2018: BEST NEW RECORDS. 

(Part # 1 of 2)

This is going to be the first of two posts counting down my favourite new releases of 2018. #11-20 are below, and a second post running down #1-10 will follow soon. Simple, right?

It should be noted that I have heard so many good records this year, I could easily do a top forty, time and consciousness permitting. But, time and consciousness does not permit, so 20 it is. Psychic apologies to all those hard-working noise-makers left hanging just below the line.


11. Anthroprophh – Omegaville 2xLP 
(Rocket)

In the course of trying to process the rage, confusion and futility hard-wired into every second of ‘Omegaville’, I’m inclined to bypass the album’s ostensible near-future timeframe and instead take a step back into the past, reflecting on the wider possibilities for life that you, I and (presumably) Heads guitarist and Anthroprophh main man Paul Allen have all seen forcibly torn away from us over the past fifteen or twenty years.

Readers old enough to remember for themselves may wish to join me on the journey, thinking back to days of waking up safe and sound in yr little basement flat, walls painted whatever colour you like and the landlord won’t complain so long as you keep the bathroom and kitchen working and don’t bother him too often. Spend the morning tinkering with effects pedals or doing some drawings, have a smoke or two. Mooch down to the library and put in some obscure stock requests, see if you can get hold of those weird German records your drummer’s always going on about. Do a few shifts in your mate’s shop every week to pay the rent, safe in the knowledge you can pop back down to the Job Centre and start filling in forms if things get hairy.

It was great, wasn’t it? Life there to be lived, available to everybody. Well, not anymore. All that’s gone, never to return. In the UK circa 2018, I scarcely need to remind you, you’re either affluent or you’re desperate. Either way, you’re probably sweaty, red-eyed and exhausted. And if you’re priced out of the lovingly scrubbed refurbished semis and you can’t get a foothold on the perilous, built-to-burn eco-system of the new-builds (money traps set by gangsters, primed to catch uni leavers like so many wasps)… what then?

‘Omegaville’ fills in the blanks, beginning with Lisa Allen’s beautifully detailed gatefold cover art, depicting a ‘near future’ approach to Bristol city centre. Nix the ‘They Live’-style satirical billboards and it all looks distressingly believable too, a notion cemented by the inner sleeve’s montage of photos (provided by the band members), in which boarded up pubs, skeleton tower blocks, barbed wire gateposts and one-man tents pitched on rubbish-strewn waste ground all combine to tell an all-too-real real estate horror story.

Musically, things begin hard and heavy as the electrified corpses of The Groundhogs, Pink Fairies and Third World War jolt upright on their slabs, bulked up Reanimator style for ugly new times. This is thick-skinned, chemically-altered battle-ready street-rock, executed in proto-h/c speed-freak tempo and pumped up with enough 21st century compression & multi-tracking to make veins in even the hardest Head throb with anxiety; particularly when Allen’s consummately frazzled solos hove into view, squeezed onto the tracks like flaming ether from some heat-resistant toothpaste tube.

On ‘Housing Act 1980’, Allen gargles venomously in the guise of a Farage-faced Tory autocrat, passing the gift of property to his offspring whilst invoking scattered references to Fray Bentos pies, guard dogs and “sunlight reflecting off the bonnet of the Austin Austin”, but in terms of linear comprehension that’s about as close as ‘Omegaville’ gets. Elsewhere, every discernable lyric or moment of simple rock pleasure is sabotaged by thuggish, mind-of-a-madman echo or tangled tendrils of out-of-control synth freak-out.

As the first disc progresses, tracks get longer, stranger, more excessive. ‘Why Are You Smiling?’ detourns Soft Machine’s bucolic, hippie-era provocation into a brutal, urban death march – the sound of the last scattered inheritors of an “alternative society” bitterly trudging the outskirts until they come face-to-face with the tarmac. Perhaps the album’s single best track, ‘I’ ebbs and flows like a band on the verge of collapse, Crazy Horse/Dead Meadow-esque psych drawl soon stomped to death by an Earache metal killdozer – the sound of waking up fuzzy-headed one morning to hear iron clanking, glass breaking and tarmac splitting, right outside your bedroom window.

In time-honoured ‘Tago Mago’ style, the second disc goes way out there – two side long pieces that see Allen initially struggling to narrate the tale of one of those one-man tent-dwellers crashing out into street drug-fuelled mystic oblivion on side C, before the machines and the twisty knobs take over entirely on side D, the band huddled between condemned tower-blocks of back-line as a phantom M4 opens out before them, offering extended thumb sanctuary towards….. somewhere?

If I were feeling facetious, I’d say that I hope the Allens got their house move sorted out ok, but regardless – ‘Omegaville’ represents an extraordinary document of UK underground rock facing up to an ugly present, and an uncertain and evil future.

Listen & buy via bandcamp.


12. Comacozer / Blown Out – 
In Search of Highs Vol # 1 split LP 
(Riot Season)

From March:

“Veering more toward the instrumental stoner rock approach taken by Mike Vest in his Dodge Meteor project, Blown Out’s recordings here put me in mind of what the classic era Monster Magnet line-up might have come up with, had Dave Wyndorf buggered off for a while and left them to their own devices. […] It’s totally sweet – as fiery as anything this band have ever recorded; this is a slightly more ‘accessible’ sound than their customary side-long wig-outs perhaps, but there’s nothing half-assed about the world-eating skree that takes over each time the drums drop out.

[…]

Colour me happily surprised upon discovering that [Comacozer’s] seventeen minute ‘BinBeal’ is actually a pretty benign affair, with a gently propulsive Cecil McBee-via-Hawkwind bass groove taking centre stage, ranging hither and yon ‘cross an interplanetary landscape, accompanied only by shards of hard-echoed, clean toned guitar dopplering away into the distance and some low level patches of DikMik style primitive electronics hovering into view now and again. […] a swell example of bombast-free contemporary rockage, and a welcome reminder that not every space-rock track needs to be a one way power blast through the centre of a black hole.”

Listen & buy via Riot Season.


13. Potion – Women of the Wand tape 
(self-released)

As I’m sure I must have repeated to the point of tedium in these pages in the past, it is my firm belief that doom metal lives or dies by The Groove.

Whereas many of the genre’s more sinister and cvltish adherents seem content to leave some slumbering drill sergeant behind the kit, occasionally rousing himself to deliver some stern, poorly-executed snare roll before fading again into the darkness, I reckon it is the duty of a doom drummer to work it hard, to remember the shining, jazz-inflected example of Herr Ward and shoulder the weight. Heads must bang involuntarily, however slowly. Riffs must crash ‘gainst cymbals, just so. Otherwise it’s going nowhere.

Potion are certainly going somewhere, that’s for sure. Hell, maybe they’ll even make it to Perth occasionally. I’ll confess, I wasn’t aware that Australia had much of a doom scene, and indeed, checking these guys’ social media would seem to suggest they’re first in line for support slots whenever a touring outfit of that general ilk hits Sydney. On the strength of this brief tape furthermore, I think it’s likely they must be blowing bigger names off the stage on a regular basis. Here’s hoping we’ll be hearing more from them soon.

In the meantime however, the two tracks / twelve minutes showcased here have The Groove in fucking spades. They’ve got The Texture too if we’re keeping score – thick, airless psychedelic sludge, dripping down the furry walls of sleep like ‘Come My Fanatics’-era Electric Wizard; atavistic hell creatures clawing the earth through mud-scooping bass drone whilst echo-addled guitar leads sear their way through some classically nasty triad moves.

Rehearsal room / tape mastered fidelity brings a uniquely muffled, pitch black heavosity to proceedings, like an old carpet thrown over the head of God, feedback shrieking with genuine menace between onslaughts. Drummer just won’t let those toms be, but under the circumstances that’s just fine.

Some of the absolute best doom I’ve heard from any corner of the year this year, in other words. Just EXACTLY what I need from the genre right now, boiled down, greased up and ready to go. A whole album or two of this stuff, unmolested by label/studio tinkering, would make me nigh on unimaginably happy.

Listen & buy via bandcamp.


14. Warp Transmission – The Process Ultra CD & d/l 
(self-released)

Funny where the byways of bandcamp can lead you these days. Here for instance, we have a Finnish space-rock group, deeply in thrall to both The Heads and the distant exhaust fumes of Dave Brock’s dreams, rocking a garden shed recording aesthetic only a degree or two more sophisticated than yer average basement black metal loner, and throwing a thick blanket of retro-futurist, Man or Astroman? style vintage sci-fi shtick across the console for good measure (yeah, dialogue samples and everything). Wild, man. Bring it on.

Raw guitar fuzz bombs across this half hour galactic opus like a burning toy dragster, leaving ashes all over the carpet, whilst the knob-twisting synth gloop goes totally out-of-control within the opening minutes and never returns to earth. Davros-inspired vocals curse and howl malevolently as the rhythm section pushes forward, ever forward, gearing up to a near-thrash level warp speed but never quite crashing over the line, much to the chagrin no doubt of whoever’s playing on the lead guitar overdubs which elbow their way in every now and then for a shrieking burst of twiddle, lurking just a few twists of the frequency knob away from the local high school’s Iron Maiden tribute band.

In the midst of all this carnage, ‘The Insect’ briefly shifts focus to some collapsed, alien electronics, before ‘Crashing Waves’ slows things down for an excursion into the kind of slightly-more-conventional, head-nodding psyche groove-out that the Brian Jonestown Massacre occasionally do so well. Of course it all builds up into yet another hulking monolith of sonic overload, but what did you expect? ‘The Stranded’ is a lovely little “cool down” track too, sounding as if Davros and his evil pedalboard joined forces with his fellow Whovians in Solid Space.

Mainly though, it’s in-the-red, freaked out madness that predominates here, and a thrilling, ridiculous journey into the furthest reaches of uncompromising, home-baked space-rock excelsis it is too. Yes, please sir, more of this kind of thing emerging from the musical underworld of this tired planet in 2019 would be lovely, thanks very much.

Listen and buy via bandcamp.


15. Windhand – Eternal Return 2xLP 
(Relapse)

On first impression, you’d be forgiven for thinking that “melodic doom” sounds like a pretty shit idea for a sub-genre, but give it a few moments consideration and you’ll no doubt realise that melody and song construction was key to the success of most of the genre’s all-time greats – so, hey, why not. Likewise, Richmond VA’s Windhand could easily be accused of sounding like an indie-rock band playing at two-thirds tempo with downtuned guitar… but, blinkers off, is that really such a terrible prospect..?

Well actually, I’ll admit, these concerns, combined with vocalist Dorthia Cottrell’s tendency to stretch out those descending vowel sounds as if she was in The Smashing Pumpkins or some shit, have caused me to prematurely write off this band on the first, second, and maybe even third, occasions on which I’ve given them a listen. Both personal recommendations and the more generalised quantity of ever-growing love they seem to have accumulated in recent years have kept me coming back though, and, after spending a bit more time with their new record this year, I think I’m finally sold.

Admittedly, acoustic-y interlude ‘Pilgrim’s Rest’ stands out as pretty questionable, but hell, even Sabbath’s best album put us through Changes, so anything’s possible. Elsewhere, moreover, this album is ON. The Groove is in full effect, the riffs are mighty and the songs have a lilting, Pre-Raphaelite arena-psych grandeur that really hits the spot, stretching out across some legitimately epic track lengths without losing sight of their compositional unity.

Jack Endino’s production is top notch too – a deeply comforting wall of luscious, dark green fuzz, top end dulled for maximum bonged out satisfaction. I particularly love the imaginative psychedelic touches that ‘Eternal Return’ brings to the band’s sound too; Garrett Morris’s slightly out-of-sync, multi-tracked solos, the hard echoed pick slides exploding all over the exultantly murky outro to opening cut ‘Halcyon’ and the cacophonous entirety of pedalboard-blitzing instrumental cut ‘Light into Darkness’ are all great examples.

Precisely the kind of stately, atmospheric but unapologetically rocking alt-metal that should rightly be blasting out of a million teenage car CD players across the globe right now, ‘Eternal Return’ hits the same oneiric psyche pleasure centres that keep sending me back year after year to early Dead Meadow, Bardo Pond and various things of that general ilk. A very particular sweet spot, and one rarely serviced by commercially successful metal bands, I’ll admit, but I’ll take it where I can, and I’m getting tons of it from Windhand right now.

Listen and buy via bandcamp.


16. Holly Golightly – Live in London LP 
(self-released/SFTRI)

Earlier this December, some friends and I ventured out to catch Holly Golightly and her band at the Lexington in London. Turns out the last time I was present for one of her semi-regular Christmas(ish) shows in a scarifying ten years ago. But, worry not, little has changed. She’s still got Bruce Brand on the drums (worth the entry price alone!), she’s still got that big chap with the quiff on stand up bass – but, she does now have a young, hot-shot lead guitarist (why, he must be about thirty years old or whereabouts) to shake things up a bit, dispensing slick, session-man licks with consummate grace and good taste.

Seeing this disc amongst the merchandise on offer served to remind me that, despite owning much of her back catalogue in digital form (booo – artist, label-owners & fanbase), I don’t actually have any Holly Golightly on vinyl. Reflecting on just how nice it would feel to drop the needle on some of her sublimely unfussed Jerry Reed-meets-Wanda Jackson stylings whilst enjoying a cuppa on a Sunday afternoon, I decided that a recent, gigs-only live album would be the perfect way to rectify this oversight.

Recorded two and a half years prior to the gig in question (May 2016), the event commemorated here on plastic took place at the same venue, featured the same band (give-or-take a guest harmonica player on a couple of numbers), and indeed much of the same set list, if the grab-bag of old faves presented here are anything to go by. (‘Crow Jane’, ‘Wherever You Were’, ‘Big Boss Man’, ‘Sally Go Round The Roses’ – all present and correct and exactly where you’d want them.) Different banter though, naturally; touch of class.

Though the results couldn’t exactly be expected to match up to the drunken grandeur of 2003’s magnificent Down Gina’s at 3, they nonetheless make for another valuable performance document from a woman who by this point has been sticking to her story since her current lead guitarist was in nappies.

This ugly old world can do as it may, but she and her collaborators implicitly understand that the art n’ craft of playing this kind of slow-burning, low key rock n’ roll properly transcends any kind of hot-stepping retro bullshit, keeping just enough Medway grit in the mix to ensure no one’s going to mistake this for some supper club oldies gig after a few tins of real ale. Past, present, future – the records keep spinning as long as the kettle keeps boiling, and it’s nice to have a new one.

(Pedants may wish to note that there’s an unfortunate fadeout halfway through the final tune – maybe batteries on the mini-disc gave out or something? But hey, you can’t have everything.)

More-or-less self-released, but with a nostalgic shout-out to Sympathy For The Record Industry on the sleeve (long time no see!), this LP is solely available from gigs insofar as I can tell (I even had to take a picture of the cover myself). Holly also has a new studio LP out this year on Damaged Goods, but I’ve got had a chance to play it yet – my wife’s taken custody.


17. Tashi Wada with Yoshi Wada & Friends - Nue LP 
(RVNG International)

Tashi Wada is an LA-based composer in a minimal/ambient vein who quite possibly has the qualifications to prove it. (Perhaps he even has an accompanying tendency to earnestly discuss his ‘practice’ in a manner befitting an embattled small town dentist, but who am I to cast aspersions?) Tashi’s dad Yoshi meanwhile appears to be a happy-go-lucky fluxus artist who, in his capacity here, enjoys making a right old racket with bagpipes, chanters, alarm clocks, sirens, and ‘audio generators’. What fun!

Together with a few of Tashi’s friends (synth player & vocalist Julia Holter, percussionist Corey Fogel amongst others), father and son got together in September 2017 to record these ten varied slices of warm, familial drone, full of benevolent dawn chorus analogue synth trails and happy bursts of controlled, harmonious noise, redolent of new days, cold, sunny mornings, parting clouds, happy collaborative friendships and all the rest of it, leaving the stresses, anxieties and confusion of the world outside the studio a long, long way away.

Sometimes sounding a bit like those eerie interludes on Boards of Canada records extended into bright, four/five minute meditations on nature n’ nurture with all the eeriness carefully scrubbed out, and sometimes touching upon passages of space-lab choral harmony so pure and meticulously realised they could quite possibly single- terraform the nearest gas giant single-handed, the results are engrossing and exultant, full of deep, drifting tones that feel both intensely familiar and strikingly new.

This is beatific headphone communion that won’t take up too much of your time, but will leave you in just the right frame of mind as you enjoy an appropriately head-spinning night-cap before hitting the pillow eight hours prior to a another working week. Wondrous, droning peace.

Listen and buy via RVNG International.


18. Guttersnipe – My Mother The Vent LP 
(Upset The Rhythm)

I remember, back in the distant past, I used to try to sell people on Melt Banana by describing them as “pop music from the future”. Well, I don't know abnout that anymore. I suppose the future’s looking a lot bleaker and crazier than it did back at the turn of the century, which is probably why similar formulations spring to mind when trying to find SOME way, any way, to account for the existence of Guttersnipe.

Let me say straight off that, in terms of its level of uncompromising achievement, its sheer, mind-blowing totality, this album deserves to be *way* higher on this list than it is. The reason it’s lurking down here in the lower teens is simply than I’m a sensitive soul, and I find it pretty difficult to listen to in anything other than short bursts, to be honest.

A full-blooded realisation of the kind flattening, full spectrum racket Guttersnipe make live, ‘My Mother The Vent’ comes on like some unholy amalgam of Carcass, Teenage Jesus and the Boredoms, stretching finger-in-the-socket death across expanses of five or eight minutes; it’s… too much, man. I can’t take it.

Nonetheless though, one of the keys to Guttersnipe’s singularity I think is their stated declaration that they wish to remain a rock band, despite pushing the concept to it’s further possible extreme. This makes me happy, and makes me like them even more, because I like rock bands. For all the excesses of their sound – each drum hit setting off a disorientating cacophony of overlapping delays, every guitar note filtered through a miniature city of transistors and lunatic EQ adjustments – there is still a feeling here of two human being playing off each other, of the wood and wire and fingers and wrists that can always keep me engaged where button-pushing electronic whiteout just leaves me cold.

Is this what the future sounds like? I don't know. Could be. I picture above-ground solar panels crackling in protest as subterranean tunnels roar with hordes of post-gender telepathic mutants, rinsing the power grid in a last gasp electronic overload. Could be worse, right?

Listen and download via bandcamp, vinyl available from UTR.


19. Mule Team 7” (Episode Sounds)

Finally, Mule Team on vinyl, and the vinyl is in my hand. Thank you, Episode Sounds. Still no download option, but it’s a start re: bringing them to the wider world. You might ask why, on an end-of-year list otherwise dominated by psychedelic rock and sundry other heavy nonsense, I have made room for these unassuming proponents of foot-tapping rock n’ roll? Well, the truth is, if there were twenty groups around the world playing foot-tapping rock n’ roll with the particular je ne sais quoi evidenced by Mule Team, I’d probably have ‘em all up here, assuming I had any energy left to write them up after going to see whichever of their number was currently closest to my locality each and every Saturday night.

As the entity once known as “garage rock” continues year on year to drift in the general direction of its own fundament (certain sainted veterans notwithstanding), mixing reheated leftovers with obnoxious, gimmicky clowning, Mule Team – warm, welcoming, no nonsense folks that they are – bring it back to base with music that is correspondingly warm, welcoming and devoid of nonsense. Skimming over the storied musical legacies of Memphis, Detroit and Nashville with a deep understanding that renders any strutting retro posturing immediately obsolete, they cradle their gear with a crafty respect learned from men who actually needed the damn stuff to earn their living, and indeed, they proceed to kick it as of they were earning a dollar for every head that nods.

A mild-mannered rave up built on a prehistoric Chuck B shuffle, ‘Give Up’ throws a wistful power-pop chord or two into its chorus for the sake of variety before the James Burton-esque melodic lead that’s been chasing the vocal through the song steps up to duke it out with the strident rhythm gtr over the break. The oddly named ‘I'm Going To Miss You Mr Illegal Civ’, reappearing after its initial bow on the band’s 2016 tape, ups the grit a bit with raucous, reverbed group hand-claps and some scarifyingly sweet guitar interplay, before ‘Grew Up in a Can’ takes us into full blown punkabilly territory, bolshy, overdriven bass stomping about like an early Fall track (of all things) whilst down-the-phone-line vox snarl against needle-peakin’ trebly guitarwork.

Most importantly of all though, the beat just keeps clipping along, Creedence-style, through all these numbers - a backwoods motorik choogle powering on eternally over the hill to the next roadhouse. Flaming arrows could bring down the ceiling and tear gas canisters take out the windows whilst these guys are playing, but feet would continue tapping as long as their backline stays plugged in.

Listen and buy via Episode Sounds bandcamp, but keep an eye out for the postage if you take the plunge, fellow Westerners.


20. Bo Gritz – Tape EP (Sad Tapes)

I don’t know why, but I continue to get a particular kick out of what these London scoundrels are cooking up. Still haven’t caught them live. From August:

“Point is: of all the endless, minute variations of bad-tempered, hopeless noise-rock that exist in the world right now, Bo Gritz - on the basis of this cassette release at least - play one of the few that I actually want to listen to.

Which is to say: the guitar sometimes sounds like a demonically possessed analogue radio that’s come to life and started attacking people, the bass is content to lurk shadily in the background, a hooligan under a tree in a nocturnal park, whilst the drums thud away in exhausted, groovelessly utilitarian fashion, rather like Simon King of Hawkwind reaching his own personal dead-end after X hours of LSD fuelled battery. None of the players display any flash whatsoever. No time-changes, no ‘look-we're-tight’ turn-around bits, no twiddly riffs - it’s just pure ug. Simple, beautiful idiot-rock, laced with a bit of Messthetics bend n’ scrape.

There are vocals in there too I suppose – potentially snarled down the same drain-pipe that used to belong to Jim Shepard or The Heads, more recently liberated from City Yelps – whilst the four track tape recording keeps that nasty treble in check and helps to bake the band’s potentially upsetting, bulbous aggro down into a warm and nourishing aural porridge.”

Listen and buy from Sad Tapes.