Displicencia

I am so fucking bored today. The tedium of what I have to do at work today* is so overwhelming it feels like an altered state of consciousness. Which I s'pose it is, only a really shit one. Time has gone bendy, I'm so tired that my eyes have that special slightly hot and too big for their sockets feel, coffee is having no effect on me whatseoever, and the official office cretin will not fucking shut up**. I'll be in a much better mood the second I'm out of this building, but that's not for a few hours yet, so I just felt the need to vent bile so I will be my normal lovely self upon leaving this evening***.

*It involves a 276 page spreadsheet. I hate spreadsheets. Any job which involves a spreadsheet for any fucking reason is automatically annoying, a 276 page one can fuck right off. The fact that said aggravation is contained within an even larger badly written, legalese enburdened and technically incorrect document is just the shit flavoured icing on an already crap cake. Cunts.

**That 2' stilson wrench still lives next to my desk. If there's a really long break between this and the next post, well, it probably means the fuckwit's started whistling and I've finally snapped.

***Joy, I get to travel on the Hipster Express again. Maybe I'll see another bloke in jeggings and have a laughter induced coronary. I saw a bloke in Berwick St wearing jeggings and a stupid too small hat and did fear for my arteries. It was almost as good as when, sitting in my local cafe, and idly people watching, one of the Barleys from over the road, who was wearing his silly girls jeans round his arse gangsta style, ran across the road for a bus, only for his jeans to descend to his ankles as he ran, sending the silly twat flying, and making me gob my breakfast all over the window. Laugh? I nearly fucking choked. But it was a beautiful moment.

Pensar

I may be many things, but I'm not a fucking snob. I don't believe that everyone should share my tastes and predilections, and I get quite arsey* when confronted with that attitude when it's aimed toward me, or towards someone or something that means a lot to me. I don't expect everyone to enjoy music that sounds like someone projectile vomiting into a broken cement mixer, or to share my twin loves of modernism and abstraction, but if y're going to tell me something's worthless, then I expect a reasoned argument to underlie that opinion. If you just don't like something, at a visceral level, that's fine, just say so, but if y're going to contemptuously dismiss whatever the something in question is, without coming to some sort of understanding of it, that's different.

I know that my language can be a little untempered at times**, but I try to never call something shit, or dismiss it out of hand without having a damn fucking good reason to do so***, because it not only makes you look ignorant, but shows a fundamental lack of respect for others viewpoints/tastes/whatever, and therefore makes you not just ignorant, but an arsehole. And yeah, before anyone points it out, I'm fully aware that I'm capable of being the most stubborn, intransigent cunt you can imagine, but, and this is the kicker, only when I'm on home turf and the person I'm talking to knows fuck all and isn't willing to listen. If we're on yr pet subject, or artform or whatever it is that floats yr boat, then I may have opinions, but I want to hear your perspectives, to learn, because you know more about it than me, and even if we still disagree, I've learnt something, had my viewpoint expanded, gained new insight into whatever it is we're discussing (obviously the same should apply with the roles reversed).

And hell, maybe my less-informed ideas might open up new avenues in yr thought too, simply because of the infinite number of angles from which it's possible to come at a subject. But the point is, it's a conversation of, if not equals, but at least two people who share some of the same knowledge, who can rationally take on board what's being said, who's mindsets are flexible enough, who have enough empathy, to not necessarily agree, but reach a mutual area of understanding, and also to accept when they're wrong or misguided. But when you just dismiss someone out of hand, with no understanding, no empathy whatsoever, y're not just an arsehole, not just a snob, but a fair way down the fucking road to becoming a bigot.

*This may be a slight understatement.

**See the above footnote.

***Except when some fucking hippy is attempting to convince me that some loopy psuedoscientific concept is right and Physics is wrong. Not that I don't have a fucking good reason in this case, it's just that a. it's absolutely impossible to argue with these fuckwits, because they don't understand the underlying principles behind what they think they're talking about§, and b. think you represent some kind of conspiracy to keep the true knowledge of the nature of the universe out of the hands and minds of the population at large. Life's too short to waste my breath on such idiocy, you will be told to fuck off in no uncertain terms.

§Reichian/Orgone horseshit and perpetual motion machines being two typical offenders. It doesn't matter how carefully you attempt to couch yr arguments, or how you organise or manipulate the data you think you've gathered, everything you are claiming violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and yr hypothesis is, in layman's terms, completely fucked. Or as Eddington put it:

"The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."

And don't even get me started on homeopathy. Chemical fucking memory my arse. When you have a "discipline" where no one who practices it can actually explain in any way the mechanism underlying what they do, you have charlatanism, nothing more. It makes me almost physically sick that you can get a fucking BSc in homeopathy, which is no more a fucking science than astrology or having a fucking wank.

Cóctels 2: Si Estás En Mallorca...

As an addendum to the last post, if you really want to experience some of the finest booze known to humanity, in what is possibly the most outrageous setting of any bar in Europe, then this is where you need to go; Abaco, in Palma inhabits a parallel universe where everyone is a decadent tyrant with appalling taste and limitless resources, where rose petals rain on yr head if y're there on a Friday night*. I recommend the Especial Abaco, a goldfish bowl full of fuck knows how many different kinds of booze that tastes like nectar and is possibly the closest thing this planet has to the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. Yeah, it's a bit pricey, but look at the fucking place.

And this is just a very small glimpse of the outrage. Now just imagine what the fucking toilets are like...

*I'm actually not taking the piss here. This actually happens.

Borracho, Pero En La Mejor Manera Posible

I love dodgy after hours bars, which, aside from the fantastic record shops (Sister Ray, Phonica, Sounds Of The Universe...), and cornucopia of really fucking good and cheap eateries is one reason I actually love Soho and Fitzrovia, because they're fucking full of 'em, if you know where to go. For one thing, there's generally a much smaller wanker quotient than in the more, shall we say, visible watering holes of that area, and the cocktails are cheaper. And I do like a properly made cocktail.

Not the shit that certain types of pubs and bars call cocktails, sickly concoctions involving lurid milkshakey looking gloop* or (Lucifer fucking preserve us) Red fucking Bull**, but proper fucking cocktails made with high quality ingredients by someone who knows and cares about what they're doing. Because mixing them takes skill, and if you use cheap shit, it doesn't matter how well you combine all the bits, it's still going to taste like cheap shit, just more complex cheap shit.

I say this, because last night I had the perfect Negroni, better even than the exemplary examples served up in the bar of NY's Time Hotel***. OK, maybe the company made everything taste better, but fuck it was good. A perfect balance of sweet and bitter, cut through with the aromatic astringency of the gin§, and a burnt orange twist just sealing the fucking deal. And were we in some posh bar? Nope, some dive round the back of Oxford Street, and it was £6. Fucking brilliant.

The cocktail, in it's purest form, like a proper Martini§§ or Tom Collins, is pretty much the pinnacle of the alcoholic art, a balancing act that's harder to achieve than it looks, and I'm glad it's an artform that hasn't died out, that people care enough about this shit to really fucking practice, to learn to play the ingredients if you like, to produce such outrageously alcoholic and goddamn delicious concoctions for good people who understand that drinking is about so much more than getting pissed, and I for one salute them and their dedication to enriching our drunken conversations with their magnificent creations.

Oh, and if you want to enjoy a proper Negroni in the privacy of yr own home, there's a rather fine recipe here. For the vermouth, you can use Martini, but it's way better with Cinzano. Fuck, that might be the ponciest sentence I've ever written. Excellent.

*What are you drinking toffee flavoured gunk for? What are you, fucking 12? Go and have a White Russian, or a Brandy Alexander if you want something creamy. For fucks sake.

**The most disgusting drink ever conceived, tastes foul, but it's the smell that gets me. For some bizarre reason I can smell Red Bull a mile away, at a distance even neat poteen would be undetectable and it makes me retch. And it looks exactly like fizzy piss.

***I can't believe how much that place cost a night (well over £200) in comparison to the size of it's admittedly nice rooms, I know NY is notorious for shoeboxes, but the bed wasn't even long enough for me, and I'm not exactly lanky, then again, we didn't pay for the room, but seriously. Their website is so artfully photographed that it's impossible to judge the size of anything, except you can guarantee that it's smaller than you think.

§Didn't see what one she made it with, but I suspect it was Tanqueray judging by the kick. I love that stuff.

§§And, if y're like me, a really Dirty one. Also you may detect a slight gin-cocktail bias here. What can I say? I like gin. A lot.

Jadeante

To quote DJO's version of Jean-Luc Picard, my head feels like it's been shat through a wormhole and fucked by a balrog. In the best possible way. My brain is still in a very comfy bed and is resolutely refusing to co-operate until it's been fed with copious amounts of good fucking coffee, so this is probably going to get a bit random. Maybe James Cotton (acid house bloke as opposed to the bluesman) isn't necessarily the most sensible music to be listening to under these circumstances, but hell, it feels right so fuck it.

And things are feeling right at the moment, in a way that they haven't for a fair whack of time, because I've finally stopped thinking and started fucking doing, and in the process discovered that all my friends were right and I was wrong, that I'm not the social retard with a permanent black cloud hovering over his head I've sometimes thought I was, and I've finally broken that fucking feedback loop of shitty thinking and negative self-analysis that has defeated me in the past. In short, I am no longer a twat.

I'm also smoking less, and not just because the quality of hash in London has increased by a remarkable degree in the last few months or so, but because getting stoned is fucking great, but you can go too far, and when the only points in your day when y're not a shambling smokebeast are work and sleep, you've gone too far, and I was chainsmoking constantly the second I got through the door during the week and as soon as I was awake at the weekends, almost to the exclusion of any other, more stimulating activities, like actually getting off the fucking sofa. So now I smoke because I enjoy it, as opposed to using it as a crutch and basically self-medicating myself out of the conscious world, a place I've discovered I like a whole lot more than I thought now I'm not invariably experiencing it through fogged and distorted lenses.

And it's fucking fantastic. I've laughed more in the last month than in the 12 which preceded it, rediscovered the joy of just being with good people, rekindled friendships that were dormant from neglect and petty stuff that really didn't mean shit. I no longer have the constant, idiotic background paranoia that I'm behaving like an arsehole and people are just putting up with me, which I always knew was fucking stupid, because my friends are generally not the sort of people who would refrain from telling me I'm being a cunt when I am, which is just one of the many reasons I love 'em all to death.

I'm so grateful to the support of the people around me, their unswerving fucking brilliance in knowing what to say, and what not to say, for listening to all of my crap, for putting up with my unreliability* and my erratic behaviour and moods and having faith in me when, frankly, my well had run dry. In that respect I'm one lucky fucker, and there's no way on fucking earth I'd be writing this if it wasn't for them.

So I have a life again, and it's one I love, and it's so fucking inspiring. Music and words and ideas are just leaking out of my pores, I'm pulling new riffs, sounds and songs from the air like a demented butterfly collector. Thor's Helmet is sounding fucking immense, a much meaner, nastier proposition than ever before, a roaring fucking spacerock fuelled doom machine with a glint in it's eye and a really dirty mind, lyrics so shameless they'd make Dave Wyndorf blush and no sense of dignity whatsoever. Think Angels In Pigtails-era Terminal Cheesecake fistfucking Black Sabbath with a massive side order of (early) Hawkwind and Chrome.

There'll be new Morgen und Nite stuff coming soon too, two of the flat out weirdest pieces of music we've ever recorded, which I'm saying nothing about until they're both completely done, except that if you listen on headphones to one of the tracks it actually makes you feel dizzy and vaguely nauseous, and which, now I'm actually off my arse and doing shit, will be released by some as yet unsuspecting record label on heavy fucking vinyl because I won't sleep until it happens. And I'm almost done with two, yes two, solo recordings. One all guitar, one techno with a big slab of gooey acid house stirred in, but more on those soon. Oh, I almost forgot to mention The Electric Bacons. So now I have**.

The biggest thing for me though, is being able to go out, to actually want to go out, the fact that I'm genuinely socially confident for probably the first time in my life, that the fear, the anxiety around people has dissipated, the shocking revelation that I can actually talk to someone I've never clapped eyes on before without having to be off my face on something or other and without wanting to run and hide, let alone contemplate the idea that that person might find me interesting or even (shock, horror) attractive. I may sound like a bit of a dick here, but I couldn't give a toss, because if it wasn't for these changes in me, then I wouldn't be sitting here with a head full of amazing possibilities, and an idiot grin on my face you'd need an angle grinder to remove, and the reason for said grin would never have entered my life.

*Some of which (but not all) can be put down to a vicious autoimmune condition called Guillain–Barré Syndrome which almost killed me three years ago. And yes, I know, I haven't mentioned that before. Just too fucking raw. I never wrote about it because it was fucking terrifying, and every time I tried found that words were just inadequate to express what it was like. Still do, I'm just infinitely better at dealing with it, and the consequences of it now.

**Soon the world will bear witness to the porcine garage glory. And it won't be best pleased.

El Nuevo Modelo Quinientos

Oh yes. Pass the cleaning equipment, because I may need it quite soon. Juan Atkins, Living God King Of Detroit Techno, is putting out the first new Model 500 ep for 11 years on this coming Monday, and I'm slightly overexcited*, because the one track I've heard from it is a rather fine slice of electrocharged loveliness, because I fucking love Model 500, and almost all of my favourite Juan Atkins tunes have slid out under that particular moniker. Anyway, the reason I'm posting this, is that you should go here, and listen to the glistening marvellousness that is "Huesca".

*Yeah, like this is some new phenomenon concerning me and music.

Duende

Driving in London can be, to put it mildly, a somewhat aggravating experience, which is why I try to a: avoid it if possible, and b: tend to listen to the less, shall we say, psychotic bits of my record collection (or the radio) in an attempt to lessen the frustration levels of driving in our beautiful but wildly haphazard maze of a city. Well I had no choice in the matter, as some of the tools I needed for todays industrial lunacy are not allowed to be carried on public transport*.

So drive I did, and I do believe that there must be some sort of fuckwits convention occurring today, given the level of general ignorance and random insanity that I witnessed and occasionally dodged this afternoon. But, just for once, none of it annoyed me, and not just because of my vastly improved mood and outlook, but also because I flicked the stereo onto BBC Radio 3, and heard the first notes of what is undoubtedly one of the most wonderful pieces of music ever composed, Berg's Violin Concerto**, and I knew no matter how apallingly anyone drove, no matter how many times I was cut up by some badly-suited prick in a Mercedes, BMW or Audi***, that while the sound of that achingly beautiful piece filled the van, I was immune.

Because it's an amazing piece of music. It manages to infuse the often forbiddingly dissonant world of serialism with a breathtakingly elegiac lyricism, bridging the avant-garde and traditional tonality in a completely seamless manner which very few other pieces can match, not that dissonance is absent, or that the clashing timbres that the orchestral music of the post-Schoenberg lot were so fond of don't occasionally erupt with great power, that's all in here, but, because of the astonishingly precise way they are employed and arise in the course of the piece, the care taken over the balance of the instrumentation, the pacing, rhythmic shifts and sheer dynamics, it never becomes overly strident, the 12-tone process never overwhelms the emotional impact.

Which is what floors me about this piece of music. I'm probably fussier about orchestral/chamber music than almost anything else, I mean, no other spectrum of music contains a period of over 150 years where I hate almost every single fucking thing I've ever heard from that era§, and no other musical arena is so hidebound by rules, conventions and hierarchy as the classical world, three things which you've probably guessed get my goat a bit, but I digress. The emotional density of this track, the amount of meaning it manages to convey through it's luminous textures is massive, and moves me in a way that only Messiaen§§ can match in this sphere of music. It's a piece deeply infused with great love and compassion, a profound sadness and a huge amount of joy, and the sonic promise of transcendence in it's glorious end. It's a life in sound, stunningly realised.

*Best not to ask.

**Also, go here and have a listen.

***What is it with people who drive German luxury cars in this country? Do you get a special arsehole license with the car?

§Classical and a large proportion of the (particularly early) Romantic period. Can't fucking stand it. You can't begin to conceive of how much I loathe Beethoven. And Mozart. Everything I hate about music neatly encapsulated. At least it got good again when Debussy, Ravel et al turned up for the party.

§§OK, I'll give you Morton Feldman too.

Máquina De Plata

It's good to know Stephen Hawking can still wind morons up, particularly the sort of idiot who finds the concept of metaphor too taxing to get their tiny mind around, who make no attempt to understand what is being said in context, instead ramming it through the 2000 year old bullshit machine they wired their head to years ago because it makes things easy and comfortable and doesn't reduce you to an insignificant random speck in the great cosmic order of things. Go and read what he said again, in context, and come back to me when you've had the long words explained to you.

Una Sonrisa* De Oreja A Oreja, O, Muchos Gracias Señor Marrón**

Goddamn motherfucking holy shit YES. Usted consigue a veces el extremo correcto del palo, if you get my drift. You know that wall I've talked about before? Rubble.

*My favourite word in my slightly shaky second language, it means smile/grin.

**And no, I don't mean heroin. You fuckers.

Bestia Excelente Tres

Stoner Wombat

El Horror...

We're back. Again. It seems our notoriety has increased in our absence, and our nation's scrumpy reserves have finally reached a level able to sustain the space-rockin' beast that is Thor's Helmet once more. I've dusted down and oiled the 7-string. The Book Of Ylem has been opened for the third time and it's forbidden knowledge will once again seep into the world's unconscious. Get ready, because things are gonna get messy.

All Hail Malachandria!

Máteme (Lo Siento, Soy Justo Correrse)

Not that I actually want someone to kill me, but if I was going to be shot, I'd very much like her to do it. Bloody hell...

Rock Es Muerte, A Dios Gracias (Parte Una)

Over the past few months, I've noticed a serious shift in my listening habits. For the first time in my life, the guitar is no longer the centrepoint of my borderline obsessive music-hoovering. Sure, there are some astonishing guitarists out there, but I can only think of one guitarist whose music I've discovered in the last couple of years that blows my fucking stack like all the usual suspects*, namely Ninni Morgia**, and that's somewhat depressing for a guitarist in many ways***. But also liberating. Because I've found myself bored to fucking tears by 99% of new guitar-led music§, electronics have rushed in to fill the gap.

In some ways I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised by this, given that my guitar setup has gradually evolved to have more in common with a modular analogue synth than anything else, and that a lot of my playing comes from running as far in the opposite direction to anyone else as I possibly can, that my listener side would eventually catch up with my musician side. It's not that I've rejected my past loves in that sphere of music, they still thrill me the way they always have, it's just that there's fuck-all new to add to them at the moment, and I need amazing, beautiful, new music like the Earth needs the fucking Sun.

It isn't just me either, I can think of a fair few other musicians of my generation, with very similar musical backgrounds, who've expressed similar opinions to me, whose musical focus has shifted in a similar way (and no, I'm not going to name names, it's not for me to attempt to unpick their reasoning, or to relate private conversations here, musicians' equivalent of the Chatham House Rule applies), but a lot of us seem to be heading in a very different direction than I reckon our listeners would have suspected even a year or two ago, and the one music that seems to have backslid to a much lower priority than it used to occupy in our minds is Rock music.

Yes, I know the whole "Rock is dead" cliche has been with us for a good while, and previously I'd have dismissed it out of hand. But now, I'm not so sure. Rock has become so codified it no longer has any fucking meaning, the cliche has taken over, the map has become the territory, and that's the death of any artistic medium as far as I'm concerned. Rock has become Lego for lazy musicians, and, I now believe, the rot set in long ago, over thirty fucking years ago, and it's death throes have been protracted and increasingly unpleasant, not to mention enormously damaging to our shared cultures artistic health.

In the 60s, when Rock was born, the musicians who played it didn't start out playing it, mainly because it didn't exist before then. Yr average 60s rock group consisted of people who learnt their craft playing Blues, Folk, Jazz, Skiffle, Country, Classical, you name it; and the music those groups produced was a beautiful synthesis of those influences, their original ideas and the need to create something new, a music that was theirs. Simply put, you couldn't just be a rock musician because the concept hadn't solidified yet (and wouldn't really for a good ten years or so). Look at Rock'n'Roll. A glorious semi-electrified fusion of Blues, R'n'B§§§, Country, Western Swing, elements of Jazz± and all the other music of the Deep South, that swept the musical world in the early/mid 50s and was essentially a spent force within 5 years, because it failed to transcend it's origins, and allowed a sanitised, commercially driven imitation of itself to become the dominant popular music.

It's the same with it's idiot child, Rock, only worse, much worse. Because Rock wasn't killed by the sharkskin-suited hucksters of the music business like Rock'n'Roll, but by the musicians themselves, and the mindless cretins that followed in their ignoble wake. And not just any musicians, but the people I trace a goodly amount of my musical lineage from, the psychedelic musicians of the late 60s, baby-boomers one and all, that generation that managed to betray every single fucking ideal it ever held dear, politically, culturally, economically, ecologically in the space of a decade±±.

Rock, in the mid/late 60s, was a paradigm shift in the conception of what a popular music could be. The record labels couldn't control it the way they had previously because they simply didn't have a fucking clue what was going on. As far as the musicians were then concerned, everything was up for grabs, freedom was the name of the game, any source was fair game for transmutation, assimilation or transformation, and the listener was therefore exposed to an astonishingly wide range of music, even if they only listened to so-called pop stations.

Imagine listening to Radio 1 in the late 60s, for a DJ to go from Petula Clark to Jimi Hendrix wasn't a particularly unusual occurrence, it was all pop, whatever it's provenance, freak or square - this is the reason John Peel was the greatest Dj ever, he never fell for the idea that one kind of music was one thing, and another less valid, it was all good and to be judged on it's individual merits - pop simply meant popular then, not officially sanctioned for the edification of the great unwashed and ignorant, the default position of most big record companies and radio stations these days.

Even a band as accepted into the upper echelons of the pantheon of pop/rock genius as the Beatles (loathe them as I do), would probably end up on some obscure indie label these days, can you imagine a band which combined a love of R'n'B & Rock'n'Roll, Victorian Music Hall, 20th C composition and Indian music into a coherent music gracing the charts these days? No is the simple answer. Ain't gonna happen. Much as I fucking hate Revolver or Sgt. Pepper, they were pop albums then, but now? I don't think so.

Part two in a few days. I thought it would be nice to end this part on a note that has probably surprised a few of my closest friends, namely mentioning the Beatles in a positive light.

*Matt Bower, Helios Creed, Gary Mundy, Jim Plotkin, Michio Kurihara, Matt Pike, I could go on (and on and on), but you probably know the drill by now...

**Big article about his last LP coming soon, so not going into detail today. Go here. Say hello. Buy his records.

***See here, here and here.

§Even my beloved Doom Metal seems to be spiralling ever deeper into a self-satisfied pit of regurgitation of past glories, Free Jazz now sounds exactly like Free Jazz then with a couple of new pedals, and don't even get me started on Improv; bloodless, sexless, devoid of any physicality§§, and a (very long) rant for another day. It's only the fucking noise/psych underground putting any guitar-led stuff out that's worth a fucking shit at the moment.

§§This is possibly the first time I've ever found myself in complete agreement with David Keenan. Fuck me, who'da thought it?

§§§Which soon became an essentially racist epithet for R'n'R played by black people, before mutating into the utterly meaningless term it's now become.

±Listen to Chuck Berry, then listen to Charlie Christian and T-Bone Walker, notice anything?

±±Not that clinging to a fixed ideology is a particularly good way to live yr life or run a country, but there's a massive fucking difference between pragmatic flexibility and cynically licking yr finger to see which way the winds of power are blowing. No that I expect any better from people in general, I firmly believe 95% of everything is bullshit, but the joy of life comes from finding that other 5%, whatever that 5% is for you, I'm not quite the misanthrope I'm occasionally accused of being, just really fucking picky.

Pecados Olvidados

A while ago, someone wrote an article in Vice about how the interweb is an unparalleled resource for yr past sins being found out by others. They weren't fucking wrong. Whilst trawling the web a couple of days ago for manky 80s/ early 90s spacerock tapes* that I've lost through the ages, (and given what I was looking for, it really should have occurred to me that these fuckers would surface again), I inadvertently came across three albums from that dreadlocked era** featuring my dubious teenage speed/acid fried guitar and bass skills (such as they were then), that some crusty bastard has uploaded for all to hear. Some of it's fucking brilliant, some of it's really atrocious, but I hereby offer a very special prize to anyone*** who can find these records without my help.

*The Ullulators. Nukli. Webcore. Treatment. Krel. I could go on (for ages). Much as I (and any right thinking person) loathe the Ozrics, the spacerock/free festival scene actually included some killer fucking bands in those days. If I ever get my hands round the throat of the inventor of trance...

**Yes, I had dreads (anyone who's known me for more than 10 years can ignore this foonote, you saw 'em), and not yr fucking neat and tidy typical fucking whiteboy dreads beloved of shit vegan industrial bands and public school hippy Gong-worshipping arseholes everywhere, but a headful of past my arse length dirty§ waxy thick as yr wrist hairsnakes that would've made Rob Zombie shit himself.

***The nature of the prize depends on who wins it...

§Really, really dirty. Stunningly filthy. You don't know the meaning of muck until you wash 3 foot of matted hair that hasn't been washed in 13 years.

Módulo De Luna

Look at that fucking artwork. Looks like Luigi Serafini knocked up a cartoon self-portrait during a relaxing shroom break while he was creating the Codex Seraphinianus. That fantastic and ridiculous artwork, coupled with the fact the band are called Moon Unit, and the album entitled New Sky Dragon, probably has led you to believe we are back in the land of the deeply psychedelic. And you'd be right on the money.

This is, hands down, the finest fucking freakout (well, pair of freakouts) committed to vinyl in quite some time, a proper fucking rocket-ride through the universe's burning brain. Moon Unit are a trio comprised of Andreas Jonsson on synth, Peter Kelly on drums, and Ruaraidh Sanachan* on guitar. No bass player**, and none is needed here. In fact, the extra low-end a bass would have provided could possibly have rendered the whole thing a little more earthbound, weighing down the sunbound spacepod of sound instead of allowing it to accelerate up through the atmosphere to it's natural home, the cosmos.

Sonically speaking, this record had me nailed almost straight away, what with it sitting in a Lagrangian point perfectly balanced between the propulsive end of Krautrock and the singing, stinging, spiralling high-end mind erasure of classic UK underground blug. Think Electronic Meditation era Tangerine Dream (when they was vicious***) duking it out with Sunroof!, or Vibracathedral Orchestra with Jaki Liebezeit on drums. Ash Ra Tempel with a raga-noise boner.

Two twenty minute tracks, Internal Future and No Money No Nothing, is what you get. Both ever-ascending whirlpools that start slow, guitar and synth stalking each other, circling and intertwining like dancing cobras as the drums lay down rolling, metronomic rhythms which push the lead instruments to twist ever higher, picking up speed like a rocket pushing itself slowly off the launch pad and just accelerating harder and harder, imperceptibly at first, seemingly crawling towards the sky on a flame of modal fuzz, faster, higher until it hits escape velocity and bursts through the Van Allen belt, careening toward the stars until finally the engine cuts out and we're in freefall, weightless, awestruck by the synth nebulae and guitar novae that fill the sky from here to there.

*AKA the loon behind the fantastic, but very different Nackt Insecten, who I recommend unreservedly to all devotees of cosmic mung.

**No fucking Doors jokes please, this is real psychedelia.

***Seriously, TD's first album is a masterpiece of freeform psychedelic fuckyou that has been rarely equalled since, particularly by themselves. If you haven't heard it, well, y're in for a shock, no wibble, no sequencers, no synth at all, just awe-inspiring fuzztone murder (Edgar Froese) with rolling, smashing meth-drums (Klaus Schulze), lashings of organ, and gratuitous globs of electric cello abuse from the genius that is Conrad Schnitzler.