Excellent quality archival live recordings of the classic trio line-up of Magik Markers – Elisa Ambrogio, Pete Nolan and Leah Quimby – recorded in Baltimore in 2003. Never got to see this line-up of the band as much as I would have liked to as they were a ferocious and unpredictable spectacle every night. Here they’re playing at some kind of tortuously down-tuned peak, with blunt guitars steamrolled by Nolan’s drums and Elisa’s inspired stream-of-consciousness performance style channeling Patti Smith as much as Lydia Lunch. Comes in the usual hand-screened envelopes.

Limited vinyl pressing of what was originally a 99 copies CD-R on Child Of Microtones, courtesy of Pete Nolan’s Arbitrary Signs imprint. A collection of massively dosed studio recordings, Liberty Rose opens with beams of elegiac solo guitar before dropping into a classic slow-burning jag with puffs of echo/delay damaged vocals melting into hallucinatory afterimages while Erika slides quicksilver runs all the way down your spine. “Crow Jane Environs” has a deep desert feel that could almost be Mu if it wasn’t for Erika’s oracular vocals and MV’s post-Takayanagi soloing. The stark, stripped down version of “Death Is My Friend” features a stunning/chilling vocal performance from Erika and Doc Dunn joins the duo for the last two tracks, with “Out In Space” as dazed and lonely as anything on Skip Spence’s Oar and “Streams” featuring clouds of lucid unison vocals that you could disappear inside. I guess at this stage Child Of Microtones has the same relationship to the Ecstatic Peace releases that Richard Youngs’ No Fans imprint has to his releases on Jagjaguwar, functioning as a repository for some of the most psychedelic, experimental and personal music to escape from the personal stash. And this is a major instalment. Dedicated to Dr Ragtime. Highly recommended.

It’s no secret that we consider Mouthus’ Slow Globes to be one of the greatest albums of the 2000s, a record that devoured and regurgitated five decades of rock/roll with omnivorous industry. Their comparative silence of late is somewhat mitigated by this stunning solo album form one half of Mouthus, vocalist/guitarist Brian Sullivan. The album opens with a totally haunting drug ballad, with Sullivan’s vocals coming across like a spirit transmission from the other side accompanied by simple downer acoustic guitar that makes you think of Bob Desper floating dead in space and from there it goes deeper. At points the ghost of Wayne Rogers hovers over the album, with Sullivan marrying classic Twisted Village-style basement psych to arrangements that dissolve form and fidelity in a series of ghostly hymns, marrying straightforward ‘songs’ to arrangements that would upset them completely, sometimes reducing them to odd minimal electro workouts that could almost be lifted from the Tolerance album and that almost appear like muffled broadcasts heard through a mile of concrete. Mouthus had a way of transmuting and re-birthing rock music as an eerie after-image, an hallucinatory phantom, and Your First Ever River extends that particular formula into one of the most haunted, vaguely singer-songwriter records of the year. Released on Magik Markers’ own imprint. Highly recommended.