"In late November & early December of 2006 the Portland Bike Ensemble played a series of concerts in Japan -- ten shows in seven different cities. This record features highlights from that tour. Side A is the complete performance from a Buddhist temple in Tokyo, and on the flip are excerpts from shows in Fukuoka, Kitakyushu, and Kyoto. Limited edition of 200 copies, spraymounted covers." – OESB.

You might have spotted Julian Lynch’s name as a member of Ducktails and Predator Vision, but behind the scenes he has been amassing a fairly formidable catalogue of solo CD-Rs that are near perfect articulations of Hypnagogic pop. Orange You Glad is his debut LP, a collection of four track recordings cut at home in Ridgewood, New Jersey and in Madison, Wisconsin, where he is a student of ethnomusicology. The album consists of a series of songs and instrumentals that exist in a zone that is totally beyond technique. The recording is crudely sophisticated, with an instinctive, naturally musical feel even when the sonic aesthetic is beyond the whole Xpressway/Siltbreeze ethos of destroyed fidelity. The bass is non-rhythmic in the extreme, appearing now and then, just out of place and time, functioning more as harmonic/melodic brackets that help to focus the music towards some kind of tonal center. The drums are crude, the guitar a punk blaze of almost-Kurihara style tremolo and fuzz. The gorgeous, soaring vocals at first seem to work against the grime of the music, the kind of high multi-tracked harmonies that would re-locate The Beach Boys’ “Surfer Girl” into the raggedy environs of Tori Kudo’s Guys N Dolls play the music of Chris Bailey and Ed Kuepper but it’s an inspired marriage, with the massively devolved nature of the jams colliding with the angelic vocal arrangements to birth an atmosphere with the kind of benign punk urgency first postulated by the early Modern Lovers. Then there are the instrumentals and mood-pieces, where Lynch brings in aspects of his ethnological studies, with Eurasian melodies and even high-life style guitars crowned by coronas of circular reed work, peaking in an instrumental with a clarinet part so beautiful it feels as if it was plucked right out of your dreams as you fell asleep in front of the TV aged 12. It’s a truly unique album, one that combines savagely primitive rock breakdowns with some of the most gorgeous Hypnagogic stylings to come out of the whole Ducktails/Predator Vision/Real Estate scene. Orange You Glad announces a major new voice. Highly recommended.

Major new LP from Ducktails and easily one of Matt Mondanile’s most beautiful, out of time creations. A perfect visioning of Hypnagogic Pop’s retro-futurist appeal, with instrumentals that are as naïve and as wide-eyed teenage perfect as anything on the Department Store Santas LP and an approach to the jam that is primitive  in its execution but maximalist in its ambition and its time-phasing potential. Although the arrangements are fairly simple, they have all of the utopian neverland appeal of the lesser known ends of the Beach Boys catalogue. Landscapes includes some re-mastered tracks that originally appeared on the Parasails cassette. Genius liner notes by Skaters road-mangler Charles Berlitz which are worth quoting in full:  “Dear Matt, It's confetti for memories! your buddy Charles and the Sunday afternoon gripfest staring, check this out: "Little Man Tate" and "Little Big Man", super funny, as well as a dusty tough to read flick called, you know i got carrots for brains, "Pipeline"! So, you know every trilogy needs the curveball, and well, "Pipeline" has got to be uncle charlie. I found these videos in the basement of chateau terrace antwerp, but it's super gritty kitty down there and i just grabbed three quickies. So I just put on your jams, and i am gunna watch Pipeline's surf visions and scope your memories and sunbake. but man, Pipeline's front flap video tape protection is busted, so i am gunna trade it with "You Got Mail's" front flap, at this point i have to duck into my roomates zone and grip his RCA to Mini jack, but he has a sign posted that reads "STAY OUT OF MY ROOM". super funny, but later I am gunna take the sign, cross out "ROOM" and insert "DREAMS", put the sign on my wall, let somebody specials red orange lipstick make out with it, so that the guy knows he's a cutie and chazzi's touched by freak. But so check it, i had to grip this RCA to Mini jack so that i can grip your memories and watch Pipeline. Hey man, for real though, member when we were on the beach in barcelona, before our car got towed, and we were cruising to beverly hills cop soundtrack, The Master and Carmen San Diego were in the back, we got to the beach jumped in the water drank beer ate coconuts and got massages while staring at boob people. at that moment, like when we snuck into the berlin film festival and danced Ocean's 11, wow, my roomate just came home, he's wearing a long party wig and telling chazzi that he shagged all night long in a squat called "Duel 3", no joke; but yeah, I cannot, for the parrot in me, forget those times, to each his own future, So wait, back to Pipeline,, no wait, i got to tell you about this party last full moon, my roomate throws one every month when the moon's light eclipses that of the rational minds hesitations, and well i had to dj, i wanted to, but i brought the parrot along, you met him right? he is always there when chazzy does the radio show or when monopoly needs vocals on a bamboo track, but neither of us invite this guy to the parties where those other dreams come true. its not cool, so i brought him along, you know his name right? Belafonte, so belafonte and i start dj-ing, you know that song from Police Academy called "I got to be somebody" by Jack Mack and a Hearttack? stars and ecstasy, for real, and jel doctor was getting me buckets of beer, cuz it was so hot and the air is full of short stuff, so i flip the records and repeatedly fend off requests for beat it and dirty diana, and all of a sudden Belafonte has drank all my beer and is smoking cigarettes, there are no tickets for free coldies, and i get pretty pissed, i kinda let Belafonte have it, you know, telling him that I cant take him anywhere, gnorm the gnome style, and he's like "alright, you go get some more beers", wow, your mirror jam just cruised in - memories... so, yeah, Belafonte is like "go, get some more beers and let me talk some of these girls into dancing with us and you will be calling me Most Valuable Vertabrae, birdtalk magazine style, so i get a bunch of coldies cuz tod god just came through with some bready poo, i come back to the dance floor, and well, i guess Belafonte burnt his head on his own cigarette, and this girl named Manon, but he understood as Emanuelle, like schnikies!! well his head is burnt and this black paint starts rubbing off his head, and i notice that there is paint on my neck, my face, and on her face, and her neck, and so on and so forth CSI style, and everybody kind of understands, the girls have taken this black paint and are marking it on their bodies like war paint initiation style, and they are petting Belafonte like he's the unattainable, i had no idea that this parrot was a model for Birdtalk Magazine back in its hey day, group therapy is affective... later i asked Manon for some affection, and she said "no, your feet are too dirty", on account of me wearing flippers to a dance party, and was like cool, its not even july 4th yet, but then, as i walked away she was like "Three O Clock, meet me at the Zoo!" no joke, Belafonte and me were like ah kuku ah kaka bamboo-for-two style... Stories are forever and i got to get back to PIPELINE, which is hitting the screen right now, and its definitely not about surfing and reminds charles of when Ebay and you stayed at the new york dante's microchip apartment and it was so hot and you guys passed out next to each other in your undies exclusively like siamese pipeline limbo style, if i had hoagie it would have been chazzi to chucky in like 4 doners and sixty seckies... Thanks for the memories Matt, i miss you man, i think Belafonte and I will get deported soon and i will meet you in Cali. Love, Charles Berlitz.”

New solo work from Sam Meringue, aka Explorers, Matrix Metals, half of Yoga et al. Flashback Repository is a crude Xerox-psych take on James Ferraro and Spencer Clark’s Hypnagogic memory-recovery process, positing a universal storehouse where all of the waste consciousness of humanity resides. It sounds like abandoned machinery heard through a fog of tape hiss and dreamtone, with keyboards spooling loops of wasteland texture beneath hallucinatory vocal forms and far-away melodies. The feel is closest, perhaps, to the early Skaters style, with peaking drones jump-cutting into keyboard carousels and flickering dreammachine actions, all rendered in a way that sounds as if its beaming across the decades, from the future as much as the past. A reissue of an obscure cassette from Meringue’s Outer Limits Collective, the LP comes with a stapled together booklet featuring ‘explanatory’ text. Edition of 425 copies. Highly recommended. 

Limited vinyl reissue of one of James Ferraro’s greatest sides, Lamborghini Crystal’s 1992 Cool Runnings, now remastered and rebirthed as Grippers Nother Onesers’ At Slimer Beach. The LP is built around amazing disco/psych/drone/glam songs with high, high vox, gospelised choirs, repeat rhythms, jamming wah guitars and that beautiful, refracted-through-a-sea-of-fug sound that characterises all of his best work. Joyous, profoundly affecting and seemingly broadcast from a bedroom in the 1970s that still harbours the slowly decaying ghost of progressive disco/funk/glam dreams, the set runs from primitive NY Dolls-styled trash through full ensemble Aquarian musicals. Another singular release from this always confounding artist. Features Ghostbusters-tribute artwork and some naked snaps of our hero. Dedicated to Richard Ramirez..“It was formed by James Ferraro and it is the first release under this name (it is inspired by childhood memories of seeing holograms for the first time and hearing disco/rock music coming from other rooms around the house and from behind walls, I remember realizing the different shades/ and it felt mystical, and the images and sounds had employed psychic senses I had never used before, total ' disco breeze/sun reflecting on iridescent oil sunglasses,)” – James Ferraro. Edition of 450 copies.  Highly recommended. 

Vinyl reissue of what was an obscure limited cassette on Not Not Fun from Sam Meringue’s (Explorers/Yoga/Flashback Repository) Matrix Metal project. This one is described as alien lounge music and it uses keyboards, 1980s soundtrack styles and huge clouds of brain-fogging static to hallucinate incidental music for the birth-pangs of galaxies. Call it Hypnagogic Kosmiche. Edition of 500 copies with full colour covers and digital download. Highly recommended. 

Massive full-length from Joe Knight aka Rangers who had a previous cassette on Not Not Fun. Heard this described as ‘mirrorball funknagogic pop’ and yeah, it’s fully mainlined H-Pop that expands on the Ariel Pink/James Ferraro blueprint by importing massive bass riffs (that at points sound like PiL), screwed and chopped production styles and fully structured songs that confuse DIY prog with 1980s pop. Think of the more guitar-focussed 80s skateboard vid soundtracks of Lamborghini Crystal cut with an Eighties frontman beaming vocals straight from late-night MTV. The whole album has a Roxy Music-bootleg vibe, a fuzzy mirror onto an alien pop music with cold, dreamy synths and monster bass. Suburban Tours is a collection of pop songs that take the raw material of Knight’s extended collage-based cassettes and turns them into classic psychedelic instants. All the tracks were recorded after Knight relocated to San Francisco from the suburbs of Dallas, Texas and there’s something melancholy in his evocation of 80s/90s teenage USA cut up with a confused love/hate for what he calls suburbia’s “failed connections with nature” – fake lighting, golf courses, air conditioning, gated communities... Todd Ledford describes it well when he says: “But despite the loneliness and melancholic themes there is a remarkable amount of color to his music. Like it's the sound of what he'd want to have playing on his headphones while riding a bike thru these neighbourhoods -- the sound necessary to make these places seem lively and fun.” Either way this is a major Hypnagogic statement. Full-colour pro-printed sleeves with MP3 download. Highly recommended.

Mind-blowing out of nowhere debut for this solo UK underground project based in the Wirral in Merseyside. Forest Swords work as a Hypnagogic update of classic UK underground modes, importing psychedelic hip-hop and R ‘n’ B production styles into the kind of eccentric art-pop settings of Simon Wickham-Smith and Richard Youngs, Two Daughters, Dome, The Shadow Ring et al. The music is hypnotically lush minimalism, sometime using synthesised ghost vocals over dubbed-up Julian Lynch style bass and beautiful smears of drone. Forest Swords talks of his love for Aaliyah’s work with Timbaland and there’s a sleight of hand going on here which is comparable to Daniel Lopatin’s seductive use of screwed hip hop styles in drone/underground settings. Here Forest Swords come over as a Hypnagogic Aphex Twin, with the stoned production style of Selected Ambient Works usurped by crude minimal Spacemen/Velvets guitar and some F/X heavy DIY remix styles. It’s a fantastic trip, with something indefinably bleak/lovely in its evocation of lonely late night England. Dagger Paths consists of specially re-mastered versions of tracks from the out of print cassettes Miarches and Glory Gongs along with brand new material. Full colour pro-printed sleeves and insert with a MP3 download. A classic UK underground side, bolstering the tradition while taking it somewhere else completely. Highly recommended.

New four track EP from Big Troubles, who redirect the fuzz pop sound of The Pastels and My Bloody Valentine into the American garage. ”Kicking off the new OESB 7" series with a 4 track single by Big Troubles. International playboy Matt Mondanile (Real Estate, Ducktails) discovered Big Troubles and urged Olde English Spelling Bee to sign these guys on the spot for their fresh "industrial shoegaze pop" sound. Done and done. Features home recordings by Alex Craig and Ian Drennan who split songwriting and vocal duties down the middle. They are joined live by Luka Usmiani (No Demons Here) on bass and Sam Franklin (Fluffy Lumbers) on drums. Their debut full-length album "Worry" will be out on OESB in July.” – OESB.

Much-anticipated third album from Julian Lynch, after Born2Run and Orange You Glad. Lynch came out of the whole suburban NJ garage pop scene but his music exists in the kind of fourth world zone that would reconcile Bollywood melodies, Saints-style garage rock, obsessive repetitive structures and a pristine homemade ethos. Mare feels more introspective than Orange You Glad, with pop songs dominated by the kind of sad euphoria of the early Beach Boys and a non-geographically specific feel that at points touches on the music of Erkin Koray and Edip Akbayram. The vocal arrangements are odd and evocative, a little more to the fore than on previous recordings, bolstering the more structured feel of the album as a whole, while the brass is a weepingly sad as any New Orleans lament. Lynch has an umbilical in a bunch of contemporary modes but really he sounds like no one else. Outside of the Flying Nun Australia/New Zealand scene it’s hard to think of anyone who better reconciles instinctive experimental home recordings and great, great songs. So here it is. Highly recommended. Comes with a download coupon.