Rocket Probes – March 2022 playlist

OCH – Bolid
(Immense new track from the Swedes)
OCH

Alison Cotton – Violet May
(Beautiful first track from forthcoming album)
Alison Cotton

The Utopia Strong – Shepherdess
(The return of the Utopia Strong)
The Utopia Strong

Moundabout – Bog Bodies
(Debut single by the duo of Paddy Shine (GNOD) and Phil Masterson)
Moundabout

GNOD – Still Runnin'
(Ferocious new single by GNOD...killer stuff)
GNOD

Jamie Paton – Parabolas / Fleshed Out
(New single on Höga Nord by Rocket remixer)
Jamie Paton

Thee Alcoholics –  Seven Inch
(Best noise band in London right now...)
Thee Alcoholics 

Lay Llamas – Goud
(New album from our Italian friends)
Lay Llamas

Cherrystones – Thee past age of futurism
(New music from Godsy!)
Cherrystones

Anadol – Gizli Duygular
(Huge fans here of Anadol's last album, great to hear some new music from her)
Anadol

Société Etrange – Chance
(Killer psyched post punk from the ever-growing and incredible French scene – cheers Adam Reid for the nod)
Société Etrange

Sara Dziri – Horizons
(Acid journey...check out the album)
Sara Dziri

Section 25 - Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix)
(Thanks to Rickard from Flowers Must Die for this treat)
Section 25

Olimpia Splendid – Olimpia Splendid
(More thanks to Adam Reid for bringing this to our attention)
Olimpia Splendid

Iditarod – the Ghost, the Elf, the Cat and the Angel
(Ghostly acid folk)
Iditarod

Mulatu Astatke Ft: Belaynesh Wubante & Assegedetch Asfaw – Alemiye
(Ethiopian grooves)
Mulatu Astatke

Bitchin' Bajas – Quakenbrück
(Love this band)
Bitchin' Bajas

Kotra – Persistence
(Heavy sounds)
Kotra

Steve Hillage – Don't Dither Do It
(Don't dither...)
Steve Hillage

Phil MFU – Marooned on Mercury
(Nice spaced sounds from Vanishing Twin man)
Phil MFU

Thank – Good Boy
(Great track on Box...whole album is worth a listen)
Thank

Bivouac – Bivouac
(Post punk sounds sounds from Bristol)
Bivouac

King Tubby – King Tubby's Rock
(Rockin')
King Tubby

Cheri Knight – Prime Numbers
(Pop repetitions)
Cheri Knight

Nape Neck – Nape Neck
(Great post-punk sounds from Leeds)
Nape Neck

Duncan Marquiss – Wires Turned Sideways In Time
(Kosmische sounds)
Duncan Marquiss

Roger C. Reale & Rue Morgue – I Can't Control Myself
(Glam Troggs)
Roger C. Reale & Rue Morgue

Carmen Villain - Gestures
(Jon Hassell vibes)
Carmen Villain

Zavoloka – Obriad
(Psyched electronics from Ukrainian composer)
Zavoloka

33EMYBW – Macrocosmic
(Cheers to Mike Bourne for putting this in our ears)
33EMYBW

The Namelosers - Land Of A 1000 Dances
(Thanks to Dauns for the intro to this Swedish 60s fuzz!
The Namelosers

Listen/follow our 'updated monthly' Rocket Probes Spotify playlist: 

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OCH reveal new album Pö om pö

Pö om pö is name of the hotly anticipated new album by Swedish trio OCH. It is is the bands second album for Rocket and will be released on 27 May.

The first track to be revealed from the album is the incredibly addictive 'Bolid' – watch the John O'Carroll made video exclusively via Psychedelic Baby Magazine:

Psychedelic Baby Magazine

Pö om pö is available on ltd edition 'Ceremony Purple' vinyl from here from this Friday 1 April, as part of Bandcamp Friday:

Bandcamp

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Hypnagogia remains one of the most mysterious and haunting daily states of mind. Moments of revelation are wont to traditionally hit us particularly in the hinterland between dream and waking, and whilst hallucinations are a key element of the much-vaunted psychedelic experience, the first such taste we’ll tend to have of these in our lifetime, be they image-based, auditory or the afterglow of repetitive activity in the daytime, are in the realm, It’s this particular headspace that’s very much the world of ‘Pö om pö’, the second Rocket Recordings released full-length record from Sweden’s equally mysterious OCH.

Pö om pö (meaning ‘little by little’) is a journey further into inner space from ‘II’, the previous Rocket outing (which followed a 2014 cassette only release). It’s a still more expansive and vibrant transmission from the ether which distills kaleidoscopic rapture and oracular intensity from a variety of sources. The excursions here are jam-based in origin but lucid in approach, crepuscular in aspect but uplifting in effect.

What’s mapped out here is a trajectory on the kosmische continuum that touches on the terrain of late -‘70s Sky records style ambience (Cluster, Harald Grosskopf) the more overgrown quarters of Swedish experimental prog (Arbete Och Fritid, Anna Själv Tredje) and the sun-baked lo-fi DIY cassette culture of the US early ‘00s (Sun Araw, Magic Lantern) Although the overarching mood of ‘Pö Om Pö’ is one of

blissed-out indolence, it’s stubbornly averse to the cliches that have beset the psychedelic world this century - no motorik dead-ends or tambourine-shaking two-chord hoedowns to be experienced here. Rather we’re transported to a landscape where drone-based ritualism vies for attention with Faustian abstraction.

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Alison Cotton announces debut album on Rocket – watch haunting video for new track 'Violet May'

We are extremely pleased to announce that one of our favourite artist's Alison Cotton, is releasing her next album 'The Portrait You Painted of Me' on Rocket Recordings on 20 May (released on Feeding Tube in the USA).

Watch the video made by Rocket's very own John O'Carroll for the first track to be revealed off the album, the haunting 'Violet May' above.

'The Portrait You Painted of Me' is available to preorder on ltd edition 'Burnt Birch Vinyl' via here:

Bandcamp

There is also a ltd edition 'Black Vinyl' version going to shops and for US fans, the ever great Feeding Tube Records will be releasing an 'Orange Vinyl' version via their shop.

See Alison's incredible live set at these up-and-coming shows:

June 25 / Coventry / Just Dropped In  Tickets
July 6 / Leeds /  Wharf Chambers  Tickets
July 7 / Glasgow / Hug & Pint  Tickets
July 8 / Preston / The New Continental  Tickets
July 9 / Manchester / The Gullivers  Tickets
July 15 / Bristol / Crofter’s Rights  Tickets
July 16 / Chelmsford / Hot Box  Tickets
August 26-28 / London / Raw Power Festival  Tickets
September 7 / Berlin / Haus der Kulturen der Welt  Tickets

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Alison Cotton presents The Portrait You Painted of Me, a new 6-track album – her first for Rocket Recordings (released on Feeding Tube in the USA). Like Alison’s previous solo albums, the touchstones of her immersive sound are viola, harmonium and voice, merged together to create a rich suite of songs.

‘Mumurations Over the Moor’ is a wordless piece of layered vocals, drifting like fog towards a sunset over the green undulations of North East England (from where she hails). ‘The Last Wooden Ship’ evokes the shipyards of Sunderland using droning harmonium and viola lines, laced with piano and percussion events, while her voice calls out like one of Tim Buckley’s Sirens urging listeners to a rocky demise. ‘I Buried the Candlesticks’ has a haunted, traditional feel with its dolorously folky viola melody laid across a thick carpet harmonium, and small bursts of percussion that sound like cannonade heard through the thick cold walls of a castle in winter. ‘That Tunnel Underground Seemed Neverending’ is a musical vision of Northumberland’s mining culture at the dawn of the 20th Century - labyrinthine, subterranean, dimmer than night. 

‘Violet May’, the only traditional “song” on the album, was inspired by a trip to Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst Castle. Its plot deals with a reclusive artist who has forsaken all else for a life of solitary creation in her tower. The structure and sound reminiscent of a post-modern approach to lyrical concerns dealt with by folk singers of the British ‘60s, but the actual arrangement is closer to something John Cale might have done with Nico on The Marble Index. The closing track, ‘17th November 1962’, inspired by nearly-forgotten memories of disaster with a fishing boat, a storm and an ill-fated rescue attempt. The song (and album) ends with what sounds like a forlorn foghorn cutting across waves of night with Alison’s voice again evoking the Sirens.

As with its predecessors, The Portrait You Painted of Me was recorded at home in London, beautifully produced by Alison’s partner, Mark Nicholas, and it contains all the elements that result in the sombre, exquisite melancholy she creates. This is some serious and remarkable stuff.

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DJINN's second album 'Transmissions' gets a repress

Many of you will be pleased to know that a ltd edition repress of DJINN's incredible album from last year 'Transmissions' is being released on the 1st April.

You can preorder this ltd to 500 copies Black vinyl edition here:

Bandcamp

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DJINN – Transmissions

Not unlike the supernatural deities from which they take their name, DJINN - the Swedish collective featuring members of Hills and GOAT in their ranks - have proven themselves a potent and mysterious force. Their first release for Rocket Recordings was a portrait of open-minded explorers foraying into the realms of free and cosmic jazz, but never overly reverential or in thrall to their own influences. 

Following the ‘Avant De Servir’ tape which was released on Swedish label Zeon Light last year, ‘Transmission’ is a still more intrepid step into new terrain for DJINN - the mantric rhythms are hypnotic here, the freeform extrapolations hit new peaks of vivid abandon, and the moments of calm are blissfully meditative. Yet their sound palette extends into refreshing collisions of intent and metaphysical intensity that echo across the psychic landscapes of Sunburned Hand Of The Man-style freak-folk, as well as the polylingual fusion of jazz, European and Asian music that Don Cherry essayed on 1969’s ‘Eternal Rhythm’ and 1973’s ‘Organic Music Society’.

Amidst these intoxicating and richly eclectic soundworlds, the band are just as comfortable invoking Popol Vuh (as on the mellotron-abetted title track) Art Ensemble Of Chicago and the lineage of Swedish underground music that found epiphanies in the radical folk-psych of Arbete Och Fritid whilst also sounding - crucially - like no-one but themselves. 

For all the far-reaching explorations of altered states by which DJINN set out their stall, this collection of mystical headspaces - in all its fearless and feral glory - is proof positive that the band’s journey has only just begun. This transmission is set to ring out across dimensions unknown. 

The album comes with a download code that also contains as a bonus their 2020 ‘Avant De Servir EP’ that was originally released on cassette via Swedish label Zeon Light.

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Watch video 'Still Runnin'' – the ferocious new single from GNOD

GNOD follow their recent 'Bad Apple' single with a ferocious follow-up, a track called 'Still Runnin''.

'Still Runnin'' is the second track to be revealed from forthcoming album  'Hexen Valley' – which is being released on 1 April.

Watch the band made video via Echoes and Dust exclusively  here:

Echoes and Dust

Hexen Valley is available to preorder on ltd edition vinyl and on ltd CD.

We have  'Black vinyl' versions available on the Bandcamp. Plus as well as the 'Black' there is a 'Red vinyl' heading to the record shops. Plus the band will also have an exclusive tour only 'White vinyl'. All versions are ltd.

Preorder LP/CD

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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.

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.

See GNOD on tour:
April 05 / UK / Nottingham Bodega
April 06 / BE / Gent / Trefpunt
April 07 / NL / Utrecht / Db's
April 08 / FR / Paris / Espace B
April 09 / FR / Nantes / Ateliers de Bitche
April 11 / FR / Lyon / Le Sonic
April 12 / CH / Zurich / Helsinki
April 13 / CH / Geneve / Cave 12
April 15 / IT / Ravenna / Bronson
April 16 / IT / Verona / Colorificio Kroen
April 17 / SL / Nova Gorica / Mostovna
April 18 / SL / Ljubljana / Gala Hala
April 19 / AT / Wien / Chelsea
April 20 / CZ / Brno / Kabinet Muz
April 21 / CZ / Praga / Underdogs
April 22 / DE / Berlin / Urban Spree
April 23 / DE / Hamburg / Stubnitz
April 24 / DE / Koln / C/O POP Festival
April 25 / BE / Brussels / Magasin4
April 26 / NL / Breda / Mezz
April 27 / FR / Lille / La Malterie
April 28 / UK / Ramsgate / Ramsgate Music Hall
April 29 / UK / London / Desertfest
April 30 / UK / Bristol / Astral Festival
May 3 / UK / Falmouth / The Cornish Bank
May 5 / UK / Birmingham / Centrala Space
May 6 / UK / St Leonards / The Piper
May 7 / UK / Birkenhead / Future Yard

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The Utopia Strong announce second album and reveal video for new track 'Shepherdess'

Following the success of their self-titled debut, we are very excited to reveal that The Utopia Strong have announced the details of their anticipated follow up album 'International Treasure'.

If you are unaware, The Utopia Strong are the incredible talented kosmische trio of Kavus Torabi (GONG/Cardiacs), Michael J York (Current 93/Coil) and Steve Davis (6 Times World Snooker Champion/DJ)

'International Treasure' will be released on 10 June – watch the video for first track to be revealed 'Shepherdess – video was created by the clever folks at Bristol motion design studio 'SHOP'

'International Treasure' is being released on LTD LP and CD. You can preorder on Pink vinyl via the link below plus there will be Yellow vinyl and Black vinyl versions available from your favourite record shop

Preorder Ltd LP/CD

See The Utopia Strong live:
April 9 / High Wycombe / Wycombe Arts Centre
June 17 / London / The Garage (Supporting Magma)
June 18 / London / The Garage (Supporting Magma)
June 19 / Manchester / Band on the Wall (Supporting Magma)
+ more TBA

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Call it synchronicity, call it happenstance, call it no more than three friends getting together to give their speakers a workout. Yet The Utopia Strong’s formidable conflagration of psychedelic radiance and beatific harmony has evolved way beyond all or any expectations since the band’s inception at the start of 2018. The following year’s Rocket debut was a powerful document of kosmische transcendence fit to banish all or any talk of its originators’ collective histories firmly into the background.

Yet it’s clear now that this triumvirate were barely getting started. ‘International Treasure’ chronicles the collaborative collision of Steve Davis, Kavus Torabi and Mike York heading into unchartered psychic territory, seemingly with nothing but their instincts as co-ordinates. What’s resulted is a step beyond anything either band or audience might have expected - a deeply rewarding voyage into inner space which moves into darker and still more evocative sound-worlds whilst remaining fundamentally off the map.

The aural epiphanies herein traverse on a hallucinatory trajectory from blissed out (the incantatory spiral of Persephone Sleeps and the arcadian lilt of Shepherdess) to ominous and unearthly (as in the case of the overcast ambience of Disaster 2 and the non-Euclidean geometry of album centrepiece Revelations) before arriving at a rapturous conclusion with the gloriously balearic end-credit euphoria of Castalia.

Whilst their debut essentially marked the first results of the chemistry between these three, the partnership has further crystallised over a number of self-released records, their improvisatory approach being honed and perfected in various intensive hive-mind sessions at each others houses and home studios. All three musicians here found themselves operating outside of their comfort zones - Torabi’s purchase of a guzheng (a Chinese plucked zither) led to Shepherdess’s lambent allure and York’s spectacular and evolving array of pipes and wind instruments contributed just as much as his ruthless editing.

Davis meanwhile, whose speciality lies in rich tapestries of modular electronics, sums up their relationship in characteristically self-effacing fashion: “I see myself as a strong midfielder, or a centre back. Kavus and Mike are like the Lionel Messi or Ronaldo of the equation, and I’m setting situations up for them”

Influences know no bounds in this context, and the listener would be forgiven for locating the atmospheres and soundscapes of this album on some sonic promontory above and between the potent abstractions of Tim Hecker, the improvisatory excursions of The Necks, and the gothic allure of Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore. ’International Treasure’ took shape initially in 2020 just as world affairs were changing drastically, and it’s open to debate to what extent this influenced the occasionally sombre and melancholic tones therein. However, this album is ultimately possessed of a vibrant life way beyond the circumstances in which it was wrought.

‘International Treasure’’ is the next chapter in a story which only grows more rewarding with every stop along the way - one in which three heads travel together deeper into their own musical journeys, and the resulting alchemical power transmutes its origins into gold. As no less a sage than Andrew Weatherall proclaimed, The Utopia Strong are “gnostic sonics in a nutshell”.

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Terrascope reviews GNOD's Hexen Valley

They say:

Recently decamped to Hebden Bridge (the Hexen Valley of the title and, for the uninitiated, a more rugged Glastonbury of the North) and with a line-up still coalesced around Founding Fathers Paddy Shine and Chris Haslam, Gnod reprise the communal approach with which they were first associated at Salford’s Islington Mill. It’s a formula that succeeded well enough then, and it sure bears fruit now.

Gnod’s last album, La Morte du Sense, doubled down on the aural bombardment that has served them so well in recent years and which as good as nailed it on that occasion, too. Now stripped back to a four-piece featuring two guitars, bass and drums, one might reasonably expect to again be on the receiving end of a bare-knuckle pasting. And to an extent we are, except that Hexen Valley introduces us to a few more jabs and feints, even a hint of fancy footwork to keep you guessing. Which of course makes it all the more delicious when you do get floored. Boy how we love a sucker punch - fall for it every time....  

Read the rest here: Terrascope

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Bandcamp Friday...

It is another Bandcamp 'No Fee' Friday today, so as ever this is a great time to buy a Rocket release, including:

Moundabout – Flowers Rot, Bring me Stones LP

Rubber Oh – Strange Craft  LP/CD

GNOD – Hexen Valley LP/CD

GOAT – Headsoup T-shirts

Nova Express – Twenty One LP

Smote – Drommon LP

GNOD – Just Say No... T-shirts

Plus we have lots of other gems for you:

Rocket Bandcamp

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Ltd edition GOAT – Headsoup tshirts up for preasale (on Friday 4 March)

Since the release of GOAT's album 'Headsoup' last year we have received a lot of requests from fans asking if we would make some t-shirts of the artwork.

So we have decided to do a 'made-to-order' run of two different designs to coincide with the up-and-coming Bandcamp 'no-fee' day on Friday 4 March.

Design 1 / Head shirt
– A double sided printed shirt with the Headsoup album sleeve on the front and a GOAT logo on the back – printed onto a red shirt:

Design 2 / Can shirt
– Single colour 'Headsoup Can' distressed montage – printed onto a red shirt

You can preorder these shirts in what size you want from 8am on 4 March.

And don't forget the pre-sell of the debut album by new GNOD offshoot Moundabout will be going live from then as well.

Rocket Bandcamp

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Moundabout – the duo of Paddy Shine (GNOD) and Phil Masterson reveal debut Rocket album

Moundabout the new project from Paddy Shine of Gnod and Phil Masterson of Los Langeros/Damp Howl/Bisect, have revealed a 27 May release of their debut album for Rocket ‘Flowers Rot, Bring Me Stones’.

Watch the Eben Barnard made video for 'Bog Bodies' – the first track to be revealed from the album exclusively via The Quietus here:

The Quietus

'Flowers Rot, Bring Me Stones’ is available to preorder on 'Megalithic Brown & Clear Vinyl' from this Bandcamp Friday (4 March):

Bandcamp

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Some of the most striking ancient structures in Ireland are not its standing stones but the country’s neolithic “passage tombs” constructed between five and six thousand years ago. As this modern name suggests, they were in all likelihood actual liminal zones bridging this world and the next; charnel houses, stone age reliquaries, bone gardens, cairns vibrating between planes and states of being. One of the most interesting of these graves is Knowth at Brú na Bóinne. Its huge, many-passaged central burial chamber is surrounded by 17 small barrows, and among these constructions is over one third of all the rediscovered megalithic art in Western Europe. Kerbstones and pillars are carved with a hypnotising array of spiral, serpentiform and lozenge-shaped patterns; alongside is chiselled the oldest known representation of the moon made by man.

Moundabout is a new folk project based in Ireland by Paddy Shine of Gnod and Phil Masterson of Los Langeros/Damp Howl/Bisect, but the words ‘new’ and ‘folk’ need to be treated with care here. Listening to Flowers Rot, Bring Me Stones is like entering a trance state while staring at one of the Knowth spiral carvings. Like following a ridged epidermal loop inwards, tracing the spiral of an ammonite towards the centre or peeling back the layers of an onion, immersion in this great album sees you travelling both temporally backwards and spatially inwards simultaneously. The listener is invited to see folk – orally transmitted music often concerning national identity and culture played on traditional instruments – as a glowing helix of a continuum stretching way back beyond the revival of the 1950s and 1960s to an eternal vibrancy that predates classical antiquity and Irish civilisation itself.

As the album moves the listener, they are taken on a geographical and geological journey as well as psychological and spiritual, traveling inwards from the coast (‘The Sea’), as well as down beneath the strata (“How many bog bodies are waiting to be found?”) And when you have been primed, it takes you all the way back to commune with older gods on the album’s epic centrepiece, ‘Dick Dalys Dance’, creating the kind of prehistoric drones and trance-inducing rhythms that the echoing, celestially aligned corridors of the Brú na Bóinne were built to amplify.

This is not new music but the deep sensations it provokes will be newto most listeners. Imagine for a few minutes something as glorious as a Nurse With Wound List for the 21st Century… were I given such a formidable task as to organise such a collection of mind-bending music, Flowers Rot, Bring Me Stones by Moundabout would be one of the first records I would include.

John Doran, Wiltshire, 2021

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