We have been anticipating this moment for a while: new HEALTH album, ‘Get Color’, which you can pre-order now from always ace Lovepump United.

So what does it do? it lures you inside the bedroom, closes the door and hacks at you with razor blades. It pumps you with psychedelic drugs and throws you into a pool full of sharks. It is hardcore body music on the prowl, engineered by instinct in a brutally abstract way,  hit & run of  rhythm, noise and drone melody shards fracturing your field of vision, primary colours seep through the cracks. Oil on water, a feeling of sexy oppression, forlorn love letters written in a cryptic code from the same jacking basement where My Bloody Valentine and Daft Punk create the thickest music from the weirdest materials. Candidate to album of the year? We are so there.

HEALTH- Eat Flesh

Little Claw have a new album out, it is called Human Taste and it seethes with yummy sweaty country nastiness. It’s all about fierce urges, craving and stomping down twisted and dusty paths. It reminds me of the following apocryphal story: there was this girl pop band who were tipped up to be the hottest thing in the air-waves, you know, proper Phil Spector material. Their van broke down in the derelict backwaters of most primeval Appalachia while they were out on tour, and they were never seen again. Some say that they roamed in the wilderness, filthy and starved, and at some point, under a furious storm that uprooted trees and chipped the sides of the hills, they got the feral blues. So they played under the gaze of mangy wild dogs and stern birds of prey, covered in mud and blood, they played with the fury of those who play for wild dogs and birds of prey and the moon gazing from between a shroud of storm clouds. They sounded a little bit like this.

Little Claw- Colors you Drown

Oh, and just so you know, Dazed & Confused Online have a blog awards, and 20jfg is in the music category (shame there wasn’t an occult one) alongside our best pals Allez Allez and some other great blogs.

Place your votes HERE, and spread the word!

Ah, and vote Obama kids.

Strange monuments rise in recondite summits of the misty forests of Oregon, deformed totems of screaming wood stretch their arms towards an indifferent sky from the bald and grey hills where they stand, surrounded by rocks arranged in bizarre configurations. These eerily silent places are avoided by the wary locals, and on the rare occasions when a squad of DEA agents tread across them on their search for Marihuana plantations you can hear the dogs whimper and become uncharacteristically shy, the virile banter of the rugged lawmen fades into an unsettled quiet, they will joke about it in the bar tonight, after a couple of beers, but next time a bust is organised in the area, they will do everything they can to get off the shift.

That is no place to go, a few hunters slid into the thick forests never to be seen again, or to reappear pale-faced, rambling about the sight of a little barefoot girl in a white dress walking between the trees in the distance, her face always turned back, her slender silhouette somehow out of focus. A bad omen, if you ask Old Joe who runs a convenience store in the outskirts of this wild area. If you are patient with the old man as he spins his yarn, he might tell you about that time when some rocker types from New York City went into the forests, they were up to no good, they had heard about the legends surrounding this area at some happening, and had decided to check it out while touring the West Coast. They were all pale and emaciated, dressed in black, sunglasses and hip talk, the works. They walked into the forest carrying some bottles of cheap wine and laughing, the sun went down and a pale and gibbous moon rose in the black sky where constellations shimmered with a portentous and cryptic message.

They didn’t show up until the morning. Old Joe would swear that at least one of them was missing, and that he spotted some red stains caked in the cheek of another, as he shuffled for change to buy cigarettes.

Some time afterwards, those rockers made a song called Sister Ray, and rumour has that it was inspired by what went on in the forests that night, by their rendezvous with a little girl dressed in white whose face is always turned back, whose fingers are forever covered in blood.

Little Claw have also met that girl, look into the heart of darkness of the drone which infects their last Siltbreeze single like some sickly organic growth, and you will find her there, terrible and lonely, not staring at you. A bad omen, but one we want to hear.

Little Claw- Feeding You

We were having a drink at the pub last Halloween when the conversation turned, as one would expect, to ghost stories. You couldn’t think of a less suitable time and venue for such discussion, surrounded as we were by drunken lads with fake butcher knives hanging from their heads (if only those were real!), and obnoxious lasses in garish diabolique outfits. Alas, we tried to make the most of the situation, subsequent pints dulling the awareness of our surroundings, so Jake started telling us an apocryphal story about a street that we all know, ‘Thadeus’ straits’, a back alley in the olden lanes which slides like an oh so thin blade between the looming, forever threatening to collapse, ribs of the old and damp colonial buildings. So Jake told us, in a rather slurring way, that his street derives its name from one Thadeus Bruce, adventurous sailor and occasional pirate who had his residence there. He was one of those unsung proletariats of corsairdom who never arrived home carrying a trove of riches, and seemed to enrol in his trips to the Caribbean to ward off boredom and escape from the overbearing presence of his wife, one screaming Mary Bruce, more than anything else.

Well, apparently Thadeus returned on the Winter of 1752 from his last excursion in a mood less jolly than usual, and Mary didn’t seem to have been the cause. Upon knocking on the door of his house, Mary thought that it was a revenant that stood tall outside the door, eyes staring intense from the fathomless black pits, hollowed ridges surfacing into emaciated jowls which sank under the bristling beard like a drowning shape in the furious sea.

Thadeus barely abandoned the house after his arrival, the punters down at ‘The Spread Seagull’ wondered about what had happened, and wished he was sharing a pint with them and extolling the virtues of adventures in exotic and far-away places. Mary did reveal snippets of his ordeal at the market, from such trinkets the gossipy women pieced together the story of how Thadeus’ ship had crashed against the rocky shores of an uncharted island, a site of obscene geometry where things that shouldn’t be mentioned occurred. Suffice to say that less men left the island than those who had landed in it, seven big sailors crammed in a frail launch which had survived the shipwreck, all of them yelping screaming and crying save for Thadeus silent in the midst of the pandemonium, holding under his jacket a book he had brought from that terrible place. Ever since his arrival he had been locked in the attic of the house reading and researching, quite a transformation for an individual not particularly renowned for his scholarly inclinations.

But this was only the beginning, not a long time after Thadeus’ return, a string of children disappearances began, rumours spread about a conspiracy of slavers who took such little ones to the colonies, and sold them there. The masons were of course also mentioned. But no-one listened to Jebediah, one of the town’s least articulate drunks, when he muttered delirious about long shadows stretching and spreading strange across the quiet lanes, two milky orbs tittering like leprous will o’ the wisps over a white bundle advancing rapid in the darkness, the whole indescribable bubbling stream of slippery shadows climbing up a wall and spilling inside the window of one of the houses there, this the same night when a babe was abducted from the Joneses. And so the children kept vanishing into the night, and every day Mary Bruce looked paler and more distressed during her quick errands into the market, and least willing to trade jokes with the loud-mouthed porters and cheeky urchins. She seemed to have aged years in the past few weeks, and when her friends asked her about Thadeus she frowned horribly, as if a bloated and slimy rat had scurried down her throat. Only with Father Corden did she talk, and when she abandoned the confessional of St Patrick’s Church, he looked at her vanish small into the light outside, and then at the figure of Christ agonising in his cross over the altar, and one would have thought that, for the time first ever, there was a hint of hopelessness, or even spite, in the eyes of this devout priest.

It was with the 15th disappearance that the town finally exploded in a riot, and fires burned in the streets, cellars were searched and strangers cornered against the walls, but no evidence of the whereabouts of the children was found. As these events unfolded, Father Corden paid a visit to some burguers uptown, and serious things were discussed over copious amounts of brandy. Later that night a group of men disembarked from a carriage at the end of the Laines, and walked with grim faces towards the Bruces’ house, where they smashed the door down with an iron ram. Of what happened there, Jebediah was the only witness. He heard screaming inside the house, Mary Bruce howling and whimpering, and perhaps even the sound of a gun detonating, and then he saw it, through the window in the attic, and what he saw he would never forget, and very few would believe. He saw the face of what one day was Thadeus Bruce against the window, eyes glaucous deep set inside skin white and tattered like rotting parchment, his jaw wide open spilling a sea of black vomit, the thick pulsating body of perhaps a snake, but then snakes don’t shimmer in the air, or spread their sickly tendrils like grotesque branches from a putrefied tree, snakes don’t have white milky eyes like leprous will o’ the wisps, twin abysses which upon being beheld should surely vanquish one’s mind into madness, or thankful oblivion.

This is what happened to Jebediah, when he woke up in the morning, he saw a crowd congregating outside the charred remains of the Bruces’ house.

The men responsible for this deed never spoke of what took place inside the house, of the pile of little bones accumulating in a corner of the attic, or of what stood by the window, wings spread like an unholy angel, of the stench of that blasphemous book as it burned, of the diary covered in feeble scribblings where Thadeus Bruce described what had happened in that uncharted island somewhere in the midst of the Atlantic, the diary where he spoke of the thing that he had brought back from there, inside of him.

No more disappearances were recorded after that, but some say that on certain nights, when you walk lonely down ‘Thadeus’ Straits’, you can feel the murky shadows around you, particularly behind you, become somehow more solid, and change shapes subtly in ways that no configuration of lights should produce, and in the quiet you can almost hear children crying, far away in the distance.

The USA is a Monster- Ice Bridge

The USA is a Monster are back from some black hole of true zenta energy, carrying powerful spells of eerie psychedelic beauty in their medicine bag, we have missed their Goblin spinning in the midst of a ghost dance hurricane vibes. Get Space Programs from Load Records.

The text above contains substantial rip-offs from Arthur Machen and H.P. Lovecraft. Guess which ones and get some gifts straight from the mouth of madness.

STUFF: 13 MONSTERS NOVEMBER- SCARIER THAN CLOWNS

We have a post-halloween thing going at the next 13M. We are putting the Monsters back into 13 Monsters. And dancing like crazy. You know the score, don’t miss out.

The Loft (formerly Enigma) at Ship Street, 11-3AM, £5 standard/4 NUS/3 if you send us a myspace message to get in the cheap list for awesome people.

See you on saturday!

‘The World is Lousy with Ideas’ 7” series is an excellent barometer of the state of affairs in the thriving lo-fi damaged pop wave U.S. Underground, that space of excitement where no wave, garage rock, fucked up folk and good ole noise collide like primeval beasts drowning bloody in a steaming tar pits. In their latest issue we get choice cuts from Eat Skull, Psychedelic Horseshit and our favouritest Little Claw.

The vibe is one of melodic fuzz, this is as close as any of these bands has got to delivering a ballad with which to swoon your sweetheart, and we fucking love them as the temperature rises, a radiation which throbs slightly mellower. This goes a long way to show these kids’ extreme levels of talent and application, say, for example Little Claw, who have blasted us with all sorts of fucked up droning shamanic incantations and transcendent wailing down the dark paths of that forest Suzy Bannion never dared to enter, look at them transformed, if only for tonight, into lovely ghosts of a C86 revolution that never quite succeeded, but still illuminates our lives with its echoes.

Little Claw- The Empty Mirror

Internet Forever make one of those sublime rackets that sound like falling in love as it happens, not when you think about it in retrospect and your cognitive system orders the chaotic maelstrom of sweet memories into a story you can tell your friends and family, nah, this is the sound of every moment of doubt, lines of sight connecting for a moment like a golden bridge which crumbles a second after, enthusiastic agreements and shared hates and staring at a figure that disappears on the distance, or materialises in the place of that date like a mirage or a miracle, 2 minutes and a half before you gave up on everything, a jumble of sensations and impressions and hopes and fears swirling around a pillar of light which finally shines full strength on you like rays of sun in a quiet beach, in spring of all seasons, that would be a happy ending, maybe better, a beginning soundtracked by a trembling glockenspiel which wouldn’t have been out of place in one of those placid moments that illuminated the seedy errands of the Velvet Underground.

Internet Forever just arrived to our house and it seems as if they had always been here, an old action figure, friendly faces in a slightly out of focus polaroid staring benevolent from a cluttered shelf, the one who saw it all happen, and watched over us as we went to bed, knowing that it was all going to work out at the end.

Special times, indeed.

Internet Forever- 3D

Read Algernon Blackwood, it’s good for you.

And listen to these songs, there is something of that mystery I referred to shining through, over and inside them, like a luminiscent shroud enveloping that ghost approaching from between the trees, not a single leave turns on its wake.

Little Claw crawl and bite like a wild thing, they understand the secret totemic power of the tribal stomping drone, and transmit it through their flesh and blood turned music in the same way in which the Velvet Underground did from the secret tower of darkness gleaming above the labyrinths of Gotham, or Sun City Girls and Indian Jewelry do spinning lost in circular deserts where they befriend rattlesnakes and coyotes. Their new album, ‘Spit and Squalor Swallow the Snow’ released by Ecstatic Peace is a storm of wind and dust and twigs which get inside your eyes making you cry, through tears you see a mirage fortress raising over the heat devils, coming at you like this was a Jorodowski flick or something.

Little Claw- Domestication of Manchild

Fucking hell John Dwyer, fucking hell Yikes, if hawks headbutted their prey before tearing it to pieces, leaving entrails and skin hanging from the branches of trees like a banner standing for all that feasting entails, and a testimonial of their bad-assness, they would sound a bit like this, the noise shitstorm unfolds furious furious furious, say it three times, raising you in the air as the spirits of a religion called Garage (not least because of the grease) come out of every orifice in your body, blood, spunk, shit, snot, they are all there in a raucous glorious mess we can’t wait to see delivered live.

Yikes- Blood Bomb

From the Whoa Commas or Blood Bombs EP released by Kill Shaman Records, which doesn’t pull any stops in making you feel dirty.

20JFG’s fave Tickley Feather’s lo-fi psyche ballads are that broken toy you stumble upon in the middle of the forest, a mysterious message which upon deciphering brings forth a beautiful reverie, the memories of whoever forgot it there and your own reaction to colour and shape intermingle like streams of a collective river, we have been keeping an eye on this mysterious lady for a while, she is drawing pretty enigmas on the sand with a drum machine put together with elastic bands and matchsticks, and we keep falling inside them enthralled.

Tickley Feather- The Python

You can get this in her split EP with Serpents of Wisdom.

If there is a band (besides Liars, and maybe Earth) able to summon fantasies of utter ghostly strangeness with their music, then it must be Yellow Swans, these two men craft strange spells where humming reverb and dissonant spikes come together like tentacles of smoke swirling and intertwining in the cold air to coalesce into phantasmagorical shapes where you are free to read whatever you want, if you dare, personally, and fittingly for today’s mood, Mass Mirage makes me think of funereal marches through the woods, an even darker equivalent of the fox wedding Akira Kurosawa documented in one of his beautiful dreams.

Stray ramblers treading across the Galician countryside at night be wary of the Santa Compana, if you do stumple upon this silent procession of the dead you might have to join them, and lead them carrying a cross through the roads as they visit those houses where a death is due.

Yellow Swans- Mass Mirage

This tune is taken from their new album, At All Ends, released by Load Records, and it might well be the most tonal piece of majestic psychedelia they have unleashed upon the world yet, now really, get this, and turn your room into a carnival of spirits.