Animal Psi

Perkin Warbek – ‘VIDE/1983’ C25 $6
Sample based sound collage artist Perkin Warbek produces a 25 minute tape titled VIDE / 1983. The collection combines echoing noise with harsh tones aside lush mixes and cocktail clinks. The mixtape mastermind isn’t afraid of letting his samples drive the release, with little consideration on length Warbek is able to mold together a passionate display of tweaked fuckery and composition. The limited edition tape features 25 marigold and 15 black cassettes. The fortune of owning this album shall be realized in the sentiment of holding a mixtape from a former lover many years later when you realize those moments are gone as you remember the euphoric sensationalism of your past.

Beynon Archival Presents: Miss C. Greave C32 $6
The picture that makes up the front cover of this release is the only surviving image the Beynon School has of one of its most prolific students, Charlotte Greave. This image is a self portrait rendered in soft pastels that create a stark image that may go some way in adding a illustrative element to her exploration of sound that are to be heard on this cassette.  The amount of work Miss Greave recorded during her four years at the Beynon School is still unknown due to the fact that more is still being found and digitised by the archive. If anything is to be ascertained from the amount of work created it is that Charlotte used her exploration of sound and the Beynon School of Audio Architecture as her main creative outlet.  Charlotte was known to live with her father after her mother left the family unit when Charlotte was very young. Her father was a local pharmacist in the small town of Totnes in Devon. There relationship was reported to be fractuous at times but generally loving with Charlotte taking on a whole host of domestic duties; very much the organised matriarch. When Charlotte’s time at the Beynon School was complete at the age of 18 she was awarded a place at Oxford University, at the OCCAM (the Oxford Centre for Collaborative Applied Mathematics) Institute. She studied diligently until 1983 when she completed her studies and moved to Cheltenham, Gloucester. It is understood that she took on some governmental work, most probably at Cheltenham’s GCHQ unit. Charlottes talent for deep mathematical theory obviously impressed enough for her to be of interest to governmentally.  It is two years after her tenure at Cheltenham that our lines of enquiry run cold. Little is known about Charlottes whereabouts past 1985. It is known that during the years of 1983 to 1985 she travelled on many occasions to both the Middle East and India, both for work and pleasure. However in 1985 after a government trip to Qatar where she acted as aide and someday confidant to the then head of GCHQ Mr. Peter Maychurch, Charlotte was reported missing after not attending a briefing in the early hours of 25th August. Charlotte was also rumoured to have had some dealing with British spy and convicted pedophile Geoffrey Prime, who in 1983 was uncovered as a KGB mole within GCHQ. It has been uttered in close circles that Charlotte may have sought asylum in a Middle Eastern state close to the Afghan border after significant threats were made on her life from Russia. Limited to 60 green tint cassettes.

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SSLEEPERHOLD – ‘Ruleth’ LP
Grinding his way up the ranks of the American underground electronic scene, Los Angeles native and Austin resident José Cota makes his long awaited solo debut as SSLEEPERHOLD. Cota is best known for his work as a member of the now defunct Medio Mutante, whose 2008 12″ Inestable (released on Minimal Wave sub label Cititrax), gave the band a well deserved cult following. Medio’s contemporary take on classic minimal synth music through the use of analog hardware became a powerful and bold statement amidst the modern resurgence of electronic music. Now as a solo artist, SSLEEPERHOLD introduces a fresh and heavy approach to synth based composition. Ruleth proclaims its unique voice through immense bass lines and brutal percussion punctuated by invasions of tape manipulation and the sounds of buckling steel. After the dust had settled from the dissipation of Medio Mutante, Cota was left to collect himself artistically. SSLEEPERHOLD is the result of a distinct effort to establish a new plateau of inward focus and expression. Drawing on a variety of genres, Ruleth makes an instant connection to dark wave, industrial, and 80’s horror scores, but the contemporary forces at work make it difficult to describe the album in such “vintage” terms. Slow and aggressive, Ruleth finds Cota exploring half-time swing rhythms, heavy metal breakdowns, and growling oscillators that creep ever so slightly in and out of tune. Filters gradually pry open to mimic guitar riffs chugging along in drop-D syncopation with the bass lines, while double-pedal kick drums deliver skull pounding accents over complex synth sequences. Busy “dirty south” style high-hat phrasing along with cassette collage and television-static also make up a significant part of the distinct SSLEEPERHOLD lexicon. This is undoubtedly electronic dance music, but one could just as easily be tempted to head bang or free-style. Ruleth is designed to officially announce the arrival of SSLEEPERHOLD, however this LP also represents overcoming the challenges of going solo and the redemption of finding an authentic style that is both personal and compelling. Leaving behind the baggage of the past, there is a tangible sense of rage and relief, but anger-release-therapy is only part of the story. Besides delivering a healthy dose of destruction, Ruleth proudly displays the fruits of Cota’s own intrapersonal endeavors and the culmination of efforts to come into one’s own. As the title implies, conquering the darkness within is the one true path to emancipation. released 15 October 2013. All Sounds by SSLEEPERHOLD. Mixed and Mastered by Michael Stein. Art by Pure Ground. Layout by Kyle Dixon.

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MV & EE – ‘Shade Grown’ LP £14
Shade Grown is the new studio LP from Vermont psych folk rulers, Matt Valentine and Erika Elder. Their first studio jam for Blackest Rainbow, something we’ve been keen to do for a while now after our previous live release for the duo. Shade Grown drops just in time for their November/December EU/UK tour, which judging by this LP, you won’t want to miss out on. The record features MV & EE channelling some spaced out tones with various incarnations of The Bummer Road, the more free cosmic jamming back up unit they venture out with from time to time. This personnel this time round reads as a who’s who of talent in the current psych/folk underworld… Jeremy Earl (Woods/Woodsist), Herbcraft, Rongoose, Carson ‘Smokehound’ Arnold, Doc Dunn, Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra/Flower Corsano Duo) and Muskox. You’re in for a treat of lunar blues, psych folk, and free form outer limit jammin’. We’re keeping this release strictly analogue. No download, no streaming. Vinyl only, like the good old days. Pressed in an edition of 600 copies package in a full colour sleeve with insert. 300 copies on 180 gram transparent teal vinyl, 300 copies on 180 gram black virgin vinyl.

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JU SUK REET MEATE/SILVIA KASTEL/NINNI MORGIA – ‘Le Puss Puss’ LP
Recorded at the Smegma studio, Spring 2012. Featuring Ju Suk Reet Meate (trumpet, double bass, various objects & percussion), Ninni Morgia (guitar), Silvia Kastel (voice, percussion) and a special appearance by Rock N Roll Jackie on side B. Pressed on 180g heavy vinyl. Reverse cardboard covers. Limited edition of 250.

GARY SMITH/SILVIA KASTEL/NINNI MORGIA – ‘BRAND II’ LP
Free improv by two guitarists renowned for their extended technique work and consistently inventive experimentation, and female electronics vocalist who explores the outer reaches of the voice. Seven rustling matches of self-containment, as if imprisoned inside a Styrofoam-insulated sleeping bag. Electro-chitters and micro-fweent form semi-transparent mosaics on top of the high-res screech of glass tchochtkes melting from the inside out, nth generation birdsong bending in on itself along an event horizon, color-blocked abstractions of mechanical squirrels playing a kalimba, and wolf fetuses horking into a trumpet. With master percussionist sound sculptor Marcello Magliocchi. Includes insert. Edition of 175

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ROCO JET s/t 7″
Roco Jet is a collaboration between Jimi Cabeza (Cabeza De Vaca, Dios) and No-ra (Nora Keyes, The Centimeters, Fancy Space People). Roco Jet is an experiment to find methods to remove the constraints that hinder the personal evolution of creativity of it’s members. It has been found in previous experiments and late night questioning by Roco Jet that idealized thought forms can cloud the creative valve and make the organic expression of art compromised. This expression of soul, which the members of Roco Jet believe to be as essential as nutrition to our species, is their quest. It is a personal quest that contains much sifting through the philosophies of our industrialized landscape and the natural kingdoms of planet Earth. Released in an edition of 300 copies (200 on black vinyl and 100 on coke bottle clear). They come with full-color covers designed by Nora Keyes and include a insert and digital download card.

AL JAMAL/CHRISTOPHER PAYNE/J. NOIR – ‘SMUT’ book/DL
Smut is a study of fetishism, desire, and pornography. It contains ten sonnets by Al Jamal (author of Terro(a)r) and eleven illustrations by artist Christopher Payne. Additionally, this book also includes a download of a three-part musical soundtrack by J. Noir (Alak). Their work is as much a meditation on modern sexuality as it is a celebration of the myriad ways in which we desire and indulge in our desires. Its content is highly graphic and intended for an adult audience only. The book contains 28, 5″ x 7.25″ pages with a screen printed cover.

FOLKTALE slipmat
Folktale slipmats for your turntable. Professionally manufactured and limited to 100.

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Rangers – ‘Scrap’ C50+C32
As the most recent entry in his gradually expanding Rangers catalog, Scrap sees Joe Knight working in a full-fledged archival/collagist mode, something like a skewed Texan one-man-band interpretation of The Faust Tapes. A dizzying range of styles and forms are orbiting within this sprawling double album, sometimes as mere one-minute fragments and elsewhere as wholly realized song-length pieces. A partial and scattered index: blisteringly fuzzed duo-guitar psych levitations; claustrophobic pseudo-Industrial churners; lucid Ethiopiques-ish desert soundtracks; feedback-encrusted noise burners; tightly-assembled and dirigible-shaped floating pop ballads; cactus-spiked slo-mo biker bar blues; deranged warbly tape-manipulation head scratchers; “lurkers only” stadium rock exercises; fictional late-nite local-access themes and over-Xeroxed degrado-funk, among dozens of other non-genres. The dozens of edges and corners fold into themselves, an origami box disguised as a pair of cassettes. Of course, those of us already knee-deep in Knight’s musical output know that he’s been charting these scissors-and-glue territories since back in the Volvo Jungle Mist days. (True heads may even recognize moments from those earliest Rangers investigations reworked with crisper fidelities within the tunnels of Scrap…) However, rather than having each fragment threaded into the next as a hazily flowing tapestry, each song on Scrap builds and inhabits its own clearly-defined miniature environment before abruptly halting and moving onwards. The whole package has a genuine workbench-notebook feel, a solo artist experimenting with new strategies and refining older ones, documenting the movement of energies and ideas over the course of two years for his own amusement and our communal benefit.

Swanox – ‘Tess’ C46
As a fellow native Northwesterner, I can assure you that cold Cascadian rain courses through Anthony Boruch’s veins each and every day. Though the man is no shut-in sun-shunner, he tends to gravitate towards the grey-weathered corners of the world. He’s been a dweller of the heavily fogged westernmost pocket of San Francisco – that windswept and somewhat isolated cold coastline on the city’s perimeter – for the better part of a decade, where he’s been quietly honing his craft. His work under the Swanox moniker could be seen as an attempt to put these types of landscapes through a sieve; his native locale, his adopted homeland and the wet/mountainous terrains of his musical reference points (England, Germany, Finland, Japan, etc.) are reinterpreted through his singular vision. The music on Tess is part of the same trajectory of his stellar Dawnrunner album from 2010, channeling only the purest basement strains of acoustic folk, cinematic psychedelia and informed outsider anti-music. The album meanders within deep eddies of finely rendered melodicism, while periodically dipping into radio assemblage, understated electronic flourishings, sheets of throbbing black bass murk and propulsive percussion/keyboard workouts. If R. Thompson and F. Fricke had cut an early-90s album for Siltbreeze, though one that could inexplicably only be played at daybreak in your pickup’s tape deck on desolate backroad drives, it could’ve resembled this. Tess feels complete and whole, a uniquely unified rain-addled statement from the narrow road to the interior.

N.N.N. Cook – ‘(Bl)end User’ C30
In a city full of modest polymaths, St. Louis’ Nathan Cook is a multi-faceted artist in pursuit of heightened epiphanies through diverse mediums. Between heading the long-running next-level Close/Far tape label, pushing crisp graphic design work into the 2-D visual realms, experimenting with video art and sound installations, as well as operating in any number of musical collaborations (see: the Subotnick-techno of Lobster, the free-jazz spew of Heyoka, the horn-drone of Blemished Stone, et al.), Cook is an aesthete-drifter of the highest caliber. His prime vehicle for solo sound output over the years has been through his namesake N.N.N. Cook project, which has been manifested largely through a long series of interconnected ritualistic live performances. In these small-scale events, Cook employs multiple cheap tape-recorders, handheld percussive gestures, wild saxophone skree, small-motor elements and gut-blossoming oscillators, while playing the full dynamics of a given room’s architectural constraints. The stage is everywhere and nowhere for the man. (Bl)end User is a significant departure from these concerns, as he dons the new coat of the weary techno-futurist. The approach here is pure electronic lab-work of the highest order. The mood is distinctly dystopian, a soundtrack for a clouded future of embedded surveillance and data-as-currency. The effort doesn’t come across as computer music per se, more as a viscous pixelated syrup-mulch seeping into your inner ear. Is (Bl)end User intended as a soothing balm or a forecaster’s warning call?

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XTEMATIC/NO WAY OUT – ‘Electromechanical Radiations’ C60 £4
6 tracks of Croatian / French growling industrial noise drone and power electronics. Packaged in a double gatefold cover on a high quality jet black cassette. Limited edition of 30.

SHAUN ROBERT – ‘appearance’ C50 £3.5
5 tracks of psychedelic abstract ambient electronica from the Mutant Beatniks / factor X / IFAR main man. Limited edtion of 30.

PIOTR CISAK – ‘Reminisci’ C30 £3.5
Beautiful pastoral ambient drones interleaved with field recordings. Perfect Autumnal listening. Limited edition of 30.

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GOD 20 KAJKYT – ‘II’ 2LP/CD/CS boxset
Unlike his previous project, Krst, which was single piece in four parts, the follower contains eight tight structured pieces, avoiding any extension of the form and compressed into massive dark ambient “pop songs”. Once again focused primary on voice, especially with it’s quality in silent articulation, the record deals with various moods, from hard industrial clashes, to very silent and lyrical passages. Hard beats, heavy bass and long drones with all present voice, are the most significant characteristics of the album.

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GNS-053 SECTION 35 – ‘Her Blues X You’ 2xC20
recorded summer 2013= tribute to embracing the space between the indoor and the outdoor. ed.25. art by nb.

GNS-052 GX Juppiter-Larsen/Dao De Noize C20
stellar split. drawing you in and in= freaky and scorched- 2 10 min sides serves well on these narratives- like 2 births/deaths? juss dial in- suuper good. ed. 60 art by Thomas.

GNS-051 FOSSILS – ‘World Canvas’ C60
ba! there’s a fine line btwn the soil and the stars- measured in sound= dialing in naturally= this long player flirts with the big pic, tickles with the sharpest switch- psyched for FOSSILS 3rd GNS release-if you haven’t been keeping up, i recommend the recent beauty at cardinal records and mjc-ed. 40 art by thomas.

GNS-050 Robert Ridley-Shackleton C32
been diggin Rob’s sounds looong time- this spin will tip you proper- everything you wanted to begin with served with attitude – heavy trip – totally recommend checkin anything you can by him- = genuine. lost fer werds- love the world of no strings, bs, blah, robert lives these sounds- dig. ed. of 50 art by Thomas.

GNS-049 THOMAS GERENDÀS – ‘Altato’ CDr
over the top always gooood- thiz one fits the bender- i recommend you check pronto. if you only got decks and tables, thrift a disc playa, worth it just for this. These 2 images are a taste of the 10 original paintings Thomas created for the limited art ed. – reg. ed. of 30 is good to go=killer art too- psyched on these trks- art ed/10 reg ed/30 art by Thomas.

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PURLING HISS – ‘Paisley Montage’ LP
Sizzling exercises from deep in the Hiss sub-basement. For twisted ears only. A slight return to the red-hot, fried and twisted garage/psych/punk blasts we’ve come to expect from MIKE POLIZZE’s PURLING HISS. He’s way off the leash on this one, up Hiss creek with nobody to paddle home. Recorded in various Philadelphia-area basements and men’s rooms over the course of 2007-11, the sessions were stunted and aborted as each successive borrowed practice amp blew smoke and crapped out under the strain of Polizze’s fiery fret work. Originally a cassette-only release, but just about every tape was quickly scattered and smashed along the Schuykill Expressway after being left on the roof of the tour van. Edition of 500 copies. available on green vinyl while supplies last.

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