Copy’s Hard Dream, out soon in Audio Dregs sounds like several three-dimensional astral planes intersecting in a cube whose faces reflect visions of rapture for the readearship of das 20Jazzfunkgreats.

If you manipulate this glimmering artefact in your holo-deck, you will hear Faberge bleep music devised by that doppelganger of Wendy Carlos that was raised in the school of Soma knocks, the soundtrack for Tour de France as ran in a behemoth IBM mainframe (super-pixelated dots racing across geographical schemata), crunk for M.I.T. postgrad students and hair metal to head bang to at NASA’s Aerodynamics department away-day. Even hallucinations of a Halo mod where every hit of the gravity hammer sows the seeds of a fractal tree growing at hyper-accelerated speeds to connect galaxies, thus making spaceflight obsolete… it is happening soon.

And it surely is something.

Copy- Something

Former Ghosts Fleurs’ collected snapshots of the aftermath of a romantic holocaust brought about by Skynet’s existential spawn, degraded into sepia and subtly overlaid onto your perceptual system before it all happens. As such, it was one of last year’s best albums.

Upset the Rhythm have kindly shared with us a promotional device containing ‘New Love’, their new album which shall be released on November the 9th, and it is once again great, updating the timeless angst of the cold wave diaspora without resorting to its conventional tropes. Instead they salvage the construction site whence Magnetic Fields (and even the Postal Service) sourced the materials for their electropop escapades, and use them to build an equivocal edifice, depending on the angle you look from it will resemble a factory, a cathedral or a Panorama-style discotheque (admittedly, a cathedral of sorts).

Like the House of Leaves, it’s measurements don’t add up, perhaps because the available instruments stop operating when certain configurations of  pitch and melody coincide, opening a escape hatch into limbo. This is where Former Ghosts soar, in the eye of a polar hurricane of longing and regret, like an ethereal, emaciated shadow of Cold Cave’s soul cyborg.

Former Ghosts- New Orleans

We shall be sharing with you other nutritious morsels from UTR’s menu of future goodness in the coming weeks.

Upset the Rhythm prevail a bastion of goodness in the midst of the turbulent winds agitating the modern music industry. They have stuck to their guns, releasing one unforgettable gem after the other, in coloured vinyl too. Their success is a testament to what one can achieve with taste, principles, attitude, love and niceness, and sets an example of the way forward for record labels all over. Here you have glimpses of their latest exercises in awesomeness, as well as an excelent mixtape that Chris has kindly put together for us. Enjoy!

We knew from day one that Gentle Friendly were destined for greatness. Behold Lover’s Rock, included in Ride Slow, a majestic torch song cutting through the confusion of a Sunday morning with ice in the streets and no coffee in the kitchen. They stomp forward with the gusto of motown spectres, while their heavenly melodies make us think of Spiritualised before Jason Pierce floated away in his howling castle. They share with Arthur Russell that subtle and intimate psychedelic spirit which seeks to animate rather than annihilate reality. Which is what we need right now.

Gentle Friendly- Lovers Rock

Former Ghosts is the super-group that brings together Jamie Stewart from Xiu Xiu, Nika Roza of Zola Jesus and Freddy Rupert from This Song Is A Mess But So Am I. The Bull and the Ram, featured in ‘Fleur’, are sparkles of the bonfire where cold wave consumes in slow and painful motion. From its ashes surges into the night sky a beautiful phoenix, like that dove soaring across industrial towers with Batty’s death at the end of Bladerunner.

Think of Einsturzende Neubauten’s mechanical insects burrowing across the honey-laden corridors of Vangelis’ synthetic hive, and you will be thinking of the glorious edifice that Former Ghosts have built.

Former Ghosts- The Bull and the Ram

Upset the Rhythm Mixtape

Tracklist:

1. PLUG – Fresh Pleasures

2. BIRD NAMES – Natural Weeds

3. HARTLEY C WHITE – Welcome Back To Reality

4. KIT – Cure Light Wounds

5. US GIRLS – Red Ford Radio

6. COLD PUMAS – Peaches

7. TORO Y MOI – Fax Shadow

8. FORMER GHOSTS – Aria Of The Bell

9. NO BABIES – Tanuki (Mix 1)

10. TRASH KIT – Sun Spots

11. THE STICKS – One And The Same

12. SANDCRABS – Mumble B. Peg

13. BRILLIANT CITIES – English Cities

14. DARK MEAT – Yonderin’

15. PSYCHIC REALITY – Foxey

16. GIRLS WITH ATTITUDE – Don’t Judge Me

17. WILD NOTHING – Live In Dreams

18. LESLIE FLINT – Possessed by Oscar Wilde (Recorded in London 02.05.1957)

We are celebrating Upset The Rhytm’s US tour with a bunch of glorious exclusives from artists that shall be participating in the jaunty shindig, beautiful stuff and much much love to Chris, Claire and Brian ‘tunes’ Miller. Remember:

This Friday (3rd July): New York at Monster Island Basement

Saturday 11th July: Los Angeles at the Smell

Sunday 12th of July: San Francisco at the LAB

Check here for more info, and for Christ’s sake, DON’T MISS OUT and TAKE MUCH LOVE TO THE SHOWS.

We begin with the High Places-related The Urxed. Gardening After Dark is like listening to Technotronic while playing hide n seek across blooming forests illuminated  by Japanese lanterns, stop for a second and you will see the pale ghosts of dead children beholding your game from the distance with a smile in their thin lips. Eerie fun is where it’s at, if you don’t believe me go and ask Calvin Johnson.

The Urxed- Gardening at Night

Lucky Dragon make deceivingly intense transcendentalist gamelan music which burrows a hole under your ribcage, slides across layers of flesh, fat and muscle without rupturing a single blood vessel and reach a cowering heart they proceed to massage with delicate and slender fingers. Moments of breathless warmth ensue. Aww.

Lucky Dragons- Open Melody

Former Ghosts are people from Xiu Xiu, This Song Is A Mess But So Am I, & Zola Jesus. The term haunted balladry gets hurled around with too much abandon in modern music journalism, but these people really do own it, and then some. If you have sat in your bedroom surrounded by the machinery of a world which continues operating furiously ignorant of your suffering, and then looked up to see a crack in the clouds through which a wisp of sun shines for a second, to make everything even more painful, then you know what I mean. Cheree Cheree.

Former Ghosts-Us and Now

Oh, btw we have opened one of those Twitter things. Follow us for brief insights into the hive mind of the 20JFG massive, and perhaps some goodies too.