Rocket Probes – March 2021 playlist

The Holy Family – Inward Turning Suns
(First track to be revealed from their astonishing debut album – amazing video by Mike Bourne too!)
The Holy Family

Land Trance – A Raft
(Amazing track from their amazing album...a record that we wanted on vinyl, so we had to release it to make that happen...accompanied by another great video by John O'Carroll)
Land Trance

Tomaga - Intimate Immensity
(Incredible)
Tomaga

Sam Barton – Bien Boa
(Stunning track by Teeth of The Sea's Sam Barton from a must buy charity comp, also featuring Gazelle Twin, Dorcha, Lower Slaughter etc etc) 
Sam Barton

Rakta & DEAFKIDS – Live at Sesc Pompia
(Brilliant first track to be revealed off this new collab live album)
Rakta & DEAFKIDS

Gazelle Twin & Nyx – Deep England
(Essential listening)
Gazelle Twin & Nyx

USA/Mexico – Del Rio
(More pure filth)
USA/Mexico

Sathönay – Hello Sunny
(Saz, beats and melodies...on Zam Zam)
Sathönay

Ashtray Navigations – Greatest Imaginary Hits
(A wealth of quality immersions)
Ashtray Navigations

Homeboy Sandman & Edan– Rock & Roll Indian Dance
(Killer psyched hip-hop via Gary the Tall's NTS show)
Homeboy Sandman & Edan

Smote – Portcullis/Bodkin/Drommon
(Channeling some nice lo-fi Hills and Myrrors sounds)
Smote

Mouse and The Boys - Xcedrin headache
(More essential psyched sound courtesy of Cherrystones)
Mouse and The Boys

Various – LA OLA INTERIOR Spanish Ambient & Acid Exoticism 1983-1990
(Nice comp of eclectic sounds)
LA OLA INTERIOR

Various  – Warfaring Strangers: Darkscorch Canticles
(Good collection of 70's rock/proto metal)
Various Artists

Art Ensemble of Chicago – Saturday Morning
(Rhythms)
Art Ensemble of Chicago

Popera Cosmic – Les Esclaves
(Sounds from '69 France on Finders Keepers)
Popera Cosmic 

Suzanne Ciani – Concert At WBAI Free Music Store
(Modulations)
Suzanne Ciani

Tren Go! Sound System & Ornamental – Assessment
(Psychscapes)
Tren Go! Sound System & Ornamental

Beak> - Oh Know
(Banger of a new Beak> tune)
Beak>

Wayne Adams – Drift
(And relax...)
Wayne Adams

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

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Raven Sings The Blues say some words about The Holy Family

They say:

Another excellent entry to 2021 from Rocket Recordings today. The label unveils the debut from The Holy Family, a fog-draped psych folk journey trapped between the mind and the astral plane. With a loping beat tattooed on hand drums and offered to the sun on the winds of flutes and synths, the first track, “Inward Turning Suns” makes a play for the spiritual as it descends onto the speakers. The accompanying video continues the course, tracking a protagonist through mystical rituals and laced with an ancient magic. The album is headed by David J. Smith, along with longtime collaborators Kavus Torabi, Emmett Elvin, Sam Warren and Michael J. York. The band’s eponymous debut is out July 2nd.

See the piece here: Raven Sings The Blues

The S/T debut album is available to preorder from Friday: Bandcamp

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Introducing the astonishing debut album by The Holy Family

A surreal odyssey into dimensions unknown, The Holy Family’s debut album has arrived to bewitch and delight. The band, led by David J. Smith, release their self-titled album on vinyl and digital on 2 July 2021.

The new album launches with an incredible animation for ‘Inward Turning Suns’ created by Teeth of The Sea's Mike Bourne, watch this stunning piece of art above:

The album is released on ltd edition 2xLP and CD. There are two versions available – double frosted clear vinyl that can be preordered from Rockets Bandcamp (from this Friday as part of Bandcamp's no fee day) and on double grey vinyl that will be available to preorder from your local record shop today, both versions and the CD are ltd first editions:

Preorder Ltd 2LP/CD (From this Friday)

The scope of The Holy Family - an auditory Rorschach test across thirteen tracks rich in adventure and intrigue - is boundless. It’s an intrepid voyage through sound-worlds that takes in all manner of incarnations, as spidery zeuhl, oceanic kosmische, blissful pastoral and celluloid-score tension are visited here in search of some greater universal truth. Yet all of these stylistic forays are married with relentless dream logic into one unifying kaleidoscopic vision. 

“I guess if I had to try to put it into words it’s my attempt at a musical interpretation of a very trippy and psychedelic murder mystery tale, or otherworldly dream / hallucination” reflects David J. Smith, the chief architect of this particular hall of mirrors. The aesthetic of The Holy Family evolved naturally via first improvisation and then a very meticulous crafting of the raw material. Recording sessions involved Smith and his cohorts - including longtime collaborators Kavus Torabi, Emmett Elvin, Sam Warren and Michael J. York - retreating to an old house in the country to lay down tracks that were then sculpted into their eventual form by Smith and engineer / mixer Antti Uuismaki, for approval and final overdubs from the rest of the collective. 

Lyrical and aesthetic inspiration came from both the magical realism of Angela Carter (whose infamous 1991 short film The Holy Family Album birthed the band name) and the surrealist art of Dorothea Tanning, with Carter’s reimagining of children’s folk tales and the essence of Tanning’s short novel ‘Chasm: A Weekend’ (written at the age of 94) finding their way into a phantasmagoric journey which dives deep into elemental and hallucinatory headspaces with magic and menace to spare. 

Musically nothing was off limits, starting as the multiple narratives of opener ‘I Have Seen The Lion Walking’ reflect the metaphysical trance states of the album’s narrator, and gathering momentum with the eerie cadences of ‘Skulls The ....’, imagined initially as a fictional theme to a BBC detective show featuring its title character as acid casualty rather than recovering alcoholic. The circuitous and crooked path of this album takes in heat-haze atmospherics, twisted Beefheart / Dr. John-inspired machinations, dark mantras and febrile incantations on its way to a revelatory conclusion. 

Mercurial and mystical yet charged with primal energy, this is a classic double album as a forum for chimerical experimentation - shifting in form and structure every time it travels from the record racks to the stereo, and revealing yet more psychic landscapes with each listen. 

Submit to its spell, and join The Holy Family.

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Neolyd reviews DJINN's Transmission

They say:

On the Edge of the Universe: Does Anyone Remember Star Trek V? This is where Kirk and his crew set out to meet God in the centre of space. The end is as outrageous as it is disappointing: God is a fake and the effects are hair-raisingly bad. In the end, the captain sits camping with his two working husbands, roasting marshmallows and singing children's songs. Djinn, too, dare to push the limits of what can be experienced on their second mission, but are far more successful than their colleagues from the distant future. They also sound much better.

Eating popcorn and lounging in an armchair is also not popular here. With “Transmission” the Swedish collective of Hills and Goat members demand a lot from the listener. The mind cannot be opened without physical injuries. In general, Djinn's music can be seen holistically. Mantras, meditations and vibrations combine to create a sound world that cannot be consumed casually. Once again, the legacy of the famous free jazz musician Don Cherry has been the inspiration. His trumpet playing impressed with an extraordinarily intense expressiveness.

On “Transmission” flutes, guitars, percussions and wind instruments come together to form a seething mixture that is difficult to put into words in its entirety. Djinn clearly follow the freak-folk and psych-jazz greats from the 60s and 70s, but as a matter of course they keep opening new doors. The listener can expect a sound experience that is as complex as it is carefree. A journey into the self: to where no one has been before.

See the piece here: Neolyd

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Terrascope reviews Djinn's 'Transmission'

They say:

Another variant strain of the Hills/Goat collective, Sweden’s Djinn trade in a blend of globetrotting and cosmically inclined jazz that, over eight succinct tracks, performs a finely poised balancing act between tasteful restraint and wild abandon. Melding the soundtrack to Noggin the Nog with the moodier recesses of the ECM catalogue, the spiritual ‘Sun Ooze’ provides the gentle introductory offer, presaging the skipping ‘Creator’, with it hints of Minami Deutsch’s ‘Tangled Yarns’. Here the ululating sax and vocals provide topping for a devotional post-Coltrane sound, the exploratory skronking held fast to its mooring by an unfussy, locked-in rhythm section. It’s a more feral cousin of the scene that has also found an unlikely home in the North West of England - think Nat Birchall and Matthew Halsall gone slightly off the rails.

There are distinct nods to Kosmische in its various forms with the title tracks affecting Popul Vuh-style pastoral classicism with it ethereal synth washes, while ‘Nights With Krupi’ is an imagining of how Can might have sounded had they branched into World Music (just waiting to be reminded that they did, and that this sounded nothing like it).  ‘Jaguar’ swaps ‘Krupi’s’ trilling flute for tenor sax, the measured approach of the first half becoming ever wilder as the finish line looms into sight...

Read the rest here: Terrascope

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GNOD announce November tour

 

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Land Trance announce ltd vinyl release of their critically acclaimed album ‘First Séance’

Last year the band Land Trance, a collaboration between Liverpool-based musicians Andrew P.M Hunt (Dialect) and Benjamin D. Duvall (Ex-Easter Island Head) released their debut album ‘First Séance’ on Forest Swords’ Dense Truth label. The album quickly became one of our albums of the year and was also featured in The Quietus prestigious Top 100 Albums of the Year list at #14.

We felt this was an album that needed to be heard on vinyl (only released digitally up to now) and we were the label who had to do it.

First Séance’ will be released on ltd edition vinyl on 21 May  – watch a new video created by John O'Carroll for one of the standout tracks 'A Raft' exclusively via the lovely folks at The Quietus here:

The Quietus

The album was expertly mastered on to lacquers to ensure a top quality sounding cut – so preorder this one-ff pressing on ltd edition 'audiophile perfection' black vinyl here:

Bandcamp

Working together as Land Trance, the duo utilise spontaneous electro-acoustic improvisation and studio-as-instrument post production to explore the inner and outer reaches of each other’s musical vocabularies. Tracks oscillate between vocal-led ecclesiastical yearning (Transcript, Chilean Miners) and ecstatic assemblages of sound (Beach Mystery, A Raft), always suggesting a palpable sense of geography with an allusive sense of place.

‘First Séance’ elevates deceptively simple materials and means with vivid imagination and bold compositional strategies, transcending the intimate scale of bedroom recording and DIY sound creation. It presents a wholly original set of musical environments, and a compelling document of intuition, friendship and artistic curiosity.

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Backseat Mafia reviews DJINN's Transmission

They say:

Succeeding two massively different but similarly mercurial and explorative releases as their respective parent bands, Goat and Hills, DJINN summon vivid, revitalised spirits on their third full release Transmission – their second on Rocket Recordings.

For all the quintessentially DJINN, inherently genre-melting fusions that Transmission pours together, the duo also (as ever) push through to an almighty plane of transcendent sound.

Experienced on Transmission’s ancestors Avant De Servir and their self-titled release, the duo’s overblown notes and crazed sax dirges pervade here in heightened fever and naked, artistic expression. This is exhibited superbly on “Sun Ooze” and “Creator of Creation”: the former a vibrant plethora of percussion clattering through the sax maelstrom, which furrows a through-line from preceding material, albeit a wholly developed beacon of spiritual sound. The latter expands on the jazz effusing, piano-sax partnership on 2019’s Djinn & Djuice via a groove-centred dirge, fitted with shamanic vocal incantations.

Read the rest here: Backseat Mafia

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Echoes and Dust interviews Wayne from Petbrick

It reads:

You may know of Wayne Adams from his production of bands such as Gum Takes Tooth, Terminal Cheesecake and Casual Nun at his stronghold Bear Bites Horse Studios. As well as from his bands Death Pedals, Big Lad and Pet Brick. I myself have encountered his work many times both as a producer and musician when writing reviews, but aside from his work as part of Hominid Sounds and his musical output, I really don’t know much about him, so I figured I’d interrogate him. Let’s turn the microscope on the meticulous engineer for a change.

(((o))): I’ve mentioned your bands above and I see you playing synth extremely well and a lot, but I was wondering how many instruments do you actually play and which do you feel is really the most fun? Is there any you wish you could play in a band, but you’ve always ended up landing somewhere else? I kind of feel like once you can play synth and have that knowledge, it’s probably hard not to end up being the synth player, same as when people can play drums they kind of get stuck behind the kit.

WAYNE: Haha, I wouldn’t say I play synth well, I know how to use a synth, so I can get them to play themselves, if that makes sense! I can play lots of things, I’m not great at anything, but have just enough knowledge to get by! I’ve played drums in Dead Arms, I used to play Bass in Death Pedals and I did a stint as “Fat Zoo” on drums for Luminous bodies. Recently I have started Wasted Death, a Kind of D-Beat/Punk/Thrash band, in which I’m going to attempt to play guitar. I have never played guitar in a band! So yeah, I move around a lot, keeps things fresh!..

Read the rest here: E&D

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The Quietus interviews Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs about the effects Coronavirus has had

They say:

Before the pandemic, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs were riding a considerable wave of momentum. Their brand of colossally heavy psychedelic noise rock was proving a hit beyond any scope they might have imagined. Off the back of an exalted live reputation, the group were selling out bigger and bigger shows like a 1,000 capacity gig at London’s Scala. For their third album Viscerals, they had their first run of dates booked across the US across March and April. “Going to America felt like the next step, something we hadn’t done before,” says guitarist Adam Sykes over the phone.

As the severity of the pandemic became more and more apparent, so too did the reality that the group’s American dates wouldn’t be able to take place. The sudden erasure of live income for a band of Pigs’ stature – a group rarely away from the road – is significant. “A lot of the costs for America, visas and such, we already paid for and became useless essentially,” Sykes says. “We’ve taken a hit as a unit.” Regardless, he says “we consider ourselves the lucky ones in all of this. The majority of Pigs work full time along with the band, so we’re not in the position where our income has been entirely halted.” Their fanbase is now significant enough that they found plenty of support when it came to a long-demanded repress of their first record, ‘The Wizard And The Seven Swines’...

Read the full piece here: The Quietus

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