Pree Tone are a band from Kiev in the Ukraine who play a competent-enough brand of hard-edged rock in the style of early My Bloody Valentine with elements of Sun Dial stirred into the pancake batter. Their Kiddy (729) album has the kind of collage cover you normally see on barmy Finnish folk cassettes, but these chaps evidently have their collective head rooted elsewhere. The “stories” in these songs are apparently told from a child’s eye view, much like Happy Flowers or The Tinklers. Not especially experimental, but the players deliver a solid well-judged whomp of rock stodge, and don’t lean too heavily on the phase effects.

Disen Gage is two players named Konstantin Mochalov and Anton Efimov…their Nature (725) album is described as two Moscow prog musicians having a day off and malarkeying about with experimental / musique concrète styled noises. Disen Gage normally record as a four-piece and I assume their 2004 debut album The Screw-Loose Entertainment is slightly more conventional progressive rock with its bass-drums-guitars-keyboards array. It has to be said Nature is great fun, nothing like the cold and dreary cosmic drone one normally expects from amateur cosmic-dabblers and tape-splicers when they decide to make an “outer space” themed LP. Three tracks, called ‘Planets’ ‘Trains’ and ‘Animals’ all take a more innocent view of the heavens like children looking for shapes and figures in the constellations, much like the loveable Russian bear on the cover art. They make use of radio samples and recordings of wagons at a Russian railway station as part of these colourful experiments. ‘Planets’ is the most entertaining and dynamic of the three with its panoramic view of the galaxies resembling a visit to a Planetarium, but ‘Animals’ has a tasty bass pulse with a sinister edge and rich soaring drones that will take you on a rocket-ship ride to a place light-years away.

Transnadežnost’ from St Petersburg are another rock combo. Their Monomyth (728) album features the guitar work of Aleksandr Yershov joined by bass and drums, alongside second guitarist Alesya Izlesa who also plays the glockenspiel. As cover imagery suggests, they hope to whisk the listener into an exciting ultra-dimensional journey across space and time, with acid-trip elements thrown in to enhance the experience. What we get is mostly competent psychedelic rock with plenty of echo pedals to boost the thin guitar solos; not objectionable, but rarely do the band cohere enough to give their music wings. Consequently the promised mind-expanding odyssey doesn’t really get beyond the planning stage and stays sitting on the runway.

Pressor are a four-piece of beefy guys from Kostroma, whose previous outings have been classified by others as a form of sludge and doom metal laced with psychedelic elements…for Weird Things (723 / BAD ROAD BR#24 / VORON-NEST VNCD0009), they’ve varying their formula with the addition of crazy synth noise supplied by Stas Vasilev, apparently with the aim to convey sensations of madness and despair. When the synths are to the fore, as on the opener ‘Heavy State’, things work pretty well and do indeed pass on a palpable state of hallucination, things going majorly wrong before your very eyes. Other cuts are more conventional doom metal in the “crusher” mode; the listener is wrestled to the ground by grunting vocals, lead-weight riffs, and hammering drums. However, these self-styled “lumberjacks” never get weighed down by their own ponderousness, nor wrong-foot themselves as they turn in surprisingly agile riffs of merciless noise-core power-grunge.

Lastly we have Frogressive Punk (702 / ZLURAD RECORDS ZR 004) by Moscow band Detieti. I have no idea what to make of this four-piece, who use a fairly conventional rock set-up with addition of much synth, sampling and electronic work on their nine very eclectic tracks. Reggae, funk, art-rock – no musical style seems safe from these loons as they rollock their way across the land in the manner of an unkempt circus troupe, replete with tattooed strong men and rowdy fire-eaters. There is scarcely a minute of music which they won’t embellish in some way, and some of these additions (especially at the start of each track) are a little too “zany” for my tastes, but when they eventually settle into a groove it’s evident these guys have some serious instrumental prowess at their disposal. They too exhibit the sense of fun that’s evident on almost all of the albums above, and that is largely a welcome relief from the uptight posturing we can get from “serious” musicians.

After albums Frozen Living Elements, Corridors to Infinity and Solar Drifting, all bearing the seal of Zoharum, edition four emerges from somewhere that hints at some mysterious subterranean location, but multi-instrumentalist Justin Wright (a.k.a. Mr. Expo 70), who kick-started this project back in Los Angeles 2003, has, as before, set the co-ordinates to the named planets and of course beyond.

This collection, focusing on all matters cosmic and krautrockian, comes as a combination of two lengthy improvised concerts captured by Californian radio station KFJC in 2008 and 2010, which were subsequently released in such small quantities as to render them almost invisible to even the most avid expophile. Justin’s opening six-string foray on “August 20 2008” soon becomes a piercing cascade of electricity that’s ably supplemented by Matt Hill’s slowly blossoming bass pulse and unobtrusive drum programming. The edgier Schickert versus Hillage-referenced fretwork, with bespoke interior design c/o ‘The Cosmic Jokers’ collective, continues with “November 6, 2010” (a solo outing…), but is eventually displaced by sprawling moog tendrils and repetitive keyboard patterning. It’s as if Terry Riley’s dancing finger (circa “In C”) were sheathed in protective metal gauntlets for a more heavy handed plan of attack. Not quite the received images that ‘Space Rock’ (and associated sub-genres) has usually dictated over the past decades (Hawkwind’s In Search of Space (Way more of a total package/way of life (?) than Mantovanied progsters The Moody Blues’ To our Children’s Children’s Children l.p. which does, to be fair, include space travel amongst its themes and does predate the Ladbroke Grove branch of NASA by a clear two years…) starting its year one) but… the accompanying cribsheet’s namedropping of Tangerine Dream’s Zeit is particularly apt, and I admit to using this comparison on one too many occasions. That feeling of gnawing doubt/deep foreboding in a largely electronic setting is definitely present here. But Expo’s economy drive means that the services of a quartet of morose cellists as Edgar, Chris and Peter used back in dreamtime, simply weren’t required.

Housed in a splendidly realised ‘Japanese Style’ vinyl replica gatefold, that opens up to show a downsized Ummagumma or indeed Kollaps-styled layout of Expo’s hardware and lit by a superimposed twinkling star field, this comes in a limited edition run of five hundred copies only.

Something stirs… the very keystone of the whole Acid Mothers oeuvre has been reactivated (again). On this occasion though, the run is a little less generous; a limited edition of three hundred, making this one hundred and eight less than the original double l.p. set which, surprisingly, is now of a ten year vintage. This lengthy double c.d. set then, edging just over two of your earth hours, adds flesh to the somewhat hazy beginnings of these other mothers, which started back in the early nineties or thereabouts. This saw Kawabata Makoto, then Musica Transonic’s guitarist of choice, luring various disciples of ‘The Acid Mothers Temple Soul Collective’ (which included dancers, artists, mermaid researchers (?), and professional vagrants), into his new ‘improvising jam band’. The A.M.T. then becoming a going concern, its freak flag mostly observed in a swirling mist of exotic substances. Their early recordings, in the form of limited edition cassettes, which took in pieces by the original cast (Makoto, Keizo, Casino, Hajime) and newly recorded tracks were hawked around by Makoto at Mainliner gigs during an overseas tour in ’97. These tapes later received further adjustments and eventually resurfaced as the A.M.T.’s debut on the PSF imprint. So any thoughts of The Early A.M.T… as a set of demos isn’t really too wide of the mark. It would’ve been fascinating to observe a group that sounded ever so slightly different to the one we’re now so familiar with, but, even at this early stage, the Gong’wind/”Flying” era U.F.O./Trad Gras… template seemed to be the finished article from day one. Though certainly, on a seriously more intense level than Messrs Allen, Brock, Mogg and Persson could’ve ever attained with their respective outfits back in the day.

“From the Melting Paraiso UFO” opens this set and is helmed, interestingly, by the somewhat unfamiliar figure of Johan Wellens. His mush-mouthed profundities becoming strangely out of focus as this multi-pedalled stomp grows around him in size and complexity. A brief moment of search enginuity reveals him to be the label boss of Tokyo-based Tiliqua Records; a second home no less, to the legendary free guitarist Takayanagi Masayuki. Wellens’ narratives can also be found on the chaosmic splurge of “Speed Guru” which has reappeared in various shapes and sizes on later albums, and as a co-scribe on the attractively warped “Rolling Buzz Fuzz Fucker”.

“Zen Feedbacker”/”Candy Aum” (from disc two) puts the listener on the back ear immediately as the respective tracks play simultaneously from the left and right channels (if you so desire). There’s also the wired churn of “Tibetan Esoteric Rage” (surely Raga?) with Makoto’s blaring bagpipes set on stun and the kitchen sink electronic drama of “Aunt Ema Blues”. “Pink Lady Lemonade” makes its first appearance, but is unfortunately, more fluffy bunny than hurtling asteroid. Its lyrical, almost m.o.r. moodscapes really do disrupt the generally accepted norms of motherdom. Apparently “Psycho Line” was dropped from this collection due to being “of inferior musical value…”, can we swap?

Kawabata Makoto: a giggling shaman, Cotton Casino as a space-suited Lorelei and bassist Suhara Keizo and drummer Koizumi Hajime as the indomitable ‘Spock Twins’… who knows what adventures these spaced cadets will encounter in the twenty-first, second, and erm, twenty-third centuries??

Neatly executed cover art parodies combined with a series of punning/corny (you decide) song titles that usually reference the golden age of seventies hard rawk and whatnot can only mean that this has to bear the signature of head Acid Mother Templar Makoto Kawabata. A whimsy so firmly entrenched that by now, is almost open to parody itself. Hiding behind an easily telegraphed/stoned sense of huma can be a tad wearing to some I can imagine… and there’s plenty of pun per square inch within the workings of Maid Hinge Ape Anne (sorry).

This, their debut full-lengther (obviously) tips its cap to the old Deep Purple potboiler of the same name. And while “Space Fuckin'”, “Dope in the Water” and “Strange Kind of Woman from Tokyo” play tag and custard pie the original titles, there are, as expected, no musical quotes from the Gillan/Blackmore-era (for me things started to go awry with the U.K.’s answer to Vanilla Fudge when Simper and Evans jumped ship…) found lurking in all this spaced-out/psyched-out activity. Business as usual in other words.

Harking back to March 2007, this archival glob of live recordings from this Japanese/Norwegian alliance sees deleted pupils Kawabata and fellow A.M.T.’er Hiroshi Higashi joined by members of LSD March, Kobi and Origami Arktika, crewing a compact but bijou spacecraft traversing a lava lamp universe a la ‘Barbarella’. One unusual feature that does deviate from all their norms, is the apparent lack of a conventional rhythm unit. Anyone expecting the propulsive clatter of a Simon King-like figure here might feel a little short-changed. The barest glimmer of bass frequencies and the scant use of percussives find themselves swamped by shards of gliss-guitar, bludgeoned by dense riffola and dazzled by vivid shades of Tim Blakean-styled circuit-bending. This chaotic anti-music of the spheres reverts to a heaving dronescape with the closing “Strange Kind of Woman…” which loses Kawabata san, but gains someone or something (?) called Tomo; (a.k.a. Transcendental Organic Magical Objective). Be he machine or be he carbon-based life-form, like Keiji Haino, he sure do crank out some righteous hurdy-gurdy!

A three-way release shared by the Apartment, end of Hum and Synesthetic labels, which is issued in a limited edition of 250.

Apart from Oho-offshoot El Sledge (+), White Boy and Tangerine Dream during their last days, a parent/sibling combination in a band still remains a fairly rare occurrence. Another addition to this select group is the father/daughter team of Jess Srogoncik (guitar/bouzouki/theremin) and violinist Alexis Ronstadt who, along with drummer Nick Vega and Emily Schalick (bass) comprise baroque psychesters Larkspurs.

Youth and experience in one package as Jess has a pretty interesting past as a member of Majora recording artists Paris 1942. An outfit known for having Moe Tucker, late of the Velvets, in its ranks – and also being the first port of call (or thereabouts) for future members of the Meat Puppets and the Sun City Girls. In fact, S.C.G.’s Alan Bishop gets a ‘thank you’ in the sleeve notes.

Under the intriguing banner of an art nouveau Bodhisattva (take a bow Christopher Kelm!), this Phoenix, Arizona-based quartet deploys, alongside the Buck Dharma’ed leads of her father, classically-trained Alexis as one of its principal voices in this eight-strong collection of darkly-veiled instrumental pieces. Her poignantly lyrical bowmanship finding echoes in the works of King Crimson’s David Cross and the real creative force behind early Pavlov’s Dog: Sigfried Carver.

Bolstered by supple/rippling bass strings that compliment a dynamic yet measured percussive drive, these ‘live-in-the-studio’ recordings go from a whisper (the chamberesque “Il Gatto Alla Soglia”) to the powerful quasi-prog scream of “Surveillance” with its relentless Crimsonoid (them again!!) six-string/violin lines, to the sublime Arabian filligree that insinuates itself into “Saharan Crepuscule”, a track which transplants an American twang onto Groups Doueh and Interane.

This release shows that this particular East/West baton (in the charge of Tucson, Arizona’s Black Sun Ensemble for some time) has now been passed on after all.

The studio set is packed mostly with straightahead rockers, as if they were extended jams by Mick Ronson and The Spiders from Mars playing a highly melodic hard-edged clutch of old-fashioned ballads and stormers while Bowie wasn’t looking. The wall of guitars (more like a barrier of solid fuzz) just won’t quit, the solos squeal like live eels as they pass unwillingly through the wah-wah pedal, and the vocals are haunted by the triple ghosts of Bowie, Bolan and Ferry (and any other glam star from the 1970s you’d care to name, with the possible exception of Brian Connolly). One track here (‘Tropics, Ionized Jungle, Peeping Auroras’) stands out as being “cosmic and abstract” with its distorted feeding axes brooding in a dark way that Ghost would have liked to glom onto their early albums, but the long title track which closes the album is also more experimental than the rest of the glammy stuff, meandering through a thick swamp under a full moon, wallowing in its own disjointed and forlorn noises. Their version of Iggy’s ‘Search & Destroy’ is also, erm, interesting…the cover art is ambitious, but while its vision of cosmic lights like the Aurora Borealis may work as a wall-size art installation, it loses something being shrunk to CD size and comes over a bit murky. A joint release between Fukuoka’s own Pataphysique Records label and Captain Trip Records, the latter run by Ken Matsutani of Marble Sheep. Arrived 5th May 2015.

Sergey Kostyrko plays on the first item, Beginner’s Luck (SR010) along with Rutger Zuydervelt, the famed Dutch king of enigmatic electronic bloops and uncertain murmurings. A live recording in two parts from the Fulldozer Festival in St-Petersburg, where the duo wowed the crowd in 2014. The label seem especially proud of the all-analogue production chain that created the finished product – originally performed on analogue synths, and mastered direct from magnetic tape. Even the mastering unit had valve tubes. The music itself is a gloomy and bleak episode of alienating grey moans, sometimes punctuated with tuneful static messages beamed to us from the Planet Zohar. While tentative and inconclusive, these statements have an unusually beautiful hue to contrast with their blank starkness.

ADDZ (SR012) by ADDZ is a much livelier electronic album which demonstrates its commitment to binary code (or to numbers, at any rate) by emphatically printing bold numerical characters on its cover. It’s certainly the one to grab if you like beats and rhythms, albeit said beats are presented in a minimal and clinical manner. The duo of Alexander Zaitsev and Dmitriy Dubov are specialists in “intelligent electronics”, if that means anything to you; to me it means they feel entitled to behave like robots equipped with stethoscopes. I liked the clean sound of their productions, but the melodies are barely there, each tune seems unfinished, and there’s a general sense of purposelessness to their twittering sequences that is unsatisfying. Imagine a Depeche Mode backing track being carved on the face of the Moon by astronauts using hand-held lasers, who give up trying after 25 mins.

SR011 with its gorgeous blue cover art is a split item. The duo of Jelena Glazova & Grigorij Avrorin came about when Jelena (visiting from Riga) appeared at the Fulldozer Festival and got involved in creating some form of accompaniment for Grigorij’s minimal synth solos. Six tracks of disconcerting bleak industrial noise were the result, music which I find impressive for its near-complete lack of humanity, unpredictable moments, and highly Spartan arrangements filled with weird gaps. I’d like to think the pair found their way to this unique, unrepeatable place through purely intuitive methods. Their grim sonic pronouncements would make ideal background music for a visit to an urban “development”, of which there seem to be a lot in London just now; it’s the sound of claustrophobia and blocked pathways. It’s rather rare to find women involved in this genre of music, so Jelena’s imaginative approach is most welcome; she comes to it from a background in visual art and poetry.

Bisamratta offers a single track, ‘Beregu’, on his side of the split, some 28 minutes of advanced guitar ambient drone. Vladimir Luchansky is one of the burgeoning Novosibirsk crowd who clearly pits himself against the “stupid happy Techno music” which currently entertains Russia’s youth (he would probably see it as a blight), and instead frequents the many seedy cabaret bars in that city in search of alternative sounds. He ain’t no Robert Fripp on the strength of this recording, but his effects-laden guitar music quickly drops down to reach the ice-cold temperatures that are required for Spina!Recs admissibility. The sustained near-magnetic humming drone is undercut later on with puzzling field recording additions of speaking voices, radio samples, water effects, and solar winds from outer space. It almost becomes the soundtrack to a Russian cosmonaut sci-fi movie of the 1960s.

SR016 is another split. Smola, a duo from St-Petersburg, appear on side A with ‘Burning Bamboo’ – a spectacular 18 minute performance of mesmerising acid-space-rock that in fact contains three separate tracks used to “hammer” the audience into submission at a live set. Lovely stuff; I’d happily face that mallet any day of the week. You’ll be glad to learn the spirit of Hawkwind lives on in this convincing update on early 1970s festival rock, taken by way of the usual suspects – e.g. The Stooges, Black Sabbath, and even Spacemen 3 who continue to cast a long shadow. They temper their hypnotic and heavy guitar-drummy numbing rhythms with shouty punk vocals and, most enticingly, their mean use of the wah-wah pedal. Not heard retro-rock as straightforward as this since the glory days of High-Rise and Mainliner did it in Tokyo…great!

Mars-96 have three lengthy tracks…the work of this combo is described by the label as “thoughtful melodies are turning into chaotic massacre in the end”. I found their highly disjunctive guitar-bass-drum stylings a little irksome to begin with, but thought that its abiding air of studied futility is bound to appeal to diehards who enjoyed listening to Vibing Up The Senile Man in 1978. However, once they liven up and find the “groove”, they start to resemble 1974-period King Crimson in terms of malevolent guitar violence and remorseless repetitions, which is not a bad place to be. While Mars-96’s performances are somewhat haphazard, it’s possible to discern their intentions and glimpse the tricky zone they’re trying to push themselves into, and the listener will urge them to complete the journey.

Psudoku have their second album Planetarisk Sudoku (DMR18), the follow-up to 2011’s Space Grind. I thought this was a band but it seems to be entirely the work of one Norwegian maniac, Steinar Kittilsen (recording here as “Cpt. Roger” in true Hawkind stylee), though he is helped by guest vocalists Anders Hana and Wei Li, plus the insane saxophone hoots of Inge Breistein. What he plays is absurdly energised prog-rock inspired guitar and equally complicated and speedy drumming patterns that have a stop-start dynamic that fans of Otomo’s Ground-Zero or Altered States will truly relish…not to mention the absurd and playful synth interjections. It’s as if Rush and Todd Rundgren’s Utopia had joined forces, turned down a Napalm Death-inspired path, and picked up extra bombast-factors from one of Zappa’s later guitar players, such as Steve Vai. The aesthetic of this “Space Grind” music is to suggest an alternative reality where the music “didn’t develop from hardcore punk and thrash metal but from 70s prog from the future”. Exhausting and exhilarating stuff. My one gripe would be it doesn’t sound “cosmic” enough for me and quite often its slightly flat sound can’t transcend the four walls of the rehearsal studio. Even so, I suppose that’s preferable to drenching every track in artifical digital echo. An LP version is also available, jointly released by three American Thrash labels.

Ultralyd is a five-piece comprising all our fave Norwegian avant-rockers, namely Anders Hana, Frode Gjerstad, Kjetil D Brandsdal, Kjetil Møster, and Morten J. Olsen, and the Geneva 13.10.2010 tape gives us four live recordings from five years ago, recorded at L’Ecurie in the Swiss capital. They make a gorgeous psychedelic-drenched noisy racket, full of intelligent dynamics, gorgeous to listen to. Where Noxagt are edgy, dark, and vicious – lopsided street thugs in black leather brandishing razors and about to pick a fight with you – Ultralyd are more like a loose passell of freaky but benign long-haired hippy types, more inspired by nineteen types of obscure Krautrock and European prog than by The Grateful Dead, and the most aggressive thing they’ll do is spike your can of orangeade with a “tab”. The drumming is particularly inspired, never content to settle for a “normal” rock beat and instead punching the tunes home with tricky cross-rhythms and bold gaps so wide you could drive ELP’s equipment trucks through them…this is just lovely to listen to, I can’t believe they never showed up on the radar until now (though we did namecheck the band when we noted Anders Hana’s solo album, Dead Clubbing). How did I miss their 2005 album for Load Records, Chromosome Gun? 26 minutes of sheer rocking delight which I recommend to fans of King Crimson, Can, and Agitation Free.

Padla Bear Outfit play and sing some lively alienated psychedelic rock songs on Sunday Morning Tapes (SR007), heavily in debt to Spacemen 3, in particular Spacemen 3 playing that Red Krayola hit ‘Transparent Radiation’, to which the opening cut here bears an uncanny resemblance…the trio of Pisarev, Samolov and Morozov evince that same mode of studied and poised icy-cool indifference in their performances, as though they were past caring about anything and can barely summon enough spirit in their numbed frames to start hacking away at their guitars. Matters improve on this retro fuzz-fest however when they start leaning on their FX pedals and the whole mess becomes swamped in distortion, delay, echo, reverb, and anything else that transforms guitars into a godless acid-fried noise. At this point it becomes clearer that the band may also be harbouring an ambition to emulate Les Rallizes Denudes, the Japanese black-leather brigade who turned the garage-rock mode inside out and projected in their music a vision of pure strung-out wastedness. To their credit, these plucky rockers keep thrashing and strumming and howling their way well past the limits of decency and good taste. “A combination of brutal and tender feelings” is the quality savoured by Alexander Gorbachev, the magazine writer who’s a major fan of PBO. The title refers to the first track on the first Velvet Underground LP, whereas the cover painting looks like something that Ghost would have snapped up in a minute.

SR009 is a split tape. On side one (I have to assume, as neither side I marked on the tape) we hear the duo of Ilia Belourkov and Lauri Hyvärinen playing four tracks that were recorded in Helsinki some two years ago now. It’s improvised noise, made with saxophone, electric guitar, and amplified objects, and it projects that particular form of abrasiveness and cold despair that the Russians (and the Finns) do so well. If hearing English improv is like taking a bath in 5 gallons of lukewarm tea, this tape is like being washed in ice-cold water and scrubbed with wire wool. The guitarist Lauri has been active since around 2009 and has performed in lots of bands, projects, and collaborations, including Neue Haas Grotesk – a promising sounding synth-guitar-drum noise band. Here the duo describe themselves as “a creative unit dedicated to acoustic improv with the involvement of small electronic devices.” A splendid instance of bitter, abstracted, cold music.

One side two of this split Alexey Sysoev and Denis Sorokin provide the “electronic” half of the act, using amplified objects, the no-input mixing desk, electronics, and manipulation of signals using MaxMSP. Their tracks were recorded at the Teni Zvuka Festival in St Petersburg in June 2014. I’ve rarely heard such tentative and incompetent fumbling…the results are shabby, disorganised, and virtually unlistenable, but at least the sound they make is repulsive in an original way. My guess is these guys have some serious “issues” they want to work out of their system, using incoherent electronic noise as therapy for their fractured minds. I’m hoping to develop more of a taste for this one over time.

SR006 is another split. We kick off with some fruity noise malarkey from Kakaokamkami and Wozzeck, another Helsinki-Saint-Petersburg meeting of talents. We’ve been enjoying Wozzeck’s missives on the Intonema label for some time now, each release different to the last as they cheerfully violate one musical taboo after another in their quest to seal their reputations as the most “extreme” band in Russia today. For the three tracks on their side of the tape, they may have reined in some of their heavier demons to assist in the general bonhomie, and the results are a totally hopped-up gumbo of futuristic disco-electronic music moving in about sixteen directions at once…the synths and guitars are just having the times of their lives in this loopy festival of madness. If you want more from the Finnish half of the act, seek out their 2010 CDR Snowballs on Jozik Records.

On the other side, the trio Harlekino which comprises more members from Benzolnye Mertvecy – we heard another of their spin-offs, Glina, the last time we received a crop of these Spina Recs. Very groovy they are too, in a menacing and spooked-out way…their smoky, jazz-inflected brand of stoner rock is shot through with unusual elements, such as evil muttered vocals and wailing synths that sound totally possessed by evil spirits. Lovely sound, and it’s intriguing to watch them lumber around the seedy back streets like a washed-up private detective, but I keep waiting for the moment when they kick things up a notch and stop cruising in neutral.

Lastly we have the oddball item Svyashennaya Govyadina (SR008) which I think is credited to Nazoilivye Bliznecy, a project which may or may not be a meld of two other Russian bands, Benzolnye Mertvecy and Studiya Neosoznannoi Muzyki. Apparently it’s a big deal for a band from Saint-Petersburg to play with another one from Tomsk. When they met up in the Spina studios, this joyous racket resulted – an indescribable mix of free rock, free noise, free jazz, scattered liberally throughout with gibbering voices and insane saxophone howls. It’s almost as good as if the first Amon Düül band of commune-hippies had managed to join forces with an unknown New York free jazz combo, and then persuaded ESP-Disk to record them for an album that went on to sell three copies. A truly maximal noise, messy and splurgy…this freakeroonie manages to stay on two feet even when everyone at the party is reeling drunk, and despite all the lumbering and thrashing from the rhythm section, the tunes don’t get stuck in the slough of despond. Needless to say that despair is only a heartbeat away, however, despite all the frenetic attempts at jumping in the air and rejoicing…those manic grunts and howls thinly conceal the bitter grimace of sorrow. Even so, this is the sort of collective mad whoopery which Feeding Tube should investigate, rather than those posey clowns from Moscow AWOTT.