Like many bands, Dreamscape came about as an antecedent to the oblique, often challenging pop of The Cure and The Smiths, and tried to make a name in the then-nascent shoegaze scene. With only one single and one 12" EP in their discography, they have been barely a historical footnote, if that. This disc compiles that EP, an unreleased second EP, and a single incomplete track. Looking back, their sound may not be entirely unique, but it makes for a great combination, and is performed with such earnestness and passion that transcends time and labels.
Two new shows just for you. We have squeezed out two extended release episodes for this weekend to get you through this week. They contain mostly new songs but there's also new issues from the vaults. The first show features music from Rider/Horse, Mint Field, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Anastasia Coope, ISAN, Stone Music, La Securite, Bark Psychosis, Jon Rose, Master Wilburn Burchette, Umberto, Wand, Tim Koh, Sun An, and Memory Drawings. The second episode has music by Laibach, Melt-Banana, Chuck Johnson, X, K. Yoshimatsu, Dorothy Carter, Pavel Milyakov, Violence Gratuite, Mark Templeton, Dummy, Endon, body / negative, Midwife, Alberto Boccardi, Divine. Cow in Maui from Veronika in Vienna. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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On first blush, it's tempting to characterize Ascent as, for all intents, a brand new Comets on Fire record, or more specifically, as Ben Chasny fronting a Comets jam session. All the Comets guys are backing Chasny here, and the album was recorded live in the studio, like a true collaborative effort. But on further listening, it becomes clear that Ascent is Chasny's baby.
Holy Other has been more or less in constant rotation for me since 2010's perfect We Over single, which makes it kind of surprising that the mysterious Manchester producer is just now getting around to releasing an actual full-length album.  I was a little worried that his very narrow aesthetic (drugged, deteriorated, slow-motion sex music?) would make a longer release drag a bit, but my fears were mostly unfounded. While I do not think the comparatively dark and minimal Held quite hits the heights of some of Holy Other's categorically stellar earlier work, it is still pretty damn good and likely to play an indirect role in many pregnancies.
A perfect pairing, Every Hidden Color is Argentina's Federico Durand and the US' Nicholas Szczepanik, both relatively young purveyors of dreamlike ambient music. There are not really any surprises on this two track LP, which is a good thing: it is a carefully constructed work that mixes beautiful, formless tonal drift with rich melodies of subtle construction.
Camera is a young trio which has been stamped with the approval of veterans Michael Rother and Dieter Moebius. With Radiate they expand the abandon and spontaneity of their live performance which have been dubbed "Krautrock Guerilla."
Having previously pumped up the sounds of surgically enhancedflatulence for a Hot Air 7", the diagnostic sound recording services ofDoctors Stahlgren and Ferguson were in demand. Their biggest job todate was the big Omag Magnetizing bank scam. They were hired to recordall the whistles, creaks, rattles, wirrings and splutterings made bythe printing, magnetizing, sorting and reading processes that digestcheques travelling through the swollen world banking gut. Their bigmoney diagnosis remains a mystery, but some of the magnetic printingsounds have been hacked, chopped, thoughtfully rearranged and evengiven the odd punchline here and there by their creator Matt Wand. Forthis dose of Hot Air he's been wearing his electroacoustic hat. Shortspells of calm droning are followed by quick collaged crescendos andwhilst it all seems quite condensed, there's nothing to stop a secondlisten. Perhaps the beauty of the 3" CD format is brevity, but I couldhappily listen to more of this, as Matt does electroacoustic laptoppingwell and leaps and hobbles adventurously into more abstractsoundscaping than on the comparatively safe but cheerful Ungu Buntu 3".I'm particularly floored by the big mangled mash up peaks of the 'DeadThixotropic Duct Roller', but can just as happily dust the speakersdown with the eerie hum wobbling of 'Anti-set-off Powder'. Now wheredid I leave that 'Shrinking Disinclination Loop'? 
Regular visitors to the Brainwashed message board might be familiarwith the name of industrial prog fiend Tim Jones. Now his cover's blownbecause The Brain can reveal that not only is he the one and moanlyPendro, but also a collaborator in noise with Triclops and productionassistant for the aural hauntings of Berkowitz, Lake & Dahmer. LikeBLD, Pendro releases have so far been CD-R's on Fflint Central, thelabel that Tim founded with longtime friend from Fflint Barry Williams."Peninsula" is particularly notable for including a good chunk of ahead on collision of roaring analogue synth and minidisc loops duringwhich Pendro almost blew the roof off at a Rotations night inManchester. Pendro's mind crumbling thick drones and piercing whistlesare bolstered to eye popping effect by some choice recordings ofbuddhist monks' gutteral chanting and what sounds like black waterswirling down the satanic plughole. This is my favourite noise fromFflint Central yet! The thick choking smog of this epic 'MasonicIncinerator' is preceded by what sounds like the looped distress callof an animated bagpipe beast called 'Flip' and followed by four moretruncated chunks of looping and loping Pendroism which inflitrate thedark camouflaged corridors of Faculty X and leave a trail of dancingmonkey droppings whilst the disembodied organ grinder grunts inectoplasmic fury. Whilst there is much wrongness in the unsettled beatsof Pendro, the closing 'Breizh Da Virviken' washes out the oddity insome eerie but calm cavernous ambient loop pools. 
This little 3" CD from the Hot Air label, with it's quaint pictures ofIndonesian women wearing old hats of the fifties, has been caughtmasquerading as a reissue of a rare tape classic which was supposedlyoriginally only released in South East Asia on the Kesenian label in1982. If the sleeve notes are to be believed, which they're not, thenObeng Ungu and Jalan Buntu not only paid musical tribute to the bravehat wearing women of Sumatra, who risked internment and publicexecution for embracing fashions from outside their culture, but werethemselves the victims of cultural reappropriation. Their 1981recordings of sessions at the Daging Dingin Candi, beating theirgambangs and rubbing their metallophones, were ahead of their time.They were so ahead of their time that their odd combo which soundedlike it had it's pot gongs, cuks, caks and sekelengs mixed down on alaptop, that Salford duo Stock, Hausen & Walkman ripped them offwilly nilly for their "Organ Transplants". Well, old John Peel of RadioOne was fooled. Admittedly, it probably doesn't take much to fool MrPeel, but surely the picture of the 'Public parading of condemned hatwearers' ought to give the game away if the music itself didn't?Strangely Matt Wand, who has been indulging in works of fiction, hashad emails from people with faulty memories congratulating him onreissuing such a mythic recording. I told Matt that the twelve shorttracks with silly long titles made me think of truncated "OrganTransplants" done with ethnic percussion and tropical croaking samples.Matt laughed and told me to fuck off.
The Oakland California trio Replicator ignite their debut album with an instrumental that puts the rock into rocket. Slow burn smouldering dual note guitar atmospherics soon zoom boldly skyward with big brash jettison chords that'd make Trans Am's Red Line go green. For the next six songs they twist and turn through angular song forms with clipped vocals which couple melodic hooks with a complexity which is forceful but never forced. The hard hitting precision production from Shellac bassist Bob Weston gives equal weight to every aspect of Replicator's sound, and might just get them a few more Shellac comparisons than they otherwise would get, but they are definite fans of that band and at times employ similarly dynamic song structures.
I've mostly lost faith in the whole Ant-Zen/Hands thing. Recently,though, two albums were released that nearly restored my entire faithin the style of music as a whole: Azure Skies (reviewed last week) andTarmvred's "Subfusc."
