Animal Psi

Avi C. Engel – ‘Too Many Souls’
Avi C. Engel is an independent non-binary artist and musician based in Toronto. Their most recent album, “Too Many Souls”, features voice, acoustic guitar, gudok (a 3-string Slavic bowed instrument), percussion, and melodica. Genre-agnostic, handmade music that is playful, sorrowful, and ecstatic. Plucked and bowed stringed instruments and organic ramshackle wooden percussion build sensory worlds that coalesce with Engel’s sung-poetry.

Aidan Baker – ‘Everything Is Like Always Until It Is Not’
Aidan Baker is a classically-trained multi-instrumentalist from Toronto (now resident in Berlin) with the electric guitar his primary instrument. Using prepared and alternate methods of playing the guitar, along with various electronic effects, Baker creates music which generally falls within the ambient/experimental genre but draws on influences from rock, electronic, classical, and jazz. A highly prolific artist, Baker has released numerous recorded works, both solo and with various group projects, including Nadja, ARC, Caudal and Mnemosyne. The third solo album Aidan has released on Cruel Nature, “Everything” works well as a bridge between the free-form jazz ambience of “Stimmt” (2021) and the bass-heavy fuzz of “Tenebrist” (2022). It’s still heavy on the low end but with added shoegaze/noise-rock ambient ethereal atmospherics.

Nnja Riot – ‘Violet Fields’
Violet Fields is the new studio album from Nnja Riot, the solo project of multidisciplined London-based artist, Lisa McKendrick . A fusion of noise compositions, darkwave aesthetics, and an experimental attitude. McKendrick interweaves the raw energy of noise with melodic layers and pulsating beats to create shamanic experimental songscapes.

H.R. Giger Counter – ‘What Do The Atoms Hold For Us?’
H.R. Giger Counter is a new electronica/ambient project from Andrew Gladstone-Heighton (waheela, Radio Free Ul-quoma) and Jeremy Hunt (QOHELETH, Aint Pancakes), two salvagepunks with a shared love of classic 20th century sci-fi and horror pulp media. Using found sounds, samples from obsolete futures and discarded machines, they present across 12 tracks, this collection of future-gazing instrumentals conjuring a world spun off of QOHELETH’s Black Kite Broadcasts, bringing to life one of the imagined bands from that record. As part three of four in the NoiseFeast release series, this album hopes and dreams of a world where systems of oppression have been dismantled, humanity has rediscovered its worth, and now moves in greater communion with creation itself.

The Last Sound – ‘Veered’
The Last Sound is Barry M, one half of Irish techno mercurial noiseniks Whirling Hall Of Knives. “Veered” started life in 2006, when the early collaborations that would lead to WHOK were just forming. Until 2010, the bulk of the album was developed in the background but remained unfinished until 2023, when it was dug out of the archives and brought to life in 2024, providing a great document to a period of transition between TLS and WHOK but also standing up as a timeless The Last Sound album. “Veered is, from a certain angle, a hazy, corroded time capsule filled with darkly euphoric artifacts from the macrolabyrinth… The first track was started in 2006, roughly around the point when elusive electro/drone don Magnetize suggested trying a one-off live collaboration (this happily developed into an ongoing concern, later named Whirling Hall Of Knives). From then on, broadly speaking as the WHOK sound grew darker, The Last Sound became a bit lighter, incorporating more normal song structures and vocals, so Veered represents this transition period. Nine of the ten tracks are from 2006-2010 (with one replacement added from 2017). As an album it wasn’t shelved but it wasn’t quite finished at the time either, so in 2023, rather than dusting it off, some extra dust was added (regular and fairy) to bring it wheezing into 2024. Apart from a 2023 mastering by Alan O’Boyle, most of it is left untouched, but there are EQ enhancements/degradations and other subtle augmentations here and there. ‘Cold Is The Brittle Hand’ previously appeared on a 2010 EP, and a distorted, looped version of ‘Outskirting’ appeared in video form in March 2020 as a harbinger of imminent lockdown psychosis. An ever-evolving ‘Drugged On The Rugged Plain’ became the closer in nearly every one of the few live appearances from 2007 onwards (though the version here is very close to the original), and ‘DOTRP Macrolabyrinth’ shows some of the paths the original track could have taken. Otherwise, everything else is “new”.” (Barry, TLS 2024)

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Darrell Devore – ‘Another Song of Civilization’
“Another Song of Civilization” continues the excavation of rarely heard music by Darrell DeVore, creative force behind San Francisco’s Pygmy Unit and foundational figure in the psychedelic underground. Drawn from an enormous repository of recordings made between the 1970s and the 1990s at Studio UM (or Universal Music), volume two offers more imaginary ethnoscapes and multitracked polyrhythms, this time supplemented with extended synthesizer atmospheres, off-kilter jazz configurations, and a slow-burning experiment in piano and horn. Loose correlations might be made with so-called Fourth World music, insofar as DeVore fleshes out musical vocabularies belonging to cultures as-yet unknown. But he also sought a more fundamental “sound magic” that could exist beyond the human world entirely, evinced in instruments that, by way of wind or water, play themselves. His heavier interest in acoustics brings to this idiom something woozier, more spontaneous, and utterly unfamiliar.

Echardt & Kash – ‘Songs of the Soul’
The shadowy duo of Echardt & Kash bring a deep groove mentality to the floating world of New Age music. Plush ambience and tropical birdsong continue in the tradition of sound-as-vibrational-transport, but this is bass music aware of its place in a post-trip hop world. Whether the title is an earnest ode to the inner journey or something more satirical remains open to interpretation. The potent, hypnotic ether of these recordings, however, makes the answer immaterial. Covers are hand-marbled and letterpress-printed.

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Poppy H – ‘Grave Era’
Multi-instrumentalist, field recordist and producer Poppy H captures sound & music via an openly recording phone, before mixing and mastering on the same device. This ultra lo-fi approach befits H’s improvisational and instinctive tendencies on this, his follow up to debut album “NOTHING IS PERFECT, EVERYTHING IS PERFECT”. “GRAVE ERA” draws a line in the sand between domestic and global conflict; in a world where overpriced flat whites and skinny lattes are served against a rolling backdrop of death, destruction and displacement. A class war rages externally and internally as H moves around the UK capital voyeuristically bottling fleeting exchanges, an outsider looking in, before heading to the eastern most point of the country to chant aloud, and onto his own living spaces where the familiar assault of modern appliances and construction work meet melancholy and hauntingly hopeful passages of improvised and crafted electronic and acoustic compositions.

Orchard – ”Til You Fall Down’
Veterans of London bands Baaneex. Magic Mist, Giant Burger, Night Pain and Melge, Joel and Rosie headed to North Yorkshire and formed Orchard in 2022. Debut album “‘Til You Fall Down” is a wonder of lo-fi indie garage punk, a captured moment in time, recalling the spirit and fizzing pure energy of C86, and K Records bands such as Beat Happening.

Charlie Butler – ‘Wild Fictions’
Charlie Butler is a Lanarkshire based artist who began a series of solo releases in 2021 exploring psychedelic, ambient, heavy and hypnotic sounds alongside being a member of Cody Noon, Neutraliser with Mike Vest, Mothertrucker and Head Drop. He has had work published by Weird Beard, Cruel Nature, Fuzzed Up & Astromoon, and Panurus Productions. “Wild Fictions” sees Butler exploring similar territories as his previous guitar-based works, but with dominant keyboards and synths creating a motorik kosmische air with touches of ‘Recurring’ era Spacemen 3 / Sonic Boom’s Spectrum

Exsanguinated Roommate – ‘Lurking’
An off-shoot project from Paul Foreman of Salisman (with support from Salisman members Chris Tate and Jon Raedeke), Exsanguinated Roommate was developed during 2023. The debut album “Lurking” retains all the classic songwriting hooks and melodies that Salisman are famed for, nudging the experimental psychedelic edge a little further, with slide glances to 80s pop-rock and Flaming Lips eclecticism.

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Sensual Spasmo – ‘Metastatic Gunk, On Lollie-Pink Playsuit, Heralded A Sopped Coming Of Age’
Clanking at the window, smudging the skylight. As the couturière to the human pubis, Fournier’s Gangrene possesses a discerning eye for elegance in the cutthroat world of genital displays. How would you arouse the indifferent? By means of septicity, so cherished, that the encroaching darkness blazes? Psyche seeks disembarrassment from echinate tendrils of moist obscenity. Body bent by profane geometry: succumbs, then blossoms. A nuzzle with nose can express the comedos betwixt the bosom, squiggling forth amid the aureola thickets. Inhale the flesh’s transudate and spit! Spit like a beast under glass! Unlike beauty, repulsion sustains oneself longer and unlike wooing, nobody escapes my domain, except as faeces.

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[slo-fi_023] The Age Of Heroes – ‘Eight Ornaments Of Patience’ CD $10USD
Juba musician and philosophy student Anda Wondu started recording music as The Age Of Heroes while attending high school overseas in Maryland. This album of eight songs spans the work of over ten years refining technique in true DIY fashion, but more influence from metal, hip-hop and film soundtracks than punk and noise. Evolving synthesizer melodies are pushed by big guitars, big 909, big bass(es). 100% authentic mid ’00s sound. FFO Mogwai & Death Note OST. Second pressing of 500 copies.

[slo-fi_31] thirteencolonies s/t CS $5USD
Cassette version of the original tour cd-r from 2012. Delay-soaked electronica with a side of jazz combo slam poetry. This release is limited to 100 copies.

[slo-fi_037] thirteencolonies – ‘thirteencolonies II’ CD $9USD
Nine-song album by the thirteencolonies project. Still influenced by dub, jazz, and goth, now focused on the Ensoniq ZR-76 workstation feeling like a throwback to the earliest Paul Joyner solo work. Psychedelic new-wave. Compact disc, edition of 500.

[slo-fi-045] Digital Research – ‘Port/MD’ 7″ $7USD
Two instrumentals recorded at Barclay House in Baltimore. 45 rpm w/ big hole. 300 copies on black vinyl.

[slo-fi_050] Digital Research – ‘Virtual Research’ LP $15USD
Lonesome synthesizer ghosts sweeping over an urban graveyard of chopped tape beats. 300 copies on “kyoho ice cream” vinyl

[slo-fi_045] Blair – ‘Heart’ C60 $6USD
Blair started summer 2016 in Idaho Springs, CO. First moving down to Denver to spend a year on writing and recording demos, the band moved to Maryland to complete the line-up and started playing shows on the U$A’s east coast. This recording was tracked inside a cold Pennsylvania farmhouse next to a fireplace. Psychedelic “emo”-inspired folk-rock. Side A is the original EP. Side B are live versions in the same order, from performances at Rhizome in Takoma Park and WMUC radio station in College Park. Some cassettes are green, some are white. 100 copies total.

[slo-fi_051] Blair – ‘Dark Woods’ CD $10USD
The trio returns to the woods of the Susquehanna Valley to record longer and darker jams than their first EP, vocals do not appear until the third song. More experimentation towards the split directions of industrial-metal and “new romantic”-inspired pop. 500 CDs in digipacks.

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Sikk Laffter – ’RR Drama’ C36
Every room houses a neglected corner. One that neither sun nor lamp adequately reach. The light spectrum there ranges from partially shadowed to virtual darkness. A potential hot bed for unsavory ongoings. Cast in tremolo are tales of the railroad too tall to be true until they break free and confront you in the light of day.

Renee Willoughby – ’33’ C33
Spectral communique now in its second pressing. A recording spanning two worlds. Calling out and hearing back.

VOSP/ The Glass Path -‘Material Duration’ C12
Sound swap between these two artists. Taking in new synthetic colloquialisms, making inroads down unfamiliar neural pathways and finishing each others sentences.

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[tzpCS89] UJ BALA – ‘Idegen tartalom’ CS
Vocal industrialisation & industrial vocalisation. Accidental disgrace & foreign body. Epileptic jolts & zigzag dexterity.

[tzpCS90] TERRINE/FUSILLER – ‘Hashtag’ CS
Split chic & choc. Terrine side: sonic heteroclism, x-ray choir, kick in the anthill. Fusiller side: suspended ambush, emotional electronica, broken-down car races.

[tzpCS91] RAPPORT1984 – ‘Le diable couleur de rose/Music for fainting’ CS
Revised versions of the last two opuses. Double-speed electronic laboratory & asynchronous escalators. Concatenated miniatures, concrete syntheses & random ramblings.

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Blazing Worlds s/t CS/LP
Recorded during a week long Midwest summer scorcher, Blazing Worlds expands & contracts with six heavily hallucinatory movements that only hellaciously humid nights could induce and seasoned sonic psychonauts Justin Wright & Grant Corum could venture to manifest.  Wright, whom is known for experimental takes on drone & rock in the long running Expo 70 project, and Corum, as a supernatural sonic forager in Million Brazilians, Timelash, and Psychic Sounds orbits, manifest a deep phantasmagoric excursion through brilliant atmospheres in a seamless performance.The material on Blazing Worlds harkens back to Wright’s synth-driven ’Sorcerer of Sound’ full of cosmic tones and other worldliness aura, blended with with Corum’s bent woodwind work & extraterrestrial sounding samples.  Where this is certainly a departure from some of their previous work, the two seem to find equal navigation through their evolving compositions morphing into a singular melting chthonic mass, giving the listener an open ended impression of mesmerizingly vast sonic topographies all gleaming with moments of both glimpses of gorgeousness and the grotesque. CS on Sonic Meditations & Psychic Sounds / LP on Feral Child.

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St James Infirmary – ‘Abandoned’
St. James Infirmary, of Ashington, Northumberland (UK), was formed in 1985 as the creative vehicle for singer, songwriter and multi- instrumentalist G.W.Lang and has been continuously active ever since. G.W.L. is assisted in producing his prolific multi genre-spanning output by an evolving and rotating cast of bandmates and (at last count), SJI has boasted in the region of 40 members. With ‘Abandoned’ GW Lang’s merry crew take on Americana, where Nashville is Newcastle, Lee Hazlewood lived in Ashington and The Byrds wrote ‘Sweetheart Of The Rodeo’ in Bedlington. Wry humour, societal reflections and dark observations, with rousing bittersweet melodies.

Look To The North – ‘A Shadow Homeland’
Look To The North is the “dronefolk” duo comprising David Colohan (United Bible Studies, Raising Holy Sparks) and Zachary Corsa (Nonconnah, Lost Trail). Recorded in 2021, “A Shadow Homeland” is 4 tracks of atmospheric other-worldly introspection; melancholic ambience interspersed with sparse piano, spoken word and field-recordings, creating an immersive transcendental twilit experience.

Nonconnah – ‘Shadows From The Walls Of Death’
Nonconnah are Zachary and Denny Wilkerson Corsa, a Memphis-based experimental music duo who explore themes of memory and the past, the lingeringly supernatural, and the profoundly American through hallucinatory layers of guitar and the spectral decay inherent in ‘obsolete’ recording mediums. Drawing on sonic traditions as varied as ambient and drone music, shoegaze, noise music, psych-rock, post-rock, and the occasional touches of old time/Appalachian folk music. The inspiration behind “Shadows From The Walls Of Death” is the trend during the Victorian era for eye-catching ornately designed vivid wallpaper, which happened to be laced with arsenic, slowly poisoning the occupants of the houses adorned with it and workers in the factories who mass-produced it. Left untouched, the wallpaper could release flakes of arsenic into the air or produce arsenical gas when conditions were damp. It was also linked to the widespread cases of mental illness at the time. Something decorative and ostensibly beautiful but potentially dangerous, both physically and psychologically. The album takes its title from Dr. Robert C. Kedzie’s book, published in 1874, warning of the dangers and containing samples of said wallpaper, collected from stores around Michigan. Thus making the book itself a dangerous artefact. The cassette outer and inner cover art features examples of the wallpaper.

Madrelarva – ‘Tierra de Silencio’
Madrelarva is a project of Spanish electronic musician Julio Tornero, who has been producing minimal techno, IDM and experimental music since 2015. Also recording as Dark Tibet, Oceanic Alpha Axis, Sequences Binaires, with his work published by a multitude of labels including Fmur, Intellitronic Bubble, Detriti, Phantasma Disques. “Tierra de Silencio” is an epic tour de force, comprised of four long-form tracks, journeying through spacious rhythms, modular arpeggios and analogue bubbles. Channeling artists like Conrad Schnitzler and Nurse With Wound, it’s a love letter to the formative years and evolution of electronic music.

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Ahti & Ahti – ‘Nokivesi’ LP
Ahti & Ahti is the duo of Finnish sound artists Marja Ahti and Niko-Matti Ahti. Originally created as a radiophonic piece for the Oscillations Radio Marathon in 2020. Nokivesi (soot-water) embraces sound montage and cut up conversations alongside instrumental and electronic sound, combining the complexity of the field-recorded sounds and compositional sensitivity.

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