The Tunnel - s/t

because you need a Venezualan duo that sound like Torche/Harvey Milk gone operatic but with organ & salsa beats in your life

worth watching this video until at least the 5:30 mark where it all goes wild Van Halen shredding and then he starts to dance.



This may well be my new favourite band. I'd try to explain this in more depth but I think I need to go and have a lie down for a while.

Meridian Brothers - Desesperanza (Soundway)

One of those bands that's impossible to describe. Think a mix of The Residents, Ethiopiques compilations, 60s surf instrumentals, old 60s electronics and Latin American psych stuff like Os Mutantes and that Tropicalia compilation Soul Jazz put out.

This Colombian band are dead tuneful but in a really bizarre way. Highly recommended though.





Oh, and they've also done one of the strangest covers of Purple Haze I've heard



Boomkat is the place for FLAC of this

Kirin J Callinan - W II W/Thighs 7"

An Australian guy that's come up with some creepy Foetus style music. Jittery drums overlayed with goth-tinged weirdness. Bizarre industrial pop.

And that's just the first song. The flipside is minimal guitar stuff with drawling vocals. Think Tom Waits or Scott Walker.

Really struggling to describe this accurately. Which is a good thing.

This guy is a total freak off in his own little sound world.

Music From Saharan Cellphones Vol 2

Contemporary pop music from the Sahara desert, where songs are stored on cellphones. Collected in Northern Mali in 2010 (since taken over by extremists who've banned music on cellphones) the second volume expands into new sonic territory - from dreamy Niger guitar ballads, Bamako club juke, to hi energy Moroccan child Raï - with a focus on the Autotuned DIY creations circulating the desert.

Only half way through listening to this second instalment of Music From Saharan Cellphones but it's standing up well with the awesome first volume.

Basically, it covers the mutant sounds of the Saharan desert. A scene where music gets passed around via mobile phones. Completely the antithesis of "authentic" Womad style world music. Recognisably African in sound but filtered through autotune and hip hop and rock but in completely and utterly unique ways.

Impossible to describe really. It's totally sui generis.

Spectral Park - s/t

http://boomkat.com/downloads/641169-spectral-park-spectral-park

This is like some kind of hyperactive crystal-meth version of chopped & screwed but done with 60s psych instead of hip hop. It's almost like a bunch of 7"s have been smashed up and randomly glued back together.

It's all really tuneful though. The organ and voice keep the melodies going while chaotic collage of sound swirls around.

The organ is a definite highlight. Can't beat a good organ tone.

Maybe a bit like MGMT done as old school cut and paste collages with glue and old newspaper magazines. it's really well done though.

Guess it'd be a good one to place next to that Retromania book. All the themes and sounds are kind of retro but they're all formed into a different style.

The song in the first youtube video has been on repeat on my commute. Really interesting way the melodies, harmonies and backing music fit together.

They've also got an 'official' video. First song on the album. Which is also good.

Slomatics - The Future Past

New Slomatics jams is always a thing to be welcomed. We only get 10 minutes this time but I guess it's always best to leave the audience screaming for more.

They channel Bullhead/Lysol era-Melvins and fuzzed out doom-psych. Just riffs riffs riffs riffs.

Slomatics really know how to construct a good song as well. It's not just a collection of reasonable sounding riffs. There's real craft going on. They've been going for years now and they know exactly how to do it.

They really need to come back to the UK and do a tour.

Also, someone needs to put these two songs onto a 7".

Wolfbait - s/t tape (Art For Blind)

This is sick.

Horrid, slow, relentless, pulverising dirge.

Swans.

Describe themselves as "kraut violence". Imagine Man Is The Bastard covering a Neu song. But a Neu song written by Chrome at their bad acid addled worst.

Like being tarred and feathered and thrown into a cesspit.

Not sure how I can recommend them much more!

Stratus - As The Crow Flies

Pye Audio Corner make up half Stratus so you know it's probably going to be good. There's some real instruments thrown into the mix with the synths. The words folk and psychedelic are mentioned and that's fair enough. Perhaps if the last Belbury Poly LP went a bit Stereolab.

The psychedelic stuff is quite restrained and pleasant. Controls being set for the heart of the living room with a nice cup of tea rather than the centre of the sun.

I can't quite place what other bands this reminds me of. A good thing I suppose. Occasionally it sounds like old film music but not quite to the point of being library music. The fuzzy guitar bits sometimes sound like the really mellow bits on a total funk OST.

Their owns words seem to explain things quite well:-

Stratus are Mat Anthony and Martin Jenkins, two English gents whose love for warped soundtracks, fuzzed-out psychedelia and analog aesthetics is distilled in the bittersweet harmonies and wistful bliss of their songs, taking in everything from sublime pastoral electronics through to string-laden cosmic rock.

Their long-awaited second album 'As the Crow Flies' is the follow-up to their acclaimed debut 'Fear of Magnetism' (which spawned the epic single 'Uplink') and was recorded over the past few years with both parties taking time out along the way - Mat producing psych edits and surf noir for Vintage Rockers and Martin making solo releases for Joakim’s Tigersushi label and the haunting synthesizer transcripts of the Black Mill Tapes trilogy as Pye Corner Audio.

A fascination for French cinematic composers of the 60s and 70s such as Francois de Roubaix and Jean-Claude Vannier was fuelled after remixing Serge Gainsbourg in their early days as a production duo and these influences weigh heavy in lush orchestral arrangements, stripped psych rock rhythms, enigmatic synths and music-box melodies. Fragments of guitar and piano combine with celestial strings while occasional vocals swirl through with pedal steel, driving brass and organ drones drenched in worn spring reverb. As the Crow Flies offers a glimpse into hidden places at the edge of memory... an unhurried, bittersweet soundtrack that revels in elegant disrepair and bucolic delight.

Dead In The Woods - The Sign Of The Son Of Man LP

"His Hero Is Hawkwind" according the band. Whne they played live you got a whole lot of the crushing His Hero Is Gone thing. Maybe beefier and more doom rock. On record the Hawkwind comes out more with spacey synths and theremin action happening.

You know how those crazy Finnish folk Circle stuck a bunch of Judas Priest into that extended Kraut rock jams? Dead In The Woods kind of the do the same but with crust punk. Less of the extended jamming but they do like to spin out a groove on occasion.

Maybe it's what late Black Flag would have sounded like if he had persuaded the whole band to turn on, tune in and drop out to Grateful Dead.

Or if 'epic' d beat post-Tragedy bands (or lounge crust, as this lot term it) had the circular Gong - Camembert Electrique design on their t-shirts rather than circular Crass ones.

They seem to shift gears between the space rock stuff and the uptempo punk riffage with ease. It's hard to spot where it changes. One minute you're nodding along and then your fist starts pumping in the air seemingly of it's own accord.

It definitely seems a step up from their split with Diet Pills that the man from Tombs put out on his Black Box Records. Sadly it's also their final statement as they are no more. There's a new band called Nadir rising from it's ashes, I believe, and members are also active in Endless Grinning Skulls and Moloch. But Dead In The Woods have been put to bed. Thankfully they finish on a high.

Here's some info from the labels if you want to buy it on LP:-

This is now available to order from me. Dirty Apparatus will have copies soon. I (Viral Age) also have a handful of DITW shirts left going cheap Let me know if you want one and I'll get a price.

Ltd pressing of 320 copies on black vinyl.
Full colour sleeve and inner lyric sheet, download code included
First 50 copies come with extra poster from the final DITW gig.
Please send paypal gift payment or add 5% for fees.
£-10 ppd (UK).
£-13 ppd (EUR).
£-16 ppd (WORLD).

Email for wholesale/trades;
Viral Age - thrash_cowboy@hotmail.com
Dirty Apparatus - thirteenthirtytwo@hotmail.com

Here's the blurb:

The Sign of the Son of Man is the final output of Dead In The Woods. Formed in 2008 with personnel from Army of Flying Robots, The Blueprint and Moloch among others, Dead In The Woods ’music has evolved from the down tempo, crust influenced metallic hardcore of their debut split LP with Dietpills to a looser, space rock influenced take on heavy music.

The Sign of the Son of Man is a document of Dead In The Woods as the band was in its final moments: five songs and three improvised jams creating thirty seven minutes of heavy, theremin-infused hardcore, metal and psychedelic rock.

These songs were written during some very chaotic times (both good and bad) in our lives and represent five friends attempting to make sense of that chaos with music and words. As it became clear that the band was going to be geographically scattered, we managed to converge to Stuck On A Name studios one last time and record all the material we had, five songs recorded in a live setting, capturing a looser, more energetic side of the band’s sound and adding to this a recording of a series of improvised jams which had become an inherent part of the band’s live set.

Kemialliset Ystävät - Kadonnutta kaupunkia etsimässä

Kemialliset Ystävät have just put up an unreleased EP of their homemade Finnish psych folk. They've put a bunch of stuff out on Fonal so you know what you're going to be getting. If you haven't dabbled in the weird sounds of the Finnish free folk scene then you really need to. Definitely one of those scenes which sits in its own little world and doesn't sound like much else.