A Place To Bury Strangers - "Let It All Go" (2:33)
The Serfs - "Time Leaks Away" (dub) (3:57)
Review: New York city noise rockers A Place To Bury Strangers - who formed in 2003 and are fronted by sole constant member Oliver Akermann - get real heavy on the a-side to this split 7". The release comes as the band prepare their Synthesizer US Tour featuring their support bands The Serfs and The Mall. In terms of getting fired up for a frenzy in the venue, few cuts come with as much incendiary energy as this, with its squealing feedbacking guitars and rapidly pulsating rhythms relentlessly intense, but also rabble rousing and tinged with optimism. The flip side sees Ohio electro post-punks The Serfs transition from their darkwave roots and embrace Jah Wobble-esque dub on the cut 'Time Leaks Away (dub)'. It's heavy on the subs and perfect for the soundsystem heads out there
Review: Almost An Island unites Kenneth James Gibson with James and Cynthia Bernard (aka marine eyes) for a quietly stunning ambient collaboration (would you really expect anything less on this fine label?) Blending tape hiss, vaporous textures, pedal steel and delicate guitar work, the album evokes themes of impermanence and emotional connection and hints of Americana ripple through tracks like 'In Light Of' and 'Wide Open' while the lead single 'What Got Us To Our Feet' swells into an aching crescendo of voice and strings. It is a deeply introspective yet expansive record that demands you carve out a tranquil sonic space in which to hear it, and the results are intimate, cinematic and beautiful.
Review: Excitably released on RSD 2016, Acid Guru Pond brought Philadelphia's Bardo Pond with Japanese psych juggernauts Acid Mothers Temple and krautrock pioneers Guru Guru. This once-in-a-career collision of three cult acts resulted in a sprawling suite of saturated distortion, cosmic noise and deep-rooted heaviness. It's the final chapter in Bardo Pond's RSD trilogy, begun in 2013, and arguably the most exploratory, lacing classic psych-rock riffage with global textures and drones that drift in and out of a plum focus. Isobel Sollenberger's flute and vocals rise through the fuzz in a haze that feels more ritual than rock show. The tracklist, meanwhile, named entirely after colours, gives a nod to the record's meditative, gamut-running core.
Review: Originally emerging from London's politically-charged underground, Bourbonese Qualk's defiant 1989 release remains an unyielding manifesto of experimental dissent. Forged during Thatcher-era Britain, this searing album combines relentless industrial rhythms, tape-loop distortion, and minimal synth arrangements, underscored by urgent spoken-word declarations against authoritarianism and neoliberal decay. Highlights include the pulsating intensity of 'Guilt', the hypnotic tension of 'Ton Ton Macoute', and the stark resolve of 'Let It Go'. Reflecting influences from minimalist composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass, the album's intricate arrangements are simultaneously abrasive and mesmerizing. This remastered reissue vividly resurrects a pivotal chapter in British experimental music-still fiercely relevant in today's climate of surveillance and mass disinformation.
Review: Cluster II was released in 1972 and was an immediately pivotal work in electronic and experimental music. Created by German musician and composer Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Swiss-born musician and composer Dieter Moebius, the album blends urban chaos with raw and intuitive soundcraft. Recorded in Hamburg but born from Berlin's underground scene, its fusion of tape loops, sine tones and improvised analogue textures forged a new path for ambient, krautrock and early synth music. With shorter, more focused tracks than many peers, this album rejected excess and embraced risk and was produced with sonic visionary Conny Plank. The album still resonates as a bold and genre-defiant milestone that showed electronic music can have both structure and soul.
Review: This remastered glimpse into the Brondesbury Road sessions captures a formative moment in British progressive music-when Robert Fripp, Peter Giles and Michael Giles were sketching out the vocabulary that would soon define King Crimson. Recorded in 1968 using a single Revox tape machine, the material is raw but revealing: two early takes of 'I Talk To The Wind' feature Peter Giles and Judy Dyble on vocals respectively, both casting the song in a more folk-inflected light. 'Suite No.1' foreshadows 'Prelude: Song Of The Gulls', while 'Why Don't You Just Drop In' seeds lyrical ideas later reworked into 'The Letters'. 'Passages of Time' stands out for its bolero pulse and melodic motifs that would resurface on In the Wake of Poseidon. The fidelity may waver, but the historical value is undeniable-this is the sound of a blueprint forming in real time.
Review: The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles And Fripp might not have made waves when it landed in 1968, but it's since become a cult curiosity for anyone tracking the tangled roots of King Crimson. The trio of Michael Giles, Peter Giles and Robert Fripp wove a quilt of psych, chamber folk, jazz daftness and classical eccentricity, within a spoken-word skit framing device (a la 'The Saga Of Rodney Toady', 'Just George'). It's less a precursor to In The Court Of The Crimson King than a sidelong step into the British art-pop twilight zone, with Fripp still years away from his feedback-drenched grandeur. Though it reportedly sold only 500 copies at first, reissues with bonus demos and singles have helped rescue it from obscurity, especially the 2001 Brondesbury Tapes, capturing home-recorded sketches that fill in the backstory.
Review: Just when you thought all the original rock & roll had been done, along come Half Japanese to prove they're not dead and nor is the canon itself. Playing through the appropriately-titled Adventure, and you almost can't believe this band have been going for more than 50 years - it would be easy to mistake the Velvet Underground-Lou Reed tones to be simply an ode to long lost wonders, rather than a sound honed back in the day when those names were still alive and kicking. Of course, that kind of comparison is going to piss some people off as it's not quite accurate. Yes, at times Adventure feels beautiful and cool and cult and perfect for an afternoon spent in the summer sunshine of some Greenwich Village park, before all the cool kids moved to Brooklyn. But there's more than one side to this coin, from the stunning progressive guitar grooves of 'Lemonade Sunset' and 'Magnificent', to the chugging, driving and very loud title track. Amazing stuff.
Review: South London radical post-punks Italia 90's new release contains their first three EPs (2017-2019), originally released on limited cassette runs and now remastered and available on vinyl for the first time. There were only 50 copies of each EP and alongside gaining a reputation for being one of the fiercest live acts in England it helped set the hype for what became their only studio album to date so far, Living Human Treasure (2023). Some of the songs, like 'New Factory', for instance, were reworked for the album, but hearing the rougher EP cut you get more of an old school post-punk aesthetic that makes it somewhat more timeless. Elsewhere, 'Road To Hell' is a brilliant call to arms for direct action with the line: "disrupt the capital/agents of antagonism", whilst 'Against The Wall' has a spangled psychedelic lead guitar that epitomizes how brilliant they are at dialing in mind-bending tones.
Little Annie - "Yesterday When I Was Young" (with Marc Almond) (4:13)
Little Annie - "Things Happen" (with Coil) (4:19)
Little Annie - "The Weather The War" (with Kid Congo Powers) (6:39)
Little Annie - "Isle Of Weeping Ladies" (with Paul Wallfisch) (4:57)
Little Annie - "State Of Grace" (with Baby Dee & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy) (5:14)
Little Annie - "Lefrak City Limits" (with Larsen - Paul Wallfisch single edit) (6:25)
Little Annie - "The Soul Of August" (with Paul Wallfisch) (4:23)
Little Annie - "Some Things We Do" (with Swans) (5:04)
Review: American avant torch singer Little Annie collects over four decades of collaborative drift on this unusually cohesive set, pairing with Marc Almond, Coil, Swans, Bonnie "Prince" Billy and others. The project balances Annie's broken-glamour vocal intimacy with the distinct language of each guest - from the choral unease of 'Some Things We Do' to the fragile synth-shadow of 'Things Happen'. 'Yesterday When I Was Young', recorded with Almond, is gorgeously undone, while Kid Congo powers 'The Weather The War' into a ghostly blues lurch. Two tracks with pianist Paul Wallfisch - 'The Soul Of August' and 'Isle Of Weeping Ladies' - find Annie at her most elegiac. What binds these pieces is mood: weary, smoke-curled, and cracked with grace. Mastered by Martin Siewert and wrapped in Little Annie's own paintings, the collection captures a singular voice moving through a lifetime of subcultural sound without ever retreating into pastiche or posturing.
Review: The 1981 debut album by Mizutama Shobodan, who are one of Japan's most compelling avant-garde post-punk acts. The remarkable interplay between vocalists Kamura and Tenko is key to their appeal as is how unafraid they were to push back against more conservative styles of music and embrace experimental sonics in with more traditional sounds. They're theatrical, haunting and with this oft overlooked gem from the Far East you can definitely get one up over your mates who only know Ryuichi Sakamoto by playing them this.
Review: Mizutama Shobodan, which translates to Polka Dot Fire Brigade, are one of the most formidable avant-garde post-punk acts from Japan. If you're wondering where the Krist Novoselic-tipped Kyoto rockers Otoboke Beaver got their influence, you ought to be down with this - as the Polka Dot Fire Brigade paved the way for more modern Japanese punk bands to follow. This album was originally released in 1985 and came after their staggering 1981 debut. They had the masterful Fred Firth mixing and self-produced. Firth, who has collaborated with the likes of Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno and no wave legend John Zorn, is right in having described them as a force of nature. This is up there on a level with the likes of the Slits and Siouxsie Sioux, whilst being arguably more uninhibited.
Review: Jonny Nash was out on his own in the ambient revival right from day one. He has remained there ever since and is now back with more home label on Melody As Truth. Following 2023's Point Of Entry, this eleven-track record explores a twilight atmosphere and mixes up folk, ambient jazz and dreampop with Nash's delicate fingerpicked guitar at the core. Accompanied by collaborators like saxophonists Joseph Shabason and Shoei Ikeda, cellist Tomo Katsurada, and vocalist Satomimagae, the album moves like a slow sunset with reverb-soaked vocals and textured melodies rife for deep and pensive contemplation. Nash is a master of balancing softness with depth and shows that again here.
Review: The Sun City Girls' Cloaven Cassettes series from 1987 to 1990 captured the band's wild early years in full experimental glory while they were ardently refusing to follow industry norms. The trio self-released 22 lo-fi cassettes bursting with surrealism, free jazz jams, prank calls, deconstructed covers and sheer sonic chaos. Most have never been reissued, until now, as Three Lobed Recordings begins a long-overdue reissue campaign starting with Famous Asthma and Tibetan Jazz 666, which have been remastered from original sources. These essential slabs of wax tap into the American underground and reveal the singular spirit of a band too restless for tradition.
Review: The debut album from genre-blurring New Jersey artist Jane Remover's Venturing project, already boasting a huge cult following online that's translating apace in the real world - they're due to open for Turnstile on tour in 2025. Remover isn't one to feel constrained by what's expected of them musically so in addition to making mash up music loosely based around hyperpop, new monikers arise if somethings better suited to having an identity of its own. Venturing is their taste for lo-fi melancholic noise rock, with plenty of distortion and other guitar effects providing an ethereal, dynamic bedding from which their soulful voice grows like a towering beanstalk. To be this versatile at 21-years-old is quite staggering.
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