Animal Psi

Gog – ‘Ironworks’ LP
Ironworks is both literally and figuratively a monolith of unrestrained power. Rapid arpeggios and slow flowing magma clash while lugubrious piano weaves depressive chords. Lurching, overdriven guitar grinds and scrapes in a hollow abyss as tortured vocals rise from the depths. This is metal in the elemental sense, the album built upon a foundation of sound recordings from the Bjella family blacksmith shop. Ironworks is an epitaph for the death of the American dream, one brought on by ourselves, channeling emotions mournful and raging.

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DK037 Magneticring – ‘All the fluid is floating’ C60 5€
Magneticring is the solo project of Joshua Stevenson from Vancouver (former member of Staked Plain , Jackie O Motherfucker, Sam Shalabi’s ‘Land of Kush Orchestra’, Samara Lubelski band, Davis Redford Triad, B.C.V.C.O. and Von Bingen), his contribute to the dokuro catalogue is a tape document of two live performances recorded in Seattle and Vancouver in springtime of 2010. Stevenson is a master player of EMS Shynti AKS, truly one of the best analogue synthesizer of all the times, his music is a refined combination of collapsing oscillations, hyperbolic arpeggios, and trance-inducing themes who define stunning electrical landscapes, Stevenson runs Cast Exotic Archives a base for deep sounds from western Canada and beyond since 1994. He operates the recording and mastering studio Otic Sound. “All the fluid is floating”comes in a ltd.100 copies pro-dubbed tapes. Artwork by mic_nodolby

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Atolon – ‘Concret’ CD
Concret is not only 4th release of Intonema but also it’s the long-awaited 4th release of the Spanish trio Atolón that was recorded in January, 2011 by Simon Reynell, director of English label Another Timbre. Alfredo Costa Monteiro (acсordion, objects), Ferran Fages (acoustic turntable, objects) and Ruth Barberán (trumpet, objects) are using their instruments by unusual way: they are preparing them, playing on their surfaces, knocking and inventing a lot of other ways for sound making. Despite of these non-musical sounds, the trio is following almost melodic motive all through the piece. CD, digisleeve, inlay, edition of 250.

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MESSAGES – ‘Message Bag’ 2LP
We come burdened with the glorious purpose of having readied the latest recordings by Messages, a double LP set called Message Bag. It’s a set of pieces that imparts a vibe rife with history, and yet clearly focused on the future. You buy these 2 LPs, poster and insert in a bag, but in all of its formats and strategies Message Bag operates as a return to an unresolved system, as an alternative to the rest of yr choices, and bestows something that can’t be bought. We call it Wisdom.

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HOW MUCH WOOD WOULD A WOODCHUCK CHUCK IF A WOODCHUCK COULD CHUCK WOOD? s/t LP
Co-produced with our friends at Avant! Records, this is the first full lenght from this trio who previously self-released a bunch of cdrs and a split 7 inches with labelmates Father Murphy. HMWWAWCIAWCCW? is a trio from Turin, Italy comprised of Gher, Coccolo and Iside. They play guitars, bass, tapes and reverbs and throw in some voices. They love wood stumps, that’s where the name came from. Their music is pitch black layers of drones and male vocals with cristalline guitar arpeggios and otherwordly female vocals hovering in the acoustic space. The self titled debut LP of HMWWAWCIAWCCW? is composed of six new tracks, the music is slow, distorted, rich in reverbs and low frequencies, suggesting deep and dark landscapes. It’s surely devilish and unsettling at first, but the melodies hidden in the drones tangle are simple and refreshing.

ETERNAL ZIO s/t LP
Eternal Zio is a quartet from Milan, Italy comprised of Rella the Woodcutter, Maurizio Abate, Raubaus and  the misterious Valla. They play a number of different acoustic and electric instruments (hurdy gurdy, violin, mandola, organ, percussions, guitars, voices) to create a timeless form of totally improvised free-music which is connected to all the music that have been played before. Their sound is genre-breaking and varies from long-form drones to short sketches of almost song like structure, without ever falling into categorization. Eternal Zio spent almost the entire hot summer of 2012 playing togheter in their basement at Ca Blasè (their house, practise space and place of occasional house shows for other bands) recording long jams and cutting six tracks for the new album. The six untitled pieces vary from meditative strumming & humming to explosions of crazyness. Eternal Zio brings music back to its roots, a tribute to the gods, we don’t know which ones. The new LP is co-released with our friends at Black Sweat Records.

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Erdem Helvacioglu & Bill Walker – ‘Fields and Fences’
An aurally stunning collaboration between Turkish guitarist/composer Erdem Helvacioglu and American guitarist/composer Bill Walker that merges lap steel guitar with electronica to create a rich cinematic vision of big skies, endless vistas, and the grandeur of the American landscape.

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Burd – ‘Wild Saloone’
Melodic and rhythmic sensibilities occasionally get the better of us, Burd finally gave into his – delivering this one take, direct to four-track cosmic synth recording with shades of house to me in early 2010 – it never should have taken so long for it to see the light of day. Wild Saloone will probably draw most comparisons with the output of Steven Warwick’s Heatsick project since it hit the dance floor.

Fossils – ‘What A Drag’
Tarred with the crude brush, What A Drag was someplace and now they’re somewhere else. Studio and live cuts from Payne and Farr, edited by Scarr. “Where else can you do a half-a-million things”.

Kayaka – ‘Operation Deep Freeze’
Operation Deep Freeze came out of a period where Kaya Kamijo was working with a more structured form of noise music, towing a line quite close to what could be considered a more straight form of rock music, but it’s warped by an odd sensibility that’s pinned around the scattered beats of a primitive drum machine. At times it’s reminiscent of the more abstracted moments of Peter Hammill’s A Black Box, and a somewhat less fractured To Live And Shave In LA.

Brood Ma – ‘F I S S I O N’
Brood Ma is the musical alias of (multi-disciplinarian) artist James B Stringer. F I S S I O N resonates within a field of contemporary electronic (dance) music which has developed into a hybridisational form – where numerous genres exist within the whole – simultaneously, effortlessly and fittingly. As for reference points – the first few 12”s of Dro Carey, and the likes of Nguzunguzu with a more industrially tinged and unhinged industrial mind-set.

Spoils & Relics – ‘Stammer Challis’
Now I know where to bring my raspberry pies. Yes send them to the Blessed one.

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CONTROL UNIT with Massimo – ‘Top Trans’ LP
Silvia Kastel & Ninni Morgia joined by power electronics artist Massimo (Mego, Staalplaat…). Old school evil industrial noise/minimal/primitive electronica. Cover is a rare collage by cult visionary LA filmmaker Larry Wessel, author of the recent Boyd Rice/NON documentary. Limited to 250 copies. Killer new album from the cold wave/Industrial duo of Silvia Kastel and Ninni Morgia, here with added muscle from ‘Massimo’: wretched repeat-keyboard Industrial overload, with ultra-grainy fidelity and modulated vocals that come over like “Frankie Teardrop” re-imagined for baldy Germans in leather, with leery rock/roll keyboard riffs reduced to smears of protesting electricity while Silvia hovers above them like a catatonic oracle, predicting future apocalypse with alla the broken technological appeal of MEV circa Leave The City. Elsewhere they get into a kind of profound metallic drone zone, with Silvia hyperventilating like she’s being seduced by pure current while shots of heavy voltage pass for beats and the last gasps of amplifiers cast monochrome shadows in the background. Best side yet from Control Unit, file this one next to Thought Broadcasts’s debut and the most spectral TG séance for a profound lesson in the reverie potential of Industrial night time. Recommended.” David Keenan / Volcanic Tongue Control Unit are guilty of making real industrial music. The creepy crawly scary kind. The kind that scares you parents a little when they hear the sounds coming out of your locked bedroom door. This isn’t post-Japanese drone or hard EBM, power duo Silvia Kastel and Ninni Morgia sculpt sonic crime scenes. True expressions of dread that hearken back to the early days of Throbbing Gristle and Coil, before the term industrial was sullied by such pedestrian concepts as a dance beat. It is much like that first time you dropped a needle on your very first copy of “Second Annual Report,” not really knowing what you were getting yourself into” Nattymari, Mishka NYC

CONTROL UNIT – ‘Oto Live’ CD
(Chocolate Monk choc.244) Proof if proof was needed that a gram of aqautic synth bloot is as heavy as a gram six stringed gutter wail. Ninni Morgia and Silvia Kastel get delirious in the premier London jive joint and showcase the sound of catatonic Italy with all the quiver of a love sick robot. Their sound is always a mix of wieldy, tactile, smart and sleazy. Plenty of vocal, synth and guitar call and response mixed in with the way out. So do your big ham hock of a face a favour and let them pervade your stink space.

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JOACHIM BADENHORST – ‘The Jungle He Told Me’ LP 16€
Limited to 400 copies pressed on heavy vinyl with screen printed sleeve & outer PVC sleeve, artwork by Rinus Van de Velde, graphic design by Marijke Loozen and screen printing by Smeraldina-Rima. JOACHIM BADENHORST (°1981) is a Belgian reed player, improvisor and composer, who divides his time between NYC and Belgium. Over the last 5 years Joachim has released a number of albums with different projects, such as Baloni, Han Bennink Trio, Rawfishboys, Taro, Tony Malaby’s Novela, Thomas Heberer’s Clarino, Mogil, Polylemma, Os Meus Shorts, International Trio, Red Rocket and Equillibrium. The Jungle He Told Me is Joachim’s first solo album. It consists out of nine pieces on clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor saxophone. Badenhorst explores range, contrasting undertones and overtones often played simultaneously, weaving in melody, noise and drones, if not investigating a theme, a path. This is a fantastic display of Badenhorst’s vocabulary and ideas, and already a milestone within the Belgian improv tradition.

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