Another major milestone in Vinyl On Demand's on-going deluxe documentation of the furthest fringes of the European underground, Viva Negativa is the culmination of several years worth of commissioned remixes, extrapolations on and collaborations with the work of The New Blockaders, the UK's most consistently feral noise group. The quality of the track listing is pretty staggering – a testament to the liberating effect those early TNB sides had on a whole generation of otherwise culturally disenfranchised post-punks – and plays even better as a state-of-disunion round-up than recent attempts at void-articulation like Gold Leaf Branches, Invisible Pyramid et al. Almost every major contemporary noise artist is featured and Volume One has tracks from Oren Ambarchi, Anomali, Ashtray Navigations (a beautiful slice of slow blown-to-smoke tone), Emil Beaulieau, Benzo, Cisfinitum, Controlled Bleeding, Dieter Muh, Evil Moisture, Freiband, Grunt, The Haters, Jason Kahn, Zbigniew Karkowski, Komafuzz, Kraang, Lockweld, Massimo, Daniel Menche, Thurston Moore, MSBR, Nocturnal Emissions, KK Null, Pita, Plethora, Prurient, Richard Ramirez, Scanner, Silvum, srmeixner, Asmus Tietchens, Treriksroset, uh…V/VM (woops!), Vortex Campaign, Keith Fullerton Whitman, John Wiese, Nobuo Yamada and Z'ev. The whole deal comes packaged in a beautiful full-colour/laminated hard card box with the LPs pressed on 180g vinyl in hand-numbered sleeves and bundled with a poster/manifesto. This one knocked us clear on our asses, a staggering document. Highest recommendation.

Another major milestone in Vinyl On Demand's on-going deluxe documentation of the furthest fringes of the European underground, Viva Negativa is the culmination of several years worth of commissioned remixes, extrapolations on and collaborations with the work of The New Blockaders, the UK's most consistently feral noise group. The quality of the track listing is pretty staggering – a testament to the liberating effect those early TNB sides had on a whole generation of otherwise culturally disenfranchised post-punks – and plays even better as a state-of-disunion round-up than recent attempts at void-articulation like Gold Leaf Branches, Invisible Pyramid et al. Almost every major contemporary noise artist is featured and Volume Two has tracks from AMK, Art Break, Aube, Bloxus, Alexei Borisov, Broken Penis Orchestra, Cheapmachines, Courtis, Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, Aaron Dilloway, Embudagonn 108, Government Alpha, Idea Fire Company (great quartet line-up track with slow choral vocals and droning machine dreams), Incapacitants, Lasse Marhaug, Merzbow, mnortham, Jim O'Rourke, Dave Phillips, Plexia, Putrefier, Christian Renou, RLW, Damion Romero, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Spiracle, Sudden Infant, Giancarlo Toniutti, Violent Onsen Geisha, Brendan Walls, Withdrawal Method, Wolf Eyes & Achim Wollscheid. The whole deal comes packaged in a beautiful full-colour/laminated hard card box with the LPs pressed on 180g vinyl in hand-numbered sleeves and bundled with a poster/manifesto. This one knocked us clear on our asses, a staggering document. Highest recommendation.

Totally sick: celebrating Alchemy Records' 20th anniversary - and Japanese noise/rock legends Hijokaidan's 25th - major label bozos Imperial have stepped into the gulf with a series of definitive birthday sets. Alchemism is a massive two-disc overview of the activities of this consistently dazzling underground label complete with a fold-out sleeve that has colour cover shots of all the action, especially noteable for the lovingly executed Modern Lovers and Ash Ra take-offs from Ultra Bide and Christine 23 Onna. All tracks previously released except for exclusives from Tongue favourites Oshiri-PenPenz and Doodles. Also includes: Jojo Hiroshige, Ultra Bide, SS, Inu, Hoburakin, Idiot O'Clock, Sekiri, The Genbaku Onanies, The Continental Kids, Danse Macabre, Sob Kaidan, Genbaku Kaidan, Subvert Blaze, Sperma, Hanadensha, Garadama, Angel'In Heavy Syrup, Auschwitz, Tatsuya Kitajima, Tsumetai Iki No Mama, Miki Sawaguchi, Masonna, Merzbow, Incapacitants, Solmania, Hijokaidan, Seiichi Yamamoto, Omoide Hatoba, Totsuzen Dan-Ball, Christine 23 Onna and Chouzu. Highly recommended, naturally.

Just got our hands on a still-sealed/unplayed crate full of these legendary, long out-of-print sides privately pressed by Peter and Patricia Harleman and Klyd and Linda Watkins 1969-1977 in order to document their wild experiments with vocal form. Across the space of these beautiful looking LPs, the two couples navigate the same kind of formless, disembodied zone that defined Jandek's unaccompanied vocal trilogy while touching on poles as temporally and spatially diverse as the associative poetry of Matthew Valentine, Jack Kerouac and Charles Olson, the wowing use of heavy delay/reverb associated with contemporary heads like The Skaters and Excepter, the slum-prose of The Fugs, Patti Smith and Lisa Suckdog and the sound poetry experiments of Henri Chopin, Bernard Heidsieck, Bob Cobbing, Brion Gysin and others associated with the legendary Revue Ou. That this was going on in almost complete seclusion somewhere in American throughout the 70s is nothing short of mind-boggling.

Recently there's been a comparative upsurge in interest in the work of the Watkins and the Harlemans, with rumours of reissues and box sets, but the LPs (all of which were originally pressed in runs of 1000, except Volume 1, of which only 500 were made) remain almost-impossible to source. It was back in 2000 that their influence first began to percolate into the underground, with Christina Carter of Charalambides uncovering a copy of Number Four in Austin's Sound Exchange. After having her ears blown she shared her find with Heather Leigh Murray who made contact with Klyd Watkins, who by that time was living in Nashville. After establishing common aesthetic ground the pair agreed to work together, leading to a brain-storming Charalambides show that took place in Nashville in 2001 featuring the trio of Tom Carter, Christina Carter and Heather Leigh Murray performing with Klyd Watkins on "Listen The Night" a Poetry Out Loud piece originally recorded back in 1971 for the Number Five LP.

The initial seeds for the Poetry Out Loud project were sown back in 1963, when Peter Harleman, then based in St. Louis, arrived in Nashville in a trip to visit his mother. Calling into Zibart's bookstore in search of paperbacks by Leroi Jones he got talking to the clerk, who happened to be Klyd Watkins. Klyd was excited to make contact with another soul that shared his passion for contemporary small-press poetry and immediately invited Peter back to his apartment to meet his wife Linda. Over the next few years the poets continued their friendship via the mail, swapping new works, journals and criticism and in 1965 Peter met and married another young poet, Patricia "Bebe" McGary. In 1965 the Watkins were living in rural Indiana, where Klyd taught high school English, while the Harlemans were based in St. Louis. During a visit to St Louis, Klyd and Peter had a conceptual bust-up over the relative merits and creative applicability of poet Charles Olson's concept of projective verse (something that Klyd, like many thinkers of the time, was immersed in) and Marshall McLuhan's concept of medium=message, an insight championed by Peter. Klyd recalled the conversation in a recent history of Poetry Out Loud: "Walking the streets of Saint Louis they had a heated argument, with Klyd championing Olson's formula for using the typewriter to capture the breath of impassioned speech as the most exciting mode of creating poetry, while Peter pointed out that another machine, the tape recorder, captured the human tongue far more directly. The harder Klyd argued for keeping poetry on the page, the more excited he became about being wrong. By the time the Watkins drove back to Indiana an alliance was formed to make poetry out loud."

The first Poetry Out Loud album was the result of four years of experimentation, with the couples working slowly towards abandoning text altogether in favour of the gush of pure intuitively-sourced sound. Recording sessions combining simultaneous musical and poetic improvisation birthed what they came to describe as "The Nashville Sound," a laminal assemblage of spoken word and song. The technology also advanced, with the players moving from a $30 deck to a $150 home recorder while working on the first LP and they briefly welcomed another couple into the fold, Toby and Ginny Tate. By 1970, the Watkins had moved to Kentucky and the Kentucky landscape was to have a huge influence on the rest of the POL series. But with the Harlemans now living in Kansas and the Tates in Atlanta, recording session were few and far between.

By the time of Number Two, the Harlemans were heavily involved in the exploration of American Indian poetry, immediately apparent on tracks like "I Am The Crow." From Number Two to Number Five the Watkins and the Harlemans contributed roughly half of every issue each, while welcoming occasional guests like Tony Cowan or legendary French sound-poet Bernard Heidsieck and his wife Francois Janicot (Number Three, Number Four, Number Five, Number Seven and Number Eight), a relationship that helped them maintain an umbilical connection to some kind of formal tradition. By the time of Volume Five the performers had once more upgraded their equipment and had also begun to record tracks "live" at various venues with a string of cuts taken from performances in bars, coffee houses, colleges and rock venues. By this point POL had a few hundred subscribers who bought the LP through the mail and they were even reviewed in Rolling Stone.

In 1972 the Watkins visited the Harlemans in New Jersey, providing an opportunity for the extended quartet recordings that make up much of Number Six. The Watkins had never seen the ocean before, an experience that inspired Number Six's massive "Ocean." Number Seven would be the last volume to feature all four performers vibrating together, with the Harlemans producing Number Eight and Nine alone and Number Ten being recorded in St. Louis in 1976-77 with Klyd working with the Harlemans as a trio. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful end to a remarkable adventure initiated by a group of artists who took the revolutionary edicts of radical 1960s poetry straight to their hearts. "These days we hear now and then of new fans who have continued to find Poetry Out Loud through the used record bins," Klyd reports. "Thirty years later, the world has not entirely forgotten Poetry Out Loud, just as it never entirely heard of it in the first place."

1975. Another solo set from the Harlemans. Notes by Robert Palmer (Rolling Stone/Downbeat et al): “With this ninth volume of their “magazine” of oral poetry, the Harlemans penetrate more deeply into the resonances of speaking, chanting, and singing voices, and into themselves. Connections with the “ritual of the irrational,” the cultivation of states of disassociation or trance. were present in their earlier work, but here, in the sound pieces “Trance,” “Fear For My Body,” and “I Give My Body To The Drum,” they are explicit. Using the narrow melodic range, chant-like insistence, drum and metallophone accompaniment, and out-of-body flight images so central to shamanist tradition, the Harlemans confront a “new” use of oral poetry which is, of course, an old use also. The recitation of written texts of written texts – the “modern” way – has been superseded by the creation of poetry in sound and, in these new compositions, by the deliberate use of some of the effects tape makes possible with the idea of affecting the listener quite directly. All poetry, all art in fact, aims at a similar ordering of “thought, feeling, and apparent sensory impressions” (in the words of William S. Burroughs), but certain music, dance and other art attempts to actually trigger and control various psychological experiences. The ritual of the Central Asian shaman is an example. It is the shaman's task to pass into a trance state and report back to his community of the spirit world. In order to achieve his altered state of consciousness he resorts primarily to various organized sounds. He chant/sings, using a restricted melodic range in a repetitive pattern, a process which helps create a trance state because of the nature of hearing. The basilar membrane, a structure in the inner ear where soundwave vibrations are translated into neural impulses, is pitch sensitive and pitch discriminatory. That is, various areas of the membrane respond to various specific pitches by sending electrical “charges” along specific nerve pathways to the brain. When these areas of the membrane are “massaged” regularly and in sequence, as in strictly modal music or in much chant, the repetition sets up a hypnotic pattern of impulses. The shaman accompanies his voice with a drum and some sort of metal instrument, both of which produce the kind of sound physicists refer to as “steep fronted,” that is a “noise” sound with tightly packed overtones. In addition, drum sounds have an extremely rapid decay time. Such sounds, with their welter of enharmonic pitches, stimulate most of the surface of the basilar membrane, thus ensuring the transmission of as many simultaneous neural impulses as possible to as much of the brain as possible. And the neurons are able to rest between firings because of the rapid decay time of the sounds, thus insuring continuing peak effects for the sound and allowing changed or other sung material to periodically resume its own hypnotic pattern. In other words, the shaman's basic equipment – voice, drum, rattle – is actually a sophisticated tool for self-induced hypnosis, or trance. This self-programmed, inner-directed cultivation of dissociation, which is at the heart of magico-religious traditions the world over, is contrasted on the present recording with involuntary disassociation from each other and from the wellsprings of their own thought and actions. The first kind, practiced as a rite, puts one in touch with worlds within. The second, accepted by many as the price of living, is the source of much unhappiness and pain. Thus the narrator in “Take A Sip Of Me” casts herself in the extreme role of a disembodied cup of coffee in order to reach out to another person: “I won't burn you,” she is forced to add to her invitation. Thus the quintessential evocation of mortal fear, “Fear For My Body,” which in its more morbid manifestations bespeaks a dissociation bordering on the pathological. “I Forgot Your Name” is a somewhat lighter treatment of disassociation; as a vision of the widening gulf between the sexes it is a little reminiscent of a Rolling Stones put-down song, with echoes of Elvis in the delivery. The musical comparisons are apt ones, because with this album the Harlemans move closer to music, just as music is moving closer to the inflections of the voice. In “Curing,” which Peter proposed as an antidote to the malady of separation, Patricia's opening whines sound like an electronic synthesizer, until one recalls that the synthesizer was originally designed to give computers a “voice” and is thus an imitation of the Real Thing. And while “Trance” has the proscribed melodic vocabulary of the chant, “I Give My Body To The Drum” makes use of that most musical of devices, the well-timed modulation. But this use of music, and again it is a very old one, has to do with the creation of magical effects for the purpose of achieving magical results. In his The Wellsprings of Music Curt Sachs wrote that “Everything that sounds, be it in the cruder form of frightening noise or the organised patterns of music, bears the brunt of mankind's eternal strife against the hostile forces that threaten his life and welfare; and, just as well, nothing better than sound can summon the powers of luck and prosperity . . . Even language stresses unity of singing and magics as the Latin word incantation, ‘magic formula,' derived from cantare, and the English charm, from carmen. Whenever singing is an act of ecstasy and depersonalization, it moves away from ordinary human expression. The voice is often remote from being as ‘natural' as we believe our own execution to be. It is coloured by pulsating, yodelling, ventriloquizing, or bleating. One screams, yells, squeaks, mumbles, and nasals.” Sachs sentences on the origins of music are strikingly descriptive of what the Harlemans are up to They've been pioneering in this area of speech / music / magic with each successive album, and with # 9 they've done it again.”

Just got our hands on a still-sealed/unplayed crate full of these legendary, long out-of-print sides privately pressed by Peter and Patricia Harleman and Klyd and Linda Watkins 1969-1977 in order to document their wild experiments with vocal form. Across the space of these beautiful looking LPs, the two couples navigate the same kind of formless, disembodied zone that defined Jandek's unaccompanied vocal trilogy while touching on poles as temporally and spatially diverse as the associative poetry of Matthew Valentine, Jack Kerouac and Charles Olson, the wowing use of heavy delay/reverb associated with contemporary heads like The Skaters and Excepter, the slum-prose of The Fugs, Patti Smith and Lisa Suckdog and the sound poetry experiments of Henri Chopin, Bernard Heidsieck, Bob Cobbing, Brion Gysin and others associated with the legendary Revue Ou. That this was going on in almost complete seclusion somewhere in American throughout the 70s is nothing short of mind-boggling.

Recently there's been a comparative upsurge in interest in the work of the Watkins and the Harlemans, with rumours of reissues and box sets, but the LPs (all of which were originally pressed in runs of 1000, except Volume 1, of which only 500 were made) remain almost-impossible to source. It was back in 2000 that their influence first began to percolate into the underground, with Christina Carter of Charalambides uncovering a copy of Number Four in Austin's Sound Exchange. After having her ears blown she shared her find with Heather Leigh Murray who made contact with Klyd Watkins, who by that time was living in Nashville. After establishing common aesthetic ground the pair agreed to work together, leading to a brain-storming Charalambides show that took place in Nashville in 2001 featuring the trio of Tom Carter, Christina Carter and Heather Leigh Murray performing with Klyd Watkins on "Listen The Night" a Poetry Out Loud piece originally recorded back in 1971 for the Number Five LP.

The initial seeds for the Poetry Out Loud project were sown back in 1963, when Peter Harleman, then based in St. Louis, arrived in Nashville in a trip to visit his mother. Calling into Zibart's bookstore in search of paperbacks by Leroi Jones he got talking to the clerk, who happened to be Klyd Watkins. Klyd was excited to make contact with another soul that shared his passion for contemporary small-press poetry and immediately invited Peter back to his apartment to meet his wife Linda. Over the next few years the poets continued their friendship via the mail, swapping new works, journals and criticism and in 1965 Peter met and married another young poet, Patricia "Bebe" McGary. In 1965 the Watkins were living in rural Indiana, where Klyd taught high school English, while the Harlemans were based in St. Louis. During a visit to St Louis, Klyd and Peter had a conceptual bust-up over the relative merits and creative applicability of poet Charles Olson's concept of projective verse (something that Klyd, like many thinkers of the time, was immersed in) and Marshall McLuhan's concept of medium=message, an insight championed by Peter. Klyd recalled the conversation in a recent history of Poetry Out Loud: "Walking the streets of Saint Louis they had a heated argument, with Klyd championing Olson's formula for using the typewriter to capture the breath of impassioned speech as the most exciting mode of creating poetry, while Peter pointed out that another machine, the tape recorder, captured the human tongue far more directly. The harder Klyd argued for keeping poetry on the page, the more excited he became about being wrong. By the time the Watkins drove back to Indiana an alliance was formed to make poetry out loud."

The first Poetry Out Loud album was the result of four years of experimentation, with the couples working slowly towards abandoning text altogether in favour of the gush of pure intuitively-sourced sound. Recording sessions combining simultaneous musical and poetic improvisation birthed what they came to describe as "The Nashville Sound," a laminal assemblage of spoken word and song. The technology also advanced, with the players moving from a $30 deck to a $150 home recorder while working on the first LP and they briefly welcomed another couple into the fold, Toby and Ginny Tate. By 1970, the Watkins had moved to Kentucky and the Kentucky landscape was to have a huge influence on the rest of the POL series. But with the Harlemans now living in Kansas and the Tates in Atlanta, recording session were few and far between.

By the time of Number Two, the Harlemans were heavily involved in the exploration of American Indian poetry, immediately apparent on tracks like "I Am The Crow." From Number Two to Number Five the Watkins and the Harlemans contributed roughly half of every issue each, while welcoming occasional guests like Tony Cowan or legendary French sound-poet Bernard Heidsieck and his wife Francois Janicot (Number Three, Number Four, Number Five, Number Seven and Number Eight), a relationship that helped them maintain an umbilical connection to some kind of formal tradition. By the time of Volume Five the performers had once more upgraded their equipment and had also begun to record tracks "live" at various venues with a string of cuts taken from performances in bars, coffee houses, colleges and rock venues. By this point POL had a few hundred subscribers who bought the LP through the mail and they were even reviewed in Rolling Stone.

In 1972 the Watkins visited the Harlemans in New Jersey, providing an opportunity for the extended quartet recordings that make up much of Number Six. The Watkins had never seen the ocean before, an experience that inspired Number Six's massive "Ocean." Number Seven would be the last volume to feature all four performers vibrating together, with the Harlemans producing Number Eight and Nine alone and Number Ten being recorded in St. Louis in 1976-77 with Klyd working with the Harlemans as a trio. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful end to a remarkable adventure initiated by a group of artists who took the revolutionary edicts of radical 1960s poetry straight to their hearts. "These days we hear now and then of new fans who have continued to find Poetry Out Loud through the used record bins," Klyd reports. "Thirty years later, the world has not entirely forgotten Poetry Out Loud, just as it never entirely heard of it in the first place."

1977. Final volume of this incredible set, very affecting. Trio recordings by the Harlemans with Klyd Watkins and one solo Peter Harleman invocation. Cover by Patricia Harleman, produced by Klyd Watkins and Peter Harleman. Tracks: LET'S GO HEAR THE HOLY ROLLERS SING (3:48) The Harlemans with Klyd Watkins, BAD MAN (1:59) The Harlemans with Klyd Watkins, WILDERNESS (4:49) The Harlemans with Klyd Watkins, I CAN SING FALSETTO (3:05) Peter Harleman, MAYBE (4:09) The Harlemans with Klyd Watkins, YOUR LOVE IS A WEAPON (AFTER A THEME FROM HOWLING WOLF) ((1:29) The Harlemans with Klyd Watkins, LET'S LET THE WORLD GO DOWN (2:41) The Harlemans with Klyd Watkins, GOING BELOW (12:25) The Harlemans with Klyd Watkins.

Follow-up to the first volume of this on-going series that joins the dots between an earlier generation of American Primitive guitarists and contemporary intuitive sound-as-thought players. Once again Jack Rose is featured (with an absolutely gorgeous 6 string re-think of "Cross The North Fork 2") but every other player puts in a first-time appearance on this volume. The inclusion of Christina Carter is a particularly inspired move and one that speaks of the liberated range of the series in general and her track is a beauty, a stubby acoustic guitar miniature. Nice cover snap too. Other tracks include a particularly mesmeric recording from UK guitarist James Blackshaw and contributions from Peter Lang, Jesse Sparhawk, Michael Chapman, Sean Smith, Fred Gerlach, Billy Faier, Sharron Kraus, Robbie Basho and...uh...Jose Gonzalez. Another rich, far-sighted assortment from this great label.

Excellent compilation of contemporary dissident European electronic/synth/Industrial/new wave sounds from this synth-focussed label. The follow-up to their epochal Electronic Renaissance LP, this one bundles a bunch of current Euro-heads with a serious jones for the early Industrial sounds of DAF/Absolute Body Control/S.P.K./Throbbing Gristle/Kraftwerk along with touches of Suicide, Public Image Limited, Minimal Man et al. There isn’t a duff track on the album but some of the highlights include Agent Side Grinder’s evocative/magickal “There Is A Sound That Always Goes Out” that mirrors Coil’s work circa “The New Backwards”/later-TG, the amazing Vincent K’s “White Sheet Glory” that crosses Billy Synth-style keyboards with an amphetamine motorik appeal and throat-shredding vocals that make it sound like the most manic La Dusseldorf track of your life and the midnight stylings of Adolf Filter’s beautiful Harmonia/DAF/Kraftwerk-esque “Inner Walls” cut up with the kinda fractured loner vocal that could almost be Peter Jeffries. Other artists featured include Dolina, Nosztalgia Direktiva, Codes, Le Triangle De L’Androgyne, the fantastically named Pierre Normal and Yseult Descieux. A great way in to the current underground Euro synth scene – which seems to have the same relation to its source material as the 80s garage explosion had to Nuggets et al – and an excellent companion piece to Poutre Apparent’s historical survey of the French new wave scene. The set comes in a handsome gatefold sleeve with a bonus 7” and is highly recommended.

Brand new tribute set of cover versions and punk extrapolations based around the phenomenal body of work birthed by Mr Jojo Hiroshige aka Alchemy label boss and Hijokaidan mainman. Features a totally disobedient Beefheart-style rave-up from the Oshiri PenPenz, microphone-gobbling action from Masonna (first new recording in years), great psych/pop stylings from Doodles, monstrously deformed guitar/noise from Solmania, GaramonKakinoki +AOL and a whole bunch of other punk Kansai Industrialists. Think of it as a particularly focussed Night Gallery instalment. Highly recommended.

Follow-up to the great Time And Relative Dimensions In Space compilation with a two CD set once again dedicated to long-form drone works. Exclusive tracks from Birds Of Delay, Bruce Russell, Son Of Earth, The Opera Glove Sinks In The Sea, White/Light, Keenan Lawler, Bird Show/Lichens, Of…Ohv, The Zoo Wheel and The Gray Field Recordings.

Three-way split of extended live sets for this volume of Heath Moerland’s (Sick Llama) compilation series, with jams from New Pledegemaster, Steve Kenney (Demons) and Slither all drawn from their recent tour. Hand-numbered edition of 50 copies.

Brand new instalment in this legendary compilation series from PSF, now in its seventh volume. For this latest survey of the state of the contemporary Japanese psychedelic underground the label ran a special live night at Koenji Show Boat in May of 2009 and recorded all of the players’ sets. The disc opens with the outer space choral folk of Le Son De L’os, a trio that features Yuko Hasegawa of Onna-Kodomo on guitar and vocal, Masahiro Deguchi of Gendai Sokkyo on flute and guitar and Shizuo Uchida on bass. Bo No Kubo are a drums/acoustic bass/guitar improvisatory unit that translate the Incus aesthetic to Tokyo. Derakushi are a phenomenal free jazz/psych ensemble who use electric rock firepower to propel the furious saxophone of Shun Suzuki; expect a full-length album from these guys on PSF very soon. There’s a great, minimal tracks from shakuhachi player Sabu Orimo, here with his new unit that features drummer/harmonica player Tomohiko Namiki. Touyounomajyo are a classic guitar/bass/drums power trio that would have fit in just as well on some of the earlier volumes and Hasegawa-Shizuo, who have had a bunch of previous releases on labels like PSF and Tiliqua, close the set with an epic drone imagining. Nothing cuts to the heart of the Tokyo underground like PSF’s Flashback series. Recommended.

Great limited triple LP set that bundles two nights of wild free jazz that Qbico presented in Detroit and Buffalo back in 2006. High energy sets from Arthur Doyle & Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, Andrew Barker & Daniel Carter, Steve Baczkowski & Ravi Padmanabha, Muruga Free Funk (with Perry Robinson), Faruq Z Bey & Northwoods Improvisers and Odu Afrobeat Orchestra.

Compilation of the best of the privately pressed triple LP that Charlie Brooks put together in 1999 that featured his field recordings gathered on trips to Madagasikara in the late 1990s. The three LPs were originally themed around Vocal, Valiha Marovany and Miscellaneous Instruments but this LP compiles highlights from all three, taking in traditional and modern instruments including the jejy voatavo, jejy lava, accordion, sodinas, harmonica, the kabosy and the guitar. Comes with a twelve page booklet of photography and notes.

Fantastic compilation of all unreleased tracks from this great NJ label. Exclusive jams from Julian Lynch, Pill Wonder, Ducktails, Fluffy Lumbers, Big Troubles, Andrew Cedermark, Frat Dad , Dana Jewell, Air Waves, Family Portrait, Alex Bleeker, Mountain Man, Real Estate, Rainbow Bridge and Liam the Younger.

Compilation featuring unreleased tracks from Connelly & The Machines, Body Morph, Hive Mind, Dog Lady and Drainolith: “So the other day, me and my lab buddy supreme Scott were knee f'in deep in trying to find out if a huge craggly motor was delta or wye three phase connected, and needless to say, was NOT having luck. It was a one of them RAW bologna built motors that has wire numbers, but its pointless cause its all on its own weirdo system. Whatever. So as usual, we shot the shit.
"What’s up this weekend man?"
"Not much, got a killer afternoon gig at the spot on Sunday...."
"What’s a gig?"
"Ah.... I’m having some of my weirdo friends over to make ah.... music...."
"You make music?"
"Sure"
"Would you ever play a 'gig' for the troops?"
"We should get black to that motor...I think I know the lead wires now..."
"Well, I can’t come over, I gotta fix my tires on my hunting jeep, but you know what would rule Olson?"
"What’s that?"
"If you would press that jammer on wax, mix all the tracks together into one inzane mess and sent it to Smith out west to press...."
"Man, you might be on to something"
"Make it one long one-sider with a lock groove, I mean shit...that’s how I remember gigs anyway.... and just use a flyer for the cover!!!"
"My man!!!"
So I took Scott's advice. Took the killer matinee jam, got out the scalpel, mixed everything together seamless inzane style, book ended it with an EVIL Hive Mind loop and boosh!!!! Pressed gig memory!!!! So it's just like a gig, except you don’t have KNOX MITCHELL's dad dropping you off or Collino spilling brews everywhere or your secret recipe INZANE CHILLI remains burning up in the bottoms of an empty crock pot. Oddly, not a peep of crew-audience noise to be found. Dog Lady played acoustic string scrape, Dan Body jammed reed universe from the uneven side (and then BLASTED Disclose and Firmeza 10 in the jamm room), Drainolith is my main man Alex K from Montreal and kept it uber real with amazing synth scramble, live from yep, THE BASEMENT. Greh said he did a cover of THE SHINING but I’ve never seen that mini-series. Dead Machines and Connelly jammed magical pixie flutes, infected metal scrape and vocals from an eerie afternoon lagoon. Like an endless gig, ...you gotta SIT THRU THE WHOLE THING...in one inzane memory blurr surpreme.... Record ends with an EVIL Hive Mind lock groover, endless...party. ... forever.... Was a blast, more of this style to come. And BYOB!!! There are three party stores right in the hood, duh!!! 2pm SHARP!!!> Edition of 100 in handmade recycled sleeves, numbered.” – John Olson.

Compilation featuring unreleased tracks from Full Scales, Spykes and Pool Water: “Is the Voltages Leads in Inductance or Induction leads Current in Capacitance? ?? Huh? Always forget this easy breeze system code to know which is leading in the Induct/Capt current game...Yeah: three tracks of attack:
Full Scales: Live at Aries assault party from last Pan gig in April last year. Mega Hammond organ live in the basement. Spykes: Terrible tones tacked onto a tapestry of mangled inzanity thru a crazed mental plane. Horrible.
Pool Water: Dog Lady, Connelly, Zone Force- live in the Comfort zone and on a trial leading to hiding places. Violin, flute, guitar = mixed together for an uncomfortable loose skin dangling in the dry wind.
Three long tracks of ZEAL-ish style. Triple ack attack. Cover covers, numbered.” – John Olson.

Compilation featuring unreleased tracks from Dwelling Unit, Madness, Influx, Immune Future Problems, First Responder and Cripple Crime’s Triangle: “Massive new comp of all short tracks of all sorts of styles. Weirdo flow, new blood, all heated and raw. Mysterious Island swamped and flanked in all sides by a tidal wave of consuming statics. More to come from each of these creatures, stirring and pacing in a sound cell waiting and plotting to bust out. Color covers, slip case.” – John Olson.

Irresistible new compilation CD from the reactivated Alchemy Records, an all-female psych set curated by Jojo Hiroshige of Hijokaidan. Features fragile, breathless song stylings from a bunch of upcoming femmes including Akiko Hodaka (formerly of Maher Shalal Hash Baz), Mai Mishio of Uzumibi, Hirachin of Oninko! and Totsuzen Danboru, Shiho of Ten-No.5 and Yuka Fujita of the excellent Chozu. “Produced by Jojo Hiroshige of Hijokaidan (The King Of Noise), the godfather of Japanese noise music and the owner of Alchemy Records. He realized the strength, fragileness, delicateness and other elements that only women could have are the keyword for this decade. This album contains 11 tunes from emerging female musicians that Hiroshige picked out from the Japanese underground music scene.” – Alchemy. 

Edition of 500 copies compilation LP with exclusive tracks from Akron/Family, Joanne Robertson & Matthew Ashworth, Wand, Natural Snow Buildings, Married In Berdichev, Moon Duo, The See See and Seadog. Comes with a full colour zine featuring artwork by Jake Blanchard, Pete Fowler, Andrew Rae, Will Sweeney, Sarah King, Olange Gularte, James Trimmer/Mirt and Mat Pringle.

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). 

Still one of the wildest of the legendary Bloodstains comps, with a round-up of classic disobedient wastoid DIY from Sweden, inclduing classic sides like Kriminella Gitarrer's "Sylvias Unge", Rude Kids' amazing "Raggare Is A Bunch Of Motherfuckers", Watabout, Bugs, Glo, Usch, Brulbajz, Mizz Nobody, Butter Utter, Vicious Visions, Liket Lever, Blodarna...

Vinyl edition of this excellent tribute to the American Primitive genius of the late Robbie Basho from a bunch of players with a deep connection to the source including Glenn Jones, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Helena Espvall (Ghost/Espers), Meg Baird (Espers), Arborea, Fern Knight, Cian Nugent and Rahim AlHaj. Buncha female vocal tracks are particularly choice here, highlighting Basho’s gift as a highly idiosyncratic singer as well as a visionary instrumentalist. Dedicated to the memory of Jack Rose. 180g vinyl, edition of 300 copies. 

Fabulous follow-up to the same label’s Ongaku 70, this set takes in a buncha obscurities from the Japanese underground of the 1980s, all of which would contribute to the momentum that gave birth to the scene’s explosion in the 1990s. Alongside stuff that some heads might know - Phew of Aunt Sally’s “Urahara” from 1980, schizophrenic Pinakotheca recordings artists Tako, the mutant techno of Riuichi Sakamoto’s “Riot In Lagos” – there’s a ton of alien tongue, ranging from EP-4’s thudding tape-damaged Industrial punk through Lizard’s acid-damaged prog-pop, Portray Heads’ transplanted Trans-Europe Express, Gunjogacrayon’s usurping of James Chance & The Contortions and prefiguring of The Boredoms, the amazingly titled Daisuck & Prostitute’s blunt punk/funk, Shinobu’s psychedelic cold wave and Pta’s epic unclassifiable Josef K-play-Can-play-“Rapture” 1982 8 minute masterpiece “Woo-Guy After Dark”. Another phenomenal set that is sure to blindside anyone who considers themselves an expert on this endlessly inventive scene. On pink/white splattered vinyl. Recommended!

Still one of the greatest volumes of this killer series of geographically themed private press psych comps complete w/cool Bunny Yeager snaps on the sleeve. The focus here is on Mexican psych and we get glorious sunbleached psych/folk/punk comedowns from legendary no-counts like Dug Dug’s The Kaleidoscope, La Fachada De Piedra, El Tarro De Mostaza, La Vida, La Libre Expresion, The Flying Karpets, La Revolucion De Emiliano Zapata, The Spiders, Three Souls In My Mind, Toncho Pilatos, Renaissance, Ernan Roch, Grupo Ciruela, Los Ovnis, The Survival and Nahuat. Recommended.

Ass-blasting double LP compilation of wild Dutch punk, still some of the crudest ever spat to wax. Amazing tracks from Ivy Green (“I’m Sure We’re Gonna Make It”), Helmettes, Panic (“Requiem For Martin Heidegger”), Flyin’ Spiderz, Speedtwins, Paul Tornado, Suzannes, Tits, Mollesters, Filth, God’s Heart Attack, Mecano Ltd, Subway, Mort Subite, The Brommers, Shith, Coitus Int. Vopo’s, The Ex, Nixe, Rondos, Nitwitz, Trockener Kecks and Frites Modern. Excellent sleeve notes too.

Aces-up compilation of early New Zealand Christchurch-focussed avant garage, post-punk and psych compiled by Bruce Russell of The Dead C: subtitled The Southern Psychedelic Moment, Russell’s comp beautifully captures the sound of post-punk into avant rock via psychedelia that birthed the early Flying Nun sound and the whole NZ underground renaissance. In his liners Russell points to two radicalising moments in the early-80s, the decision to tour an apartheid-era South African rugby team through the country and the founding of Flying Nun Records, both of which provided a rallying point for unemployed, dope-smoking counter-cultural teens. Russell’s curatorial vision makes the perfect case for the way psychedelia was introduced as a viral agent into a new music that had internalised punk’s lessons but that was looking for ways to extend the basic blueprint. And while there are contemporary influences that come through in the music – specifically Joy Division and The Fall – the bulk of the music feels so radical in its re-think of the basic rock set-up that it’s no mere hubris to posit the 1980s NZ ‘moment’ as one of the true, far-sighted ‘year zeros’ in modern underground rock. The line-up is stunning, kicking off with The Pin Group’s amazing downer drone masterpiece “Jim” before crashing into The Clean’s amazing “In The Back” that trades two phasing guitars and motorik drums with the most primitive/euphoric fuzz guitar solos. Playthings – along with The Shallows the only bands who didn’t actually release material on Flying Nun – contribute a phenomenal femme-fronted garage cruncher followed by The Gordons’ OTT guitar blow-out “I Just Can’t Stop”, with post-VU amplifier crank married to endless six string breakdowns. Victor Dimisich Band’s “It’s Cold Outside” takes ESP-Disk-era Pearls Before Swine and marries it to the kind of deep-space balladry that defined the dosed/folk side of the PSF underground, perhaps the only truly parallel underground music scene. The live rip through The Chills’ “Flamethrower” reminds you of how vital – and aggressive – some of the early Chills sides were and there are major brain-bombing sides from Alastair Galbraith’s The Rip, Michael Morley of The Dead C’s Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos, Chris Knox’s Tall Dwarfs, 25 Cents, The Stones, The Great Unwashed, Sneaky Feelings, Scorched Earth Policy, The Shallows, Look Blue Go Purple, The Puddle, Max Block and Double Happys. Truly, the definitive document of the genesis of one of the most profoundly important underground scenes of this or any age and a mandatory purchase for any serious VT head. Comes in a gatefold sleeve and a free download. Check out Bruce Russell’s exclusive VT column for a deeper pass through the 1980s NZ underground: http://www.volcanictongue.com/columns/show/20 Highest possible recommendation!

Hard to believe that this is the 200^th release for the consistently greatest contemporary underground label in the world but what better way to celebrate than a new instalment of their legendary Tokyo Flashback series that documents the state of Tokyo’s psychedelic underground circa now. A few artists will be familiar to the VT hardcore - ex-Overhang Party mainman Rinji Fukuoka’s Majutsu No Niwa’s classic take on garage psych, Reizen’s amazing flat-lined guitar tectonics – but the bulk of the material makes an even deeper past through subterranean Tokyo. The ass-flatteningly great Soldier Garage explode into life with the kind of cacophonic guitar noise of early-Fushitsusha before floating all the way out on Suishou No Fune-styled acid balladry while Mamushi stagger all over blues and Neil Young-styled collapsing universe dynamics with alla the staggering high-wire drama of prime Kousokuya. Oser walk the line between Borbetomagus/Demo Moe-styled freakout and lurid Incapacitants-inspired noise mash-ups and Metaphoric use two treated electric guitars to generate the kind of eternal music of the Fripp/Eno collaborations. Demons describe Kaoru Abe, Rotten Telepathies and High Rise as being “like a Led Zeppelin to us” and come over like Oshiri Penpenz play Mark Fry. Netanoyoi play blown-out punk with an aggressive angularity and an almost Org-like naivety while the righteously-named Heavy Metal Glue feature members of White Heaven, Marble Sheep and Church Of Misery and play supremely crude psychedelic rock with thudding riffing and Kraut hypnotics applied to doomy 70s metal bombast and gasoline-huffing blues. The whole set comes with a booklet featuring pics and liners and it makes for one of the best instalments of this vital compilation series in an age. Highly recommended!

Alongside Come Org, Produktion and United Dairies, Broken Flag was one of the most important UK avant/noise/power imprints of the early Eighties Industrial revolution. It provided cover for a host of seminal rock/noise/performance groups who had been inspired by early Whitehouse performances and associated art/music refusals to extend punk’s liberating anti-rock ‘n’ roll stance into more formally challenging areas. As the label’s reputation has grown the artefacts associated with its brief reign have become extremely collectable, making it even more difficult for the average dolt to get his ears around the many manifestations of this subterranean UK scene. Until now. With this retrospective Vinyl-On-Demand perform a vital cultural service by gathering all of the early label releases in one place across five beautifully presented CDs with individual sleeves bundled with a highly informative booklet with tracks details, history, complete discography and introduction by label owner Gary Mundy of Ramleh. The set features a raft of tracks from artists like Sutcliffe Jugend, Consumer Electronics, Un-Kommuniti, Maurizio Bianchi, Controlled Bleeding, Ramleh, Male Rape Group (Gary Mundy and Philip Best), Kleistwahr, TOLL, New Blockaders, Mauthausen Orchestra, Falx Cerebri, Giancarlo Toniutti, Vortex Campaign and many more. From this perspective, Broken Flag looks to have permanently deformed the arc of underground music, infecting everything from the Matthew Bower Skullflower/Total/Hototogisu arc through the contemporary Michigan noise scene. A jaw dropping over-the-top-deluxe set and one that feels every bit as culturally resonant as the Patton box – highest possible recommendation! 

Excellent limited edition collaboration LP from two notorious UK 'noise' groups, The New Blockaders and Putrefier. The sound here harks back more to the early hermetic, electro-acoustic feel of the first few Blockaders releases, with Putrefier working subtle magic with original source material that tends towards the more minimal side of Industrial entropy. There are slithers of metal, slates slowly detached from suburban roofs, broken glass, bursts of atonal whirlwinds and the sound of microphones gorged on charged silence. The tracks are fairly short, each focussing on a pretty distinct vibration, allowing you to fully plug in to each 'movement'. A classic release from these two, the album comes in an edition of only 500 copies with this special edition featuring a bonus CD-R of collaborative material only available with the first 100 copies (in two numbered batches of 50 each), all of which are already sold out at source. Recommended.

Wild document of classic noise action from this alter ego of The New Blockaders featuring Richard Rupenus alongside Dominik Fernow (Prurient) and Ron Lessard aka Emil Beaulieu. Recorded live at the No Fun fest 2006, Silent Movie also comes with a silent DVD of the show that makes for pretty surreal viewing when viewed without the record spinning in the background. DVD also comes with a commentary by G.X. Jupiter-Larsen. Edition of 500 copies.

Inspired 25^th anniversary reissue of one of the all-time oddball UK Industrial/experimental classics, Mixed Band Philanthropists’s legendary The Impossible Humane. MBP was a pseudonym for Richard Rupenus of The New Blockaders and pals who put to together this insane LP with the help of a bunch of cassette contributions from a veritable who’s-who of DIY/avant gods. MBP then dredge the whole thing through several layers of impossible aural logic until you have one of the most spectacularly grid-locked and obsessively dense sides of scattershot/ plunderphonic noise/drone never released by United Dairies. Includes appearances from Nurse With Wound, Andrew Chalk, Nihilist Assault Group, The New Blockaders, Organum, Asmus Tietchens, Smegma, Tom Recchion, Merzbow, The Haters, Giancarlo Toniutti, HNAS, P16.D4, Vortex Campaign and more. Something about this set really suits the cassette format too. Recommended.