Backseat Mafia have reviewed the our Goat Live Ballroom Ritual album that is released on 2nd December:
"Goat were one of the biggest “breakthrough acts” of 2012. Their album ‘World Music’ was met to critical acclaim and the mysterious Swedish group quickly gathered a cult following. They played two sets at Glastonbury, which quickly became accepted as surprise highlights of the weekend. Rumours flew around the blogosphere; their live show is some sort of ritual, all of the band members wear pagan masks, joss sticks are burnt, there may or may not be a live sacrifice. The only definite is that Goat’s live show is some sort of spectacle. So a live album would make sense. Wouldn’t it?
The live album is an add concept. On the one hand, it’s a sure-fire way to capture a band’s energy and chemistry. When a band plays live, they really up their game, knowing that there is a crowd of devoted fans eagerly waiting to be blown away. Thus, recording a live album is surely the only way to capture a band at their best.
That said, there is something about witnessing a band create music that just cannot be captured on record. Being in the same room as the artist and watching the piece of art come to life is magical; it can act as a “way in” to new music, or open up new levels of understanding and appreciation of the music. It is why, for instance, that in an age where you can download almost any album for next to nothing, people continue to pay to go and see their favourite musicians.
It is for this reason that I was sceptical of a live Goat record. I loved their album when it was released, and saw them perform at Supersonic Festival shortly afterwards. The show was brilliant – fun, intense, compelling and freaky. Dancers, lasers, elaborate costumes and burning incenses were surely what made the performance so spectacular! Clearly, these are all things impossible to capture on a live album, so surely the record would not work as anything more than a money-spinner.
True, the costumes, lights, and other visual feats did add a lot of fun to the performance, but the real excitement was the music. The band transformed their album for the live environment; locking into extended instrumental sections, screaming vocals, satanic tabla beats and guitar wig-outs. Energy was turned up way past eleven. It is this aspect of the performance that is captured on ‘Live Ballroom Ritual’…."
Read the rest of the review here: Backseat Mafia
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Under the name of Soundheads, Loop returned to the stage after a 23 year absence and it was great to see them back!!
The importance of Loop on the influence on Rocket has been a constant thread since our inception.
So, if you get a chance to see them do, as by all accounts it will be a short lived reunion.
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Can't wait two weeks until the Goat Live Ballroom Ritual LP is out?
Well NME are exclusively streaming the whole album for the next two weeks here: NME
Let us know what you think?
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Teeth of the Sea performed their live soundtrack to the great Ben Wheatly film A Field in England at Cork Film Festival on Saturday…We are Noise have written the following review:
"...There was a brief interval as London psych group Teeth of the Sea rearranged the stage for A Field in England: Remixed. My advance understanding of this show was that it would consist of a live original soundtrack played to reworked sections of A Field in England, Ben Wheatley’s English Civil War film released this year.
Philip Ilson came back on to make fresh introductions for this specially commissioned work and to explain the extent of the permissions underpinning the project, which extended to financiers Film 4, director Wheatley and the film’s original composer Jim Williams, who was in attendance among the packed house.
And so, there were on stage… a trumpet, a bow playing something indeterminate which was laid flat, an electric guitar and a couple of tabletops’ worth of effects. As our cast of ill-fated deserters arrived on the screen, the band created a slow build with extremes – these were ear-piercing high frequencies contrasted with a shuddering bass end that seemed about to levitate the entire audience. Very soon, it began to feel like a church in Cork remixed.
The arresting black and white photography presented many memorable images – wind blowing through long grass, close ups of helmeted faces approaching a mushroom circle at ground level, a caterpillar trudging along a twig silhouetted by the sun – meanwhile there was plaintiff trumpet and a lovely swirling wash of guitar chords…"
Read the rest of the review here: We are Noise
Photo courtesy of Mark Graham
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Brett Savage from Louder than War (and Dead Sea Apes I might add) have written a humbling review of our forthcoming 15th Anniversary compilation album:
Various Artists – Crystallized (Rocket Recordings)
"Louder Than War’s Brett Savage reviews arguably the years most essential compilation album, 12 tracks that give you “a glimpse into the past, present and future of one of the UK’s most vital labels”, Rocket Recordings, home, amongst others, of the phenomenal Goat.
Many people bemoan the death of the independent spirit. The very term ‘indie’ is in itself a contested space. Does ‘indie’ even mean independent any more? Many ‘indie labels’ are in fact sponsored clearing houses created by major labels to capitalise on a bit of ‘cool’. All independent scenes are a case of necessity being the mother of invention, as the more maverick musical spirits realised that major labels didn’t see them as a great investment.
Nowadays, the term ‘indie’ pretty much applies to bands slightly left of the AOR spectrum. Has that independent impulse been destroyed by the co-opting of the aesthetic by the majors? Well, no. If anything, there has been a flowering of young labels making their way to the surface in recent times and true to form, it has been those independent entities releasing the most vital music.
Bristol based Rocket Recordings have been toiling away at the coalface of the independent scene for the last 15 years. Although their output can largely be described as ‘psychedelic’, they are not restrained by the traditional definition of the term. Rocket do not deal with tedious revivalist 60s wannabes whose parodical approach to music is a depressing equivalent to Civil War Recreationist Societies (replacing their pikes with Vox Teardrop guitars), rather they have kept their eyes focused sharply on the forward thinking, the innovative and the noisy. They have unerring musical instincts and have an enviable back catalogue which includes releases by their hometown heroes and subsequent ‘cult’ – The Heads. In recent times they have released three indisputable classics: Drop Out by Gnod & White Hills, Your Mercury by Teeth Of The Sea and perhaps the most exciting album of last year – World Music by Goat.
Crystallized represents the jewels in the label’s crown and also gives space to bands that are in line with Rocket’s musical vision…"
Read the rest of the review here: Louder than War
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The great HILLS have announced a rare show in Denmark on 13 December and in Sweden the day after.
We are hoping to get the band over to the UK next year for at least one show to coincide with their new album which they are currently locked away making.
Our reissue of their album MASTER SLEEPS is still available from the Rocket Shop: Bandcamp
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As xmas is approaching we have got a ltd special offer for three classic Rocket CD's at a seasonal discounted price.
You get:
Gnod – Dropout with the White Hills II CD
White Hills - Heads on Fire CD
Gnod - Chaudelande CD
For only: £17.99
You can buy here: Rocket Bandcamp
BUT REMEMBER:
"Rocket is for life, not just for Christmas"
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Thought Forms - Landing from Thought Forms on Vimeo.
Friends of Rocket Thought Forms have just released this self made video for the track 'Landing' one of the great tracks off their Invada Records LP Ghost Mountain that came out earlier in the year.
Love the Tuba's!!
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"The Salford krautrock merchants play The Trip fest next week. Ahead of that, Samuel A Smith took a trip to/in their HQ to catch up with the band:
In the foreword of The Archaic Revival by ethnobotanist and sage of psychedelia Terence McKenna, Tom Robbins writes of "a cyclone of unorthodox ideas capable of lifting almost any brain out of it's cognitive Kansas."
This is Gnod. The auricular incarnation of McKenna’s strangest philosophies, re-imagined by some pissed off Norse demiurge to be enacted in an amphitheatre made from multi-coloured crystal skulls. The flower children have been forced to violent revolt and what’s left is bizarre, and fucking magnificent.
On a Friday night, ahead of their first night set at the five-day psych odyssey fest The Trip, I’m at Gnod’s Islington Mills base in Salford, the epicentre of Gnod's collective mind, and about to be immersed first hand in a practice session. They have a banquet table of kit - analogue gadgets, pedals, drum machines, all manner of wires and strange twisty bits like some genius teenager's wildest aqueous dream, all set up ready to transport to some peculiar and freakish realm. Lead to a black leather sofa at the back of the room, they hand me a bin bag blind fold. This was something to be experienced without vision…"
Read the rest of the interview here: The Quietus
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Here is the not seen before footage of the Heads playing San Francisco on their one and only American Tour. The show saw the Heads share the stage with Nubula, Acid King and High on Fire and also sported a stunning Kozik poster
Rocket's Mission Control was there on the night (can be seen down the front) and we remember it fondly, it was a stunning night!!! Paul is wearing his 'fresh from the printers' first print Rocket Big Muff shirt.
Sit back and enjoy...
This is the first of a series of unseen footage we are going to be posting over the next few months.
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