Animal Psi

Locrian – ‘The Clearing’ LP
Coming up from the basements of experimental black metal, Locrian quickly made a name for themselves, laying the cobblestones for their own unique world. Through three LPs and a small stash of other releases, the group have floated ever towards a mesmerizing sound that defies classification. Dark, brooding, complex, and lush, with each release Locrian have raised the bar for their own grey sky heightened standards.   This fall, Fan Death Records sees Locrian give birth to their magnum opus. The Clearing breaks free of the “must own” list for the group itself, and transcends into a “must own” list for general fans of everything from Loveless to Goo to Black One, Touched, Through Silver and Blood, and beyond. Not quite ambient, certainly not black metal, The Clearing takes a diversity of sounds, combined with a hushed aesthetic, and folds them into a mature record that demands attention from the first second to the last. This may be the closest the group will ever come to capturing the holy communion of their live performances.  The ominous sounds that escape cognitive identity clatter through the intro of “Chalk Point” before falling into the gulf of layers that comprise the majority of The Clearing. Pushing the organic and the electronic in and out, with Augury in an Evaporating Tower and Corpolite, Locrian adds a mastery of everything from hushed acoustic guitar to near power electronics to synths that break through from a world of giallo soundtracks, penning a near symphony while never faltering from a solid path. The beacon atop this secret pyramid is “The Clearing” itself. Here you find a staggering arc of sound that may be the group’s finest hour. At nearly 20 minutes, a slowly building rite pulls the listener into a place and time that they will compulsively visit over and over again to better understand. For every person any of the above strikes a chord with, Locrian is a must-know band, and The Clearing is a must-own album.

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SUDOR – ‘LA SANGRE, LA MIERDA Y LAS BABAS’ 2€
Cinta en directo del híper-energético grupo punk Sudor. 20 minutos de no-música cruda directa a la yugular. Portada de dos paneles de punks mutantes a todo color y encarte impresos en papel academia blanco. 100 copias (50 a través de Afeite Al Perro). 2 euros. Live cassette by hyper-energetic punk band Sudor. 20 minutes of raw no-music straight to the jugular. Mutant punks two panels full color cover and insert printed in white academy paper. 100 copies (50 through Afeite Al Perro).

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EMT001 – Kösmonaut – ‘The Dilation of Mother Cosmos C75 $5
ltd edition cs (75) / Progressive Electronic-Berlin School-Space

EMT002 – Kösmonaut – ‘Voyage of Time’ $12
ltd edition cdr (15) / Progress Electronic-Experimental-Space – each of the 15 cdr’s pressed has two different cover sleeves and are hand-numbered. Examples of cover art are at links below.

EMT003 – Kösmonaut – ‘Emanations’
digital-only album / Progress Electronic-Experimental-Space – contact me if you want to download the album.

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SM032 CLOUDLAND BALLROOM – ‘Infinite Mind’ CS
Following the recent release on Aguirre Records, “Illusion Circles”, comes “Infinite Mind”. This new release from U.K. based musician and visual artist James R. Moore, features two long-form tracks of blissed out driving new age excursions fueled by synthesizers. More focused meditative and mind relaxation tones sure to open those realms infinitely inside your mind. Moore is also behind Black Mountain Transmitter, who released the great notable “Theory & Practice” cassette..

SM034 WHITE HILLS – ‘The Process’ CS
“The Process” is a series that looks at what went into the making of the WHITE HILLS album “H-p1”. Other releases in the process series include the “Measured Engery” 45 on the Irish label Trensmat, a split LP with Farflung on Cobraside Records, and a series of nine abstract paintings by Dave W. that were created during the mixing of the album. If you’ve managed to catch White Hills lately you know they’re capable of some epic splrawling jams and this tape collects 2 of those solid work-outs. I have yet to hear the new album, but if this is any indication of the solid performing that will be on it, it’ll be top-notch!

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Félicia Atkinson – ‘O-RE-GON’
O-RE-GON was recorded by Felicia Atkinson in Portland, Oregon at Adam Selzer’s Type Foundry Studio.  The album was made in one rainy day of July 2010, when Felicia was all ready traveling for 2 months coast to coast in the United States, and recovering from a Lyme disease she caught a week before upstate New York in the deep woods east coast and that she was about to cure west coast.  The sound engeneer Adam Selzer showed Felicia all the instruments she could used, most of them she never played before: a fender rhoades, a marimba, or an harmonium, but also some she used before: a (this time) golden electric guitar and a piano: this how began this day of musical wonder.  Felicia didn’t have any idea of what she wanted to play, she did not touched an instrument since two months before and wanted the tracks to be complete improvisation.  So they captured one track in the morning, Grey and green, and one track in the afternoon: Green and grey. The music was influenced by this special state of body and mind she was in, just in the middle of being sick and , beside this event, in the middle of a wonderfull 4 month trip, and the many “ghosts” that appeared during this improvising session. The record is also a kind of elegy to some dark and beautiful destinies that ended in troubled water: Victor Hugo’s daughter Leopoldine (the lyrics of Green and Grey are a drift from one of his poems), of David Lynch’s Laura Palmer and Robert Bresson’s Mouchette.

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SPCTV CS5 various – ‘Vital-Sound I’ C62 $7
opaque red, handmade art: Psychedelic compilation matches bands from Atlanta and Chicago, with each city taking one side of the release. Everything from paisley, drone, and repetitious instrumentals to acid blues, pure noise, and doom is covered here. Atlanta contributors are Sovus Radio, Soft Opening, The N.E.C., All The Saints, Brainworlds, and The Sunny Muffdivers. Chicago contributors are Implodes, The Great Society Mind Destroyers, The Leavitt Ours, and Killer Moon. Handmade art features 7 different series of art, including cuts from watercolors, zoning maps, acrylics, and illustrations.

SPCTV CS6 The Leavitt Ours – ‘Return’ C26 $7
clear, handmade cases: Beneath the shadows of Chicago’s fuzzier and heavier psychedelic sounds, The Leavitt Ours perform experimental pop in the private press tradition. In order to develop and produce their own reflective spaces and musical statements, the trio embrace aggressive ambient soundscapes, synthetic guitar tones, eclectic percussion rhythms, and driving keyed bass and synthesizer backbones. This release celebrates the discovery of something presumed lost, finding once again what was buried beneath the surface.

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Gianluca Becuzzi – ‘Haunted’ CDr €5
Gianluca Becuzzi started recording unconventional Electronics in 1999 under the name Kinetix, project which he maintained until 2010. Recording as himself since 2006, Gianluca Becuzzi creates minimalistic ambient music based on Electroacoustics and Musique Concrète. He points out the direct influence of Alva Noto, Alvin Lucier, Asmus Tietchens, Merzbow, Ryoji Ikeda, Zoviet France, amongst others. Haunted was recorded in 2011, in Becuzzi’s Kinetixlab, and it presents out of this world soundscapes, traveled through vacuum tubes. Special edition (CM008L) Spray-painted cassette housed in aluminum foil card box. All hand-made and hand-painted. Limited to 18 copies (15 hand-numbered, 3 slashed)!

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Sundrips – ‘One Hundred Hints’
A new piece of dark guitar and synthesizer moans and sequences from modern masters Sundrips. Ryan and Nick at their most rich and deep and heavy!

Piper Spray – ‘Omnicron Girls’
Russia’s Piper Spray gives us bizarre electronic pop. This is experimental stuff when it works on an established and trodden musical realm and subverts from within.

Quilt/Developer split
Developer (Matt Reis of Teeth Collection, Yes collapse, Foot Binder etc) is sharing space on this new cassette release with Seth Graham (Quilt). Matt has been cranking out bizarre sounds for over 15 years. Quilt’s side is a delicate combiantion of guitar, sounds layered with subtle harmonies congealing into small pockets of bliss and glitch. Developer’s side is common to Matt’s style, sounds of unknown origin put into a controlled context, dynamic sounds and noise, never a dull moment.

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Pan To Scratch – ‘Odomez Serie #5’ C60 6€(France)/7€(EU)/8€(World)

It is a 60 minutes cassette. All of it recorded outside (except a few piano notes perhaps) over the course of one summer, in the dying factory district I walk through everyday. The doomed factories stand between my neighborhood and the coffee shop/food co-op and other businesses. Simply an audio diary but not a chronological diary. I generally fill up the tape as I stumble upon various “random” noises/sound events. Then I will listen to the tape and decide what is “finished” and what needs work. I try to keep things random but definitely make decisions now and again especially if some sounds seemed to align just right. Many times, after a few different sounds have been juxtaposed, the combination of sounds will suggest a loose rhythm that I will build upon or try to emphasize. Sometimes adding sparse, found-object percussion and minimal instrumentation.  As the months passed during this recording, the cheap batteries I used slowly lost their life and as a result the recording capabilities of my handheld device were compromised and this allowed certain sounds to remain on the tape while more ‘layers’ were added. This, coupled with the warble of the tape caused by the drained batteries allowed me to create “scenes”, with one group of sounds fading into the next.  c60. 23 copies.