-legendary “Fare Thee Well” shows celebrating the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary, and assembled a team of musicians now known as Circles Around The Sun.
Recorded over four days with nothing written or rehearsed beforehand, all of the music was written on the spot and tracked immediately with little to no overdubs and every bit of the energy and verve that’s become CATS’ calling card, and the spirit of the first release.
Volume II was recorded at Dan Horne’s UHF Studios in Los Angeles and was notably conceived…
From the Garage fueled shadows of upstate New York, The Chesterfield Kings have returned this Halloween with Loose Ends: 1989–2004 Rare, B-Sides & Unreleased that is out via Wicked Cool Records. This anthology cracks open the vault to deliver a fuzz-drenched feast of rarities, forgotten gems, and unreleased recordings spanning the band’s wildest years. For the first time ever, these deep cuts and obscure one-offs, many previously scattered across hard-to-find vinyl and CD pressings, have been digitally remastered and compiled into one explosive release. It’s a time capsule of pure Rock swagger: stomping rhythms, snarling guitars, and that signature Chesterfield Kings attitude that has influenced generations of garage revivalists and true believers.
Lê Almeida’s improvisational indie rock troupe Oruã had been making fine records for years before their debut for K, 2025’s Slacker. In fact, their earlier work impressed Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch so much that he asked most of Oruã to join his group and together they made one of the best BTS albums, 2022’s When the Wind Forgets Your Name. Slacker gives the uninitiated plenty of clues why Martsch was so enamored; the album is made up of long songs that unspool at languid paces and are just barely moored by swirling guitar lines, hazy melodies, and a crack rhythm section that pushes and pulls on the underpinnings like it was so much taffy. Almeida sings in a similar drawl too, delivering the words in a plaintive fashion that gives the proceedings some added…