It’s been a year and a half since BASIC first emerged out of a bare bones set up of two guitars (Chris Forsyth and Nick Millevoi) and a drum machine. That early experiment, inspired by the 1984 collaboration between Robert Quine and Fred Maher, put a boxy, machine-drilled framework around open-ended guitar jam. Mikel Patrick Avery tended the rough propulsion of the drum machine, enriching its stutter with additional improvised percussion, while Forsyth and Millevoi slashed away at one another on conventional and baritone guitar. It was, at once, disciplined and free-spirited, and you can see why it appealed to Forsyth. Christian Carey reviewed the full-length debut last year, writing “With a rattling drum pattern, synth lines embellished by bent notes…
Category: psychedelic rock
There’s J.D. Salinger, there’s Thomas Pynchon, and then there’s Takashi Mizutani, founder, singer and guitarist of Japanese psychedelic rock giants Les Rallizes Dénudés. How and why could someone so obviously gifted, perhaps even touched by the divine, remove themselves from a world that not only inspires their art but adores it? This question plagued some of the most dedicated and maniacal record collectors in the world, the deepest heads with the most fried and obscure psych rock platters, until 2021 when The Last One Musique and Temporal Drift opened the floodgates and let the music stream forth. It’s curious to think that if Mizutani had emerged from hiding before his death in 2019, perhaps he might have enjoyed the exposure, much in the way…
…Remastered by Helge Sten.
Back in 2008, Motorpsycho MK3 was beginning to gel and settle. Kenneth Kapstad’s entry into the band a year earlier had not only started to inspire a new and different writing, as shown in their first album, Little Lucid Moments, but also given the musicianship a solid kick up the behind. By summer 2008 the engine room was back to firing on all cylinders, ushering in a new era of intense and ambitious work for the band.
In hindsight it’s hard to quite remember the sequence of events, but some time early in 2008, an invitation to play the Terrastock Festival in Louisville dovetailed with an opportunity to fulfill the long held ambition to record at Electrical Audio with Steve Albini.
Radiance Opposition is the tenth album by Julie’s Haircut, one of Italy’s most enduring independent musical outfits: a band that has developed a genuine sonic catalogue through the years and which makes a renewal move with this record, their first full length since 2019.
With a title taking inspiration from the I Ching book of divination, and a six piece lineup introducing new singer and songwriter Anna Bassy joining the consolidated team formed by Nicola Caleffi, Luca Giovanardi, Andrea Rovacchi, Andrea Scarfone and Ulisse Tramalloni, Radiance Opposition collates an eight tracks cycle that generates a consistent yet multifaceted musical journey, combining psychedelia, electronica and polyrhythms – all blended together thanks to a syncretic…
Osees have released their new live album, Live at the Broad Museum via Deathgod Records. Album captures a dynamic live performance at The Broad museum in Los Angeles. The record features extended tracks that highlight the band’s improvisational energy, including a standout 22-minute jam, “I Got a Lot.” Unlike their tightly structured studio recordings, this album explores krautrock-inspired grooves, hypnotic rhythms, and experimental soundscapes, showcasing the band’s versatility and adventurous live presence.
The album is mixed by frontman John Dwyer and mastered by JJ Golden, emphasizing the raw, immersive quality of the performance. Critics praise it as a document of Osees’ live power, capturing moments of spontaneous creativity…
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…
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…