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)

The Big Pink got remixed by Gang Gang Dance, there. What begins like a psychedelic excursion of portent and wonder across paths strewn with the corpses of Beach Boys and other sunny Californian types, all of which shine in a very fluorescent grey flips, halfway through, into a vicious skank which is pure shoegazing voodoo, the result is a mesmerising trompe d’oeil where seemingly incongruous landscapes blend, dark tropical forests in whose shades shine wild eyes, strobes bouncing against the corrugated metal walls of an anonymous warehouse, epic moors illuminated by fragments of a full moon that break through the spidery shroud of wind-distorted clouds.

The Big Pink- Velvet (Gang Gang Dance remix)

This will be available in their website in a couple of days, you should also check out the remixes by Van Rivers/Subliminal kid and Mount Kimble.

Patten’s Version is listening to Liquid Liquid while you await for the last tube at night, alone in the dishevelled platform but for something at the other end, close enough for you to be aware of its presence, too far to be able to distinguish gender, features of age, it is listening to Liquid Liquid as this something starts getting closer and the adrenaline kicks in, a thousand urban legends of psychotic headhunters and underground cannibal tribes queuing at the doors of the lizard brain sending electrified impulses all over a system that begins sweating, microscopical contractions of muscle and viscera heuristics of a subconscious plan first put into practice against a sabre-toothed tiger millennia ago.

You haven’t come a long way baby.

Version is the sound of the tube finally arriving, trembling lights that would feel like a horror film cliché if you weren’t the starring character, step in an empty carriage as your companion blurs at the other end, speed up into the night across shadowy wormholes with the wind howling and every single fixture rattling like a festival of the ghosts sharpening their knives, or Liars’ own death disco dub. Nothing will probably happen, but vicarious thrills such as these deserve a definitive holla.

Patten- Version (test mixxx)

Blank Dogs are the definitive US Invasion outfit- in the same way in which some 60s brits got totally wasted on R&B and electric instruments and by some brilliant accident of genius and teenage fearlessness came up with the stomping dance craze that would eventually become rock and roll, it is some American savants who now rummage hungry into the fascinating pile of debris of that wonderful car-crash that was post-punk and its melodic heir C-86, dig out shiny jewels and trinkets, reconfigure them with their awesome fuzzy sensibility and come up with something which is awesome and timeless, Under and Under, or their best album to date (out in In The Red), end outcome to inspire crazy kids over here to go down the second hand record shop and rediscover those original 7” their cool uncles used to headbang to down in the club or the DIY commune, what have you, everything is a cycle and we spin delighted.

If you want an example, check out Night Night, definitive classic of Great Wall of Sound Minimalism if there ever was one, sonic vomit never sounded this pretty, the Ronnettes caught in the Normal’s meatgrinder? Perhaps, a second-hand tape found in the midst of a crime scene of ink and blood and lipstick smeared in beautiful patterns over the once white tile reticles of a dingey toilette at the back of a condemned apartment flat, could have been recorded there too, it sounds so much closer and beautiful this way.

Blank Dogs- Night Night

Crow’s Nest Hill No.13

Arkham, MA.

Dear friend,

Receive heartfelt apologies for my sluggishness in replying to your last communication, my comrades and me have been rather busy: Estuardo had to visit the lands of Wales to finish some business with the Little People who dwell in recondite summits, while Stevonius has been duly engaged moving to a new house with a larger cellar better suited to the conduction of his experiments. I have had to visit that sprawling cancerous temple to Mammon and Khali which some call London to attend a summit with fellow sorcerers, and only about managed to escape the evil spells cast by ghoulish warlocks from the heights of their unholy spires.

You will find enclosed within this letter two wax cylinders which I recommend you play in your gramophone, I have received them from the Troubleman Unlimited imprint, which as you well know is located in the city of New Jersey beyond the seas. The man behind this operation, one Mr. Simonetti, is also responsible for the Italians Do It Better label, which has, of late, sent us into intense paroxysms of pleasure with the seductive incantations of Glass Candy and Chromatics, now that is music that can raise the dead and send them wondering yonder into the hallowed underground spaces of the discotheque where humans shake compulsively as mostly inadvertent participants of secret sex magick rituals, if they only knew, the fools.

But let us keep to the business at hand, time is always scarce and I need to feed the hungry beast in the basement lest it break through the seals of power again, I should not think the constabulary in the neighbourhood would be happy if there were to occur another massacre in this area. As I was saying, I expect these two morsels of dark music will encourage you to undertake further investigations into the arcane zones of the beyond where potent secrets await for the right seekers. I must warn you these researches shall surely end with your soul burning in the fires of the Pit until the day of the Reckoning., but the experience will have been worth it.

First come mysterious emanations from the aptly named Religious Knives, who have made their enigmatic record ‘It’s After Dark’ with ethereal threads severed from the mist with a consecrated silver blade held deftly on the midnight of Candlemas, the intermitent glare of a streetlamp and a piece of concrete in which the ghost of a deranged child scribbled words of wisdom with a broken piece of chalk.

The effect of this powerful magick is not dissimilar from the one exercised by the aforementioned Chromatics, perhaps in their previous incarnation as industrial fiends, only if they had belonged to one of those strange religious covenants we know so much about, or perhaps that strange Deerhunter group floating at their atmospheric eeriest. Their will o’ the wisps brought to my mind fearful memories of the oft-missed Genders also, and for this I am indeed grateful.

Religious Knives- The Streets

Blank Dogs’ proposition does also contain a great deal of the otherworldly, I think you shall find the way in which they resonate uncertain and hazy like transmissions coming from the other side most appealing, like reliable messengers delivering a lost love letter across impossible distances with a fierce passion which reminds me of that most excellent Sir John Maus. Blank Dogs seem to have studied in the cadaverous school of German minimalism where thaumaturgs such as Grauzone excelled, but covered some of the piercing angles with the flesh and blood of the new wave that these Islands did bear, particularly Joy Division and even Young Marble Giants at certain moments of trembling melodic beauty. All laced with that distorted barbed wire one finds in so many promising new acts from the other side of the pond. Formidable material, I am sure you will agree, do purchase their album ‘On Two Sides’ when it is made available and you shan’t be disappointed.

Blank Dogs- Around the Room

I hope that life is treating you kindly, that the spells whose formulae I included in my last missive were successfully executed, and that they functioned as expected, Kandarian flesh eaters can be unruly brutes, and if you want them to behave as desired you must ensure all the necessary ingredients are administered in the right proportions, and at the precise time. Otherwise, I should expect the outcomes to be rather ghastly. I do pray that, by the time this letter arrives to your hands, you have indeed hands to pick it up, and eyes to read it, and an intact brain with which to understand the words therein contained, and finally, that your foes in the village have been definitely vanquished with the use of those darken arts of which I am master, and you, promising disciple.

Alas, as my Grandmother used to say, it’s no use crying over spilled blood, and even if the worse has come to pass, I am sure we can still undertake profitable negotiations over the black waters of River Styx, I will wait for your revenant to manifest itself in my dreams before carrying out a summoning ritual, it is rather hard to come across cheap babies these days.

Yours fauthfully,

J.

Post-scriptum- I have decided to include in this letter, as a final gift, another wax cylinder which contains a song that was played in one of the Witches Sabbath’s celebrated in the thick forests outside of this Town some weeks ago, the scene looked like something out of a hideously enthralling film called Possession that Master Nixon played us some time ago. It was originally performed by an act from the olden days called The Last Dance and I am rather sure that you’ll find a suitable use for the furious coiling and trashing of their Gothic industrial steam organ-powered malevolent sexual energy, I should think that if played at the right time, it would intensify the effectiveness of that Evil Eye of the Thousand Cuts from a Thousand Cats spell you seem to be so fond of.

The Last Dance- Malignant Love

Carmilla told me she came across this particular piece of nasty craft in that wireless program ‘Art for Spastics’, a treasure trove of delights which would make Von Juntz proud, I recommend it to you with all the strength of my wicked heart.