La Piramide di Sangue

Berlin's Sound of Cobra finds another gem with La Piramide di Sangue, the seven-piece ensemble from Torino (Turin), Italy. Mixing a free jazz element with gritty psychedelia, the album mirrors their urban hometown's charred charm, fusing the old world aesthetic to a chaotic and dense pace. "Sette" fires on polyrhythmic cylinders in much the same way that psychedelic contemporaries Goat have in the past few years, but where that mysterious cult employes the scorch of guitars and African tribalism, LPDS taps into a psychedelic Klezmer vein that's more dark soundtrack and intrigue than blood letting ritual. The addition of clarinet to the simmering cauldron adds a lyrical texture to what's otherwise a very dark palette of twisted synth, pulsing percussion and a storm of bass.

Listen:


Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

Aaron Sheppard

Vin Du Select Qualitite has a reputation for snagging acoustic releases from some pretty choice guitarists. Sir Richard Bishop, Thurston Moore, Mark McGuire and Chris Brokaw are all alumni of their Solo Acoustic Guitar series and so it comes as little surprise that the lesser-knowns that the label pulls under its banner are unusually rather talented for artists with little headlines to their name. This same holds true for new series entrant Aaron Sheppard, a Bay Area native who mixes a deft picking style; mellifluous and rambling, with a keen understanding of how to wrap burbling brook fingerpicking into melancholy beauty. There's a rustled grandeur to the tracks here, a kind of stripped down pauper beauty that works its way through the cracks and crags of Sheppard's guitar and trickles out in streams of steel string bliss. Its easy to see how VDSQ saw something bright in Sheppard's work and if this is an entry point into his catalog then I hope there's plenty more to come.

Listen:


Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

Alvarius B. / Sir Richard Bishop

Record Store Day certainly brings out a lot of releases that require a few sighs of "was that necessary" but amongst the mash of ill-conceived reissues and colored vinyl there exist plenty of great bits as well. Case in point, Three Lobed comes through with an excellent split from Sun City Girls alums Alan and Richard Bishop. The two sides of the release each go to a brother, focusing on their respectively jarring and mellifluous guitar styles. Its the first time that the pair have co-existed on a release since the Sun City days and as such an essential pickup for fans of their canon. The Alvarius B side shows off Alan Bishop's penchant for rough edged, short, acoustic shards that pick at the brain in uneven fashion. The flip sees brother Sir Richard stretch out in his typically pretty and paced acoustic runs, something he's been nailing for a long time so no surprises here that it winds up the more polished side. If you missed the physical version while avoiding long lines and pushy customers then its available at Three Lobed's bandcamp to brush up your digital collection.

Listen:


Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

The Murlocs

Despite numerous setbacks, including a stolen laptop that required the rerecording of several songs from Loopholes, The Murlocs finally have a debut ready and shipping for King Gizzard's Flightless Records. The album's found an apt home, with the band meshing well with their hosts' low slung soul-blues fire. There's darkness and aimlessness fighting for control of the stick on the album but both feelings are amiably pushed by Ambrose Kenny-Smith's shredded steel wool howl and in the end its more about the dark shadows the band throws than the messages they're trying to convey. Loopholes is a vibe, a cool cinder block basement temperament, an effortless swagger of an album; and despite the rather considerable effort that was actually put into its very existence, it remains better defined by the sweat left hanging in the air as the stylus clicks to a stop. The band has been building their sound through EPs and singles to this moment and it seems that for all their tribulations, it was well worth the journey to get to this stunner of an album.

Listen:


Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

Rat Columns - "Another Day" Video

Following on a 7" from 2012 David West's Rat Columns have a new album on the way from the venerable R.I.P. Society and the first video is a great taster of the album to come. The record was produced by Kelley Stoltz on an old tape machine formerly owned by The Residents but the first track sounds more soft focus than experimental think piece, wrapped in a gauze of jangle and ennui. The record is out next month featuring West's former Lace Curtains bandmates Mikey Young and James Vinciguerra.

More info: HERE

David Novick

Novick's second album, following the re-release of his debut on GOD?, is a fuller and more vibrant record; culling a more pastoral folk sound that's underpinned with the matchstick flicker of bright psych-fuzz, resulting in a more well rounded statement than he's made previously. The record stretches out with yawning fingers towards summer skies feeling, despite its more studio refinement, more like a backporch psych-folk record from the boom of 2004. And that's in no way meant to say that this sounds dated, merely that its picking up where many of those deft records left off, in their own way echoing 1967 through the fractured prism of present day. With some amiable help from GOD? label honcho Ty Segall on drums and the perfectly placed vocal accompaniment of Claire Plumb, Your Sister's Hand stands as a pastoral gem cut through with striped sunlight bouncing off the afternoon pollen. Now's the time to get in on Novick's work, as it feels like it can only get more exciting from here on out.

Listen:


Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

	The Mentalettes - Lovers' Wasteland / Tides 7" Berlin's Mentalettes mash 60's girl group sounds with a low swung guitar twang for a dose of impressively sweet and spicy rock n' roll; the kind of songs that float on choruses and expand between your
ears like Easter peeps in a microwave. Its a confection, its the simple scream of carnival thrill rides and jukebox 45s and sometimes that's all it ever needs to be. No frills shake n' shimmy at its best with a real hankering for 60's bouffants and organ driven nuggets that can't help but make ya smile. This is the band's second single but seems like there's an LP on the way. This ought to hold you over for now. Listen: Support the artist. Buy it HERE

Stein Urheim

Stein Urheim has often been noted in a collaborative context, having played with The Last Hurrah (Rune Grammofon), Åresong and collaborating with singer Mari Kvien Brunvoll, but his second solo album for Hubro solidifies him as a solid solo player in his own right. The album is tinged with a worldswept feeling, rooted in fingerpicked guitar but folding in drones and Eastern tones, his self-titled album transports the listener to a frosted plain where only the music can warm the soul. The guitarist cites everything from Chinese gu qin music and Steve Reich to Ornette Coleman as influences and that melting pot of the past seems to explain much of this release, though Urheim manages to boil them all into a much smoother delivery than those touchstones might warrant. The record wafts into an almost backporch blues, bent through the addition of varied string instruments from all corners of Urheim's travels and swaddled against the Norwegian chill with a core of sprightly execution. For fans of the fingerpicked tradition, Urheim is a welcome addition to the canon.

Listen:


Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

Jeff Burch

Jeff Burch has crafted an album of shifting sonic textures that brings to mind the quiet spaces explored by Mountains and The North Sea. Melding pastoral, slow fluttered guitar passages with the spatial drone of synth, the bulk of these two tracks ebb and eddy like tides. On the opener "The Nine Points," the push pull is almost nonexistent, with the track moving instead like a film; the sections fading, dissolving and occasionally cutting through moments of languid pooling quiet and tense, prickling static. The second track sprawls out just as widely as the first but builds itself on a loping, hypnotic bit of guitar that acts as a more propulsive and ultimately warmer base. This loop opens as a mesmerizing anchor through a good clip of "La Perouse," though it too melts away as the track gives in to a din of Burch's aural impulses, breaking apart into a sputtering middle before melting completely by the close. Both tracks are engrossing enough that multiple listens only open up new gems each time and this is largely due to Burch's skills but also the friends he's brought along, Stephen James (Songs, Rand and Holland), Tres Warren (Psychic Ills, Compound Eye, Messages) and Marcus Whale who lend percussion, guitar and sax respectively. It’s a strong debut and an essential for fans of Important's catalog.

Listen:


Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

	Jook - Jook Rule OK Jook's long and sorted tale has them rise from the ashes of The Kinetics and members of 60's nugget raiders John's Children to gain a record contract without even settling on a name. The band was christened Jook by a friend, drawing influence on the Jook Joint
idea. The band often gets lumped in with glam but its got just as many hands in the power pop and proto-punk camps as it does the glitter circuit. They fell in more with mods and Bovver Boys, which gave their shows a more menacing presence that would befit the teenybopper trappings of glam at the time. The band issued a string of singles that made some but not significant chart impact, leaving their live show to champion their legacy at the time. The band's label, RCA, cycled them through sessions with several producers searching for a glam hit but ultimately it seemed no pairing caught on despite leaving a trail of great tracks. The band was set to open on a tour with Sweet, but just as stardom seemed in grasp, Sweet frontman Brian Connolly was injured in a street fight and his hospitalization sunk the tour. That pretty much singled the decline for the band and they parted ways with members going on to 70's glam band Jet, some managerial work and others reforming John's Children in the wake of interest from Nuggets. This collection has found its way to CD prior but Sing Sing's got the whole thing on vinyl, back where they belong. Listen: Support the artist. Buy it HERE

Thee Oh Sees

Despite those volleyed cries of hiatus, Thee Oh Sees have one more in the bag, and apparently a few more dates and festivals to boot. Well so much for a hiatus. Maybe get John Dwyer and co. a stack of dictionaries for their birthdays, though it would seem they'd be far too busy to actually read them. Taking a leap off the psychedelic springboard that was Floating Coffin, the band ventures further into a throbbing den of bass chaos and space-faced synths, brain toasting guitar and vertigo wrangling squelch that threatens to blow it all down in an avalanche of light and smoke. Its a headier direction than they've gone, if only ever so slightly, but if this is where they leave off I'll rest easier knowing that the legacy of Oh Sees is swaddled in a nest of tweaked keys, guitars screaming from sunburn and hide n' seek vocals that hint at the fuming melodies buried in the din. The band never sways too far from their garage roots but they've certainly found a magical balance between guttural drive, psychedelic excess and a pop undercoating that keeps the kids coming back every time for another kaleidoscopic patchwork adventure. There's certainly room on your shelf for one more Oh Sees hard charger and Drop fits the bill, a necessary addition to a long, twisted journey.

Listen:


Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

Islaja

Been a while since Merja Kokkonen dropped a track under the Islaja moniker and it seems that after a move to Berlin she's shed her Finnish-folk past for the darker shores of minimal wave and jagged electro-pop. Though, this being an Islaja album that puts this closer to the fucked end of the spectrum than the dancefloor, that's for sure. Garnering some obvious Bjork comparisons, likely because of the similarities in accent and the fractured pop filter, S U U twists itself through shards of shattered fluorescents, and jumpcut static to craft one of the year's finer dark synth stunners. Stripped bare like a concrete cube, lone light bulb swinging back and forth to a beat that's more felt than heard, the album hits hard to the chest with a metallic 'clang'. It’s an unexpected turn for a veteran of so many years in the Fonal kingdom of buzzing bouzouki and plucked chaos but the ink black shroud suits her well.

Listen:


Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

Herzog

Cleveland's Herzog tumbles out of the barrel with their third album for Exit Stencil, a fizzing, shambling cracker jack prize of a pop album that rolls the slackened nature of 90's heroes like Weezer, Ash and Fountains of Wayne through a heavy dose of aughts pop hangover. Though the majority of the subject matter centers on the futility and struggles of middle tier stardom in the music industry, the band's cheeky pathos more than ably crosses over to a generation stuck with unfulfilled dreams and short sheeted promises, all the while pumping up the kicks to the ribs into fist shaking anthems. With a growl of guitars and the kind of squiggly nerd-rock keys that draw a line from The Cars to Apples in Stereo the band knows how to blow up a pop hook into basement party fury and with the help of producer Kevin S. McMahon (The Walkmen, Titus Andronicus) they've churned those angst-baiters into bouncy hits that beg to be cranked from the car windows all summer long.

Listen:


Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO return with yet another album, 19 years deep into their career and now back with original vocalist Cotton Casino in tow. Full of four psychedelic juggernauts, including a new recording of the AMT classic "Dark Star Blues." By now, with recordings by The Temple, you're either in or out, you either take the stumble down a rabbit hole of swirling feedback and DMT laced squall frothing along with the band or frankly you sit this one out. Around here any new Acid Mothers venture is reason to sit down, dim the lights and let the speakers feel the pain for an hour or so. Important's issuing the beast on heavy vinyl as they have the band's last few. Still so good after all these years.

Listen:


Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

	Apache - Civil Disobedience Apache return with a vengeance with a glam-stomped, caffeine pumpin', gas huffer of a single that opens with the grease thick A-side, a harder version of their usual brand of garage antics. The real treat here is the flip though, a collaboration with Norton
Records' Daddy Long Legs that turns the open road anthem into something of a blooze rawk firestarter. The band paired up with Daddy at SXSW for this number and rest assured that its even more unhinged live. Hopefully this is just a taster of an album to come but at least this burner is preserved in wax for all eternity. Listen: Support the artist. Buy it HERE

Amen Dunes

Years ago when the first Amen dunes record hit the RSTB desk I'd have never guessed that the fractured pop creaking through the cracks on Dia would have wound its way into the open, honest portrayal that Damon McMahon has presented on his latest album, Love. Working with members of Godspeed You Black! Emperor and Iceage on this one, the songs have certainly become fleshed out and showcase that singer-songwriter that was always lurking below the boards of a one-take troubadour aesthetic. It seems that McMahon slowed the process, took the collaborative road and let these songs form themselves rather than rushing to tape and that's been the key to Love's success. It feels well-formed, not over practiced, but rather littered wth a wealth of recording nuggets and production touches that spit shine the diamond that was always under those ragged pop tunes he'd begun turning out over the last few releases. Still that by no means infers that Amen Dunes has begun churning radio hits, but this one will sit nicely on the shelf next to some other sweetly fractured folk from 2014, like that Chad VanGaalen record and Dylan Shearer's newfound studio gem.

Listen:


Support the artist. Buy it: HERE

Nun - "Uri Geller" Video

Melbourne's Nun have an album coming out this month as a split between Aarght/Avant that grinds through some gritty post-punk back alleys and their second video taster for the upcoming self-titled album, "Uri Gellar" captures their grainy 80's veneer perfectly. The track is a propulsive, jagged slice at the heart of the goth/minimal wave template and a damn fine one at that.

Support the artist. Buy it: HERE (AUS) or HERE (EU/UK)

	Giorgio - Son of My Father For those only familiar with Giorgio Moroder through his disco work or, hell, through his recent Daft Punk guest spots, then this reissue of his early work should come as something of a left hook. Moroder recorded the album's title track
which made its way to British band Chicory Tip, resulting in a UK hit and the birth of a bubblegum classic. Moroder's own version is here in its English and Italian iterations along with the subsequent bubblegum nugget "Underdog". The collection is a pure wealth of studio wizardry with some obvious nods to his impending dive into electronics but the interest stems from that edge of tech attitude being applied to the 60's garage/bubblegum ethos; a catchy, crunchy bit of hits that could only come from the warped mind of an auteur. Shortly after these years Moroder would, of course, help shape disco and carve out a production career that included some of your favorite 80's crystalline pop (Danger Zone!) but aside from just the documentation aspect of this reissue, it plays well as a pop entity on its own. Listen: Support the artist. Buy it HERE