Massive solo dub/drug-damaged percussion bombs from Matt Earle of xNoBBQx/Breakdance The Dawn, with miniature electro-acoustic constructs that recall the more solitary, wigged-out form of Sun Ra through to almost Faust-scale slo-mo thunder crossed with that amazing/inexplicable 'edge' that he brinsg to pretty much everything. Still one of the most enigmatic performers on the Australian underground. Highly recommended.

“Mark Sadgrove and Anthony Guerra are a pair of Australasian transplants currently based in Tokyo, Japan. Iron Sand is a series of electric guitar duets illuminated with harp, electronics, vocals and acoustic strings. Both players work minimal repeating shapes into nagging, emotionally insistent cells of smudged tone that re-visit the same territories again and again, as if to force a gentle confession of significance from the same two or three staggered notes. And it works. There’s something of Loren Connors’ foggy, late night style to the sound of the guitars, with washes of silver strings and solitary single notes left suspended in space. But whereas Connors uses variously amplified techniques in order to access the kind of highly-articulate zone where music and speech blur into one, Sadgrove and Guerra opt for re-statements of the most simplistic musical phonetics in order to access hypnagogic states. This is a magical, delicate recording, where minimal guitar lines interact with roaring analogue silence to create a music that somehow manages to combine stark, auraless playing with a deep, psychedelic atmosphere.” – David Keenan/The Wire.

Limited edition fanzine produced by Black Petal and A Binary Datum featuring art by Joshua Burkett, Matt Earle (Breakdance The Dawn/Craft Bandits/xNoBBQx et al) and Daniel Lebow, photos by Daniel Lebow, photos by Clint Morgan, poetry by Ian-John Hutchinson, a review of the Japanesse curry house run by Pirako and Kageo of Suishou No Fune (!), an interview with Tetuzi Akiyama, a short story by Jienko Kurosato and a review of Takahiro Hirama’s ‘Thr Eat Rhy Thm’ CD-R. Packaged in the usual exquisite Black Petal style, handbound with string with an obi strip and fold-out pages. Each copy comes with an original A4 lithograph by Joshua Burkett. 

Staggering blast of a-formal rock confusion from one of the first group’s to articulate the NON-aesthetic of the whole Breakdance The Dawn scene, contemporaries of xNoBBQx, Your Intestines and Mosseisley. Antipan featured Matt Earle on guitar, Nick Dan on vocals and bass, Anthony Guerra on drums and Sumugan Sivanesan on guitar.  Antipan have a scratchy, devolved guitar band sound that’s somewhere between the stumbling early Rough Trade style, the absolute refusal of No Wave and a disjointed Magic Band and this captures them live at Club Consolador De Dos Caras in December of 2008. There are primitive echoes of free jazz and even stomping two-chord blues but Antipan play the kind of blues more associated with Corwood Industries, wrapped in barbed wire and tuned to the moon. Pretty fantastic. Comes with an original photograph of the group rocking the bandstand and exposed to firelight by Guerra. Recommended.

Excellent set from this New Zealand duo that features Shannon who runs the Dungeon Taxis imprint and Tim Coster. Fresh from supporting Richard Youngs during his recent NZ tour, this four track EP finds them in a stoned/hushed late night Velvets mood, with barely strummed guitar and eerie vortices of banjo and assorted strange strings generating a slow-burning atmosphere with a zoned, ritual feel. Hypnotically stoned free folk that exists on the very edge of form. For fans of Go Hirano, Tori & Reiko Kudo, The Hunter Gracchus, Trees, Chants & Hollers... edition of 50 copies with hand-painted sleeves and stamped covers.