Psychedelic / Progressive

This double album retrieves a radio broadcast of the Grateful Dead dated 1970. The title refers to a concert in San Diego, California, without giving further indications: what is certain is that the repertoire includes some songs recorded for 'Workingman's Dead' (' Dire Wolf ',' Black Peter ', outtake' Mason's Children ') released in June of that year as well as covers of Otis Redding's' Hard To Handle', Rascals' 'Good Lovin' 'and Buddy Holly 'Not Fade Away', to country and western 'Me and My Uncle', to traditional 'Cold, Rain and Snow', 'I Know You Rider' and 'Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad’ , framed by numerous jams.

The band project Drums Off Chaos was one of the central and on-going projects of the recently deceased drummer Jaki Liebezeit (who is normally associated first and foremost with the Cologne-based band CAN). In the early 1980s he had initiated an – at first – loose collective of drummers, who created a rhythmic concept on the basis of simple, strictly binding codes that enabled expansive improvisations.

Over the years the ensemble became smaller and refined its collaboration marked by repetitive patterns and their variation. “You have to play monotonous,” a member of the audience had already told Liebezeit in the 1960s. He took this to heart and there was hardly any other formation where he could bring this concept to life as regularly and with as much inspiration as in Drums Off Chaos.

During a development spanning more than three decades, this extraordinary band, which never saw itself as such, made numerous recordings but rarely any releases. However, in the last few months of his life Jaki Liebezeit, with colleagues Reiner Linke, Maf Retter and Manos Tsangaris, earmarked some tracks for imminent release on vinyl and CD – on different compilations. Liebezeit’s death is all the more reason to go ahead with this plan.

Recorded in 1971, Amon Düül’s only album for Ohr was a visonary slice of acid-folk which has gained cult status as years passed by. Ritualistic folk-rock, pastoral hippie songs, stoned jams, eastern flavours, mystical passages and heavy hypnotic riffing which are in fact very different from the early Amon Düül epic freaked-out improvisations (Psychedelic Underground) or Amon Düül II complex and psyched-up progressive works (Phallus Dei).
 
These were in fact archival recordings done by a different incarnation of Amon Duul, one that combined members of both factions into a floating line up welcoming many a guest, and which were released by R.U. Kaiser without the musicians knowledge or authorisation, most likely in order to catch up with Amon Düül II rising popularity.
 
All in all, a mythical recording featuring such underground classics as “Love Is Peace”; “Snow Your Thurst Sun Open Your Mouth” and “Paramechanische Welt”. Included also on our edition is their sought after Ohr single:  “Paramechanical World” / “Eternal Flow”.
 
Sleeve reproducing original artwork.

Featuring bonus tracks  “Paramechanical World” and “Eternal Flow” (originally released as  7” single). 

Siloah were a German progressive psych / folk band in the vein of Kalacakra, Langsyne and others "curiosities". Siloah are one of the best kept secrets of the krautrock production. Siloah had a hard core including Thom Argauer, Manuela von Perfall, Heinrich 'Tiny' Stricker and Wolfgang Görner, plus a host of guests coming and going, everybody was free to join and play at any time, guest members often joining from the Baumstassen commune around which the band was living before they eventually moved to an abandoned farm on the outskirts of town A collective hippie musical tribe largely inspired by mysticism, LSD and sexadelism. Their music features a heavy use of stoned vocals (in English), mantric like guitar parts, flute, "ethnic" percussions. Their first drugged item released in 1970 offers a dangerous and imaginative ocean of trippy, perpetual jammings. A bombastic psychedelic explosion in the mood of the best german prog folk releases. The atmospheres are beautifully "acoustic", sometimes dreamy and ethereal but never away from krautrock "primitive" sound.

Zweistein was the brainchild of Suzanne Doucet, who was joined by her sister Diane during the recording process, with added studio effects by Peter Kramper. Doucet spent the first part of 60’s as a pop star - gathering number of hits, and as a TV presenter. Filled with a radical spirit, a love of art and technology, and fueled by a heavy intake of psychedelic drugs, her successes proved unfulfilling by the end of the decade. Zweistein was born. The album, which stretches over three LPs, each with its own theme - Trip, Flip Out, and Meditation, is a writhing radical construction in sound - far closer to the revolutionary gestures of synthesis, electronic and electroacoustic practice emerging during that era, than what is commonly associated with Krautrock or Kosmische. Almost completely abstract, with passages of fleeting melody and drone - enveloping landscapes realized through sound, Trip Flip Out Meditation is pure art, creativity, and experimentation, filtered through the lens of LSD - the heights of the era and all the wonders it brought, with an unmistakable, overt attack on the pop sensibility of its day. An artist diving underground, rearing their head into the mainstream with a thrust of what was found. An astonishing edition - double gatefold, silver engraved gimmick sleeve, 3LP plus a bonus 7" single w/PS and a colour insert. Limited to 1000 copies.

The Book Of AM is a project begun in 1977 with esoteric philosophical intentions, and featuring words and sounds from around the world and across hundreds of years. Part V, representing Night, for some reason was not completed and never appeared with the rest of the collection, but this crack team, using overdubs and additional composition as well as mixing and mastering techniques, now present the completed final part!

"2015 reissue. Originally released on FBWL in 2000. Remastered in 2014 by Taylor Deupree at 12k." "... For those who believe they've heard all Connors has to offer, seek this out because it will astonish and mystify you while simultaneously changing your mind. For the rest who are fans, this is one of the man's records you need, because it, more than any other, expresses who he was during its recording. Painfully honest, vulnerable, raw, and graceful, Portrait of a Soul is unlike any record ever made." --AllMusic

Named for a familial forested retreat on Wisconsin’s Shell Lake, Scout Island is the vessel for Jungle Gym audio boss Jared Carrigan’s compact and compelling instrumental guitar vignettes. His latest, Laurentian Voyage, charts a rich trip down river through the North Woods of Minnesota and beyond, a formative landscape of his youth (recently revisited during Covidian isolation). The collection’s 19 tracks flow through twilight psych, sunset jangle, dockside devotionals, and whispering pines soft rock, a gallery of glimpses into scenes and seasons come and gone. Lean guitar figures ripple, riff, refract, and reverberate, framed by filtered drum loops, organ, synth, or bass. The mood softly sways between reverie and reflection but skews more autumnal as it unfolds, a sense of waning warmer days, a paler shade of light, campfires long since lit. Even so, the embers of memory cast their own warmth: faces, cabins, summers, music drifting out across the water. The clarity of fleeting moments, captured in snippets of strings and melody, slicing through choppy waves like the nose of a boat towards distant lightning.

After 20 years of incubation, My Bloody Valentine's third album, m b v, was suddenly released in 2013, and was at once their most experimental and most melodic and immediate work, proving their insatiable appetite for reform. Highly acclaimed as an astounding work that pushed the boundaries of musical and genre concepts even further, it also featured a type of music that had never been heard before. At once otherworldly, familiar, and intuitive, this album is a masterpiece for a new era, a stunningly beautiful transformation of the sound synonymous with MBV as it had been known up to that point. The album's final track, "Wonder 2," is a testament to this, with Shields' hypnotic guitar sound mixed with drum'n'bass that has left many awestruck.

Mastered from original 1/2" analog tape using Studer A80 VU-PRE and Neumann VMS 80.
Mastered from original 1/2" analog tape using Studer A80 VU-PRE and Neumann VMS 80
180g weight vinyl
Standard gatefold outer sleeve
Produced and mixed by Kevin Shields
Includes five 300 x 300 mm art prints
Includes DL code (24-bit | 16-bit | mp3)

Reissue of Flower Travellin' Band's debut album Anywhere, originally released in 1970. Anywhere is the first album from the legendary Japanese rockers fronted by Yuya Uchida. Although an album consisting mainly of cover versions, Anywhere still exhibited many of the musical traits that were to come to the fore on the band's next release, the classic 1971 album Satori, an album of original material delivered with panache by the increasingly confident Uchida. An album made memorable by its risky cover as well as its ground-breaking approach to Western rock music."

Limited edition gold vinyl with embossed sleeve. After leaving the band, Damo Suzuki himself said, "No one else can reach that kind of space. It's a new dimension." He also said that this album is Can's masterpiece.

HEAVY CUMBIA GUITAR ROCK FROM 1960s COLOMBIA Formed in 1961 by the legendary brothers Pedro Jairo and Guillermo León Garcés, Los Golden Boys quickly rose to the top of the Colombian "música tropical" scene by combining popular rock and twist influences with cumbia, gaita, porro and other local styles. The band recorded several hits for the Discos Fuentes label, until the tragic death of brilliant electric guitarist Pedro Jairo's in 1972, laid the original Los Golden Boys to rest. CUMBIA DE JUVENTUD is a newly remastered collection of 12 of the heaviest songs from their golden era! Focused on raucous and driving cumbias that highlight the Garcés brothers talents, this LP is full of haunting minor-key melodies, thundering percussion, sinister guitar and Solovox solos, thumping bass, pulsing brass, and an atmosphere of a stoned all-night beach party under a persistent cloud of angst and dark Teenagedom. The use of the strange Solovox electric keyboard as a stand-in for the indigenous Gaita flute adds a unique dimension that weaves through the air, and the voices of Pedro Jairo, Benny Marquez and Amparito Muñiz keep the dance up all night and into a rough hangover. Of the countless great Discos Fuentes recording artists from the 60s, Los Golden Boys stand out as not only stellar and tasteful musicians, but also incredible songwriters able to construct perfect dance songs from a slew of influences. CUMBIA DE JUVENTUD stands as a tribute to the Garcés brothers and a magical moment in Colombian music history. Includes the highly-sought stoner cumbia banger CUMBIA DE LA MARIGUANA (SE TRABÓ LA BANDA), the incredibly heavy CUMBIA y BESO, the brooding pasaje EL AÑO VIEJO, the creeper hit SONRIEME (featured on the TV show "Narcos"), and many more... An instant classic! These 12 songs have been expertly restored by Timothy Stollenwerk from the best available sources to reveal all kinds of beautiful details and they sound better, clearer and heavier than ever. Pressed on 160 gram black vinyl by Smashed Plastic in Chicago. Glossy and heavy tip-on color jacket. Highly recommended for fans of AURITA y SU CONJUNTO, GUITAR MOOD, LOS TEEN AGERS, LOS FALCONS, LOS GRADUADOS, LOS HISPANOS, LOS SAICOS, LOS MIRLOS, LOS DESTELLOS, A ORILLAS DEL MAGDALENA, REMOLINO DE ORO, THE ORIGINAL SOUND OF CUMBIA

Nicola Giunta and Gioele Valenti (the musicians creating the Lay Llamas dimension) seem to communicate from a different solar system their ecstatic gaze towards an imaginary future world. They rely mainly on a narrative tone of mysterious and spectral dark-psych shades, digging abyss of glacial depht of the self, where light filters through lysergic languors and radiant progressions of luminous dust. Oneiric voices refer to the hybrid chaos of a metropolitan jungle, as a hypnotic and psychic dimension of mind layers. Goud is steeped in numerous literary, mythological, philosophical, ecological and alchemical references. Pulsating and magnetic Farfisa, mesmeric basses and flutes or poisonous pinkfloydian and krautrock patterns forge a clear divinatory aspect of the music. The trip ends in the dark night of the forest, with more acoustic flavours and percussive incense of pure acid-folk. The beautiful cover by Virginia Genta by Jooklo, with her amoebic-cosmic graphics, seems to perfectly seal the sound inspiration of one of the most advanced forges of Italian neo-psychedelia.

Violinist, composer and filmmaker Tony Conrad started his career in New York in the early 1960s. As a member of the Theater of Eternal Music (a.k.a. the Dream Syndicate) alongside John Cale, La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela and Angus MacLise, he participated in now-legendary and often legendarily loud drone performances with many pieces having no beginning and no end. During a fateful trip to Germany in 1972, Conrad met with avant-rock visionaries Faust and made the very first record to bear his name. Outside The Dream Syndicate, originally released in Europe only in 1973, is a stunning debut. Two side-long tracks―“The Side Of Man And Womankind” and “The Side Of The Machine”―show just how far Conrad had moved beyond his minimalist peers. Werner Diermaier’s repetitive drum beat and Jean-Hervé Peron’s stripped-down bassline conjure a tense, ascetic groove, while Conrad’s seamless violin, initially so controlled, reveals a surprising adaptability. The music shifts almost on a subliminal level, pushing and pulling to the drone’s internal pulse. It is hard to imagine Conrad’s trajectory from downtown Manhattan to a farmhouse in the German countryside that ultimately resulted in Outside The Dream Syndicate, yet no other record captures―so completely and instantly―the intersection of avant-garde and rock forms. Outside The Dream Syndicate remains ahead of and bracingly outside of its time. This first-time vinyl reissue and long out-of-print CD release have been carefully been carefully mastered from the original master tapes and include liner notes by musician Jim O’Rourke and author Branden W. Joseph.

An unbelievable collection of dynamic Cambodian music recorded between the 1960s and the 1990s, both in Cambodia and in the United States. A truly Khmer blend of folk and pop stylings - Cha-Cha Psychedelia, Phase-shifting Rock, sultry circle dance standards, pulsing Cambodian new wave, haunted ballads, musical comedy sketches, Easy-Listening numbers and raw instrumental grooves presented in an eclectic variety of production techniques. Male and female vocalists share the spotlight, embellished by roller rink organ solos, raunchy guitar leads and MIDI defying synthesizers. Culled from over 150 ageing cassettes found at the Asian Branch of the Oakland Public Library in California, these recordings showcase a pre and post holocaust Cambodian musical lineage that can't be ignored.

A masterpiece buried in history for a long time finally sees the light of day! !! The original is a very rare Roman progressive jazz rock band, Spirale's only work released in 1974 is the first official reissue from Milan's ! Corrado Nofri (key), Gaetano Delfini (vo, sax), Giancarlo Maurino (sax / flute), Peppe Caporello (ba, g), Giampaolo Ascolese (dr). This work has a gorgeous, beautiful and tough sound with a unique Mediterranean atmosphere that is similar to jazz rock bands such as Napoli Centrale and Arti & Mestieri in Italy. This is a must-listen for those who like Germany's Out Of Focus and Xhol Caravan of the same age! !! Limited to 500 sheets.

Bongo Joe celebrate their 5 year anniversary with FUTUR ANTÉRIEUR, a digital compilation of 19 brand new tracks, created by Bongo Joe’s contemporary artist community, who provide their own stamp and interpretation of tracks that have previously been released as part of the label’s celebrated re-issue catalogue of archaeological discoveries. The anniversary and compilation release coincides with the re-opening of the Les Disques Bongo Joe’s record store, relocated to a new home on the banks of Lake Geneva, which opened for trade in March. Re-affirming the label’s disregard of genres and boundaries, the compilation sees artists like Bogota and Colombia’s pioneering and eccentric cumbia artist Meridian Brothers take on Extranos Juegos by the Spanish group Zombies (LA CONTRA OLA: Synth Wave & Post Punk from Spain 1980-86), the Geneva residents-en-psych-groove L’Eclair take on Mauritian singer Allen Meller on Moin Qui Bizin Travail (Soul Sega Sa! Indian Ocean Segas From The 70s) and Turkish outfit Derya Yildirim & Grup Simsek reinterpret Ay Dili Dili from Azerbaijan guitarist Rüstem Quliyev, whose retrospective album Azerbaijani Gitara was released in 2020. Founder of the label, Cyril Yeterian, half of Cyril Cyril, recollects, “Looking back to our past 5 years' mixed catalog of music from the past and the present made us immediately think about bridging these musical worlds into one. Several bands we have on our roster told us our reissues inspired their music so it sounded like the obvious thing to propose, to all our current bands on the label.” In just five years Bongo Joe has established itself as a label on a mission, doing things on their own terms, without hierarchy making sense of the world and industry from their community base and record store/cafe/DJ and event space in Geneva Switzerland; and it’s a method that has garnered much respect, with audiences and artists alike. The present compilation is the result of this vibrating energy coming from the shores of Geneva Lake. Definitely time to support musicians : all benefits will go to our artists

ニューエイジ〜アンビエント・リスナーにも！オリジナルは、名キーボーディスト = Philippe Besombesも参加した電子音楽グループ"Pôle "が運営していた仏の〈Pôle Records〉より75年に発表。元祖トイポップことフランス前衛ポップの大スター、Pascal Comeladeの別名義Fluenceの唯一作が、世界各地のアンダーグラウンドな音楽史を現代へと再提示する名門〈Superior Viaduct〉傘下の〈États-Unis〉より復刻リリース！仏南部の都市、モンペリエで74年から75年にかけてレコーディング。豊穣な実験精神と深遠なるプログレッシヴネスを湛え、時代性を超越した印象的な音世界へと昇華。フリップ&イーノ～リシャール・ピナス、ポポル・ヴーの幻影さえも付き纏うヴァナキュラー&コスミッシェなサウンド全開に、オブスキュアな電子音楽観を披露した傑作。ナンバリング入り限定750部。

In mulling over their career, it’s staggering to realize that Sonic Youth not only delivered a healthy slab of releases as a unit but also have a myriad of shelved material still waiting for broader ears. While the group’s current Bandcamp abode lays out a generous amount of it, a bunch more has yet to surface. And it’s a massive mountain to chip away at in the sense of the group output alone; individual members’ projects are a whole other game, needless to say. "In/Out/In" ably delivers a new slab of mostly-unheard Sonic righteousness, with a scope on the post 2000-era band in especially zoned/exploratory regions. The 80’s and 90’s continually saw Sonic Youth reminding everyone that their jams ran free alongside song craft and visible development album to album; there were Peel excursions, dipping toes into soundtrack work starting with 1986’s "Made In USA", and of course great impromptu expansive takes of tried and true previous material onstage. The millennial establishment of home turf studio spaces in NYC then NJ greatly egged on forays into improvisation and composition on their own clock as evidenced in "Goodbye 20th Century" and the plethora of SYR releases that trickled out side by side between major release albums. At this juncture they had already created a cultural template for a whole new breed of rock heads who, in turn, entered a feedback loop to SY itself, which cultivated more of its own new moves informed by the very fandom they had for their acolytes all the while pushing the band outward to uncharted fields. Jim O’Rourke’s residency had already influenced the band’s material in part into denser, longer, meditative paths. Mark Ibold’s entry for their swan song "The Eternal" also allowed for more of this exploration with Kim Gordon having more room to commit to third guitar. However "The Eternal" also took more cues from Ibold’s bottom-end swing and perhaps dialed back the expansiveness of the "NYC Ghosts and Flowers" and "Sonic Nurse" era a notch in a cool way, making it one of the best group efforts for me, anyway. Perhaps this fueled some of these tracks here, in an already comfortable zone with a new lineup and new drive to take sideroads to even more outer realms. "In/Out/In" reveals their last decade to be still heavy on the roll-tape and bug-out Sonic Youth. Not all recorded in one session but rather spread out over 2000-2010, the sequencing here is especially well thought out. Opening with the 2008 “Basement Contender” we get a super-unfiltered glimpse of the band at Kim and Thurston’s Northampton house creating a gentle springboard of Venusian choogle, with phased Lee lappings at cascading Thurston figures forming a simmering soundtrack. “Machine” offers another instrumental track from "The Eternal" sessions and is a steamy exercise in stop-start rhythmic grunt amidst a jungle of chiming and upward spiraling chord progressions. We’ve also got the extended score offering “Social Static” from the Chris Habib/Spencer Tunick film of the same name, draping white sheets of noise over your head then descending into a gauzy maw of car-alarm guitars and ambient-yet-disruptive turbulence that eventually subsides into a smoky coda. Two more tracks round out the set both culled from a Three Lobed box set of various artists from 2011 called "Not the Spaces You Know, But Between Them": “In & Out” quietly resembles Can in a cave with dripping stalactites of Kim’s wordless tone rumble and was recorded at a soundcheck in Pomona California and their home Hoboken turf in 2010. “Out & In” from 2000 was done in their late downtown NYC studio and serves to close out this LP’s last 12 minutes as a reminder of what they got up to with O’Rourke there. More gentle time shift chord framework erupts into molten fury three minutes in, before mutating into the sonic equivalent of a slowly collapsing star. Casting an audio net over the entire instrumental/outtake oeuvre of Sonic Youth’s long history isn’t something easily committed to a single release without a doubt. Hearing these tracks in comparison to, say, 1986’s "Made In USA" material shows the massive leaps they took over the years. Whereas ’86 showed them freshly discovering their go-with-the-flow instrumental abilities for a soundtrack, their last decade showed them complementing the ambience with assured twists and turns that only came to be through their inimitable and rooted telepathy. That, plus the freedom to compose in more comfortable environs other than dank Ludlow Street rental spaces (hard to believe "Daydream Nation" was created in a claustrophobic practice basement) most assuredly was a component in their continued paths of discovery. Shifting on the drop of a dime from quiet/deep forays into full on noised-out Autobahn stomps with Steve Shelley at the wheel, they painted detailed and varied brush strokes and continually created organic sounds that undoubtedly carried the signature sound of the band, while ringing loud with their continual drive to free themselves from just that. Enjoy this capsule. -Brian Turner, 2021-

Prog Rock & Obscure Groove from Indonesia...! Djauhar Zaharsjah Fachruddin Roesli (1951-2004) was a singer-songwriter from Bandung, Indonesia, who played rock and blues in his early years, dreamed of becoming a writer like his grandfather, the famous writer Marah Roesli, and left behind many unpublished poems, and even wrote acoustic protest songs inspired by Bob Dylan. Djauhar Zaharsjah Fachruddin Roesli (1951-2004), a singer-songwriter from Bandung, Indonesia, who even wrote acoustic protest songs inspired by Bob Dylan. This is a miraculous reissue of a 1976 cassette album by Harry Roesli, the legendary rock band he led!

After releasing an album with the band, he studied at the Jakarta Art Educational Institute and went on to the Rotterdam Conservatory in the Netherlands. After returning to Indonesia, he started an avant-garde project that mixed the sounds of Xenakis, Cage, and Stockhausen with the poetry of Indonesian writer Yudhistira ANM Masardi. The group's activities have been multifaceted, including international performances in collaboration with such luminaries as novelist Putu Wijaya and filmmaker/actor Nano Riantiarno. With nearly 20 performers, the album is a miraculous blend of progressive rock, psychedelic rock, funk, and other sounds with Indonesia's unique grooves, using not only traditional Indonesian instruments such as gamelan and choir, but also western instruments such as synthesizer and guitar. It's a miraculous balance of progressive rock, psychedelic rock, funk, and unique Indonesian grooves!

A beautiful album celebrating Hawaii’s warmth and spirit. Enterprising composer and musician Eddie Suzuki made his own path throughout his lifetime. Born on October 4, 1929, Suzuki worked as a young shoeshiner in 1940s Honolulu, saving enough money to take piano lessons. In high school, he led a big band orchestra of 16, and sometimes up to 40 members. By the age of 18, he owned a piano shop that pivoted to become Honolulu’s top guitar store. For Eddie Suzuki, music always came first. In 1973, after performing and composing songs for many years, Eddie Suzuki and his group, New Hawaii, recorded the now impossibly rare album, High Tide. The LP isn’t a rock-outfit, local music journalist Wayne Harada ruminated in a 1973 review. Rather, it’s one man’s vision and version of the now Hawaii. A seasoned mix of psych, Hawaiian, and pop sensibilities, the music on High Tide gave the listener a look into Eddie’s singular vision celebrating the sights and sounds (and spirit) of Hawaii.

Following the incredible (and successful) compilation Taiwan Disco, the master minds behind Aberrant Records present this delicious record. Subtitled Disco Divas, Funky Queens and Psych Ladies from Asia from the 70s to the Early 90s you don't have to take a wild guess to figure out what you'll find here, a treasure trove filled with exotic jewels from Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and South Korea, from Asian funk to psych-tinged awesomeness, disco madness and much more. Features Chailai & Sawanee, Chantana Kittiyapan, Lei Si Si, Ding Dai, Yasmin, Wong Foong Foong, XYZ, Fatimah Razak, Chen Qiong Mei, Sum Sum & Pan Pan, Grace Simon, and Hit Girls.

No. 7 on Rolling Stone's list of the 50 greatest live albums of all time. The Grateful Dead's quintessential live energy exploded on this classic album released in 1969.

Karina Gill. She became a musician only recently, having sat on the sidelines while ex-partners and friends made their stabs at it. Gill describes a chance encounter with an abandoned Squire Strat left in the basement by a previous tenant, “mummified in electrical tape with the remnants of a burrito on the head stock”, that led her to begin carefully strumming her way through simple chords and making her own songs. After one interesting self-released LP, still finding their footing, the band made the masterful and buzzed-about Free Advice, which went from a limited cassette on local SF label Paisley Shirt to vinyl pressings on Tough Love (UK) and Mt St Mtn (USA). Cindy’s third LP arrives in quick succession, the quietly devastating 1:2. Jesse Jackson on bass, Simon Phillips on drums and Aaron Diko on keyboards weave the perfectly thin web behind Gill’s slow Velvety strums and murmured melodies. The rhythm section brings the crude flow, while the keys add subtle and surreal counterpoint to the withering world Gill depicts in her lyrics. “Songs tie together seemingly disparate things by the logic of mood,” Gill tries to explain. This isn’t dream-pop sunshine bliss; half-closed black drapes hang on the window where the narrator stares into the middle distance. “Sometimes you say you’re feeling small/You plan all day for your own funeral”, she intones in Party Store. Gill has a way of halting her phrasing that makes it feel like her thoughts are gently tumbling into the abyss. It’s this unsettling quality mixed with the hazy atmosphere that makes Cindy’s new LP 100% addicting and the perfect antidote to comfort listening. - Glenn Donaldson, 2021