Blackest Rainbow

BURIAL HEX – ‘Angelic Gematria’ cassette £5
Brand new full length cassette from Clay Ruby’s amazing Burial Hex project. Cascades of blackened electronics, distant and buried wailing electronics drenched in throbbing rhythms and grumbling thunderous reverberations, swelling across the two 20 minute compositions, steadily building to utter decay. Limited to 100, pro-dubbed with black and white covers printed on parchment paper.

HUSERE GRAV – ‘Untitled’ cassette £5
A desolate and bleak new 30 minutes from Husere Grav, following on from releases on Not Not Fun, Stunned and Small Doses. 8 tracks of stark drifting blackened tones, claustrophobic tension building throughout each untitled track. The opening track opens with a empty repeated riff, shrouded in a thick electric drone and perhaps a drum beat crushed to the very edge of recognition, followed by a piece that engulfs the listener in a plague of blackened sounds working against one another. The sounds continue with static organic zone outs and soundtrack-style compositions. Husere Grav’s newest release showcases a host of influences from dark ambient, black metal and power electronics but unlike the latter genres, never sounds harsh, the sound is just dark, brooding doom. The lack of any information and titles enhance the somewhat mysterious artist behind this excellent bleak sound project. Limited to 100, pro-dubbed with black and white covers printed on parchment paper.

PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST – ‘Transparent Winter’ LP £12
Transparent Winter follows on from the debut release on the always excellent Time-Lag label and releases on the equally great PSF, Opax and A Silent Place. Painting Petals On Planet Ghost is the trio of Ramona Ponzini with Roberto & Maurizio Opalio (aka My Cat Is An Alien). Here they return for a new full length vinyl release on Blackest Rainbow. PPOPG create some wonderfully fragile and unusual experiments that fall somewhere between folk, psychedelia and drone. Ramono Ponzini sings in Japanese as well as contributing ‘furin, metal and wooden japanese wind chimes’. These are combined with Maurizio Opalio on acoustic guitar, and Roberto Opalio on ‘mini keyboard, bodhran, alientronics, and wordless vocalizations’. The trio’s eclectic setup helps them create some truly luscious and mysterious music that is perfectly fragile, strange, distant and delicate. ‘Mars Appears’ is a hazy dream piece with layered guitars, strange electronics and Ramono’s perfectly delivered Japanese vocals drawing the listener in surrounded by a strange but perfect fitting created by the Opalio brothers musical output. ‘The Mountain’ is equally as otherworldy as the previous sides track, with swirling strings and out of this world electronics created by Roberto and Maurizio. Whilst Ramona’s vocal are almost delivered in a trance like state. A extremely beautiful record with a gorgeous organic feel to it. The record is housed in a sleeve featuring film photographs of flowers. Edition of 250 copies pressed on 140gram virgin vinyl.

AIDAN BAKER – ‘Plague of Fantasies’ LP £12
Brand new solo material from Aidan Baker, one of the most prolific musicians recording at the moment, Aidan creates such a wide array of musical sound its hard to keep track, not only does he perform as part of the fantastic Nadja, as well as in projects such as ARC, and collaborating with other luminaries such as Tim Hecker, he releases a whole host of solo material. This new solo record is really something, pulling together all the genres he works in, fusing heavy drones, with broken drums beats, buried vocals, dreamy ambient manoeuvres, and moments referring to post rock build across the two twenty plus minute tracks on this new recording. Baker’s genre blending somehow builds a sound that somehow sounds delicate and beautiful, but also at times sounds gloomy and melancholy. Plague of Fantasies is a rare vinyl release from Aidan Baker. Pressed on virgin vinyl in an edition of only 300 copies.

TWINSISTERMOON – ‘When Stars Glide Through Solid’ 2xLP £18
Long awaited reissue of the debut release from Mehdi Amezianes Twinsistermoon project, originally released as a gorgeous handmade self released CDR in 2007, to many of Natural Snow Buildings and each of their solo project, this is the pick of all their releases, which is rather ironic being that its one of the smallest release runs in the discography of all the Natural Snow Buildings and related projects, it is infact the most limited release of all the Twinsistermoon releases. But due to the massive level of word of mouth about their releases on blogs and in the smaller press publications this release has become one of those holy grail releases. Unlessof course you have a small wedge of cash lying around doing nothing. So, finally, and with great pleasure, the much talked of reissue is finally here. The record opens with a real stunner, ‘I Wish I Could Drown The World In Reverberation’ is a trance inducing piece, with percussive tambourine, dreamy vocals, and shimmering strings, with a gorgeous organic rich feeling. It’s followed by ‘To Breath Underwater’, a more pastoral folk song, akin to some late 60s/early 70s folk artists. The album as a whole focuses more on the song based material which occasionally venture into the more far out zone outs. The vinyl reissue features an entire side worth of new material, all of which is exclusive to the vinyl edition and is packaged in a beautiful gatefold sleeve featuring stunning new artwork by Solange Gularte. Limited to 600 copies. 200 direct mailorder copies on regular weight coloured vinyl, 400 copies on heavyweight black virgin vinyl.

TWINSISTERMOON – ‘When Stars Glide Through Solid’ CD £9
Long awaited reissue of the debut release from Mehdi Amezianes Twinsistermoon project, originally released as a gorgeous handmade self released CDR in 2007, to many of Natural Snow Buildings and each of their solo project, this is the pick of all their releases, which is rather ironic being that its one of the smallest release runs in the discography of all the Natural Snow Buildings and related projects, it is infact the most limited release of all the Twinsistermoon releases. But due to the massive level of word of mouth about their releases on blogs and in the smaller press publications this release has become one of those holy grail releases. Unlessof course you have a small wedge of cash lying around doing nothing. So, finally, and with great pleasure, the much talked of reissue is finally here. The record opens with a real stunner, ‘I Wish I Could Drown The World In Reverberation’ is a trance inducing piece, with percussive tambourine, dreamy vocals, and shimmering strings, with a gorgeous organic rich feeling. It’s followed by ‘To Breath Underwater’, a more pastoral folk song, akin to some late 60s/early 70s folk artists. The album as a whole focuses more on the song based material which occasionally venture into the more far out zone outs. The CD reissue features an additional bonus track, which is exclusive to the CD edition and is packaged in a beautiful gatefold sleeve featuring stunning new artwork by Solange Gularte. Limited to 500 copies.

CAM DEAS & JACK ALLETT – ‘Outgrowing The Wretched Cradle’ LP £12
A wild new collaboration from long time touring partners and Blackest Rainbow buddies Deas & Allett. The record comprises of two side long pieces both with the same approach in terms of playing; Deas plays guitar pulling together his classical sound and his stunning recent experimental approach from his Quadtych releases while Allett does live manipulations, taking advantage of his long experience as one half of Towering Breaker. Deas and Allett seem to consistently push there work to new levels and sounds, and once again with this record, they do just that, two sounds colliding making something between experimental guitar music, electronica and something on the very fringe of the avant garde. Limited to 300 copies in stunning sleeves.

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE COSMIC INFERNO – ‘Shakespeare From The Cosmic Inferno 2008’ 2xLP £18.5
Debut release on our new Blackest Bootleg labels releasing live recordings. The bootleg was recorded back in August 2008 at The Shakespeare in Sheffield, a great venue that played host to Acid Mothers first show in Sheffield, and it was so packed, the floor was literally moving underneath the crowd, the room was like a sauna, every single person dripping with sweat, it was one of the busiest shows I’d been too in Sheffield in a long time. I remember there being some total hippies down the front going so nuts, it was like their dream come true to see Acid Mothers. And, of course, it was INSANELY loud. This release captures that, the sheer volume AMT were playing at for the size of the room was crazy. I remember several months after, a guy I know said he’d heard there was a recording of it, and then a few months from then he said he’d managed to get a hold of it and he’d got a copy for me. After months I managed to get it, it was on DVD as it was too long to fit on a CD, so the guy had said he’d literally said he’d sat in front of the TV and listened to the 80+ minutes staring at a blank screen. That must’ve been a hell of an experience. I managed to get a hold of it in the end, and edit to a perfect 79 minute release just cutting of a few minutes of the encore. This double LP collects those 79 minutes of the recording, 6 tracks including two awesome versions of Pink Lady Lemonade, and other classics like Heart of Earth and Space Disco. The line up for the show was Pika (Afrirampo), Tabata Mitsuru, Hugashi Hiroshi, Shimura Koji, and Kawabata Makoto. Both Pika and Shimura played drums, so the set was seriously heavy as you will find out when you get this spinning… Be warned there are a couple of points in this where the sound goes a little crackly and distorted, but only very, very briefly, and it does get pretty loud at a few points. Just like a true bootleg should be!  Edition of 250 copies on printed card sleeves featuring cover shot of the band. Pressed on 140gram virgin vinyl.

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