Mood Taeg - Exophoria (Happy Robots)

Another excellent release from the Happy Robots label becomes available next week in the form of this Dusseldorf/Shanghai collaboration that stems from a wider collective comprising DJs, graffiti artists and photographers, among others.

Exophonia's five tracks exhibit their krautrock influences prominently but there's something highly distinctive about what emerges, all emanating from their own Lowell's Garden studio where digital recording techniques meet with analogue synths to produce results that are at once experimental and bewitchingly accessible.

I'm playing opening track '2MR' in my Dandelion Radio show this month and you can pre-order the release as a download or on vinyl here.

Threes And Will - Purge of Genden (Nothing Out There)

I first encountered Threes And Will via a split release they put out through the always wonderful Blue Tapes some time ago.  Ever since then I've been a huge admirer of the caustic, sub-krautrock din dished up by this Estonian band and their latest release, in partnership with French label Nothing Out There, has certainly not diminished my admiration.

If anything, the band crank up the noise levels still more on this offering.  Looping, repetitive guitars dominate, though often to subtly varied ends: the woozy, dissonant fuzz of opener 'Koniec Cywilizacji' opens up over the collection, via the epic spaciness of 'The Conquest Of Zhangzhung' until something more reminiscent of psychedelic rock is let loose on 'Bunkers'.

That in turn gives way to the magnificent 'Erebus', half stoner nightmare and half the sound of something that might well come out from the speedway pits if the mechanics got the pitch and balance just right.  You can hear it in my current Dandelion Radio show, streaming throughout April.

I'm aware I'm already descending to the level of the figurative to describe all this, which kind of gives away the difficulty I'm experiencing in doing so.  Perhaps I should just tell you that the six tracks here collectively bring about the kind of head-shredding thrill we've no right to expect to last over forty minutes but somehow, in the hands of Threes And Will, it does. 

Sadly, the limited edition cassette version is now sold out, but you can still download these six slices of magnificence here. 

Vert:x - Annwn

A couple of years ago, there seemed a real and very concerning possibility that Vert:x might be about to suspend activities indefinitely.  Thankfully that was a threat that proved to be short-lived. 

Neil Whitehead's project returned, now with Vinnie C as his established musical partner, releasing the storming twenty-minute single 'Pure Golden Light' at the end of last year and now comes a fresh release of 'Annwn', produced by Earthling Society's Fred Laird, to remind us, if we'd been stupid enough to forget, why we love them so much.

The lovably intense drone at the heart of the band still remains, but there's an equally lovable playfulness in evidence this release.  Frowning over their instruments they clearly are not: ten-minute opener 'A Witch!', complete with telling exclamation mark, is the work of a band enjoying what they do and possessing the musical dexterity to transmit that with familiarly laid back ease. 

It's an upbeat mood that permeates the whole release, from the swirling synths of 'Atom a.k.' to the nineteen-minute frantic head-shredding extravaganza of closing track 'Y ol i Annwn'.  I'm playing 'Surf Crayola' in my Dandelion Radio show this month, a track that puts space rock tools in the hands of a sixties garage band.  The result are, predictably, shambolically brilliant.

You can download some of the tracks here but it's seriously worth getting hold of the full CD version.  They'll also be recording a session for my show for broadcast some time in the summer - not to be missed, I would suggest.

Crowdrock - Rarities & Curiosities Session

This month in my Dandelion Radio show, we present a unique session that comes from legendary 'lost' Dusseldorf band Crowdrock. 

 

We can't, on this occasion, claim that the tracks were recorded for the show.  Rather they've been rescued and exclusively remodelled for broadcast by the estimable Phil South.  What follows are details on the four tracks, all of which you can hear in my April Dandelion Radio show, streaming at various times through the month.  There are no dates on any of this stuff but it's all almost certainly from the period 1975-1978.

 

Bach Schwachkopf (AKA Bach Cretin)

B side from the single “Ihre Mutter ist ein Sex-Objekt” written by Klaus Eins and Dieter Zwei. The title says it all, but apparently Klaus had a love hate relationship with Bach as well as Dieter’s mother.

Rock-Si-Chord Concerto (part 1)

Opening movement from the concerto written exclusively for Klaus Eins’ beloved RMI Rock-Si-Chord keyboard. There are four movements, and although a fifth movement was rumoured to exist, it was regarded at the time as a movement in the wrong direction and deemed superfluous.

Tanzkonzert Nummer 7 (AKA Dance Concerto #7)

Unreleased track composed for inclusion on the “Zwei” album but cut after Klaus Eins decided he hated it. He later said it was actually better than some things which ended up on the album. “I was a bit up my own arse back then” he said later.

 

Minuet Steak

Another track which didn’t make it onto an album, this time the difficult third album “Authentisch Seltsam” or “Authentically Strange”. Dieter Zwei couldn’t think of anything to call it so he wrote down what he had for lunch. Once again they regretted leaving it out of the released disc, saying “Why anyone thought we knew what were doing is beyond our comprehension.”

 

You can find out more about Crowdrock, and download their recent EP, here. 

Crowdrock - Music For Dances

 

Little is known of Crowdrock, a hugely important band from the Dusseldorf underground scene who, among other releases, were responsible for this gem, a vinyl copy of which was discovered in a loft recently.

 

Of the band's members, Klaus Ein apparently hasn't been seen in public since going out for cigarettes in Berlin in 1981, while Dieter Zwei lost his life in a plane crash in Switzerland the following year.  Hans Drei moved to England and is responsible for the running of the Crowdrock archive, while Albus Barom went off and became a Franciscan month in the mid-eighties. 

 

Their recording output consists of four albums, three EPs and five singles, all released between the years 1972 and 1979.  The music?  You can hear that for yourself now that their Music For Dances EP (or Musik fur die Tanze) has been digitised and made available by the wonderful Phil South, who you may have heard in my Dandelion Radio show due to his involvement in such fine outfits as The Sinatra Test and Anonymous Bosch.

 

You can download it as NYOP from here.  I'm playing 'Nummer Zwei' from the EP in my show this month. 

Churn Milk Joan - 8 Black Postcards

It's been a good year for improvised music.   I'm currently enjoying wallowing in the elongated jams of Keller (something from them in my April show) and the Mystical Weapons album was probably the first really outstanding release of the year.   Now the latest collection from Churn Milk Joan is upon us, a five-track monster that's the result of impromptu recording sessions in Hebden Bridge, and it's another stunner.

On the evidence of this, improvisation suits Churn Milk Joan.  For this release Colin Robinson and Richard Knutson are joined by Marian Sutton and Pete Scullion, guitarist with Colin in Block 454.   As I'm a fan anyway, and so never really want their records to end, the prospect of luxuriating in the products of lengthy krautrock-influenced sound experiments immediately tickled my fancy.

But that doesn't really describe what I found, which is actually much much better.  These are not the twenty-minutes plus epics favoured by Keller, but instead the improvised jams have provided an opportunity for the band to unleash their brilliance in a looser framework rather than merely indulge themselves, and the results are even more wonderful than anticipated.

The five pieces on 8 Black Postcards all warrant attention in their own right, but it's the second track 'The Letter (episode 1)' that for me represents the best work of Churn Milk Joan to date.   Characteristic of the album as a whole, its eight minutes do not become a stretched palette onto which the band paste meandering sound collages, but instead yield a taut percussive backdrop against which sparse guitar patterns interweave, Tago Mago-esque musical interludes rise and fall and something not unrelated to a funk vibe drags you into a sonic blender into which sounds are tossed before coming out of the other end entirely transformed, as indeed is the listener.

As usual, you can get the release as name your own price from the Churn Milk Joan bandcamp site and you won't be surprised to hear that I've seized the opportunity to feature 'The Letter' in all its lengthy majesty in my Dandelion Radio show this month.   You'll hear a band who've ceased to be simply an interesting afterthought to enjoy in the gap left by Block 454 and have now confirmed themselves as a fascinating musical proposition in their own right.

Vert:x - 1947

If you heard the first Vert:x release for Unwashed Territories you'll know what to expect: sonic overload, where guitar and electronic pyrotechnics crash around psychedelic/krautrock drones destroying patterns that you suspect may not have existed in the first place as they go. It's an exhilarating experience, so when it comes in the form of 15 and 21 minute tracks, as it does in their new 1947 release, the effects of the bombardment are longer lasting and even more pleasing.

This time the textures are even more intense, lulling the listener into downtempo peaks and valleys of sound until you come out the other end like a traveller from a voyage both mesmerising and disorientating, like Odysseus emerging from the land of the lotus eaters not entirely sure whether he's been drugged into bliss or had his senses blasted into oblivion by some crazed hallucinatory demon.

Vert:x are a pretty special experience live, so every time they play a gig or a festival a bunch of people who've been there always rush out and grab a copy of their first release for us, the glorious transmission u.t., making it easily the most popular release on Unwashed Territories thus far. Each release is available for less than the price of a pint, with the effects considerably more pleasing and the hangover an absolute delight. Get the two releases here:

1947
transmission-u.t.