August 2014 – T P A

Neil’s Heavy Concept Album

As Neil’s Heavy Concept Album had been unavailable for many years the Esoteric Recordings (Cherry Red Records) team took it upon themselves to restore this missing whimsical oddment and along with the customary re-mastering this reissue reprises the cassette version…

Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO

Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff 29th August 2014 I wasn’t intending on writing a report of this gig but as it was notable for a number of different reasons I think it is more than worth a few words, if only…

Sunn O))) & Ulver – Terrestrials

Four years in the making, Terrestrials is a collaboration between two beacons of alternative music, shining their black light at one another across the vastness of the tumultuous Atlantic Ocean and the entire uncaring width of the North American continent.…

Farpoint – Paint The Dark

This is the sixth studio album from a South Carolina five-piece who have been plying their trade since way back in 1997, but who have evaded my attention until now, and who state that their vision is “to create melodic…

Richard Pinhas & Oren Ambarchi – Tikkun

The currently prolific Richard Pinhas, French electronic music pioneer and otherworldly guitar wrangler famed for his exploratory ambient/rock band Heldon returns with a double release on the esteemed Cuneiform label. Whereas Welcome In The Void, created in partnership with drummer…

Richard Pinhas & Yoshida Tatsuya – Welcome In The Void

With sheets of sound whistling around the listener’s ears this is an intergalactic trip like no other. It is certainly a visceral experience that shows the power of both of the artists involved to their full potential. And what artists…

Alex Carpani – 4 Destinies

A name that has regularly cropped up in recent years, is Swiss-born Italian keyboardist and composer Alex Carpani. I’ve heard a couple of pieces by him previously, but for whatever reason he seems to have always remained on my to…

Fred Laird – Earthling Society

“Out here in the perimeter there are no stars” said Mr Morrison, and where Fleetwood in Lancashire is concerned the metaphor becomes soot flecked reality if we are to believe the various hideous epithets appended to his home town by…

The United States Of America – The United States Of America

Originating in the New York experimental music scene of the mid to late 1960s, The United States Of America shared a radical outlook with fellow Big Apple dwellers The Velvet Underground, and, according to legend, Nico once tried to join…

Pingvinorkestern – Push

Hailing from Malmö in southern Sweden, Pingvinorkestern unsurprisingly take their name and ethos from that mildly eccentric English institution, the Penguin Café Orchestra. Similarly fusing pop, folk, classical and general quirkiness, but with a modernistic bent, Pingvinorkestern with their debut…