EXPO ’70 – ‘Beguiled Entropy’ LP £12
Expo ’70 has garnered a great deal of notoriety over the last few years in certain circles in which the moniker is usually mentioned to describe types of cross-genres. After completing a couple US tours and a handful of limited releases and re-releases in 2010, a short hiatus was in order. During this time last year Justin Wright, sole operator of the project, recorded tracks for an upcoming release. Wright entered a basement studio and improvised over two nights layered recordings for the first time in several months. A track from this session was released earlier this year as the title track for Sound of Cobra’s “Hovering Resonance” one-sided limited LP. That song did not take up the full record and Wright returned to the studio with his current 3 piece line-up to record “Moon Raga”, a more eastern-sounding influenced exploration. The edition of 200 hand silk screen covers which disappeared extremely fast. The remainder of the solo session is collected here as one full album entitled “Beguiled Entropy”, which explores more fidelity in sounds and texture than “Hovering Resonance”. Soft synthesizer creeps along to explorations dominated by drifting melodic guitar leads, quickly shifting in textural atmospheres. As “Beguiled Entropy” is flipped to side B, the narratives drop and a more driving synth line bridges a rising pulse that takes the steering wheel in to a more cosmic psychedelic territory, adding analog drum machines leading the listener deeper into a trance-like state. This release co-insides with Expo ’70’s first European tour this September. Mastered by James Plotkin. Pressed in an edition of 500 copies, 100 copies pressed on 180 gram blue vinyl with orange swirl available only directly from Blackest Rainbow and 400 copies on 180 gram black virgin vinyl. Includes a download card for the entire album as FLAC, WAV, MP3 etc, you decide what format! Order at Bandcamp and get instant download of a track from the album.
ORPHAN FAIRYTALE – ‘Comets Come Alive’ LP £12
Orphan Fairytale emerged mid 2000s from the Belgian underground which seems to be a consistently solid ground for fantastic music emerging. This brand new LP from Eva Van Deuren’s Orphan Fairytale project follows on from her fantastic ‘Ladybird Labyrinth’ LP on Ultra Eczema as well as releases on Rampart, Foxglove, Release The Bats and many other great labels. ‘Comets Come Alive’ is a beautiful dreamy album of keyboard, layered with various unknown objects, toys and other non-instruments creating a sea of sound that is so stunning it’s hard to put into words. The sounds Eva creates have a childlike nursery rhyme like quality which is what makes her music so charming, it’s simplistic, but there’s not much else out there that sounds like what Eva does, she blends the minimalistic with the psychedelic. ‘Comets Come Alive’ is pressed on 180gram virgin vinyl including a download code. Edition of 500 copies, 100 copies pressed on 180 gram green vinyl with red, yellow and blue splatter with a hand numbered insert available only directly from Blackest Rainbow and 400 copies on 180 gram black virgin vinyl with an un-numbered insert on a different coloured paper to the coloured vinyl edition. Includes a download card for the entire album as FLAC, WAV, MP3 etc, you decide what format. Order at Bandcamp and get instant download of a track from the album.
SPACE VICTIM – ‘Decreased Awareness Of inner Processes’ CDr £6
New CDR of nightmare visions from this relatively unknown Newcastle duo that features Mike Vest of Bong/Basillica etc. Potentially one of the most weird and eerie projects I;ve heard from Mike, fractured strings echo across vast bellowing strange sounds. Probably one of my favourites from all his associated projects so far. Black and white art printed on coloured card.