Rocket Recordings
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Visit product page →Following the original, digital only, release of Goat’s score for ‘The Gallows Pole’ TV series, we are now thrilled to announce an expanded, ltd edition vinyl version, which will be released as part of Record Store Day 2024.
‘The Gallows Pole’ is a three-part Element Pictures production, written and directed by Shane Meadows which was aired in the UK on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.
This new vinyl version of the ‘The Gallows Pole: Original Score’ differs from the previous digital release as it now only features the music which was specifically written for the series itself – it doesn’t include the three, previously released back catalogue tracks. Instead, this vinyl edition contains three ‘unused/unreleased’ tracks: ‘Goat Witch’, ‘Timeless Awareness’ and ‘Kampsång (Instrumental)’.
These tracks have not, up-to-now, been heard by anyone apart from Shane Meadows himself. The themes and imagery of Benjamin Myers’ source novel are the perfect fit for Goat’s mystical, pagan aesthetic. The story, based in rural 18th century Yorkshire, tells a fictionalised, psychedelic tale based on the true story of David Hartley and the Cragg Vale Coiners, which became the biggest fraud in British history.
Rather than 'writing to picture' in the traditional way, Goat approached the creative process differently, explaining: “In the beginning, we would get inspiration just through reading the book, trying to get a sense of its vibration and then translate that into music, with passages from the book as a springboard for the initial jams.”
Goat were already fans of Meadows’ work, in particular ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ and the various iterations of ‘This Is England’, and understood the importance of music to him, noting that: “Music is a central part to everything Shane has created” and describing the opportunity as a “blessing” when they were approached about the project. Working on the score for ‘The Gallows Pole’ also provided an ongoing inspiration for Goat, resulting in the germs of music that formed the bands most recent album, the critically acclaimed ‘Medicine’.
“Although it may seem an abstract or unorthodox way to work with film, a lot of interesting new ideas and music came out of those sessions that went beyond just the score.” said the band. Sometimes, the results of musical exploration are best heard (and seen). As Goat themselves conclude, “music is never easily explained with words”.
‘The Gallows Pole: Original Score’ is ltd to only 3,000 copies worldwide – the package comes as a colour vinyl LP + 7” and is housed in a special gatefold sleeve.
Tracklisting:
Vinyl LP
Side A
1. Mind is Like the Sky
2. Field Raga
3. JazzmanSide B
4. The Gate Is Open (The Temple Lies Within)
5. Vallåt
6. Goat WitchVinyl 7"
Side C
7. Timeless AwarenessSide D
8. Kampsång (Instrumental) -
Whether inhabiting the realm of dreams or nightmares, the primordial drive of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs is more powerful than ever and ‘Land Of Sleeper’, their fifth record in a decade of rancour and revelation is testimony to this.Visit product page →
Arguably the most potent and assured record of their storied life so far, it’s the product of a band energised and fortified by their individual passions to incendiary effect. After the travails of the two and a half years since 2020’s ‘Viscerals’, ‘Land Of Sleeper’ sees the Newcastle-based quintet not so much reinvigorated as channelling a furious drive which only appears to gather momentum as the band’s surroundings spins on their axis.
For all that the last few years have seen Pigs’ stature rise in the wake of triumphant festival slots and sold-out venues like, this remains a band fundamentally incapable of tailoring their sound to a prospective audience, rather standing alone and impervious as a monument of catharsis.
“Certainly for me, writing and playing music is often surprising and revealing, it can be like holding up a mirror and seeing things you didn’t expect to see” reckons drummer Ewan Mackenzie, whose return to the Pigs fray after two albums away marked another big influence on the new record.
“For me, the darker tracks on the record hold in common a determination not to lose faith, despite the odds” The better to unite slumber and waking, ‘Land Of Sleeper’ is no less than an act of transcendence for Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - new anthems to elucidate a world sleepwalking to oblivion.
Tracklisting:
1. Ultimate Hammer
2. Terror's Pillow
3. Big Rig
4. The Weatherman
5. Mr Medicine
6. Pipe Down!
7. Atlas Stone
8. Ball Lightning -
Since their foundation in 2014, this malevolent rogues gallery of luminaries of the UK underground have consistently proven to be capable of projecting vibrations that transcend and usurp any idea of the sum of their component parts.Visit product page →
It is true that they've clocked up notable experience sparking tinnitus with everyone from Mugstar and Bonnacons Of Doom (bassist Jason Stoll) to Dethscalator (vocalist Dan Chandler and drummer Stuart Bell) and from Earth (guitarist Jodie Cox, who also introduced keyboard player Ollie Knowles to the melee) to a dizzying variety of endeavours from the paint-stripping skronk of Dead Neanderthals to the righteous ire of Idles (all via saxophonist Colin Webster).
Yet Sex Swing represents less a group of disparate musicians pooling their resources, and more a peculiar spark of collective chemistry, with all forces gravitating towards the pursuit of the same dissolute and mysterious goal. Type II 'is that goal reached in effortless style and amplified to intimidating aural vistas.
This mighty monument of swagger and malice also sees fit to add a certain amount of glitter to the trademark gri t this time around. Just as the artwork from long-term collaborator Alex Bunn boasts a luminous sheen absent from the unsettling abjection of the sleeve of their 2016 debut, so the rolling grooves and mantric hypnosis here boast a new-found structure and a feline sleekness fresh and unusual for this pugilistic outfit.
Nonetheless, this remains a band fundamentally obsessed with the expression of decadence and wrongdoing through the mediums of repetition and overloaded frequencies. Type II 'is more than the mere machinations of a rock band - it's a howl of malfunction rendered terrifyingly visceral.
It's the lightning flash and unearthly roar of the primeval battle between Godzilla and Mechagodzilla that provokes awe and disquiet in the realm of fantasy, It's the haunted clangour of the faullty air conditioning unit that lurks in the anonymous office building yet lends it eerie ambience.
It's man vs machine where discord becomes harmony, and it's a fearsomely invigorating spectacle to behold.
Tracklisting:
1. The Passover
2. Skimmington Ride
3. Valentine's Day At The Gym
4. Betting Shop
5. Need Battery
6. La Riconada
7. Garden Of Eden / 2000 AD
Release Date: 15/05/2020 -
I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig' reasoned George Bernard Shaw. 'You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.' True to form, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have left the wiser of us aware that they are no band to be messed with. This is made manifest on Viscerals', their third proper, and an enormous leap forward in confidence, adventure and sheer intensity even from their 2018 breakthrough King Of Cowards'.Visit product page →
Incisive in its riff-driven attack, infectiously catchy in its songcraft and more intrepid than ever in its experimental approach, Viscerals'is the sound of a leaner, more vicious Pigs, and one with their controls set way beyond the pulverising one-riff workouts of their early days.
Yet Pigsx7 have effortlessly broadened their horizons and dealt with all these new avenues without sacrificing one iota of their trademark eccentricity, and the personality of this band has never been stronger, whether on the Sabbathian and philosophical warcry of Reducer', the debauched, Jane's Addiction-tinged swagger of Rubbernecker', the Melvins vs Sonic Youth demoltion derby of New Body'or even the demented MBV-meets-Twisted-Sister party-banger from hell that is Crazy In Blood'.
'We're a peculiar bunch of people - a precarious balance of passion, intensity and the absurd' notes vocalist Matt Baty. Such is the unstoppable character of this unique and ever-porcine outfit; still the hungriest animals at the rock trough.
Tracklisting:
1. Reducer
2. Rubbernecker
3. New Body
4. Blood and Butter
5. World Crust
6. Crazy in Blood
7. Halloween Bolson
8. Hell's Teeth -
‘In The Silence Electric’, the latest record in Julie’s Haircut’s long history of sonic otherworldliness is notable for its deft balance between hypnotic radiance and extrasensory intensity, between beatific calm and palpable anger.Visit product page →
Yet it’s also a record which has arrived through a strange process of osmosis from a band confident enough to let subconscious and metaphysical aspects steer them in the appropriate directions.
“We embraced the incidents, letting the songs guide us to their final form rather than trying to force them in a precise direction” confirms the band’s Luca Giovanardi. For all its divings, this is a collection of supremely confident and cohesive ditties that sees the deep-end diabolism and mantric intensity of the Italian-based band’s Rocket debut, 2017’s ‘Invocation And Ritual Dance Of My Demon Twin’ expanded into a righteous fury and incandescent splendour.
Whether it’s the heavy-lidded rapture of ‘Lord Help Me Find The Way’ (like Spiritualized transposed to 1970s Berlin), the menacing dream-state of ‘In Return’ or the Suicide-damaged psychic assault that is ‘Sorcerer’, all is subsumed by a bold singularity of intent, amidst a colourful firestorm of electronic monomania, jazz-tinged atonality and indelibly memorable vocal hooks.
“There’s a theme springing from the title of the record and the (cover) photos of Annegret Soltau that deliver some sense of helplessness, suffocation, difficulty in communication” notes the band’s Luca Giovanardi.
Yet for all this - and paradoxically enough - ‘In The Silence Electric’ is both this mysterious and rebellious band’s most adventurous and most direct record to date - not to mention an ever more compelling transmission from renowned experts in altered states.
Tracklisting:
1. Anticipation Of The Night
2. Emerald Kiss
3. Until The Lights Go Out
4. Lord Help Me Find The Way
5. Sorcerer
6. Darlings Of The Sun
7. In Return
8. Pharaoh’s Dream
9. For The Seven Lakes -
Gnoomes, the Russian outfit who blend a potent mix of psychedelic stargaze, kraut techno and kosmiche pop return with a brand new album, MU! their third for Rocket Recordings.Visit product page →
Since the release of their last album Tschak! the three piece has turned into a quartet with synth player Masha Piankova joining the band. And it was the success of their tours in the UK and Europe that subconsciously created a template and tone for where the band would go next with this new album; to capture that surging drive and throbbing assault of their pulverising live shows.
'We decided to make this record more live and less electronic,' Sasha, singer and guitarist from Gnoomses said. 'We were thinking about how to make it sound more dynamic.' Masha's introduction was a key one, with her replacing Sasha on synth bass whilst he moved over to second guitar to add a fuller and more impactful sonic crunch. MU! has been part recorded in the same old soviet radio station where the band recorded Tschak! part in a professional studio and then part at home. This was to ensure the best capture of Gnoomes live assault.
The results brim with a magnitude and sense of coherence that belies some of the environment it was created in. Fuzz-driven guitars shift in engulfing waves, resembling shoegaze giants at their most ferocious, whilst elsewhere layered vocals stack on top of one another, weaving between pristine melody and augmented discordance.
Whilst the glacial electronics and coldwave tendencies that soaked much of their previous album may be more absent here, this record pulses with an electronic tinge that bubbles more subtly under the surface of immersive guitars
The title Mu! has Japanese origins and comes from Zen Buddhism - something Sasha began to practice during past trying times - meaning both 'no' and 'nothingness' and the understanding that the acceptance of this concept can lead to enlightenment. 'For me personally it's a spiritual record,' he says.
Although any sonic warbles of new age blandness couldn't be further from the end results here. This is a cleansing record, no doubt, but one that washes over you with both brutal force and deft subtleness. With the completion of this album, it also wraps up a trio of records all connected via punctuation - Ngan! Tschak! Mu! - but with one each distinct in its own tone and sense of evolution.
From Bowie to The Cure to Moderat, musical history is peppered with great musical trilogies and now Gnoomes'Exclamation Mark Trilogy can be added to that.
Tracklisting:
1. Utro
2. Sword in the Stone
3. Irma
4. Glasgow Coma State
5. Sine Waves Are Good For Your Health
6. Ursa Major
7. Progulka
8. How Do You
9. Feel Now -
London-based psychedelic stalwarts Josefin Ohrn + The Liberation are proud to reveal their third album 'Sacred Dreams' for Rocket Recordings. Continuing to dive into the deeper waters of experimentation, Sacred Dreams'is both a musically hefty amalgamation of reverb drenched space-rock and retro centric electronics, as well as an emotionally cathartic release for the band, marking a new direction and fresh approach.Visit product page →
Since their critically acclaimed album 'Mirage' was released, Josefin and writing partner Fredrik have relocated from Stockholm to London and have created a new Liberation around them - this new band consists of the powerful and intuitive assemblage of musicians; Maki (Go Team), Patrick C Smith (Eskimo Chain), Matt Loft (Lola Colt) and Ben Ellis, who's worked with both Iggy Pop and Swervedriver.
Sacred Dreams'was largely recorded at Press Play Studios (King Krule, Fat White Family, Yves Tumor, Stereolab, High Llamas and many others) run by Andy Ramsay of Stereolab, who also produced and even programmed his non synced drum machines adding a lot of inspiration to the album. Scared Dreams'invites you into the bands own dimensional soundscape, a world built with transcendental guitars, driving grooves and otherworldly, enchanting vocals, altogether seeped in layers of blissfully produced synths.
Opener and lead single Feel The Sun'encapsulates this new direction perfectly before the anthemic I Can Feel It'makes the bands intentions known. Elsewhere playful 80s electronics sit alongside a shoegaze sensibility effortlessly and amongst the textured flow of the LP emerge pop hooks like the infectiously bluesy Baby Come On'.
Josefin tells us 'This album comes out of a period of heartbreak, loss and dissolution, but also of deep love, warmth and beauty unveiled in the middle of it. A sacred dream, the way we see it, is not necessarily a golden fluffy cloud river, but instead also contains all the shadows that need to be seen and felt in order to drop what has to go in order to truly live. And the dissonance of such a dream may not be immediately apparent, let alone the meaning of it. In a way all of these tracks seem to emanate from that place where we have almost reached a new shore, or maybe we missed it and are headed somewhere else entirely, but there's no way of telling until afterwards.'
'Beautifully controlled, understated, subtle but infectious.' The Guardian
'The Josefin Ohrn record is ridiculously good.' Lauren Laverne (BBC6 Music)
'Mesmerising with a flair for motorik groove and creepy pop grandeur.' Uncut
'An enthralling band.' Mojo
'Music to shine light into our lives.' Vice
Tracklisting:
1. Feel The Sun
2. Honey Slumber
3. I Can Feel It
4. Desire
5. Hey Little Boy
6. Only Lovers
7. Baby Come On
8. New Horizons
9. Caramel Head
10. Let It Come
11. Whatever You Want
12. Floating Away
Release Date: 26/04/2019 -
Sold outWhen London's Teeth Of The Sea set about recording their fifth album, there seemed to be more than just the familiar spectres of the band's collective and overactive imagination at their disposal - the unruly morass of 80s horror and sci-fi movies, industrial ballast, 2000AD terror, 70s-damaged experimental brinksmanship and atmospheric grandeur that they'd somehow conspire to sculpt into coherent structures - instead, these ghostly interruptions - or wraiths - were of a distinctly otherworldly nature.Visit product page →
In Soup Studios, located in the liminal zone of East India Dock on the Thames under the auspices of Giles Barrett, all such influences contributed to form a collection of tracks that represented a fearsome and transporting marriage of the ferocious and the melancholic.
Alchemised trash, kitchen-sink surrealism, out-of-order intensity and ritualistic overtones collides and colluded into a monstrous hybrid - this was a world where Tetsuo-The Iron Man would happily share space with Judee Sill, and where the acid guitars of Helios Creed would happily conspire with the Acid Rock of Rhythm Device.
Meanwhile, Erol Alkan helped sculpt a mixture of mariachi elegy and electro euphoria at his Phantasy Sound studios, whilst Valentina Magaletti (Tomaga/Raime), Chloe Herington (Knifeworld/Valve) and Katharine Gifford (Snowpony/ Stereolab) also willingly entered the fray to assist this unholy assemblage of inspiration, irreverence and otherworldly infiltration.
Who knows where these voices and visions arrived from, yet we can only hope the resulting sounds help them gain safe passage into the beyond. Ladies and gentlemen, pray silence for the Wraith.
'TOTS are merely vessels for a force operating somewhere beyond our comprehension of what can, and does, qualify as pop music' Clash
'Space-disco juggernaut tunes into the transcendental infinite--a glitter ball in one eye, the other on the cosmos' Mojo
'A record of real and rare magnificence' Drowned In Sound
'Imaginary dystopian sci-fi disaster flick, with battered beasts gliding over a demolished landscape of deserted cities trapped in perpetual night' Line of Best Fit
'Every track here is distinctive; a cinematic, mind-scramblingly complex yet cohesive mini-epic' Record Collector
Tracklisting:
CD:
1.I'd Rather, Jack
2.Hiraeth
3.Burn Of The Shieling
4.Fortean Steed
5.VISITOR
6.Her Wraith
7.Wraiths In The Wall
8.Our Love Can Destroy This Whole Fucking World
9.Gladiators Ready
Vinyl Running Order:
Side A:
1. I'd Rather, Jack
2. Hiraeth
3. Our Love Can Destroy This Whole Fucking World
4. Burn Of The Shieling
5. Fortean Steed
Side B:
6. VISITOR
7. Her Wraith
8. Gladiators Ready
Release Date: 22/02/2019 -
Four years on from Lay Llamas'Rocket Recordings debut Østro, this Italian-based astral-voyaging collective, led by Nicola Giunta - have manifested a revelatory official follow-up in the form of Thuban - a travelogue powered by a pan-global fascination with rhythmic hypnosis and an unquenchable experimental mindset.Visit product page →
Dwelling in the night sky of the Northern hemisphere, Thuban was the star closest to the North pole from the fourth to the second millennium BC. For Giunta. this mysterious stellar icon offers pause for thought. 'A polar star is something that drives the travellers towards a safe place. But in the age we're living now it seems hard to recognise a polar star.'
Indeed, his mission has been as much one of discovery for himself and listener alike 'Everything around us is transforming, always! You know, I'm not a proper songwriter, I consider myself a sound crafter. An experimental alchemist of sounds and visions' True to form, Thuban maps out terrain in which collaborators from Clinic and Goat contribute to the air of earthy vibrancy and fertile exploration.
Moreover, Mark Stewart of The Pop Group's spoken-word contributions to the searing Fight Fire With Fire'(styled by Nicola as dystopian afrobeat') steers the album to new pinnacles of intensity informed by science fiction yet with explicitly political force 'Thuban talks about ancient sea travels, ancient cultures, ancient rites, but also about today's travellers, travellers from all ages' Nicola surmises 'Travellers that are still looking for their Thuban, for their polar star to reach a safe place to live with their family.'
Tracklisting:
1. Eye-Chest People's Dance Ritual
2. Holy Worms
3. Silver Sun
4. Cults and Rites from the Black Cliff (Ft. Clinic)
5. Altair (Ft. Goat)
6. Fight Fire with Fire (Ft. MarK Stewart)
7. Chronicles from the Fourth Planet
8. Coffins on the Tree, a Black Brain on Our Way to Home
Release Date: 15/06/2018 -
vRocket Recordings
White Hills / GNOD 'Aquarian Downer' Vinyl LP - Deep Space Swirl Coloured
£20.49
Aquarian Downer'is a five track collaboration with New York's purveyor of pummelling Post-Motorik Fuzz White Hills'and Manchester's Psychedelic-Punk human anatomy assault GNOD'. Initially released as a limited tour CDR in 2008, Rocket Recordings are delighted to announce that for Record Store Day 2018, it will be available for the first time on deep space'blue swirl vinyl.Visit product page →
In 2007, GNOD booked WHITE HILLS to play at one of their Attention All Shipping'nights in Manchester. After the gig they spoke about doing a collaboration together. As their inevitably synchronous desire to create music around the outer limits prevailed, the bands were drawn onto the same trajectory, their first meeting of minds.
Over the years the two bands have gone on to build a formidable reputation for releasing many outstanding records, including their second collaboration after Aquarian Downer; the stunning GNOD Drop-out with White Hills II'released on Rocket Recordings back in 2010. Both bands'music have consistently pushed at the boundaries of what psychedelic music is. Aquarian Downer is no exception, feasibly this is the point that they both crossed into the Event Horizon of their prismatic paths.
An album submerged in minimally restrained serene chilling drones, tailed by the pulses of GNOD's heads-down astral power, Dave W (White Hills) has masterfully conjured an album who's boundary passes events that cannot ever be observed. You think you've found perception's doors.... they open to a lie, but these two bands'output go some way to help guide you through the narrow chinks of refuge.
Tracklisting:
1. Belonging
2. Hard Butter Reality
3. Resolve
4. Aquarian Downer
5. When You Are Old -
Debut album by MIEN, the exciting new four piece band comprised of The Black Angels'Alex Maas, The Horrors'Tom Furse, Elephant Stone's Rishi Dhir and The Earlies'John-Mark Lapham.Visit product page →
The seeds were sown for this collaboration as long ago as 2004, when Rishi Dhir (Elephant Stone) found himself in a chance encounter with Black Angels frontman Alex Maas whilst performing sitar with his former band on a bill at SXSW in Austin with The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
Not long afterwards, he would also stumble across electronics guru and producer John Mark Lapham from Anglo-American band The Earlies, via a shared love for one song - the classic sitar banger'by The Association, Wantin'Ain't Gettin'. Some years later, another piece of the puzzle came into place, when Dhir was now playing bass with The Black Angels in 2012, and found the band sharing several bills with The Horrors.
Thus he made the acquaintance of Tom Furse, and yet another pact was made to work together. Several traversals of the globe by both plane and audio-file later, the result is an album that sees this quartet transcending their origins whilst maintaining a cohesive unity borne of a desire for outward exploration.
John Mark's vision, as he puts it, was 'imagine the Black Angels as Nico in her 80's industrial phase mixed with George Harrison and Conny Plank.' - true to form, it's an album that finds equal room for radiant groove-based propulsion and ambient dreamscapes alike - as comfortable with the murky hallucinogenic voyage of You Dreamt'as the powerful widescreen sweep of (I'm Tired Of) Western Shouting', yet with songwriting acumen as potent as the production values are expansive and exploratory.
This may have been a record put together at a distance - yet the chemistry between these four figures is manifest amidst a kaleidoscopic series of atmospheres and excursions whereby the fertile songwriting of the golden age of 60s psychedelia is transmitted into a transcendental realm above and beyond the second decade of the 21st century.
MIEN are: Alex Maas (vocals, samples, loops), Tom Furse (keyboards, programming), Rishi Dhir (bass, sitar, keyboards) and John-Mark Lapham (keyboards, samples, programming).
Tracklisting:
1. Earth Moon
2. Black Habit
3. (I'm Tired Of) Western Shouting
4. You Dreamt
5. Other
6. Hocus Pocus
7. Ropes
8. Echolalia
9. Odessey
10. Earth Moon (Reprise)
Release Date: 06/04/2018 -
Mamuthones may have originally taken their name from the death-masks used in rituals in their native Sardinia, and initially emerged from the Italian occult psychedelic movement alongside the likes of Father Murphy, Mai Mai Mai and their labelmates Lay Llamas.Visit product page →
Yet now, in the wake of their Rocket Recordings debut album Fear On The Corner', the band find themselves undergoing a metamorphosis from mystical and ceremonial realms into a direct connection with the everyday, the personal and the political.
This vibrant reinvention also sees Mamuthones transcending their roots in Italian prog and soundtrack work and shifting their modus operandi firmly in the direction of a distinctly New York-based headspace - a realm of mirrorballs and black-clad basements both As the band's Alessio Gastaldello tells it, this is a groove-based. eclectic style that finds its metier in the realm of two albums which are paid direct homage in the record's very title - the bleak and kinetic Fear Of Music'by Talking Heads and the iconoclastic, heat-haze repetition of Miles Davis'On The Corner'.
'The songs deal with fear.' he clarifies. 'Fear of the present, of human situations, fear of the new political situation, but also fear of relationship breakdown, fear of not finding 'a place in the world', fear of fear itself' Yet this is principally an aural landscape whereby the eclectic mischief of ZE Records, the sonic brinksmanship of Tago Mago'era Can and the post-punk songwriting flair of LCD Soundystem can happily form communion in a post-2AM reverie.
'it is a big dance party for very sad events' clarifies Alessio, on the disparity between the serious nature of this record's subject matter and its distinctly hedonistic atmosphere. 'We are a kind of Titanic orchestra playing and dancing while the ship goes down. The party must go on'.
Tracklisting:
1. Cars
2. Show Me
3. Fear On The Corner
4. The Wrong Side
5. Alone
6. Simon Choule
7. Here We Are
Release Date: 23/02/2018 -
Hey Colossus have undergone a spectacular metamorphosis in the last three years - the 2015 Rocket Recordings double-drop of In Black And Gold'and Radio Static High'displayed not only a band with a work rate to put most all their contemporaries to shame, but one arriving at an atmospheric and rewarding sound with as much flair for the beguiling as the barbaric.Visit product page →
Changes may have been afoot in the Hey Colossus camp, yet their latest transmission The Guillotine'marks another peak for an innovative force in the realm of heavy amplification. Darker and more brooding than their recent work, it's also perhaps their most richly melodic to date - the interplay of their three guitar lineup has never sounded more fluent than on these eight songs, nor their songcraft more well-defined.
This is a record whose alchemical charge arrives from a reinvention of loud rock shapes into forms both feral and fresh - whilst Hey Colossus can still bludgeon with overamped vigour, as on the hypnotic and devastating krautrock-Jesus-Lizard hybrid of Back In The Room'they can also deliver the dusky and haunting waltz-time serenade of Calenture Boy'with uncompromising fortitude, with the new-found confidence and allure of Paul Sykes'vocals at the forefront.
These menacing and immersive songs chronicle a band exploring a unique sound and invigorating approach in a decade in which cliches and genre pieces in the realm of the psychedelic have frequently surrounded - here the six-piece find themselves transcending the limitations of the underground scene from whence they came, whilst exposing the paucity of inspiration in much of the guitar-rock mainstream.
Hey Colossus are at their sharpest, and none will survive The Guillotine'.
Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Honest To God
2. Back In The Room
3. Calenture Boy
4. Experts Toll
Side B:
1. Potions
2. Englishman
3. In A Collision
4. The Guillotine -
Sold outAsk many self-styled music aficionados, and they'll tell you that rock in the early to mid 70s descended into a mire of boundless self-indulgence and instrumental virtuosity.Visit product page →
Not so in Sweden. For there, the egalitarian spirit that many thought revolutionary to punks in the UK was nothing new for the heads to be found enjoying the cult Swedish psychedelia of bands like Träd, Gräs och Stenar or Þlgarnas Trädgård. It's exactly this lineage forty plus years later where one can find Flowers Must Die, the six-piece Swedish outfit whose Kompost'- their full-length debut on Rocket Recordings, home of Goat and Josefin Ohrn + The Liberation - is a landmark moment for an outfit pursuing an improvisationbased approach removed from the codified realm of contemporary psych, and exploring uncanny and unhinged territory fuelled by diverse record collections yet unique to their own collective headspace.
The band may have taken their name originally from an Ash Ra Tempel song, whilst both the strains of Amon Düül II and the repetition of Can lurk within these overgrown sonic pathways. Yet Kompost'shows them honing their improvisatory excursions into coherent songcraft amidst spectral techno and cosmic disco shapes, as the angular post-punk pop of The Sugarcubes sits alongside the narcotic clangour of prime Royal Trux, and one-take spontaneity locks horns with nocturnal revelation.
Here the outward-looking spirit of 1971 and the anything-goes mentality of the Scandinavian freaks of yore is transposed elegantly to a modern era in need of new horizons, and in a manner refreshingly bereft of retro chic.
What's more, who's to say what dimensions this alchemical force have yet to explore.
Tracklisting:
1. Källa till ovisshet
2. Hit
3. After Gong
4. Why?
5. Hej DÃ¥
6. Don't you leave me now
7. Hey, Shut up
8. Där blommor dör
9. Svens song -
From adversity can come triumph, and from catharsis inspiration. Such has been the case for Gnoomes, the threesome hailing from Perm, Russia, whose second release for Rocket Recordings, Tschak!'arrives in the wake of considerable turbulence and tumult within their personal lives and society itself, all of which has only been fuel for a creative epiphany that has seen them create a deeply evocative work rich with vibrant experimentation and saturated in a widescreen sense of wonder.Visit product page →
It may only have been eighteen months since Ngan!', the band's first release for Rocket, whose self-styled stargaze'approach marked a glorious collision between melodic sweetness, skysurfing guitar experimentation and motorik magnificence, yet the band have already moved on to a sonic landscape still more adventurous and ethereal on Tschak!', not to mention an emotionally resonant approach that's bewitching to witness.
Taking in torrents of guitar noise and electronic extrapolations both blissfully kosmische and aggressively abrasive, it exists outside of all or any convenient genres, a vivid and singular work by three dreamers-at-heart forced to manifest their vision into a psychic defence to the circumstances surrounding them.
Working in splendid isolation thanks to a studio space provided by their work for a local radio station, the band had time and space for the alchemical process of creating Tschak!'entirely on their own terms. Central to the this were a collection of Russian synths that they gathered, whose eccentric arpeggios and analogue textures form crucial ingredients on songs like Severokamsk'and the title track, arriving at a sound that forms a star-crossed and timeless marriage between the experimentation of krautrock and the lineage of Warp Records.
Forging forth into unknown realms both physical and metaphysical, Gnoomes recently completed a UK tour - including an appearance at Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia (full European tour planned for spring 2017).
Yet with the dreamlike radiance of the potent and otherworldly Tschak!'on their side, this adventure is already well on its way.
Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Super Libido
2. Maria
3. Cascais
4. Severokamsk
5. Tschak!
Side B:
1. City Monk
2. In the Park
3. One Step
4. ADSR Eugraph
5. B-Day -
Visit product page →Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs may be the best band on the planet right now.' Echoes and Dust
' Arresting stuff...' The Skinny
' Relentless energy from a band who will always deliver.' Sleeping Shamen
' Ridiculously exciting...' Soundblab' They deliver a very satisfyingly heavy racket.' Sludgelord
Playing their first gig supporting Goat at what was only the latter's second ever show, the band have gigged relentlessly with kindred spirits including The Cosmic Dead and Luminous Bodies, not to mention gracing festivals like Supernormal and Portugal's Reverence with their feral attack. Yet the time has come for this band to transcend the realm of word-of-mouth phenomenon and be judged on their feverish and demented collision of psych-drone dementia and riff-driven salvation alone.The inarguable proof is Feed The Rats, the overwhelming first album the band have created for - equal parts righteous repetition, bludgeoning brute force and Sabbathian squalor, its alchemical charge has the power to transform bleary-eyed abandon into small-hours revelation.
This three-track, forty-minute monument of chaotic catharsis captures the everything on eleven spirit of the band's live manifestation whilst adding a level of finesse and texture often less easily accessible in a dangerous haze of flying hair, discarded clothes and spilt premium lager.
Channeling the grimy trip hazards of Monster Magnet's Spine Of God'through a prism of kraut-derived repetition and Part Chimp style bloodymindedness, the resulting hallucinatory vortex appears constantly on the realm of breaking point. Yet for Baty, the porcine realm is less about a nihilistic quest for fiery oblivion than one might imagine. 'You know, I think we've experienced it, many times. It's those gigs where we can almost sense that everyone in the room is engaged.
The energy created is so thick you can almost bite down on it and it feels like there's no longer any barrier between band and audience. Those are the special shows, where there's a solidarity and a very visceral bond. That, and being able to smell our amps melting'.
Amps and brains alike, as these psychic omnivores bring seven times the joy, seven times the pain, seven times the dementia and deliverance.
Tracklisting:
1. Psychopomp
2. Sweet Relief
3. Icon -
Kuro take their name from the Japanese word for black', and their debut release for Rocket Recordings marks an experimental union between two diversely storied yet inherently like-minded musicians.Visit product page →
Agathe Max, who hails originally from Lyon, is a classically-trained violinist with a varied back catalogue of studio and live work - running the gamut from spectral ambience to stately soundscapes and adept at summoning dreamstates and drama alike, her emotive and engaging work has found admirers at a number of UK festivals such as Supersonic and Raw Power.
The Bristol-based Gareth Turner, meanwhile, maintains a busy schedule performing and recording with Rocket Recordings trio Anthroprophh (alongside The Heads guitarist Paul Allen) bass/drums duo Big Naturals, and his solo double-bass project Salope, as well as working as a touring tech for Melvins on their trips to Europe.
Yet despite both of these artists'multi-faceted artistic lives, their partnership was both a natural progression and reflective of an intuitive chemistry. The result of their initial spark is perhaps both artists'most coherent and captivating work to date.
'At times her work approaches the supersonic escape velocity of Tony Conrad; elsewhere, she introduces delicate repeating threads, then slowly weaves them into a fabric of vast, billowing sound more reminiscent of Steve Reich' Boomkat
'Bridges the gaps between minimalism, post-classicism, the avant garde, krautrock, and plain old-fashioned pop' Supersonic Festival 'Beautifully melodic moments or massed strings set against itself to create a gently lush if unsettled feeling' All Music
Tracklisting:
1. Arashi
2. The Hierophant
3. Ishtar
4. Incantaion In C
5. Shanghai'd
6. Song for the Mysticeti -
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In a culture obsessed with content, saturation, and continual exposure, it's rare to find artists who prefer to lurk outside of the public eye. Thomas Pynchon is perhaps the most notable contemporary recluse'a virtually faceless figure who occasionally creeps out of hiding to offer up an elaborate novel steeped in history and warped by imagination'but for the crate digging audiophiles, guitar mystics, and third-eye visionaries, Sweden's enigmatic rock outfit GOAT may qualify as the greatest modern pop-culture mystery. Who are these masked musicians? Are they truly members of a remote tribe in the Arctic community of Korpilombolo? Are their songs actually a part of their communal heritage, passed down through generations in their isolated homeland? Their third studio full-length, Requiem, offers more questions than answers, but much like any of Pynchon's knotty yarns, the reward is not in the untangling but in the journey through the labyrinth.
Western exports may have dominated the consciousness of international rock fans for the entirety of the 20th century, but our increasing global awareness has unearthed a treasure trove of transcendental grooves and spellbinding riffage from exotic and remote corners of the planet. GOAT's previous albums World Music and Commune were perfect testaments to this heightened awareness, with Silk Road psychedelia, desert blues, and Third World pop all serving as governing forces within the band's sound. But GOAT's strange amalgam isn't some cheap game of cultural appropriation'it's nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact origins of the elusive group's sound. Whether or not the enigmatic collective truly claims Korpilombolo as their home, the fact that they pledge allegiance to a spot on the periphery of our maps'a spot so distant and off the grid that it feels fictitious'bolsters the nomadic quality of their sonic explorations. With Requiem, GOAT continue to rock and writhe to a beat beholden to no nation, no state.
GOAT's only outright declaration for Requiem is that it is their 'folk' album. For the initiated, such a proclamation seems almost unnecessary'GOAT has always vacillated between electrified exuberance and unplugged tribalist hymns. But Requiem does find GOAT focusing more on their subdued bucolic ritualism than on the psilocybin freakouts. Opening tracks 'Djorolen/Union of Sun and Moon' and 'I Sing in Silence' both set the stage for GOAT's rustic approach, with the guitars laying down simple chord progressions and pan flute providing the primary hooks. From those very first notes, the piper leads us down a path where GOAT relies less on acidic guitar lines and more on sun-bleached psych-pop. 'Trouble in the Streets' carries all the jubilance of classic African highlife. 'Try My Robe' bares the group's signature ceremonial hip-shaking rhythms, but eschews guitar for a mandolin line that would make John Paul Jones proud. But GOAT hasn't completely foregone their fiery charms'tracks like 'All-Seeing Eye' and 'Goatfuzz' conjure the sultry heathen pulsations that ensnared us on their previous albums.
Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of Requiem comes with the closing track 'Ubuntu'. The song is little more than a melodic delay-driven electric piano line, until we hear the refrain from 'Diarabi''the first song on their first album'sneak into the mix. It creates a kind of musical ouroboros'an infinite cycle of reflection and rejuvenation, death and rebirth. Much like fellow recluse Pynchon, GOAT doesn't offer up any explanations for their strange trajectories. But like Pynchon, they have managed to create a world of their own where the line between truth and fiction is so obscured that all you can do is bask in their cryptic genius.
Tracklisting:
1. DjOrOlen / Union of Sun and Moon
2. I Sing in Silence
3. Temple Rhythms
4. Alarms
5. Trouble in the Streets
6. Psychedelic Lover
7. Goatband
8. Try My Robe
9. It's Not Me
10. All-Seeing Eye
11. Goatfuzz
12. Goodbye
13. Ubuntu
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