Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife describes life in a small college town where the wives of the lecturers and professors clash against each other in a secret war of witchcraft. This involves a relentless arms race where books on anthropology are scoured for new tricks with which to thwart the efforts of the competition, and protective charms are deployed to ward off the evil eye like an esoteric version of the star wars programme. The conflict escalates and eventually the contenders bring out the big guns, lightning bolts, body snatching and murderous gargoyles roaming the campus at night. The Ohsees would undoubtedly thrive in this environment, teenage thaumaturgists crafting spells of fire and brimstone from a garage in the outskirts of town, walls covered with dada voodoo loa signs, all the rebellious and gnarly force of primeval punk-rock channelled in a shocking blue ray of psyche glamour to ensure that Ms. Mickleff gets what she’s coming to her for expelling Bobby from the science class. Carol Anne is the sonic equivalent of a Twilight Zone episode where everyone else is in the receiving end, we heart.

The Ohsees- Carol Anne

Natural Numbers craft a more introspective but equally powerful spell, in ‘Old Room’, included in a split cassette with Fungi Girls to be released by nice North Carolina label Neon Aztec, we are thrilled by the pulse of memories crashing through the cellar room of the subconscious like a battalion of spectral cats, the white magick equivalent of  Suicide’s poisonous drone, a bite off My Bloody Valentine’s radiant field of distortion expanded like chewing gum to create a throbbing amniotic den inside which we step because it’s cold outside.

Natural Numbers- Old Room

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We have a new post up in Vice, this time with Gyratory System, Telepathe and an apology of dismemberment. You know the score.