Ariel Pink and his Haunted Graffiti: Before Today. News at 11. Pop prophet transforms utopian fish into crumbling DIY bread, masses flock  to worship at his bedroom temple.

Ariel Pink & His Haunted Graffiti- Fright Nights (Nevermore) (Posted on April 21)

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Arp – The Soft Wave.  Cluster and Eno and Rilley and Georgopoulos.  Ringside seats in an amphitheatre at the edge of time.

Arp – Pastoral Symphony: I. Dominoes II. Infinity Room (posted September 3rd)

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Arp and Anthony Moore: FRKWYS Vol. 3. Lullabies for wide-eyed children destined for polymathematic stardom.

Arp and Anthony Moore- Spinette (posted on April the 5th)

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CFCF: The River. Mies Van der Rohe built an exquisite Canal de Amazonia to make Fitzcarraldo’s job easier.

CFCF- The River (Piano Version) (Posted November the 8th)

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Delia Gonzales & Gavin Russom – Track 5.  In everyone’s life there’s one album that has a disproportionate pull on you.  Something that, ‘objectively’ is very good, but which has an almost supernatural hold on you above and beyond that. An album which can evoke pure moments of transcendent bliss.  Imagine if, after five years a missing piece was released.

Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom – Track 5 (New Post)

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Hounds of Hate: Head Anthem. Organic ghost machine music that circles the sleeping victim like a shadow pygmy tribe armed with ancient spells of compelling abstraction.

Hounds of Hate- Purple Stuff (Posted November the 2nd)

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Hunx and his Punx: Gay Singles. Nuggetbagging, rather than teabagging. John Waters would be proud.

Hunx and his Punx- U Don’t Like Rock and Roll (New Post)

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Hype Williams: Find Out What Happens When People Stop Being Polite and Start Getting Reel.

Perchance the last addition to these terminal celebrations, and a timely one. Hype Williams have animated 20jazzfunkgreats séances with feeric liquors over which glide pixies imported from Chicago and Kingston, shouting their wares in a cloud of voodoo tags. Their gift is a graphic novel of panels that blur in Steranko fever. Sade drowns in an ocean of pavement syrup, while the chaotic transmissions of a thousand pirate radios converge in the neon sky above, like a Batman sign for much darker heroes

Hype Williams- The Throning (new post)

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International Feel: The Coptic Sun.That apocryphal chapter of Invisible Cities that Italo Calvino wrote under the influence of a particularly strong strain of Peyote, or the destination point of Conan’s pilgrimage if Thulsa Doom was only a conduit into the psychedelic stargate, rather than a dirty reptilian worshipper.

International Feel: The Coptic Sun (Posted September the 30th)

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Male Bonding: Nothing Hurts. Mixtape fodder for teenage punk heroes.

Male Bonding- Weird Feelings (new post)

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Mi Ami: Steal your Face. A growing crescendo calling out across decades of electric guitars, rusting in the salt heavy sea air.

Mi Ami- Dreamers (Posted April the 9th)

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Paul Rosales: Wonder Wheel I.  ‘Crimes’ is exactly the sort of thing we wanna hear when we’re selling out, its unselfconsciously wrought unplanned energy is our 20 inch rims, its atonality is our leather dashboard which we caress whilst cruising illicit streets to do deals with shadowy figures who hand us parcels full of the highest grade low fidelity shit which we now sell to you at the vastly inflated price of £0

Paul Rosales- Crimes (Posted July the 8th)

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Plug: S/T. This is our minimal wave. DIY electro-pop to take over your life.

Plug- Don’t Forget It (New Post)

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Pocahaunted: Make it Real. Block rocking beats that Big Daddy Kane could have freestyled over as delivered by the Shaggs’ feral skull faced reverse.

Pocahaunted- Make it Real (posted May 17)

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Skeletal System – s/t & Small Talk.  This is our dream-pop: full of watery ill defined shapes and haunted guitar lines.  Will surely be placing highly on Peel’s Festive Netherworld 50.

Skeletal System – Dialogue (posted April 23rd)

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VA: Deutsche Elektronische Musik. The sounds that rebuilt Germany, and built us.

Gila- This Morning (Posted May 11)

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As a bonus, we leave you with Harrison Owen’s video for Excepter’s Anastasia, included in The Late EP in Woodsist, riding the razor edge between sex and violence in the best tradition of the Psychoterrorist squad that taught us all, and the most fucked up of all transcendental meditators (circa Nadja, and pumped on colour).

We wish you a twisted transition across the no-man’s land between Christmas and the end of the Year, we shall be waiting for you on the other side.

Iko form a dead end, an ice covered wall at the end (or the beginning) of one of the forking paths.  I’ve been listening to their album ’83 for years and am still no closer to discovering much about them.  What I do know is that they’re Canadian; the album was released in 1983 (or 1982 according to Discogs – which I guess means one of them might work for EA Sport’s naming department now); and that this track taps into the Miracle Mile, Reagan-revived nuclear paranoia, by then so worn it became a jaded backdrop to a dispassionate tirade against Nuclear Powers sung in the style of a jilted lover.

Radioactive Mist bounces in all eager drums and submerged synths, tracking in a vocal emoting as much as possible under the strain of Cold-Wave sensibilities.  The hook here being the crystalline melody underpinning the chorus like the slickly apocalyptic ancestor of post-millennial-disco.

Iko – Radioactive Mist

Fellow Canadian’s Ceramic Hello precede Iko though much more is known about them.  Brett Wickens and Roger Humphreys formed the band in 1980 and released their only album (thus far) in 81, called the Absence of Canary.  Wickens had a parallel career as a graphic designer, partnering with Peter Saville and eventually designing the packaging for Photoshop CS3 believe it or not.  I understand that he’s not at all Sleezy.

Geometry fades in, slipping, reversed tape and oscillating shards of synths flittering in and out of hearing.  Like some malfunctioning synth-pop instrumental sitting on the edge of 20 Jazz Funk Greats’ grand parody / inadvertent genesis.  Less terrifyingly perfect than anything off TG’s ‘accessible record’ whilst managing to still skewer any utopian ideals with it’s fucked up electronic squeals.  And yet, still quite beautiful as if the grandest excess of early 90s Vangelis – all lasers and city sized crowds – were sent back in time and inadvertently arrived backwards and humble.

Ceramic Hello – Geometry

Closer in time, I first saw Plug at the Yes Way festival in Peckham earlier this year.  Sian and Georgie sat amongst the chattering throngs under purple and green lights and teased out this minimal vortex, blocking all the distractions of a freezing warehouse and drawing me into a post-punk stupor with its arch chorus and resigned verses, its downbeat bass and synth swells.  Of the scores of songs I heard that weekend You Keep The Beats stuck.  Sliding in like a sedated Y-Pants covering Wurlitzer Jukebox.

Plug – You Keep The Beats

You can get one of the last few copies of the 7″ this appears on here.

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On Saturday two of your 20JFGs will be taking a break from cold-wave anthropology to play some records at the Sexbeat show at The Rest is Noise in Brixton.  Featuring good-dudes Teen Sheikhs and the awesome Male Bonding.  More details here.