Rocket Recordings

Despite almost all bands being prone to painting themselves as frontier-hurdling mavericks who provoke extreme reactions in their audience, the fact is that the vast majority of them of them wont produce little more than bland indifference or benign acceptance in whichever audience they come into contact with, Not so Housewives, the London-based outfit whose psychic charge- equal parts brittle rhythmic drive, angular contortions and monochrome minimalism - is as punishing in approach as the band are enigmatic in aspect.

FF061116', which follows in the wake of their debut Work'(released on Hands in The Dark) and previous tapes and 7' releases (on Faux Discs and Blank Editions), the band shows no sign of compromise whatsoever, being as stark, harsh and stubbornly inhospitable as the strobe-haunted, feverishly kinetic live shows that have earned them a fearsome reputation beyond the rumoured West country of their origins or the urban environs of their adopted home.

Split into seven excerpts and built on powerful repetition, it's a mind-melding travail into abstraction and abjection which draws on post-punk, jazz, drone, electronic and avant-garde tropes to create an unclassifiable assault that feels oddly timeless - innovative, invigorating and bare-boned yet tapping into a uniquely English lineage that extends back to the 1970s and forward, into the unknown.

Nonetheless, whilst some may be able to detect influences like This Heat (whose Charles Hayward approvingly described their sound as redolent of 'a barely controlled anger, hypnotic and building from the simplest elements') or Einsturzende Neubauten, Housewives are carving out their own unique place in the darker quarters of the underground, motivated by a fearsome intensity of conviction and a fearlessly experimental approach.

FF061116'is the latest in a series of transmissions from a collective mindset whose manifestations are as richly rewarding as they are relentlessly intense. Wherever they go from this aural outpost, all intrepid avant adventurers would do well to buckle in for the ride.

Tracklisting:
1. Excerpt 1
2. Excerpt 2
3. Excerpt 3
4. Excerpt 4
5. Excerpt 5
6. Excerpt 6
7. Excerpt 7

In 1965 the Dutch scientist and psychedelic pioneer Bart Huges embarked on a personal journey by taking an electric dentist's drill and using it to open a hole in his skull, theorising that this measure - known as trepanation and chronicled in this book The Mechanics Of Brain Blood Volume (BBV) - would result in enhanced mental power, and in effect a permanent high for the owner of the skull in question.

Fifty-one years on, in 2016, this act formed an inspiration for a meeting of mind and matter on an entirely different level, as Salford's imperious collective Gnod locked horns for a collaboration with Dutch psychedelic and experimental force Radar Men From The Moon, also originally set to take place in the Netherlands, at Eindhoven Psych Lab.

Written and recorded in only four days, the result is four uncompromising transmissions, informed equally by stark intensity and hypnotic repetition.
Temple Of BBV'sees both acts spurring the other on to higher peaks of intensity.

'Both bands had agreed from the off that we were not just gonna go in there and just jam and play over each other for hours in the hope that something good would happen' elaborates Gnod's Paddy Shine.

'We went in with the mindset of creating sound structures which turned out to be a very gratifying process' Powerful testimony to the expansive and exploratory nature of both bands, Temple Of BBV'is a radical foray into the unknown that exists firmly outside of genre or classification. Aptly, the set will be performed once again as part of Gnod's residency at this years Roadburn Festival.

The collaboration maps out intimidating psychic landscapes that revel in challenge and confrontation, and appear set to enter the skulls of the uninitiated by any means necessary.

Tracklisting:
1. Butchers Tears
2. Your Party
3. The Other Side of the Night
4. What Happens to Memories When You Die?

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.

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

As we embark on a new year more characterised by fear and uncertainty than hope and optimism, a chronic shortage of dissent can be detected in the artistic community amidst a harrowing socio-political climate.

Yet the Salford-based collective Gnod have wasted little time in kicking against the doom and disquiet with everything at their disposal. 'It seems like we are heading towards even more unsettling times in the near future than we are in at present.' Reckons Chris Haslam of Gnod.

'2016 is just the beginning of what I see as the establishment's systematic destruction of liberalism and equality as a reaction to the general public's loss of faith in their system' Charged by this outlook, Gnod's new album, Just Say No To The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine'represents a hitherto uncharted level of antagonism and adversarial force for the band - an artistic statement as righteous, fervent and direct as its title. which far from being an echo of an anarcho spirit of yore, denotes a record firmly entrenched in the psychic terrain of 2017.

'On the surface it could almost seem like there's no political art movement out there to oppose what's happening, but there is - we know there is' adds the band's Paddy Shine. 'Maybe that movement is struggling to find its voice as a cohesive whole right now but that will change. It has to change.'

Fuelled by their militant drive and unyielding ardour, Just Say No - ¦'refracts Gnod's harsh and repetitive riff-driven rancour through a psychotropic haze of dubbed-out abstraction, with Paddy's incendiary vocal delivery to the fore. ,Just Say No - ¦ sounds like a record only Gnod could make - a band fiercely independent, never comfortable in one place artistically for any duration of time, always with their co-ordinates set on uncharted territory and the next challenge ahead, and delivering a monument of ire and iconoclasm.

Tracklisting:
1. Bodies For Money
2. People
3. Paper Error
4. Real Man
5. Stick In the Wheel

Limited to 300 Copies.

A Goat family release.

Literally translated from the Latin, the name Capra Informis means ‘Shapeless Goat’, a curious turn of phrase given that this project is the work of the nameless djembi player from the Swedish psychedelic warriors monikered with the latter of the two words. Nonetheless, somewhere amidst the hinterland between shape and void, dream and waking, it would appear that some form of transformative process has indeed occurred over the course of the nineteen minutes of their debut EP on Rocket Recordings. Casting a heady and intoxicating spell of nocturnal atmosphere and drone-based abandon, these four tracks set out a shamanic mission both fresh and feral.

Whilst Capra Informis may share some stylistic touches with their main protagonist’s regular band, they also boast a markedly darker approach - the mesmerising percussive onslaught may be present and correct, yet the psychic landscapes and deviant monomania of these four raven-hued trips renders them imposing in their Dionysian debauchery. Moreover, while the one-chord guitar-driven inferno of ‘Womb Of The Wild’ finds kindred spirits in the nihilistic, spiritually-driven like of Dead Skeletons and early Skullflower, ‘Cold and high’ sees glacial synths and garage-birthed organ take the lead on a cinematic twilight voyage not unlike a Kenneth Anger filmscore’s depiction of an ayahuasca ritual. 

Throughout, however, the potency and persuasive powers of Capra Informis’ approach cannot be called into question - within these whispered incantations and mantric arrangements lurk dark forces and strange undertakings untold. Yet it remains a rare pleasure to bear witness to this rich collision of fiery intent and fearless third-eye vision. Far from the shadow of their ringleader’s past work. Capra Informis are staking their claim as chimerical warriors with manifold powers, and this four-track sermon marks only the first of their forays into the unknown that promise rich rewards for the far-gone and the intrepid alike.

Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Darkness, You Fire
2. Womb Of The Wild

Side B:
1. Cold And High
2. Enter Thaumiel

Julie's Haircut - Italy's premiere psychedelic explorers have created a deep-end approach to sonic innovation that is audible on 'Invocation And Ritual Dance Of My Demon Twin' - their debut release for the great UK label Rocket Recordings.

Seven albums into a mission initially inspired by the likes of Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3, the band now find themselves at a new plateau of small-hours elucidation and revelation that may summon the spectres of the wayward squall of early Mercury Rev, the shamanic allure of Dead Skeletons, the freedom of Miles Davis, the repetition of Can or the wild soundscapes of Amon Duul II to some, yet essentially sounds like no-one but themselves.

The result is a record built on trance-like repetition that grows to mantric intensity to summon atmospheric plateaus redolent of the psychic and surreal transgressions of its title - a double-helix tribute to both Frank Zappa and Kenneth Anger.

Coruscating guitar overload and jazz-tinged blowout collide amidst hypnotic soundscapes like the shamanically inclined The Fire Sermon'and the eleven-minute motorik magnificence of the curtain-raiser Zukunft'.

Yet atmospheric restraint, glacial texture and immersive groove play as large a part in this blinding and beatific soundworld as droning darkness or overheated amp tubes.

Tracklisting:
1.Zukunft
2. The Fire Sermon
3. Orpheus Rising
4. Deluge
5. Salting Traces
6. Cycles
7. Gathering Light
8. Koan

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.

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

Having already been nominated for a Swedish Grammy with their debut EP, Diamond Waves, their full-length 2015 debut on Rocket Recordings, Horse Dance, marked out a territory in which beguiling repetition could sashay with sweet pop suss, melodic flourishes with experimental intensity, and it was summarily rapturously received on arrival, making new fans and earning them appearances at Roskilde Festival and Eindhoven Psych Lab.

Their second effort Mirage, which follows a mere year after its predecessor, sees the band sculpting sprawling, hypnotic jams into elegant nocturnal serenades. 'We agree on not remembering very much about how these tracks came about, that all of them were written on the road and that most of them came fully formed' note the band. 'Most were really long to begin with, but we found it relieving to break away a bit from the mandatory psych jams a little bit. We also just realised that none of them were written in daylight, which might be why memory is so elusive.' Indeed, this hypnagogic approach seems to fit well with the primary inspiration for the five-piece, which centred on the state where dreams, visions and the present are entwined'.

Mirage sees the band taking a chic tradition of avant-pop that extends all the way from Serge Gainsbourg and Françoise Hardy to Broadcast and Saint Etienne, and warping it mercilessly to their own darker ends. Whilst the brooding yet sultry Sister Green Eyes'is no less than a sharp slice of velveteen motorik-pop and Looking For You'reinvents three-chord garage-rock attack with mighty finesse, The Liberation are just as comfortable dealing out the heavy-lidded and electronically-driven In Madrid'or the dive in the hallucinatory deep end of Circular Motion', on which they're aided and abetted by Lay Llamas'Nicola Guinta.

The seductive splendour of these ten songs åmake manifest a parallel world of disorientation and deliverance in which one would be a fool not to want to languish adrift. Fresh excitement for the band lies in wait, courtesy of a UK tour with Goat and an appearance at Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia.

Tracklisting:
1. The State (I'm In)
2. Sister Green Eyes
3. In Madrid
4. Rainbow Lollipop
5. Endless Ocean
6. Looking For You
7. Rushing Through My Mind
8. Circular Motion
9. Where I'm Going
10. Imagine You

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

H.U.M. marks the convergence of a triad of kindred spirits with a common goal of expanding consciousness.

On Trinity Way their debut release for Rocket Recordings, the cosmic/terrestrial musician/magician triumvirate of Héloïse Zamzamrec, Olmo Uiutna and Mark Wagner delve into ritualistic audial travelogues which unite mantric repetition, concrète noise and kosmische explorations, the better to transform and enrich the soul.

All three acolytes of H.U.M. arrive at this destination from a rich history of experimental music and art - Héloïse and Olmo found renown running the cult label Zamzamrec whilst Mark Wagner, meanwhile, has involved himself in a diverse and vibrant litany of projects, most recently touring as a member of GNOD, and Ahrkh Wagner and is an active practitioner of music as a spiritual medium.

These trance-like meditations and illuminating visions draw on a plethora of earthly parallels, from the iconoclastic writing of Rimbaud or Artaud to the occultist sound-world of Coil, from the invigorating DIY ethos of the Not Not Fun label to the anarchic sprawl of The Faust Tapes, and with Wagner's stream-of-consciousness incantations inviting comparisons to Robert Calvert or Genesis P-Orridge.

Using primal rhythm, earthly resonances and devotional oratory as pathways to uncharted dimensions and higher metaphysical realms Trinity Way emanates on another wavelength from most of which is dubbed psychedelic music in the second decade of the 21st Century, Trinity Way is a free-flowing odyssey of vivid, hallucinatory intensity. Yet through a marriage of simple ingredients, these three have created an off-the-map album which nonetheless places its feet on the ground and its gaze on the cosmos.

As Héloïse herself says; 'Trinity Way is a magic door, a sonic portal. Trinity Way is not an escape of the everyday realm but an entrance, a mode, an invitation - ¦'

Tracklisting:
1. L.O.V.E.
2. L'Ame Agit
3. Cat-Man-Do
4. Welcome To The Sea
5. A Maze In Grace
6. Under Neith
7. Eternally Yours

It looms into view through the fog. much like a metaphysical force from the celluloid revelations that dwell in our memories and haunt our subconscious. A twisted morass of circuitry and flesh, binary chill and visceral barbarism. Necro Deathmort have created a monster, and it's both a malevolent and magical thing to behold. It's name is The Capsule.

This two-man aural manifestation came to life towards the end of the last decade, starting originally in the words of co-conspirator Matthew Rozeik 'as an abortive attempt to do a regular'rock band, born from jamming in studio downtime when our drummer was AWOL' Drawing on influences ranging across the spectrum from Ed Rush & Optical to Old Man Gloom and from Autechre to Neurosis, he remembers that the unspoken objective for himself and cohort AJ Cookson was 'to make electronic music that was as heavy as doom metal, with absolutely filthy bass.'

Moreover, the duo have proven frighteningly prolific, releasing a total of ten releases both on Distraction records and on Rozeik's own Extreme Ultimate label, which arrive at a wide variety of tense and transcendental mental landscapes. Yet The Capsule marks the band's first for Rocket Recordings, and it's a step yet further into the terrifying vacuum of space. 'We've stopped caring that each new release might alienate fans of a previous record' notes Rozeik wryly. 'I think it's contributed to the longevity of the band, as we have a large well of inspiration from which to draw.' True to form.

Whilst this album's opener In Waves'maps out rhythmic terrain somewhere amidst krautrock groove and techno relentlessness, it's not long before matters take a turn into the unearthly, with dreamlike extrapolations like Mono/Serum'- redolent of nothing so much as Mica Levi's otherworldly soundtrack to Under The Skin - sharing space with the threatening momentum of the more overtly metallic Moonstar'. Yet at all times The Capsule is a work of fierce cohesion and compelling intensity. Whilst there may be three words for death in this band's initially playful name, Necro Deathmort have proven themselves well versed in infinite varieties of the macabre. What's more, in The Capsule, no-on can hear you scream. 

Tracklisting:
1. In Waves
2. First Rays
3. Moonstar
4. Capsule Sickness
5. Crux
6. Mono/Serum
7. Pecklyn
8. Screens