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Elkhorn

The Red Valley

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Debut standalone VHF album by the Elkhorn duo of Drew Gardner and Jesse Sheppard, a tight set of six studio recordings in a variety of moods and featuring a lot of new sound textures. Elkhorn’s prolific stream of releases since 2016 has highlighted their mastery of sprawling long-form, acoustic-driven hypno-jams, with an emphasis on live performance (including on their collaboration with Pelt’s Mike Gangloff on the Shackamaxon Concert album). The Red Valley is a more layered and composed-sounding set, with the duo overdubbing extensively on top of their own dual guitars. Leading off the LP, “Crystal Hummingbird” features one of their signature minor-modal vamps, with layers of fuzz bass, zither, and frame drum providing weight and psychedelic density. “Gray Salt Trail” continues the vibe, with thick fuzz vibraphone supplementing the cinematic palate, leading into the spare side-closer “Black Wind Of Kayenta,” where Sheppard plays electric 12-string and Gardner solos on acoustic guitar. Side two starts with “Road to Chaco Canyon,” a brooding duet that builds momentum with Gardner’s insistent frame drum cadence, dropping down into the quiet string pool of “Inside Spider Rock” (featuring Fern Knight’s Jesse Sparhawk on gloriously swirling lever harp) and the graceful finale “Jackrabbit Hops.”

O'Sullivan, Daniel

The Pastoral Machine

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Fourth volume of Library Music miniatures by Daniel O’Sullivan (Ulver, Æthenor, This is Not This Heat, etc) for VHF, this time commissioned by the legendary German Music Library, Sonoton. Another sampling of O’Sullivan’s versatility and brilliance as a composer, performer, and sound designer, the focus on The Pastoral Machine is more “electronic” compared to the three previous albums O’Sullivan recorded for KPM (also issued on LP by VHF), with simpler arrangements and a focus on gentle and emotive synthesised soundworlds. Even without as many full ensemble arrangements, there’s still a wealth of diversity—“Empathogen” opens the record with latticed arpeggiating sequences recalling Japanese “environmental music” or Persian Surgery-era Terry Riley, “Fruit Of Stream Entry” burbles with gentle ripples evoking the album’s title, while “The Silversmith Of Space” mines a simple chord sequence evoking Eno’s ’70s classic short instrumentals. “Superstrings” is a series of hypnotic overlapping guitar patterns, like a lost Ash Ra or Achim Reichel track. The brief “Star Lore” is a heavy highlight with deep bass washes and grainy, tape-laminated melodies, followed immediately by Rose Keeler Schaffeler’s vocal feature on “The Oscillating Love” recalling futurist new-age pop in the vein of Enya or Virginia Astley. Housed in a jacket and heavy euro-style inner featuring collages by O’Sullivan, soon to be the subject of an art book published by Timeless Editions in mid-2024.

Mahti

Konsertti I

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Third album from Finnish group Mahti, a collaboration between three members of stalwart avant-rock legends Circle and Hannu Saha. Saha plays the Kantele, a traditional Finnish acoustic instrument which can have five, ten, fifteen, or thirty-six strings, and which is plucked like a zither or harp, producing a delicate string sound. Following their two very limited studio albums on UK label Riot Season, Konsertti I is an excellent recording of the group in live performance, capturing their understated and beautiful mix of ambient, electronic, and string music. Saha’s Kantele centers the music, sometimes plucking out melodic arpeggios, at others blending in with the burbling-but-subtle electronic and electric guitar backdrop. Doesn’t really sound like anything else, but recommended to fans of AR & Machines, Ash Ra Temple, Richter Band, Durutti Column, etc. “These ancient musicians played their ‘mahti’…and the sound they produced was called ‘musiikki’.”

Tomutonttu Ja Lehtisalo

Tomutonttu Ja Lehtisalo

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Finland has long had a uniquely progressive underground, with thriving punk, avant, jazz, and rock scenes with oversized output and impact. Jussi Lehtisalo’s (Circle, Pharaoh Overlord, Mahti, etc) label Ektro has been at the center of this activity for the last three decades, with a stream of excellent and conceptually bonkers releases covering music of all types. Here Lehtisalo joins up with Jan Anderzén (of Kemialliset Ystävät among others) for an album of absolutely fun and unusual miniature duets that sound like alien Library music beamed in from the outerlands. Tracks like “Luukku Yksi” and “Puistossa” use a charmingly retro synth-y sound palate and Cluster-like melodic sensibility to make accessible some deceptively “out” music. Some cuts (like “Kylpy”) have a vague hint of early ’80s post-punk / new wave vibes, bouncing along in a friendly way with odd interjections of sample debris and electronics jumping out of the mix to keep it weird. The surging “Hymy yössä” could be music for the credits of the world’s hippest newscast. Beautiful jacket by renown Helsinki-based artist Dylan Ray Arnold, bringing the die-cut techniques of their gallery pieces like “Growth of the Night Plants” to LP form.

Acid Mothers Reynols

Vol. 3

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Volume 3 of a set of collaborations between the prolific Argentine polymaths Reynols and the inescapable Acid Mothers Temple. Recorded in Buenos Aires on AMT’s 2017 South American Tour, the music has identifiable sonic elements from both groups but ends up sounding like neither, with a surprising weightlessness that keeps things jammy and psychedelic until the final track’s blustering rock. Taking up most of side 1, “Kicking Air Bricks” has a loose Gong/’70s Euro-classic vibe, with Satoshima Nani getting to swing on the drums in a way that isn’t always part of AMT’s steamroller, while the rest of the gang layers in abstract piano, percussion, glissando guitar, etc. “Multiverse Turtle Reflex” closes the side with a thick drone coda. Side two starts with Miguel Tomasin’s gentle vocal and organ accompaniment on “Smelling Oneiric Asado” before the group gradually gathers momentum with Wolf’s thick bass anchoring layers of clean and loose guitar interplay. “Lemurian Tsunami Inside A Hat” is a thriteen-minute heavy rock epic, with the Reynols’ guitars going head to head with Makota Kawabata’s easily recognized interjections, ramping up into a riffy crescendo.

Elkhorn & Mike Gangloff

Shackamaxon Concert

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Delicate and beautiful music from the combined forced of the recently ubiquitous East-Coast psychedelic combo Elkhorn and Pelt’s Mike Gangloff, laying down two epic raga-like performances captured on a 2022 collaborative tour. Gangloff—fresh from the triumph of his VHF solo fiddle album Evening Measures—has found a distinct instrumental voice, blending drone music and trad influences in way that really advances the tradition into new areas. “East Dauphin Suite” builds patiently on the interlocking acoustic guitars of the Elkhorn duo, with Gangloff’s hardanger fiddle carrying the melody over the top. The sound is a neat riff on American primitive, with just enough Appalachian-style touches via Gangloff’s careful glissandos cutting through the Vuh-type chords and patterns to create a unique and supremely melodic hybrid. “Summerfield Raga” takes things further out, with more microtonal variation in the embroidery, with assertive bowing and an increased energy level. Pressed in Chicago and housed in an amazing jacket by Jake Blanchard.

O'Sullivan, Daniel

The Physic Garden

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Third in a trilogy of albums of library music miniatures from composer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel O’Sullivan (Æthenor, Ulver, This Is Not This Heat, etc) following 2020’s Electric Māyā and 2021’s Fourth Density. For heads, the term “library music” in 2021 might evoke dodgy Italian gray market LPs and crate-diggers hunting for “funky breaks”—but London’s venerable KPM Music is working with groundbreakers like O’Sullivan to open up new avenues for composers to experiment. The fifteen tracks on The Physic Garden are fully-formed and orchestrated compositions, which would be highlights on anyone’s release, never mind as incidental music. Of the music, O’Sullivan says: “The Physic Garden is an album of diverse instrumentals inspired by a swathe of verdant vistas from manicured gardens and follies to urban common land, overgrown and forgotten. Convalescent memories in the shape of psychedelic auditory botanics.” Key tracks include the droning acoustic folk of the title song; the Canterbury-esque rolling horn and woodwind melody of “Return The Heart” (with expert drum kit from Frank Byng); the prog-ish odd meter interlude “Buttercup Tea”; The quiet ambience and delicate melody of “Dusty Feather:”; and the Eno-like drift of “Vapourer Larvae.”

Sunburned Hand Of The Man

Hypnotape

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A genuinely sprawling collection of high-fidelity mutation music that suits the compact disc format perfectly, Hypnotape is the third consecutive Sunburned Hand Of The Man album of studio assemblages following 2019’s Headless and 2021’s Pick A Day To Die. Recorded throughout 2021 and 2022, it’s an album possessed with a peculiar runaway locomotion which jump cuts feverishly between unusual atmospheres yet maintains a beguiling consistency—throbbing, twisting, undulating rhythmic blast-offs suddenly kick the door down into serene realms of nuanced acoustic privacy which are unexpectedly plunged back, face first into a miasma of shirtless, raging thuggery, ad infinitum. The album is notable in the group’s monstrous catalog for a few reasons: first, it showcases founding member Conrad Capistran stepping out from behind the keyboards and electronics to spread his smooth, buttery baritone atop the majority of the tracks. From his velvet cooing above the pulsing whirlwind of opener “People Person” to his vivid and febrile musings as a trip reporter on the frontlines of the meltdown zone on “Roger” his honeyed vocals guide the listener Virgil-like through the inferno all the way to the album’s finale where he duets with Ron Schneiderman on the old Dino Valenti / Quicksilver chestnut “What About Me”. Secondly, it features the recorded debut of Sunburned’s longtime friend and collaborator Mark Perretta after years of touring with the group. Some may remember Perretta from his days stomping across the primordial Boston underground of the late ’80s / early ’90s with the mighty Subskin Cables or his...

Ashtray Navigations

The Apotheosis of VaVaVoom

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Third VHF dispatch from the mighty and prolific Ashtray Navigations, following 2020’s mega and extremely popular Imaginary Greatest Hits package. The curiously titled The Apotheosis of VaVaVoom is one of Phil Todd & Melanie O’Dubhshlaine’s most direct and rocking packages, with mucho ripping lead guitar action backed by some absolutely fun bubbling synth and drum grooves. “Irons Three” kicks off with wicked wah’d out leads, followed by the subdued ambience of “Tasteful Grey Putting” and “Appropros Tower” and a segue into the driving “Hinges on the Clapometer.” Side 2’s opening combo of “Slush Puppy Window” and “Avatar Down The Highway” sounds like a head on collision between Terje Rypdal and Tangerine Dream on a dark bender, with laser guitar over a bed of tumbling electronics and tiny noises. The closing “Crack Another Bloodcapsule” is one of Ashtray Nav’s all time best, like a lost krautrock classic jam with a driving rhythm from guest drummer Alex Neilson. On limited green vinyl.

Gangloff, Mike

Evening Measures

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First solo LP in a decade from long-time Pelt/Black Twigs/Eight Point Star leader, presenting a remarkable program of solo Hardanger and octave fiddle music. Evening Measures is a bold and unique statement, a direct and disarming individual expression of a musician’s inner thoughts and inspirations. Like some of Mike’s work in other projects, this ricochets back and forth across the line between the most traditional and the most “out” music, blending drone, melody, and the pure tactile sensation of acoustic string music into a personal sound. A set of all-original compositions (save the traditional “Wild Geese Chase”), Mike’s playing is languorous and expressive, with the sympathetic strings of the Hardanger-style instrument ringing out on some cuts like multiple players. The album touches on a variety of styles, keeping things fresh for the entire playing time. “The Other Side of Catawba” is a deeply psychedelic and immersive cloud of hovering string sound, reminiscent of some of Pelt’s more gentle explorations. “New River Suite” (some of which appeared in group versions by Eight Point Star on a PBS documentary about Appalachia’s New River) is a keening set of themes that have the memorable melodies of established traditional repertoire but are all completely new. “Wild Geese Chase” is a rugged and wild slash through a well-known fiddle standard. “Halfway From Shawsville” rounds things out with a lovely tribute to Mike’s Virginia town.

Flower-Corsano Duo

The Halcyon

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The Flower-Corsano Duo, the world’s best and only drums / Japan banjo duo return to VHF for their first album since 2009’s monumental The Four Aims. Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra) and Chris Corsano (frequently seen with Bill Orcutt, Joe McPhee, and other luminaries) work an area that’s not really jazz, not really anything—a stream of endlessly mutating free sound, a unique mind-merge between Corsano’s nimble drums and percussion and Flower’s amplified Japan banjo (also known as a Shahi Baaja, a type of electric Indian zither with both fretted / keyed and drone strings). Flower cuts a highly original line, playing neither “leads” nor making drone-music. Less amplified here than on the more “heavy” The Four Aims, the strings ring out with distinct clarity in short snippets of melody and a canvas of pleasing electric sound. Corsano’s bag is to charm out a flow of thoughtful percussion engagement, rolling around on his kit, continually varying his attack and approach in conversational free-jazz style. The Halcyon is a precious addition to a tiny discography, a fortunate event even in today’s world of small press overabundance. Thanks guys!

O'Sullivan, Daniel

Fourth Density

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Second in a series of three records of Library Music miniatures from composer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel O’Sullivan (Æthenor, Ulver, This Is Not This Heat, etc) following 2020’s Electric Māyā. For heads, the term “Library Music” in 2021 might evoke dodgy Italian gray market LPs and crate-diggers hunting for “funky breaks”—but London’s venerable KPM Music is working with groundbreakers like O’Sullivan to open up new avenues for composers to experiment with. Fourth Density’s fifteen tracks include several beguiling instrumental beauties, including the Ashra-like “Astral Survivor” and the drifty “Faster Than Light.” Mixed in with the instrumental are almost-pop gems like the hypnotic “Orgone Attenuation” and “Head In The Belfry,” both with guest vocals from Astrud Steeholder. Like the other volumes, this is in a beautiful jacket designed by O’Sullivan and Turner Prize-nominee Mark Titchner and pressed on aesthetically complimentary blue vinyl.

Eight Point Star

S/t

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Remarkable debut album by new Cosmic-Appalachian string band, birthed from the same Virginia firmament that has brought forth Pelt, Jack Rose, Black Twig Pickers, and Spiral Joy Band. Led by Mike Gangloff’s droning fiddle and Matt Peyton’s fingerpicked guitar, Eight Point Star mines the modal traditions of both old-time Appalachia and far-out drone music to produce beautiful tunes that are equal parts memorable and psychedelic. Side A starts with the gentle guitar and fiddle duet of “Winchester’s Dream” before segueing into the loping “Waiting on the Band,” where the subliminal pulse of Tim Thornton’s upright bass animates the music until the lengthy lock-groove repetition of “The Interloper.” Closing the side, “Flowerthrower” and “Mount-Calvary Peacock” have a vibe reminiscent of Popol Vuh’s mid-’70s masterpieces, combining sawing fiddle and melodic guitar with simple and haunting chord structures. Side B is bookended by two country-blues influenced numbers, with Peyton’s boisterous vocal and guitar and Isak Howell’s harp leading the upbeat “Brand New Shirt” and the elegiac “Weeping Cherry Cry.” In between the two vocal features are a segued mini-epic of moods, including an expanded group lineup collapsing midway through “A Water Panther Speaks” into an eerie soundscape of singing bowls and distant gong sounds as dark as the night in remotest Virginia.

Black Twig Pickers

Friend's Peace

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Following a series of records with Thrill Jockey (including the sensational Seasonal Hire with Steve Gunn), the Black Twig Pickers return to the VHF mothership to continue their charming and original take on old time and Appalachian-inspired string band sounds. Together since 2001, and a continuous presence in the music’s true home of Southwest Virginia, the Twigs represent the actively working evolution of the traditions—learning songs from other locals, playing dances at the Floyd Country Store, etc—without retro-artifice or nostalgia. The ragged-but-right performances and recording (and Sally Ann Morgan’s perfect cover design) sit at the ideal intersection of DIY / “underground” and local string-sound values. On Friend’s Peace, the band travels a range of styles, from the lovely harmony on the trad-classic “Moonshiner” to the racing fiddle / guitar / banjo on the “Money Musk” medley. Mixed in with the traditional songs are several perfectly-placed original tunes, including Mike Gangloff’s keening “Cara’s Waltz” and Isak Howell’s solo guitar spotlight on “Barnswallow.”

O'Sullivan, Daniel

Electric Māyā: Dream Flotsam And Astral Hinterlands

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First in a series of three records of library music miniatures from composer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel O’Sullivan (Æthenor, Ulver, This is Not This Heat, etc). For heads, the term “library music” in 2020 might evoke dodgy Italian gray market LPs and crate diggers hunting for “funky breaks”—but London’s venerable KPM Music is working with groundbreakers like O’Sullivan to open up new avenues for composers to experiment. Electric Māyā includes eighteen gems, beautifully arranged and recorded specifically for the challenge of the short form. These are fully realized tunes, not just clips from the middle of some jam to be used on late night TV. The obvious touchstones here are Eno’s On Land and Music For Films, but O’Sullivcan’s touch on multiple instruments and knack for melody extend the music far beyond mere atmospherics. There are plenty of drifty segments, each rendered fully realized—a timely reminder that a well-made drone or bit of ambience can set its spell in two or three minutes rather than thirty. In a beautiful jacket designed by O’Sullivan and Turner Prize-nominee Mark Titchner.

Ashtray Navigations

Greatest Imaginary Hits

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27th Anniversary set for the multi-dimensional midlands-crew, led by Phil Todd and Melanie O’Dubhslaine. Nearly six hours of cosmic, psychedelic, mind-boggling sounds, featuring a newly recorded LP plus four max-length CDs curated by AshNav connoisseurs Rob Hayler, Henry Rollins, Pete Coward, and Neil Campbell. The CDs are drawn from the band’s massive back catalog of mostly small run / private releases, covering activity dating back to 1994. Mining a deep well of thousand-yard stare psychedelia, Ashtray Navigations possess of one of the most exciting outré music catalogs of the contemporary era, matching the classics from any era in originality and straight-up bonkers fun. This epic release includes a full range of hypnotic jams, including sequencer-led cosmic workouts, drifty ambience, and a heavy dose of Phil Todd’s ripping, laser guitar leads. The gatefold LP also includes pithy liner notes from Matt Valentine, Henry Rollins, Jon Dale, and more.  “Phil. Well I am glad you’re finally back from your place in Monaco and getting to work. The pictures of you with the polo mallet and the horses you sent were impressive, sure but when you sell yourself as an artist type and then are seen cavorting with those over tanned Euro trustfunders, it is alienating to your audience. You are, however, the only person I have ever met who has actually cavorted and that’s why you will always be a mid-level god to me.”   —Henry Rollins

Youngs, Richard

Ein Klein Nein

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Mysterious and minimal instrumental album by Richard Youngs, dreamt at home and recorded quickly in Glasgow’s Green Door Studio. Centered on a single piano chord and bare snare strikes, Youngs builds a haunting atmosphere in four episodes, featuring his guitar, organ, harmonica, and voice. The reductive and hypnotic approach here recalls his early classics like Advent and Festival. Another essential work from the prolific and truly unique musician. Creator of nearly one hundred albums, Richard Youngs somehow continues to find ways to surprise listeners. Even in these dark, dark ages where everyone knows everything, Youngs finds new creative ways—recording albums of accessible “rock” and folk music for the overground Glass and O Genesis labels, playing high-concept disco in the critically acclaimed AMOR; and releasing an extensive and bewildering series of albums where he plays all instruments with his feet!

Astral Social Club & Grumbling Fur Time Machine Orchestra

Plasma Splice Trifle

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Debut collaboration between these like-minded English underground titans, perfectly mixing the long-form pop eccentricities of Grumbling Fur with the free electric sound of Astral Social Club to produce four epic and memorable tracks. The music is dense and layered, with hidden hooks, haunting vocals, unidentifiable electronic shuddering, delicate ambience, etc. Challenging but completely accessible and beautiful stuff. After a brief vocal declaration of purpose, “Back To The Egg” rides a motorik pulse ala Harmonia or Kraftwerk for ten hypnotic minutes. “Three Years Apart” pulses gently in a burbling cloud, reminding that along with crafting song gems, Grumbling Fur has collaborated with noted avant-composer / performer Charlemagne Palestine. “Ozone Antifreeze Intelligence” layers electronics over a haunting piano and vocal melody, framed by subliminal fuzz guitar. “Toejam Boxdrum” closes the album with an uproarious polyrhythm hidden by more layers of soft-focus electro-fizz, gradually giving way to thick bass riffs and tremelo’d interjections.

Russell, Bruce & Luke Wood

Visceral Realists

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Debut album by the New Zealand duo of Bruce Russell (Dead C, Handful Of Dust, etc) and Luke Wood. Visceral Realists is a high-concept commentary on the state of vinyl, analogue recording, music culture, art, etc. A 45-rpm bullet of short bursts of free electric sound, the music here is tactile and rough but not “noise music.” Russell and Wood play over loops of scratchy records, with their guitars and electronics surging to get over the wall. Russell’s guitar sound from his vintage transistor amp and anti-style is instantly recognizable from countless classic Dead C sides, but the tracks are more painterly than recent DC epics—these are celebratory vignettes of thoughts—singles, if you will. Originally made as an unfindable edition of twenty by Wood’s Ilam Press label to accompany an exhibit of NZ lathe-cut records, this new edition is beautifully packaged in a debossed and letterpress printed sleeve designed by Wood and printed by Stumptown in Portland. Two color risographs printed by Wood in NZ are tipped onto the jacket, and an additional two inserts provide revelatory notes by Russell and glam shots of the instruments that made the sounds. Also includes download slip.  “There’s more information encoded in an old record than in a new one. Every crack, every pop, a tree ring of recovered time. A life-time. Time again for life. Like the revenants, come from the grave warm; and once again walking. But still just blood in a bag. The glow of the vacuum at the...

Wingtip Sloat

Purge And Swell/The Lost Decade

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Wingtip Sloat’s slashing and arty post-punk sounds weirdly contemporary these days, so what better news than to have their first new music in almost twenty years! Purge And Swell is a 12-inch 45 RPM mini LP with ten new tracks, and is accompanied by a 76-minute bonus CD Lost Decade with thirty-one additional tracks. The 12-inch includes plenty of the trebly guitar blare and low-fi charm immediately familiar from the group’s classic early ’90s singles, backstopping winning and memorable tunes like “Stars Bailed Out” and “Gizzard Jett.” The bonus CD includes bric-a-brac from the Sloat rehearsal room, with found poetry, perfect ninety-second rockers (the DC-specific “Cruisin’ The Ellipse”), confusing instrumental detours, and winsome covers of Eno, Dylan, Wire, Belle & Sebastian and more.

Flying Saucer Attack

In Search Of Spaces

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First ever reissue and first time on vinyl for this unique Flying Saucer Attack live album, expanded with additional material and a new side four mix from Jim O’Rourke. Produced in collaboration with Dave Pearce / FSA and Bruce Russell (compiler of the original CD release for his Corpus Hermeticum label), featuring new artwork by Bruce Russell as well.  While rightly known for the folk-influenced songs and spacey instrumentals of their proper albums, the briefly active live version of FSA unexpectedly delivered a blistering wave of electric sound. Recorded at various shows in 1994, In Search Of Spaces heaves with long passages of feedback guitar racket, broken up by sections of surging rock music. The live band focused almost exclusively on visceral, trebly guitar noise—which, while always a key element in their sound, was greeted by audiences with total mystification (and often disapproval). Following a few brief attempts to settle a lineup and play songs from their records, Dave Pearce / FSA abandoned live performance altogether, leaving behind this album (and the barely available P. A. Blues CDR) as the sole document of his in-person delivery.  Originally compiled and released in 1996, this reissue adds several minutes of music back to the original program that had been edited out by FSA for being “too rock.” For side four, Jim O’Rourke revisited the original 1994 live tapes and has made a spooky and brooding new mix of music exclusive to this release.

Slowest Lift, The

S/t

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The debut release by The Slowest Lift (Sophie Cooper and Julian Bradley) presents a new chapter in the long-running tradition of radical English music duos. Originally formed via a commission from the Supernormal Festival, Cooper (an accomplished solo performer and collaborator) and Bradley (from frequent VHF delinquents Vibracathedral Orchestra) play a kind of gentle post-industrial psychedelia, with Cooper’s lovely vocals floating over a collage of live and electronic performances. The songs are a blend of straightforward performance and eccentric bricolage, with rude electronic interjections sitting comfortably alongside delicate guitar and keyboard melodies. Zoviet France-like low-fi atmospherics compete with Cooper’s voice for air on tracks like “Crystal Fracture” and “Hi From The Skyline Swim,” while the duo’s surprising cover of Duran Duran’s “The Chauffeur” deep on side two sneaks in perfectly, a mini-pop music drama reimagined as pure hallucination.

Rose, Jack

Opium Musick

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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 later works like Kensington Blues. Recorded and originally released in 2003, Opium Musick is an eclectic collection with pieces for 12-string (the percussive and dark “Black Pearls”), 6-string, and lap guitar. The lovely raga-ish “Yaman Blues” features Mike Gangloff (Pelt, Black Twig Pickers) on tanpura, and echoes the extended modal work on Pelt’s contemporaneous Pearls From The River. The near-ragtime of “Linden Ave Stomp” showcases Glenn Jones on his vintage Gibson in a jumping duet with Rose’s lap steel. “Linden Ave” charted a path that Rose would determinedly pursue—short ragtime and old-time influenced pieces (originals and classics), with all phrasing worked out to a perfectionist standard. The lovely “Mountaintop Lamento” was memorably used in Catherine Pancake’s film about coal mining in Appalachia, Black Diamonds: Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice.  “In the year and half between Red Horse, White Mule and Opium Musick Mr. Rose spent the majority of his time honing his Ragtime and Jass skills. He met Dr. Chattanooga Red soon after recording his first LP and he revealed the secrets...

Rose, Jack

Red Horse, White Mule

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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 later works like Kensington Blues. Rose’s 2002 solo debut Red Horse, White Mule was a bit of an outlier in the underground gestalt at the time, coming just before the wave of releases from the new generation of Takoma- / Fahey-inspired players. Strictly a solo affair, Red Horse balances the epic, side-long raga of “Red Horse” against a second side of shorter pieces, including the ragged slide style of “The Colonel’s Blues.” The compositions and performances incorporate the new and the classic with a rough-hewn charm.  “Rose’s personalized and disparate criteria awaken feelings of both rapture and tragedy on the scale of that which must have been felt by the newly-wed anthropologist who drove Kiowa Indian guests out of his Oklahoma residence with Victrola discs of Amelita Galli-Curci in order to go to bed with his bride or the child who, on hearing Bugs Bunny sing Queen Liluokalani’s dirge “Aloha Oe,” quarantined himself in the clothes hamper until such time that the United States withdraws from Hawai’i.” —Kisan Nagai, blues scholar, on Red Horse, White Mule

Aethenor

Hazel

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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 results. Contradicting expectations of a massive blow-out of sound, everyone plays with remarkable, effective restraint. Atmospheric and layered, this latest release features bits and pieces of identifiable rock-moves peeking out from under a thick blanket of hard-to-identify drift.Based on live recordings made on a lengthy tour of Italy in 2010, Hazel has been extensively edited and supplemented, but without losing the elemental sound of a group playing live together. Though there’s plenty of weird ambient sound to be heard, this isn’t a soundeffects / “pedalboard” record. Like the previous En Form for Bla, Noble’s drums anchor the music with spare and considered playing, sometimes lashing out with abstract punctuation, and other times laying out a Can-like groove. O’Malley’s guitar is also restrained, providing a bed for O’Sullivan’s constantly morphing Rhodes, synths and electronic effects. Kristoffer Rygg contributes a rousing vocal incantation to “Ermanna” and peppers the mix with ghostly modular details. Æthenor’s catalog continues to be not like anything else out there right now. Sleeve designed by Stephen O’Malley.

Vibracathedral Orchestra

Rec Blast Motorbike

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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 bleeping electronics riding atop the band’s signature grooves. As with some of the band’s other records, there’s more than a hint of the early Velvet Underground spirit in these ten tracks. If you wish that Cale and Reed would have been more of an instrumental band, here it is.

Ashtray Navigations

A Shimmering Replica

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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 guitar-and-electronics exotica with burbling rhythms, Heldon-like laser guitar leads, field recordings, synth racket, etc. The totally fun take on Les Baxter’s all-time classic “Quiet Village” (here wittily retitled “Quite Village”) is a good example of the explorer spirit at work. Considering the amount of unhinged psychedelic fuzzwah lead damage laid out across this thing, it’s arguably the most effusive guitar heroics record of the genre, hopefully inspiring a new generation of young rockers out there to get on the bus.

Kawabata, Makoto

Astro Love & Infinite Kisses

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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, with echoplex’d guitar anchoring a stream of expertly done glissando. The title track is a darker drone in the tradition of Kawabata’s Inui series of releases for VHF. “Woman From Dream Island” closes the record with a thick buzz of tamboura overlaid with trippy backwards guitar, before giving way to a gentle, finger-picked acoustic coda.

Youngs, Richard

No Fans Compendium

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No Fans Compendium is a deluxe, limited-edition seven-disc set of Richard Youngs’s recordings for his long-running private No Fans label. Five CDs are the artist’s personal selection from his No Fans releases, all of which were issued in tiny editions (20-50 copies) and only available for sale at his rare shows or at Glasgow’s now-defunct Volcanic Tongue shop. In addition, Youngs has included two full discs of material previously unavailable in any form: a recording from 1989 predating his earliest widely known work, and a new recording from late 2014.  Unbeatable as a survey of Youngs’s career, everything here is of equal quality to his over-the-counter releases. In keeping with his penchant for unpredictable stylistic mashups and reinventions, there are folky laments, achingly beautiful “songs,” tape collage, rude prog noise, minimalist experiments, multi-tracked vocals, etc. Each disc is housed in an individual card folio with artwork repurposed from the original releases.

Astral Social Club

Fountain Transmitter Medications

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A boggling and super-fun 100+ minutes from Neil Campbell’s Astral Social Club, Fountain Transmitter Medications delivers the head-on collision of classic UK electronic styles, electric grit and the future.  The LP starts with a set of tight chuggers, the high-end racket of “Infinity Thug” ripping through the speakers before closing the side with the loping “Grisly Terroir.” Side two is comprised of the 20-minute epic “Diamonds in the Dreich,” a mid-tempo journey of Throbbing Gristle-ish lurch-pulse and disembodied voices, giving way after ten minutes to an organ-interlude which accelerates into a full-on rock jam loaded with scathing guitar slashing. It’s unlike anything else in the Astral Social Club catalog.  The CD (“side three”) offers three lengthy explorations of key facets of the overall Astral Social concept, where Campbell really stretches out and lets the tape run—the rushing sound effects and buried rock of “Sun Still God,” the bristling electric juddering of “Erotic Meditation,” and the blown-out space-rock (!) of “Squeegee Anthem #3.”

Usui, H.

Sings The Blues

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Solo darkness from remarkably pedigreed but rarely recorded Japanese legend Hiroyuki Usui (Ghost, Fushitsusha, L, Marble Sheep, A-Musik, August Born, etc.), Sings the Blues is raw and gripping, like a darker version of his all-time classic folk-psych work Holy Letters (VHF).  Performed by Usui alone on voice, guitar, banjo, bass, steel guitar and cornet, the music is blunt and rough around the edges—a Tonight’s the Night-like offhandedness that increases the feeling of existential seriousness. Like Holy Letters, most of these tracks are undeniably “blues,” but there’s nary a familiar progression or guitar phrase. Vocals are a whisper, accompanied by simple guitar or banjo. Clever overdubs add to a few of the tracks—untutored (but just right) blats of cornet here, some electronic static there.  If you like Loren Connors, Simon Finn, Jandek, Kan Mikami, Six Organs, etc., this is for you. Pressed in a limited edition, the vinyl includes a CD version of the album as well.

Sparhawk, Jesse / Carbonara, Eric

Tributes & Diatribes

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Tributes & Diatribes is the lovely second set of tracks from the entirely unusual duo of Jesse Sparhawk (38-string lever harp) and Eric Carbonara (22-string upright Chaturangui guitar, banjo, nylon string guitar).  The four tracks here are restrained and unhurried, letting the elegant string flow breathe and build over each cut. Like on their debut Sixty Strings (also on VHF), there’s plenty of virtuosity, but it’s not showy and crass. These guys are more mood-builders (deep, cosmic, meditative) than doodlers. Even though Tributes & Diatribes is immediately graspable by those of us who like “our kind” of music, it really doesn’t sound like anyone else—a rare achievement.  Along with the main dialogue between the two players, the arrangements are filled out with percussion by Peterson Goodwyn, giving some of the tracks an overt groove that cuts against the spiraling string notes. Beautiful.

Turnquist, Alexander

Like Sunburned Snowflakes

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The limited-edition Like Sunburned Snowflakes features five tracks in Alexander Turnquist’s unique style, using only plucked harmonics on a 12-string. With this seemingly narrow palate of sounds, the guitarist crafts sparkling waves of notes, employing the minimalist sensibilities that have informed his more recent work (e.g. his 2011 album Hallway of Mirrors) on a smaller scale. Arguably “new age,” the EP is not drifty or ambient—it’s more Reich and Riley than Windham Hill. The harmonics are frequently struck hard and in complex patterns.  Like Sunburned Snowflakes is another intriguing experiment from one of the most forward thinking solo players out there, whose recordings are completely devoid of the folk / Americana spirit so imbued in the genre.  “My fascination with harmonics on an acoustic guitar started as a child; from before I ever started playing I was drawn towards the warm sounds that I heard people play in brief moments. So I’ve had the idea for a very long time, that idea being to make an entire solo guitar recording just employing my left hand to the harmonics up and down the neck and alternating picking patterns with the right. I feel like it gives the instrument a tonal color that doesn’t necessarily feel at first listen like a 12-string acoustic guitar. —Alexander Turnquist

Black Sun Roof

Feral

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Feral marks the return of Matthew Bower’s Sunroof! (in the guise of Black Sun Roof), for their first recording in five years. Quiet since 2007’s blistering Panzer Division Lou Reed, the group delivers a more introspective set here, reaching back to the fuzzy, spacey sounds of releases like the epic double-CD Bliss. Among the drifting sonic washes, there’s the crude, Dead C-like riffing of “Lions + Peonies” and the lock-grooved tremolo of “Son of the Blue Wolf” (referencing previous triumphs like Cloudz).  Bower says: “I have a problem with the term ‘psychedelia’ [and its] negative associations of a ‘hippie’ falseness. Nevertheless, my arte is, I know, deeply psychedelic in a true sense, a kind of synaesthesisia, a scrambling, an overload that seeks Samadhi in its primal gush, that will reconnect one with the all, or rather, a ‘black psychedelia,’ substituting the elective current, for ‘all’....” In addition to the all-new tracks on the LP, the package also includes a bonus CD featuring a Bower-curated overview of his work. Many of the tracks on the 75-min Zebra Blood CD are from scarce or out-of-print recordings, including “Austrian Shade” from an impossible-to-find Total seven-inch. Also included is the epic and exclusive new track “Spirit Animal Danzig.”

Vibracathedral Orchestra

S/t

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VHF presents a public service reissue of this impossibly rare and choice title in the Vibracathedral Orchestra oeuvre, originally issued by the band in 2004 in an edition of 250. Featuring the “classic” lineup (Mick Flower, Neil Campbell, Bridget Hayden, Adam Davenport, Julian Bradley) that made Queen of Guess and Dabbling With Gravity and Who You Are, 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 and development jams) cut in abruptly, continuing the informal, expansive vibe of the band’s other self-released items. The thick blanket of signature drone-fog is never far away, anchoring tunes that veer from early Velvets-style rock jammers (“Thrift”) to swirling electronic mystery (“Clear”). On side three, “Gist” builds up a looping, guitar-led rhythm like a lost AR & Machines track, sharing the same side with the pulsing “Flötz,” which rides a taut electro-pulse bolstered by group small percussion. This lengthy two-disc album concludes with the almost side-long “Minkey,” featuring the full complement of VCO sound signatures in one big, hallucinatory swirl. Exclusive to this release is a 35-minute DVD of three live performances selected by Flower. A rare chance to see some cinema verité of the group in action, the performances here (shot in the UK in 2005 and 2007) are all on the rocking side, with furious drumming and guitar strangling. Perhaps best of all is Flower and Campbell’s optional audio commentary track (!) on “Wisdom T,” providing some insight on...

Nugent, Cian

Grass Above My Head

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Cian Nugent’s lovely follow-up to 2011’s much acclaimed Doubles album presents two short solo acoustic turns—one original, and one Black Flag cover.  “Grass Above My Head” is a wistful, fingerpicked, South Dublin coastal lovesick blues. In contrast to the two ambitiously complex side-long tracks on Doubles, “Grass” is simple and elegant, full of just-so chord changes that make all the right references to the genre classics.  In contrast, the truly unusual assault on Black Flag’s “My War” is a knot of edgy picking, starting with an abstracted take on Greg Ginn’s naggingly dissonant intro and rapidly moving into a hypnotic variant that suggests an entirely different kind of blues than the A-side. Truly one of the weirdest (and best) Flag covers of all time.

Skullflower

Carved Into Roses / Infinityland / Singles

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Recorded together and originally conceived as a double-CD back in the dark ages of 1995, Carved Into Roses and Infinityland find the transitioning from the heavy riffs of Skullflower’s early days to a more free-form sound that continues to drive Matthew Bower’s many guises (Total, Sunroof!, Hototogisu, Mirag, etc.) to this day. The revamped lineup of Bower, Stuart Dennison, Russell Smith (of UK scuzz legend Terminal Cheesecake) and Phillip Best whacks away at both styles simultaneously, with lumbering hooks meeting rainbows of coruscating feedback. Both records start with lengthy, two-chord modal jams, anchored by the guest organ of Simon Wickham-Smith. “Pipe Dream” and “The Idiotsburgh Address” sport structures that wouldn’t have been out of place on a 1960s Pharoah Sanders album, but with the spiraling sound of Bower and Smith’s guitars tearing up the sound bed. The two-guitar / no-bass configuration sounds at times like a UK version of The Dead C. “White Fang’s” slashing riff and Michael Morley-style vocal are a tip of the hat to the New Zealand band’s (essentially contemporaneous) key works. Elsewhere, the classic drone and low-end menace of “Abraxas” and “Blood Orange,” the galloping drum signatures on “Metallurgical King” and the live mayhem midway thru Carved make it clear that this was a real working outfit that laid down a distinct statement of purpose and identity on these two records. The Singles disc collects both sides (over 50 minutes) of the four 7-inch records that were released around the same time and made largely by...

Nugent, Cian

Doubles

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Doubles, the first widely available release by Irish guitarist Cian Nugent, showcases a major talent in the audacious setting of two side-long epics. Clearly inspired by the Takoma classics and the recent generation of greats (Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, etc.), Nugent delivers a pair of perfectly formed takes on the classic steel-string sound, one (mostly) unaccompanied, the other an expertly arranged full-band throw-down.  “Peaks and Troughs” is a slow-building solo piece in the style of Fahey’s “Fare Forward Voyagers,” with each part perfectly connected to the previous. Nugent has ample technique, but the virtuosity here is all in service of the mood and the build-up. His guitar has a darker, more intimate sound than many current players, without the brittle ring common to fingerstyle. The emergence of a deep drone after fifteen minutes shakes up the track, like a swarm of bees spilling out of the speakers. In contrast, “Sixes and Sevens” is a percolating jam in the style of Jim O’Rourke’s classic Bad Timing LP, with Nugent’s steel-string riding an inventive wave of drums, organ, viola, woodwinds and brass in an ambitious, filmic masterpiece. The main tune of the song is instantly memorable, building momentum before a subdued interlude that resets things for an elegant, orchestrated finish.

Sparhawk, Jesse / Carbonara, Eric

Sixty Strings

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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 players supporting simple but elegant melodies that recall Brüder des Schattens-era Popol Vuh and various modal / devotional styles. While the sound of the Chaturangui’s sympathetic strings provides a constant electric blanket of comfort, Carbonara’s playing is concise and restrained, forgoing the kind of melismatic ornamentation that is a stylistic tic of much Indian-inspired music. Sparhawk, whose expert playing adds much to Fern Knight’s complex orchestrations, steps out and extends his instrument using various techniques: fingerpicking guitar-like patterns that interlock with Carbonara, and using sharply struck attacks at the upper register for a piano-like effect. On “The Entwined Twin,” the dry crack of a snare drum (played by Julius Masri) enters after a few minutes, ratcheting up the urgency and adding an unexpected texture to the proceedings. The excellent recording captures both instruments in detail with close-up, intimate feel.

Turnquist, Alexander

Hallway Of Mirrors

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On Hallway of Mirrors, young New York-based guitarist / composer Alexander Turnquist continues to forge his own radical style: a resonant and enveloping acoustic sound, full of beautiful harmonic overtone interplay, all instruments sustained.  Turnquist’s guitar approach revolves around a prodigious right-hand technique and a minimalist slant on composition that separates him from the retro-styling endemic to most current acoustic guitar music. Hallway of Mirrors uses much of the tonal palate from its precursor As the Twilight Crane Dreams in Color—dense twelve-string finger-picking with vibraphone and piano carrying much of the melody. On Hallway, the pieces are more concise with the added sweep of Christopher Tignor’s elegant violin punctuating Turnquist’s harmonics-laden forward motion and Matthew O’Koren’s immaculate vibraphone (played with both mallets and bow). The additional instrumentation, inspired in part by Steve Reich’s “Music for Eighteen Musicians,” provides an added focus in the music, signifying each change in tone and timbre.  Recorded on analog tape using traditional automatic double-tracking stereo mix techniques by engineers Henry Hirsch and Bram Tobey, the sound has an elegant soft focus that highlights Turnquist’s strong and sharp performance. The centerpiece of the album, the sixteen-minute “Waiting at the Departure Gate,” makes a sly nod in tribute to fellow VHF artist Jack Rose, who all too briefly explored similar techniques on his classic “Black Pearls.” A truly uplifting and emotional listening experience.