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LAUNCH 116LP
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London-based outfit Housewives' psychic charge -- equal parts brittle rhythmic drive, angular contortions, and monochrome minimalism -- is as punishing in approach as the band are enigmatic in aspect. FF061116 follows their debut Work (released on Hands In The Dark in 2015) and previous tapes and 7" releases (on Faux Discs and Blank Editions). The band shows no sign of compromise whatsoever, being as stark, harsh, and stubbornly inhospitable as the strobe-haunted, feverishly kinetic live shows that have earned them a fearsome reputation. Split into seven excerpts and built on powerful repetition, FF061116 is a mind-melding travail into abstraction and abjection which draws on post-punk, jazz, drone, electronic, and avant-garde tropes to create an unclassifiable assault that feels oddly timeless. Whilst some may be able to detect influences like This Heat (whose Charles Hayward approvingly described their sound as redolent of "a barely controlled anger, hypnotic and building from the simplest elements") or Einstürzende Neubauten, Housewives are carving out their own unique place in the darker quarters of the underground.
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LAUNCH 114LP
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In 1965, the Dutch scientist and psychedelic pioneer Bart Huges embarked on a personal journey by taking an electric dentist's drill and using it to open a hole in his skull, theorizing that this measure -- known as trepanation and chronicled in this book The Mechanics Of Brain Blood Volume (BBV) -- would result in enhanced mental power, and in effect a permanent high for the owner of the skull in question. Fifty-one years on, in 2016, this act formed an inspiration for a meeting of mind and matter on an entirely different level, as Salford's Gnod locked horns for a collaboration with Dutch psychedelic and experimental force Radar Men From The Moon. Written and recorded in only four days, the result is four uncompromising transmissions, informed equally by stark intensity and hypnotic repetition. Powerful testimony to the expansive and exploratory nature of both bands, Temple Ov BBV is a radical foray into the unknown that exists firmly outside of genre or classification.
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LAUNCH 115CD
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Hey Colossus's latest transmission The Guillotine marks another peak for an innovative force in the realm of heavy amplification. Darker and more brooding than their recent work, Radio Static High (LAUNCH 083CD/LP, 2015), it's also perhaps their most richly melodic to date. The interplay of their three guitar lineup has never sounded more fluent than on these eight songs, nor their song-craft more well-defined. The Guillotine is a record whose alchemical charge arrives from a reinvention of loud rock shapes into forms both feral and fresh. Whilst Hey Colossus can still bludgeon with over-amped vigor, as on the hypnotic and devastating krautrock-Jesus Lizard hybrid of "Back In The Room", they can also deliver the haunting waltz-time serenade of "Calenture Boy" with uncompromising fortitude, with the new-found confidence and allure of Paul Sykes's vocals at the forefront. These menacing and immersive songs chronicle a band exploring a unique sound and invigorating approach in a decade in which cliches and genre pieces in the realm of the psychedelic have frequently surrounded. Here the six-piece find themselves transcending the limitations of the underground scene from whence they came, whilst exposing the paucity of inspiration in much of the guitar-rock mainstream.
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LAUNCH 115LP
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LP version. Hey Colossus's latest transmission The Guillotine marks another peak for an innovative force in the realm of heavy amplification. Darker and more brooding than their recent work, Radio Static High (LAUNCH 083CD/LP, 2015), it's also perhaps their most richly melodic to date. The interplay of their three guitar lineup has never sounded more fluent than on these eight songs, nor their song-craft more well-defined. The Guillotine is a record whose alchemical charge arrives from a reinvention of loud rock shapes into forms both feral and fresh. Whilst Hey Colossus can still bludgeon with over-amped vigor, as on the hypnotic and devastating krautrock-Jesus Lizard hybrid of "Back In The Room", they can also deliver the haunting waltz-time serenade of "Calenture Boy" with uncompromising fortitude, with the new-found confidence and allure of Paul Sykes's vocals at the forefront. These menacing and immersive songs chronicle a band exploring a unique sound and invigorating approach in a decade in which cliches and genre pieces in the realm of the psychedelic have frequently surrounded. Here the six-piece find themselves transcending the limitations of the underground scene from whence they came, whilst exposing the paucity of inspiration in much of the guitar-rock mainstream.
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LAUNCH 113LP
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In Sweden in the early-to-mid '70s, the egalitarian spirit that many thought revolutionary to punks in the UK was nothing new for the heads to be found enjoying the cult Swedish psychedelia of bands like Träd, Gräs och Stenar or Älgarnas Trädgård. It's exactly this lineage, forty plus years later, where one can find Flowers Must Die. The six-piece Swedish outfit's full-length debut on Rocket Recordings, Kompost, is a landmark moment for an outfit pursuing an improvisation-based approach removed from the codified realm of contemporary psych. It explores the unhinged territory fueled by diverse record collections, yet it's unique to their own collective headspace. Kompost shows them honing their improvisatory excursions into coherent song craft, amidst spectral techno and cosmic disco shapes, as the angular post-punk pop of The Sugarcubes sits alongside the narcotic clangor of prime Royal Trux, and one-take spontaneity locks horns with nocturnal revelation. Here the outward-looking spirit of 1971, and the anything-goes mentality of the Scandinavian freaks of yore, is transposed elegantly to a modern era in need of new horizons, and in a manner refreshingly bereft of retro chic.
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LAUNCH 109CD
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"It seems like we are heading towards even more unsettling times in the near future than we are in at present," reckons Chris Haslam of Gnod. "2016 is just the beginning of what I see as the establishment's systematic destruction of liberalism and equality as a reaction to the general public's loss of faith in their system." Charged by this outlook, Gnod's new album, Just Say No To The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine, represents a hitherto uncharted level of antagonism and adversarial force for the band - an artistic statement as righteous, fervent and direct as its title. "On the surface it could almost seem like there's no political art movement out there to oppose what's happening, but there is - we know there is," adds the band's Paddy Shine. "Maybe that movement is struggling to find its voice as a cohesive whole right now but that will change." Fueled by their militant drive and unyielding ardor, Just Say No refracts Gnod's harsh and repetitive riff-driven rancor through a psychotropic haze of dubbed-out abstraction, with Paddy's incendiary vocal delivery to the fore. Gnod - fiercely independent, never comfortable in one place artistically for any duration of time, always with their coordinates set on uncharted territory and the next challenge ahead, and delivering a monument of ire and iconoclasm.
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LAUNCH 109LP
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LP version. "It seems like we are heading towards even more unsettling times in the near future than we are in at present," reckons Chris Haslam of Gnod. "2016 is just the beginning of what I see as the establishment's systematic destruction of liberalism and equality as a reaction to the general public's loss of faith in their system." Charged by this outlook, Gnod's new album, Just Say No To The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine, represents a hitherto uncharted level of antagonism and adversarial force for the band - an artistic statement as righteous, fervent and direct as its title. "On the surface it could almost seem like there's no political art movement out there to oppose what's happening, but there is - we know there is," adds the band's Paddy Shine. "Maybe that movement is struggling to find its voice as a cohesive whole right now but that will change." Fueled by their militant drive and unyielding ardor, Just Say No refracts Gnod's harsh and repetitive riff-driven rancor through a psychotropic haze of dubbed-out abstraction, with Paddy's incendiary vocal delivery to the fore. Gnod - fiercely independent, never comfortable in one place artistically for any duration of time, always with their coordinates set on uncharted territory and the next challenge ahead, and delivering a monument of ire and iconoclasm.
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LAUNCH 112LP
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Double LP version. Alive At Roadburn is Gothenburg based Hills' third album with Rocket Recordings. Hot off the Swedish psychedelia revival of the past few years and after their hailed 2015 album Frid (LAUNCH 079CD), Hills connect the dots to their country's rich and intoxicating past with a handful of new sepia-toned tunes. Like their predecessors unholy trinity of Pärson Sound, International Harvester, and Träd Gräs Och Stenar, Hills penchant to stretch out beyond, performing what feels like openly casual exhortations into intricate Eastern tones and primal hypnotic rhythms. These four tracks sit deeply buried in oblivion, bones, skin, sweat, grooved with fearless intensity with no diminution of the interplay, spontaneity, and feeling onstage, the band are entombed in mantric repetition while the vapor trail of The Byrds' (Untitled) epic; "Eight Miles High" descends into an Elysian Field, where the dead enjoy happy tranquility, until they come to life and rise up again.
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LAUNCH 112CD
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Alive At Roadburn is Gothenburg based Hills' third album with Rocket Recordings. Hot off the Swedish psychedelia revival of the past few years and after their hailed 2015 album Frid (LAUNCH 079CD), Hills connect the dots to their country's rich and intoxicating past with a handful of new sepia-toned tunes. Like their predecessors unholy trinity of Pärson Sound, International Harvester, and Träd Gräs Och Stenar, Hills penchant to stretch out beyond, performing what feels like openly casual exhortations into intricate Eastern tones and primal hypnotic rhythms. These four tracks sit deeply buried in oblivion, bones, skin, sweat, grooved with fearless intensity with no diminution of the interplay, spontaneity, and feeling onstage, the band are entombed in mantric repetition while the vapor trail of The Byrds' (Untitled) epic; "Eight Miles High" descends into an Elysian Field, where the dead enjoy happy tranquility, until they come to life and rise up again.
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LAUNCH 105CD
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Gnoomes, the threesome hailing from Perm, Russia, present Tschak!. It may only be eighteen months since the release of Ngan!, the band's first release for Rocket Recordings (LAUNCH 082CD/LP, 2015), yet the band have already moved on to a sonic landscape still more adventurous and ethereal on Tschak!, not to mention an emotionally resonant approach that's bewitching to witness. Taking in torrents of guitar, noise, and electronic extrapolations, both bliss-fully kosmische and aggressively abrasive, it exists outside of all or any convenient genres, a vivid and singular work by three dreamers-at-heart forced to manifest their vision into a psychic defense to the circumstances surrounding them. Working in splendid isolation, thanks to a studio space provided by their work for a local radio station, the band had time and space for the alchemical process of creating Tschak! entirely on their own terms. Central to this were a collection of Russian synths that they gathered, whose eccentric arpeggios and analog textures form crucial ingredients on songs like "Severokamsk" and the title track, which allows them arrive at a sound that forms a star-crossed and timeless marriage between the experimentation of krautrock and the lineage of Warp Records.
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LAUNCH 105LP
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LP version. Gnoomes, the threesome hailing from Perm, Russia, present Tschak!. It may only be eighteen months since the release of Ngan!, the band's first release for Rocket Recordings (LAUNCH 082CD/LP, 2015), yet the band have already moved on to a sonic landscape still more adventurous and ethereal on Tschak!, not to mention an emotionally resonant approach that's bewitching to witness. Taking in torrents of guitar, noise, and electronic extrapolations, both bliss-fully kosmische and aggressively abrasive, it exists outside of all or any convenient genres, a vivid and singular work by three dreamers-at-heart forced to manifest their vision into a psychic defense to the circumstances surrounding them. Working in splendid isolation, thanks to a studio space provided by their work for a local radio station, the band had time and space for the alchemical process of creating Tschak! entirely on their own terms. Central to this were a collection of Russian synths that they gathered, whose eccentric arpeggios and analog textures form crucial ingredients on songs like "Severokamsk" and the title track, which allows them arrive at a sound that forms a star-crossed and timeless marriage between the experimentation of krautrock and the lineage of Warp Records.
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LAUNCH 104CD
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Julie's Haircut - Italy's premiere psychedelic explorers - create a deep-end approach to sonic innovation on Invocation And Ritual Dance Of My Demon Twin, their debut release for Rocket Recordings. Seven albums into their mission, the band find themselves at a new plateau of small-hours elucidation and revelation that may summon the specters of the wayward squall of early Mercury Rev, the shamanic allure of Dead Skeletons, the freedom of Miles Davis, the repetition of Can, or the wild soundscapes of Amon Düül II to some, yet essentially sound like no one but themselves. The result is a record built on trance-like repetitions that grows to a mantric intensity, summoning atmospheres redolent of the psychic and surreal transgressions of its title - a double-helix tribute to both Frank Zappa and Kenneth Anger. Coruscating guitar overload and jazz-tinged blow-out collide amidst hypnotic soundscapes like the shamanically inclined "The Fire Sermon" and the eleven-minute motorik magnificence of the curtain-raiser, "Zukunft". Atmospheric restraint, glacial texture, and immersive groove play as large a part in this blinding and beatific sound world as droning darkness or overheated amp tubes.
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LAUNCH 104LP
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LP version. Julie's Haircut - Italy's premiere psychedelic explorers - create a deep-end approach to sonic innovation on Invocation And Ritual Dance Of My Demon Twin, their debut release for Rocket Recordings. Seven albums into their mission, the band find themselves at a new plateau of small-hours elucidation and revelation that may summon the specters of the wayward squall of early Mercury Rev, the shamanic allure of Dead Skeletons, the freedom of Miles Davis, the repetition of Can, or the wild soundscapes of Amon Düül II to some, yet essentially sound like no one but themselves. The result is a record built on trance-like repetitions that grows to a mantric intensity, summoning atmospheres redolent of the psychic and surreal transgressions of its title - a double-helix tribute to both Frank Zappa and Kenneth Anger. Coruscating guitar overload and jazz-tinged blow-out collide amidst hypnotic soundscapes like the shamanically inclined "The Fire Sermon" and the eleven-minute motorik magnificence of the curtain-raiser, "Zukunft". Atmospheric restraint, glacial texture, and immersive groove play as large a part in this blinding and beatific sound world as droning darkness or overheated amp tubes.
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LAUNCH 103CD
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Playing their first gig supporting Goat at what was only the latter's second ever show, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have gigged relentlessly with kindred spirits including The Cosmic Dead and Luminous Bodies, not to mention gracing festivals like Supernormal and Portugal's Reverence with their feral attack. Yet the time has come for this band to transcend the realm of word-of-mouth phenomenon and be judged on their feverish and demented collision of psych-drone dementia and riff-driven salvation alone. The inarguable proof is Feed The Rats, the overwhelming first album the band have created - equal parts righteous repetition, bludgeoning brute force and Sabbathian squalor, its alchemical charge has the power to transform bleary-eyed abandon into small-hours revelation. This three-track, forty-minute monument of chaotic catharsis captures the everything-on-eleven spirit of the band's live manifestation whilst adding a level of finesse and texture often less easily accessible in a dangerous haze of flying hair, discarded clothes and spilt premium lager. Channeling the grimy trip hazards of Monster Magnet's Spine Of God (1991) through a prism of kraut-derived repetition and Part Chimp style bloody-mindedness, the resulting hallucinatory vortex appears constantly on the realm of breaking point. Yet for Matthew Baty, the porcine realm is less about a nihilistic quest for fiery oblivion than one might imagine: "You know, I think we've experienced it, many times. It's those gigs where we can almost sense that everyone in the room is engaged. The energy created is so thick you can almost bite down on it and it feels like there's no longer any barrier between band and audience. Those are the special shows, where there's a solidarity and a very visceral bond. That, and being able to smell our amps melting." Amps and brains alike, as these psychic omnivores bring seven times the joy, seven times the pain, seven times the dementia and deliverance.
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LAUNCH 103LP
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LP version. Comes in a die cut sleeve. Playing their first gig supporting Goat at what was only the latter's second ever show, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have gigged relentlessly with kindred spirits including The Cosmic Dead and Luminous Bodies, not to mention gracing festivals like Supernormal and Portugal's Reverence with their feral attack. Yet the time has come for this band to transcend the realm of word-of-mouth phenomenon and be judged on their feverish and demented collision of psych-drone dementia and riff-driven salvation alone. The inarguable proof is Feed The Rats, the overwhelming first album the band have created - equal parts righteous repetition, bludgeoning brute force and Sabbathian squalor, its alchemical charge has the power to transform bleary-eyed abandon into small-hours revelation. This three-track, forty-minute monument of chaotic catharsis captures the everything-on-eleven spirit of the band's live manifestation whilst adding a level of finesse and texture often less easily accessible in a dangerous haze of flying hair, discarded clothes and spilt premium lager. Channeling the grimy trip hazards of Monster Magnet's Spine Of God (1991) through a prism of kraut-derived repetition and Part Chimp style bloody-mindedness, the resulting hallucinatory vortex appears constantly on the realm of breaking point. Yet for Matthew Baty, the porcine realm is less about a nihilistic quest for fiery oblivion than one might imagine: "You know, I think we've experienced it, many times. It's those gigs where we can almost sense that everyone in the room is engaged. The energy created is so thick you can almost bite down on it and it feels like there's no longer any barrier between band and audience. Those are the special shows, where there's a solidarity and a very visceral bond. That, and being able to smell our amps melting." Amps and brains alike, as these psychic omnivores bring seven times the joy, seven times the pain, seven times the dementia and deliverance.
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LAUNCH 096LP
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LP version. Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation took little time to make their mark on the wider world, brandishing a radiant sound that stands effortlessly apart from the increasingly staid and often paradoxically predictable world of modern psychedelia. Having already been nominated for a Swedish Grammy with their debut EP, Diamond Waves, their full-length 2015 debut on Rocket Recordings, Horse Dance (LAUNCH 086CD/LP), marked out a territory in which beguiling repetition could sashay with sweet pop suss, melodic flourishes with experimental intensity. Yet clearly this was only the beginning of a journey of discovery, and few would have guessed how the band's sound would quickly evolve into still more enchanting and enlightening strains. Their second effort Mirage, sees the band sculpting sprawling, hypnotic jams into elegant nocturnal serenades with such serendipity that their actual creation remains a little hazy even to themselves. "We agree on not remembering very much about how these tracks came about, that all of them were written on the road and that most of them came fully formed" note the band. "Most were really long to begin with, but we found it relieving to break away a bit from the mandatory psych jams a little bit. We also just realized that none of them were written in daylight, which might be why memory is so elusive." Indeed, this hypnagogic approach seems to fit well with the primary inspiration for the five-piece, which centered on "the state where dreams, visions and the present are entwined" - the domain of surrealists and mystics. True to form, Mirage sees the band taking a chic tradition of avant-pop that extends all the way from Serge Gainsbourg and Françoise Hardy to Broadcast and Saint Etienne, and warping it mercilessly to their own darker ends. Whilst the brooding yet sultry "Sister Green Eyes" is no less than a sharp slice of velveteen motorik-pop and "Looking For You" reinvents three-chord garage-rock attack with mighty finesse, The Liberation are just as comfortable dealing out the heavy-lidded and electronically-driven "In Madrid" or the dive in the hallucinatory deep end of "Circular Motion", on which they're aided and abetted by Lay Llamas's Nicola Guinta. "Horse Dance was very much about conjuring the strength needed to cut ties" the band elucidates. "Mirage may be about having left but having no clue what's next - the power in being completely lost and thriving on it."
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LAUNCH 102CD
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Kuro, taking their name from the Japanese word for "black", present their debut release for Rocket Recordings, marking an experimental union between two diversely storied yet inherently like-minded musicians. Agathe Max, who hails originally from Lyon, is a classically-trained violinist with a varied back catalog of studio and live work. From spectral ambience to stately soundscapes. Max is adept at summoning dream states and drama alike. Her emotive and engaging work has found admirers at a number of UK festivals. Gareth Turner maintains a busy schedule performing and recording with Rocket Recordings trio Anthroprophh, bass/drums duo Big Naturals and his solo double-bass project Salope. Despite both of these artists's multi-faceted artistic lives, their partnership was both a natural progression and reflective of their intuitive chemistry. The result of their initial spark is perhaps both artists's most coherent and captivating work to date.
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LAUNCH 102LP
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LP version. Kuro, taking their name from the Japanese word for "black", present their debut release for Rocket Recordings, marking an experimental union between two diversely storied yet inherently like-minded musicians. Agathe Max, who hails originally from Lyon, is a classically-trained violinist with a varied back catalog of studio and live work. From spectral ambience to stately soundscapes. Max is adept at summoning dream states and drama alike. Her emotive and engaging work has found admirers at a number of UK festivals. Gareth Turner maintains a busy schedule performing and recording with Rocket Recordings trio Anthroprophh, bass/drums duo Big Naturals and his solo double-bass project Salope. Despite both of these artists's multi-faceted artistic lives, their partnership was both a natural progression and reflective of their intuitive chemistry. The result of their initial spark is perhaps both artists's most coherent and captivating work to date.
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LAUNCH 096CD
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Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation took little time to make their mark on the wider world, brandishing a radiant sound that stands effortlessly apart from the increasingly staid and often paradoxically predictable world of modern psychedelia. Having already been nominated for a Swedish Grammy with their debut EP, Diamond Waves, their full-length 2015 debut on Rocket Recordings, Horse Dance (LAUNCH 086CD/LP), marked out a territory in which beguiling repetition could sashay with sweet pop suss, melodic flourishes with experimental intensity. Yet clearly this was only the beginning of a journey of discovery, and few would have guessed how the band's sound would quickly evolve into still more enchanting and enlightening strains. Their second effort Mirage, sees the band sculpting sprawling, hypnotic jams into elegant nocturnal serenades with such serendipity that their actual creation remains a little hazy even to themselves. "We agree on not remembering very much about how these tracks came about, that all of them were written on the road and that most of them came fully formed" note the band. "Most were really long to begin with, but we found it relieving to break away a bit from the mandatory psych jams a little bit. We also just realized that none of them were written in daylight, which might be why memory is so elusive." Indeed, this hypnagogic approach seems to fit well with the primary inspiration for the five-piece, which centered on "the state where dreams, visions and the present are entwined" - the domain of surrealists and mystics. True to form, Mirage sees the band taking a chic tradition of avant-pop that extends all the way from Serge Gainsbourg and Françoise Hardy to Broadcast and Saint Etienne, and warping it mercilessly to their own darker ends. Whilst the brooding yet sultry "Sister Green Eyes" is no less than a sharp slice of velveteen motorik-pop and "Looking For You" reinvents three-chord garage-rock attack with mighty finesse, The Liberation are just as comfortable dealing out the heavy-lidded and electronically-driven "In Madrid" or the dive in the hallucinatory deep end of "Circular Motion", on which they're aided and abetted by Lay Llamas's Nicola Guinta. "Horse Dance was very much about conjuring the strength needed to cut ties" the band elucidates. "Mirage may be about having left but having no clue what's next - the power in being completely lost and thriving on it."
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LAUNCH 101EP
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Swedish band Flowers Must Die follow three LPs and several EPs and cassettes with their Rocket Recordings debut, the Sista Valsen EP. The band grew to a six-piece when the highly talented vocalist and violinist Lisa Ekelund (formerly of the band Katla) joined the collective; this EP collects of four raw jams recorded during the early sessions with Ekelund, ranging from the fuzz-heavy grooves of "Sista Valsen" through the laid-back space jazz of "Taskig Stämning Annars" and the propulsive motorik of "Kruta" to the repetitive folk drone of "Varför." Flowers Must Die have shared stages with Om, White Hills, Konono N°1, Master Musicians Of Bukkake, Hills, et al.
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LAUNCH 094CD
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H.U.M. marks the convergence of a triad of kindred spirits with a common goal of expanding consciousness. On Trinity Way, their debut release for Rocket Recordings, the cosmic/terrestrial musician/magician triumvirate of Heloise Zamzam, Olmo Uiutna, and Mark Wagner delves into ritualistic audial travelogues that unite mantric repetition, concrete noise, and kosmische explorations, the better to transform and enrich the soul. All three acolytes of H.U.M. arrive at this destination from a rich history of experimental music and art; Heloise Zamzam and Olmo Uiutna run the formerly Bristolian and now France-based Zamzamrec, which, besides being a record label specializing in tape releases by artists working in psychedelic realms and beyond, they characterize as "a superfuture network, a community of musicians, storytellers, scientists, writers, poets and dreamers." Mark Wagner, meanwhile, has involved himself in a diverse and vibrant litany of projects, including time touring as a member of Gnod and Ahrkh Wagner, and is an active practitioner of music as a spiritual medium. Following the limited-edition 2015 We Are One cassette on the Bumtapes label, Trinity Way marks the most expansive and intrepid ascension yet for these psychic travelers, using primal rhythm, earthly resonances, and devotional oratory as pathways to uncharted dimensions and higher metaphysical realms. These trance-like meditations and illuminating visions draw on a plethora of earthly parallels, from the iconoclastic writing of Rimbaud or Artaud to the occultist sound-world of Coil; from the invigorating DIY ethos of the Not Not Fun label to the anarchic sprawl of The Faust Tapes -- and with Wagner's stream-of-consciousness incantations inviting comparisons to both Robert Calvert and Genesis P-Orridge. Yet influences come also for further afield, as testified by "L'Ame Agit" -- a mysterious rework and ode to Françoise Hardy's 1968 classic "Comment te dire adieu" -- and "Cat-Man-Do" which uses Heloise Zamzam's recordings of a shamanic initiation in the Colombian jungle to help conjure an overwhelming air of hypnotic momentum. Altogether on another wavelength from most of what is dubbed psychedelic music in the 21st century, Trinity Way is a free-flowing odyssey of vivid, hallucinatory intensity. Through a marriage of simple ingredients, these three have created an off-the-map album which nonetheless places its feet on the ground and its gaze on the cosmos. As Heloise Zamzam herself says, "Trinity Way is a magic door, a sonic portal. Trinity Way is not an escape of the everyday realm but an entrance, a mode, an invitation. . . ."
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LAUNCH 094LP
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LP version. H.U.M. marks the convergence of a triad of kindred spirits with a common goal of expanding consciousness. On Trinity Way, their debut release for Rocket Recordings, the cosmic/terrestrial musician/magician triumvirate of Heloise Zamzam, Olmo Uiutna, and Mark Wagner delves into ritualistic audial travelogues that unite mantric repetition, concrete noise, and kosmische explorations, the better to transform and enrich the soul. All three acolytes of H.U.M. arrive at this destination from a rich history of experimental music and art; Heloise Zamzam and Olmo Uiutna run the formerly Bristolian and now France-based Zamzamrec, which, besides being a record label specializing in tape releases by artists working in psychedelic realms and beyond, they characterize as "a superfuture network, a community of musicians, storytellers, scientists, writers, poets and dreamers." Mark Wagner, meanwhile, has involved himself in a diverse and vibrant litany of projects, including time touring as a member of Gnod and Ahrkh Wagner, and is an active practitioner of music as a spiritual medium. Following the limited-edition 2015 We Are One cassette on the Bumtapes label, Trinity Way marks the most expansive and intrepid ascension yet for these psychic travelers, using primal rhythm, earthly resonances, and devotional oratory as pathways to uncharted dimensions and higher metaphysical realms. These trance-like meditations and illuminating visions draw on a plethora of earthly parallels, from the iconoclastic writing of Rimbaud or Artaud to the occultist sound-world of Coil; from the invigorating DIY ethos of the Not Not Fun label to the anarchic sprawl of The Faust Tapes -- and with Wagner's stream-of-consciousness incantations inviting comparisons to both Robert Calvert and Genesis P-Orridge. Yet influences come also for further afield, as testified by "L'Ame Agit" -- a mysterious rework and ode to Françoise Hardy's 1968 classic "Comment te dire adieu" -- and "Cat-Man-Do" which uses Heloise Zamzam's recordings of a shamanic initiation in the Colombian jungle to help conjure an overwhelming air of hypnotic momentum. Altogether on another wavelength from most of what is dubbed psychedelic music in the 21st century, Trinity Way is a free-flowing odyssey of vivid, hallucinatory intensity. Through a marriage of simple ingredients, these three have created an off-the-map album which nonetheless places its feet on the ground and its gaze on the cosmos. As Heloise Zamzam herself says, "Trinity Way is a magic door, a sonic portal. Trinity Way is not an escape of the everyday realm but an entrance, a mode, an invitation. . . ."
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LAUNCH 095CD
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Necro Deathmort have created a monster, and it's both a malevolent and magical thing to behold. This two-man aural manifestation came to life towards the end of the '00s, starting originally, in the words of co-conspirator Matthew Rozeik "as an abortive attempt to do a 'regular' rock band, born from jamming in studio downtime when our drummer was AWOL" Drawing on influences ranging from Ed Rush & Optical to Old Man Gloom and from Autechre to Neurosis, he remembers that the unspoken objective for himself and cohort AJ Cookson was "to make electronic music that was as heavy as doom metal, with absolutely filthy bass." Following ten releases on Distraction and Extreme Ultimate, The Capsule is the band's first for Rocket Recordings, and it's a step yet further into the terrifying vacuum of space. Opener "In Waves" maps out rhythmic terrain somewhere amidst krautrock groove and techno relentlessness. It's not long before matters take a turn into the unearthly, with dreamlike extrapolations like "Mono/Serum" - Redolent of nothing so much as Mica Levi's other-worldly soundtrack to Under The Skin - Sharing space with the threatening momentum of the more overtly metallic "Moonstar". Yet at all times The Capsule is a work of fierce cohesion and compelling intensity. Whilst there may be three words for death in this band's initially playful name, Necro Deathmort have proven themselves well versed in infinite varieties of the macabre.
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LAUNCH 095LP
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LP version. Necro Deathmort have created a monster, and it's both a malevolent and magical thing to behold. This two-man aural manifestation came to life towards the end of the '00s, starting originally, in the words of co-conspirator Matthew Rozeik "as an abortive attempt to do a 'regular' rock band, born from jamming in studio downtime when our drummer was AWOL" Drawing on influences ranging from Ed Rush & Optical to Old Man Gloom and from Autechre to Neurosis, he remembers that the unspoken objective for himself and cohort AJ Cookson was "to make electronic music that was as heavy as doom metal, with absolutely filthy bass." Following ten releases on Distraction and Extreme Ultimate, The Capsule is the band's first for Rocket Recordings, and it's a step yet further into the terrifying vacuum of space. Opener "In Waves" maps out rhythmic terrain somewhere amidst krautrock groove and techno relentlessness. It's not long before matters take a turn into the unearthly, with dreamlike extrapolations like "Mono/Serum" - Redolent of nothing so much as Mica Levi's other-worldly soundtrack to Under The Skin - Sharing space with the threatening momentum of the more overtly metallic "Moonstar". Yet at all times The Capsule is a work of fierce cohesion and compelling intensity. Whilst there may be three words for death in this band's initially playful name, Necro Deathmort have proven themselves well versed in infinite varieties of the macabre.
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LAUNCH 090LP
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LP version. Just as dramatically as their restless disposition morphed their sound to a binary-driven direction for their last work, now Gnod strip their electronic setup to a viscous attack, as redolent of the primal punishment of early Swans, as the angularity of prime Public Image Ltd, yet shot through with a mercurial power and fiery intensity that could come from no-one else. The opening title-cut of Mirror seethes with lithe energy and dubbed-out vitality, whilst elsewhere the eighteen-minute closing track "Sodom & Gomorrah" may be the most dystopian piece of music the band have yet created; a harrowing yet fiercely compelling colossus of bleak abjection. "The tracks were pretty much written on the road in May 2015" elaborates Gnod's Paddy Shine. Reflecting and refracting the uncertainty of a darkening era, Mirror is a work of bold reinvention and raw renewal, sculpting chaos and discord into a formidable statement of intent. Only one thing is certain - wherever Gnod choose to go next, their ire and inspiration blaze as brightly as ever.
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