Indie, alternative, experimental & electronic vinyl and CDs

This week's hottest shit...

Moonhearts
Moonhearts Album of the week

Well the US underground is totally smokin' at the moment. Q/ How many steaming, adrenalised buzzsaw garage bands can you fit in a phonebox? A/ None 'cos they've exploded the thang into a zillion fragments & they're off, running around all over town like demented rock raccoons on the loose playing delirious doo-wop punk, muffled college rock & sludgy surf through a oil drum stuffed with Vaseline & grass cuttings. I think Guided By Voices...read full review.

Still Corners
Don’t Fall in Love / Wish Single of the week

Big fat deranged buzz single of the week alert. Yes, by the time you read this, it could well be sold out. "The Guardian" have been seduced but what does that really mean? Are Still Corners really that great? Phil was blown away by the slinky majesty of their previous collection 'Remember Pepper?' the other year then.... Nothing. Until now. Are Still Corners "the best new band in Britain"? Does that heap tons of unreasonable expectation on their yo...read full review.

Boredoms
77 Boa Drum

Five just on principle y'knarr? Five just 'cos it's Boredoms. Five just 'cos they got seventy-seven drummers (cool dudes like Brian Chippendale, David Grubbs, Alan Licht etc. etc. etc., not boring session geeks) to hit things all at the same time on the seventh of the seventh oh-seven in Brooklyn while Eye jumped around twatting his weird guitar rack thingymajigs. So yeah, you get the full seventy-seven minute seventy-seven second (natch) performan...read full review.

Rafael Anton Irisarri
The North Bend

Room 40 have come up trumps with a stormer of an LP by Rafael Anton Irisarri this week. Firstly it's packaged in a silk screened sleeve which is lovely and there's a download to boot too for you digital folks. As ever you get the usual mix of digital trickery and neo classical beauty which he blends together with adept skill. It's lovely stuff alright. It veers along the dark ambient tip as there's a real feel of forebodingness about it but there's...read full review.

The London Snorkelling Team
Audio Recording and Map

Bloody hell, here's this week's dose of rampant fruit-cakism from today's most prominent mad-as-lorries award contenders. Setting out their stall somewhere between berserk cartoon jazz, funky 60s soundtracks, quirky easy listening & bloopy Ghost Box style hauntologicalisms - this is the kind of demented tinkering & fun experimentation Norman Records used to pride itself on stocking. I'm reminded of Terry Edwards in a couple of spots, but al...read full review.

Grinderman
Heathen Child

Another slab of quality from Messrs. Cave and Co. This is about as dirty and sleazy as you would hope to get. They certainly know how to pummel a tune into your face. 'Heathen Child' stomps along with great gusto, and Nick Cave sounds better then ever. The real treat is on the flip side. Instead of a pointless remix, they have reworked the track, adding Robert Fripp(!) into the mix and made a great track even better. Fripp's searing guitar and mast...read full review.

The Vaselines
Sex With An X (single)

I've always wondered why The Vaselines didn't reform around the time that one Kurdt Kobanian was all over their tracks, it seemed like such an opportune time. Anyway, twenty years on and they've finally decided to join the 'reform and play at ATP Krew' and who can blame 'em, it looks like a good laugh. 'Sex With An X' is exactly what you'd expect, a simplistic three chord pop song with a memorable vocal line you can sing along to on first listen. I...read full review.

Charles Douglas
Summertime / Good Luck

This is a sexy little bitchwax. Two corkers from Charles Douglas's rarely appreciated 1999 LP “The Lives of Charles Douglas”. This is New York indie rock at it's finest. Cheap, cheerful and effortlessly simplistic pop story telling bolstered by the appearance of percussion genius Moe Tucker (The Velvet Underground) on drums. 'Summertime' is a two chord ode to the best of all the seasons. It's Richman vs The Vaselines with no decisive ou...read full review.

The Soft Moon
Parallels

Liking this 'Parallels' tune a lot. Can't say I've been that impressed with The Soft Moon on previous listens but they've pulled out the krautrock vibes for this cheeky 45 and it totally suits them. Repetitive uptempo drums play off a semi-gothic sounding, almost Joy Division-esque bassline drenched in chorus effects and propped up by ghostly vocal wails and ambient synths. It's a drifter with no discernible beginning or end and that's what makes i...read full review.

Oval
O

As it says on the inside of the handsome gatefold packaging I'm holding in my hands, Oval = Markus Popp and he's really changed up quite a lot from the records that made his name back in the 90s. Although strong hints of his glitchy past remain in the arrangements and attitude to melody, these days he's reminding me as much of current labelmates Tortoise as anyone in the abstract experimental electronica world.. Largely that's due to the general ch...read full review.

Mathemagic / Young Prisms
Split

Mathemagic are a bit dreamy, like. Their track ('Breaststroke') is kinda making me think of Lucky Dragons doing some sort of shoegazey remix of themselves on some idyllic beach somewhere just as daylight is starting to fade.. I might get the lilo out and see if the sounds'll float me out of the window into the Armley sunshine. Young Prisms have apparently had stuff out on Mexican Summer so I'm sure they must be hot shit. 'These Days' has a little b...read full review.

E.M.A.K. (Electronische Musik Aus Köln)
A Synthetic History of E.M.A.K 1982-88

I've been intrigued by this one ever since the pre-order crept onto our overstuffed pages. Soul Jazz's Universal Sound imprint usually know what they're doing as far as this reissue biz goes and they're talking this one up as bridging the gap between the German synth heroes of the 1970s (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze etc.) and the New Wave/Cold Wave/EBM type stuff of the 1980s. First impressions are that they could well be right, although since th...read full review.

The Doozer
Great Explorers

This one came out on CD a bit ago but when Siltbreeze deem fit to stick something out on vinyl it usually pays to sit up and take a bit of notice. The press release mentions proper good shit like Syd Barrett and The Shadow Ring and it's to The Doozer's credit that this one-man band doesn't suffer from the comparison, combining the whimsical oddness and something of the vocal style of the former with the lo-fi 'kitchen sink' approach to instrumentat...read full review.

Minks
Ophelia

Another act picking at the bones of the grand & noble beast that was once the UK New Wave is Minks. They're another band that has settled on the more tender, delicate sound of the early 80's (acts such as Wild Swans, Felt & Lotus Eaters) simply making an effort to imbue their tunes with a fragile ethereal quality that suggests both the more dreamy end of Factory records ('Our Ritual') and, occasionally, the nervy sketches of early Cure ('Op...read full review.

The Green Kingdom
Prismatic

Northern stable of audio pastoralism Home Assembly has been hoovering up some fine talent in recent times. Now they're aiming their sights over the Atlantic, towards a man in Michigan, Michael Cottone, who likes to tinker about with twinkly ambient moods, guitar processing & occasional drifty, downtempo beatsmithery. This is another of those sublime, richly detailed & sensual excursions into sound that only truly works when there's nothing...read full review.

Peter Broderick
How They Are

Ole Peter is back. It's been a while since his last release. In fact we've just been discussing that it seems like it was more of a recent thing but it's actually his first commercially available release this year. Oh, and it's not even a proper album... It's a stopgap 7 track mini-album jobber which was written while he was on sabbatical with a poorly knee! Nils Frahm is on board as pro knob twiddler and the artwork has been done by Machinefabriek...read full review.

Ithaca Trio & Machinefabriek
Par Avion

Judging by the front of this A5 sized fun sized package it seems local Leeds lads The Ithaca Trio (previous release on Under The Spire) approached Machinefabriek to see if ole Rutger was interested in doing some sort of collaboration. I reckon he was as it's here and he's made the artwork. Funtimes! You get 4 tracks by The Ithaca Trio who seem to make soundscapes created from weird double bass sounds, field recordings and weird noises. It's all ver...read full review.

Boris Gardiner
Every Nigger Is A Star

This curio is from a long forgotten film which was panned by the press. It was a massive flop and legend has it that it had the shortest (and most violent) run in Jamaican film history. Audiences were incensed and they rioted to get their money back. It had no storyline and it was more like a documentary on Rastafarianism - people wanted something big and beautiful and what they got was something else. By the third night the theatres were bereft of...read full review.

The Clientele
Minotaur

Ideally you want your favourite bands to release a record every three or four years. You want them to be sweating over it a little bit. Anything over that (unless you are The Blue Nile) starts to become a bit of a worry. Conversely its also a concern if too many records come out too quickly. Only last October The Clientele delivered 'Bonfires on the Heath' which was mostly great. Could they really come up with something as good in less than a year?...read full review.

Celer
Panoramic Dreams Bathed In Seldomness

Despite Phil's concerns about their input slowing up in recent months, Celer seem to be continuing unabated, presumably with a huge backlog of material to plough through. Like most of their releases, this comes in gorgeous evocative artwork that seems to match the lazily spun out ambient sounds contained within. There are a lot of people making ambient washy instrumental music but it takes real skill and panache to do it well. Luckily Celer have th...read full review.