Anti-Gravity Bunny

Millipede – Dungeon Dweller (self released)

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Tennessee’s Joseph Davenport is back with a new Millipede record, this first since 2011′s Realms (although he did have a new piece on my free comp You’re All The Fucking Best) and it’s a fucking winner. This dude belts out the noisiest harsh bliss I’ve ever heard, sounding like he’s tossed a hundred guitars into a raging bonfire, caked in scorched & burnt feedback, with gauzy melodies climbing out from a pit of red hot embers, some blown out mixture of shoegaze, psych, drone folk, & space rock, taking all of those sounds and leaving them out to crust up in the desert sun, the core still peaking through the shell, and in fact the “lead” guitar is more noticeable than ever in The Lower World, nuzzling up to your ear drums while the caustic distortion bores through your skull, this is a masochistic record of pain & pleasure, the beauty buried deep in grit and wholly worth excavating, one of Millipede’s best, and exciting as hell because this the second part of a trilogy (Realms being the first), so we know there’s more destructive brilliance on the horizon.

Taps – Side Two (Individual Lines)

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Two bad Boston vets making some weird noise that’s all kinds of cool. Brendan Murray does some electronic wandering and Chris Strunk bangs out krauty jazzy foreign beats on his drum kit. Not really sure where the fuck this would get shelved in a record shop, they’ve got some sprawling minimal psych that gets into a killer fuckin groove, hushed ambience where they’re bathed in tape hiss, a semi-IDM that could be played at only the specialest of dance parties, and sonic synth explorations propelled with drum fuel. It’s kinda funky, kinda techno, kinda punk, but totally sparse and just rad as hell, unlike anything else coming outta Boston right now. Dudes know how to keep it fresh. Tapes & digital available from the increasingly awesome local label Individual Lines.

Night Worship – Mantaka (Vestige)

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Night Worship is an awesomely monstrous doom drone project with a revolving cast anchored by Ryan P. Jobes. Three tracks on Asterism (the last clocking in at 30 minutes and taking up the whole B side), Jobes is joined by Andrew Weathers (more guitar droning), Scott Siler (subtle percussion), and Carolyn Waiter (ethereal woodwinds), together they make the unholiest fucking drone that dives deep into reverb worship and sonic meditations, blackened distortion crumbling out of amps, chaotic incantations on the brink of conjuring the purest of evils, honoring both sides of the volume spectrum, breaking souls with blistering intertwined feedback and whispering the secrets of shamans through silent prayers, obvious Sunn O))) comparisons but never quite as monolithic, instead going for a more crusted pagan sound, but just as black, just as demonic, and fucking brilliant. Amazing work, breathing fresh doom into the world via an hour long tape on the new label Vestige Recordings, who you should clearly keep an eye on.

Sarin Smoke – Atmen Ein (MIE)

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Not like yall haven’t heard about this yet but I’m just doing my due diligence so it reaches as far & wide as possible. This is a fucking hellbeast of a record. Tom Carter & Pete Swanson teamed up for some 6 string feedback & tortured electronics that sound like they’re being spawned from the core of the goddamn sun. Swanson’s new technoise aesthetic is found all over this, just sans beats, and Carter’s guitar is either jamming the best Americana sprawl or throwing on a Swanson suit and making the strings completely indistinguishable from the electronics. Superb drones salvaged from the Dust Bowl and left out to bake in Death Valley, crusted over in a layer of caustic bliss, scorched alarm calls & nauseous jet engine hum, star worshipping reverb & meditative resonance, the enjoyment factor on Vent is through the fucking roof. So insanely good. Definitely don’t want to miss this.

Side note: Tom Carter has some crazy medical bills from when he got pneumonia while touring overseas earlier this year. A fund was set up to help ease the financial pain, The Robert Thomas Carter Irrevocable Trust, which you can just flat out donate to, but you can also just buy this record. All proceeds from Vent will go to the Trust, so buy a few copies to give out as birthday gifts or something.

Glacial – On Jones Beach (excerpt) (Three Lobed)

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Special stuff right here. On Jones Beach is the debut release of Glacial, the power trio made up of Lee Ranaldo, David Watson, and Tony Buck. A singular 48 minute journey into worlds unknown, occupying a headspace you didn’t know existed. The first movement is a spectacular brooding drone, minimal feedback & electronics that slowly caffeinates itself into a gritty dirtbag of swirling ambience that’s ominous and climactic. It seamlessly brings in some percussion and before you know it, you’re in a full on psych jam with a heavy groove and a bagpipes solo. But then you figure out the climax of the drone was only epic on its own terms, not in relation to the whole thing. On Jones Beach gets so crazy, post-punk atonal guitar shredding, screeching feedback, bagpipe drone noodling, electronic nastiness, and a drum beat bleeding perfection to tie it all together, grounding it in some fake-reality where this whack shit makes sense and it’s 100% acceptable to have a noise/drone record that rocks this fucking hard. Seriously though, these goddamn bagpipes are the most unexpected thing and get me maybe a bit too excited. I love those fucking reeds and they just give this record an extra dose of awesome. I can’t believe it took so long for the three of these guys to put out a record because this is such stunning work, it’s like they’ve been rolling together for decades and have already amassed a masterful discography. Big ups to Three Lobed for giving this the swanky vinyl treatment and making sure the one heavenly piece didn’t get butchered when split for two sides. Plus, you get an uncut digital version with the LP, as well as three shorter live tracks that make this thing a fucking steal.

Sun Splitter – Eye Of Jupiter (BloodLust!)

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How these Chicago dudes aren’t as well known as Locrian is beyond me. Sun Splitter have just as must genre blending as Locrian, just a different blend. They’ve got this incredible black industrial psych doom thing with some dark ambient noise/drone and even a little HANL style gloomgaze tossed in. I think III is their first vinyl (limited to 500, white, sexy, etc) and it’s monolithic & pure fucking evil. Seriously, this is just monstrous in every way. The riffs are skull crushing, a wall of reverb and distortion sounding like napalm melting your core, drum machines hitting harder than any human could, explosive blasts that level cities, with an abusive assault of rapid-fire fury for the second half of “The Serpent’s Golden Death” where the individual hits coalesce into a waterfall of insanity, static vocals that roar their way to the surface, guitars that chug & rattle, at home only in Hell’s scorched valley, crusted under the black sun. These guys get in a groove and don’t let up until they’ve reached total devastation, the drum machine locked in a loop, sealing their fate as endless riff demons. If you need some fucking heavy in your life, this is where you should be looking. This is the fucking best and most original metal. And with killer artwork by band member Anthony A. Dunn, you would be doing yourself a major disservice by passing this up.

Black Eagle Child – Eighteen And Six (Under The Spire)

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Black Eagle Child (aka Michael Jantz, aka Avant Archive champion) is dropping a new LP on Under The Spire, which is certainly reason to celebrate. And after a couple dozen releases, Jantz has purified his tactics to give you the glorious Go Around, Again. Fantastic sounds on here, doing a sort of Citay-like ambient psych with elements of Ponytail’s light loop styles and The Books’ chopped pop, sunny and charming and everything pleasant. Jantz shows his cards on the first track, the A side stunner “Sun Cylinder,” where he touches everything with a gentleness, crafting hundreds of loops & layers that don’t build into any sort of climax but come and go as they please, a constantly evolving current, a vacation in his dreamworld. The three tracks on the B side are equally wonderful, cheery & easy, giving you the benefit of the doubt, hooking you with its playfulness & mass appeal, but then Jantz shows off his mad skills, every cut & fade a perfect segue to the next moment of bliss, and compiling what seems like a full warehouse of instruments, you get to hear everything in his collection, banjos & accordions, bells & xylophones, electronics & violins, drums & hand claps, lots of guitars & pedals, all that shit and then some, a never ending display of sweet kitchen sinkery. It’ll be shipping soon and it’s still in pre-order mode where you can get it for £2 cheaper than usual. No reason to skip out on this one.

Crystal Crypt – Side A (The Beyond / II / Worlds Apart / Damaged) (Native Parts)

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This is a side project of Johannes Brander, the dude behind Native Parts Recordings and the band Skogar. Pretty much consistently awesome in everything he does. This tape is a little bit of a sidestep from Skogar, venturing into the sounds of horror soundtracks and evil realms. Part Goblin synth snippets, part crumbling fuckery, lots of weirdness, and all manner of dark & dank. Like a cult of savages from the deep, who care not for fidelity nor beauty, but have occasional moments of tenderness, the sheets of guitar feedback seamlessly making way for light drones and vocals. Very cool shit right here, definitely hoping these 20 minutes are only a taste of more to come.

Ous Mal – Metsien Hämy (Full Of Nothing)

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Finland’s now defunct Ous Mal makes one of his last outings on a split with Russia’s Bedroom Bear. Ous Mal’s side is absolutely killer, a cracked bliss that will surely be missed. Some songs have a way about them similar to the recent surge of instrumental hip hop jams except the beats here hit as soft as your grandma’s punches. The rest are a warped & blurry bedroom pop, droned in the best way with zero sense of urgency, moth eaten and full of holes like it’s been tucked away in the attic for half a century.

Bedroom Bear takes a slightly more dramatic approach to the bedroom pop, permeated with a low-key psych sound, waves of the bizarre melting into dream-like drifts of noise, all while still being chill as fuck and totally blissful. One track is like a nap on the beach with waves lapping at the shore and the creatures of the coast singing about how awesome life is. Doesn’t get much better than that.

A truly great split, limited as expected, and on the increasingly awesome Russian label Full Of Nothing. Wholly worth your while.

Avgrunden – Den Fördömda Jorden (Ominous)

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Please tell me you remember Avgrunden’s last album, Gremorian Chants, because it was just fucking AWESOME (and now it’s up for free downloading). Well, the previous solo efforts of Victor have rounded out to a full four piece band, and this new album is slowed down, shifted from a doom drone to a more doom psych sound now. This time around it’s a concept album (title translated to “The Cursed Earth” I think) about “the great Nordic emigration to America in the 1800s.” Think Earth covering the Dead Man soundtrack, that’s what this is like. Absolutely enormous. Wide open, expanding to infinity, hulking, dusty, dark, and evil. Midnight in the desert, coyotes & Native American chiefs howling at the moon, resonant guitars making the walls of the Grand Canyon crumble, thundering drums splitting the earth in two. Gets in a serious groove sometimes and turns fucking heavy, beautifully doomed, delicate when it needs to be, but totally fucking epic the whole time. It’s about 75 minutes long and is non-stop amazing. It was released on tape by Ominous, which is now sold out, but I know a CD & digital version are on their way as well, perhaps also put out by Ominous? Who knows. I just know this shit is essential.