Ginnungagap - Remeindre

Sunn O)))'s highest priest Stephen O'Malley teams up with Anthony Sylvester and Alexander Tucker to cover a broad palette of instruments, including ethnic and folk instruments such as tamboura, harmonium, shruti box, tibetan singing bowl, mandolin, and bulbul tarang, as well as acoustic guitars, classical guitar, farfisa, and Juno-106 keyboard. Excellent stuff.

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Boduf Songs - The Strait Gait

Southampton creepster Matt Sweet came out with another midnight music with timely splashing cymbals, scratchy guitar sounds and deep thunderous drones. Latitudes releases are undoubtedly mental. Hit this.

Boduf Songs - The Strait Gait

No-Neck Blues Band - Clomeim

Mind-blowingly good twisted improv from New York's No-Neck Blues Band. This new album is brilliantly all over the place, taking in a tremendous range of stylistic stopping off points, all handled with the utmost freedom and spontaneity by these seasoned psych-blues travellers.

NNCK - Clomeim

Jackie-O Motherfucker - Freedomland

Portland-based space commuter, Jackie-O Motherfucker aka Tom Greenwood has a new album compiling series of their live tour during 2006. Avant-garde style dive bars with loads of alcohol induced crowd heard from track through another. Freely improvised, unusual, yet very entertaining piece.

Jackie-O Motherfucker - Freedomland

Suarasama - Fajar di Atas Awan

Founded in 1995, Suarasama, a Sumatran group led by composer Irwansyah Harahap forms most of the songs around stringed instruments and plays three – guitar, oud (a.k.a. ‘ud), and a Malay lute called a gambus. Many of the songs feature female singer Rianthony Hutajulu. They plays contemporary music, exploring conceptually or instrumentally the sounds of African, Middle Eastern, Indian, Sufi, Pakistani, Easter European and Southeast Asian traditions. Fajar di Atas Awan (Dawn over the Clouds) was originally recorded by Philip Yampolsky in 1997, towards the end of his work on Smithsonian Folkways’s Music of Indonesia series. And now, re-released by Drag City, the tag world music is now a free-folk. Highly recommended.

Suarasama - Fajar di Atas Awan

MV & EE with The Golden Road - Astral Bleachers, Big Moment: Pete's Pick Volume I

Deluxe limited edition CD-R in pro-printed gatefold sleeves featuring the first instalment from legendary king of the tapers’ pit Pete Coward and his pick of recent live blats from Matthew Valentine, Erika Elder and their flower travelin' Golden Road. The tracks seem focussed on the kind of motion that would highlight moments of weird pan-cultural/methodological osmosis, with live takes that run from some of the most beautiful group-mind mass flux orchestrations through classic barn-stomping big band hoedowns. Even Zuma danced to this.

MV & EE with The Golden Road - Astral Bleachers, Big Moment: Pete's Pick Volume I (Link by a good friend, TheBlackPope.)

MV & EE - Total Loss Songs

Another celestial bonus release from the everblooming sunshine couple. If you pre-ordered the Ragas of the Culvert LP, you also received an exclusive CD entitled Total Loss Songs. It might not be as brain-dissolving as the main LP, but it's Neil Young influenced songs are a nice way to slowly come down after such a rush. Big thanks to my good friend, TheBlackPope for upping this marvel. Hope you kids had the tastiest weekend. Here's to celebrate!

MV & EE - Total Loss Songs

Death Chants - s/t

Enigmatic Maryland residents Death Chants are a relatively new group, but already their homegrown space folk ramblings have drawn some well-deserved attention. The new DIY Americana of bands like Death Chants has merged the familial comforts of porch friendly music with the ethereal sweep of modern psychedelia. Death chants seem to succeed at exploring the cosmic side of folk music, and are definitely a group to keep an eye on. I definitely recommend snatching up anything you can get your hands on by these guys.

Death Chants - s/t

Tau Emerald - Travellers Two

This collaborative venture from Fursaxa's Tara Burke and Sharron Kraus came about when the two musicians missed a flight bound for Finland. Instead of rebooking or changing flights the duo decided to spend the week at Sharron's house recording this album. The end product of their endeavours is a three-quarter-hour collection of improvised acoustic psychedelia and avant-folk song crafting. There are comparatively few pieces that would fit into any conventional song template, but the largely a cappella, almost ecclesiastical sounding 'Hensbane' stands alongside the mediaeval-styled title track and the drifting sea shanty 'Mermaid's Call' as examples of what these two can do within the parameters of 'traditional' folk music. Elsewhere, you'll find a varied approach to instrumental music, with some pieces along the lines of 'Evening Wings' propelled by melodious string plucks and sonorous metallic drone tones, others taking the form of pure percussion, as on the magical 'Stoikite' while 'Laureola' establishes a reedy astract drone. With so much emphasis on variety and multi-instrumental exploration, Travellers Two is an album that never fails to maintain your interest, ranking amongst the best work of either artist. Highly recommended.

Tau Emerald - Travellers Two

MV & EE - The Ground Aint Dirty: Ragas of the Culvert

This is a deeply, sublimely, supremely psychedelic album that manages to be at the forefront of the 21st century free-folk avant-garde while simultaneously digging back to the roots of U.S. psych-rock by reclaiming the blues for mind-expanding purposes. The ghosts of Canned Heat and The Grateful Dead are the guiding spirits here, providing an electric, outlaw-blues context for jams that soon drift off into realms of mind-blown, pink-cloud psychedelia—with Valentine’s guitar adding layer on layer of dripping, gut-wrench fuzztone and Fahey-esque Americana—while Elder’s disembodied vocals drift through to us on a whiff of drug-haze eroticism.

MV & EE - The Ground Ain't Dirty: Ragas of the Culvert