Rocket Recordings
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As 2016 dawns , it's a fool who predicts the next move of Gnod, seemingly less a musical collective and more a psychic force fuelled by maverick spirit and fearsome willpower. Their mind-frying 2015 triple-album Infinity Machines'stood proud as a towering work of experimental expansion, acidic invective and nihilistic abrasion.Visit product page →
Yet as an outfit whose restlessly uncompromising nature is matched only by their unflinching anti-establishment drive, Gnod set about creating a diametrically opposed aesthetic. Just as dramatically as their restless disposition morphed their sound to a binary-driven direction for their last work, now Gnod were to strip their electronic setup to a vicious, viscous attack, as redolent of the primal punishment of early Swans as the angular clangour of prime Public Image Ltd, yet shot through with a mercurial power and fiery intensity that could come from no-one else.
The opening title-cut of Mirror'seethes with lithe energy and dubbed-out vitality, whilst elsewhere the eighteen-minute closing track Sodom & Gomorrah'may be the most dystopian piece of music the band have yet created; a harrowing yet fiercely compelling colossus of bleak abjection. 'The tracks were pretty much written on the road in May 2015' elaborates Gnod's Paddy Shine. 'The final versions of the tracks on the album are a reaction to the results of the recent UK election and also some shit that was happening to us and our friends during that period.
Lyrically it deals with mental health issues and how things like social media are a vehicle for our split personalities and egos - that and being under the thumb of forces and power structures we can't really fully understand, or even if we understand them we feel helpless to change the situation.
This album won't change the situation or start any revolutions but it felt good for us to write some music to let the rage out' Reflecting and refracting the uncertainty of a darkening era, Mirror'is a work of bold reinvention and raw renewal, sculpting chaos and discord into a formidable statement of intent. Only one thing is certain - wherever Gnod choose to go next, their ire and inspiration blaze as brightly as ever.
Tracklisting:
1. The Mirror
2. Learn To Forgive
3. Sodom & Gomorrah
4. The Mirror (RAIKES PARADE REMIX) -
In an era in which psychedelia'can often mean merely a grab-bag of influences from which wah-wah pedals and two-note riffs are dispensed as signifiers and signposts into a realm of easy accessibility as opposed to gateways to another dimension, it can be a rarity to come across a band who are genuinely fixated on creating alternate realities for the listener.Visit product page →
Yet this is exactly how Stockholm's Josefin Ohrn + The Liberation view their incandescent art, and it's this sensibility that's led to the kaleidoscopic spendour of their debut full-length for Rocket Recordings, Horse Dance'. The last twelve months have seem a dramatic rise to prominence for The Liberation (who take their band name from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead) with their EP Diamond Waves'leading to shows in their homeland with Goat and Les Big Byrd, a nomination for a Swedish Grammy as best newcomer, and rapturously received appearances at festivals like Roskilde.
These adventures have set the stage for a spectacular movement into the unknown from their earlier work. Horse Dance'is a razorsharp collection of ditties that marry dreamlike radiance with hypnotic rhythmic drive, set alight by a prismatic experimental glow. It inhabits a realm in which a propulsive 60s-tinged pop song like Sunny Afternoon'can be elevated skyward with krautrock-tinged repetition, dub echo and analogue curlicues alike, and one in which a Broadcast-style mantra like You Have Arrived'can tap into a psychic lineage that stretches all the way from The United States Of America to Portishead's Third'.
Yet whilst ghosts of the like of Laika, Cat's Eyes and The Creatures may lurk in the darker recesses of these songs, this is a band paying no homage to bygone glories. The Liberation cite a myriad influences in both their philosophical stance and their aesthetic, from 12th century iconoclasts like Milarepa to 20th century sonic voyagers like Catherine Ribeiro, and from Kandinsky's abstract expressions of synaesthesia to the avant-jazz of Moondog.
Yet at all times their transcendental extrapolations are married to icy and enticing melodic flourishes, making for a revitalising clash between the chic and the transcendental, and a sound as biting as it is beatific. With Horse Dance', Josefin Ohrn + The Liberation step into a world where all such restrictions and taboos are null and void, and this journey is already proving quite the spectacle to behold.
Tracklisting:
1. Radio Static High
2. March of the Headaches
3. Hop the Railings
4. Numbed Out
5. Memories of Wonder
6. Snapping Undone
7. Another Head
8. The Mourning Gong
9. Hesitation Time
10. Honey -
In the last decade, the iconoclastic four-pronged force of Teeth Of The Sea has traversed from its origins in North London pub gigs and basement rehearsal rooms to far-flung locales that its members could scarcely have considered possible when they first began. Yet this band has never lost sight of its original vision - to reconcile a fearless experimental drive with a primal lust for noise. To exist outside of all or any compromise. Yet never to lose sight of the crucial irreverence of their inception.Visit product page →
Their fourth album Highly Deadly Black Tarantula', in all its malevolent glory, may well be the apex of their mission thus far. Following in the wake of the release of their mind-melting third album MASTER''.
2014 was a bizarre and thrilling year for Teeth Of The Sea, taking them to unexpected territory both physical and metaphysical - a re-imagining of the modern-day midnight movie A Field In England saw performances at both Cork Film Festival and Hackney Picture House, and was released on Rocket Recordings on a limited run for Record Store Day. A new audio-visual piece The Last Man was performed at both Cineglobe Festival in Cern, home of the Large Hadron Particle Collider, and at Transilvania International Film Festival in Cluj-Napoca.
What's more, the band travelled to America for the first time to perform in Austin, Texas for SXSW and to Portugal for Milhoes De Festa, as well as finishing the year off with a comprehensive demolition job of Liverpool Psych Fest.However, as 2015 dawned, the band set about reinventing themselves once again - both returning from the ornate and expansive sounds of MASTER'to their gnarled roots and pushing firmly forward in search of adventure anew.
What resulted was Highly Deadly Black Tarantula', their most focused and aggressive album yet. Machine-driven yet melodically abundant, the widescreen industrial expanses of this album combine the influence of long-time band favourites like Aphex Twin, Angelo Badalamenti and Throbbing Gristle with new inspiration that spans from Chicago footwork to black metal. What's more, it's a collection as rich in scope as it is powerful in intent.
Whilst the pummelling and incisive Animal Manservant'and the kinetic dancefloor attack of Field Punishment'maintain an audial assault both concise and corrosive, the monomaniacal Have You Ever Held A Bird Of Prey'represents a fearless plunge into the experimental deep end. Elsewhere, the bleak cinematic drama of All My Venom'strikes like hammer to anvil, and Love Theme For 1984'may be the most richly emotive work the band have yet created.
This is no less than a vital reinvention, abusing technology and warping convention to arrive at a monochrome psychedelia as stylish as it is savage. Yet even whilst ushering in delight and deliverance for both fans of this band and the uninitiated, HIghly Deadly Black Tarantula'- a fearsomely coherent assault of post-everything dementia - sounds like no-one but Teeth Of The Sea.
Tracklisting:
1. All My Venom
2. Animal Manservant
3. Field Punishment
4. Have You Ever Held A Bird Of Prey
5. Phonogene
6. Love Theme For 1984 -
The Russian city of Perm takes its name from the Finno-Ugric word para ma'meaning Faraway land'. Indeed, despite being a centre of both culture and industry for the Ural region, at seven hundred miles from Moscow it was far enough away from the heart of the Russian empire to be used as a place of exile in the nineteenth century for those who fell out of favour with Alexander I. Even whilst dwelling in an era two centuries on in which such exile is now more metaphysical, and in which electronic connections have effectively made the world a smaller place, it can nonetheless be easy for an artist to feel the burden of geographical isolation, The three musicians who form Gnoomes hail from Perm - and have a deep connection with their home - indeed their drummer Pacha is descended from the Komis, the indigenous pagan people of the area before Russian culture and orthodox religion overtook it in the the late 15th century.Visit product page →
Yet rather than being confined or frustrated by their surroundings, the three-piece outfit have used their origins as a springboard to the unknown, via the skysurfing radiance of their debut album for Rocket Recordings, Ngan!''We think about isolation as a dream trigger, and sometimes a dream becomes a motivation to do something cool' Gnoomes relate. 'Being in a band is the one thing that keeps us from Russian madness.'
Ngan!'is an album suffused with a potent sense of wonder - it's bookended by the enormous twin psychic monoliths of Roadhouse'and My Boy', which form dreamlike aural travelogues clocking in at around a quarter-hour each, and take influences as diverse as the fiery avant-six-string scree of Atlas Sound, the classic motorik of Neu! and Kompakt label techno, and sculpt them into a wide-eyed, kaleidoscopic sweep of sound that the band themselves, keen to break free of generic convention, dub stargaze'. It's a style which nods to the melodic sweetness of The Flaming Lips or Tame Impala as much as the synapse-shifting dynamics of Animal Collective or My Bloody Valentine. Myriads'is nothing less than a sweet and somewhat slightly dazed pop song - distantly related to the muse of Syd Barrett, yet filtered through the band's ambitiously hallucinogenic soundworld and propulsive rhythmic drive.
Elsewhere,on Moognes'the collision of melancholy vocal harmonies, luminous guitar melody and in-the-red intensity makes for a sound as bracing as it is beatific.
Ngan!' is the sound of a band looking above and beyond modern archetypes of guitar-fuelled noise in search of a strange and beguiling personal vision, and dissolving barriers of distance, cultural context and geographical inconvenience with a confident and warm-hearted flourish. 'For us this is the main mechanism of psychedelic music' the band explain. 'to connect things, to join this particular experience into a global one.' On the evidence of Ngan!'Gnoomes would appear to be on the verge of doing just that.
Tracklisting:
1. roadhouse
2. myriads
3. moognes
4. my son -
Available on Blood Red Vinyl and CD.Visit product page →
Initially lurching from the UK noise underground in 2003 like a bedraggled audial creature rendered from toxic waste in a VHS horror movie, the musical growth rate of Hey Colossus has been quite a spectacle to observe. Yet from the nightmarish murk of early driller-killer works such as 2004's debut Hates You'and 2008's Happy Birthday'to more recent nuggets of perversity like 2013's Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo', this beast has mutated and evolved into something uncommonly alluring.
The six-piece London-via-Somerset troupe began 2015 with February's release of In Black And Gold'- in which the brawny repetition-driven raunch they built their sound on was furnished and burnished by dub-derived spatial awareness and cinematic drama, making it both a bold reinvention and an uncommonly compulsive avant-rock document. Yet not content with this, the band immediately set about following it up with their second album of the year, and one that further ups the ante on their savagely graceful assault.
Radio Static High'is the sound of a confident outfit honing their attack to become a veritable force of nature. With the band citing - tongue presumably firmly lodged in cheek - inspirations as diverse as Jane's Addiction, Fleetwood Mac (Tango In The Night era) and Cypress Hill, songs were constructed at a fierce rate of knots, yet with a focus and intensity partly instilled by band members living hundreds of miles apart, and partly by the relentless passage of time.
'We have noticed a small wave of incredible goodwill towards us. We want to give as we receive.' notes guitarist Jonathan Richards, whose chiming lead guitar plays a notable role in the album's Paris,Texas-esque midday ambience..'Maybe the knowledge of our 12 years together makes us aware of our mortality. Time is limited. A band's purpose is to create' Songs took shape from demos, exchanged riffs and drunken text messages alike -one such from guitarist Bob Davis to Richards demanding an homage to Neil Young's Cortez The Killer'resulted in a demo to that effect a mere 20 minutes later. which eventually became album centrepiece Memories Of Wonder'.
Elsewhere, Hop The Railings'takes the powerfully propulsive groove of Can and cross-pollinates it with Beefheartian interweaving triple-guitar skronk to make a heat-haze-dwelling juggernaut of intimidating proportions, whilst the closing double-drop of Hesitation Time'and 'Honey'hits like Joy Division repurposed for the soundtrack to True Detective. 'After 12 years functioning in a Noiserock/Doom/Kraut/whatever scene of sorts and being aware of unwanted repetition, we feel it is more subversive for us to compose songs with rigid song structures than it is to absentmindedly clang off another riff-athon.'
Richards adds:
Indeed, with all the bulldozing primal drive of heavy AmRep-style rock and none of the cliches, and a sound infused with leftfield sleight-of-hand yet hitting home like hammer to anvil, Hey Colossus prove themselves as potent as they are prolific. What's more, 'Radio Static High', in all its sunkissed widescreen glory, is set to leave most all their contemporaries eating their dust.
Tracklisting:
1. Radio Static High
2. March of the Headaches
3. Hop the Railings
4. Numbed Out
5. Memories of Wonder
6. Snapping Undone
7. Another Head
8. The Mourning Gong
9. Hesitation Time
10. Honey -
Visit product page →As has often been noted, psychedelic music can involve causal links between getting out of it and getting into it. Conversely, expansion of consciousness can be found by heading deep into the roots that a band explores, and journeying to the centre of their inspiration.
Thus, a curious paradox is attained, whereby the traditional elements of an outfit's sound are superseded by them blasting their core vibrations into unchartered territory. Such is the case with the new opus from third-eye visionaries Hills, a dizzying journey that traverses through the band's origins and beyond to new dimensions.
The Gothenburg-based Hills are entering their ninth year of existence, in which they've released two full-length albums, the second of which, Master Sleeps'saw a vinyl outing on Rocket last year. Part of a rich scene in their homestead also including friends and Rocket Recordings label mates Goat, they form the new chapter in a tradition of Swedish psychedelia that found its origins in late-'60s and early 70s freakouts and mind-melts by the likes of Baby Grandmothers and Þlgarnas Trädgård - not to mention the unholy trinity of Pärson Sound, International Harvester and Träd Gräs och Stenar - before being developed by the likes of The Spacious Mind and Dungen in the last two decades.
These inspirations make their mark on Frid'by journeying inward, via mantric repetition and hip-shaking pulsations as on the ten-minute monolith, Och Solen Sänkte Sig Röd', yet they can also lurch into the unknown via the fuzz/wah odysseys of the aptly monikered National Drone'and the ceremonial exhortations of the closing Death Will Find A Way.'As they also showed recently at a rare and spellbinding appearance at Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia, Hills have landed on a rich and intoxicating sound that sidesteps the cliches and humdrum stylistic foibles that often plague modern-day psych, in the process breathing new life into an approach that can sometimes seem in danger of appearing redundant through lack of imagination.
Frid', their most out-of-mind and out-of-sight effort to date, crystallises everything that makes these Scandinavian satyrs stand out from the global herd; adventurous experimentation and fearless hallucinatory intensity, rendered with brass-knuckle fortitude. The end result is 38 minutes that translate into a feast for seasoned crate-diggers and fresh-faced converts alike. There is, indeed, gold in these here Hills.
Tracklisting:
1. Kollektiv
2. National Drone
3. Anukthal Is Here
4. Milarepa
5. Och Solen Sänkte Sig Röd
6. Death Will Find A Way -
Sold outAvailable on limited Green or Black vinyl With a Download Card.Visit product page →
Goat return with a brand new single, their first new music since the critically acclaimed second album Commune, which was released last September.
The winter months following that release saw the band return to their village of Korpilombolo in Sweden to start anew on fresh material, and this two-track single collects the first fruits of this work. However, these two songs were not recorded in their native land - instead Goat decided to hit the studio on a recent excursion to the Americas.
The A-side It's Time For Fun'was recorded in New York whilst B-side Relax'was committed to posterity in Sao Paolo. New York seems a fitting location for the recording of It's Time For Fun'as the spirit of ESG and early 80s No Wave runs through the skittering drum machines, dubby basslines, fuzzy synth and the haunted chants of the vocals.
Its flip-side Relax'mainlines a similar vibe, yet this reflective instrumental marries Future Days'like drum machine, tribal percussion, grooved-out bass and a fan-driven organ solo that gyrates elegantly in a manner akin to a North African Heldon or Fripp & Eno.
A hectic and hedonistic summer of rituals and revelations lies ahead of Goat, as besides from recording their third album for Rocket, they'll be bringing their legendarily earth-shaking live show to a plethora of festivals, including a return to Glastonbury!
Tracklisting:
1. It's time for fun
2. Relax -
Sold outSlaves to no-one but their own psychic co-ordinates. Gnod continue their fearless voyages down pathways unknown. Operating from their base camp of Islington Mill - a venue, art-space and liminal zone in Salford - the band have stubbornly pursued their own free-flowing aesthetic since their formation.Visit product page →
Infinity Machines', their fifth release for Rocket Recordings, and the latest for this prolific outfit in a vibrant and diverse history, is no less than a pinnacle of achievement for a band who exist beyond all or any reductive genre pigeonholes, not to mention beyond the constraints of the everyday. A triple-album, it explores a unique vision informed by experimental élan and metaphysical intensity. In an era in which the word psychedelic'too often tends to signify a reductive and retrograde rag-bag of second-hand shapes, it was in Gnod's nature to forge forth in search of new and expanded sonic terrain.
At first, this led them to pursue a purely electronic sound in the live arena, yet as they knuckled down to chronicle this expansion and experimentation for posterity, it became clear that a mixture of live instrumentation and binary audial research would be the path that would prove most fruitful. Thus began the process that would ultimately produce these recordings, and a far-reaching mission which would result in uncanny crepuscular atmo¬sphere locking horns with sinister electronic intensity.
Infinity Machines'traverses between and beyond a variety of different headspaces from the bleak to the beatific - yet whilst touching on nocturnal jazz, soothing yet unsettling ambience, menacing aggro-industrial battery and opiated bliss-out alike, it's shot through with an undercurrent of fiery countercultural zeal and small-hours revelation, as if the hive-mind of their home collective had manifested itself on six sides of wax. Tracks were put together from an initial blank canvas, and as the band themselves emphasize, 'We got pretty tactical in the approach.
We have certainly noticed that the emphasis has shifted from full on throw everything at it'Gnod vibes to a more stripped spacious sound which was not fully intentional but more of a natural progression' Spoken word contributions, many from Islington Mill inhabitants and seers, vie for attention with gridlike and vicious beats, synapse-shifting modular synthesis, field recordings. and even the hitherto unheard appearance of saxophone and electric piano textures.
As Gnod put it. 'We really like the idea of a Rhodes and sax on a Gnod record, because to most people those instruments are pure cheese, but we think they are pure soul' This 110-minute opus, fearless in spirit and limitless in scope, documents the unstoppable motion of an iconoclastic force beyond the comprehension of the unenlightened. A transmission from a collective consciousness that touches on universal truths and dark powers alike, and a bold new chapter in this mercurial collective's glorious passage into the unknown. Yet now as ever, In Gnod We Trust.
Tracklisting:
1. Control Systems
2. Inevitable Collateral
3. Desire
4. Importance Of Downtime
5. White Privileged Wank
6. Spinal Fluid
7. Breaking The Hex
8. Infinity Machines -
Sold outShit and Shine, the mutant brainchild of seasoned transgressor Craig Clouse, have traversed to places that few ordinary bands would dare to venture, and moreover have transcended both genre and sanity in their pursuit of reckless audial endangerment. Taking the repetitive rhythmic drive of krautrock and marrying it to a percussive Butthole Surfers-style strain of acidic intensity. they've carved out a unique niche for themselves as one of the most unpredictable, ornery and - occasionally - outright unpleasant outfits in living memory.Visit product page →
Like a robot Can-Hawkwind hybrid in a Phillip K. Dick future, reassembling disco, abstract electronica and noiserock into elegant new shapes, Shit and Shine furrow brows and fry synapses in equal measure. In spite of this new opus boasting a leaner, sleeker attack than that of yore - partly informed by the band's recent releases on Powell's Diagonal records - the same sense of gleeful perversity is abundant, and the same twisted humour ingrained in these grotesque and hypnotic grooves. Where there is rock within 54-Synth-Brass 38 Metal Guitar 65 Cathedral', its essence is morphed and feverishly formulated into extraterrestrial aural landscapes, as on the opening Electric Pony 2', which lurches forth like Chrome alchemically reassembling the disembodied spirit of Marc Bolan in a scrapyard trash compactor.
Elsewhere, spectres of smooth jazz fusion lock horns with the against-the-grain approach of Aphex Twin, circular necro-Necks grooves are beset by demons. And the abstract funk of Love Your Hair-Hope You Win'locks a Larry Graham-style groove in a vortex of digital disorientation. Brandishing an intimidating psychic attack and equipped as ever with both nameless menace and savage wit, rarely has a band made sounding so wrong sound so right.
Tracklist:
1. Electric Pony 2
2. C2-6
3. Cowboy Hat
4. Goat $Hit (Cd Exclusive Track)
5. Love Your Hair - Hope You Win!
6. Writing Poetry On Your Forehead With The Tip Of A Hunting Knife
7. Egg Mm-Mufin/ Pimp Different (cd bonus track)
' ...psychedelic experiences as bowel-shakingly visceral as they are disorientating.' The Wire
' ...a work of near genius.' The Quietus
' ...it's grungy, dungeondwelling electronic mayhem, and at the same time, almost vintage, b-boy electro.' Fact Magazine -
The Rocket Recordings Collisions series has thus far seen luminaries like The Heads, White Hills, Oneida, Mugstar, Shit & Shine and Gnod locking horns against each other on psychic voyages to bold dimensions anew.Visit product page →
The latest instalment again deals with a pair of hand-picked, boundary-breaking iconoclasts, pushing the Collisions series further out into the realm of the unexpected, as this Anglo-Italian pair of perversely kindred spirits combine to wreak havoc.Mysteriously and ghoulish masked voyagers from a land of nightmare (via Preston, Lancashire) Evil Blizzard have been raising eyebrows in the live arena in the last two years with their queasy,grand guignol-tinged style of repetitive and intense dementia, existing on a psychic wavelength informed by the howling dread of Metal Box'-era PiL, the sonic overload of Hawkwind and a taste for a very British type of disquieting absurdity.
Their contribution to this disc comprises two versions of the previously unreleased powerhouse that remains at the centre of their live set, Sacrifice'; along with the sinister riff-monolith itself, a remix by fellow Rocket artists Teeth Of The Sea, beams the track through a prism of electronic horrorscore tension and adds chanted vocal mantas and demented ululations to suitably unsettling and portentous effect.
Mamuthones, noted for their position in the burgeoning Italian occult psychedelic movement, possess markedly similar psychological makeup, building their sound on circular, repetitive motifs and taking their name from a death-masked figure from a ritual of some 2,000 years standing, famous for walking the processions and haunting the imaginations of the Sardinian locals via their prominence in traditional carnivals.
Yet in keeping with the darkly celebratory origins of their monicker, this band, formed by ex-Jennifer Gentle (Sub Pop) man Alessio Gastaldello, are possessed of an upbeat and effervescent sound equally damaged by the dark alchemy of early Can, the sci-fi swagger of Chrome and the magpie spirit of Eno and Byrne's My Life In The Bush With Ghosts'.
Collisions 04 explores the ying and yang of an approach whereby overt post-punk and psychedelic influences meld with with esoteric vibrations and irreverent attitude, challenging bands, listener, and label alike in an intimidating and invigorating assault on the senses. Evil Blizzard and Mamuthones make for formidable opponents, in a demolition derby where the result is victory for all.
Tracklist:
Mamuthones
1. I Gotta Be
2. Don't Be Choosy
3. Fire On Fire
4. Holy Ghost People
Evil Blizzard
5. Sacrifice
6. Sacrifice (Teeth Of The Sea's Offering Mix) -
Sold outSide A:Visit product page →
1. Hot Grave
2. Oktave Dokkter
3. How To Tell Time With Jesus
Side B:
4. Leather Lake
5. English Flesh
6. Pit And Hope -
Emerging in a haze of demented riff science and booze-addled abandon, Hey Colossus have carved out a notable niche for themselves in the British underground's murkier quarters. They've dished out a formidable array of wax over the last decade, specialising in a primordial barrage of abject noise from overheated ampstacks.Visit product page →
Yet for all the grit and gnarl of their output thus far, it's seemingly only been a warm-up for their latest opus, which sees their monstrous assault finely honed into an album as beguiling as it is bulldozing. In Black And Gold', their eighth album proper and first for Rocket Recordings, ushers in a new incarnation of Hey Colossus.
Marrying malevolent attack to expansive celestial splendour, In Black And Gold'marks a point whereby Hey Colossus map out a sonic trajectory that expands on their trademark ornery overload. The songs herein may be leaner and more artful than the fearsome sound by which they made their name on albums like 2008's Project: Death'and the monstrous 2013 opus Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo', but they remain possessed of the wrath both Stoogian and Stygian that fuels their noiserock transgression.
Yet meanwhile, and with 2015 looming large, an evolutionary process has led to their maximalist tendencies being replaced by a sharp focus on space and restraint, not to mention a refreshing stylistic diversity, resulting in a strange aural alchemy. Here, they sound as comfortable tackling electronically-fried dub mantras like Lagos Atom'as they do the Cluster-esque lullaby of the opening Hold On'. Yet there's no shortage of primal rock action to be had on In Black And Gold'; on Sisters And Brothers'they summon up a swaggering, demented groove that sashays like a zombified Gun Club, whilst on the dramatic spaghetti-psych of the title-track a revelatory cinematic sprawl of sound sees The Bad Seeds and The 13th Floor Elevators engaged in a psychic duel in the noonday sun.
The vital and Spinal Tap-approved fine line between clever and stupid'has been a location that this London-based tinnitus machine has made fine work of dwelling on for the duration of their life thus far. Yet with In Black And Gold', in a laudable leap of faith, they've stepped beyond, and the result is both vicious and visionary. These unpretentious underworld overlords have emerged from the shadows to create an avant-garage pièce de résistance, and moreover it turns out that the sunlight suits them better than they ever realised.
Tracklisting:
1. Hold On
2. Sisters And Brothers
3. Hey, Dead Eyes, Up!
4. Wired_Brainless
5. Black And Gold
6. Lagos Atom
7. Eat It
8. Sinking, Feeling -
Sold outVisit product page →1. National Crisis2.Lost In The Modern World3. Queen O' Fuck4. Stars Explode5. Don't Wanna Know6. Distance Between Us7. Babies Blossom8. Feel Like I'm Fading Away9. Going Down10. She Plays With Light And Crystal Roses11. Near The Final Destination -
Sold outVisit product page →1. Rise again2. Bring me sand3. Claras Vaggvisa4. The Vessel5. Master Sleeps6. Death Shall Come -
Goat return with Commune, the eagerly awaited follow up to their astonishing debut album World Music. Commune continues on with World Music's acidic grooves, hypnotic incantations, and serpentine guitar lines but also introduces a darker, more angry edge to the band, not seen before on previous releases.Visit product page →
Starting with the layered percussive groove, Eastern guitar flourishes, and convoking vocals of Talk To God, it re-establishes the trance-inducing rhythms and exotic blaze of guitar that characterized their debut so well.
That spellbound pulse delves into darker and more propulsive territories on Words and Goatslaves, while Goatchild veers towards the transcendental pop of '60s Bay Area rock. The vintage psychedelic vibe permeates through songs like The Light Within and To Travel The Path Unknown'?tracks that suggest that these rural Swedes operate on the same wavelength as the Turkish psych-folkies recently rediscovered by reissue labels like Finders Keepers. Commune reaches its apex when Goat's hymnal invocations meet a heavy doze of proto-metal fuzz on Hide From The Sun and Gathering of Ancient Tribes.
Tracklisting:
1. Talk To God
2. Words
3. The Light Within
4. Travel The Path Unknown
5. Goatchild
6. Goatslaves
7. Hide From The Sun
8. Bondye
9. Gathering Of Ancient Tribes -
Sold outAvailable in a limited edition on thick red wax.Visit product page →
Swiftly following the release of their successful third album MASTER, Teeth of the Sea are proud to present a limited LP release of their re-imagined score to Ben Wheatley's metaphysical midnight movie A Field In England. This work sees London's most adventurous and intrepid psychedelic adventurers allying motifs and psychic spectres from Jim Williams and Blanck Mass' music and reinterpreting them to their own ends, arriving at a bold and richly atmospheric transmission that takes the rites and revelations of the original work into pastures new.Originally spurred into action by a commission for Cork Film Festival in November 2013, Teeth of the Sea worked on the audio-visual reworking with their long-standing visual collaborator Benjamin Barfoot (who also created the jaw-dropping 'Reaper' video last year and worked on the band's previous 'Beyond The Transfinite' piece, which debuted at Bestival in 2012).
The first performance of A Field In England-Reimagined, in the converted church venue Triskel in Cork in November 2013, was a resounding sell-out success, as was a repeat performance at the enormous screen one at Hackney Picture House in January 2014. Inspired by this reaction, the band entered Lightship95, the studio housed on a converted ship on the Thames where they also recorded MASTER, to record the music to this half-hour travelogue. In the process, they found themselves travelling down unforeseen sonic avenues- taking a notably more melodic and pastoral approach, these three tracks find them channelling influences like Flying Saucer Attack, Bobby Beausoleil, Popol Vuh and 'La Novia' era Acid Mothers Temple to mercurial and transformative effect.Teeth of the Sea's goal was to take the mind-games, the malevolence and the magick of the film as fuel for a work that exists on a parallel dimension to the earthen realm on which the protagonists carry out their actions.
I. Whilst We Live In Fear Of Hell ChapterII. An Ungodly SchemeIII. Open Up And Let The Devil In
Housed in a sleeve featuring all-new artwork by Rocket Recordings seer Johnny O, and available in a limited edition on thick red waxHoused in a sleeve featuring all-new artwork by Rocket Recordings seer Johnny O, and available in a limited edition on thick red waxv -
On saleThe Lay Llamas consist of the Sicilian-born and raised but now Rome-based duo of Gioele Valenti and Nicola Giunta, who are now set to release their debut album 'Ostro' this May on Rocket. Recorded in an old-house in the Segesta countryside of Sicily, Valenti and Giunta soaked up the history-imbued environment. The makeshift studio was located alongside the great Temple of Hera that dates all the way back to 6th century BC We've been so influenced by the place's mood, with that ancient presence in the air says Valenti. These recording sessions have resulted in a heavily layered album, filled (but not clogged) with various instrumentation from the expected guitars, bass, synth and drums to the more unexpected sounds of Tibetan Bells and Ukulele.Visit product page →
Whilst the duo work from a shared vision that places keen focus on stream-of-consciousness approaches or, as Valenti puts it A prismatic panorama, or well, a BRAINMATIC PANORAMA! there really is an ambiguity, an uncertainness and a sense of the unknown, the otherworldly and the mystical when traversing through the vast spheres of the record. The pair's own descriptions of some of the album's tracks are testament to the sprawling, shifting, mass of it all Suicide and Oneida dancing together around a big campfire ' Pagan post-punk! ' a slow march for psychedelic warriors on the unknown planet ' gospel-dub ' A bad trip. And a trip it certainly is, some records aim to exist by not coming from a particular place but to exist in the transitions and journeys in-between them. Be them real, mystical or imaginary, present or past, the focus is on the movement rather than the end destination and the Lay Llamas' debut album 'Ostro' is most certainly one such record.
1. Ancient people of the stars2. We are you3. The Lay Llamas4. Desert of lost souls5. Overmind6. Archaic revival7. Something wrong8. In search of plants9. Voices call -
On saleVisit product page →From the radiant consciousness of Britain's most intrepid sonic assassins comes a shattered mirrorball of a record fit to transform and transfix all that surrounds it in 2013 and beyond.
Master, the long-awaited and devastating third album of Teeth Of The Sea, is an unprecedented junket into mind-melting abstraction and neon-drenched revelation.Nearly three years have passed since the band released 'Your Mercury', their transcendent second album, and the four-piece have kept very busy during this period-they've gigged constantly, sharing stages with the likes of Goat, Circle, British Sea Power, Trans Am and Parts And Labor, collaborating live with Wire and Esben & The Witch, and taking their incendiary barrage to festivals like Roadburn, Green Man, Supersonic, Supernormal and Standon Calling.
Yet the evolution of their third album was most dramatically affected by two specially-commissioned soundtrack projects they embarked on-at Branchage Film Festival in Jersey, the band performed REAPER, a new live score to a re-interpretation of Neil Marshall's film Doomsday, and a year later, at Bestival on the Isle Of Wight, they unveiled BEYOND THE TRANSFINITE, a tribute to Kubrick's 2001.
In this period, the band's experimental instincts have continued to extend in a myriad directions, and whilst MASTER nods to the established Teeth of the Sea touchstones of Throbbing Gristle, Goblin, Heldon, Angelo Badalamenti and Slayer, recent work by the like of Byetone, Pete Swanson, Raime, Powell and Prurient, alongside a long-standing fixation on the disco stylings of Patrick Cowley and Giorgio Moroder, have helped to mark out a gritty, confrontational path whereby abrasive and sparkling electronic textures do battle with waves of incandescent noise and a merciless beat-driven imperative to form a powerful alchemical charge.
From the concrete and chaos of North London, Teeth of the Sea have taken the psychic spectres of their surroundings and allied them to the apparitions of their trash-culture fixated imagination to create a laser-guided metaphysical foray, cinematic in scope.
1. Leder
2. Reaper
3. The Servant
4. Black Strategy
5. Pleiades Underground / Inexorable Master
6. Siren Spectre
7. Put Me On Your Shoulders So I Can See The Rats
8. All Human Is Error
9. Responder
