FH035 PLVS VLTRA – ‘YO-YO BLUE’ CS $6
RIYL: Alog, Bjork, Brigitte Fontaine, The Focus Group. Rippling like a thumbed-through flip book of vaporous, hazy memories or maybe like a box of old photos left to the devices of the wind, Yo-Yo Blue feels like a curated tour of a fevered dream. Replete with childhood recitals, fragments of half-remembered stanzas and sumptuous j-pop interludes, we sense that this was a life lived well and well lived. As the shadows fall around our eyes and the summer skies turn from pink to the bluest-black the sensation of being lifted and rocked slowly slips away… PLVS VLTRA is Toko Yasuda, formerly of Enon.
FH034 CREMATOR – ‘ALPHA RALPHA BLVD’ CS $6
RIYL: Heldon, Tonto’s Expanding Head Band, John Carpenter. Cremator’s new album title comes from a tale about a sudden, radical shift from a controlling, benevolent, and sterile society to one of individuality and danger ruled by an elite group called the Instrumentality. Now picture the soundtrack circa 1979 by Klaus Schulze and filmed by Jean Painlevé. Flickering images beyond your stars have trapped you in the dark as you recline in your velvet-lined pod whilst arpeggios and synth washes swirl around the ship, returning from the ether, leaving crystal contrails – and that is just the opening sequence. Cremator is Matt Thompson of Rashomon and Zoltan.
FH033 BLACK HAT – ‘COVALENCE’ CS $6
RIYL: Tim Hecker, Mouse on Mars, Loscil. The voices of futures past howl through PNG files of grass and waterfalls – thumping and thrumming, bumping and humming – but always subservient to the pulse. It’s a very pleasant factory where the tunes for imaginary holidays of post-Christian digital paganism are made: some static is playing dub on a radio in the background, mechanical insects flit about your head plucking harps from a laser bandstand and the air always smells of ozone. But the beat, the beat is what drives us through our toil – always the beat. Black Hat is Nelson Bean of Seattle, Washington.