Boredoms - Chocolate Synthesizer

Let EYE and co. confound your mind.

"4th album from 1994. ...chocolate synthesiser was the boredoms second major-label album + while it bears little or no resemblance to their new stuff its absolutely essential listening & very much in the same ecstatic spirit. it's very raw but also sophisticated - blending elements of speed-core, punk (there seems to be a tribute of sorts to the electric eels at one point), dub, psychedelia, biker rock, the gross-out too-muchness of the butthole surfers at their lunatic best. Ace." - Boomkat

Mama Brain

Fushitsusha - Origin's Hesitation

One of my favorite groups, but not for everyone. If you don't like your musical preconceptions pushed to the limit, steer clear away. This is one of their most difficult records.

"Japanese guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist Keiji Haino had been a prominent figure in the Tokyo underground since the mid-'70s before forming this incredible group that stands as one of Japan's most inventive and extraordinary and powerful groups of the era. Their work draJws on noise,rock, free improvisation, and psychedelia, yet they sculpt their group sound in a fashion that their music is relative to few forms. In fact, the sound of Fushitsusha could best be described as contemporary Japanese music as some of their modalities and vigorous improvisational manner reflects the Japanese folk and traditional formulas. On the other hand, the electricity and refined indulgence of their feedback drenched albums and live concerts bares similarities to early Sonic Youth and the Swans, yet is as challenging as avant-garde improvisation. Sonny Sharrock's Black Woman and Peter Brötzmann's Machine Gun are good points of reference, as are Captain Beefheart, Guru Guru, or even Can.

Fushitsusha is part of a continuum in Japanese avant-garde music that was developing in the '60s with noisy improvisational groups such as Group Ongaku, Taj Mahal Travellers, and, most notably, New Direction Unit, who were versed in a free-form noise dialect that went beyond the free jazz movement to higher and more unsettling places. Where Fushitsusha fit into the spectrum of rock, noise, and avant-garde could be pondered for hours. The conclusion, in most cases, could only be that they are a phenomenon of an incredibly creative force in leader Keiji Haino, who has forged some of the most magnificent avant-garde recordings of the '90s seemingly out of blood, sweat, and tears. As a solo performer, he has such an extraordinary and singular approach one could only compare him to an artist like Cecil Taylor, as his work is all-consuming, brutally passionate, and individual. " - Skip Jansen


"Expectations exploded, intentions fleetingly revealed, faith justified. A new album from Keiji Haino's Fushitsusha is always going to be a major event. And to make the release of Origin's Hesitation even more significant, it is the first new album from the group in almost two years, the first studio recordings by the new duo line-up, and the first Fushitsusha album on PSF since 1994's stunning Pathetique. The popular perception of Fushitsusha has usually been as a rock band, albeit one that pushed the definition of that term further than anyone had ever done before. While the group's approach has always been (and remains) rock to the core, the outside manifestation of those intentions have gradually moved further and further away from the rock framework. Shockingly, on this release, Haino takes the process to its natural conclusion and has decided to eschew the guitar entirely. In its place, nothing but the eerily empty hiss of overdriven amplification. Here Haino sings, plays drums, and conjures with spectres. Consequently, the sound palette is starker, and Haino's intentions plainer than they have ever been before. The no overdubs policy remains, though both Haino and bassist Ozawa work with realtime loops. The unique dynamic hallmarks of the group are preserved, the focus on individual sounds and their interaction underlined. Attack, duration, beginnings and endings all merge into one heartrending, emotionally eternal present. This is a hugely important, hauntingly insistent, spectral blast of a record. Quite simply and beyond any doubts, one of the releases of the year." - Alan Cummings

Two Exist

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

200 Motels, A Frank Zappa film.

Frank Zappa - 200 Motels Cd1
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Frank Zappa - 200 Motels Cd2
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Frank Zappa - 200 Motels Cd3
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Scott Walker - Tilt

This ain't the Scott your mom listened to.

"Tilt was Scott Walker's first album following over a decade of silence, and whatever else he may have done during his exile, brightening his musical horizon was not on the agenda. Indescribably barren and unutterably bleak, Tilt is the wind that buffets the gothic cathedrals of everyone's favorite nightmares. The opening "Farmer in the City" sets the pace, a cinematic sweep that somehow maintains a melody beneath the unrelenting melodrama of Walker's most grotesque vocal ever. Seemingly undecided whether he's recording an opera or simply haunting one, Walker doesn't so much perform as project his lyrics, hurling them into the alternating maelstroms and moods that careen behind him. The effect is unsettling, to put it mildly. At the time of its release, reviews were undecided whether to praise or pillory Walker for making an album so utterly divorced from even the outer limits of rock reality, an indecision only compounded by its occasional (and bloody-mindedly deceptive) lurches towards modern sensibilities. "The Cockfighter" is underpinned by an intensity that is almost industrial in its range and raucousness, while "Bouncer See Bouncer" would have quite a catchy chorus if anybody else had gotten their hands on it. Here, however, it is highlighted by an Eno-esque esotericism and the chatter of tiny locusts. The crowning irony, however, is "The Patriot (A Single)," seven minutes of unrelenting funeral dirge over which Walker infuses even the most innocuous lyric ("I brought nylons from New York") with indescribable pain and suffering. Tilt is not an easy album to love; it's not even that easy to listen to. First impressions place it on a plateau somewhere between Nico's Marble Index and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music -- before long, familiarity and the elitist chattering of so many well-heeled admirers rendered both albums mere forerunners to some future shift in mainstream taste. And maybe that is the fate awaiting Tilt, although one does wonder precisely what monsters could rise from soil so belligerently barren. Even Metal Machine Music could be whistled, after all. " - Dave Thompson

Tilt

The Cramps - Bad Music for Bad People

R.I.P. Lux Interior

I Can't Hardly Stand It

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

Lee "Scratch" Perry & The Upsetters - Super Ape

You heard the most recent stuff from the Jamaican Madman, now hear him in his absolute prime, blasting off new soundworlds through the valves of his humid, interzonal Black Ark.

Creation

Arthur Brown - The Crazy World of Arthur Brown

FIIIIYAAAHHHH! Arthur was one fucking madman, and this, his first effort, proves it beyond a doubt. Sublimely excessive psychedelic soul produced by Pete Townshend. And of course who can forget that famous single: FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! On the Dementor Hall of Fame fo' sure.

Come and buy

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

Lee "Scratch" Perry - Repentance

Abe request. New shit from Jamaica's Mad Genius and one of the crucial figures in the development of its music. Produced by Andrew WK with contributions by David Tibet, Don Fleming (Velvet Monkeys et al), Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt) and Sasha Grey (yes, the porn star).

Pum Pum

Faust - Faust Tapes

"The album fades in slowly in a cacophony of rainy city blues, droning synthesizers and tonelessness. An abrupt edit cuts suddenly to a call and answer vocal and drum groove and. . . bang! A savage edit into. .. a ballad. Piano, drums, acoustic guitar, Eno-ish synthesizer and voice. A ballad. Except that the vocals were intriguingly trans-Atlantic and sounded insightfully psychedelic in a badly-translated way. It was charming: "When you leave your place and walk in someone other's garden, Suddenly you see, it's a woman's colour in your mind to be."

Most surprising about The Faust Tapes is the number of truly wonderful pop and rock songs hidden within the cut-ups and experiments of the album's tangled grooves. And halfway through Side I is their most defining Krautrock riff of all. It's another of Faust's Krautrock/Family Stone/Temptations trips in the tradition of "It's a Rainy Day". A scientific German-American voice makes pronouncements over the groove and Gunter Wüsthoff's sax tears along over a loopy breakneck driving beat, as the call and answer of life kicks in: "Chet-vah Buddha, Cherra-loopiz Chet-vah Buddha, Cherra-loopiz. Chet-vah Buddha, Cherra-loopiz Chet-vah Buddha, Cherra-loopiz."

50,000 copies of The Faust Tapes were sold in 1973 and the night they played at Birmingham Town Hall, it seemed as though those words could become a football anthem. The Heads were taking over. Soon after, as we lay in my friend Cott's caravan listening to The John Peel Show, out of nowhere the DJ began to read out the names of the 20 or more songs from The Faust Tapes. The sleeve and label of the LP had showed no titles to any of the songs and Cott raced around trying to find a pen. It was all over in half-a-minute and all I could remember was some title about Humphrey Bogart. It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that John Peel was in on Faust's intended wind-up of its audience - that we were only meant to hear the titles fleetingly and race around like half-wits. And Faust were right.

. . it was their persistence in the Entirety of their trip that makes them so legendary now. Even better, The Faust Tapes was the social phenomenon of 1973, and it finally brought the true avant garde into everyone's living room, for a short while at least. But most of all this LP revealed just which side of the fence everyone was really standing. In April 1980, Jim Kerr, leader of dinosaurs Simple Minds, gleefully told me how he and his mates had all chucked their copies of The Faust Tapes off the roof of a Glasgow tenement. Enough Said? I'm sure that's the phrase." - Julian Cope

Tapes

The List

The infamous Nurse With Wound list. Rosetta Stone for us demented music freaks with a penchant for hallucinogenics.

Amon Düül - Psychedelic Underground

A fair assessment of Amon Duul's excursions into the furthest reaches of the id can be found here. To me it sounds like the gates of hell opening and a smiling Satan waiting for your arrival with two pounds of fly agaric in each hand.

Care to join?

Faust - Faust

It's hard to damn this piece of sheer chutzpah and utter brilliance with faint praise. So i'll let their biggest fan, Saint Julian, try to do it:

"Listen to the Mothers of Invention's concert recordings from 1966 onwards and it's just trash. Musical bollocks of the most merely capable variety. Faust live? This is a different thing entirely. Like all the greatest Teutonic groups, Faust were brought up with middle-European dances and a staple of folk and tradition which was not 4/4. As a consequence, German bands could get far more complex than U.S. and British bands would ever dare and it still sounds rocking and crazy, rather than a bunch of Twee Smug Gits. Find an old Caravan,Man or Henry Cow LP for 50p somewhere and compare it with this. I'm joking of course.

Four years ago, I had dinner with a very successful journalist who told me that he'd had to review Love's "Forever Changes" for Q Magazine now that it was available on CD. Wow, I shouted. You lucky fucker! Yes, he said. But I know it so well I couldn't summon up any real energy, so I just gave it 8/10. "Forever Changes" is a dark achievement. Were it an ancient text or a document it would be hidden from view and spoken of in obscure circles, But because it operates through the medium of Pop Music, it gets tarts like said Journalist giving it 8/10. This is a classic case of a man sleepwalking through life.

So now I have to set to and tell you about the first Faust album, and I will not let you down. For a start, its a big 10/10. No, make that 11/10. It defies categories. It's a horrible noise. It's cut-ups to the Nth degree. Part of it is just like Frank Zappa's "Lumpy Gravy" (a funny bit, thank the Goddess.) It is super-gimmicky, syrupy in the weirdest places, and never outstays its welcome. But probably the strangest thing of all is just how good Faust sound when they are creating on the spot moments of rock'n'roll on the epic Miss Fortune. Here they transcend all studio trickery and here they come alive."

Get it