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Youngs, Richard & Simon Wickham- Smith

Metallic Sonatas

Vhf

***15 short, searing slices of electronic mayhem on this, the prolific duo’s latest and last for awhile (Simon Wickham-Smith is moving to Australia) contrast the song-oriented action of their previous release Pulse of the Rooster. Performed on electric sitar, voice, glass harmonica, drum machine, electric cifteli, electric banjolin, violin, cello, cardboard boxes, Casio, electric shirt-reinforcer, electric bass, guitar, bowed cymbals, electric thai harp, clock-chimes, reed organ, and bagpipes, the sounds have been mutated into towering alien sculptures evoking the “textures” of metals. Each piece is short and novel enough not to slip into dreary repetition. “Metallic Sonatas,” like most R!!! & S!!! releases, somehow makes the most unusual music accessible.  

Skullflower

This Is Skullflower

Vhf

*** Most mellow and spacey SF release - and the last until their reactivation in the 2000's. The music here is an authoritative re-working of some of the ideas that first surfaced on their Argon CD (released by Freek). The modal structures and experiments with bowed instruments and horns that surfaced on that record are redefined and sharpened in terms of sound quality and execution, providing an extremely fulfilling listen for both the SF acclimated and the novice alike. The 40 minute "The Pirate Ship Of Reality Is Moving Out" was recorded live to DAT at a concert with Richard Youngs on extra guitar, and is the only SF live recording of such high fidelity. Also has very nice full color Matt Bower artwork all over. 4 tracks, 78 minutes.

Kawabata, Makoto

Inui 2

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***Inui 2 is the first widely available solo CD by this prolific Japanese guitarist/composer/bearded guru. Known primarily for his recent work with oddballs Acid Mothers Temple, Kawabata's career actually goes back to the late '70s and spans many styles, including solo guitar improv, electronics, folk, and, of course, the deranged acid mayhem associated with the PSF scene. Performed entirely solo on violin, kemenje, zurna, electronics, sarangi, taiko, gong, water, bouzouki, cello, vibes, organ, and sitar, the four tracks that make up Inui 2 are perfectly executed dream-music, equal parts delicately floating and heavily droning. There's also one all-too-short modal essay for bouzouki that is amazingly beautiful. After years of obscurity, there has been a recent avalanche of Acid Mothers and Kawabata releases, most of them of the impossibly limited variety, all of them snapped up by the internet and by real people, too

Youngs, Richard & Simon Wickham Smith

Lake

Vhf

***Originally issued in an edition of 300 on their No Fans label and for all intents and purposes unavailable and unheard for a decade, the 10th anniversary CD-ification of their classic debut double-LP still sounds as revelatory and alien as it did when it was released. Tracks like the immortal collage freak-out "Dance: Help The Aged (Give Them A Heart Attack)," the minimal pulse epic "Chord," and the psych-fuzz rock mania of "Goat" have been undiluted in their majesty by the unbearable decade that has elapsed between then and now. Deep breath, keep the eyes from rolling back in the head, focus, focus, highest rating.  "We're listening to Lake close on a decade since we recorded it. Just as it sounds odd now, what we do today would've sounded bizarre then. We couldn't make this record now. It's like a ghost - so long ago. We've moved on. Our label name, No Fans, was a statement of fact; the record was a dare to ourselves - who in their right mind would ever release anything like this? With No Fans, No Distribution and No Prospect of either, spending over £1,000 on a vanity project when most of our peers were doing sensible things smacked of arrogance. In an ironic bid to launch Lake, a Goat Evening was held in Nottingham at the home of Neil Campbell and Jim Plaistow. Though everyone had a good time, by the end of the evening no-one had bought the album, so we gave...

Skullflower

Carved Into Roses

Vhf

Pelt

Rob's Choice

Vhf

***Surprise and sudden release of this previously unplanned live CD, hand-selected by west-coast mystic ROB VAUGHN, just in time for PELT's summer 2000 tour. Recorded in New Orleans and Austin on the band's monumental spring 1998 tour (which yielded their masterpiece Empty Bell Ringing In The Sky), Rob's Choice gives you a listen to two nearly complete performances, both superb expressions of the band's higher-ground drone-myth expansion and contraction, uh, that is to say it wails, and who doesn't love that Lowrey tube organ? Plus, there's the very special addition of TOM CARTER (CHARALAMBIDES) on sax and time-lag accumulator on the Austin performance. This thing was supposed to be a CDR, but it's too good, and who has time to burn all of those CDRs anyway? Three tracks, sixty-five minutes. Edition of 500.

Vibracathedral Orchestra

Versatile Arab Chord Chart

Vhf

***The second full-length outing from the quintet of NEIL CAMPBELL, MICHAEL FLOWER, JULIAN BRADLEY, BRIDGET HAYDEN, and ADAM DAVENPORT. Like their UK cousins and fellow VHF recording artists Sunroof!, VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA usually works from a base of modal improvisation. Led by Campbell's sawing violin, the group builds up arcs of lingering overtones beneath an undercurrent of melody. They cut the drones in their life with extremely effective bursts of near rock, in a style reminiscent of the pre-Nico Velvet Underground (circa 1966 or so). The band's combination of clattering percussion, droning strings, and considerable sense of where to put the "groove" makes them unique among their peers.

Sunroof

Found Star Sound

Vhf

***Found Star Sound is the annual dispatch for 2000 from Matthew Bower and friends, continuing their long legacy of outward-bound audio verité. Recorded mostly at Bower's Cumbrian home in the rainy and windy UK "Lake" district, the group's droning guitars, organs, voices, and violins blend with twinkling percussion to evoke an atmosphere perfectly suited to such an environment. Following a brief living-room organ-with-built-in-rhythm-section-gone-haywire introduction on "Pink Stream 1," the CD builds a vibe around Bower's thickly buzzing - but mellow 'n' casual - guitar. Steadily picking up momentum, the record peaks with the chugging sound-of-trains epic "Pink Stream 2," calms briefly, and then goes out strong with a rousing blast of guitar and violin scrape on "Silvera." Another scuff from the UK's biggest scuffmakers!  * The names Matthew Bower, Total, Sunroof and Skullflower all command awed hushes of acquisitive anticipation from completist fans of droning noise-blur * Its predecessor, the Delicate Autobahn opus, continues to sell well * Expect the usual flurry of internet / 'zine attention 

Total

Eternity's Beautiful Frontispiece

Vhf

Using a droning electric guitar and/or organ in a variety of tones ranging from the excoriating to elegiac, Total's music envelops the listener in a haze of overtones variously evoking Indian music, machine noise, nature sounds, and monolithic power. This may be a more "accessible" carefully-edited look at Toal than some of their recent releases, but it surrenders not one iota of hallucinogenic juice.

Youngs, Richard & Simon Wickham-smith

Pulse Of The Rooster

Vhf

Self-proclaimed as their "psychedelic" album, R!!! & S!!! explore their roots on more traditional areas of pyschedelic rock and folk, making this also their most song-oriented record since their debut Lake LP. Vocals join in the plaintive English tradition of folks like Robert Wyatt and folkies like Pentangle, while a concoction of electric dulcimer, casio, drums, electric bass, electric guitar, electric sitar, thai harp, violin, shakuhachi, glockenspiel and penny whistle brews, simmers, and occasionally boils behind them. Fill your cups, as their's certainly runneth over.

Wickham-smith, Simon

Butterfly Dust

Vhf

***The first solo CD by SIMON WICKHAM-SMITH follows a long and prolific ten-year recording partnership with RICHARD YOUNGS. Recorded during a temporary relocation to Australia, Butterfly Dust is a strikingly intimate solo performance on organ, voice, Peruvian reed, and Dijeridu. A wonderful collection of performances that combine both virtuosity and exploratory improvisation to create gorgeous dronescapes that you wouldn't want to be caught dreaming without. Includes a twenty-one-minute wall-of-sound Didjeridu body enveloper, aimed to restore respect to an instrument long abused by short-sighted new agers and dull-witted World Music hacks.

Bell, Sandra

City Of Sorrows

Vhf

The long-awaited City Of Sorrows is Sandra Bell's first full-length release since 1995. From the musically fertile South Island of New Zealand, Sandra has previously recorded for Turbulence, IMD, and of course the legendary genre-defining Xpressway label. Recorded during a temporary relocation to Berlin, City Of Sorrows finds Sandra turning back toward the more austere and emotional style of her Xpressway debut, Dreams Of Falling. Her voice and guitar blend perfectly with cello, accordian, and on a couple of tracks, a full but rough-around-the-edges band featuring Nicholas Young, Bill Direen, Uli Glosauer, Lars Reinhardt and Ekki Solms. Sandra's lyrics and alternately deadpan and harrowing delivery accurately convey an atmosphere of dissolution and decay, creating an emotional landscape available to only a special few artists.