Re-stock of this limited 7": hypnotic, repetitious free blues blare from this one man underground. Numbered edition of only 170 copies.

Edition of 64 copies. New work from these excellent European baroque/psych surrealists with guest appearances from Duncan Pinhas, Phil Todd of Ashtray Navigations and Steve Warwick of Birds Of Delay.

Excellent three-way psych/trance and roar-drone oblivion rendered in the usual human/primitive style from a bunch of central UK heads, with Mel Delaney of Ocelocelot, Bridget from Vibracathedral Orchestra and Phil Todd of Ashtray Navigations et al. Excellent lo-fi, tactile feel, with dead car-crash tones dive-bombed with lurid shots of electric string and what sounds like the "Fire" section of Brian Wilson's smile extrapolated to almost Xpressway-levels of grit. Hand-numbered edition of 100 copies on Delaney's own label. Long OOP.

Relentless psychedelic brutalism from legendary UK noise group The New Blockaders, with the Rupenus brothers joined by Phil Todd of Ashtray Navigations for a live recording drawn from The Red Rose in London in November 2003. This is very much in the contemporary style of TNB and makes a great companion piece to their amazing Das Zerstoren, Zum Gebaren from Thurston Moore’s Nightmare Before Christmas with a staggering feel for dynamics and tectonic accumulations of bastard textures that is as exhilarating as it is confusing. This is TNB’s modern black nightmare sound perfectly rendered. At the time this was scheduled to be the last TNB performance. Edition of 300 copies. Recommended. 

New cassette from Laurent Gerard aka El-G, with a composition for tape, voice and electronics that has that classic cracked French underground atmosphere that’s flits between apocalyptic torch song and vintage Nurse With Wound. 

New three track EP from Ashtray Navigations that crosses his recent experiments in zoned synth/guitar eternities with some destination=oblivion raga and minimal electronics. Comes with a download to an exclusive 20 minute blow-out. 

New release from this solo electronic/threat outfit from Phil Todd of Ashtray Navigations on his own label. Aspects of early Whitehouse/Suicide’s minimal/’billy style, even Minimal Man himself, with drum machines ticking out time over hissing electronics and reverb/delay vocals that are straight out of the Total Sex ‘songbook’. Some of the keyboard solos have a great ’72 vintage Sun Ra appeal but this is some of Phil’s darkest/most claustrophobic electro-psych sides. Edition of 100 copies. 

Edition of 100 copies on Phil Todd’s own label for this archival recording, a trio set from 2001 featuring Phil alongside ‘Cloughie’ (of, uh, “prog legends” Rancid Poultry) and Robert Hayler (of the Fencing Flatworm label etc). Some nice drone moves here, all cut up with Phil’s endless acid guitar/raga styles, giving the set a kind of Northern England “Swastika Girls” feel, and that’s a feel I can really ‘feel’, know what I mean? 

A “heavy session players” release from Phil Todd’s Ashtray Navigations, with the A side featuring the duo  line-up of Todd and Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club/Vibracathedral Orchestra) and the flip a trio jam with Mel Delaney and Phil Legard (Xenis Emputae Travelling Band). A side has a great Velvets play two-chord infinities feel while all sorts of astral fireworks explode just beyond the horizon. Very beautiful and with a slow-motion euphoric appeal that is highly addictive. The trio side hews closer to Faust’s “Krautrock” but with a semi-erased/subliminal edge. Packaged in the usual classy Medusa style with a two-colour silkscreen fold-out cigarette box style sleeve. 

Numbered edition of only 100 copies private press LP from Phil Todd and co, this time out dedicated to mythic/unrecorded UK psych group The Sensory Armada. The album pushes further into the gorgeous kosmische keyboard style of recent Ashtray releases, stopping off for some classic Ostrich guitar over Industrial percussion and phaser tone, classic suspended in time Zeit/Atem-isms, Heldon-styled space-punk, thudding electro re-thinks of The Velvets circa Black Angels Death Song, some beautifully weird almost Hawaiian guitar/beatbox destruction that overwhelms with wave after wave of solo fuzz and an elegiac almost side-long synth/bass/fuzz séance that ties-up Perfect Prescription-era Spacemen 3 with the black mass style of the Hermann Nitsch/Conrad Schnitzler orchestra. Highly recommended, but won’t hang around for long.

“The is the sound of your haywired central nervous system committed to tape... Beautiful, slowly evolving, yet unnerving electronic psych that bleeds out to a total shutdown on side 1. Blood is still boiling on side 2 even if the comatose state of mind is a fact... exploring the inner workings of a life support machine.. Black case C-30 cassettes in black/yellow fold-around paper cover. Edition of 50.” – GS.

“Four approaches to destroying time... Alistair Crosbie hits with a mammoth drone fuzz out. BM serve up a soup of slow moving industrial static. Divine Coils play it minimal squeezing the air out of your lungs. Family Battlesnake destroy with a thug life side that pins you to the wall then leaves......... no explanation. Edition of 101.... black & white covers.... black & white tapes.....black & white spray.” – SH.

New split CD release that pairs the London-based Family Battlesnake with Chicago drone duo Number None. One long 28 minute tone-float from the duo incarnation of Family Battlesnake (Bill Kouligas and Harry Astras) and four slowly collapsing galaxies from Number None. Hand-numbered edition of only 200 copies in oversize card sleeves.

Excellent split set from Family Battlesnake and Japanese psych/noise legends Astro on Bill Kouligas’s (Family Battlesnake) suave new vinyl-only imprint:”Delving into the realm of deep listening, transported by way of analog synthesizers, Family Battlesnake weaves an electronic web that cocoons the listener in warm cascading frequencies. Calls to mind classic electronic composers such as Charles Dodge, Eliane Radigue and even a hint of NWW. Family Battlesnake is Bill Kouligas, a London-based Greek who also performs and records with Sudden Infant. Astro is Hiroshi Hasegawa of the legendary and now defunct Japanese noise unit C.C.C.C. Sonic waves of squealing feedback and oscillating waveforms meld with biting distortion in the appropriately titled “Lunatic Luminescence”. Enveloped by haywire electronics and burbling loops & skree, Astro has constructed an impressive piece of modern electronic music of devastating magnitude. A fine document of pure Japanese sonic nihilism and fresh deconstucted electronic frequencies. The Lp is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker in a limited edition of 330 hand-numbered copies, pressed on 140g vinyl and comes in a poly-lined inner sleeve. It is packaged in a pro-press jacket which itself is housed in a two-tone silk screened pvc sleeve with interweaving geometric designs.” – Pan.

Massive limited edition LP on NNCK’s imprint documenting a series of recordings from this ambitious American/European big band that unites Dave Nuss of The No-Neck Blues Band with Spencer Clark and James Ferraro of The Skaters alongside Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystavat, Jonna from Kuupuu, Stellar Om Source, Mik Quantius from Embryo and Tiitus Petajaniemi and Jari Koho of Uton/Keijo. The whole entourage toured through Europe in the spring of 2007 and this LP collects the best of the jams. Three long tracks and one fragment, including two pieces recorded at VPRO Radio. The sound takes off from the kind of free goof blueprint of The Godz, with a lots of percussion and odd rhythmic dunting while The Skaters work lush keyboard parts and a wall of ululating vocal drone deep into the backdrop. Quantius supplies vocals that are somewhere between Don Van Vliet and Alan Bishop and the whole thing proceeds into this kind of weird ethno-zone where fragmented world rhythms and sounds are twisted to dark, psychotropic ends. But the real gravy is the side long fourth track, the most convincing update of the monochord bass/drum confusion of Skip Spence’s “Grey/Afro” ever improvised in real time, combining sublime vocal highs with a hypnotic bottom end. Highly recommended.

New LP from Stellar Om Source aka Christelle Gualdi, compiling and re-mastering selected tracks from what was originally a limited 3xCD-R set that we stocked at VT way back in the day. The renewed attention she’s been getting recently isn’t surprising: unlike many of the her ‘new age synth’ contemporaries, Gualdi has some advanced technique, playing rippling, almost Alice Coltarne-esque arpeggios of pure liquid tone set in deep cosmo-settings that have an ecstatic future jazz feel while tapping into the H-Pop style of timbres and modes salvaged from 1980s synth soundtracks and 1970s keyboard ritual. Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never makes a guest appearance on “Rites Of Fusion”. Full colour cover art by Gualdi and a free download. Recommended. 

New issue of this excellent underground/H-Pop journal, perfectly bound 110 pages w/colour and b/w printing and bundled with a CD-R and a DVD-R. Articles by Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never), Cameron Stallones (Sun Araw), Michael McGregor interviews Velvet Davenport, Jesse Jarnow on Recording The Cosmos with Greg Davis, an interview with new age keyboard legend Iasos and more by Daniel Bachman, Nate Grace, Emilie Friedlander and Curtis Knapp. Artwork from Camilla Padgitt-Coles, Brenna Murphy, Christelle Gualdi, Christian “Megazord” Oldham, Daniel White, E*Rock, Hydrothermal Emerald, Jon Rafman, Julien Laugier, Massimiliano Bomba/Rawraw, Michelle Ceja, Productlaneevol, Push the Button, Stephanie Davidson, Yannick Val Gesto. The CD-R comes with tracks from La Big Vic, Airbird, Laurel Halo, Dent May, Ducktails, Buffalo Moon, Velvet Davenport, The Twerps, Young Prisms, Big Troubles, Alex Bleeker, Chuck Person, Zonotope ™, Sacred Harp and Dolphins into the Future while the DVD-R features video art from Amy Ruhl (excerpts from How Mata Hari Lost Her Head & Found Her Body, scored by Julian Lynch, Samantha Cromwell (live video of Speculator), Laurel Halo (video feedback piece), Ray Concepcion (live video of Julian Lynch), Christian “Megazord” Oldham (video for Dolphins into the Future), Maia Stern (live video of La Big Vic) and Ryan Hover (video remix of Candy Claws song).