Gong - Angel`s Egg

keeping up with tradition.
do this shit.

DO IT.

Gong - The Flying Teapot (Radio Gnome Invisible, Pt. 1)

GONG, son. Respect.

Gnome it

Circle - Katapult

More Circle for my friend Duke.

"Inside the sleeve of Circle's umpteenth album Katapult (there have been more than 25 since 1991) and under the disc are the initials "NWOFHM." They stand for "New Wave of Finnish Heavy Metal." This is the same band who've brought everything -- from their own version of a trance-inducing, circular, overdriven, droning update of classic Krautrock to restrained imaginative acoustic ambience (2006's Miljard), to rugged wily, punk ethos-infused boogie rock (2007's Arkades), to jazzed downtempo fusion à la Miles Davis' In a Silent Way and the sonic grooviness of Tortoise (2007's Tower). But this is no mere heavy metal recording -- death, black, progressive, power, or otherwise. Circle have too much of an individual ethos to downright ape anything. They have a "sound" that they've brought to every single record that bears their name, and even to some side projects of their individual members' (Pharaoh Overlord for one). That said, Katapult is yet another side of the band none of us has heard before. There are big repetitive rhythmic grooves, riffs, and psychedelic space rock moving ever forward toward nowhere but out. The pulse is constant and it breathes. But the vibe on this recording is downright dark and nasty. Hard and crunchy at the outset, "Saturnus Reality" opens with a full guitar throttle on a riff and a percussion throb powered by rumbling basslines you've heard in everything from early Hawkwind to Celtic Frost to Motörhead. But keyboards enter the picture as Jussi Lehtisalo growls à la Andrew Eldritch from the Sisters of Mercy at his most sinister, even as the backing vocals are sung in falsetto! "Torpedo Star Throne" picks up right where it left off, even as skittering snares, electronic loops, synths, and crunchy guitar start pushing from the back to the front and overtaking the tune, making the "circle" (no pun intended) spin faster and faster even as a big church organ plays at quarter speed to deepen the chill. And chill it does. There is something mysterious, and truly nasty sounding, about this album. Katapult is in some ways a return for fans of the old Circle, but it's something further out than the band has ever tried before. As the tracks move on -- all of them are relatively short, between three-and-a-half and six-and-a-half minutes (short for Circle in full-on pummel mode) -- alien sounds and deeper textures start to settle in. They never replace the guitars, bass, and drums, but they lengthen the shadows considerably and make themselves felt. What's left is a completely psychedelic, and seamless, mind blowing affair. Ambient soundscapes creep in on "Black Black Never Never Land," yet even as the title is chanted over and again, the six-string slash and burn and triple-timed drums never cease their incessant struggle for domination -- even as wafting vocals buried in the mix carry themselves forth to float just under the mix. Effects, textures, colors, shapes, and riffs begin to intermingle and entwine; they create a harrowing sonic journey for the listener in and out of tunnels of echo, reverb, weird '70s glam rock-style bridges to angular synth patterns (that are literally next to one another in the closer "Snow Olympics"), and so many other topsy-turvy flips and labyrinthine flops, that Katapult should be a mess. It's not. It's as tight a record as this band has ever pulled off while still sprawling into infinity. This is Circle at a whole new level in an entirely new direction and more focused and frighteningly intense than they've ever been. - Thom Jurek

Skeletor

Circle - Andexelt

Another awesome effort from these Finnish bastards.

Third Eye

Hovercraft - Experiment Below

For Felix, second album by these Northwest psychonauts.

"The title of Hovercraft's second recording for Mute is wholly appropriate, given their tendency to treat the recording studio as some kind of laboratory. Nearly impossible to describe, the instrumental sounds here are never soothing, even though Sadie 7 (aka Beth Liebling, aka Mrs. Eddie Vedder) certainly is capable of playing a lush bass guitar. But the screeching, scratching sonics of Campbell 2000's guitar takes her lullaby rhythms and turns them inside out. While not a sign of conformity by any means, Below finds Hovercraft offering up more structure, orchestrating stronger dramatic climaxes than their previous work and knowing when to pull the plug on the atonal moments. Some songs, like the ghostly "Phantom Limb" or the static-embraced "Transmitter" even cry out similarities to the blackened spirit of Joy Division in their most saddened state. This is challenging music that certainly has its rewards for those patient enough to hang around." - Jason Kaufman

Epoxy

Hovercraft - Akathisia

This group has been largely forgotten these days (aside from a few good friends of mine and me), and unfairly so I might add. They conjure up tense, taut and razor sharp space rock/psych instrumental constructions, filled with a spot-on sense of experimentation and drama.

"Perhaps everyone and their mothers -- assuming the moms were into such things -- were indeed raving endlessly about post-rock in all its supposed forms throughout much of the '90s, instead of that seeming like an involved indie rock dream. Where Hovercraft fits into all this isn't so much in style and scene as it is in direct participation -- if not quite as freaked out as, say, Main -- the trio on Akathisia did a fantastic job of whipping up five dark, engrossing instrumentals that avoided any pretense of commercial acceptance. The inclusion of drummer Dave gave the group a touch more traditional rock punch without otherwise sounding too traditional, though he does have an ear for the steady post-psych tribal drumming doom approach that must have scared a few folks taking bong hits in 1972. One can almost audibly hear the three members testing each other out with their experiments; jam sessions turned into creepy alien soundtracks, the end descendants of everyone and everything from Ash Ra Tempel and instrumental Pink Floyd to Joy Division, and even Wire at its most unsettled-but-calm. Perhaps by default Ryan is the most openly exploratory member; while the rhythm section finds its own paces and subtle rhythm shifts, Ryan freaks out in his own way, wailing guitars shooting up, down, and all around, with mixed brief, repetitive parts that obsessively focus on rhythm as well. But he doesn't dominate, and indeed Beth Liebling and Dave are often the most prominent in the mix -- consider "Angular Momentum" and its steady, just doomy enough crawl forward towards the end. "Haloparidol" plays around with some Arabic scales here and there to attractive effect, while "De-Orbit Burn" is a killer ending for the album, with some seriously noisy feedback damage from Ryan and Liebling throughout." - Ned Raggett

Haloparidol (sic)

International Harvester - Sov Gott Rose-Marie

Primal Swedish protodronerocking dementors that penetrate your frontal lobes with aural icepicks.

"Like a Swedish version of communal krautrockers, Amon Düül [I], the ominous music saunters around the room, occasionally breaking into political slogans or stage play recitations, not unlike The Mothers of Invention or the improv scenes by The Committee in “Billy Jack.” You may also hear the seeds of the more avant garde, psych/folk bands emerging from Scandinavia today, such as Finland’s Kemialliset Ystävät and Avarus or Norway’s Origami Republik. In either event, it’s certainly not “musical” and it’s a very antagonistic listen combining sloganeering, stage plays, Scandinavian folk melodies, documentary-styled sound bytes and a totally wigged-out, 60s’ political vibe not unlike Ya Ho Wa 13, with Persson assuming the mantle of Father Yod. Nevertheless, it is a key artefact from the formative Swedish psychedelic scene – just be prepared to have your brain pulled in 40 different directions at once!" - Digitalis

Tunis

Guru Guru - Hinten

Mani Neumeier's barbarian rock horde in one of their more drug-blasted, wigged out efforts.

"'Hinten' was the second album by the three-piece Guru Guru comprised of: Mani Neumeier (voice, electric drums, cymbals, gong, contact microphone, kalimba, sounding being, zonk machine); Uli Trepte (bass, radio) and Ax Genrich (guitar.) And here they sound less lumpen/trudgin' than on their stellar "UFO" LP but every bit as Frei-Rock and exploratory. But unlike "UFO","Hinten" exhibits a more flexible and plastic structure: it's loose, yet tight. It's free flowing, yet scripted enough to accommodate a freefall of freak outs and it allowed themselves all the space in the universe yet managing to combine together with such effectively precise riffing JUST off enough to allow all concerned to wander off the path as many times as they liked without leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind AND NEVER GETTING LOST. There are also more vocals present here, but only if you can call murmuring song titles over ten-plus-minutes' worth of an ensemble jumble of detuned, skittering guitars shrieking and groaning feedback with an overlay of contact microphone hi-jinks with jarring percussive strikes "vocals". And this was presented in a far clearer sonic image than ever before, courtesy of its self-production ably assisted by engineer Conrad Plank.

Even though the performance was several notches up on the tightness scale from "UFO", the chaos remained unchecked to an extreme because for all its pre-planned boundaries (which they wound up pushing through or just plain ignored for most of the time) the end result was a loose and gigantically sprawling, avant-proto-metal improvisatory monster that for all its audio strength caught the trio completely in the raw...And speaking of which, the cover's got that, too. What cheek. And when I say "cheek" I mean that literally cos it's a four times repetition of a photograph of a guy's backside with the word "GURU" painted twice across his bared glutei. Although it seems a long way round to go just to riff off the album's title, it did effectively scream "FREAK" before anyone got to hear it and the music sealed the whole deal with so many instantaneous stops-and-starts, false endings, guitar solos and outright freakery it both roots you to the spot and sends you off into a zone of anarchic mind-warp all at once. Makes you crack up at inopportune moments, too." - The Seth Man

Bo

Spiritualized - Lazer Guided Melodies

The first album of Pierce's longest-running and notorious project, that set the bases for the songwriting in subsequent work. Lovely shit.

Space

Mammatus - The Coast Explodes

These California fuckers spit out some insane Heavy-ass Psych Rock which combines Sabbath chug, Hawkwind craziness, Red-era Crimson Prog Brutality and Ash Ra Tempel mindfuck in one neat little package. The soundtrack for fly agaric eating soap dodgers the world over. No wonder they're named after some fuckin' giant cloud of doom.

Lick the frog

Neu-4

Requested by Felix. Not their best by a long shot, but still pretty damn good. Out of print and pretty hard to find.

Fly Dutch you bastard!

Neu-75

More Neu!, as requested.

"After splitting the band up, Rother and Dinger eventually regrouped for their best album. Strangely, it's anything but a cohesive masterpiece: Neu! 75 sees each occupying fenced-off artistic territory, the tracks divided fifty/fifty, and the components of the group's music being separated and ushered to extremes. Rother's fascination with texture and harmony results in wintry, crystalline music, frosted by keening analogue synthesisers and pristine lead guitar; Dinger has little patience with all that, and weighs in with two pieces of proto-punk lunacy. The moment at which Rother's painfully hushed Leb Wohl ("Good luck") gives way to the scabrous intro to Dinger's Hero acts as an utterly incontestable argument for divorce. That Dinger proceeds to the utterly insane After Eight, in which two fuzztoned chords pummel it out while the song's author and vocalist sounds like he's flying, bat-like, round the studio, only adds to the impression of barely-managed discord."-John Harris

E-muzakkkk

Spacemen 3 - Dreamweapon: An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music

The Spacefuckers paying tribute to the Grand Master and Holy Father of Minimalism, La Monte Young. Mesmerizing droneworks of the highest order.


Ecstasy

Neu-Neu 2

More Neu! was requested, so more Neu shall be posted.

"Neu! 2 is one of those rare albums that challenges the very notion of music itself. It scrutinizes the concept of the album, the relationship between the artist and the listener, the producer and the consumer, as well as making the very notion of originality extremely dubious."- Nick Taylor

Fur immer

Neu-Neu

The Genesis of Motorik. Staggering. Everyone from Wire to Stereolab, man up and pay them royalties.

"Neu!,their 1971 debut is arguably the strongest record the duo of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger made; its stunningly reductionist stuff, rock stripped down to its essentials of pulse and texture, arguably predating techno and the whole post-rock movement by a good fifteen years. It's music with no narrative structure, not much in the way of dynamics - it just is." - Pete Marsh

Hallogallo

Spacemen 3 - Perfect Prescription (UK)

Rosetta Stone for space rockers around the globe. This is the UK version.

Street Hassle

Joe Byrd & The Field Hippies - The American Metaphysical Circus

Requested by Andres. More electronic/psychedelic craziness from Mr. Byrd.

"Byrd wasted no time refurbishing his nest with another group, this time a studio-only entity known as Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies. Their lone LP, The American Metaphysical Circus, is another oddball classic. Opening with some dark, electronic soundscapes laminated with haunting, moaning female vocals that segue into an awesomely catchy, lightweight, psychedelic rock song; a parody of many musical styles then follows: ’60s pop, romantic ballads, vintage hot jazz (in one speaker only with tons of surface crackle added for authentic 78 rpm record sound), old folks' sing-along piano ditties, etc. with occasional ominous electronics bubbling up to the surface. The overall “Age of Aquarius” feel is subtly twisted by beautiful, mostly female vocals belting out some fairly mentally disturbed lyrics."

Mister 4th

The United States of America - s/t

Request by Andres. Like the Silver Apples, the USA's use of electronic apparatus to bolster the song into other planes of there made them instrumental to the development of popular electronic music.

"Joseph Byrd is a composer and music teacher who's been working since the 1950s. After starting out playing in pop, jazz and country bands as a Tucson, Arizona teen, Byrd moseyed on over to Stanford college in New York City in 1959, where he became a student of experimental composer John Cage and joined the nascent Fluxus art scene. He even debuted his first minimal music works at Yoko Ono's loft! Soon after college, Byrd accepted a teaching position at UCLA in the mid '60s, but after the music bug bit him hard, he quit to play full-time. His most well-known work appeared on two LPs at the end of that decade.

Byrd's first band, the short-lived United States of America, splashed out a unique spray of rock, psychedelic and avant-garde music. They eschewed rock's staple instrument, the electric guitar, in favor of then cutting-edge electronic devices like an early, primitive synthesizer and a ring modulator, the whoosh and bleeps of which they blended in with crystal clear female vocals and searing violin to effortlessly bake a whole loaf's worth of damaged space age pop. After the release of their one and only self-titled LP in 1968, the band played a few shows, then promptly and predictably imploded due to the usual drug problems and creative differences."

USA

Tangerine Dream - Zeit

TD as glacial, molasses like ambient outfit, recording approximations on the sound of galaxies colliding. Check how "The Birth of Liquid Plejades" puts chancers like Godspeed You! Black Emperor to shame...and it was recorded more 20 years before those canadian pretenders ever decided to pick up an instrument.

time

Spectrum - Forever Alien

Request from my friend Christiancillou. Spectrum is one of the main projects of ex-Spacemen 3 founder and Experimental Audio Research's head honcho Sonic Boom. On Spectrum he focuses on following the footsteps of the electronic constructions made by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and the glacial electronics of prime Tangerine Dream within a pop context, using an array of vintage synths, pedals, ring modulators, and vocoders. Still "taking drugs to make music to take drugs to", forever drifting into cosmic bliss. This is their fourth album.

Owsley