Uzu Audio

Linda Hagood Pink Love Red Love

(2008, Awesome Vistas)

"Appalachian-born singer/songwriter LINDA HAGOOD (DOUBLE-U, SMACK DAB) releases her first solo album Pink Love/Red Love on famed artist CHRIS JOHANSONs Awesome Vistas label. Conjuring a kaleidoscopic, magical, and visionary sonic landscape, Hagood pays tribute to her own unique iconography with lyrical elegies to crabs, kangaroos, caducei, pink and green vampires, and little hyenas. An enchanting and unique hothouse of seeming contradictions -- fierce yet funny, strange yet familiar, hypnotic yet surprising-these songs are also a fully realized musical vision for this soulful, peculiar, and accomplished artist. Beautiful cover artwork by CHRISTINE SHIELDS." -Awesome Vistas

LP: $20CAD

Hair Police Born Dead

(2005, Weird Forest)

"Drawn Dead is the sound of a burning human body. The sound of a boiling kneecap microwave marshmallow popping and then sliding down the leg like jellied pulp. This record is so dark, you can smell the burning flesh and will have to shake the human ash from your clothes after each listen. From the second this record starts, you're in for total oppressive heaviness, a slow suffocation of sick tones and blunt shrapnel. Hair Police have taken sound to the sickest realms possible, with guitar, drums, and electronics. With serious overwhelming grit and shadowy fuzz, the four untitled pieces on this downer disc never reach a rock pace, instead choosing to lumber through some of the meanest tones ever laid down. Industrial in the truest sense - factory ambience and disembodied moans in absolute darkness. This is the time for America to burn its face, and Hair Police know it. They are handing you the torch. Drawn Dead is a horrifying lump of old school tape noise sludge collage with the anger and muscles of In My Head era Black Flag and the psychedelic mind fuckery of To Live And Shave In L.A. [T]he most hideous release these boys have unveiled yet."

LP: $11CAD

Harrius Enter The Cotton Ring

(2006, Eshe Records)

This brand new epic by Jenny Gräf Sheppard (of Metalux) and Chiara Giovando (of PCPCG and a bunch of other bands no one's ever heard of) sits quietly for its real audience in the ages. Both an alarmingly intense and hushed "noise" record and totally whacked "songwriter" record, if it needed a catagory, Enter the Cotton Ring is an exploratory mack truck of left-hemisphere-manifestation-in-time. Unlike the majority of vocal-noise hybrids bubbling up lately, Gräf and Giovando refence neither sound poetry, nor metal (for the dudes) or jazz balladry (for the ladies) but instead a novel hybrid of dream-incantation, lieder and effects that electronics might achieve but how? An unsettling mix of vocal wrenching and melifluousness, effected guitar twang fuckery and intuitive anti-system electronics, it'll send you on a rapid shuttle-ferrey on the space-time straits compells you to keeping chewing slowly. No CD issue or promotional tour on the horizon, just a psychedelic Western recently shot in the Badlands (no joke) for this will be part-soundtrack. Grab while you can. Twelve stars.

LP: $17CAD

Hasegawa-Shizuo I Know A Chord Buried Into The Ground And A Tongue On A Cloud

(2008, Hanng Niap)

"Hasegawa-Shizuo is the duo of Hirotomo Hasegawa (Aburadako,Kito-mizukumi rouber) and Shizuo Uchida(Kito-mizukumi rouber, ex Shokubaiya,ex nijium). Central to our sound is Hasegawas hichiriki (a flute used in gagaku) and Uchidas bass. Our performances are all real-time improvisations with no-overdubbing. "I know a chord buried into the ground and a tongue on a cloud" is our third album - previous releases were on PSF and Tiliqua. Its a live-in-the-studio improvisation. Factory-pressed CD in a gatefold mini-LP style card sleeve." - Hasegawa-Shizuo

CD: $23CAD

Heavy Winged/Windy & Carl Monolith - Earth

(2009, Music Fellowship)

The Monolith series combines two artists on the same one-sided, reverse-cut LP by hard-panning one recording to the right and the other recording to the left. By adjusting the panning controls on his or her turntable, the listener is free to control the degree to which the two recordings melt into one. Each edition in the series is limited to a one-time pressing of 500 picture disc LPs featuring a Monolith inspired painting by NED CLAYTON and includes a CD with stereo mixes, extended versions, and bonus tracks. Monolith: Earth is the oxymoronic pairing of dreamcore drone legends WINDY & CARL and new school leaders of free rock HEAVY WINGED. Heavy Winged contribute one of their darkest, most oppressive tracks yet. The addition of Windy & Carl's purity creates something entirely different. It's no longer the sound of three bros busting out dark drone metal in some shed in snowy Vermont; it's now the sound of some communal artists busting out epic krautjams in the German hinterland.

LP: $30CAD

Hototogisu Robed In Verdigris

(2007, Nashazphone)

"Hototogisu is the duo of Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards, GHQ, UN) and Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Sunroof!, Total). For the past few years, they have been delivering intense guitar/electronics-based drones of gargantuesque scales. Robed in Verdigris is their 16th release and only the third on vinyl. Three tracks spread over both sides of extreme sunshine and ecstasy. A total assault of metaphysical vibrations." Limited to 500. Sold out at source.

LP: $35CAD

Hototogisu Pale Fatal Sister

(2008, Important)

Limited edition of 700 copies. Double LP pressing housed in a gatefold jacket. Being a Nabokovian and visceral garden of delights, a musical evocation of memory and desire spread over four sides of vinyl. The sound is conjured forth from dark wells to be birthed, twisting and screaming in silver winds. Recorded at Black Dirt Studios, over an intensive three day period of hermetic isolation, whilst snow blanketed the surrounding fields, this work is both more detailed and conjures a heavier, more brooding occult atmosphere and sound, than any previous hototogisu release.

LP: $35CAD

Hototogisu Under the Rose

(2008, Heavy Blossom)

First ever vinyl release on their own Heavy Blossom imprint from the Hototogisu duo of Matthew Bower (Skullflower) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards/Zaimph/GHQ). Edition of 600 copies with silkscreened rear and paste-on photographic fronts. Two epic, lengthy studio tracks recorded at Jason Meagher of The No-Neck Blues Band's Black Dirt Studios, “Malignant Coronation” and “Origami Skulls”. One side features the heaviest guitar-duelling bombast to come out of Bower's paws since that mind-blowing Flower/Bower Sunroof track on the Mouthus/Double Leopards three-way on Music Fellowship, with martial percussion and the sound of pure voltage stapling the entire thing to the ceiling. Over on the flip it's another non-stop vertical ascent, with fully-imploded guitar noise riddled with flickers of choral song. Highly recommended.

LP: $20CAD

Various I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore

(2008, Mississippi)

2nd edition with regular printed jacket. "This compilation is our tribute to the music made in the U.S. between 1927 and 1948. We decided not only to focus on traditional genres (blues, old-time, Cajun), but to also show the music that was brought by the boatloads of immigrants coming to these shores. Their music influenced and still affects our culture today. The album starts off with a heavenly example of Greek rebetica from Marika Papagika. Also featured is early Tex-Mex pioneer Lydia Mendoza and gospel duo Two Gospel Keys. The latter gives us our title track. Louisiana Cajun music is beautifully executed by artists Cleoma Falcon and Blind Uncle Gaspard with Dela Lachney. The Blue Sky Boys may be considered old-time, but their haunting, melancholic harmonies belong in their own genre. The Caresser and Wilmouth Houdini bring on the Calypso with that New York jazz flavor. Hawaiian slack key guitar is demonstrated by Mike Hanapi's Ilima Islanders and Mme. Riviere's Hawaiians. Aside from Calypso, NY was also a big hub for Jewish klezmer, as shown by Jacob Hoffman playing with Henry Kandel's Orchestra. Sexteto Bolona is a great example of the roots of salsa and there's even a mystery track by an unknown Indonesian folk singer of the time. The comp ends with blues performer Big Boy Cleveland with his oddly original 'Quill Blues.' A beautiful record from beginning to end."

LP: OUT OF STOCK

Inca Ore Brute Nature vs Wild Magic

(2005, Weird Forest)

Inca Ore is the solo voice of Eva, the singer of such fine bands as Alarmist and Malibu Falcon. Inca Ore travels the cosmos on firey phoenix mattresses with the voice of a goose-quilled cloud pillow siren calling to all the constellations in the universe. Eva uses her vocal range and delay complement to create the sounds of entire sorceress covens through her lone voice. Lovely psychedelic drone mixed with narcoleptic folk. An enchantress of the highest order! Side A was previously issued as a CD-R in a small pressing of 100 copies on the Collective Jyrk label. The b-side is a brand new track consisting of one astounding, 18-minute interstellar vocal trance-out! First pressing in silkscreened jackets.

LP: $17CAD

Jackie-O Motherfucker America Mystica

(2007, Very Friendly/Dirter)

" America Mystica is a collection of four live recordings, made under varied circumstances, ranging from the quiet and comfortable setting of the WFMU free form radio recording studio, to the live theatre environment at the cube cinema in Bristol, England, where the group was recorded in concert performance. The line-up includes Montreal musicians Fluffy Erskine and David Bryant, as well as long time JOMF members T. Greenwood and Brooke Crouser. Also appearing on these recordings are Jeff Mooridian, Adam Forkner, Honey Owens, Jessie Carrot, Theo Angell, Samara Lubelski, Josh Stevenson, Genevieve Delinger, Alexander Tucker and Andy Cvar, with live sound by Craig Bowen. The four compositions contained here, issued for the first time ever by Very Friendly, are all quite long, even by JOMF standards, the shortest piece being over 19 minutes long. Listening to this work requires some patience, but is richly rewarding, as each piece unfolds and delivers its content in a way completely unique, and timeless, raw blues, layered drones, and hypnotic percussion combine with pulsing micro-tones, turntable live/samples, bells, whispers, and jive talk, to create a poetic, trance-psych classic."

2LP: $38CAD
2CD: $22CAD

Jackie-O Motherfucker Cryin' Sea

(2008, Awesome Vistas)

The awaited new album from this multidirectional improv-out unit based around the core of saxophonist NESTER BUCKET and guitarist/manipulator TOM GREENWOOD, and featuring a revolving membership of up to twenty musicians spread out between Portland, Vancouver, New York and Baltimore.

LP: $20CAD

Jackie-O Motherfucker Valley Of Fire

(2008, Textile)

The first full-length studio recording since the acclaimed 2005 Flags of the Sacred Harp album from JACKIE-O MOTHERFUCKER. Here, the band continues to travel fascinating, mystical spaceways, proving their affinity with organic songwriting and arrangement on three finely crafted songs and one sprawling instrumental. Produced by ADAM FORKNER (YUME BITSU, WHITE RAINBOW) and packaged with cover art by renowned American artist JO JACKSON.

LP: $24CAD
CD: $22CAD

Jandek Ready For The House

(re:2008, Corwood)

The 1978 release of Corwood Industries #0739, "Ready For the House", began one of the most compelling, disturbed, and singular legacies in musical history. In the 30 years since this unique debut, Jandek has released 53 albums of mournful, atonal music that continues to defy classification and accessibility. And while the past three decades of intense productivity have yielded a depth of discussion, a handful of legendary live performances and even a film documentary, no amount of time or experience can prepare a listener for the experience of "Ready For the House." Beyond stark, beyond oblique, beyond outsider, the first Jandek LP (originally credited to The Units) explores musical territories no one even knew existed, with just a hollowed-out voice and a lonely, detuned guitar. In 1985 it had infamously sold less than ten of the 1000 copies originally pressed, however by 1999, when it was issued on CD, the vinyl had completely disappeared, with original copies changing hands for hundreds of dollars. This exact vinyl repress on Corwood Industries, is the first time "Ready For the House" has been available on vinyl for nearly 20 years, finally giving collectors and fans the opportunity to own one of the most peculiar, solitary, and strangely magnetic records of all time.

LP: $23CAD

King Darves The Sun Splits For... The Blind Swimmer

(2008, Destijl)

The bedrock of this NJ-based concoction is based in folk, but there's no headband and KING DARVES (ASPS, GORGOT, HUMAN ADULT BAND) does not sing about pixies in the moss. This is somewhere between rolled cigs and the foggy vision of Big Pink from somewhere on Jersey Avenue. "An excursion into mountain man folk music, with a few surprises thrown into the mix here and there," as Smooth Assailing puts it, "Pure and earthy." This one-man Meat Puppets with a deep, rich voice has really cobbled something together in his kitchen sink--a shocker, a pleaser, a toe-tapper, a head-nodder

LP: $18CAD

Basil Kirchin Particles

(2007, Trunk)

For the last five years Trunk Records have been issuing the great, lost work of pioneering British composer Basil Kirchin. Here is his last album, completed only a couple of weeks before he passed away in late 2005. It proves that Kirchin, even in his mid-'70s, was still very much an experimentalist at the top of his odd game. Kirchin invented ambient music and set the template to which much of today's avant garde music sounds like. Highlights of Particles are many -- "The Atonals" for example, was made using conversations between musicians that Basil had secretly recorded over the years. These conversations were then processed into music and the results are quite startling. In fact, the whole album is brimming and bursting with odd ideas, new ways and the unique Kirchin sound. The current Trunk favorite is the last, epic ten-minute hypnotic monster simply called "E+Me." It's an obvious homage to his dear wife Esther, who actually sings at the end of this heavily rhythmic, modal tune. Tragically, Esther died a week before this last Kirchin CD was pressed. Particles adds further fuel to the glowing Kirchin legend, and increases his standing up there with all the other groovy weirdos of the world.

LP: OUT OF STOCK
CD:$20CAD

Takehisa Kosugi Catch Wave

(Showboat/Iskra)

Originally issued by CBS in Japan-only in 1975, this album has been as difficult to find as either of the original Taj Mahal Travellers' LPs. The descriptive text on the back jacket of this exact repro gives an insight: "sounds speeding on lights, light speeding on sounds, music between riddles & solutions." A devastating, drone-intense record (unlike Kosugi's later solo recordings for Lovely Music or P-vine; Catch-Wave is the closest follow-up recording to his Taj Mahal Travellers group in the form of group improvisation), finally accessible. ESSENTIAL!

LP: SOLD OUT
CD: $30CAD

Tori Kudo/La Consumption 4 Atlantic City

(Siwa)

"Archive LP of material recorded by Tori Kudo and some fellow travellers during a stay in New York in the Summer of 1981. Originally released on cassette the approach on these recordings was a long way from the eerie organ driven Noise Tenno LP that Tori and Reiko released a year earlier. About half of Atlantic City consists of songs, teeth bared and falling apart as they come together but still in a style similar to Tori's subsequent work with Maher Shalal Hash Baz. The other half is made up mostly of extended guitar jams rooted equally in rock and blues but retaining Tori's rather unique take on the idioms. Screenprinted cover and insert art adapted from drawings and photos taken in NY and Atlantic City in 1981."

LP: $20CAD

Taguchi KumiTokyo Emmanuelle Fujin ~ Amai Yoru No Takeiki

(2006, Tiliqua)

DFirst time ever legal reissue of this hyper rare 1976 Japanese erotic artifact. Tiliqua Records continues its quest to bring you forgotten erotic gems out of Tokyo's sleazy underbelly. This time, we could secure the legal rights to Taguchi Kumi's sole recorded LP, following her instant fame after starring in some of Nikkatsu's finest Roman Porno celluloid dreams such as " Tokyo Emmanuelle Fujin" (July 1975), “Tokyo Deep Throat Fujin” (1975) and “Aru Kôkyû Callgirl no Shôgen: Roshutsu” (June 1976). Compiled out of tracks that appeared in the aforementioned porn flicks, the disc is a stunning artifact and will especially appeal to those who were already enthralled by Ike Reiko's erotic mumblings. Taguchi's effort dwells into similar erogenous eras but is more mid-seventies discoed-down and funked-up. Hot dance floor how-downs spiced up with erotic moaning and hissings. Erotic and sesunsual mid-seventies night clubbing with a psyched feel attached to it, hell Taguchi even ventures in the team of Deep Throat and leaves nothing to the imagination. A release that once again proves that late sixties and early seventies Tokyo was a wicked and perverse place to be. In short it is a stunning and historical Iroke gem of oblivious times, restored to its original state and by doing so we repositioned it into the pantheon of forgotten erotic artifacts. Digital remastered from the original master tapes, original artwork and housed in a heavy duty deluxe mini-LP styled gatefold jacket. Comes with hot obi artwork and illuminating liner notes by Mogura Dan (with translation by Johan Wellens). One time edition limited to 1000 copies. Acting quick is the key word here, since this baby, like the previous titles, won't be available for too long, pre-orders are taking a high flight already so act smooth, swift and quickly in order to secure yourself a copy.

CD: $30CAD

Okkyung Lee I Saw The Ghost Of An Unknown Soul And It Said...

(2008, Ecstatic Peace)

Anyone who has seen and heard Korean improviser/composer Okkyung Lee blow collective minds with her supremely amazing cello noise, energy, vibration, friction and true sound feeling music knows that in a world of wild and mind-snapping improvisors Okkyung is one of the most exciting players to arrive down the rocky road in some time. After being in music schools from age of 3 to 25 Okkyung found her artistic freedom in NYC's lower east side where she moved in 2000. Since then, she has performed and recorded with numerous artists such as Laurie Anderson, Derek Bailey, Steve Beresford, Nels Cline, Chris Corsano, Fred Frith, Shelley Hirsch, Susie Ibarra, Thurston Moore, "Butch" Morris, Jim O'Rourke, Beth Orton, Christian Marclay, Ikue Mori, DJ Olive, Zeena Parkins, Marina Rosenfeld, and John Zorn. Okkyung released her debut CD, Nihm, on Tzadik; a duo recording with Christian Marclay on My Cat is an Alien label's split LP series called Rubbings, a CD of her own compositions in collaboration with artist Colin Stinson for his art book Dust to Dust, and now this solo cello vinyl-only LP I SAW THE GHOST OF AN UNKNOWN SOUL AND IT SAID... Her performances have been featured in the Whitney Biennial 2006, BAM Next Wave Festival, San Francisco Jazz Festival, Kill Your Timid Notion, Musique Actuelle Victoriaville Festival, Taktlos Festival and La Biennale di Venezia. This LP contains some of her most deep and resonant, at once furious and hushed string, bow and wood music recorded to date. Beautiful and frightening, daring to be both. LP only - 400 copies

LP: $16CAD

Les Rallizes Denudes Yodo-Go-A-Go-Go

(2007, 10th Avenue Freeze Out)

"AKA Flightless Bird Needs Water Wings . The young person's guide to Les Rallizes Denudes! Now available everywhere in the free world!" Seemingly endless sonic flame-throwers of phased white noise streak across your inner landscape, as stupidly loud and overly-backlit lead guitar emissions perpetrated by a perpetually be-shaded longhair pummel the similarly be-shaded but barely adequate musical backing that sags and creaks under the wattage. Occasionally, lead vocals of a singular variety are provided by said be-shaded mad axeman, whose paranoid personality ensures all songs are delivered in a voice of querulous subterranean gargling from beyond the valley of Alan Vega. My giddy aunt, what's this, then, a Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy from the Underworld? A rough guide to Japrock's most intuitive non-career movers? Has the world's most revolutionary rock'n'roll band released a compilation album of leader Mizutani's most frequently requested tracks due to overwhelming popular demand? Ja, mein hairies, this certainly seems to be the case. For, with the arrival of this superb Flightless Bird compilation, obsessive fans of Les Rallizes Denudés (are there any other kinds?) finally have a proper 'early career' overview of Mizutani & Co. at their fingertips, a 70-minute-long super distillation of this most contrary of band's choicest musical moves executed between 1967-'82, a superb sounding and partly/mostly chronological trawl through the freaked out and perpetually-yelping mindscape of singer and avant-avalanche guitarmonger Mizutani, and his sinister-yet-interchangeable pool of black clad world-to-rights acolytes." --Head Heritage

Les Rallizes Denudes Le 12 Mars 1977 Tachikawa

(r2008, Over Level)

Repressed. Double CD bootleg, of the most historic Rallizes recording of them all (originally issued by the band in 1991, only very briefly available -- there have been no legitimate Rallizes recordings since). Mastered from CD (presumably), with relatively extravagant die-cut printed sleeve packaging. "Les Rallizes Dénudés, Haddaka No Rallizes in Japanese, and probably 'Les Valises Dénudés' in French, are the most obscure group from Japan. Their guitar-based music began at Kyoto University in late 1967 with their first official gig in 1968. While their self-released recordings from this time are structured in a loose Group Sound ('GS')/Folk Boom-type style, their live shows featured deafening volume, strobe lights and mirrors for maximum disorientation. This, of course, invites comparison with the Velvet Underground's Exploding Plastic Inevitable not to mention Le Stelle de Mario Schifano's art-show happenings in Italy during 1967-68. References could also apply to the Grateful Dead before losing Tom Constantine and Ron 'Pigpen' McKernen. In any case, the volume was too much for others to deal with -- a relationship with a theatre group fell apart due to the band's refusal to turn their amplifiers down. Nothing was going to change for the next 20 years... In the late 1970s the band reappeared, playing their best music. It seemed that punk had allowed Mizutani, with his newly cut hair and leather clothing, one more chance to unleash his over-the-top distortion-laden guitar over their simple melodic rhythms for a supreme Asian form of acid-punk annihilation. In August of 1991 releases were finally made available. Three CDs appeared on the band's own SIXE label. These were 67-69 Studio et Live , Mizutani/Les Rallizes Dénudés , and the 77 Live 2CD set. The only other non-CDR artifacts are a video released in 1992 and a 7" included with the Japanese Etcetera magazine from 1996. It is all rare, sought after and expensive. The 77 Live release (reissued and re-named here with new diecut B&W artwork and photos, mimicking the old Ocora LP sleeve style) is the best, a document of extreme feedback and distressed guitar with Mizutani's detached vocals laid over languid rhythms, unbelievable in intensity."

Various Life Is A Problem

(2007, Mississippi)

2nd edition with regular printed jacket, no longer comes w/ a bonus 7". "Compilation of raw electric guitar-based gospel recorded between 1949 & 1976. Hard to find & unreleased gospel that makes most rock & roll sound weak & contained. Features Utah Smith, Rev. Lonnie Farris, Sister O.M Terrill & many lesser known artists. Fourteen tracks in all."

Limbus 4 Mandalas

(2008, Wah Wah)

"Another unsung bunch of Krautrock pioneers, Limbus had formed in Heidelberg in 1968. Comprising the trio of Odysseus Artnerm, Bernd Henniger and Gerd Kraus, in 1969 recorded the groundbreaking New Atlantis LP (subtitling it 'Cosmic Music Experience') for CPM, a spaced-out concoction of free and psychedelic musics with strong folky and ethnical flavors sounding very much like a more ethnic take on free improvisation. In 1970 they become a quartet with the addition of Matthias Kniepper thus renaming themselves Limbus 4 and went to record the puzzling Mandalas LP, a further step in their cosmic ethnic improvisations, this time making use of a more varied instrumental palette and taking advantage of the possibilities of the recording studio. A unique album that ranks amongst the most adventurous ever released by Ohr and which, to make things even better, spots another of those cool Reinhard Hippen covers designs made of doll parts (which graced the covers of the first five of the the label's albums, this being actually the second ever Ohr release). You don't get them much trippier than this. Strictly limited to 500 copies -- gatefold cover -- sealed copies w/info sticker."

Little Claw Spit and Squalor Swallow the Snow

(2007, Ecstatic Peace)

"New 2007 LP from this Michigan rock-brut trio who combine the more hypnotic aspects of The Magic Band and Sun City Girls with great/possessed female vocals that are somewhere between Elisa Ambrogio of Magik Markers and Sandra Barrett of Major Stars. This album also has a particular post-'billy hiccup to it that's reminiscent of the way that The Cramps or even The Gun Club modified early country blues styles with burlesque rock moves and future-primitive energies. And that's a combo that I wish more avant-hucksters were plugged into. But this sounds great.",

LSD March & Bardo Pond s/t

(2008, aRCHIVE)

This one hardly needs a review. Space rockers Bardo Pond, jamming with Japanese psych-rockers LSD-March! Two discs, looooooooong songs, plenty of sprawling druggy psychedelia, throbbing serpentine basslines, busy groovy drumming, and lots and lots and lots of guitars, buzzing and whirring, grinding and roaring, wailing and howling. Culled from two stoned, late-night recording sessions on days off from the 2006 Bardo Pond / LSD-March / Masami Kawaguchi's New Rock Syndicate East Coast tour, these tracks were edited together by Bardo Pond-er Michael Gibbons with no overdubs, just a document of epic, swirling, lurching, grooving spaced out psych rock. Incredible recording, super clear, almost studio quality, multiple drummers, multiple guitar players, the sound is loud, and intense, sometimes blissing out into laid back stretches of near ambient tranquility, but always building back up into howling squalls of freaked out psychrock nirvana. The first disc is the more jammy of the two, more loose and improvised sounding, even the opening track fades in with the track already in full swing, like they had already been jamming for a while before we even got to the part.
The second disc introduces flute, and some electronics, and begins with a looped lick, over some skittery drumming, and some serious grinding growling low end, it goes on for ages, and we never really wanted it to stop. It does eventually, which is okay as the band has already moved on, locking into some new looped rhythm, the guitars fiery arcs of sound, that low end continuing to grind and buzz, the multiple guitars and guitar parts careening wildly over a roiling backdrop of howling moaning distorted buzz. The second track on disc two is almost entirely ambient, sounding more like Toho Sara or something, the guitars smeared and blurred, everything buzzy and rumbling, clouds of tinkling shimmer and random percussive clatter, hand drums, glitchy electronics, streaks of feedback, thick swaths of distorted abstract riffing, culminating in a soaring blown out multiple guitar-ed Ur-drone. The disc finishes off with a 20 minute scorcher that goes from furious psych skree meltdown, to stumbling abstract freeform flutter and back, the players locked in a battle to the death, full freakout, ultra-noise mode, vocals scrambling over a dogpile of grinding electronics, a sea of shrieking feedback, an avalanche of drum chaos, and about a ton of blown out guitar damage. Phew. As always, aRCHIVE spares no expense on the packaging, but they may have outdone themselves this time. A thick textured black ink on cream cardstock gatefold sleeve, the words LSD and POND embossed and printed in reflective silver ink, inside an 8 page black and white booklet affixed to the sleeve, with live photos and liner notes, each disc in it's own black sleeve, printed in silver ink, Japanese characters, the two discs held together by a Japanese style obi, in the same style as the cover. WOW. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. A one time pressing, so don't miss out.

LSD March Big Jar Solo Sets

(2007, aRCHIVE)

New DVD set that compiles three solo sets - one each from LSD frontman Shinsuke Michishita, ex-Fushitsusha/Kousokuya drummer Ikuro Takahashi and ex-Broomdusters/Miminokoto frontman Masami Kawaguchi - recorded live at the Big Jar bookstore in Philadelphia in Autumn of 2006. All filmed in black and white and real close up, Michishita's set combines velvet balladry with explosions of wasted acid guitar while Takahashi presents one of his oscillator performances where he strings a series of alarms along a microphone stand and generates a constantly shifting assaultive field of surging overtones. Kawaguchi's set is the best of the bunch, with his amazing, languorous vocal style gobbling up classic Japanese acid folk chords and luminous lead guitar scorch. The release comes packaged in a half fold heavy stock cover with a pressing size of 550 copies with design and silkscreen work by Jason Killinger from Birds of Maya.

LSD March Empty Rubious Red

(2007, Tequila Sunrise)

"For those of you already living a couple of years ahead of the rest of us, you will know that this will be the fifth full length by this band, and that it was originally released in 2006 on their own white elephant imprint. It's actually more like a solo outing by LSDM front-man Shinsuke Michishita (on voice, guitar, bass and percussion), accompanied on two tracks by legendary drummer Ikuro Takahashi (High Rise, Fushitsusha, Tamio Shiraishi, Kosokuya, Che-Shizu, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Nagisa Ni Te, etc). most of the songs here are intimate, in-your-inner-ear ballads, hypnagogic and melancholic, achy hangovers from the third Velvets LP -- sorrowful birds on the last tree in the universe, thinking themselves into being, then forgetting themselves, then remembering again. except for the title track, that is -- an 8-minute doppler-effect trance that gets you wasted on polonium 210, sets the dials of the Kabbalah for the heart of the sun, and clicks 'send.'"