Silver Bullets - Free Radical

Stunned, 2009

One of the best psych-rock neo-kraut knockers of the past couple years. Way into the Faust's "Krautrock"/ Neu!/ ur-Vibracathedral boogie-beat ad infinitum trance style. Way better than their recent release on Stunned, too.

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Edgar Froese - Aqua

Brain, 1974

Hidden synth gem from the golden era, from the heavy-mustached Tangerine Dream founding member. From just before Phaedra, so you kind of know what to expect. Sequenced analogues, mellotron, dreams of futuristic oceanic habitats, the mysteries within the Earth itself.

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Dire Wolves - Jams And The Giant Peace

Stunned, 2010

Totally zoned-in kraut/free jams from the band with both a great name and an even more awesome album title. Grooves in the vein of Magic Lantern/ Eternal Tapestry (spec. way better than Eternal Tapestry, and not as epic as Magic Lantern) with that kind of wonderful Stunned tru-lazy stoned living room just-made-for-the-hell-of-it vibe. One of the most vibrant of their crazy psychedelic rainbow collage covers too. Rocks.

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Klaus Schulze - Timewind

Brain, 1975

One of my personal favorites (along with the classic debut Irrlicht) of Klaus Schulze's early kosmische synth works, this was also his first as far as I know (and thus one of the first albums ever) to use a sequencer. What you have is a nacent, minimal dark version of the old orchestral sound heard on classic Tangerine Dream albums like Phædra and Zeit. There's a certain kind of unrepeatable majesty to what these artists were doing back then, something about early digital vhs effects, massive synthesizers, orchestral training, virtuoso keyboard playing, and cosmic themes, that no amount of modern mimicry can recreate.

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Outer Limits Recordings - I Need My T.V./ Julie 7"s

Olde English Spelling Bee, 2010

Outer Limits Recordings is the current main project of Sam Meringue, of Explorers/Matrix Metals/Yoga fame. A far cry from the first incarnation of Outer Limits Recordings, the less rotten-supermarket back alley graffiti and more surreal Vegas strip nightlife version of James Ferraro's Lamborghini Crystal seen in Foxy Baby, this is less post-Skaters 70s-90s metacultural archetypes and more accessible freak pop in the vein of Ariel Pink or R. Stevie Moore. While I would have thought I was more inclined for his more instrumental, submerged sounds, this is just too fucking great a combination of weird & catchy, like painful, infectious catchy. Not to mention every instrument Meringue touches still turns to golden magickal tools of TV-god invocation. What makes matters even better is that he created videos for all the tracks from both 7"s (and check out his youtube channel for more). Oh how I love this man. IMO both 7"s are great, but the shit really gets magical with Julie b/w Plastik Child

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"you don't have to kill just to be happy"

CoH - Love Uncut

Eskaton, 2000

CoH, the Russian word son for "sound" (or according to most sources, just the Latin letters COH), is the electronic "post-pop" project of one Ivan Pavlov, a Sweden-inhabiting Russian ex-pat. A major collaboration with members of COIL, and released on one of their house labels, this 4-track EP bridges the gap between the borderlands of academic electroacoustic/noise music given on labels like Mego and Touch and COIL's purely magickal sonics. Reminds heavily of Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil-era COIL, choice cuts include Steven Thrower's positively alien digital invocations on "Prayer For Russell," and Jhonn Balance's drugged-out psych-ward screams on "Health And Deficiency: Love's Septic Domain," referencing the only other track (eponymous "Love's Secret Domain") where he is really this far out in the self-induced madness of magickal possession. CoH is glorious in his ability to imbue heavy digital electronics from the fringe with the deep warm ichor and stink of the human soul, a tact rarely seen outside of COIL.

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Aeoga - Coav

Aural Hypnox, 2004

"To exhaust mind and body in order to obtain a condition of non-consciousness and thus receive, realize and create material based on both primal and absent vision."

Spare-ian scryings of the inner orb through dark absorption of excitatory states. One of the most shamanic outings of the Helixes Collective.

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