Pulse Emitter - Grass

I hadn't heard one bit of Pulse Emitter until fairly recently on WFMU/thanks to the honourable Gift Tapes blog and now GT have followed through with the blog praise and put out a fantastic cassette with artwork that fits the music perfectly.

The first side contains some beautiful synth drift that ebbs/flows/waxes/wanes beautifully before gently moving off into the distance. It's seriously relaxing stuff and some high end flutter appears towards the end, possibly to mark your move into a deep meditative state. Many of the synth fiends in my collection often seem to merely hang the sounds out there and allow them to billow in the wind but Daryl Groetsch is a master craftsman, introducing the tones methodically and letting them breathe and melt into each other to weirdly soothing effect. Side B brings recognisable melodies to the fore and more twittering/bassy rumbles without sacrificing any of the atmosphere. Pulse Emitter brings you the sounds of intensive isolation tank therapy triple distilled for maximum...effect? Taste? Something like that.

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Listen to Pulse Emitter@Free Music Archive

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The Radiation Line - EP3

The Radiation Line are an experimental collective based in Central Scotland. I think that might contain Glasgow but I don't exactly know. What I do know is that this is a bit of a mind-boggler.

Skulls on any record cover usually suggest that evil is afoot but these guys seem more concerned with beauty, albeit a noisy sort of beauty rising out of the darkness scarred. Thirty seconds in I was ready for another drone-out but then whispered vocals and guitar appear. Hugely surprising stuff continually emerges from the murk throughout the whole thing including a full on four-to-the-floor banger (!) which dredges up memories of the heaviest nights out - when everything's an overpowering blur underpinned by thudding, there's a police siren screaming in one of your ears while someone's trying to speak into the other...it's massively disorienting. Before long it seems as if you're flying up and out of the town centre at speed. This is a consistently confounding release which still has its fair share of heavy drone, ambience and impending doom to please fans of impending doom, ambience and heavy drone but also squeezes loads of different sounds/rhythms into every available space.

Head over to the myspace and have a listen. One track on there suggests a more Earth/metal influence which wasn't immediately apparent. Who knows what the upcoming full-length will sound like? Not I. If it's as much of a trip as this EP it should be a winner.

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BONG - BETHMOORA

Bong are one of those bands that totally fill the room, whether listening to them live or on record. Or on cd, ye know. Probably on tape too. You get the idea. I will always remember walking into a gig late and being hit with the heaviest opening band i'd ever seen. The following acts (with far bigger and more expensive amps) sounded tame in comparison, as if Bong had ploughed through the musical landscape and crushed them under their mighty weight. Or as if they had broken the PA.

They are all about uneasy crawl and riff worship, finding the essence and repeating it over and over again with drums and sitar punctuating. Once you hear the sitar in this band it makes you wonder why every other band doesn't have one. Like the 13th Floor Elevators electric jug. They are altogether more ominous and evil than Sleep (who the internet says they worship) and possibly even more monolithic. This stuff practically commands you to lie down and let yourself be flattened.

Everything i've heard has been fantastic but the 25+ minute cover of Pink Floyd's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" on the second cd of "Bethmoora" bowled me over all over again.

Bongspace

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BLOOD SABBATH

I'm sure you're all familiar with the old & low budget sexy cult horror movie known as Blood Sabbath. I certainly am! Not. An imdb user has this to say:

"Delerious [sic] mess of a witchcraft tale is interesting only as a showcase for the female bust. One of the strangest B-grade ensemble casts of the 70s cannot save this film, a tale of love, lust and the supernatural set in the deep forest. Skip it unless you are completist of 70s Z horror trash. 2/10"

Funeral Folk have put out a 20 minute edit of the soundtrack music from it which runs what I assume to be the whole sexy cult horror gamut - from disorientating tribal weirdness with squiggly synth to seedy psych funk (with squiggly synth) to creepy clanking ambience featuring squiggly synth. There's a pop tune at the end about the wise and the not-so-wise that presumably runs over the credits. Some dialogue/monologue from the film pops up every so often to tie it all together. Here's a preview snippet:

"TAKE MY SOUL DAMN YOU!!!!!"

Sounds good doesn't it? It is! You can find the cd(r) at thee Boa Melody Bar and the whole film is actually available to watch online if you search for it on google. Soon I will find out if it lives up to the excellent twenty minutes of music, which at points is very bizarre and Angus Maclise/Skatersesque for all you Angus Maclise and Skaters fans. Here's a very small clip featuring some squiggly synth to whet your appetite.

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Nackt Insecten - Quantum Odyssey II: Corridor Voyager

Long time no typey. I think this is the first 'real' (ie not a cd-r) cd release by Glasgow's finest and it is included with a 7" of a gig he played on the subway. During my short time in Glasgow I managed to see NI live a couple of times and was totally hypnotised. This release is similarly hypnotic, the first track pairing shrieking feedback with shimmering keyboard, seemingly soundtracking some kind of rebirthing ceremony and conjuring a bizarrely cleansing, serene atmosphere despite being the noisiest section of the album.

Elsewhere drum machines underpin some mesmeric, weaving casio drones and wordless vocals battle to emerge from underneath a gargantuan electronic sruti box. It reminds me of Skullflower circa 'Orange Canyon Mind' but with a more eastern feel. I had this on while running along the beach and I felt as if I would start floating up towards the sun at any moment. Exercise and epic sounds do funny things to you.

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Harvey Milk bonus 3" CD (2006)

Good afternoon everyone, it's OOP Gem time. If you like Rock and Roll music with guitars playing great riffs you'll simply LOVE this short EP from Athens, Georgia's Harvey Milk band. You may have heard them playing very slowly on seminal releases like 'Courtesy & Goodwill Toward Men' and 'My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be'. But this EP presents Harvey Milk as you've NEVER heard them before! Unless you've heard their singles or their straight up RnR album 'The Pleaser'. These cuts sound a bit like those - GREAT songs with amazing riffs! And an REM cover, live and direct with that slightly iffy/still quite good recording quality.

So download this, take six Coors Light beers out of your refrigerator and put them in the freezer so they're really cold (careful they don't freeze), take off your shoes, take off your shirt, put your shirt back on again, go and get the cold beers, open them, sit back, stand up and ROCK OUT to the rockalicious sounds of Harvey Milk - Athens, Georgia's six legged rock machine of rock.

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The excellent "Anthem" dvd that this cd originally came with is available again with a bonus disc (no 3" CD this time hence the upload)

BUY IT NOW

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Oneohtrix Point Never / Slow Listener split tape

Daniel Lopatin recently appeared on the ol' radar with his Young Tapes release 'Ruined Lives' but this is an entirely different animal. It's as if aliens are trying to relay distress signals through a thick haze of static. High pitched buzzing and chirrups seem to be the only sounds able to rise above the din. Giant space insects with killer mandibles ahoy. Eventually a bit of tweaked modem bursts through and creates a pathway for some lower synth notes and the unwanted guests are in the room, coming closer & baring big sharp pointy teeth.

The Slow Listener side is a blurry, zoned out affair in comparison - organ drones pushing against each other for supremacy and creating gently shifting fuzz and crackle along the way. The sound gradually expands outwards to fill the room, bouncing off the walls and sucking in the ambient noise until only the tape's mournful tones remain, dizzying and gloomy. Then, some applause.

clip from the Slow Listener side here ("Undiagnosed Sleep Disorder")
clip from the Oneohtrix Point Never side / link to buy
Archivo de Sangre de Dios blog (looks a bit dead)

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