Massive slab of temporal disruption from one of the most consistently wowing figures to come out of the cultural meltdown of the 1960s. Conrad was a key mover in the Lower East Side rock and avant underground in the early to mid 60s, playing with Lou Reed, John Cale and Walter DeMaria in Reed’s frat-rock combo, The Primitives, and standing in with early line-ups of The Velvet Underground. But it was his activities as part of The Dream Syndicate/Theatre Of Eternal Music, a group dedicated to extending waves of single note bliss into whole new zones of psychoactive ecstasy, that were to have the most far-reaching cultural impact. Alongside John Cale, Angus MacLise, LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela, Conrad founded a whole new approach to sound, working tiny pulsing intervals into long monotonal drones generated by bowed strings and vocals and birthing a minimalism several cells more blasted than the saccharine soundtracks associated with bigger hitting names like Philip Glass and Michael Nyman. Fantastic Glissando dates from 1969 and features four tracks of degraded sine-wave oscillations that approximate the roar of a fleet of V-2 bombers.

Kane was the powerhouse drummer behind Savage Blunder/Speed Trials-era Swans and since then he has held down the drum seat for a whole bunch of power/blues minimalists like Rhys Chatham and LaMonte Young's Forever Bad Blues Band. February takes the endless boogie of LaMonte's Forever Bad Blues Band a few lurches closer to the source with a clutch of long-form blues instrumentals that work seemingly-leaden mechanical rhythms and non-fluid structures into hypnotic cogs in a massively subtle psychedelic system that makes even the slightest flux in rhythmic/melodic detail seem almost tectonic. Besides Kane's own formulations, there's a version of the traditional spiritual “Motherless Child” which matches Träd Gras Och Stenar in terms of ploughing, flat-lined rock and a ferocious restaging of Rhys Chatham's epochal “Guitar Trio”. Recommended.