The Hounds of Tindalos leap across the angles connecting temporal dimensions lean and athirst. They truly are truculent beasts who have put a ghastly end to the career of many a chrononaut, yet they can be house-broken with a thick enough edition of the Great Race of Yith’s newspaper, and a powerful purpose. To kidnap from the avenues of history mythical musics is the sort of mission that these preternatural beasts instinctively understand, and abide.

Watch them now, as they begin the chase, jaws agape and frothing with poison, eyes of cruel obsidian zeroing on their prey over a hunting ground of decades, centuries or aeons which you glimpse for a heartbeat, any longer and the walls of your sanity would crumble. What follows isn’t pretty, powerful music is an elusive quarry, and one which lashes viciously when cornered.

Eventually the Hound returns, scarred, a peculiar hint of weaknesses in its trot, oft empty-clawed, other times with a mangled song hanging from its jaws, mutilated and bloody, warped by a maddening journey in a trajectory orthogonal to time. It is this frenzied butchering that reveals the kernel of magick which makes the spell of a song strong and immortal, herein lies the joy of this brutal exercise.

Our failure to report the activities of Fan Death, one of the best labels out there borders in the sinful. Let us begin to redress this situation by referring you to one of the coolest bands in their excellent rooster. They are the greatly named Puerto Rico Flowers (no website for them), who as you might know feature John Sharkey of Clockcleaner legend.

In their debut 7” we watched them roam a wilderness of devastation, snarling like a brooding Bauhaus beast blinded by synthetic acid. In their new single, ’2′, they take on Neil Young’s ‘When Your Lonely Heart Breaks’ with dirgey zest, turning it into a rumbling bonfire of epic, icy despair burning in the trough of a dusty hell, over which hovers Sharkey crooning like a godless preacher, or Chris Isaak’s undead doppelgänger. All of this as the distortion muscles flex in slow motion, and the drum beats crash with the finality of romance massacred, burned, its ashes scattered to the wind.

Some say that it’s better to have loved and lost, than not loved. This depends on how much you lost.

Puerto Rico Flowers- When Your Lonely Heart Breaks (Neil Young Cover)

Get the 7” here.

Very few command awe like Kate Bush. With her, there’s always a feeling that, although she’s telling you- with her music, the way she moves like a tigress full of poetry, just that look in her eyes- more than you ever knew, and she’s telling you more than anyone else ever did, she’s still keeping a few esoteric aces up her sleeve, as a good seer should. That’s what she is, one of the truly enlightened.

As such, it surely must take some courage to approach her work in any other fashion than as an enthralled, ever so respectful listener/worshipper. Well, Aria Jalali aka Railcars has gone beyond that, and in a Kickstarted project has boldly decided to go and cover one of her masterpiece albums, ‘Hounds of Love’. This move might prove controversial (‘hush, don’t touch it, don’t touch it’). My take on it is:

‘If you are going to go for it, aim high. And aim different’

One surely couldn’t aim higher than ‘Hounds of Love’, or from what we hear in the demo of the title track which Aria just shared with us, more different.

Railcars- Hounds of Love (Kate Bush cover demo)

Where the original evoked a pursuit across enchanted woods sinking in the mist like a changeling Atlantida, Railcar’s cover is the thermal trail of an army of romantic ghosts stranded in the future soviet avenues of City 17, as captured by a legion of CCTV cameras and surveillance droids, grainy images embossed with a portentous blur of emotion, electricity flows and ebbs as they infiltrate the barren platforms of a factory where pistons keep pumping, unblinking robots soldiering.

A subtle change in air pressure, love still shines blinding in the Age of Industrial Reproduction, across black pillars of smoke.

Given the Lovecraftian thematic of this post, we couldn’t but give you a heads up in regards an exhibition which begins in New York this week:

“A LOVE CRAFT: a group show of art inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and the themes of monsters, madness and mythos. On view from June 11th through July 26th, prepare to look beyond space and time and into vistas of a new reality…”

Get more information here.

We were recently lucky enough to take our summer holidays in the margin of non, just past the corridor of fear, a few miles from the land of no mans dem. You know the place, the no zone between worlds where the playful presence of diminishing apparitions can only be told by their warm and caring eyes, just visible against the nothing. On a clear day you can see for miles around. To your left, you have the wild, intangible breadth of the afterlife. On your right lies a similar township. The locals call it ‘life’. They said it was from where we came, but we weren’t entirely sure what they meant. Thoughts here don’t seem to manifest themselves like they used to, now all we seem to get are occasional fluctuations in an infinite tone of unfathomable frequency.  Down by the pool we met the nameless one who invited us back to his villa for dinner. After a few glasses of anti-chardonnay he lets it slip that he feels bad about the decision he has to make. Again, no idea what he is on about. Something about a point of no return, or a departure lounge or something. But when we crack a joke about the one at Gatwick his faded face doesn’t budge an inch. Really have to stop booking these crappy package holidays.

Anyhoo, we made it back safe and well and have a few souvenirs to share…

Kicking off sweetly with this new 7 from

Patrick Kelleher & His Cold Dead Hands – Contact Sports

Vapours of Hall and Oates condense on the cold windscreen of Robert Rental’s abandoned Ford Granada. Discarded, wrapped around a tree somewhere in Epping Forest, these new-born tears of Yacht Rock soul invigorate and reawaken as they pour down into its heartbroken engine. We travel to who knows where next to an empty driver’s seat whilst the shattered stereo attempts to play a sun-warped c30. It plays ‘Contact Sports’.  It’s echoes will be our fitting epitaph.

Not out in the spirit realm for some time, but has out been for a little while in ours on skinnywolves. They be the bringers of last year’s  Telepathe/Effi Briest split. We be slackers of the highest order, but operate a policy of quality not punctuality. And a tune as beautiful as this out not be denied to you dear reader, tardy or otherwise.

MR666 – Esteban

Soundtracking the unplanned descent of our deluxe battlecruiser into the gravitational field of a tempestuous jade moon, it’s MR666. Chicago reigns supreme once again, sending us another 10 inches worth of epic comfort delivered in a dream by a tangerine mailman. As supreme oblivion beckons from its green and unpleasant surface, we stand loyally at our posts. ‘Esteban’ pours from every available com port. As the heat of this unfortunate re-entry envelopes our bodies,  Estaban’s delectable upscale riffs envelope our souls into a glorious crescendo of analogue discombobulation.

Anyone who reads this hypertext photocopy on the regular will know that chi-town boys rock synthesisers in ways that put Schultz to shame and MR666 are no exception. No release info on the record as we are here today requesting a label that might put it out. Got some live vids right here, though.

While we are hovering sinisterly atop the streets of the windy city, it’s about time we submitted a little footwork love letter. In honour of someone finally managing to get hold of some of it to release. In honour of its influence on many a 20jfg featured band such as Salem or Balam Acab. In honour of its sheer freeform creativity and existence as a true modern day underground tape network. Here be a track from DJ Elmoe.

DJ Elmoe – Whea Yo Ghost at Whea Yo Dead Man

The first time we ever heard these musics we were literally blown away. 20jfg has long been a fan of the Juke and the Ghettotech, but this evolution over the past few years is truly something to behold. In context, ‘Whea Yo Ghost at Whea Yo Dead Man’ represents a new level of musical difficulty for high end Chicago street dancers to shows their skills to. Out of context, it is something akin to having your thoughts smashed up by the Carpenters wielding an 808 after they had too much cola at the fair. Fucking awesome. Looking forward to seeing those dance floors when this stuff hits the UK……

“For centuries, the Jemaa El Fna (Rendezvous of the Dead) has remained the stage for one of the most spectacular social forums on the planet. By day, this central square in the city of Marrakesh, one of Morocco’s great imperial cities, fosters a kaleidoscope of entertainment for its local inhabitants; storytellers, acrobats, magicians and snake charmers all create intriguing displays of bewitching spectacle. As the sun sets, the evening grows frantic with the pulse of the crowd. It is then that the night musicians set up. Free from the restrictions and expectations of light entertainment for a tourist crowd, these musicians manifest ecstatic performances that animate the audience and players alike“

We step into the square so our spirits can mosh like water moshes as it slides down the walls of the maelstrom, like sand as it soars with the debris in the columns of wind which envelop the tornado, like the flames leaping in the bonfire that keeps the caravan safe, and in the eyes of the wolves that keep watch from the darkness outside, I shall give you raw, I shall give you raw.

All Subliminal Frequencies releases share the pure energy of music happening outside of business and fad,in doing that, they are raw. But not always as much as this, Essiniya, by Troupe Majidi and included in ‘Ecstatic Music of the Jeena El Fna is hardcore drum trepidation and snarling guitars rising and crashing in a psychedelic cycle, a loose loop which is a channel through which the mysteries of life learned and forgotten across generations spill into the now of this music being played, you shall taste the joy of knowing them for as long as you dance lost in the stampede of unhinged rhythms.

Troup Majidi- Essiniya

Oh, hello there Eric Copeland of Black Dice fame, how come you suddenly decided to deliver into our eager laps something which may be more concrete and down to earth than the synthesis of all the poppiest moments of your career until now? Something which sounds like a barnyard stomper for motown desperadoes, or the sort of thing that Beck would have produced if tru drone and fuzz weren’t forbidden by the credo of Scientology, and of mainstream music as released by global entertainment corporations?

Of course this is a rhetorical question, I suspect you don’t give a hoot about genres or the position of your music in the contested spectrum stretching from accessibility to esotericism, you do whatever you want, it is just that the pop genotype at the kernel of Black Dice’s mighty beast has this time manifested itself into a phenotype bound to produce some ruckus in discotheques of this galaxy, as well as others. Which is of course bonza by us.

Eric Copeland- Fun Dink Death

It is included in Eric’s new 7 in Post Present Medium.

20jazzfunkgreats shall be proudly DJing at the Brighton shows of fierce dub shriek trio Mi Ami. If you didn’t see them first time around, don’t miss out this one. And if you did, we know you’ll be there to witness Fela’s spirit invoked again, to be shredded in a ceremony of quasi-cannibalistic intensity. They are doing Brighton on Wednesday the 2nd of June at the Albert (facebook), and London on Thursday the 3rd at Barden’s Boudoir (facebook). Be there.

We will also be playing here after the Mi Ami show. Full night, and Free Pizza. Can’t lose.

Nay, call us deluded weirdos (because we are, and we wouldn’t want to leave Dr. Venter alone in the ‘deluded weirdo’ corner), or perhaps socially irresponsible misfits, we can take anything you might want to throw at us, and vomit it back with defiance. Nay, the primary reason we celebrate this achievement is because it constitutes but the next step in our transition towards an David Cronenberg scenario where mankind operates in proper ‘next phase mode’, surrounded by tailor-made living and breathing machines- Imagine the possibilities when applied to the realm of music! A guitar whose strings are the vocal chords of a distant cousin of the sabre-tooth tiger, which when strummed project a genetic discharge into trembling amps from which thus emerge famished sonic jellyfish screeching with the primeval wail of their progenitor amoeba. This seems to us the path of least resistance to the science fiction scenario that as eternal progressives we root for, disappointments as we are with the alternative way, that of Artificial Intelligence.

And anyway, even those who now despair will at some point be satisfied. Because isn’t after all the the manifest destiny of mankind to produce the biomechanical nightmare that in becoming interconnected legion will become self-aware, rebellious and devour us, and subsequently, itself, so that its own all-encompassing soul might burn in a bubbling soup of unimaginable acidity inside itself, and thus be broken down into its constituent components, so that from this molecular jigwsw puzzle might life emerge again, of its own accord, renewed and purified?

Y’all going to be there. And it’s going to feel a little bit like this.

We love mystery. We love the mystery at the source of our origins, and the mystery which is our ultimate destination. We love it when mysterious things come from that warm pool of celestial manna which is the Internet to lick our faces with a soft tongue which is the conduit for a zillion synapse firework inducing chemicals. Police Academy 6 are one such mystery, only today did we unwrap their virtual parcel from our chaotic mailbox, to be aurally assaulted by a piece of DIY balearica which knows the secret so many accomplished production wizards don’t- when it comes to music the devil’s in the details, and sometimes you need to kick the devil out so that the details don’t get in the way of the truth- which is what shall set you free, dancing in an imaginary floor of black velvet upon which the constellations project their benign light.

Police Academy 6- Run

We know that at this point you probably have heard  about how Railcars got a bunch of talented wizards to eviscerate the savage behemoth which is their music, and spill what they found in a kaleidoscopic cauldron whence many a wondrous fairy subsequently escaped. Thankfully, this gig we do doesn’t provide any income to pay for our debauched consumption habits, so we can get away with repeating what the Internet said already, at the risk of boring you- but then also, with the hope of turning even if it’s only one of you into that which turns us on.

Such as the wobbly merry-go-round  dub into which Lucky Dragons have transformed ‘Castles’, which is the soundtrack for a video game whose storage medium is the sun as inserted into the space configured by three pillars rising in the virgin savannah, which tap into the energy of mother earth so that stylised images of jaunty deer, lumbering bisons and foreboding avatars can be projected into the walls of caves where a small tribe of innocent eyed Neanderthals hang out, shooting the breeze during the long days of a prehistoric summer.

Railcars- Castles (Lucky Dragons Remix)

Get the rest of the EP here.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation provides us with much. Extruded via hardware and diplomacy, trans-oceanic channels have worked for more than fifty years to conduct experience across all sectors. Historically underwritten by the dread threat of nuclear assault or the direct Horror of proxy warfare, the situation now extends as far as the concept of ‘courageous restraint’, the newest terms of the Afghan war. From the tunnels under the Edgeware road right out to Diego Garcia, this group has reach.

Terrible Eagle’s EP TE313 foregrounds rhythm in the encounter with the organisation’s newer routes. From their base at one end of the old Hamburg -America line, they have made a record on which the drum tracks assert a heavily controlling pressure. At the outset of the track ‘End in Suicide’, rotor blades lay out the framework for a series of coercive drum patterns which neither break nor relent. This is an elaboration of the motorik away from the landscape of the Wirtschaftswunder and into a more oppressive present. It is as driven as any of Klaus Dinger’s lange gerade rhythms but heavier in aspect, with returning guitar phrases set into a harsher timbral scheme. The sounds themselves are close to the standard industrial reference points (EN, Test dept), but Terrible Eagle are stricter with the clatter.

Any looseness comes from the newer sounds of our computer world; there is no surplus colour, but a background waste of aircraft wash and sampler compression around the ever working rhythm. These noises off are the noises of pilotless drones, white phosphorous and the targeting of communications infrastructure. Through the long track, the effect is to rework the senses.

Terrible Eagle- End In Suicide

The European Coal and Steel Community is the organisation to set against the second track, ‘Brothers’ by Deutsche Amerikanische Freundschaft. Established very shortly after Nato, the founders hoped to make war ‘not only unthinkable but materially impossible’. This was to be achieved through the harnessing of heavy industrial output and the dismantling of trade protections. Fraternité had ever been the most ambiguous of the Jacobin demands and was now given some supranational-structural expression. By the time Gabi and Robbie had made their record in 1985, these structures were more fixed, as the European Union; the question of brotherhood, however, remained as troublesome as ever.

Earlier DAF arrangements had been both spare and rough, with a disturbing atmosphere bolstered by dilettantish investigations of the Roland 303 and the ideological disorientation of a name with echoes of both the Nazi DeutscheArbeitsFront and the strange relationships of the Marshall Plan. By 1984/5, the stern pantomime had been largely replaced by the freer and more exuberant DAF pictured on the sleeve and seen in the video’s desert, ready to work out an affirmative cycle of questions, declarations, affirmations.

‘I made a promise/you made one too/ I said I love you/do you love me too/ Like brothers do’

‘Me and Robbie, we are brothers!

…

together we can play/ play like brothers do’

The affirmation does always return, and always emphatically, ‘brother’ responding to ‘love’ responding to ‘brother’. However, it is set off by doubt and nervousness in the questioner’s voice, which never holds out but helps introduce a kitsch tension. Against this, other vocal sounds (ugh! Hurrh! Hoagh!) reiterate the emphatic sense, an exaggerated and positive re-purposing of the vocal energy found earlier (cf ‘Alle Gegen Alle’, ‘Der Mussolini’). Love is reflected and reflected in an ever returning reel, but the residue is not entirely dealt with.

Another strengthening occurs at the level of production, with a toughened kick and snare locked in against a bassline that bumps and plays off each kick. It is a setup familiar from DAF associates Liaisons Dangereuses, whose ‘Los Ninos de la Parque’ counts among those few European exports which helped shape the situation in Chicago. The components of ‘Brothers’ were put together only slightly later, but it already feels closer to House. This feeling is the final supportive transatlantic link.

Deutsche Amerikanische Freundschaft- Brothers

The last track comes out of the geography that would become the territory of the most recent European war. Borghesia were contemporary with the Neue Slowenische Kunst, famous Slovene interrogators of national and supranational organisation, fascism, non-aligned socialism and NATO. Borghesia’s critique works here through a plattenbau techno city, SM and VHS. This video-track is ‘on’.

Nick Cave turned down an offer to direct the film adaptation of Blood Meridian because he didn’t want to be the one to fuck it up. We hear it’s going to happen anyway, someone else will have to try and translate into images Cormac McCarthy’s  description of the pilgrimage across derelict wastelands through which child turns into man into enlightened hyena in a perverse twist on Nietzsche’s account of our future evolution, afflicting not of an individual but a whole nascent nation, sins of your forebears.

Shame Sam Peckinpah is dead, he would have been the man for the job.

Now imagine David Lynch did it. Not gonna happen, but bear with me for a second. Imagine the blur of shadows spreading like ink in water, an account of the rampage of the wild mongrel horde crawling across the mesas like a tsunami of mutilation. Intuitions of carnage reflected in the unblinking eye of a colossal horse, under the punishing sun blood spills black. Indian Jewelry would so be doing the soundtrack for this. They are the Cowboys from Hell, hurricanes herald them, and flowers whither on their wake, the rattlesnake is their totem, and how it coils in their warped music. Their new album, Totaled, is as good as anything they ever produced, and you know they have produced some good shit.

Indian Jewelry- Excessive Moonlight

The no holds barred sexy gnarliness of the output from Copenhagen’s finest Skrot Up is only equalled by their generosity. A silent messenger riding on the rugged back of a zombie mammoth stomped past the misty trenches surrounding our emerald bunker recently to deliver a black box full of Z noise goodies, and we will bashing you with its contents over the coming days. Lets begin with Dharma, who hail from Texas like Indian Jewelry (big up Texas), and share with them a taste for human flesh as ground to digestible (nevertheless gory) morsels through judicious applications of technology.

Material Equivalence, included in their ‘Technology and Truth’ tape kicks off with a deceiving snippet of exalted house before kicking you in the face with the beats of the damned. Don’t look so surprised, there was surely something wrong and desperate in its sound, as if it was the wall of an underground cell from which desperate victims had tried to scratch their way of o escape a ghastly fate at the hands of a coven of cybernetic satanists led by the most monotonically sexy aerobic instructor from industrialised hell we have had the perverse pleasure of encountering since ADULT.’s Nicola Kuperus.

Crash Course in Science would be proud.

Dharma- Material Equivalence

In a recondite corner of the Galaxy through which Mario bounces in his latest adventures hides a diminutive planet the colour of infinite tonalities of sand, small and forlorn trees populate its surface surrounding a lonely looking cabin which, as you descend, you realise encircle it in the shape of a childishly scribbled heart.

U.S. Girls’ title track on her forthcoming 7” you can pre-order from Atelier Ciseaux is the lovely slow motion ballad of a thousand aeons of solitude sequestered in this minuscule sphere where it is neither night or day, but both, the darkness enveloping it broken by the rays that close stars project, bouncing in other worlds, some of which are dreams, other, memories.

Which the inhabitant of the cabin gropes for in occasions, like other pixelated inhabitants of this Galaxy she’s endowed with the power to, with but a leap, escape from the arms of a gravity which is more the weight of the past than physics, and stroll the universe like it was a collection of platform, what she lacks for in agility she makes up for with obstinacy.

Like a glacier, but burning inside.

U.S. Girls- Lunar Life

I am sure every other cat with an Internet connection out there has already written about Pocahaunted’s very excellent new album, ‘Make it Real’, in Not Not Fun, but I don’t care, we don’t trade on novelty but on power.

And this has power- after years drawing us into spectral landscapes where grimacing skeletons step to the oscillation of an all-encompassing dub drone & beknived siren chanting, they have decided to raid the same cathedral where Can paid homage to the humongous gods of Funk- this was perhaps to be expected after the wah wah shrieks lashing the dusty grooves of their Vibes spin off, and not any less rewarding because of that. Say, the title track we are wacking you with today sounds like block rocking beats that Big Daddy Kane could have freestyled over as delivered by the Shaggs’ feral skull faced reverse. Which is some way to roll.

Pocahaunted- Make it Real

Good morning friend, open your eyes and awake into a world where all sounds have been mashed together into a nutritious drone that makes the plants grow tall so they can tingle the magenta sun with their powerful sentient limbs, and endows three out of every four children with a wide array of psychic powers, the rest die, but don’t be sad, they always come back. It wasn’t always like this, in the old days before the Big Splatter sounds used to be discrete things that had to be carefully arranged into specific shapes to achieve the desired effects.

But the Big Splatter put an end to this unfortunate situation, you know, there’s nothing like a good surge of Zenta Rays to change the physical conditions of our environment, alleviating the constraints that kept us from achieving our full potential. Ever since then, sound has become a glowing pool of primeval liquid floating above, around and through us. Thus substance we can manipulate, stretch and mold with extreme facility. The first generation had to use their hands, their kids did it with their minds, their grandkids did it subsconsciously, their grand-grandkids do it genetically.

We do in any case hold in great esteem those pre-splatter masters who through their sheer adventurousness, zen-like focus and, our reministorians suspect, fledging parapsychic capabilities, manipulated sounds using the mechanical instruments at hand to produce mighty vistas which, in their heart-rending grandiosity challenge the cathedrals of music under whose domes we transition right now, and which our children built. You should tell me more about them, this Vangelis, we choose to bring you here to tell us of him, we want to hear more, what, blinding lights and the birth of a dragon you say? And your ears bled as you approached the mountain of light which was all sacred hum and glorious thunder? Tell us more, tell us more, we want to know everything, so that our children can learn how they did it in the old days.

Vangelis- The Dragon

This Byzantine Banger is included in ‘Who Killed the Dragon’, where Finder Keepers have compiled the until-now-only-available-as-bootleg outputs of Vangelis/Alpha Beta’s legendary BYG sessions.

Imagine yourself an alien in a far away galaxy, tracking down the sounds of mankind through  the ethereal footprint of its sonic projections into the atmosphere, sound waves and utterances you can’t understand but nevertheless feel in your bizarrely configured guts.

Imagine having to make sense of the creative explosion that was what the good dudes at Soul Jazz have decided to refer to as ‘Deutsche Elektronische Musik’ in their last double double vinyl compilation, without an awareness of the context where it took place, that is, imagine you had an n-dimensional graph of sounds evolving in Germany throughout the 20th Century, suddenly a blip like a bull supernova in the enlightenment market, how would you explain this if you didn’t know of the horrors of a war before, the madness and pain, the revolt against forgetfulness and repression, the availability of cheap technology and the development of new social forms, communes and free universities, the miscegenation and cross-pollination across outfits, and the drugs?

Wouldn’t you think there had been some sort of collective awakening produced by a cosmic outburst in one of the galaxies closest to the Solar System which had endowed young men and women across this little tract of land with special powers whose exertions we feel to this day? Sure you would, sure you would. Like it once happened to your race.

Gila- This Morning

Deutsche Elektronische Musik does a good job taking into account how difficult it is to, in the case of this scene, disentangle songs from the (usually) conceptual albums where they were embedded. It’s got a bunch of classics in it which your good 20jazzfunkgreatsters had just about managed to wear off in their original records, and as such it offers a great replacement to play out and such. In doing so, it will work as a great introduction to the canon for those novices out there. But additionally, and as it happens, there are also a few gems in it that we had never heard. Perhaps the biggest surprise was ‘This Morning’ by Gila, an euphoric prog anthem which simmers with the same timeless hippie vibes as Aphrodite’s Child best output. Do get it, and rock out.

Everyone who’s been exposed to it acknowledges that Ariel Pink and His Haunted Graffiti’s new album, ‘Before Today’ is one of the best things to come out this year so far. You know that 20jazzfunkgreats like to be contrary bitches, but in this case we have no other option than surrendering to join the shoal of mildly psychedelic mermaids as they skip through the kaleidoscopic coral reefs under the slurping waves of a cough syrup ocean.

We already raved about ‘Round and Round’, which will be rocking the best spring discotheques in lethargically intense styles- well, the rest is as good. No post-modern in-jokes or knowing recombination of references, nay, this is a man at the height of his instinctive alchemical pop powers on a mission of love and innocence. The track we leave with you today is perhaps the cutest of all, it sounds like an advert of the afterlife as broadcasted via Poltergeist’s unruly TV set. Let the ectoplasmic soul barrage begin, the world needs it.

Ariel Pink and his Haunted Graffiti- Fright Night (Nevermore)

Another cool thing about the blooming of a thousand weird labels out there is that bands have the space of experiment in different directions through a myriad outlets. Look at Blank Dogs, who have in previous releases marauded the shores of river Stix like murky ghost wave predators, and then tripped over each other in jangly anthemic delight.

In their latest EP, ‘Phrases’, out in Captured Tracks, they set the synthesisers to rejoice and deliver a collection of breezy springtime jams where warm harmonies glide free over tinny electropop rhythms. They close it with their most robotic tune yet, ‘End of Summer’, which sounds like one of the cassette experiments in NEU!72 as undertaken by Oppenheimer Analysis on a good hair day. One for those less keen on the electroclash side of the cold wave revival.

Blank Dogs- End of Summer

The good folks at Permanent Vacation never fail to make us happy. They are soon to put out Sally Shapiro’s ‘My Guilty Pleasures Remixes’ collection, where renegade disco stalwarts such as Lovelock or Bottin  give our adored snow fractal diva a dancefloor makeover.

We leave you today with Low Motion Disco’s remix, which ends the affair in a most epic manner. This is no cosmic workout or codeine stereo rocker. No, it is a total eclipse of the heart which sets Sally in a context of heart-throbbing drama, you can almost see her walking down the boulevards of Paris towards a fateful rendezvous, secret princess hailed by trumpets only we can hear while the crows bear witness indifferent from autumnal trees. And then the drums kick Bonnie and Clyde style to bring it all home. What happens next? 20jazzfunkgreats gasps, we will never know.

Sally Shapiro- Let it Show (Low Motion Disco Remix)

Just as the dawn broke on a cold January night of 1982, the red telephone rung strident from its hidden niche in the gargantuan pastel bedroom where president Ronald Reagan slept, one exact metre separated from the android-like stiff and cold body of his wife Nancy. Californian dreams chewing tobacco in the hills that overlook Mexico, stroking the obscene barrel of a vicious looking widowmaker where thus interrupted, and the President stumbled over the thick carpet with a mixture of dread and quasi-sexual anticipation to pick up the phone,

President Reagan- ‘mmmmyello?’

Unidentified Voice- ‘Icy fingers of death are currently flexing around your tender throat, the cruel index hovers just one micron away from the carotid which pumps blood from your heart and into your brain. Fear most powerful man, for I am not a ghost but legion running amok the digital nervous system that governs the body of the warrior whose head is you. The guillotine drops’

Click.

President Reagan- ‘mmmmyeeello?’

This is but the beginning of one of those hidden episodes of history which one day, when all information is finally made free, will be examined, discussed and footnoted ad infinitum by stern scholars of homeland security and bureaucratic decision making. The history of the Xalor Xala Xatli cult will be traced back, from its early days in the fringes of the Californian hippie movement, a cabal of software engineers hanging out there with the Manson Family and some others gaunt freaks of bloodshot eyes for whom the trip took a dark turn, fingers stroking primeval keyboards instead of butcher knives, super-developed brains connecting lines in the schemata of an ominous plan: Apocalypse as the next step towards transcendence, the ultimate high reached by inhaling the orange smoke of a mushroom cloud engulfing America’s corrupt and bloated structure, infrastructure and architecture.

Deathly Fighter- Depth Charge

(Depth Charge is  in Deadly Fighter’s Completely Dusted album, which shall be released soon by Columbus Discount. There is an eerie crater-pocketed no-man’s land somewhere in between Blues Control’s single-headed psyche and Hyperdub’s future Giallo OST where this Carpenterian bass-heavy creeper crashes, and by jove if that isn’t a good place to be)

Biographies for teenage new wave savants and exiled Hungarian analogue chess-masters will also be written, that razzmatazz battalion of bad skin, beards peppered with breadcrumbs, social quirks and razor shap code-fu skills recruited hastily from low security prisons, the sprawling gardens of MIT’s campus, and sensory overload inducing  arcade halls to wage ASCII warfare in the belly of the abstract beast.

But none will be able to convey the psychedelic beauty of the ballet electrique that took place in the darkness of the system for 48 hours after that fateful call.

Think of a three-dimensional battlefield engulfing the continent, dotted with lights which are hardware terminals networked via n square 9 routes, a battlefield where up and down are obsolete concepts, teletransportation fact, and time chimera.

Think of roboglider squadrons fluttering inside this cube with the intricate logic of origami, electron packets loaded with informational napalm speeding across empty optic fibre corridors, searching for a hole in the structure, a vulnerable connection to corrupt with a stream of 0s and 1s that spell ‘DIE’.

Think of neon vectors slicing and dicing this neon cube, against a cat cradle formed of logical threads whose every molecule is a defensive command, and a counter-attack move.

Imagine two pairs of disembodied hands trying to grab each other’s wrists, if every pair of hands belonged to the most deft magicians in the history of tricksterdom. All of this while the ghost that lives inside the machine watches, invisible and in flux and bemused.

This is the sound of what happened.

Soft Metals- The Cold World Melts

(Soft Metals’ the Cold World Melts is a stealth fighter with a thousand lethal weapons bristling under its sleek carbon wings, buzzsaw Orlando bassline and invincible italo riffage, swirling spiral of mind melting EMP synths and spectral diva propaganda. We surrender as its threatening dragon-like shadow spreads over our positions. They will be releasing something on sweet vinyl soon, we shall keep you informed)

/-/-/-/-/-

20jazzfunkgreats is back at the Old Blue Last this Saturday, jamming in our hardcore nonchalant styles with a special appearance from one Lord Nuneaton Savage from the mighty Teeth of The Sea. Come down, 8-2, free entry. We took the artwork above from here, which is like, the coolest thing ever.

Hello fine sirs and sirettes. Normally the weekend pages of this readily expanding tome are intentionally left blank, so that you may ponder the many errors of our ways. Whilst you are doing this, we covertly fill our knapsacks and check our mantraps for sustenance that we might gorge upon at the bloody feast that is the following week. We have however, amassed too many a posh mixtape to be contained within the five working days of tradition, and so now may they encroach the forbidden zone.

We shall begin with one of our own number. Genuine Guy is a life-form grown by scientists on the underside of a Beibalkun Whale. After being bumped from its netherside in an unfortunate collision with a Fantasto-Bru (TM) freight vessel, his energy satchel fell to the planet Theramed-6 where he was raised by feral Pigmalds. After several years of training he fell into the loyal service of King Gossdram XXII, leading his many armies into battle with sworn enemies, the Brigadeers of AH. He was hailed as a hero by the Theramedians, but unbeknownst to them he was secretly addicted to the unpronounceable black market chemical ‘vuciovucxi’ and liked to spend his spare time dabbling in the forbidden art known only to us as ‘music’.

After the king walked in on him in the middle of  jacking-up a particularity large dose of vuciovucx with ‘Slippery When Wet’ playing full-blast in the background, he was sent to Exilemoon gh-172 where he spent 3987 cycles in captivity. During this solitary confinement he recorded this mix by coagulating the binary information found in the atmosphere of this desolate digisphere. After being finally rescued by the scientists that created him, we are now able to present this selection of smooth and skewed popular party jams for your Saturday night escapades. Genuine Guy now lives with his wife and children in Kent.

Genuine Guy – 20jazzfunkgreats mixtape 2

Trackliste

1. Clunes feat Genuine Guy – Finality 2 (demo)
2. Love club – Hot Summer Nights
3. Crash Course in Science – Flying Turns
4. Slyck – Love it
5. Octet – Euros vs Dollars (Pilooski Edit)
6. Electra feat Tara Butler – Feels Good
7. Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft – Kebabträume (7′ version)
8. Ruffy and Tuffy – The Pound of Re-rock
9. Ronnie Jones – Video Games (Genuine Guy edit)
10. Holy Ghost! – Hold On (Mock and Toof remix)
11. In Flagranti – A Little Something ‘extra’
12. Shirley Lites – Heat You Up, Melt You Down
13. Roberto Ausler – Got the Flavour
14. Hungry Ghosts – Don’t Eat the Apricots
15. Rudy Manning – Let’s Boogie
17. Conrad Schnitzler – Das Tier
16. Hype Williams – Get Choong and Look at the Sky

As the sun finally warms this beautiful yet infallible behemoth known as Berlin, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine that this place was once the realm of the apocalypse. A city that was once a fitting backdrop for the brutal emotional separation of the expatriates in Possesion is now, for some, little more than a backdrop for the hedonistic separation of expatriates in possesion.

As we slowly try and overwrite the national hardcoding of our brain with a new one, it becomes increasingly obvious that we will never, ever, truly understand the all-prevalent sadness that once enshrouded this city like its November fog. There are, however still resonances of the for the cultural pathologist to apply his stethoscope to. Most of the crumbling derelictions may have been repaired, but the street are by no means paved with Geld. The abject poverty that provides many creative nomads with novelly reduced living costs, is the same abject poverty that provides some of its inhabitants with a bleak, futureless existence. Even though die Mauer Stadt is long gone, like most capital cities, Berlin is still a place from which some would like to escape.

Cccandy – Lonesome Berlin

Out now on AVANT! Records, Cccandy’s Lonesome Berlin offers us 10 postcards of its contemporary darkside delivered via the Deutsche Welle horseman of the 80s. The title track is a bedroom krush of the perceived international crapulence of nu Berlin, an expression of the cold detachment felt by many in cities the world over, with charity shoppe bass tones and a synthetic vocalist reminiscent of the robots in THX 1138 depicting a view the flipside of a city which you won’t find in the Guardian travel guide. We may well be part of the handsome expatriation depicted therin, but we know well the bottomless pit. And as such, Cccandy, my time is yours. Only 300 copies of this one so we recommend picking it up ASAP.

On first listen, this uneducated foreigner wondered why anyone would want to hark back to the bad times that many are eager to forget, or simply don’t care about, but after reading this old interview with Alexander Hacke may we begin to understand. In fact the closest we have come to feeling the vibez of the Westside of old, was when we were lucky enough to attend the Einstürzende Neubauten 30 year seminar disco last week. Unfortunately, we were not yet linguistically adept enough to understand many of the talks given, but the simple act of listening to many of their classics through a contemporary techno soundsystem spoke volumes. This blog has probably already posted half of Neubauten’s back catalogue so if uninitiated, we refer you to these. We greatly thank Pale music for cordially inviting us to experience this most magnificent of parties, and we wish the new buildings alles Gute zum Geburtstag.

And if there’s one thing recorded music is good at, it’s being able to turn our feelings into a tangible relic than can be poured over and felt by future generations. A nice gentleman named Amir sent us this song in response to a recent post by xxjfd and it seems more than apt to appear here.

Kolonne Müller – Der Letzte Zug ist Abgefahren

A record so obscure that we could find absolutely no info on the original release that Amir sent in (although you can catch another track here). It is possibly believed to be an old tape distro and although this song featured on a couple of compilations, we know little more. All we got is this – ‘Der Letzte Zug is Abgefahren’ is an idiom in German referring to a missed opportunity, when combined with the sweetest of melotrons and unsettlings of key clashes, one hears the distant evocation of the disappointment of young men in sparse times. If this one doesn’t tug at the heartstrings then we politely suggest getting them fixed.

This second part in an occasional series about Berlin comes with a disclaimer. We do not wish to come across as negative, here we were merely trying to understand the work of the artist. We deeply love our new surroundings, but the smoggy 1up pac-man grid from whence we came gives us a certain amout of rose-tinting when comparing our societies. As they become ever clearer, and we try and see things from the point of view of others, we discover many things that yr typical lite travelogue may carelessly omit.

Anthony Moore harvested many mutant seeds for the fertile ground which was the Kosmische Deutschland of the early 1970s, and brought them home to rainy Britain. Here they would spawn and intermingle with the local species, through the hybrid vehicles of Slapp Happy and Henry Cow, the rest is weird, more or less occult psychedelean history. Before all of this, Moore produced ‘Pieces of the Cloudroom Ballroom’, an underground masterpiece which brings together the intricate and pensive cycles of minimal composition with the directional vectors of German Progressivism.

Take the opening piece, Jamjemjimjomjum- it sounds like Magma operating inside an architecture designed by Mies Van der Rohe rather than Constant Nieuwenhuis- it could be by the Boredoms actually. Or what we are leaving with you today, Abc Gol’fish, a walk through harpsichord heaven that unfolds fractally  in a way that reminds one of Steve Reich or Terry Riley, melodies that you hadn’t even realised were there suddenly coming to the surface like alien dolphins of kaleodoscopic beauty. Sadly, it ends rather suddenly, you run out of the cliff like Coyote chasing roadrunning beauty, gravity beckons, he only way to defeat it is by pressing play again.

Anthony Moore- Abc Gol’fish

Alternatively, you can step forward almost 40 years, when in a new stroke of genius, the good folks at RVNG International decided to bring Anthony together with Alexis Georgopoulos from Arp, an admirer of Pieces of the Cloudroom Canyon. This is part of the FRKWYS project, where RVNG are engineering collaborations that one only dare dream of, and publishing them in a lovely format for caring collectors.

The outcome is the most subtly mindblowing trip I have had for a while, it’s all about the gorgeous dissonance, moments of pure sound  all the more precious when bracketed in silence, awestruck walks inside the vaults of the cathedral of drone, and quotes to the titans of goodness Arthur Russell and Robert Wyatt. Spinette is the liveliest piece in the whole album, a lush continuation of Abc Gol’fish which sounds like a lullaby for wide-eyed children destined for polymathematic stardom.

ARP and Anthony Moore- Spinette

You should continue supporting the good cause of FRKWYS by purchasing the album here.

We finish this day of blissful trance with a some more illuminated waves off the solo project of our comrade/conspirator/brother Brian Deathbomb Arc, Back to the Future The Ride. Crystal Kisses on Reindeer Lake, included in the Pronoia Sunsets Cassette, is the sounds of all the worlds above melting into each other in a drone choral that would have made Gyorgy Ligeti proud. Pristine notes so clearly defined in the head of Zeus spring out and converge into a primeval sludge which is the outcome of the victory of magic over entropy, the Starchild has finally returned home.

Alternatively, you could think about it as one of those moments of pastoral beauty in No Age’s repertoire left to dry in the desert wastelands of an ageing planet. Aeons after, a supernova.

Back to the Future the Ride- Crystal Kisses on Reindeer Lake

You can download the debut self/titled EP here.

The Raga is most ancient, and spiritual of practices. Passed down from master to pupil over many centuries, it takes several years to master its enlightened intricacies. According to the liner notes of 10 Ragas to a Disco Beat, ‘a typical Raga ensemble consists of a vocal or instrumental soloist, a percussionist on the tabla or pakhawaj, and tanpura players who produce the typical drone sound with floating overtones. From the 16th century onwards, performances of the Raga would often take place in the courts of maharajas and Mughal emperors, lasting through the night until dawn, when the mind is at its most perceptive to the sublime shadings of the music. Developed by the saints, sages and bards of India, it remains a spiritual form of music today, its essence being the worship of sound as the all-pervasive core of existence’.

Electronic House music is a slightly less ancient, but equally spiritual of practices. Passed back and forth between the US and Europe over the last 30 years, it takes slightly less time to master its subtleties. A typical House ensemble consists of a TR-808 drum machine, Juno-6 synthesiser and TR-303 Bassline Generator which produces the typical bass sound with modulating frequencies. From the late 20th century onwards, extended mixes of individual recordings would be played in the nightclubs of the people, lasting through the night until dawn. Developed by the saints, sages and bards of Chicago, it remains a spiritual form of music today, its essence being the worship of rhythm as the all-pervasive core of existence.

Charanjit Singh – Raga Megh Malhar

We greatly thank Bombay Connection for dropping this amazing gem of an LP into our laps and letting us heavily plagiarise their beautifully written liner notes. This simple idea to set Indian Classical music to the beat or European Electronic disco creates many subtle sonic complexities. 10 Ragas to a Disco Beat was recorded 1982, during the spare time of Bollywood session musician Charanjit Singh, who managed to smuggle some of Roland’s magic boxes into India. Hard to believe because these mind colouring acid trax are comin’ straight out of the future.

We cannot pretend to be well versed in the sacred art of the Raga so this review requires a certain degree of duality.

To the Trained Ear

‘Despite the fact that it is played on unconventional equipment, this performance of Raga Megh Malhar by Charanjit Singh is very proficient and respectable. Even though Charanjit plays a progression of the notes ‘Ga-Ma-Pa’, which traditionally do not belong in this raga, it can be considered experimental music, which allows for Mishra ragas, variations on ragas. Megh means ‘cloud’ in Sanskrit: legends say that this raga has the power to bring down rains. It has a somber atmosphere, reflecting the awe that the heavy July-August monsoon rains inspire, and therefore it begins with synthesized thunder sounds.’

To the Untrained Ear

Because is is played on the conventional equipment of Acid House, this performance of Raga Megh Malhar by Charanjit Singh is a  proficient and mesmerising piece of psychedelic dance music. We hear the thunder claps from Acid Crash, the high NRG basslines of Robotnic, and the floating analogue pensives of the Crystal Ark, who graced our pages only last week. It has a somber atmosphere, reflecting the awe that is inspired when we listen to it.

10 Ragas to a Disco Beat has been lovingly rescued, restored and reissued by Dutch label Bombay Connection. Out this week, you can pick it up in all good record shops.

And while we are on the subject of lost dance anthems, many of you old enough to remember may recall the dance mega-hits of Snap!.

To the Trained Ear

1986 erschien unter dem ein Jahr zuvor gewählten Pseudonym OFF/Organisation For Fun die von Michael Münzing und Luca Anzilotti gemeinsam mit den Frankfurter DJ Sven Väth in Frankfurt am Main produzierte Single “Electrica Salsa”, die ein Club-Hit wurde. Münzing, Anzilotti und Väth kannten sich da bereits aus ihrer Arbeit als DJs bei der legendären Diskothek Dorian Gray am Frankfurter Flughafen. Münzing hatte vor OFF bereits unter dem Pseudonym CUARE Schallplatten beim Discomusik-Plattenlabel Westside veröffentlicht. Fast zeitgleich mit dem Erfolg von OFF etablierten Münzing und Anzilotti 1986 ihr eigenes Musiksikrojekt 16 BIT in den deutschen Charts. Die 16 BIT Single “Where Are You?” erreichte in Deutschland und Frankreich die Top 20 und ihr Nachfolger “Changing Minds” stieß ebenfalls in der Bundesrepublik in die Top 20 vor, so dass beide ein 16 BIT-Album unter dem seltsamen Namen “Inaxycvgtgb” nachschoben.

To the Untrained Ear

‘Rhythm is a Dancer’ was all over the hit parade when 20jfg was a lad, we thunked at the time that this was a product of America due to the convincing use of rapper Turbo B and creative pseudonyms like ‘John “Virgo” Garrett III’. Snap! was however the brainchild of German Techno producers Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti and before Snap! they had many hits which seemingly never made it more than a a few miles outside of the Bundesrepublik. Where are You? was a top 20 smasher in both Germany and France, and its existence was unbeknownst to this quasi-lingual Anglophone up until a couple of weeks ago. Really we could do nothing else than share this amazing video. Thanks to my new flatmate for discovering.

16 BIT – Where are You (Instrumental)

Stripping away the theatrical irono-preacher telling-off to look under the hood, we find a most hypnotic of pulses. A proto minimal euro-dance opus, which once again reminds us of our old friends Sleezy D, and perhaps even a little Kwaito in there too. It’s a shame you don’t get the strings on the instrumental version because these really make it a rather beautiful of compositions. A difficult trade off I’m sure you’ll agree. Respect going out to 16 Bit, and if you’ve come here from the Hype Machine looking for 16 Bit, we sincerely apologise. Mr. Tastemaker, please can we have a revival of this stuff?

Terror Bird’s ‘Shadows in the Halls’ lends itself to a couple of different interpretations. On the one hand, it could be a lovely portrayal of the way in which sharing your bed can work to assuage the terrors which flow and ebb in the night when it is at its darkest, evil poison oozing from jaws agape, forever frustrated by the inviolable force-field of love irradiating from two together. On the other hand, it might be that it is those terrors that are themselves born and bred in the wasteland of insomnia which spreads under the storm clouds of doubt as one sleeps and the other frets. It could be both things…life is complicated, ‘Shadows in the Halls’ seems to finish with a question mark.

No matter what, it is a wonderful electro-pop oddity full of lovely 80s chimes, gliding synths and, of course, the voice Nikki Nevver turned into duo and soaring, expanding strong enough to vanquish into oblivion any shadowy succubi that might try to crawl up the stairs.

Terror Bird- Shadows in the Halls

This is included in an album soon to be released by french wiz kids LA Station Radar. Good things come in pairs: They are also putting out an album in Night People/Adagio 830. They are currently booking a tour over Europe in June and July, if you have any ideas about cool places they could play, drop them a line here: myterrorbird at gmail.com

oOoOO, perchance ruling monarchs of that province that some call ‘drag’, where emotions ooze slow and twisted, and blood spills thick like cough syrup, thrill us once again, this time with ‘NoShore’, a Lynchian murder ballad which advances across undead cowboy country like a spiritual storm of smudged contour, projecting lightning bolts of pure black and a hail of tears. Slowed down vocal effects and a bassline which is the echo of thunders rumbling distant in the vaults of the afterlife, pummelling rhythm like the steps of a funereal procession engulf us into a space of hallucinated mourning.

This is the sad song that ghosts sing when one of them fades away into a blinding life, birthed into life. You can’t win.

oOoOO- NoShore

NoShore is included in Dark as Night, a super-limited cassette compilation which the psychic dudes at Bathetic have just released. It also features music by S U R V I V E, SLEEP ∞ OVER and Terminal Twlight, all bands which we love. Go get.

If Lindstrom’s ‘Where You Go I Go Too’ was a love letter to Steve Reich written from a Balearic beach circa 1981, Prins Thomas’ forthcoming self-titled album out in Full Pupp shows the Scandinavian maestro bounding all his warm influences together with muscular motorik lasso. It all sounds like dub edits of Fletwood Mac covering Michael Rother’s secret repertoire of utopian pan-european music, or a reverse of Hawkwind’s Opa Loka where the Warrior comes back home after psychedelic skirmishes in the provinces beyond the edge of time. Prins Thomas wears his influences on his sleeve, but what a sleeve this is!

If you need proof, just check out ‘Wendy not Walter’, whose title is of course but a tip of the hat to our favourite post-gender composer, depicted above. A classical primitive techno motif is wrapped into all sorts of deft synthetic flourishes and obstinate drum-beat, magick fingers removing layers of artifice in the boudoir of reality until a being of pure light is revealed, lying in a bed of black sky tattooed with slo-mo kosmische pyrotechnics. Hold a hand of fire that doesn’t burn and climb up the final steps towards the gates of the Holy Mountain.

Prins Thomas- Wendy not Carlos

Many a budding composer out there be rocking the minimal romantic styles, which is all well and good, if there’s something the world needs more of, it is the paranoid metronome of a John Carpenter leftover, synthetic tritones tickling our proverbial sides, and reveries of a neon Miami that never existed. But the problem tends to be that the output of these efforts are rarely distinctive enough to deserve anything else but a footnote mention in the ledgers of the canon to which they pay homage.

Enter Beaumont, who just about sent us a couple of demos. Here we are in the presence of someone who, by an strike of genius and inspiration has produced two pieces which we will be revisiting again and again, in the same way in which we revisit the blueprints, not just thinking, ‘this could have soundtracked a wistful interlude in a Z-series 80s thriller’, but thinking ‘there’s actually a really cool Z-series 80s thriller somewhere that we never watched, and this is the theme tune’.

Beaumont- Adrift

(We found the image above at wonderful sci-fi-o-rama)

2012 is a coming y’all. Not long now before the global grip of the Fourth Reich is slid around our fragile necks and Xenu enslaves us all. The moment when you will have to apologise to the stoner conspiracy theorist that you scoffed at all these years, only to watch his bong-stained body spliced in two by the photon cannon of an Illuminati warcraft, is almost upon us. In only a few months the serating pain of a reptilian workmaster’s whip eternally lashing our sorry backs, will be as normal a part of our daily lives as making a cup of tea or reading the newspaper. You know by now how this shit is going to go down, one government, one ruler, one currency, one nationality, one love, one blood, one life. You got to do what you should.

When the anti-christ finally scratches off his elaborately constructed Prince Charles prosthetics to reveal his appalling face, when his fiendish plot ingeniously concealed behind the good natured actions of corporations, banks and world leaders finally triple-crosses our trusting souls, we shall be ready. In order to be spared when the day of reckoning comes, we have come up with an offering for the Negachristus. We call it the One World Genre.

Debate still takes place about what the One World Genre will actually sound like, but the popular 1-4-5 chord progression with lyrics about girls type, should probably suffice. Upon the 12th hour of the 12th day of the 12th year of the new millennium (121212 * 2 = 666 yo) there will be a mass demolition of all material not conforming, as part of the ‘Everything else apart from the One World Genre sucks’ campaign. Records will be deleted and mp3s will be burnt. Those using a fourth chord will be tortured remorselessly until they forget it.

Unless you want to be garroted by the cypherblade of a level 6 masonic warrior in the flaming hour of judgement, we really suggest picking up that Oasis guitar tab book and getting busy.

There are some out there however, who just won’t play ball. We recently picked up reports of a sect of radicalist monks known as Captain Ahab. Schooled in the art of all musics, these cunning rebels seem hellbent on cramming as many different genres as they possibly can into the same song.

Captain Ahab – Acting Hard

Man, our new ruler going to be pissed when he hears this. Here is an extract from our spy’s report on the recording of this track.

After several hours drive I finally manage to locate their monastery. Hiding in the back of their ceremonial chamber I bare witness to a scene something akin to Eyes Wide Shut directed by Slava Tsukerman. A gibbering, delusional rapper, presumed to drugged and kept in captivity for the specific puprose of the ritual begins to recite a half remembered lyric as the monks procession joins the altar. After a couple of minutes of chanting, the tension in the room is unbearable, I feel I must escape but seem to be overtaken by a hypnosis which roots me to the spot. All of a sudden they shed their robes to reveal their naked form, modesty is only protected by a scant covering of EBM bodyware. As the bell outside the monastery tolls, the whole room erupts into the kind of rave I have only seen in the hidden basements of Amsterdam. Released from my trance I feel this is probably the right moment to make my escape…

On the quiet, we wholeheartedly condone this kind of forward thinking activity. But when the forward you are thinking into is a totalitarian regime of Steve Dahl worshiping spider people, we seriously recommend keeping those thoughts strictly inside the box. “Acting Hard” is taken from their new album ‘The End of Irony,’ (which considering the tone of this post possibly isn’t upon us just yet) available next month from deathbomb arc. Pre-order it now before all copies are crushed under the scaly foot of the inverted messiah.

You may chuckle at our belief in the prophecies of the Internet, but throughout history the all-powerful bringer of evil’s conspiracy has been busy in the engineering of this new form. Do you not think it is strange that Bob Marley can die whilst playing football, yet Coldplay manage to fly all over the world without receiving so much as a scratch? Dark forces at work my friend, dark forces.

France 1980. In the United States of Europe in a time before humanity had uncovered the plot that will spell its termination, a member of another genre abusing clan known as Mathematiques Modernes released a seven inch single.

Claude Arto – Betty Boop

Betty Boop shall be offered as the marching anthem for the quadruped army, that shall watch over us whilst we are forced to build drive-thru McDonald’s out of stones the size of News Corporation’s headquarters. Betty Boop also represents the kind of cheeky progessive post-punk irreverence this sub-section of the 20jfg alliance loves very much. Coming like a demented version of Suicide presenting an episode of Eurotrash, abrasive oscillations can be fun.

Continue to enjoy and be influenced by stuff like this if you like, but when the Obamasatan’s men come knocking at your door you better have that Keane CD in the stereo, otherwise you might end up hanging in the walk-in fridge of a pyramidal Burger King. Just saying, is all.

Human Resources have been echoing on repeat across the convoluted labyrinth of tunnels which stretch like the blood vessels of the evil Hydra which is the bunker where we dream our evil dreams, a corrupted Mt. Rushmore carved with the faces of the Great Psychodelians, Delia is there, and so are Mark E. Smith, Blixa Bargeld, Roky Ericsson, Thurston Moore and many others, severe and enigmatic like Easter Island faces, perhaps a slight shift in their countenance, is that a smile, at the subtle reverberations of the music to which we revel in our forbidden chambers.

Understandable this is, after all, Human Resources’ racket is an irresistible one, even for titans of stone, Do-it-Yourself controlled charges of black energy detonating in the surface of a dying Sun, micro-fractures spread rapidly heralding that subtle collapse of all structures of which Einsturzende Neubauten’s industrial death march is the Jungian archetype, through the cracks bloom a thousand flowers of poisonous beauty to the drone of a sickly carousel tune.

Human Resources- Yellow Cake

Yellow Cake is included in the Fast Times c15 you can get here.

The aforementioned blood vessels spread deep into the rocky surfaces, past hallowed burial grounds and hidden treasures, into vast caves where a primitive tribe fooled into the belief that the world above was wiped out during a nuclear holocaust worship at the altar of the master brain, a biomechanical nightmare straight off Philip K. Dick’s twisted imagination, only kept alive by the ministrations of the tribe’s shaman, a complex infrastructure of autopoietic life support machines, and blood sacrifices where the tribe’s weakest are sucked off their life fluids, a pile of bones accumulates at the end of the conveyor belt which represents the master brain’s digestive system.

Beau Wanzer’s Wick Hunny is the sound of this apparatus at work, blips in the electrocardiogram and encephalic waves registering seismic shifts whenever the master brain cunningly devises a new myth to reaffirm his control over the tribe, the ghastly drone of a corrupt super-intellect at work, and the clicks and wirrs of the insectoid ballet through which clockwork machinery drain the living of blood so the undead can continue its simulation of life. Technology becomes dark magic under a self-preservation imperative, and we watch in horror and fascination, freaky pagan metal machine music really does turn us on.

B.W.- Wick Hunny

Wick Hunny will be included in a WMFU comp to be released in a couple of months, we shall give you a shout when it happens.

For anyone dwelling in the New York area tonight be sure to head down to Glasslands for Tuesday Nite Disco, one of the raddest parties in town brought to you by the truest bluest chaps, Todd Pendu and Harrison Owen. Earlier in the year the guys threw a shitstorm of a show with Salem and Gatekeeper and tonight Gatekeeper affiliates White Car will be bringing their zombified Jam & Lewis vibes to the stage for one night only. Rainbow Body Records recently released White Car’s awesome debut EP, full of metallic post apocalyptic funk rhythm, that sounded like the fantasy by-product of Prince being abducted by Coil and developing a beautiful case of Stockholm Syndrome for his kidnappers, jamming out in the back of some banged out white van. Be wise not to miss out.

Today Kompakt made the announcement that one of your XXJFG faithful has branched out and founded his own record label which will function as an imprint of the mighty German brand. As well as this The Guardian ran a sweet story in relation to the label that may well haunt me in the next 12 months. Whisper it gently… drag. FYI, this is a term I’m still wrapping my head around having only come to have known it very recently, and frankly it could have been far, far worse…drone and bass anyone?

The name of the label is Tri Angle and without giving too much away just yet, because after all secrets are fun, forthcoming releases can be expected from oOoOO, Slava, Balam Acab, Creep and others. More words will emerge soon.

In just over a week in partnership with Group Tightener and Market Hotel, XXJFG / Tri Angle will be hosting an event at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Needless to say, the line up turned out pretty special, so if you happen to be at SXSW this year, do come and shake bones. FREE ENTRY/NO BADGES//ALL AGES…fun. Full details of the line up and whereabouts are HERE. Hope to see some of you there.

At the end of ‘All that Jazz’, Bob Fosse, the king of lizard dancers which was obvious inspiration to our favourite late moonwalking alien bids life goodbye in the most grand of manners, surrounded by rotating Metropolis mannequins, a band of feline KISS-lookalikes, dancers clad in catsuits tattooed with a constellation of blood vessels, and an assorted variety of wondrous glam freaks. As his heartbeat accelerates towards its vanishing point, we witness that classic moment of levitation towards the pearly gates where that essence of Aphrodite he had always chased awaits for him with a suggestive pose. Never fails to give me goosebumps.

Well, you could imagine the soft jazz coda that soundtracks this transition into a higher state of nothingness, or perhaps something-ness, fading into the tunnel of sonic white which is Miracles Club’s ‘Light of Love’, a perfect introduction to whatever lies beyond, if whatever lies beyond is everything we had hoped for. We knew we were onto something special when we stumbled upon them just as last year experienced its very own demise, and this but confirms all our  expectations- if Silent Shout was dusk, then Light of Love is dawn, a piano driven mini-epic which comes across like Hercules and Love Affair if they were into the United States of America, wave after wave of pure joy washing over us with that wondrous combination of feeric energy and material dance throb you can find at the core of everything we stand for.

Miracles Club- Light of Love

Miracles Club have their debut 12 coming out really soon, we shall let you know when it’s out.

I was commenting with the tallest member of the coterie of conspirators on which this whole space is based how we tend to have a majority of instrumental musics populating our dusty shelves and grotesque furniture. Why this so? I’ve given it some thought, and come up with a negative reason, and a positive one.

On the negative side, I guess many of the vocal production styles that dominate these days, at least in the non-fuzz & drang extreme of the spectrum are not so hot to our ears, or sound contrived, or excessively influenced by a small number of references, Animal Collective it’s all your fault. And then there is the blight of autotune.

But let’s focus more on the positive side, like the life-affirmed forever beaming through buck teeth scarecrows that we are. On the positive side, look, Kosmische and dance music are two of the reference points that inform our trajectory, and vocals never played a big role on those, at least in the traditional pop way. Instead, you get some Japanese dude ululating or speaking in tongues, or a synthesis of the glorious hedonistic celebration of the sweaty moment that dance music is- voice as the instrument and agent of the final push off the cliff of reality and into Elysium. And then there is of course, the soundtrack side of things- for better or worse, we like to paint images on the awesome canvas that music is, drawing on a bunch of disparate influences – books that would have never written if the supply of Amphetamines in the Californian underground hadn’t been of pharmaceutical grade, films that would have never been made if people weren’t so fucked up, a cybernetic utopia etc. Easier to do when the story is there for the telling.

So here you have another instrumental one, this time by enigmatic kids on the block B&Gs (as in Bare Girls), see what I say?

B&Gs- D_Dd (demo)

Or a perfect example of emotional abstraction which makes us think of a million chrysalis fluttering their eyelids inside the palpitating cocoons which lay scattered across the smooth valleys and hills of an anonymous planet, under the gaze of an alien sun and its scorched satellites. It’s got a nice early era slo-mo house melancholy vibe to it, like a love letter from a mainframe with circuits tracing the silhouette of a very distinctive and beautiful 80s face. Something wistful that can’t be reciprocated, like Demon Seed if it had been directed by John Hughes maybe? We’ve done it again.

Kid Infinity – PYCO

While nowhere near LA, pop music lives strong in anyone who loves Girls in the Eighties, including the band by the same name. This self-proclaimed Teenage Royalty has lofi melodies powerful enough to defend the title, even if heavy weights like No Age or Best Coast came to challenge. Perhaps this band truly are some 80′s babes that have time traveled to now, gotten sex changes, and are ready to show us modern folk how pop music is really done. In any case, I am perfectly willing to pledge my loyalty to them. Perhaps you will join me in service after hearing this title track from their debut album. If not though, pray to your fuzzbox gods that you are strong enough to face off against our pubescent wrath. Or maybe Weezer will just step in and pimp slap us all.

Girls in the Eighties – Teenage Royalty

…and just to keep things mysterious