Back catalogue: Psych/Garage Rock

Review: This a unique release that features a song that was released by two different bands during within the same year. The song 'Meshkalina' was by a psychedelic and prog band from Peru called Traffic Sound and then, soon after, by Latin duo Paco Zambrano and Reynaldo Murrieta under the name Paco Zambrano Y Su Combo. The latter version is more traditional and Latin while the Traffic Sound version is more psychedelic garage rock band-like. Two formidable and very different versions featured on limited splattered 7" vinyl.

Review: Thundercat hasn't released any new music in some three years. This first new tune in a while comes alongside fellow cult favourite Tame Impala and is a limited edition, single-sided cheetah screenprint 7". The song is a perfect coming together of the two with lyrics musing on a doom relationship and real melodic synchronicity elevating the tune. A slew of new and much anticipated new live dates follows the release of this tasty new single and will see Thundercat play with the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Strokes.

Review: Peru has enjoyed a thriving and exciting music scene since the mid-1960s. Bands such as Los Saicos, Los Shain's, and Los York's, to name just a few, released a number of brilliant records that drove young fans crazy and set an example for many to follow. The end of the decade brought about an evolution in sound and new music, as Peruvian bands kept an eye on the groundbreaking British and US artists. One of them was Traffic Sound, founded in Lima in 1967. Over a very short period of time the band managed to successfully develop their career, and by 1971 their Latin influences had overpowered the psychedelic prog vibe of their previous records. The song became a local hit and several versions were recorded by different Peruvian artists. On the other side of this single we find Black Sugar, a Peruvian band considered to be a pioneer group in Latin America in mixing funk influences with rock and Latin rhythms. In 1976, following their gig at Coliseo Amauta in Lima, opening the night for the legendary Spanish band Barrabas, they started to show a growing interest in disco music, resulting in some line-up changes with members leaving the project due to their lack of interest in the new sound and new ones joining in. Their own take on 'La Camita' was released in 1978, and adds a modern twist to the original song.

Review: Mushroom Pillow have tapped up the maverick Jacques Renault here and asked him to tap into a whole new world of influence away from his colourful house fair. It is the rich heritage of Latin underground sounds he leans on most as he threads together his own edits of classics from that world into two steamy new jams. His vibrant rhythms come peppered with mystic flutes and Latin vocals, psyched-out guitars and soulful melodies that make for truly captivating listening. The originals were chosen for their historical significance and cultural impact and have been sympathetically touched up here.

Review: A collaborative EP between 2 Australian rock giants, this limited one-sided collectors disc comprises the 19 minutes long 'Satanic Slumber Party' split into three sections. 'The Chairman's Portrait' intro is a dark, heavily distorted spoken-word piece backed by dark rumbling guitars that explodes into the head-banging electronic banger 'Midnight in Sodom'. The angry lyrics are paired with awesome melodic guitar solos and chiptune noises, before shifting into noise rock territory. 'Hoof and Horn' takes up most of the runtime at a hefty 12 minutes, in which ambient drone begets experimental sound effects that are reminiscent of the liquid bass and synths favoured by producer SOPHIE. The track evolves into a demonic lullaby that wouldn't feel out of place in an episode of American Horror Story, and fans of 2 Mello's 'Atmospheric Horror Music Vol.1' will greatly appreciate this track. The EP is all-in-all a camp experience. An Avante-Garde, quintessentially fun blend of two incredible groups.

Review: Khruangbin came out of lockdown and hit the road with glee, spreading their infectious, groove-laden joy around the world, and now the dust has settled on that wild ride they wanted to create a special kind of document of their experience watching people dancing together again for the first time in too long. Rather than a straight-up live album, they decided to create a series of Live At recordings which not only feature choice cuts from Khruangbin's sets, but also showcases the music of the people they played with. In the case of this release, it's Toro Y Moi who get the A-side warm-up slot, recorded from their May 7 2022 show from The Fillmore, Miami Beach.

Review: It's hard to side with anyone that goes in hard on enigmatic epic metallers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. When a band releases 24 studio albums you know they're sure of themselves and cult followers are almost guaranteed to support every release. When those releases come with names like PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation you also know the band don't really care for people who take things too seriously. There's always been an interesting juxtaposition between the Gizzard's tongue in cheek persona - even the band name smacks of wry humour - and the music itself, though, and this outing is no different. Sprawling guitar-fuelled arrangements that owe as much to post punk as psychedelic and prog reign supreme, making for another powerhouse outing you can love or feel indifferent towards, but never legitimately hate.

Review: Israeli guitarist Charlie Megira has an eclectic palette, with his music blending every influence from 50s trash rock, garage, surf, and goth. 'The Hefker Girl' is a new album, coinciding with a recent reissue from his back catalogue, 'Da Abtomatic Meisterzinger Mambo Chic' - an LP which ironizes the neoliberal ethos of postwar America. This one, by contrast, charts Megira's collaborative jams with fellow Israeli instrumentalist Michal Kahan, and is a more earnest, heads-down affair. Expect reverb-drenched new wave, 80s tropes and talent on the guitar beyond common comprehension.

Review: Provocative post-punk from Israel’s undercover goth prince. Megira’s lone album with the Modern Dance Club, Love Police, flaunted a grimier, more driving vision of his brand of trashy no wave. Spread across 31 tracks and two LPs, Love Police schizophrenically mixes industrial soundscapes, surf ditties, hardcore, swamp pop, bubble grunge, screaming, ecstasy, and enough fuzz to warrant a needle check. With this new reissue spread across a mammoth four sides of vinyl, you can be damn sure you’ll get your money’s worth from Megira, a modern-day punk polymath.

Review: Australian combo Tama Impala has always been hard to pin down, with their two studio albums to date displaying a keen desire to capture a trippy, psychedelic vibe, whilst refusing to settle on one easy-to-categorize sound. Currents, their fourth album, continues this trend, toning down some of the psychedelic rock elements in favour of nods to blue-eyed soul, woozy dream-pop, cheery summery pop (see the radio hit in waiting "The Less I Know The Better"), and even the head-nodding rhythms of hip hop (which, incidentally, prove the perfect backing for the morphine pop wooziness of "Past Life"). It's a blend that re-casts the band as baked, inter-dimensional travellers with a neat line in enveloping, sun-kissed downtempo pop.

Review: Kevin Parker is a real enigma of a musician. The brains behind the rightly celebrated and ever-surprising Tame Impala, he's never one for delivering quite what you expect, while still understanding that one of the most important things in music is striking a balance between the familiarity disciples need, and the expressive exploration that can prick the ears of the previously uninitiated.

Album number four, "The Slow Rush", certainly adopts a different outlook to previous undertakings. It also more than lives up to its name. It's smooth, tripped out (perhaps not so surprising on the latter front) and strikingly void of those highs that seem to offer the aural equivalent to some opiate-amphetamine blend. But we don't miss out. Instead, we're given permutations of soul, prog rock and acid house, perhaps making for the most expansive record this guy has been responsible for.

Review: Tame Impala'a Slow Rush album is certainly deserving of this special deluxe treatment which packages the record in an "off lid" artwork box on double red vinyl. The artwork is new for this one and as well as the original tracks there are two new remix 12" featuring 'One More Year (NTS Extended Version)' and 'Patience (Maurice Fulton Remix)' as well as the original version of 'Patience' and Four Tet's take on 'Is It True' plus 'Breathe Deeper (Lil Yachty Remix)' and others. As well as all the music this version includes a deluxe booklet and the Slow Rush 2050 Calendar.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Slight box damage, otherwise in perfect condition***


Tame Impala's breakthrough album 'Lonerism' celebrates its tenth anniversary with a special edition reissue. Through tracks like 'Elephant', 'Feels Like We Only Go Backwards' and 'Endors Toi', the album is known for introducing psychedelia to a new generation of hungry music fans in the early 2010s, and features Kevin Parker's distinctive falsetto vocals and intricate guitarwork throughout. The reissue here includes various bonuses, demos and "assorted sketches", casting renewed light on an important record for both the music-loving public, and an Aussie band/project destined for stardom.

Review: Tame Impala's breakthrough album 'Lonerism' celebrates its tenth anniversary with a special edition reissue. Through tracks like 'Elephant', 'Feels Like We Only Go Backwards' and 'Endors Toi', the album is known for introducing psychedelia to a new generation of hungry music fans in the early 2010s, and features Kevin Parker's distinctive falsetto vocals and intricate guitarwork throughout. The reissue here includes various bonuses, demos and "assorted sketches", casting renewed light on an important record for both the music-loving public, and an Aussie band/project destined for stardom.

Review: For those who go gaga for (originally) ultra-limited presses, we've got you. In 1974, Hiroshi Tanaka and Yoichi Fuwa, the self-proclaimed heirs of the Beatles, crammed into a 75 square-foot room and recorded over 50 songs, all without names. Taking after the furtive experimentalism of the Fab Four's White Album, the duo laid down the Untitled White Album as an ever-more experimental companion piece (or psychotic pop-culture reaction), mimicking the Beatles' tonal inflections while adding sprinklings of madness that the former group daren't've. Widely sought-after but rarely found, this reissue from LITA comes as a second LP featuring 16 tracks that heretofore were unknown, and are now released for the first time.

Review: It's time we gave more attention to Takeshi Terauchi, one of Japan's many guitar greats, whose chops have yet to receive enough recognition elsewhere in the world. Light In The Attic chart Terauchi's best reworkings over the years here, remarking on the artist's wondrous ability to tinker with famous traditional folk songs, in a time when the cultural fallout of World War II left many in the nation hungry for a new style, Rokabiri. Hypnotic filmic groovers such as 'Tsugaru Jongara Bushi' blend effortlessly with slick, bluesy and uptempo freakouts like 'Dannoura', making this an all-time great in the instrumental rock canon.

Review: Cult Kent garage rock legends Thee Headcoats have been at it a long time, but you might be forgiven for thinking they'd retired what with 22 years passing since their last album, I Am The Object Of Your Desire. It turns out you just can't keep a good band down, and Billy Childish and his gang are back with a whole new album of kick-ass tunes recorded with all the grit and grime you want and expect from a Headcoats record. The DNA of 60s beat, original r&b and lo-fi rock n roll is hardwired into the band, and they capture that energy perfectly on these 12 raucous new tracks.

Review: Originally established as an outlet for founder and core member John Dwyer to explore home recordings, The Oh Sees soon grew into a full live band, who quickly picked up acclaim not just for their excellent musical abilities - straddling garage, post punk, noise, art rock and more - but also aesthetic wit, prolificacy, and deft ability to keep switching things up without looking like they were lost.
In 2013, it was announced that a hiatus was coming, but this lasted very little time at all - a record followed in 2014, and the group toured as a three-piece, sans Dwyer, for a little while. He then rejoined in 2015, driving that when something is good it's hard to say no. Skip to today, and they've released well over 20 LPs, but while studio work is quality, it's the live shows that really make an impact. Here's one, which proves exactly what we mean.

Review: Vinyl Lovers brings you the reissue of Traffic's 'Mr Fantasy'. Riding fairly high on the success of their singles, the band, whose members included Jim Capaldi, Steve Winwood, Chris Wood, and Dave Mason, released its 1967 debut LP, which also soon shot up to the number 16 slot on the UK albums chart. Aided by their use of unusual instruments (Winwood played the organ, Wood played flute and Mason the sitar) they created a hybrid of pop/blues rock with a sound that was somewhat unique for the time and which soon made them international superstars. This deluxe reissue includes 5 bonus tracks and a poster.

Review: Tucson, Arizona-based band Trees Speak have been exploring the interplay of 1970s German electronic music and modern production since the early 2010s. Their latest release, Mind Maze, showcases their penchant for intricacy, dreamweaving psychedelic rock, krautrock, and electronic music into a lengthy 19-track tapestry. The band's mesmerizing live shows, featuring live projections and intricate lighting design, have garnered them a cult following - but that barely scratches the surface of their conceptual scope, with their name drawing inspiration from the concept of harnessing future technologies to store information and data in trees and plants, with the idea that trees are able to communicate within their root systems. A convincing continuum of kosmische cool.

Review: Australian art-punk combo Tropical Fuck Storm bring the weird and wonderful to this new album on Joyful Noise. Submersive Behaviour is a new type of take on the well worn cover album concept. The band put all their energy into 36 minutes of mental reworks of epic classics by legends like Jimi Hendrix, Middle Aged in the Middle East in the Middle Ages, Men Men Menstruation and The Stooges. Friends and collaborators such as Dan Kelly, the Bard of Beenleigh and Aaron Cupples all get involved to add to the carnage.

Review: Much contemporary and so-called cosmic American music lacks true cosmic essence, appearing more as imitation than innovation. Trummors' fifth album, 5, defies this norm with refreshing originality and exquisite execution. With lyrics akin to Robert Creeley's poetry and melodies that feel timeless, songs like 'Hey Babe' captivate with fatalistic beauty. Lerner and Cunningham's harmonies, complemented by skilled musicianship, create a captivating atmosphere and subtly blend genre conventions. Despite its rapid creation amidst uncertainty, 5 exudes both weight and airiness, ancient resonance and contemporary charm. Trummors' achievement in transcending tradition with confidence and immediacy is truly remarkable.

Review: Where do you start with 'Wild' Billy Childish? A true enigma, and a figurehead of the eccentric, anti-establishment British arts scene known for advocating amateurism, non-conformity and free emotional expression through creativity since the 1970s, co-founder of the Stuckism figurative painting movement, concerned with supposed Remodernist ideals which push back against the post-modern, it's almost easy to forget about his recording career in and among the book publishing, exhibitions, poems and Super 8 movies.

Thankfully, then, we have The Fighting Tameraire in our new releases pile to remind us that he's fundamentally a deft hand at writing, arranging, singing and performing lo-fi semi-traditional garage folk stuff that has one foot in the English pubs of bygone ages and another in contemporary alternative rock. This collection is rousing, emotive, witty, and thoroughly human in a way that feels increasingly rare today.

Review: "What's a girl like you, doing in a place like this?" Zappa croons with audible debauchery as 'The Mud Shark' falls effortlessly into 'What Kind of a Girl Do You Think We Are', making it clear that Fillmore East: June 1971 is the kind of live album that quickly makes you feel as though you're right there front and centre watching this rock 'n' roll icon delivering his legendary live show.

But there's much more here than simply a recording from a gig. The record is as much a concept album as anything else, offering a skew-eyed look at the life of a guitar outfit on the road, spinning yarns about - among other things - staying in a motel where guests can fish directly from their room, 'negotiating' sex with groupies and girlfriends, essentially representing the tongue-in-cheek, satirising Zappa in all his glory.