As we announced previously Rocket will be releasing the next album by Alison Cotton – more details regarding that will. be coming shortly.
In the mean time we would like to let you know about two BBC Radio 3 events Alison has announced:
First up is this Friday on the Late Junction, were you can hear a very special collaboration piece recorded exclusively for the show between Alison and synth player Hinako Omori. The show starts at 11pm:
Alison has also announced that she will be taking part in a BBC Radio 3 New Music Show on Saturday 12th March at The Fire Station in Sunderland, the event will be recorded in front of a live audience. If you would like to go to the show then tickets and more info can be found here:
We are very excited to hear that Pharaoh Overlord are going to be playing this year's Supersonic Festival and Aaron Turner will be joining them on vocals. So the first chance we will get to hear the mighty tracks from '6' live!
Already announced to be playing was J. Zunz who will be in the UK finally promoting her debut album Hibiscus plus some incredible new material!
Back in December Sam Grant from Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs revealed 'Little Demon' the debut ltd edition 7" by his new project Rubber Oh. And now a couple of months later Rubber Oh have released a brand new single called 'Nothing' – a taster for what to expect from the band's debut album 'Strange Craft' which is released on 3rd June.
Watch the amazing video for 'Nothing' which was made by the hyper talented Mike Bourne (Teeth of the Sea) above.
You can also stream the single 'Nothing' here: Stream
The incredible cover art for 'Strange Craft' was created by the very talented 3D artist Santi Zoraidez.
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You can preorder Strange Craft on a special Rocket Edition that can be bought via the link below. Rough Trade also have an exclusive Pink/Grey splatter vinyl, and all other shops have a ltd edition Yellow vinyl version for presale.
The album is also being released on ltd CD in a mini-gatefold-LP sleeve:
Rubber Oh have also announced the first few live shows, you can catch them at these venues:
June 02 / Manchester/ YES June 03 / London/ The Lexington June 04 / Newcastle/ The Cluny 2
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Inspiration can strike anyone at any time, and more often than not from somewhat peculiar quarters. Rarely more so than when Sam Grant - thus far best known as guitarist and producer of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - finally set about work on a solo project that had been pursuing him for some years. “It’s easier to describe it materialistically than by any other way.” he reasons “I want people to imagine that feeling of rubber - its physical memory, the unnatural vibe of it. It’s so tactile but alien, but also difficult not to know. It’s an odd analogy, but that’s what this music is for me.”
A specific gravity is one more property that rubber has going for it, and that much is certainly true of Rubber Oh’s debut album ‘Strange Craft’, the result of his elasticated fixation, and his debut album of deliriously tuneful sci-fi tinged psych-pop. Mapping out a retro-futuristic trajectory that stretches from the wide-eyed travails of the late-’60s through to the hard-edged mind expansions of the 21st century, this collection of warped interstellar voyages is intent on taking the scenic route across the cosmic continuum.
The project took shape initially in snatched hours around Grant’s regular job as studio engineer at Newcastle’s Blank Studios. Not content with completely revamping this facility over the pandemic period, Rubber Oh initially took shape as a means for pure indulgence on the part of its creator, in which he could set about scratching every itch that he’d been forced to discard when working for others.
Paradoxically, certain rules of thumb were utilised, with each track constructed - some might argue in counter-intuitive approach to the riff-driven world of his main band - across a subterranean low-end bedrock of two bass guitarists, a complete absence of cymbal wash, and only single notes allowed on guitar. While he performed the majority of the music, help from friends and acquaintances was enlisted, such as Pigs’ Chris Morley on drums as well as Matt Baty [Pigs x7] and Beth Jeans Houghton [Du Blonde] counting amongst the backing vocalists, all amidst a wash of celestial ambience and curlicues of analogue synth.
The result is a unique soundworld in which an emphasis on beguiling melody marries a kaleidoscopic grandeur. Widescreen gems like the radiant Children Of Alchemy, the hard-edged and paranoid brain-melter Little Demon, and the unshakeable earworm Hyperdrive Fantasy are all vibrant colour and celestial energy, setting their psychic stall out somewhere between the incandescent headspace of a ‘70s sci-fi TV show and the red-light-fever of the overheated ampstacks Grant has been historically more familiar with.
Ultimately, for Grant as well as everyone else, Rubber Oh amounts to one strange trip - “Many of the lyrics are about alchemy, journeying and vessels, as interchangeable metaphors for knowledge and wisdom” he says. “I wanted to mesh the land and sea, the cosmos and the psyche across the tracks as one single plane” Mission accomplished, in short. This Strange Craft is fuelled up and ready to accept all comers on a ride into extensions through dimensions.
Last summer Rocket teamed up with the great Carnival Brewing to create a special beer called 'Time we left this world today' – a DDH session pale ale that comes in six different ltd edition cans.
These sold out incredibly fast and Carnival have decided to do another brew of cans and some ltd kegs for a select few bars/venues.
The cans feature six Rocket album sleeves: Goat's 'World Music', Teeth of the Sea's 'Master', GNOD's 'Just Say No to the Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine', The Utopia Strong's S/T album, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs album 'Viscerals' and Pharaoh Overlord's '6'.
But most importantly, about the beer...
'Time we left this world today' is a hazy, juicy 5% pale ale brewed with loads of wheat and oats for a thick body then dry hopped with citra and mosaic to maximise the juice levels.
As said the beer will also be available on draft for a ltd time at a selection of bars and venues across the UK, if you run a bar and are interested to get a keg or cans then wholesale is available.
The Holy Family are following the success of their incredible debut album with some debut live shows in April. Live performances by the band are probably going to be quite rare so these dates will be very special indeed:
April 18 / Bishops Stortford / The Half Moon Tickets
Another reason to make sure you do not miss these shows is that the band are going to have a ltd edition lathe cut 7" EP that will only be available on their merch table. The Kinked 'EP' is a two track 7" containing two very unique versions of The Kinks classic tracks 'Fancy' and 'Rainy Day in June'. The single will be released digitally on April 22.
“Double album of monstrous resurrection.” Uncut "A vital dose of future-pagan magick." Electronic Sound "Get onboard…you would not want to be left behind." Louder Than War “Pastoral psychedelic perfection” Independent
The Holy Family's S/T debut album can be purchased from here:
Originally arranged as two socially distanced gigs, one in the evening and a matinee show. This gig had already been moved twice. Last time, I had just ordered a pint at the bar when I received the message the gig had been cancelled due to a positive test upstairs. So my gig consisted of watching Utopia Strong pack up their car as I sat outside drinking my pint. Thankfully, today’s gig went ahead as a full capacity show.
Supporting Teeth of the Sea were the Utopia Strong. For somebody my age, the big draw is that the snooker legend Steve Davis is a member of the band. I have seen Utopia Strong before and like last time, I was more star struck seeing Steve, than just about any artist or sports person.
While obligatory to mention Steve. The Utopia Strong are a very good band. They create experimental ambient electronic music. Mixing old electronic instruments, guitar, flute and even Northumbrian pipes to create a wall of ambient music that washes over you. I rarely want to sit listening to music, but this is music to lie down to while staring at a stream of psychedelic imagery projected onto the ceiling. As the music doesn’t have a base line. It’s not something I can necessarily move around to and I realised halfway through their set, I was stood completely still, mesmerised. Looking around at the audience, so was everyone else. No one was talking. Everyone listening. Clearly, their music works...
There is a Red vinyl and a Black vinyl heading to the Record shops. Plus the band will also have an exclusive tour only White vinyl. All versions are ltd.
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The Calder Valley has been well known as a bohemian enclave and epicentre of strange vibrations for decades now. It’s an area of West Yorkshire that extends roughly between Manchester and Leeds across a landscape rugged in aspect and rich in allure. Todmorden, a town within in, has been home to so many UFO sightings that it’s been dubbed ‘The UK”s Roswell’. Sylvia Plath and Emily Brontë were galvanised by its raw beauty. And it’s where Gnod came together to create Hexen Valley.
The formation of Hexen Valley began in summer 2021 when Gnod’s Paddy Shine moved to Hebden Bridge to join fellow protagonists Chris Haslam and Jesse Webb in a co-op house at the 200-year-old Nutclough Tavern. As has been the case since the formation of Gnod, the line-up of the collective shifted and morphed to fit circumstances - soon they were joined by fellow Nutclough resident Richard Chamberlain on guitar, and in the Hebden Bridge Underground rehearsal studio the four soon began intensive jamming in which certain distinct songs and themes began to emerge. These were eventually captured by Sam Greenwood in the same studio, with the whole project taking place in both this physical location and its companion headspace.
Inspiration struck not only from the chemistry of the four musicians in this confined room but all around - Shine cites the likes of shop noticeboard messages and pub conversations in Hebden as lyrical sparks; channeling by his reckoning the ‘valley fever’ that exists somewhere in the chasms and contrasts between the amazing light and vivacity of the valley summit and the comparative darkness of the towns below.
Meanwhile, musical shapes were making themselves known seemingly of their own volition - Haslam shifting back to bass for this setup led to the colossal low-end groove which underpins the monstrous 12-minute album centrepiece ‘Spotlight’. ‘Antidepressants’ in turn sprang from a mantra chanted at Nutclough to a fully-fledged exercise in aural overload. ‘Still Runnin’’ takes shape across a sonic hinterland between Daydream Nation-style kineticism and sludged-out aggression.
Opener ‘Bad Apple’ was an entirely spontaneous piece of in-studio magic which evolved from a spidery guitar line of Chamberlain into a piece of potent and angular post-punk intensity. And perhaps most surprisingly of all, Lou Reed’s tour-bus favourite ‘Waves Of Fear’ is jammed out with fearsome gusto into a piece of first-take catharsis and alchemy, fit to transcend all or any oppressive atmospheres
that surround.
The previous Gnod line-up - minus Chamberlain but including bassist Alex Macarte, drummer John Perry and soundman Raikes Parade - reunited for an overwhelmingly positive and successful UK tour in late 2021, and the journey continues. Yet Hexen Valley marks another distinct chapter in this iconoclastic mission.
Hexen Valley is where a monolithic sonic force - charged by the energy of its surroundings -makes contact with other realms. It’s the sound of a band whose fearsome intensity is only matched by their evolutionary drive. It’s Gnod at full power, and it’s a haunted place you might struggle to leave.
Bandcamp have decided to carry on their 'No Fee' Fridays to continue to help labels and bands financially while the industry continues to suffer due to the repercussions of Covid (and Brexit for UK labels/bands).
So as ever this is a great time to buy a Rocket release – be it the latest releases by GNOD, Rubber Oh, Goat, Nova Express or Smote? Or a recent ltd edition reissue by Teeth of the Sea, Utopia Strong etc or delve deep into our catalogue for something you don't know? Or you could pick-up a Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs or GNOD Tshirt or a ltd Hawkwind poster?
In December we released 'Little Demon' the debut single by Rubber Oh - the new band lead by Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs guitarist Sam Grant and also featuring fellow 'Pig' John-Michael Hedley.
The Bside of this ltd edition 7" featured this mighty remix by Richard Dawson that also featured the talents of Circle/Pharaoh Overlord main man Jussi Lehtisalo!
You can buy the 7" from Bandcamp here or from a handful of record shops that have a couple of copies: