Monthly Archives: January 2025

Ghost Dubs – Extended Damaged Versions (Pressure)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description: GHOST DUBS
‘EXTENDED DAMAGED VERSIONS’
(PRESSURE)
PRESH025

Bandcamp Digital Release via PRESSURE on 17th January 2025
Streaming on Digital Platforms : 31st January 2025
VInyl release : 14th March 2025

“No less deep, in fact debatably deeper still, Ghost Dubs aka Michael Fiedler returns after the runaway success of his highly acclaimed ‘Damaged’ LP(‘Dub/Reggae album of the year’ for 2024 in The Wire Magazine), with ‘Extended Damaged Versions’. Six dubbed out
reworks of tracks from last year’s album, deconstructed by the man himself, again for The Bug’s PRESSURE label(NB Only two mixes have been previously available digitally, ‘Chemical Version’ and the haunting steppa ‘Wired Version’). It will drop both digitally in full,
and subsequently on vinyl in March 2025.

Kickin off with the irresistible seismic grind of ‘Dub Regulator’, a dancefloor driven beast that miraculously eclipses the original mix, the opening cut increases in weight and intensity seductively, upping the fx drenched madness with its incessant droid hypnotics. The mini
album’s mutant dub techno relentlessly probes, stretches and disfigures all of the previous originals, version by version, on this fascinating follow up release to ‘Damaged’. As Fiedler surgically splices and dices his own original source material into successively more warped variants, gleefully atomizing the originals into molten space echo fragments.

‘Thin Dub’ is a masterclass in simultaneous saturation and evaporation, wilfully liquified in the heart of the echo chamber. Anyone already smitten by ‘Damaged'(ie Pole, JK Flesh, Echospace, Valentina Magaletti etc have all graciously, recently acknowledged its greatness), will definitely find further reverb drenched nourishment on ‘Chemical Version’,
which releases a whirlpool of heavily sedated delay trails, and ends up sounding like a wall of sound mirage, vaguely resembling prime Porter Ricks at their sub aquatic peak.

Finally, the ambient pulsations of ‘Lobotomy Version’ sets the album adrift in deepest space, as this superbly crafted collection reflects Michael Fiedler doing what he does best, getting lost in his own mixing desk sorcery, whilst reflecting the captivating morphology of his live
shows, where he magically revamps his heavyweight tracks into pure voodoo, casting spells effortlessly….Not an attempt to just milk ‘Damaged’, ‘EDV’ is itself a standalone triumph, an invaluable transformation of the original album’s material into an epic, fresh, dub odyssey.

Links:
pressurerecords.bandcamp.com
instagram.com/ghost.dubs
facebook.com/ghostdubs

Pound Land – Live In Nottingham 20/10/24 (Self Released)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description: Recorded by Ben the sound engineer on Sunday 20th October 2024 (’twas a matinee performance in the afternoon). The cavernous venue was the Liquid Light Brewing Company Tap Room (very decent beer but no free food as promised) on an industrial estate in the Sneinton area of Nottingham. The show was part of the annual ‘Hockley Hustle’ festival. Note: this gig featured the debut live performance of new track ‘Cunt Do It’.

“Which leads us nicely onto Pound Land, whose mid-afternoon set at 3pm set the standard for the rest of the day. This five-piece hailing from places as disparate as Winsford and Macclesfield via Derby woke those present out of their post-Sunday Lunch slumber with a blistering sonic assault that sits somewhere between the monologues of John Cooper Clarke, early eighties punk bands like Blitz or Discharge and the doom metal of Black Sabbath via occasional forays into motorik inspired psych rock territories. If anger is an energy (and they cite PiL as an influence as well) then “voice” Adam Stone is a livewire, pent up ball of frustration that’s both incendiary and mesmerising. They have two bass players and a saxophonist (no guitars) and play songs with titles like “Cunt Do It” and “Paralyser” about people with “sausage dicks” and sound like your worst nightmare whilst simultaneously being the most captivating live experience we’ve witnessed in a very long while.”

Dom Gourlay, Under The Radar magazine. 22nd October 2024.

Cheers Dom, although no one in the band is from Winsford. Steve’s from Bolton though

The Legendary Pink Dots – So Lonely In Heaven (Metropolis Records)

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Label Description:

Way way back in the early days I used to say a lot about ‘The Terminal Kaleidoscope’ , a concept comparing the fragile planet we live on to a drowning human being with life flashing before his or her eyes, the images constantly accelerating. It’s 2024, a little over 2 decades since the turn of this unbearably turbulent century and the concept appears to have become an unlikely soap opera where we are the cast. Let’s hang in there….. EK

SO LONELY IN HEAVEN – THE CREATION

‘So Lonely in Heaven’ is The Legendary Pink Dots’ second album since the World stopped for a Global Pandemic.
With members scattered across three countries and two continents, our guilty confession is that quite a few Air Miles were consumed in its creation.
Ideas were spun across Cyberspace for months, but the magic happened collectively in small spaces with the tape running.

SO LONELY IN HEAVEN – THE MESSAGE

The machine is everything we are. It sees everything, hears everything, knows everything and feeds, speeds, drinks us down, spits us out – we lost control of it at the instant of its conception.
You may cough, curse and die, but the machine will…  more

credits

released January 17, 2025

Erik Drost- Acoustic and Electric Guitars, bass guitar; Randall Frazier- synthesisers, devices; Edward Ka-Spel – Voice, devices; Joep Hendrikx – live electronics, devices. Simon Paul – Cover design and layout. Raymond Steeg & Peter Van Vliet – mastering. Thank you Alena for your enduring support!

Disco Morato & Velax – The Product Is You (Body Musick)

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Label Description: Body Musick welcomes Disco Morato & Velax on the release number 41 with 4 tracker ‘The Product Is You’. The concept in their words: Near future, people used AI to replace real sex and human interaction in the real world (they succeeded). There are simulacra of truth all around, everyone is «happy» to be consumer, consumption of sexual content is at its peak. In moments of «sobriety» people experience incredible emptiness and detachment from the real world, only being connected to the sex network and their toys do they feel happy. All is the product and the product is you.

Uniform – American Standard (Sacred Bones Records)

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Label Description: American Standard begins with a shock. Vocalist Michael Berdan stands alone, screaming, “A part of me, but it can’t be me. Oh God, it can’t.” It all starts with an admission. Beneath the harrowing screams, there’s the pain of bulimia nervosa.There’s the pain of a sickness that is as physical as it is psychological. This is a kind of emergence. 

With every movement of American Standard, Uniform Peels off a new layer and tells the story inside of the one that came before it. The lyrics sink down into the core of the innermost self, the small human being crushed in the grip of sickness. To help peel away this narrative of eating disorders, self-hatred, delusion, mania, and ultimate discovery, Berdan sought assistance from a towering pair of outsider literary figures. Alongside B.R. Yeager (author of the modern cult-classic Negative Space) and Maggie Siebert (the mind behind the contemporary body horror masterpiece Bonding), the three writers eviscerate the personal material to present a portrait of mental and physical illness as vividly terrifying as anything in the present-day canon. The result is an acute articulation of a state beyond simple agony, capturing the thrilling transcendence and deliverance that sickness can bring in the process. 

American Standard is surely Uniform’s most thematically accomplished and musically self assured album to date. Sections spiral and explode. Motifs drift off into obscurity before reasserting themselves with new power. Genres collide and burst open, form-ing something idiosyncratic and new. There’s a grandeur, due in part to the addition of Interpol bassist Brad Truax alongside the percussive push and pull of returning drummer Michael Sharp and longtime touring drummer Michael Blume, marking his Uniform recorded debut here. However, this magnificence is most clearly attributable to the scale and power of guitarist and founder Ben Greenberg’s arrangements, matching ever elegantly to the intense lyrical subject matter.

Without a shred of doubt, American Standard is a work of art, agonizing in its honesty and relentless in its pursuit of sonic transcendence. It is hideous. It is beautiful. It is necessary.

Ivy Chalice – Noctifer (Library Of The Occult)

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Label Description:

Ivy Chalice release their highly anticipated follow up to last years ‘Nachtmahr’, with Noctifer, on Library of the Occult Records. Drawing inspiration from classic cinema and the evocative sounds of the 1960s and 70s, Noctifer blends acoustic textures and ethereal vocals with a shadowy electronic edge, crafting a musical experience that is as haunting as it is hypnotic.

Noctifer (“bringer of night”) is an album of shadowed landscapes and eerie tales. Ivy Chalice conjures a soundscape where dark folklore, dreamlike acoustics, and modern electronic elements meet. The album’s narrative threads echo the haunting charm of films like The Blood on Satan’s Claw and The Wicker Man, as well as the spectral allure of British folk revival acts.

Maria Perez Query of Hellebore writes:
“The dense, dreamy atmosphere conjured by Ivy Chalice reaches its zenith in “Der Wald, Die Spiegelwelt,” which has echoes of the classic folk horror series Moondial (1988). Ethereal and eerie, Noctifer feels like wandering into the woods to find a ruined chapel, like opening a gate that leads to a secret realm.”

Featuring tracks that balance fragility and foreboding, Noctifer is both an homage to and a reinvention of folk horror soundscapes. The combination of acoustic instrumentation and shadowy electronic textures offers a contemporary twist on timeless themes of nature, ritual, and the unknown.

Chris Alexander – Body Double (Library Of The Occult)

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Label Description:

Celebrated Canadian filmmaker and composer Chris Alexander joins Library of the Occult records with his album ‘Body Double’

A sinister fusion of 80s horror aesthetics and cinematic electronic soundscapes, Body Double throws listeners into a shadowy world of pulsating synths, eerie melodies, and haunting atmospheres. Alexander’s signature approach to sound design captures the spirit of classic genre film scores while pushing into uncharted sonic territory.

In the words of Shawn Macomber from Decibel: “Chris Alexander is easily one of the most fearless, imaginative, and iconoclastic world-builders currently operating in the worlds of cinema, and music. And when it comes to conjuring the magic and menace just beyond the veil, the man is damn near peerless.”

With Body Double, Alexander channels the sonic legacy of icons like John Carpenter and Goblin, weaving a tapestry of sound that feels both familiar and otherworldly.