Reissue of a still infernally-potent head-shredding side from Phil Todd’s Ashtray Navigations unit, originally released by Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers back in 1998. This edition comes in a hand-numbered run of 100 copies with full colour artwork.

Edition of 64 copies. New work from these excellent European baroque/psych surrealists with guest appearances from Duncan Pinhas, Phil Todd of Ashtray Navigations and Steve Warwick of Birds Of Delay.

Hand-numbered edition of 100 copies self-released CD-R from Ashtray, ‘officially’ available on their upcoming US tour. This one reissues an Ashtray Navigations CD-R originally released in 1997 on the Ignivomous label. It’s based around hypnotic circling fuzz tones illuminated by distant choral melodies and shortwave fidelity and it kinda orbits the whole William Basinski/Grouper school of entropic loops.

Edition of only 200 copies LP from Phil Todd’s Ashtray Navigations, using a combination of field recordings, guitar, F/X, synth and saz to transport the whole deal into an electrified fourth world zone where ethnic string miniatures go up against glazed drones and the kinda heavy psych rock – complete with phased drums – that could easily have been cut at the sessions for Walter Wegmuller’s Tarot. Every Ashtray releases is compulsory but this is a particularly great LP, with a killer hi-fi studio sound that repays deep listening and some of Todd’s most psychoactive creations. Highly recommended.

New album from this fascinating, schizophrenic French outfit (the solo project of Laurent Gerard, a frequent collaborator with Ghedalia Tazartes) who seem to have inherited the surrealist tradition of Jacques Berrocal/Red Noise/Futura Records, the same current that so entranced Nurse With Wound’s Steve Stapleton. Capitaine Present 5 is a collage of spoken word, sound poetry, weird synth pop and Industrial cut-ups, all rendered with the sophisticated élan of an experimental Gallic chanteur. Singular. Edition of 160 copies.

New album from Phil Todd’s Ashtray Navigations, a real CD with full-colour pro-printed digipaks. Todd describes this new one as being closest in spirit to last year’s Johnny Fuckoff Minotaur and there’s plenty of that early Heldon style of guerilla sonics softened by reverb electronics and power drones. The fucked-up drum machines on “You’d Look Good As A Five Pound Note” relocates Richard Youngs & Simon Wickham-Smith’s “I Live In A Big City” to some kind of cybernetic nightmare zone complete with lead guitar that could almost be an unissued live take of  “Run Run Run”. Pretty choice. Edition of 200 copies. 

Last-minute contender for gig of the year was the recent Glasgow date that paired a furious Prurient set with an inspired, funny, visceral onslaught from the duo of Sudden Infant's Joke Lanz and Bill Kouligas of Family Battlesnake. Between the two of them they managed to bridge classic early Industrial junkyard ritual - complete with fucked new wave ballads that combined the bombed-out architectures of AV Borsig, Abwarts, Neubauten with quirky electro rhythms and DIY pop rants - and beautifully streamlined modern noise euphoria. It was a fucking blast. They had this CD with em, not a collaboration, but an excellent split that demonstrates the kinda muscle both sides bring to the table in their amazing live collaborations. Sudden Infant side is Live At The Gluerooms, London. Comes sealed inside a printed/stickered reflective silver bag, limited copies available. Recommended.

Massive new limited edition LP on NNCK’s new imprint documenting a series of recordings from this ambitious American/European big band that unites Dave Nuss of The No-Neck Blues Band with Spencer Clark and James Ferraro of The Skaters alongside Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystavat, Jonna from Kuupuu, Stellar Om Source, Mik Quantius from Embryo and Tiitus Petajaniemi and Jari Koho of Uton/Keijo. The whole entourage toured through Europe in the spring of 2007 and this LP collects the best of the jams. Three long tracks and one fragment, including two pieces recorded at VPRO Radio. The sound takes off from the kind of free goof blueprint of The Godz, with a lots of percussion and odd rhythmic dunting while The Skaters work lush keyboard parts and a wall of ululating vocal drone deep into the backdrop. Quantius supplies vocals that are somewhere between Don Van Vliet and Alan Bishop and the whole thing proceeds into this kind of weird ethno-zone where fragmented world rhythms and sounds are twisted to dark, psychotropic ends. But the real gravy is the side long fourth track, the most convincing update of the monochord bass/drum confusion of Skip Spence’s “Grey/Afro” ever improvised in real time, combining sublime vocal highs with a hypnotic bottom end. Highly recommended.

More beautiful tone sorcery from Christelle Gualdi’s bewitching Stellar Om Source project. Seven tracks on this limited self-released CD-R that move from the sound of soft, brain-massaging arpeggios through early Popol Vuh styled hymnals and lucid re-wirings of 20^th century synth timbres that generate endless neon/neon/neon. A whole bunch of heads are currently plugged into the new age synth zone but no one takes you *there* so completely or with such an intuitive feel for the liminal aspects of devotional electronica as Stellar Om Source. Highly recommended. Sold out at source.