Over the last handful of months, Mannequin records have experienced double-digit rates of growth in the impossible market exchange for hot record labels peddling beautiful and corrupted synth-wave. Having had privileged access to the fine output from Sixth June, the latest addition to Mannequin’s repertoire, your 1980s oversized spectacle wearing 20jazzfunkgreats Wail Street analyst has but one recommendation to make regarding their stock: BUY BUY BUY.

Sixth June – Back for a Day

Their Back For A Day EP is a relentless killstreak of emotional sniping across the ravaged structures of an industrial state surrounded by a psychic iron curtain that no imbalances in trade or shortfalls in productivity could ever bring down. In the title track, a sleek and stripped down italo cyborg that should make Soft Metals feel in good company, they provide an alternative soundtrack for Snake Plissken’s gliding NYC infiltration, if only his mission was not just about death and freedom, but also love.

20jazzfunkgreats don’t get any more emotionally invested on record labels than it is the case with NYC’s finest, IGETRVNG. Matt RVNG reports that they have a new Pink Skull album on the way that is ‘a fucking mind rub’. Any sceptics out there seeking for validation need but go and check out the preliminary EP, Bee Nose (Put Yr Face in), feat. the ‘Paper Rad’ reimagining of a Cthonian god boss fight micro-epic original, and remixes by the mighty Brassica and Ace of Spies.

Pink Skull – Bee Nose (Brassica Remix)

The former keeps it down-tempo and ‘carnivalesque in a Coney Island fucked up dubby way’ in his remix, which is of course happy times for the 20jazzfunkgreats fam, especially when the creepy rasta clown posse slips out from the shadows to do some weird capoeira/kabuki style satanic theatre performance of hypnotic dynamics & unfathomable semiotics.

(Sweet poster by Chris Seddon)

Brassica will be one of the features of 20jazzfunkgreats The Great Escape times at Brighton’s Green Door Store on Thursday. The cosmos will be kept from tipping into darkness by our very favourite Echo Lake. We will be skating the thin line between ying and yang with some cool records. Get down & say hi.

There are some other super bands playing at the festival, not least Gatekeeper, Laurel Halo, Mazes, Prize Pets, Planningtorock and Gang Gang Dance. We’ll be at the front row of all these shows, even if they clash, because we have awesome powers.

If you are in London on Friday, do get down to the ICA for the above, as organised by our very best comrade Ashley Marlowe.

The house dips in and out of the frenzied waters of the late 20^th century property market like the obstinate detritus of a calamitous shipwreck. If you examine its contractual life, you will find a recurring pattern over the decades: property title found in the state of the late A, bequeathed to B, and eventually sold to C. Property title found in the state of the late C, bequeathed to D, eventually sold to E. Rinse and repeat, a vaguely unsettling transactional drone that should prick the ears of anyone listening, like the buzz of a carrion fly crawling over your pillow.

Alas, those who would listen won’t, state agents rewarded for throughput rather than customer satisfaction, oblivious to the preposterous ranting of an old man in a retirement home, the warning notes tremblingly scribbled and stapled to the property title of the house, as it precipitates back into an unwary property market.

What might have happened in the house stays in the house, and connecting the dots between the ‘might’ and the ‘did’ would require some sleuth work that few have the time or patience for.

That is what your 20jazzfunkgreats detective squad is for, and these are some musical insinuations of what happened in the house.

(image by Paul Tragus)

Brassica’s remix of Gareth Cheshire’s Galaxia (out soon in Audio Parallax Recordings) suggests forbidden exchanges between the house’s first owner and mysterious correspondents in mostly mountainous and wild regions of Europe, the southernmost extremes of South America, dishevelled outposts in the boundaries of deadly African deserts.

It rattles like heavy parcels being delivered to the house, and fearful complaints from the couriers that handled them, and neighbouring families soon after, about bad dreams, about strange lights shooting from the house and into the sky, about strange lights shooting from the sky and into the house.

It echoes of disquieting sermons in the local church about those who congress with devils, and act as conduits for a cosmic plague.

It foreshadows the disappearance of the puritan pastor that uttered them, and the finding of his mangled remains in the distant fields.

It screams like he did when the strange lights caught up with him.

It’s such a tune.

Gareth Cheshire – Galaxia (Brassica Remix)

Go to Gareth’s Soundcloud for more superb stuff.

Mirror Mirror’s New Horizons, and their The Society For The Advancement Of Inflammatory Conciousness album were recent and definitive hits in 20jazzfunkgreats’ cultic circle, daring (and having the wisdom) to go beyond the abstraction of many a witchcraft apprentice and budding warlock to articulate in words (rather than chanting) and wonderful 1960s psychedelic tropes the commandments of a post-hippie, pre-new age religion where mystique melds into emotion like the psychic aftermath of a Roman Polanski hallucination. If Krzysztof Komeda’s theme tune for Rosemary’s Baby had had lyrics, Mirror Mirror would have been the ones to summon them from the place whence such subtly satanic things come from.

Which makes it rather meaningful for them to be the next participants in IGETRVNG’s forward thinking mythological FRKWYS series, featuring personnel from Ike Yard and Young Marble Giants amongst others. Nau Sau Ser Bil Uma Rah Rab, which we are leaving with you today, may well be the climax of a mass of impossible colours taking place in the forbidden cave complex which stretches under the house which is the theme for this post, like the roots of a tree made strong by cosmic rays way beyond our puny sun.

Mirror Mirror featuring Stuart Argabright – Nau Sau Ser Bil Uma Rah Rab

Go and get it here

What vinyl platters could wake 20JFG prematurely from its cryogenic slumber in 2010? What repetitive beats could make its unconscious and partially thawed corpse shuffle towards the nearest dancefloor? What warm-hearted heaters could possibly defrost that heart of stone and illuminate that mind of disillusionment? What songs offered comfort when we were sat down and told that our plan to freeze ourselves in search of a better life in the future, had received some major setbacks? In the year that moved at 60 b.p.m, magic at higher tempos shone like the opening ceremony of the Ark of the Covenant.

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2 Dogs In a House - Scream in the Night (posted 25th June)

Echoes of Mr. Fingers drift across prehistorical plains where the proto-wolves wait 10,000 years to devour us.

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Beautiful Swimmers – Big Coast (posted July 5th)

The soundtrack to Streets of Rage 2 as rerecorded by Shriekback whilst holidaying on Easter Island.

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Brassica – New Jam City (posted August 26th)

Prodigious astral boogie 1st heard in the pastel discotheque of Count Ramulus III, Lord of the Vapour Folk (the DJ wouldn’t tell us what it was but we sneaked a look at the label while he was in the toilet).

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Charanjit Singh – Raga Megh Malhar (posted March 31st)

Humanity’s ongoing search for ‘The Future’ in electronic music was called off when it was discovered in the past.

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Cos/Mes – Gozmez Land (posted November 4th)

A luscious trip into the humid rainforests of Selza-G where the indigenous folk speak only a percussive language based on distant Gamelan mythology.

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Crystal Ark – The City Never Sleeps (posted March 22nd)

This is what happened when you dropped the schematic for that trans-dimensional love-canon on your visit to the druid camp.

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Crystal Ark – The Tangible Presence of the Miraculous (posted November 16th)

This is what happened when they worked out how to build it.

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DJ Nate – Make Em Run (posted July 6th)

Planet Mu gave the Europe a 4-part lesson in how they do things in Juke-Town. From Ramellzian voyages into unchartered arrangements by the younger generation, to telepathic hyperspeed bangers from the seasoned vets – each part served to further bend our stiff upper lips and get that booty shaking like it was Mecha-Godzilla being throttled by King Kong.

DJ Roc – Phantom Call (posted September 22nd)

DJ Rashad – Teknitianz (posted September 16th)

DJ Elmoe – Whea Yo Ghost at Whea Yo Dead Man (posted June 22nd)

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Hunt with a cat – Wrapped in Rope (posted August 13th)

Gary Wallace (Anthony Michael Hall) and his best friend, Wyatt Donnelly (Ilan Mitchell-Smith), are 15-year-old nerds with low social standing at their Shermer, Illinois high school. During a weekend at Wyatt’s house in which his parents are out of town they came up with ‘Hunt With a Cat’, the finest mechanoid basement-acid act in the land.

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Hyetal – Phoenix (New Post)

Between two stratosphere piercing peaks lies a valley shrouded in a synthetic mist: atmospheric and portentous.  Still, no amount of scene setting can quite prepare you for the majesty of those two peaks. “Last song of the night”-of-the-year.

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Hyetal & Shortstuff – Ice Cream (posted January 26th)

Pitch bended celestial ballroom music so good, just hearing the opening takes us five years into the future whereupon we chance on a dank basement club, hear the first few chords of Ice Cream and levitate.

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Jonathan Kusuma – Days are Numbered (posted August 27th)

One of many awesome transmissions from Indonesia this year via Space Recs.  Kusuma opening in a baroque fashion with a mile long procession towards a dark and foreboding tower…before storming it in thunderous style.

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JR Seaton – Azklementyne (12′ mix) (posted August 5th)

The 20JFG specification document genre known as ‘Beatnik Beats’ was created especially for this blazed out intellectual battle of wits between Lil Louis and Artie Shaw.

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Malvoeaux- Targets (posted July 5th)

The moment in Tron:Reloaded where Daft Punk finally remove those helmets to reveal thier unspeakable Teuthidian faces.

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Pagan Future – Ancient Ritual (posted October 15th)

Delicate images from the insecure formation of techno preserved at a lower bpm for us to greater appreciate their beauty.

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Protect-U – Double Rainbow (posted June 10th)

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain, where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies.

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Rocha- Hands of Love (Fingers of Sand) (Gatto Fritto’s Menorcan Nightmare Version) (posted March 22nd)

This is what hell wants you to think it sounds like down there, so that you will spend your life robbing banks and not helping old ladies across the road.

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Steve Moore – Zero Point Field (posted october 13th)

This is what it felt like to be the LHC in the moments leading up to the first collision.

OR

It has long been speculated that the observed periodic radial velocity pattern for the K giant Pollux might be explained in terms of an orbiting planetary companion. We have collected 80 high-resolution spectra for Pollux at Lick Observatory yielding precise radial velocities with a mean error of 3.8 m s^-1, providing the most comprehensive and precise data set available for this star. Our data confirm the periodicity previously seen in the radial velocities. We derive a period of 589.7+/-3.5 days and, assuming a primary mass of 1.86 M_solar, a minimum companion mass of 2.9+/-0.3M_Jup, consistent with earlier determinations.

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Valis- Exegisis (posted May 9th)

A 13 piece uniformed funk band named Cameo raided a Government building in 1984. Only 3 of them made it out alive, so they moved to Essex and renamed themselves Nitzer Ebb.

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December 21st 2209AD

Only 4 days til Biebermas and I’m so super excited! We learnt some more about the true meanings of the festival at Sunday school today. They said that many hundreds of years ago, before the coming of J Biebz, some of the world celebrated a Pagan festival named X-mas around this time of year. But in 2010 AD a record company, realising the success of the J Beibz x 800% Internet meme, slowed his follow-up single down by a factor of infinity. The resulting meme was so transcendentally beautiful, that anyone who heard it became entranced, rejecting their currently held beliefs and hailing J Biebz as the prophet and saviour to guide us into blinding light of the eternal rapture. Even the cynics and atheists began to believe.

Now, every year on this date we celebrate the passing of one sixteenth beat from the eternal holy song that the messiah named ‘Baby’, and every 32 years we welcome in the beginning of a new kick drum. The priests say that in a few years, on bar 16, J Beibz will come in and we will finally hear the sweet voice of god. The prophecy also says that just before the middle 8, someone has left a Soundcloud comment containing the physical form of J Beibz, and upon its arrival we will learn the meaning of the universe from his divine teachings.

Wow, I’d really like to be around to see that, but they say it’s not going to happen for another thousand years at least. Anyway, my mum says I should go to bed now but tomorrow I’m going to write all my Biebermas cards and help mum wrap all the presents.

December 31st 2212AD

OMG so psyched!! Today is the last day of bar 15, at twelve midnight we will move into bar 16 and finally hear the sublime voice of J Biebz, supreme master of all things good and right in the cosmos. Dad has gone out with rest of the guys from the university to try and record the voice of god. He said that they are going to analyse the recording in the hope of solving some of the mysteries of life. I can’t wait!!!!

January 1st 2213AD

I’m so upset I can barely write. Dad just came home, he looked like he had seen a ghost. We all heard his voice, it was soooo beautifal, but dad said they ran some tests on the recordings that they made, he said they sped up the recording and what we heard was not the voice of J Biebz at all, and what humanity had been listening to for the last 200 years was not the divine and eternal sonic continuum of ‘Baby’, but actually a Sigor Ros album played back at normal speed. Our world is in tatters, our beliefs were based on an elaborate hoax!! Who will lead us now from temptation, J Beibz was just a regular teenager like me. I don’t think I can write any more today :-(

Q. Who could possibly be qualified enough to mould the drifting dunes of Psychic Ills epic ‘Mantis’ into a dancefloor?

Psychic Ills – Mantis (Juan Atkins remix)

This is indeed a true honour. Those high minded folk at RVNG have curated an astonishing EP of Psychic Ill’s collaborations with legends of the kindred fall including Hans-Joachim Irmler and Gibby Haynes. Here Juan Atkins picks up the Jodorowsky burn of the orignal’s creeping guitar embers and scatters them across a cinereal landscape, where the debris of a dead robotics industry reactivates to throw warehouse parties in abandoned factories in order that they may amalgamate with the souls of their human guests. Just you wait for that breakdown……

Pre-order it here.

Those high minded folk at Nocturnes have had the foresight to release a new Brassica record.

Brassica – New Jam City

If we slowed down Justin Bieber by 800%, taped over him with a bunch of astral boogie which is made out of a D Train record slowed down by 300%, added some reverb and false harmonics then taped over the whole thing with Sigur Ros and then smashed up the tape, would it sound anywhere near as good as ‘New Jam City’? No it would not. There is not a software in the world that can fabricate Brassica’s warmth, attention to detail and melodic kinship, and we doubt there ever will be.

Pre order here. Nocturnes are also putting on a special party this Friday in London containing many 20jfg faves including half of Gatto Fritto, Ali Renault, Moscow and JR Seaton – check the Facebook event here.

Patience, patience dear reader, there are so many things you could do in 20 minutes, you could capture the secrets of the Zeitgeist in your feeble fist, like an ephemeral firefly whose wings are loaded with the power of the now, indeed, you could skim the surf bubbling at the top of the wave before precipitating into the oblivion of the forgotten.

Or you could stay with me, sit in that noble chair over there and listen to Year After (Entering Into Nothing) with the utmost concentration, for the 20 minutes that it lasts, watch layer after layer of beautiful freeform cha-boogie melody and rhythm mingling in the air like specks of diamond dust, sinuous tributaries converging into a golden river which is a piano which is the beginning of dawn, that moment when, through an uncanny alchemy, the darkest night breaks into day.

Because it is then when the music bursts with the utopian zest of the Boredoms at the apex of their psychedelic glory. This is the progressive answer to Juan MacLean’s Happy House, and the song that Lindstrom and Prins Thomas didn’t have space to fit into their last album. It is incredible.

Have patience, it will be worth it.

Iblis Kotor- Year After (Entering Into Nothing) (feat. Anes Guo)

Iblis Kotor’s Year After (Entering Into Nothing) is included in the latest release by Indonesia’s most awesome Space Rec.

O Brassica, through which deft exercise of the dark arts do you tap into the ebbing and flowing recesses of 20Jazzfunkgreats dark imagination? You have invaded our nights with invisible terrors, feline eyes glaring from the murky space beyond a door ajar, you have transformed our Cold Pumas into satanic titans lashing in the corridors of a concrete bunker, what now, we ask?

Well, you speed out the tempo and quote Goblin at their coke-addled most euphoric best, Discocross rather than Suspiria, you have produced an undead synth-boogie anthem for mysterious cat-people to breakdance to in the back alleys of the decaying metropolis, and a candidate for the soundtrack for Marathon Man if it had been directed by John Carpenter, we surrender, what next, what next?

Brassica- Venom Season

Venom Season is included in a record soon to be released by Nocturnes.

And as promised, here you have the mixtape that Teeth of the Sea have put together for us in order to celebrate the launch of Hypnoticon Viva, their new 12”. I am listening to the record  (which you can, for example, fetch here), 2 minutes into the title track and a simmering halo of progressive power has already started to take form around the turntable, unspeakable forces peek from the other side. What can I say that Julian Cope hasn’t?

Check out the mixtape: Fly like Jodorowsky, Kick like Peckinpah. That’s the way it’s done.

Teeth of the Sea 20JFG mixtape

0.Angry Bob: Intro
1. Eroc: Greenhouse Effect
2.Oneida: All Arounder
3.Dirty Filthy Mudd: Forest Of Black
4.Big Business:Another Fourth of July…Ruined
5.Skyramps:Flight Simulator
6.Bongwater:Nick Cave Dolls
7.This Heat: S.P.Q.R.
8.Venus Gang: Cosmic Daddy
9.Reichmann: Wunderbarr
10. Keith Fullerton Whitman: Schnee
11. Hygrades: In The Jungle
12.Crom: The Gathering
13. Medieval Steel: Medieval Steel
14.Underworld: To Heal

However, it seems the surrounding wistful revivalism has already begun to move on and retreat.  The need is there, but the hyper-deflated concentration of ‘tastemakers’ has again flicked the grand musical randomiser and thundered off.  As the tide retreats and Juno’s weekly ‘Disco’ email list gets thinner, we’re left with rare gems embedded in the sand.  The sounds of Chicago beckoning our nascent Knuckles.  Indeed, it was a bunch of those meddling ‘indie kids’ that brought Jamie Principle back to teenagers dancefloors this year (but that’s for another post).

Thankfully, we still have those that care sticking around, those that never left (which Italo revival are we on now?) and those that never cared much for email lists, record store dividers or iTunes genre tags. Time then, to climb aboard the enduring arpeggiation of our peers, and let it take us on a journey through the ecstatic syncopation explorations of 09.

Acid Washed – General Motors, Detroit, America – Frankie Knuckles found out where I live, if only I can reach the light switch in time.

Azari & III – Hungry for the power – Vocannibal House for night walkers.

Black Meteoric Star – Self Titled – A foggy encapsulation of an analogue intelligence.  Brutality in a glove of tape hiss.

Bottin – Horror Disco – Giorgio turns out to Satan, but fear dissipates when you realise he looks like Ned Flanders in a devil costume. Italians most definitely do it better.

Den Haan – Release the beast – The sound of primeval creatures arguing about mathematical equations.

Desire – Under Your Spell – Phil Spector hits the Gallery, all guns blazing. Poetic, slow motion carnage ensues.

Holy Ghost – I Will Come Back – Monstrous Italo hooks pose a threat to the 20jfg hive mind by entirely dominating its synapses.

In Flagranti – Brash and Vulgar – The creepy science teacher left a cassette in your desk. As you watch him being bundled into the police car, you feel strangely aroused.

Joakim – Milky Ways – There’s something strangely messianical about your new employee, the ‘Colin’ name badge you gave him now reads ‘he can do no wrong’.

The Juan Maclean – The Future Will Come – RIP Jerry Fuchs.  See why.

Lindstrøm & Christabelle – Real Life Is No Cool – Making Kosmische-Funk acceptable. Actually, making it pretty awesome.

Mutant Beat Dance – In a Daze – Beautifully deranged vocal house from the villa of our beloved Discos Capablanca, also one of the best intros of 09 IOHO.

Pictureplane – Dark Rift – A Euro-Trance tape run through a disintegrating deck, one hand slowing the motor until the air is turned to crystal.

Professor Genius – Heaven Sent – The speakers in the Delorian emanate further saw-wave broadcasts from the pulsating mind of the professor.

Silver Columns – Brow Beaten – We bow to Pinglewood‘s description: “this song sounds like Jimmy Somerville playing Mario Kart and that can only be a good thing.”

Slava – Dreaming Tiger – Jean-Luc Ponty goes on a 3 day bender and the results are stunningly somniferous.

Sorcerer – Chemise (Neon Lenon) – On constant rotation in the 20jfg jacuzzi room whilst we platonically scrub each others backs.

Subway – Xam – Any piece of dance music where the drums don’t come in until 4 and a half minutes, is always going to blow us away.

From Disco to House with the click of a mouse, whilst the production rate of original tracks seemed to falter somewhat, picking a re-edit from 09 is something akin to selecting the favourite molecule in your body. We don’t dare tell you where ours is, only that we called him Goliath. Back in summer, whilst we were coolin’ out in the blood filled hot-tub with our reptilian honeyz, Ze Records unleashed a selection of reassemblages old and new from their vaults. Most were of the highest order, so for those of you out there trapped in the frosty void, with the delerium of summer a faded half-concept that you cannot attribute to memory or imagination, we present an assurance that it was in fact, real.

Gichy Dans Beachwood no 9 – On a Day Like Today (Todd Terje friendly children edit)

As is traditional, Todd amputates the songsmithery of the original to reveal a delightful refrain of innocents. They circle you, hands held, whilst the pagan lord lights the tinder piled at your feet, to incite a most rapturous of combustions.

Terminal Twilight are so happening. Snow swirls outside the windows of the 20JFG demesne as the crystal fractals of ‘The Lovers’ begin to spread their own special brand of frosty magic all across the lounge. This is sparse soulful minimalism at its lethargic best, up there with the sweet android power ballads of our Italian comrades- think Chris and Cosey on a walkabout across strange rooms shrouded in layer after layer of scented mist, past which a confederation of strange shadows lurk- desires, questions, the id of the princess trapped in the heights of an ivory tower rising over the smog of orange LA vistas, this is a tunnel connecting it all, get strutting.

Terminal Twilight- The Lovers

The Terminal Twilight 12” is coming out on the 18th of January. You can pre-order it here.

Deliberately omitted from the list above so we could write some extended gush in the space below are Pink Stallone. These purveyors of the loose wowed us in 09, and although the ‘hotly tipped’ label is both gift and curse, we received subconcious transmissions from the dancefloors of ’010 telling us they were aching for their future wax. The memory of the aggregator is already nearing capacity with their data, so we push for joyous overload with exclusive mix.

Pink Stallone – 20jfg Mixtape

Recorded live at the reception of our unholy union to the cold blooded chicks of the summer, we lost the scroll containing the tracklist after a scuffle broke out between one of us and a rather unconvincing man in a lizard costume, who turned up claiming to be one of their husbands. We don’t have to tell you who won, cus our scalez is real. The scroll has been fedexed to us so if you’re hungry for the knowledge check back on this post in a few days.

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Something that will not be continuing in ’010 is the covert operations of Dissident Records. Their vinyl-only idealism brought us a myriad of vintage dance activists including Gatto Fritto, Ali Renault and Casionova amongst others. But sadly there’s little means to facilitate the more wanton aspects of human nature in ideal ideologies. As such, their purity of vision in a zero attention-span digital world may well have spelled their demise.

Let’s strut for a trip down memory lane on how this awesome label fed into the hallucinations of 20jazzfunkgreats, in case you didn’t catch them the first time around. Listen, shed a tear, crack your knuckles and follow their example. And go to Juno and scope the vinyl, because it has a price, but it’s priceless:

Binary Chaffinch- Guitar Shaped Heart

Brassica-The Centre

The Off-Key Hat-Emergency Calling

The Off-Key Hat- This is not…

Photonz- Shaboo (Andy’s Edit)

We pay our respects to the dearly departed, and wish our man Andy Blake the best of luck with his future projects. One of which being the World Unknown party in Brixton tonight.

Exciting times lie ahead for members of this fair MP3-zine. Along with our cohorts in 13monsters we’re on the verge of launching our new record label: Hungry For Power.

Our first release comes straight from the howling shores of Brighton beach where remorseless waves of guitars crash ceaselessly against the yelping pebbles. We first saw Cold Pumas support Ponytail in March (the 6th gig they ever played) and were smitten. Their support slot with Mi Ami (their 8th gig) saw consensus reached and plans made. And so here we are, with artwork by the esteemed Mr James Hines and remixes by débutante Murlo and 20JFG fave Brassica.

Jela opens the 12″ with it’s velvet gloved metronomic beat hurtling along hand in hand with a delirious wail of guitars. Vocals appear all around, loud but indistinct, like a hazy blood ritual seen through the drugged eyes of it’s victim. Then it shifts again. Anchored by the eternal kickdrum, we’re off to Suicide out of control at 45rpm supporting Glen Branca as the drum flings us aside once more until we ascend and allow the whole thing to come to a cacophonous close. This is ‘the hit’.

Jela has been blogged many times before (because it’s great!) including here, here and here but I think in this case we’ll make an exception to the usual policy of ‘first’ and post it again…

Cold Pumas – Jela

Brassica’s remix closes the 12″ with a giallo synth flourish. Taking on the other Cold Puma track on the A-side, A Tempting Haunt, Brassica bends the track’s sad refrain into a John Carpenter fever dream. A theme tune to dimensional rips and nameless horrors witnessed by muscular existential heroes contemplating the end of empire. Italo left to grow feral in the abandoned discotheques of an eastern European industrial quarter. Ghostly warnings lost in static.

Cold Pumas – A Tempting Haunt (Brassica remix)

The Cold Pumas 12″ will be available at select UK record stores from Monday (5/9/09) as well as from the Hungry For Power webstore.

As a bonus we’ve discounted the pre-order until Sunday at midnight (4/9/09). We’ll also be shipping internationally from the webstore so that should just about cover everyone.

Thomas de Quincey

‘Levana and our Three Ladies of Sorrow’

Suspiria de Profundis

Brassica’s latest, The Centre, is rave music thumping in a negative astral plane of shadows which are crow’s wings taking flight and ink spilling into ominous shapes at the bottom of a white folio, heavy italo disco inhabited by half-glimpsed nightmares and agate-eyed cat people. Synths slash and rhythms pound, just when you thought things couldn’t get any better the house band of undead bikers deliver a solo which is the scream of agonising souls being sucked into fiery jack’s private pit for an eternity of fire sweat and brimstone, careful least the silver chain tying you to reality be snapped by frothing Cerberus jaws and you be forever lost in this land of delirium, if only.

Brassica-The Centre

It had to be Dissident.

The tar melts under the obscene wheels of Indian Jewelry’s ghastly cavalcade, flowers whither and the sun turns red, they have been polishing the machetes with which they hack, slash and rip across the thin sheets of reality in a mesmerising seven armed dance, breathing fire and spitting blood, Zing Zang might be the most powerful demonstration of their dark art yet, music for an anti-natutal eclipse which pounds like the heart of  Gang Gang Dance’s evil twisted sister, that whose room is covered in Throbbing Gristle’s totemic paraphernalia. The dead are coming back to life, and they are devouring the souls of the living, we repeat, they are devouring the souls. What a mess, our kind of mess.

Indian Jewelry- Zing Zang

This is included in Indian Jewelry’s split with Future Blondes.

Aside from the fact that opting to translate a Slayer song into Italian and letting a computer do all the talking will always be in our books incredibly rad, Ballo dei Morti is awesome for evoking so beautifully in our minds the penultimate moments in which a hapless, nerve wracked female grid co-coordinator floats quivering through luminescent chrome corridors, reflecting her image back at her from all angles making her feel haunted by her own visage which slowly and steadily twists more and more with the realization that she’s helplessly traveling towards something unspeakably terrible that has so far remained unseen, except for the odd passing glimmer in the electronic glow that decorates and soaks everything, a phantom force without face, but only blood soaked calling cards left strewn around the ship, that now beckons and pulls with hypnotic allure, the sound of a robotic incantation that draws in closer and closer.

Brassica- Ballo dei Morti

As we sit back and let them wash over us and probe our collective brains, the futuristic-sounds-by-way-of-the-movies-made-in-the-80s-about-the-future that sadly for us all prophesied an intensely more glamorous 21st century we have yet to exist in, we can’t help but wander that when the brains behind Savage Fantasy concocted the glitzy synthcrusher cruise of Sunset King Theme he closed his eyes and imagined the broken streets of his stomping ground, Los Angeles, as a seedy wasteland of cyborg sex and scarred hustlers in black lipstick and Grace Jones attire sinking into a cesspit of sleaze in the face of an ultimate impending doom darting and dodging gargantuan robotic juggernauts programmed by the shadowy types from above to patrol the streets with lethal iron fists, a future I think we should all fully endorse if it happens to sound this good.

Savage Fantasy – Sunset Kings Theme

Rose for Bohdan sound like field recordings of some utterly deranged party on a derelict basement of walls covered with revolutionary hyerogliphs out of which everyone comes out purified and more intelligent the morning after. They sound like Sonic Youth fighting for their lives against a horde of undead noise vermin in a customised cadillac scrapyard at the very bottom of Death Valley 69. They sound like Nation of Ulysses burrowing through a vietcong style maze built deep under a Metropolis of lies, reaching the light at the end of the tunnel, an illuminated place whose walls tremble uncertain under the fury of the bombardment, there is a wooden box in the middle of the room, open it, inside, a chainsaw.

Alas, they are no more and we shall miss them, but they are going out with a bang, ‘There it is, The Creeping Moral Decay of the Past Thousand Years’ is their farewell album, which shall be released on cdr by Realicide Youth. For now, you can go here to download it in its entirity at whatever bitrate you want, it is a labour of love but donations are welcome. So, what are you waiting for, spread the word, get active, get real.

Rose for Bohdan-Insideterior