30 Sept 2021

Rocket Probes – September 2021 playlist


GNOD – Pink Champagne Blues

(Blistering new track from GNOD)
GNOD

Nova Express – Nova Express
(Killer 14min+ of immersion)
Nova Express

Low – Hey What
(Mighty new album)
Low

Sun Forest – Transitions
(Nicola from Julie's Haircut on Golden Ratio Frequencies)
Sun Forest

Zen Mother – Get high now
(Jammin')
Zen Mother

Roxane Métayer – Paroles Cavernicoles
(Droned hymns)
Roxane Métayer

Gong – Master Builder
(Freak out)
Gong

Maurizio Merli – Dancing man
(Texan grooves)
Maurizio Merli

The Bug – Fire
(Sonic excellence)
The Bug 

Purple Image – Purple Image
(Psyched funk)
Purple Image

Tonto's Expanding Head Band – Riversong
(Exploratory electronics from '71)
Tonto's Expanding Head Band

Barış Manço – Mozart
(Turkish fuzz)
Barış Manço

Nordra – Pylon III
(Nice digital drones – reminds of Arrival soundtrack in places)
Nordra

Le Stelle di Mario Schifano ‎– Dedicato A...
(Psyched sounds from '67 Italy)
Le Stelle di Mario Schifano

Oiseaux-Tempête  – AL-'AN ! الآن
(Instrumental sonic jams from France)
Oiseaux-Tempête

Amebix – No Sanctuary
(Crust)
Amebix

Psychedelic Digestion Therapy – Egipcia
(Middle Eastern tinged sounds)
Psychedelic Digestion Therapy

Beak> – Oh know
(New Beak 7")
Beak>

Weather Report – Boogie Woogie Waltz
(Gets the groove on)
Weather Report 

Rien Virgule ‎– Le Couronnement Des Silex
(Rhythmic noises and melodies on Zam Zam)
Rien Virgule

The Trees – Don't You Worry
(Fuzzy freakbeat)
The Trees

Bitch Diesel – Bionic Woman (Jacky Winter Remix)
(Spacey post punk repetitions)
Bitch Diesel

Patrick Cowley – The Jungle Dream
(Kosmische grooves by the master)
Patrick Cowley

Nala Sinephro – Space 8
(Nice astral jazz on Warp)
Nala Sinephro

Ofege – Try And Love
(Nigerian fuzz from'73)
Ofege

Oranssi Pazuzu – Palava Puu
(One of our favourite bands around drops an unreleased track for an Adult Swim compilation)
Oranssi Pazuzu


Listen to and follow our updated monthly Rocket Probes Spotify playlist here:


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Watch Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs play their track 'World Crust' live in Blank Studios


Ahead of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs up-and-coming UK 'Viscerals' Tour the band have dropped this great video of themselves playing their track World Crust live in Blank Studio's where they recorded the album.

The bands tour dates are as follows and the incredible Blom are supporting on all dates, plus a couple of extra guests have been announced as mentioned below. Tickets can be bought from:

http://pigsx7.com

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UK tour 2021 - The 'Viscerals' Tour... Finally:

October 2021
Saturday 23 Stowmarket John Peel Centre for Creative Arts

November 2021
Friday 12 Norwich The Waterfront
Saturday 13 Swansea Sin City
Wednesday 17 Belfast The Belfast Empire Music Hall
Thursday 18 Limerick Dolan's
Saturday 20 Dublin Whelan's
Tuesday 23 Manchester Albert Hall 
(+ Richard Dawson)
Wednesday 24 Bristol Marble Factory
Thursday 25 Birmingham The Mill
Saturday 27 Brighton Concorde 2
Monday 29 Southampton Engine Rooms
Tuesday 30 London Electric Ballroom

December 2021
Wednesday 1 London Electric Ballroom
Thursday 2 Leeds Stylus
Wednesday 8 Nottingham Rock City (+ Lovely Eggs)
Thursday 9 Edinburgh Summerhall
Friday 10 Glasgow St Luke’s
Saturday 11 Aberdeen The Lemon Tree
Friday 17 Newcastle The Cluny
Saturday 18 Newcastle The Cluny
Sunday 19 Newcastle The Cluny

'Viscerals' can be picked up on LP and CD here: Bandcamp

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28 Sept 2021

Backeat Mafia reveal second Smote video for forthcoming album 'Drommon' – plus announce debut live shows


Newcastle band Smote have just revealed the video for 'Poleyn' – the second track taken from forthcoming album 'Drommon'. 

Originally released as a cassette earlier this year, this expanded vinyl version of 'Drommon' features a longer version of the title track, plus adds two new pieces of music. The track 'Poleyn' is one of these new tracks and you can watch its video made by Sebastien Cao via Backseat Mafia here:

Backseat Mafia

The album is released this Friday, though frustratingly due to the chaos vinyl manufacturing is in at the moment, the ltd edition LP has been delayed and won't be in the shops now until late October early November. Though you can still preorder a copy from your local record shop or via Bandcamp:

Bandcamp

The band have announced the first live dates, starting at the incredible Brave Exhibitions Festival in Newcastle:

Nov 19-21 / Newcastle / Brave Exhibitions Festival  Tickets
Nov 27 / Manchester / The Talleyrand
  Tickets

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Summoned from the murkier reaches of the subconscious and summoning a powerful aura of twilight communion, Smote’s ‘Drommon’ is here to intimidate and enchant. The first Rocket release for this enigmatic Newcastle-based entity is no less than a mystically-aligned voyage into abandon and epiphany.

Replete with doom-laden atmospherics and crepuscular intensity, this is an intimidating denouement to return to time and again. Join the ritual, and submit to ‘Drommon’.



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27 Sept 2021

Raven Sings the Blues reviews Smote's Drommon

They say:

Unfurling more psych-folk plumes for 2021, Rocket pairs their excellent Holy Family release from earlier in the year with an expanded issue of Smote’s Drommon. The Newcastle band had put out a digital release earlier in the year which featured the two movements of the title track — a sorcery-scorched twin attack of cinder and smoke that builds to a seething boil. The fogged forms of “pt. 1” encircle the speakers, working repetition into a hypnotic daze. It’s a trance that becomes a possession by the time the thunder of guitars ramps up for the collapse of its conclusion. The second part, also topping the fifteen-minute mark, creeps in with a more sinister itch. A pound of drums beats through, insistent and ominous. A jungle ambience of humidity, danger, and darkness surrounds the song. There’s a very real sense that something ancient and angry is just beyond the reach of mesmerizing swells of drums and guitar. Unlike the first part, it doesn’t explode, and a constant creep of tension sweats out of every measure. If danger lurks, its patient and omnipresent through to the anxious end.

To push the record into a full LP release, Smote add in two additional tracks. What for some bands would feel like padding out the potency of the title tracks, Smote use as an opportunity to build out their world of psychedelic seance. With a bit of curious flute on “Hauberk,” and a churn of guitars that picks up from the opener, the record takes on a touch of prog that deepens the colors of Smote’s cinder n’ smoke aesthetics. “Poleyn” continues the straddle between wooded psych and the citadel of prog, adding in organ ripples to their works, playing with ‘70s colors that dredge up the Swedish undergorund, moving from Bo Hansson to latter day disciples like Sagor and Swing in the process. It’s an excellent first offering for the band as a full-scope LP and lands nicely among the fare at Rocket Recordings, home to more than a few artists who work that alchemy in wondrous ways. 

See the review here: Raven Sings the Blues 

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Carry's New Underground reviews Smote's Drommon


It reads:

On October 1, Rocket Recordings will release the album "Drommon", plus 2 tracks, as a limited edition LP on green and black splattered vinyl in a redesigned sleeve and as a digital download.

The 4-track album starts on side A with "Drommon (Part 1)", in which Smote performs a beautiful song with a not too fast tempo, which has a slightly hypnotic monotonous recurring rhythm, which after a few minutes transitions into an up-tempo piece of psychedelic music with a hypnotic recurring rhythm, where sitting still is not an option, to change in a quiet tempo shortly before the end and end.

This is followed by "Hauberk", a fantastic song, which starts off calmly and after a short while turns into a danceable mix of psychedelic music and folk and contains a recurring rhythm. (listen to this song via the bandcamp link below the review)

In "Poleyn", Smote allows me to enjoy a delightfully psychedelic song in a medium tempo, which contains strong influences of the music of an early Pink Floyd, with which the band takes me into higher spheres.

Finally, "Drommon (Part 2)", a great song with a fairly easy tempo and a recurring rhythm with mystical Eastern influences, which provides a hypnotic effect... 

Read the rest here: Carry's New Underground

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Terrascope reviews Smote's Drommon


It reads:

Not to be confused with the Slovakian musician of the same name or for that matter The Smoke, Smokey, Smog, or indeed Smudge, whose punsomely titled career-spanning slacker-classic  This Smudge Is True is likely to excite one or two ‘Scopic scribes, if only for the title. No, Smote is Daniel Foggin from England’s North East, described in the press blurb as an “enigmatic Newcastle-based entity”. So, not Jimmy Nail either, then. Drommon is his debut for perennial good guys, Rocket Recordings, and a second outing of 2021 following Bodkin, which was covered with no little enthusiasm on the ‘ol virtual velum back in March.

Now I remember enough from my youthful studies to know that a Dromon (one “m”) was a galley ship. Well maybe that isn’t what Foggin had in mind here but, nevertheless, there is an interesting correlation between the hypothesis as presented and what emanates from the two-part title track that bookend the proceedings. ‘Part 1’ leads with an arresting drone, one that we might once have associated with icy Nordic blasts prior to The Great Melt (deniers look away now). It soon succumbs to trademark Rocket tribal thumping, and to think that Smote isn’t even Swedish. Still, why change a tried, tested and for the most part winning formula? Vigorous, mesmeric and trancelike, it pummels remorselessly before subsiding to the sound of sloshing water. Besides not being especially kind to an ageing bladder, it nonetheless provides a perfectly pleasant coda and one that fits well with the imagined nautical theme...

Read the rest here: Terrascope

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9/10 review of Smote's Drommon by Backseat Mafia


It reads:

Newcastle has been a veritable hub for a wide spectrum of psych and noise, from the raw trio of Blóm to the relentless clamour of Pigs x7; the same city’s Smote offers a different, but similarly singular, vision of psych.

Drommon comprises the previously released titular, two-parter, bookending new material ‘Hauberk’ and ‘Poleyn’; a more cohesive offering to the psych-folk Gods than the eclectic Bodkin.

The album centres around – and draws upon the greatest exponents of – repetition: revelling in Sweden’s greatest cyclical conjurers and the malevolent alchemy of Sunburned Hand of the Men equally. Smote also marks their own firebrand form of repetition with traces of NEU! and a sinuous, Swans (circa 2012) style unravelling – as on the epic opener – that swiftly entombs the listener in it’s ever-shfting psych chasm. Said opener, through the surreptitious woodland ephemera and the overwhelming churn of monotony-leaning instrumentation, builds a panoramic, Tolkien-esque musical environment sustained consistently – though subtly – throughout.

An abundance of Fripp-y flourishes on ‘Drommon Pt.1’ and ‘Hauberk’ bleed effortlessly into the krautrock, space-y organ skyline and hammering percussion of ‘Poleyn’, demonstrating the apparent ease with which Smote combine elements throughout the album, without stepping beyond the realms of palatability...

Read the rest of the review here: Backseat Mafia

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Watch Teeth of the Sea's full Raw Power Festival 2021 performance

Watch Teeth of the Sea return to the stage in full at this years Raw Power Festival.

The bands latest and long sold-out LP, 'WRAITH' has just been reissued on Green and Black vinyl editions. Buy from here: Bandcamp

The band are heading out on a UK tour with The Utopia Strong and three Scandinavia dates with Hey Colossus in November:

Nov 13 / Manchester / The Carlton Club
Nov 14 / York / The Crescent
Nov 15 / Barrow In Furness / Barrow Underground Music Society
Nov 16 / Newcastle / The Cluny
Nov 17 / Glasgow / Broadcast
Nov 18 / Bristol / Strange Brew
Nov 19 / Cambridge / Mash
Nov 20 / London / Lexington (MATINEE AND EVENING SHOW)
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Nov 25 / DE  / Copenhagen / Lopen
Nov 26 / NO  / Oslo / Bla
Nov 27 / DE  / Aalborg / 1000FRYD

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25 Sept 2021

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs to play Berlin Desert Festival


Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs to play Berlin Desert Festival on 26-29 May.

Info and tickets can be found here: Desertfest

And don't forget, the band have these dates coming-up:

Nov 12 / Norwich / The Waterfront
Nov 13 / Swansea / Sin City
Nov 17 / Belfast  / The Empire Music Hall
Nov 18 / Limerick / Dolans
Nov 19 / Cork / Kino
Nov 20 / Dublin / Whelan's
Nov 23 / Manchester  / Albert Hall
Nov 24 / Bristol / Motion
Nov 25 / Birmingham / The Mill
Nov 27 / Brighton / Concorde 2 – SOLD OUT
Nov 29 / Southampton / Engine Rooms
Nov 30 / London  / Electric Ballroom – SOLD OUT
Dec 1 / London / Electric Ballroom
Dec 2 / Leeds  / Stylus
Dec 8 / Nottingham  / Rock City
Dec 9 / Edinburgh / Summerhall
Dec 10 / Glasgow  / St Luke's
Dec 11 / Aberdeen / The Lemon Tree
Dec 17 / Newcastle Upon-Tyne / The Cluny – SOLD OUT
Dec 18 / Newcastle Upon-Tyne / The Cluny – SOLD OUT
Dec 19 / Newcastle Upon-Tyne / The Cluny

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The Utopia Strong to support Magma


The Utopia Strong have been announced as the support for French legends Magma:

17th & 18 June / The Garage / London Tickets

19th June / Band on the wall / Manchester Tickets

Utopia Strong's S/T debut album has just been reissued on ltd edition yellow and black vinyl editions, buy from here: Bandcamp

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Fragmented Flaneur reviews Nova Express album 'Twenty One'


They say:

This album is completely new to me, in fact in one sense it is new for everyone… certainly in terms of the track listing. In reality this the sole album from the band Nova Express, released in 2001, and now remastered and resequenced. When you listen to it, however, your first thought is unlikely to be the fact that it is a couple of decades old. Furthermore, I absolutely love the fact that the late Torbjörn Abelli, bassist of seminal Swedish band Träd, Gräs och Stenar, declared on its release, “This album will mature and be perfect twenty years from now”. Well here we are twenty years later and I have to say that Abelli is not far wrong.

There is also something rather perfect in releasing this album in a way that fulfils his prediction, by a label in Rocket Recordings who have done much to further the influence of Abelli’s band through a series of releases by the likes of Hills, OCH, Centrum and Flowers Must Die… all of whom also sit in that earthy Swedish musical tradition. Maybe, in this sense, it has become a deliberately fulfilled prophecy… however, without the music to back this up it would have fallen flat. So it is that when I first heard this revived album I was absolutely blown away and, as has happened with a number of recordings that I have been hopelessly late to over the years, I am caught between having missed out on it for all that time while also revelling in the recent memory of hearing it for the first time… and enjoying that moment… and I must say that I am really enjoying getting to know this record...

Read the rest of this glowing review here: Fragmented Flaneur

And preorder the ltd LP here: Bandcamp

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17 Sept 2021


+++OUT TODAY+++

Teeth Of The Sea 'Wraith' and The Utopia Strong debut reissues are available from today:

Thanks to the MANY requests we have decided to press some ltd edition reissues of Teeth of the Sea's last album WRAITH and The Utopia Strong's debut S/T album.

Teeth of the Sea's Wraith is available on Moss Green & Black Vinyl and The Utopia Strong's on Toxic Yellow & Black vinyl, order from any good record shop of your choice or copies available on Bandcamp: 

Teeth of The Sea 

The Utopia Strong 

And don' t forget the bands are playing shows together in November:

Nov 13 / Manchester / The Carlton Club
Nov 14 / York / The Crescent
Nov 15 / Barrow In Furness / Barrow Underground Music Society
Nov 16 / Newcastle / The Cluny
Nov 17 / Glasgow / Broadcast
Nov 18 / Bristol / Strange Brew
Nov 19 / Cambridge Mash
Nov 20 / London / Lexington (MATINEE AND EVENING SHOW) 

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14 Sept 2021

GNOD announce new album 'La Mort Du Sens' with blistering first track


It is always an exciting time when new GNOD music lands, and we are ecstatic to share with you the video for 'Pink Champagne Blues' - the blistering first track to be revealed from the forthcoming album 'La Mort Du Sans' which is released on 5 November.

Head over to The Quietus now to watch an exclusive video made by the Baghead Crew:

The Quietus

'La Mort Du Sens' is available to preorder now on LP and CD – all ltd LPs come with a diecut sleeve.

We have a Rocket version available on Red/Blue 50/50 vinyl (as shown below):

Rocket Version

There is a special numbered Dinked version that has a different diecut sleeve, Clear with Red/Blue splatter vinyl and poster featuring exclusive art by Helen McDonnell:

Dinked Version

Also available to preorder via shops is a ltd version pressed on Blue vinyl

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If one overarching feeling has dominated the last two years on this orbiting rock, it’s uncertainty. A sense of an old order in ruins, and nothing lined up to replace it. With societal strife, psychic warfare and sheer boredom assaulting us from all fronts in this still-fresh decade, co-ordinates have been hard to place forging a path forward. Therefore, who better to turn to as a soundtrack for this tumultuous new era than Gnod - longtime chroniclers of discord. 

“The Death Of Meaning” is the translated rendering of the new Gnod album’s title, and this also reflects its creation. As Paddy Shine of Gnod notes: “I think the title sums it up well because this album was coming together at a time when confusion was king for us all - still is. I think we can all relate to that. This record is a really strange beast because of the big change that happened between mixing and recording. I think the title really does sum up the vibe of ‘What the Fuck’? Maybe we should have called it that!”

Wielding the taut, stripped-down and bludgeoning sound that had evolved on 2017’s ‘Just Say No The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine’ and 2018’s Chapel Perilous, Gnod initially recorded the tracks for ‘La Mort Du Sens’ with key soundman and collaborator Raikes Parade in ‘an old mill in Manchester’ around the Christmas period of 2019. “It’s the first album in a while where we kept it in-house and DIY, and we wanted it to be as ferocious as our live sets have become” says Paddy, “We banged it all down live - two drummers and a load of cabs in a room pushing each other forward”

Nonetheless, the arrival of the pandemic in early 2020 took the record on another course, adding to a turbulent and cathartic vitality that electrifies the likes of the caustic Melvins-in-hell assault of ‘Pink Champagne Blues’, the uncompromising percussive battering ram of the twelve-minute ‘Giro Day’ and the post-punk angularity of ‘The Whip And The Tongue’ with a fearsome elemental charge. “The world changed two months later so we were mixing this old world record in the new world and a lot of the vox got laid down during lockdown” reflects Paddy. “‘Pink Champagne Blues’ is a burst of total nihilist abandon and the lyrics wrote themselves in the midst of a dark wintry night of the soul”

Masters of an approach which manages to be both unmistakable and unpredictable. Gnod are now well established as prophets of the dispossessed. ‘La Mort Du Sens’  is no less than another relentlessly invigorating stop-off on their wild ride to who knows where. “It’s all about the energy” reckons Paddy. “We never really know what’s coming next. It just organically shifts around, and I think we are getting better at not analysing where it’s going and just going with the flow”

“Got No Obvious Destination, innit”



GNOD are hitting the UK with these confirmed live dates:

Oct 29-31 / Salford / Fat Out Fest
Nov 11 / Preston / The Ferret
Nov 12 / London / Studio 9294
Nov 13 / Margate / Elsewhere
Nov 14 / Brighton / The Hope and Ruin
Nov 15 / Bristol / The Lanes
Nov 16 / Cardiff / The Moon
Nov 17 / Leicester / The Soundhouse
Nov 18 / Leeds / Mabgate Bleach
Nov 19 / Glasgow / Nice & Sleazy
Nov 20 / Newcastle / Brave Exhibitions Festival
April 29 (2022) / London / Desert Festival

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10 Sept 2021

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs to play Pohoda Festival


Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs are heading to Slovakia next year to play Pohoda Festival.

Info/Tickets: Pohoda Festival

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3 Sept 2021

Today is September's Bandcamp Friday!


Bandcamp have decided to run their Bandcamp (no fee) Fridays again, from August until December.

So as previously, it is a great time to buy some ltd Rocket albums and shirts - here's some of our latest releases we wanna shout about:

Nova Express – Nova Express LP
Brand new presale going live today – ltd Red vinyl

Various – Aphelion Vol 1 & 2 LP/DL
We have a handful of these ltd RSD exclusive LPs for sale – first time available to buy digital as well

Smote - Drommon LP
Ltd green/black vinyl 

Teeth of the Sea – WRAITH (Repress) LP
Moss Green and Black vinyl editions

The Utopia Strong – The Utopia Strong (Repress) LP
Radiant Yellow and Black vinyl editions

Land Trance – First Séance LP
Last few copies of this ltd run LP

Urdog – Long Shadows: 2003-2006 LP
Ice Black splatter vinyl version

Hills – Frid (Repress) LP
Forrest Splatter vinyl

GOAT – Requiem (Single album edition) LP
Blue Flame vinyl

+ there are loads of other great albums, shirts and posters to pick up from the Rocket or individual bands Bandcamp stores:

Rocket Bandcamp 

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2 Sept 2021

Smote announce a Manchester show


Excited to announce that Smote have announced their first live show at The Talleyrand in Manchester on 27th November for the great Beauty Witch

Info and tickets


The bands incredible new album Drommon is released on 1 October, preorder the ltd vinyl here:

Bandcamp

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More reviews come in for Goat's Headsoup


Here are a selection of reviews that have come in of Goat's album Headsoup (will be updated as they come in):

"Stylistic versatility and penchant for spontaneity and structure."

Beats Per Minute

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"Experimentalists who try to cross as many boundaries as possible."

Post Trash

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"The kind of album that should be ingested at regular intervals."

The Wee Review

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"It's sometimes brutal, punctuated with a power hammer, but it's always effective and confusing."

Mowno

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1 Sept 2021

Fragmented Flaneur reviews Smote's Drommon


It reads:

I often hear people decry what, for them, is the fact that there is “no good new music out there”. This is something that I am a little incredulous about because I don’t seem to be able to keep up with the excellent new sounds that are coming out all the time, both digitally and on various physical formats… including a surprising, but welcome, cassette revival. Included in that cassette revival, but also releasing albums on vinyl has been Daniel Foggin, aka Smote, who, until very recently, I’m sorry to say, I had not had a chance to listen to.

When I did finally hear his ‘Bodkin’ album (see below), which came out on The Weird Beard label, I was somewhat blown away by it… and couldn’t believe my luck when Foggin recently advertised a couple of copies he’d found down the back of his sofa… I was only too happy to snap one up. All this is a round about way of saying that I really wanted to get ahead of the curve on the next Smote release, which is why I’ve been very contentedly listening to the new one which is out on Rocket Recordings in early October 2021.

‘Drummon’ was originally a two-track (each of around fifteen minutes) digital release back in March 2021, but has now been augmented with two further numbers to make it into a full length vinyl release… and I have to say that you wouldn’t really notice if you didn’t know… and even then it’s arguable whether the joins can be seen...

Read the rest here: Fragmented Flaneur 

Preorder the album from here: Bandcamp

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Rocket to release ltd LP by long lost Swedish kosmische/psych collective 'Nova Express'


We are really proud to reveal that we are releasing a remastered/resequenced LP version of 'One' – Nova Express's one and only album they released in 2001. This updated version, now called 'Twenty One' is released on ltd vinyl on 22 October – listen to the 14min + track called 'Nova Express' via Psychedelic Baby Magazine here:

Psychedelic Baby Magazine 

Preorder 'Twenty One' on ltd edition Red Vinyl from 8am GMT on Friday (3rd September) as part of Bandcamp Friday:

Bandcamp (link goes live on 3 September)

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Somewhere along the rich lineage of Swedish psychedelic music – the type forged in communes and smoky rooms alike on a kosmische continuum that spans over half a century, lies Nova Express – unheralded purveyors of timeless cyclical repetition and trance-inducing soundscapes. Torbjörn Abelli of national icons Träd, Gräs Och Stenar was even heard to remark in 2001 on the release of ‘One’ - their sole album - that “This album will mature and be perfect twenty years from now”

Somewhat serendipitously, two decades on, ‘Twenty One’ – the remastered and resequenced version of this maverick gem on Rocket Recordings - make it clear he wasn’t kidding. These free-flowing extrapolations take minimalist shapes and expand them into dizzying spirals of improvisatory abandon and heat-haze atmospherics. Redolent of the serene celestial shapes of Can’s ‘Future Days’ and the summer sunset climes of Cluster’s ‘Sowiesoso’ alike, tracks also blossom from mechanical 

Casio rhythms into Terry Riley-esque bursts of beatific abandon (as on the fifteen minute long title track) not to mention Organic Music Society style exaltation. On the closing ‘Spektra’, a majestic drone-odyssey even takes flight that connects the interstellar dots between the classic earthy strains of International Harvester, the droogy bliss of Spacemen 3 and the devotional mind-melt of Catherine Christer Hennix. 

Yet at all times, Nova Express essentially sound like no-one but themselves - an unassuming band (whose members have also reared their heads before and since in outfits like The Janitors, Klotmystik, Audionom and Josefin Öhrn & The Liberation) whose ability to alchemically transform simple ingredients into psychic monuments has only gained potency as the years have rolled by. Indeed, the buried audial treasure that is ‘Twenty One’ - like all truly transcendent music - exists beyond time and space alike. 



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