Unicorn Hard-On returns with Dream Machine

Valerie Martino will end the project with a new album for Untergang-Institut next month.

After a decade of proliferating the US underground with a vivid, colourful and beat-heavy approach to experimental music as Unicorn Hard-On, Valerie Martino (pictured) was granted her most high-profile release to date with Weird Universe for Spectrum Spools. Arriving 10 months into 2013, the album sat alongside long players from Steve Moore, Palm Highway Chase and those killer Dozzy reworks of Bee Mask in one of Spectrum Spools’ most impressive years to date. Prior to that, Martino had developed a tangled web of cross-format releases as Unicorn Hard-On with a 2011 split LP with Container on Ryan Martin’s Hot Releases among our favourite examples of her glistening style.

Absent since that Spectrum Spools album, Martino is set to return next month with a new Unicorn Hard-On LP that effectively, and rather sadly, put the project to bed. Entitled Dream Machine, the six-track album is due out on the rather enigmatic Untergang-Institut label and sees Martino expand on the “twisted, colourful world of previous releases with slowly unravelling acid tracks and psychedelic synth lines.” You can hear three of the tracks from Dream Machine via the below bandcamp player whilst artwork for the record comes via the supremely gifted Cosmo Knex. Despite Unicorn Hard-On coming to an end with this album, Martino will continue to make music with Untergang-Institut quoting her as stating “I just want to make sounds that are beautiful and weird.”

Untergang-Institut will release Dream Machine by Unicorn Hard-On on July 1.

Tracklisting:

1. Wave Vacation
2. Dream Machine
3. Echo Palm
4. The Mystifying Oracle
5. Miss Maddox
6. Florida Water

Unicorn Hard-On on Juno