Edition of 100 copies art book presenting colour reproductions of six of Marcia Bassett’s (GHQ/Zaimph/Hototogisu) psychedelic paint/collage works, running from Rorschach forests peopled by huge kittens through weird crystal geometries and distressed anatomy. Stapled card booklet.

Limited edition of 100 copies documenting a live solo show from Marcia Bassett that took place 6/6/06 in Hasselt. 28 minutes of thick, frozen air, slow brain-bloating highs, and thunderous ecstasy peaks. One of the darkest/densest blats from Marcia to date and highly recommended. Comes in wraparound colour pro-printed sleeves.

Limited edition of 500 copies LP plus 3"set that collects a bunch of recent live shows from the trio of Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards/Zaimph/Hototogisu et al), Pete Nolan (Magik Markers) and Steve Gunn (Moongang). The sound here builds on the damaged, garage-devolved approach that defined their Crystal Healing album with cracked avant-drones, the expiring hiss of slowly imploding amplifiers, primitive American modes and that unique, endlessly peaking approach to euphoric rock logic. The LP features sets from Sacramento and Eureka while the 3" has the Seattle show.

The first ever release from the Hototogisu duo of Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Total/Sunroof) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards) that even approaches being ‘generally available', Green is a real CD - not a CD-R - pressed up for the group by the sainted Ed Hardy of Eclipse records and available in an edition of 1000 copies complete with a suave full-colour booklet reproducing a bunch of the duo's art. Anyone whose mind was blown by the vision of this pair powering their way through one of the most magical/unforgiving sets of Subcurrent 2005 will find plenty to drown in here. Tracks are shorter than on previous releases, though even more obsessively detailed. There are points where the cacophony is so insanely oversaturated that the noise starts to sound as if it's spontaneously giving birth to language: you start hallucinating words and sentences, almost as if the film protecting you from a constant bombardment of information-heavy environmental radiation has been blown apart. Green also features some of Hototogisu's most straight-ahead death/doom metal moves. Although they're not quite Skullflower, the first track features snatches of classic death metal riffs alongside the stomach-punch of a cheap drum machine and on their theme song, the beautifully ferocious “Heavy Blossom”, Mick Flower of Vibracathedral Orchestra plays drums. Alongside all the iron first action, there are some beautiful moments where Marcia and Matthew's voices melt into ribbons of pure white light and the whole thing floats to the ceiling. A modern classic, and possibly the best Hototogisu album to date. Highest recommendation.

Brand new full-length recording from the duo of Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Total/Sunroof et al) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards/Zaimph/GHQ) features a more rock-reverent take on the kind of vertical screens of impossibly detailed overtone that defined their earlier albums, with Marcia's viola slow-burning fluttering afterimages of neon spirals deep into the air while Bower's guitar/microphone worship generates repeat-ascensions of overloaded ecstasy tone. Something grittier, more immediately tactile, that makes this their most dramatically meat-based orbit of hallucinated space/time vectors to date. Highly recommended.

New set of solo electric guitar recordings from Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards/GHQ/Hototogisu et al). Tectonic string work that has the weight of planets, with high, eerie melodies threaded through massive baseline drones. Aspects of Keiji Haino, Charalambides and Electronic Meditation-era Tangerine Dream make this a particularly explosive set. On Brother Raven’s label, hand-numbered edition of 200 copies. 

Hand-numbered edition of 200 copies LP on Manuel Mota’s private Headlights imprint documenting a heavyweight duo set from Marcia Bassett of Zaimph, Hototogisu, Double Leopards, GHQ et al and improvising Portuguese bassist and guitarist Margardia Garcia. Garcia is one of the major new generation European free players, coming out of the same scene as Mota, and she’s just as capable of generating Swans-style Industrial entropy as she is playing explosive fire music. Here Bassett uses keyboard and guitar to create austere arcs of Industrial-strength drone that Garcia anchors with tactile, questing strings, giving the whole thing an odd avant-classical backbone. 

Necessary reissue of this noise/rock monster, the 1986 debut cassette from Matthew Bower’s post-Pure project, Total, originally released by Broken Flag (BF-53): the opening “Shallow Terrorists (Live ’84)” has to be heard to be believed, with the strains of a PA blasting The Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy In The UK” amidst a storm of ultra-violent feedback and explosive valkyrie drones. From there it’s into doomy percussive guitar pieces that cross air-raid sirens with some of the most beautifully exaggerated/extended feedback symphonies of Bower’s career, pieces that sound like John Coltrane’s Ascension re-configured for the Guitar Army, ghostly choral fragments via variously treated tape-loops, wild Whitehouse-esque power electronics w/ecstatic glossolalia, weird decadent piano minimalism ala Richard Youngs’ Advent and the kind of euphoric synth tectonics of the most Industrial Krautrock. Still one of the hands-down greatest releases of the original Broken Flag run and an album that is truly ahead of its time. Edition of 500 copies, fully re-mastered and with updated artwork. A key UK underground release, highly recommended. 

Brand new trio moves from a new group that sees Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Total/Sunroof et al) joined by Justin Broadrick of Godflesh on guitar, bass and rhythm machine and Samantha Davies (Voltigeurs) on guitar: Valley Of Fear play martial drone rock with a weird/haunted a-temporal aspect that sounds like choirs of disembodied voices coming straight out of the void. The addition of the rhythm machine actually seems to free-up the music even more, with drifting walls of guitars that sound as if they are slowly being pulled apart, moving backwards and forwards in time, combining the kind of nod-out rhythms of Silence-era titans like International Harvester with the Industrial metal of Zeni Geva and a dramatic orchestral aspect that is truly epic. In a way it’s as balanced a pairing as you could imagine between Godflesh’s martial Industrial rock and Matthew Bower’s vision of endlessly levitating overtone damaged psychedelic drone. Edition of 500 copies and highly recommended. 

Split LP of 333 copies with two tracks from Matthew Bower’s Skullflower – one long, inchoate feedback ritual and a shorter martial drums/guitar tattoo – paired with new material from Limepit, a black noise/vocal/drone group with connections to Heavy Blossom recording artists Sarah’s Charity.  Silkscreened covers with insert.

Massive two CD set of monolithic post-metal from Matthew Bower’s Skullflower project. The sound is blurrier and more widescreen than on the Not Not Fun LP, with laminal layers of heaven-scraping guitar moving in black clouds of fuzz and distortion. Somewhere between the grimy primitive appeal of early Ramleh, bombastic European symphonic music and the glorious psychedelic guitar oblivion of the group’s recent astounding form. Song titles include “Gateway To Blasphemous Light”, “Chaotic Demons Fly In To My Eyes” and, uh, “Blackened Angel Wings Scythe The Billowing Void.” I think you get the picture.

Edition of only 250 copies reissue of what was originally a limited cassette release (BF3) on the legendary Broken Flag label. Kleistwahr is the solo project of BF head Gary Mundy (Ramleh/S.P.I.T.E./Skullflower/Consumer Electronics et al). One of the earliest releases on the label, Myth more than fulfils the promise of the UK’s power electronics scene to fully deliver on punk’s failure to fully liberate rock/roll from the service of generic form. The first track is massively psychedelic – Ramleh always were the most ‘psych’ focussed of the BF groups, as their later ‘rock’ albums underline – with a churning miasmic appeal that sounds like it’s devouring several decades of outlaw sound with alla the triumphal Non of the first Faust album. Later tracks are a little more pugilistic, with electronics that double all over themselves again and again, generating hypnotic matrices of pulse-based melodies and whooshing outer space F/X. Indeed, the degree of obsessive repeat here makes this a minimalist Industrial classic, doing more with a simple set up of electronics and vocals than your favourite goddamn avant orchestra. Parts of this inexplicably remind me of Alan Silva’s electronics on the Celestrial Communication Orchestra’s classic The Seasons triple LP – go figure! Either way this is another major BF unearthing and highly recommended. 

Edition of only 250 copies reissue of what was originally a limited 1983 cassette release (BF15) on the legendary Broken Flag label. Kleistwahr is the solo project of BF head Gary Mundy (Ramleh/S.P.I.T.E./Skullflower/Consumer Electronics et al) and Arsonicide matches the early hysterical Whitehouse sound with harsh oscillating feedback, electronics and wild vocal assaults. Some amazing bloody-minded noise on this, with the epic second track that combines arcing cracked synth tones and sudden explosions of voice matching the best of Maurizio Bianchi’s ‘symphonic’ work but with a supremely crude UK DIY edge that is particularly satisfying. On the flip the electronics get even more alienated and extreme, with minimal morse code patterns dancing beneath flat-line feedback drones and waves of minimal tone threat. Spectacularly great and highly recommended!

Massively potent set that hoovers up a bunch of key sides from Matthew Bower’s Skullflower and bundles them with a compilation of stray singles from the same period: Carved Into Roses and Infinityland were both recorded in 1995 and were originally conceived as a double set, with the classic one-off Skullflower line-up of Bower, Stuart Dennison, Russell Smith and Philip Best (Whitehouse/Consumer Electronics) joined by long-term Richard Youngs collaborator Simon Wickham-Smith for a massively heavy UK underground summit. 1995 saw the Skullflower sound mutate from the early monolithic rock attack influenced by the new wave of US guitar monsters into something that was more free-form and ecstatic. Here the group trade single chord fuzz levitations for dunting Industrial klang, endless waves of organ drone and delirious all-guitars-soling-all-the-time post Xpressway/NZ-isms while visioning a form of rock music that was closer to the orchestral noise of the John Coltrane Orchestra than Black fucking Sabbath. Heard together, this is a massively ambitious set, several leagues ahead of anything else that was happening in the UK at the time and it pretty much sets the co-ordinates for the future ecstasy sound of the contemporary Bower catalogue. 

Much anticipated hook-up between these three trans-Atlantic monsters. One-side each and then a third monster inter-band jam. Leopards side is a classic haunt, with wraiths of hovering drone peaking in eye-rolling vocal confusion, while the Mouthus track is a fabulous punk trouncing of fuzz-impacted guitar and clattering electrified skin. Sunroof! jams are the real highlight though, especially the doofily-named “Cortez Tha Killa” that features Matthew Bower on repeat-riff nirvana while Mick Flower of Vibracathedral Orchestra lets his wrist fly with some of the most insane and righteously piloted post-Young acid delirium of anyone’s career. Too fucking much. Final big-band side presents a beautiful void of spooked eternity, with shadow forms moving in and out of earshot like so much hallucinatory cumulus. Comes in a full-colour gatefold sleeve, already sold-out at source, so move it.