Indie, alternative, experimental & electronic vinyl and CDs

Alva Noto
For 2  Album of the week

MORE BACK IN ON APRIL 13th!! Carsten Nicolai is an artist whose work I always await with high expectations. His approach to creating audio is both artistic and scientific, this also applies to his visual output. Over the years he's amassed an impressive catalogue in both fields, yet is probably best known for his work as Alva Noto and collaborations with Ryuchi Sakamoto.

I have a huge amount of admiration and res...read full review.

Soft Circle
You Can't Hide Your Love Forever 6  Single of the week

Geographic North have picked a sure fire winner in Hisham Akira Bharoocha's Soft Circle. Formally a member of Black Dice and now accompanied by Ben Singer of Signer, Bird Show, Town and Country, Bharoocha has creating some awesome music in his time. Soft Circle have taken the electronic tribalism of their PPM split with High Places and expanded on the theme with 'End of Summer' using hypnotic vocal chants and an onslaught...read full review.

Fabio Orsi
Winterreise

Fabio Orsi has been steadily building his catalogue with releases on Students of Decay, Foxglove, Sentient Recognition Archive, A Silent Place, Students Of Decay, Low Point and Preservation. He makes his debut this week on Japan's Slow Flow Rec following excellent releases from Celer and Ian Hawgood. The audio comes in six parts and it's really doing the business for me. It's ultra soothing ambient/ drone of very high q...read full review.

Excepter
Presidence

Yo yo and not forgetting little yo down there. This next recording has us in fits of fascination. It's by Brooklyn tribal psychonauts Excepter and is a double disc blow out that commences with bent, sluggish synths & monged beatery. Onwards I march, my ears being subjected to some wonderful komische tropicalia action, digital fireflies fizz into my oversaturated shell-likes whilst gibbering digital druids moan at me f...read full review.

Neon Indian
Psychic Chasms

Bit of a buzz surrounding this release especially in Pitchfork camp and on first spin i can see why. 'Psychic Chasms' is a totally sweet sounding album that perfectly encompasses the feeling of anticipation for a summer of love and laughter (something we won't get much of here at club Norman). The strange thing about this album is that every tune seems to utilise the same synth sounds used of Wham's classic christmas sing...read full review.

Ulrich Schnauss
Missing Deadlines - Selected Remixes

The Schnausser is back with a brand new album courtesy of Rocket Girl... Well it's kind of new.... it's a collection of remixes he's done for a ton of like minded shoegazey/ indie bods all packaged into one package called a CD. This one features tracks by Howling Bells, A Sunny Day In Glasgow (weirdly when I listened to this the first time and didn't realise it was remixes I said this sounds just like a Sunny day in Glasg...read full review.

Balmorhea
Constellations

Is Balmorhea a sudden, urgent shifting in the bowels when visiting the country home of our gracious Queen? Like, OMG does she have gold leaf bog roll or what? What if I use a full roll? Will I get billed? What if the bailiffs come round and kick my door in? Just because I've had a dump on Lizzie's throne!!! Worries aside for now as I investigate the REAL Balmorhea. This neo-classical/experimental folk outfit has a new alb...read full review.

Eluvium
Similes

Think we struggle here to fully appreciate some of our wares whilst the chaos of daily human traffic & general Norman Records mayhem shifts our consciences elsewhere, away from the subtleties & nuances of the gentler sounds emitting from the stereo. I couldn't even remember the new Eluvium CD yesterday. Had my head in boxes all day, my mind on the job, firmly on the prize. Which turned out to be a small ball of st...read full review.

Gutta Percha
Tube Overtures

Joy...more cyclic, hollow scraping making the inside of my head go funny. The first track on here has that rolling industrial ambience thing happening with heart wrenchingly sad bursts of cold, melancholic synth. This CD also features some of that post-Caretaker blues; hazy, muffled evocations from another dimension parading themselves as weirdly fluffy hauntological snippets . Apparently the core aim of this project by t...read full review.

Lovesliescrushing
CRWTH (Chorus Redux)

  I've not heard of these folks before. They formed in 1991 and released this album Chorus which was only released in Peru. Apparently Richard Chartier was well into it and he was pretty keen to get his hands on a copy and eventually after a number of conversations with Lovesliescrushing he persuaded them to go back to the original album and re do it. So it's not a remix album... it's a redux. Am I right in thinking...read full review.

Motorpsycho
X-3 (knuckleheads in space)

Listening to Motorpsycho taught me a lesson today. Norwegians know how to rock! This might sound naive but I thought bands from that neck of the woods were introverted Noise/Ambient meisters. These chaps seem to know their way round a riff. The title track reminds me of Hawkwind in its groove and production. The vocals are caked in reverb and the song gallops along in a very space rock way. The second track got me fully e...read full review.

Pantha du Prince
The Bliss

Riding the current wave of Pantha Du Prince's successful Rough trade long player, Dial have reissued his second album on CD. It was originally issued in 2007 but feels a lot like his recent work in terms of pristine production and all the percussive layers. Generally speaking though the overall vibe is a little darker. From what I've read Hendrik Weber is quite conceptual with his ideas. Here even using small samples from...read full review.

Pjusk
Sval

Phil has put some neo-goth nonsense on the stereo so I've decamped to headphone heaven to peruse the contents of this here CD on 12k. Pjusk is a Norwegian duo specialising in brittle, arctic glitchscapes & frosty dark ambient moods. I can sense a comradeship with the old guard such as Biosphere in these deep isolatory tones, manipulated found-sound, sporadic minimal beats/pulses and vast, brooding synth lines. Ea...read full review.

The Bundles
The Bundles

Originally stemming from a brief Jeffrey Lewis & Kimya Dawson jam session in 2001, this project has blossomed almost a decade later to encompass his bro Jack, Karl Blau & Anders Griffen, not to mention the Olympia Free Choir somewhere on backing vox! I was a little nonplussed at first but this S/T album has many dimensions & a hell of a lot of charm. Kimya's sassy childlike voice melded with Jeff's nerdy brogu...read full review.

Jasper TX
A Voice From Dead Radio

Dag Rosenquist fans will be pleased that Under The Spire have collected the limited long out of print 3” CD-r’s. Harrisburg, D+A EP and Pilgrims and presented them in a lovely six panel digipak complete with a remix Cd with a super stellar line-up of remixers: Pillowdiver, Zelienople, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Xela, Peter Broderick, Simon Scott, Steinbruchel, Aaron Martin, Alex Cobb and Seaworthy. It's numbered and...read full review.