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EARTHLING SOCIETY: England Have My Bones (LP, Riot Season REPOSELP040, 2014)

“Good old Riot Season…”, to paraphrase an old Yellow Pages television advert. “They’re not just there for the bad things in life”. They are there, though, as a relatively frequent, always reliable source of all things noisy, heavy and ‘out there’, with a previous release list that includes names like Hey Colossus, Shit And Shine, Aufgehoben and Acid […]

LES RALLIZES DÉNUDÉS: Electric Pure Land (2LP)

As seems befitting for a release by the “influential, yet reclusive Japanese avant-garde band” Les Rallizes Dénudés, this double album – the first from the band in my collection – provides few hints in its packaging to what it is, who released it, when it was released or what it contains. Indeed, except for a series of […]

TANGERINE DREAM: Alpha Centauri / Atem (2LP, Virgin VD 2504, 1976)

Record companies love to repackage and resell existing product, but in the case of this double album – which compiles a couple of Tangerine Dream’s early releases (Alpha Centauri was originally out in 1971, Atem in 1973) – I don’t have a problem with it. It’s a convenient way for me to hear a couple of […]

BRETT NAUCKE: Seed (LP, Spectrum Spools SP 034, 2014)

Said out loud, I’m not sure if Naucke is ‘now-ker’, ‘nork’, ‘nowk’ or something else entirely. That, potentially, isn’t important. This is a very recent purchase, I bought Seed after reading its description on the Editions Mego website – Spectrum Spools is one of their associated labels, along with Ideologic Organ, Old News and others. This is the wording, […]

LOU REED: Transformer (LP, RCA NL 83806, 1972)

I’m not the biggest fan of Lou Reed, although I was sad when he passed away. I did quite enjoy his notoriously confrontational and prickly persona in interviews – or maybe it wasn’t a persona, maybe he just was that grumpy; rock stars should be different to ‘norms’, through being either unpleasant, or remarkably nice, or out-there […]

HELLVETE: Ode (LP, Deep Distance DD15, 2014)

I’ve mentioned before how I have a few ‘go-to’ labels that I’ll tend to buy all new releases from – ones that have proved themselves enough in terms of consistency and quality to pretty much have me opening my wallet instantly upon receipt of a ‘new release’ email. Deep Distance – an offshoot of The […]

VARIOUS: Crystallized: Celebrating 15 Years Of Rocket Recordings (2LP, Rocket Recordings LAUNCH060, 2013)

I bought this two-album set very recently, after discovering the outstanding weirdo noise outfit Anthroprophh and taking myself on a Spotify-led journey through various releases and connected bands. After being somewhat blown away by the sounds on this compilation when listening online, I read that the physical release came on spattered clear/black vinyl and featured […]

HEY COLOSSUS: Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo (LP, MIE 018, ?)

I’ve got a lot of records by Hey Colossus, they tweak my musical nodes in several ways: they’re noisy, strange, experimental, riff-heavy, repetitive and melodic. That’s a win-win-win-win-win-win combination as far as I’m concerned. They successfully pull off that trick of seeming like a mysterious, shadowy collective, that must surely exist in some kind of […]

JEALOUSY MOUNTAIN DUO: No_01 (LP, Blunoise LC 05575, 2011)

Here’s a nice example of the kindness of strangers. I wrote a very brief piece on my record label’s website about Nicoffeine and their “dystopic, potentially harmful guitar noise” after hearing one of their tracks on a Wire magazine compilation CD. Soon afterwards, a member of the band – Jörg Schneider – got in touch […]

VARIOUS: The In-Kraut Vol. 2 (2LP, Marina MA 67, 2006)

After many months of living with a jumbled record collection, I finally organised everything into alphabetical order over the past couple of days. (LPs, 12″s and 10″s, at least – the 7″s can wait until another time…) Part of this process inevitably meant reminding myself of records that I forgot I owned, or that I […]