Moon Duo - Killing Time Ep

Genre: Psychedelic, Rock, Noise, Space Rock
Label: Sacred Bones

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Moon Duo is a project of Wooden Shjips guitarist and singer Ripley Johnson. Under the Moon Duo moniker, Johnson and collaborator Sanae Yamada create expansive Krautrock influenced tapestries of warm cascading fuzz and controlled feedback, organ, and accenting keyboard.

After lambasting those Wooden Shjips and their rotting bows and decaying hulls since I was first subjected to their largely boring ouvre, I scoffed at the ridiculous travesty of one of them having some sort of "solo" career. What's that gonna entail then? A solitary 2 note bassline looping for nigh on 10 minutes? Erm I was a bit wrong and now with the new Moon Duo EP 'Killing Time' on Sacred Bones shaking the office, i've gotta eat humble pie a little. It's repetitive alright, opening with the stunning self titled lead track, the relentless primitive 60's Motown-esque beat grounding a blurred echoed vocal whilst guiding this hollow wail of harrowing, fuzzy distortion that simply renders the tune sound quite stunning, eerie, claustrophobic & dystopian, like a Phil Spector production fed through the heart of a holocaust. 'Speed' possesses a juddery, nihilistic seedy bent with heavy nods to the hypno-sleaze overload of Suicide, the beat remaining a metronomic 60s flecked pulse whilst walls of sneering overloaded organ pulse & grind away like the soundtrack to some psychedelic orgy. More mellow edged lo-fi motorik psych beginning the flip slide that sounds quite Neu-ish, concluding with 'Ripples' a hazy mid 70's Komische style slice of desert baked chill-out that'd sound even better after a Peyote & Mescaline shake & a large doobie - but after the blistering shellshock of the opening track you're just nodding along obliviously with a spannered, lopsided smile on yr face.

Bardo Pond - Gazing At Shilla LP

Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Drone, Noise

Label: Important

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Limited edition pressing of 1000 copies on vinyl heavy enough to hold some of Bardo Pond's headiest jams. This is the first of four vinyl only Bardo related releases coming out simultaneously on Important Records. Gazing at Shilla is Bardo Pond's first release on Important. The two pieces, both very different in sound and feel, have sat patiently in the Bardo archive waiting for the most opportune moment for release. Eight-Thousanders and Kali are both entirely improvised pieces with no overdubs. Slide blissfully into a smokey heaven and then forget your mind in a lower world of strange tones on side A. If you're still able to flip the record when the needle hits the runoff groove you'll find yourself exposed to the Goddess Kali's naked blackness.

Headdress - Lunes

Genre: Psychedelic folk, Drone, Experimental
Label: No Quarter Records

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Lunes is the second album by the Texas psychedelic duo Headdress. Written in the desert but recorded during an endless New York City winter, the album is a dark meditation on Americana. Guitarist Caleb Coy and organist Ethan Cook sculpt a cold, expansive sound made ripe for these turbulent times. It’s the blues shaped by the avant-compositions of La Monte Young and Dylan Carlson. It's drone rooted deep in the American tradition. It seems that the shamanic desert wanderers known as Headdress have left the barren wastelands and entered the streets of the city. With this transition the band have dropped a bit of their Brightblack Morning lightness and delved into darker areas of blues drone. The high plains still hang over the sound of Lunes but it's a strangely urban high plain; full of street lit canyons and brick dusted caverns. They've begun to cut ground through Wooden Shjips and Blues Control territory but swapping one's heaviness for the others tempos. All the while the dank threat of drone hangs over the amplifier rubble they've begun kicking through, creeping in like an omen on the wind. A vast step up from their last album that'll see light via No Quarter, this one's begging to shake your turntable. This is going to scare you so if you are alone, turn on the lights. Headdress are on one expansive trip through the history of sound. It’s no wonder they spent the last year travelling through the American West in search of inspiration. They found it. Headdress is the closest you can get to Cosmic Americana without getting burnt. These two native Texans make scary murder ballads while driving through deserts in slow motion. ‘Moon of Shedding Ponies’ evokes eerie Ry Cooder landscapes; ‘Blanket of Golden Fields’ is Jason Spacemen surveying a broken Americana. Make no mistake, Headress is eerie stuff.