★VHF Records
Opium Music
Includes download code. "Part of a collaboration with Jack Rose's estate and Three Lobed Records to restore all of his LPs to print, VHF presents new vinyl editions of the celebrated guitarist's first three solo albums, newly cut by John Golden Mastering from the original source material. Originally issued on LP by Eclipse Records between 2002-04, these releases chart an eclectic, more experimental approach left behind as his technique and compositions became more refined and deliberate on…
Hazel
Amazing psych invocations from the psych/improv supergroup Æthenor, arguably amounting to their most surprising and wide-reaching work to date. "Hazel is the fifth record from Æthenor, the group of eclectic travelers that includes Stephen O'Malley (SunnO))), KTL), Daniel O'Sullivan (Ulver, This is Not This Heat, Grumbling Fur, etc.), Kristoffer Rygg (Ulver), and Steve Noble (Brötzmann Trio, N.E.W.) Together they bring their considerable pedigrees into play with unexpected and original result…
A Shimmering Replica
This first-ever VHF release by the 21-years-running Ashtray Navigations brings one more core piece of the UK freakout underground back to the mothership. With a discography that boggles even the most ardent Discogs user and an on-point WTF graphic sensibility, Ash Nav fits perfectly into the extremely fertile and prolific scene that has produced titans like Sunroof! and Vibracathedral Orchestra. On this generous 100-minute package, Phil Todd and Melanie O'Dubshlaine essay a kind of guitaran…
Rec Blast Motorbike
"The mighty 'classic' lineup of the Vibracathedral Orchestra returns with their first new music in many years. Here the quintet of Michael Flower, Neil Campbell, Bridget Hayden, Adam Davenport and Julian Bradley (joined by raconteur John Godbert) feature in a set of upbeat tracks that put the group's radical instrumental strategies into a package of full-on rock action. Recorded live using a binaural head system, the sound is nicely ragged in a you-are-there way, with scouring guitars and …
Astro Love & Infinite Kisses
**restocked** Kawabata Makoto emerges from a period of relative quiet with his first widely available solo release in several years, the blockbuster Krautrock-flavored Astro Love & Infinite Kisses. This lovely and impressionistic record showcases the other side of Makoto's outrageous works with Acid Mothers Temple. Taking cues from classics of the genre like Tangerine Dream's Phaedra and Steve Hillage's Rainbow Dome Musick, 'Dos Nurages' is the album's centerpiece, a 41-minute hypnotic epic, wit…
Ourselves
Ourselves was originally recorded as a one-hour special for broadcast on London's Resonance FM but was too good to leave to the aether. Ourselves is the first collaboration between Richard and octopus-armed percussionist Neilson. The music here represents something of a return to the extended psychedelic mania of mid 90-s outings such as Asthma and Diabetes and Endekeg. "Beam" kicks off the CD with Richard ripping it up on electric guitar over a thick blanket of hand percussion, plucked…
(untitled)
(untitled) is a devastating set of almost pure white light. The intense drone music on (untitled) represents a return to "sonic-ism" for the quartet of Jack Rose, Mike Gangloff, Patrick Best, and Mikel Dimmick. Like Pelt's 2003 effort Pearls from the River, (untitled) is an all-acoustic affair. On (untitled) the group concentrates on producing dense clouds of overtones from guitar, cello, tibetan bowls, gongs, sruti, and esraj. Track 1 is an overpowering straight line ala the Theatre of Etern…
Dauphin Elegies
First new studio recordings from Pelt in 3 years finds them picking up where 2005's Untitled CD left off - delivering massive slabs of heavy, all-acoustic drone action. "Waning Crescent" is an ominous workout for three large gongs, rich with overtones and subsonic rumble. "Fire Signs Along the Field" offers a slightly jarring quartet of spare string noise, with Nathan Bowles (Black Twigs, Spiral Joy Band) sitting in on double bass. "Cast Out to Deep Waters" is an immense 30 minute epic that fits…
Fountain Transmitter Meditations
Boggling and super-fun 100+ minutes from Neil Campbell's Astral Social Club, bringing you the head-on collision of classic UK electronic styles, electric grit, and THE FUTURE. The LP starts with a side of tight chuggers, the high-end racket of “Infinity Thug” ripping through the speakers as you make your way to the end of the side with the loping “Grisly Terroir.” Side 2 is the 20 minute epic “Diamonds in the Dreich,” a mid-tempo journey of Throbbing Gristle-ish lurch-pulse and disembodied voice…
No Fans Compendium
Restocked! The unplaceable, implacable Richard Youngs presents a personal selection of five CDs taken from his long-running private press imprint, No Fans, plus 2 discs of previously unreleased and very covetable early material. An enigma to most, us included, Youngs' output over the years stretches as far as the ear can see, from tangled modular pop craft to noisy psychedelia and cranky folk, earning him a considerable cult fanbase in the process. These CDs include some of his rarest mate…
Sings The Blues
Solo darkness from remarkably pedigreed but rarely recorded Japanese legend (Ghost, Fushitsusha, L, Marble Sheep, A-Musik, August Born, etc). Raw and gripping, like a darker version of his all-time folk-psych classic Holy Letters. Performed completely solo on voice, guitar, banjo, bass, steel guitar, and cornet, the music is almost uncomfortably blunt and rough around the edges – a “Tonight’s the Night”-like offhandedness that only serves to increase the feeling of existential seriousness. Like …
Feral
Holy sh*t it's a new Sunroof! record, and while the name might have been amended a little, the sound is still the same delirious fuzzed-out noise rock we have come to expect from Matthew Bower's long-running troupe. 'Feral' is the first record from the Sunroof! camp in five years, and shows Bower on a blackened psychedelic tip, exposing a stark serenity in his sound we haven't heard for some time. That's not to say the noise has lost any of its grit or power, but underneath the swathes of white …
Vibracathedral Orchestra
Public service reissue of this impossibly rare and choice title in the Vibra oeuvre, originally issued by the band in 2004 as an edition of 250. Featuring the “classic” lineup (Mick Flower, Neil Campbell, Bridget Hayden, Adam Davenport, Julian Bradley) that made “Queen of Guess” (vhf#77) and “Dabbling With Gravity and Who You Are” (vhf#66), this self-titled double takes a wild ride through the inner-workings of VCO’s stream of consciousness.
Many of the tracks (selected from research & dev…
Carved Into Roses / Infinityland / Singles
Deluxe triple-pack CD that restores two classic Skullflower albums to print, with a bonus disc of contemporaneous singles. Recorded together and originally conceived as a double CD back in the dark ages of 1995, "Carved Into Roses" and "Infinityland" find the band making a transition from the "heavy" riffs of their early days to a more free-form sound that continues to this day to drive leader Matthew Bower's many guises (Skullflower, Sunroof!, Hototogisu, Mirag, etc). Sporting a revamped …
Hallway Of Mirrors
VHF is releasing a bunch of solo guitar dudes over the next few weeks. Here's one of 'em! It's an album from New York's Alexander Turnquist called Hallway of Mirrors. It says that above so it's kinda pointless me saying that. Having said that the New York thing was a new bit of info so it's not all filler! I've not heard this chap before but I was rather taken with him on first listen. It's not a million miles away from the likes of James Blackshaw.... ie extreme 12 string fingerpluckery which i…
As the Twilight Crane Dreams in Color
Second full length from NY based guitarist Turnquist, who defies expectations with a set of hypnotic epics that owe more to classic minimalism than current notions of solo guitar. Forgoing most of the extended techniques of his debut, Turnquist concentrates on laying down a thick blanket of 12 string that sets up persistent loop-like patterns in the music. Simple and lovely strings, piano, and percussion accompaniment provide the melody, carrying most of the movement in the pieces. The pa…
Doubles
"Doubles" is the first widely-available release by Irish guitarist Cian Nugent, a showcase of major talent in an audacious setting of two side-long epics. Clearly inspired by the Takoma-classics and the recent generation of greats (Rose, Jones, etc), Cian delivers two perfectly formed takes on the classic steel-string sound, one (mostly) unaccompanied, the other an expertly arranged full-band throwdown. "Peaks & Troughs" is a slow-building solo piece in the style of Fahey's "Fare Forward …
Sixty strings
Sixty Strings is an album of two epic duets by Eric Carbonara (22-string upright Chaturangui guitar) and Jesse Sparhawk (38-string lever harp). While Carbonara has studied Chaturangui extensively with Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya in Kolkata, and Sparhawk was classically trained by major figures of the harp world in his formative years, the music here is their own—not a mashup of quasi-orientalism and conservatory bloodlessness. Both side-long tracks lay out a spacious framework, with the two pl…
En Form For Bla
Stephen O'Malley (Sunn0))), KTL), Daniel O'Sullivan (Ulver, Mothlite, Guapo), Kristoffer Rygg (Ulver), Steve Noble (N.E.W., Company, etc). En Form For Blå documents the continued evolution of this unlikely collective, a collision of players from various avant, improv, metal, and "other" threads who together make a unique and arresting sound. Documenting three gigs in Oslo recorded in 2010, the music is deep and weird, with liquid sounds juddering around the occasionally identifiable percussion o…
Castings
Castings is the third VHF release of lovely psych/folk by East Coast quartet Fern Knight, written, arranged and performed with their trademark quality and verve. Somewhat less fastidious than 2008's exquisitely arranged Fern Knight CD, Castings has a warm, analog feel, with looser and louder performances. Led as always by Margaret Ayre's voice, guitar and cello, the group stretches out on rockier fare like "The Poisoner," growling with fuzz, while leaving plenty of room for softer moments of bea…