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.

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.