When you listen to a lot of music and educate yourself on different genres, I find that it's somewhat easy to get jadded on occasion, and feel like you've heard all there is to hear in such a such type of music. And whenever I start feeling that way, I end up stumbling upon a band with a unique sound that slaps my assumptions straight out of my head. Finnish project Heroin and your Veins is one such band.

"Nausea" is the second album from Heroin and your Veins, their debut album being released back in 2007. Both records are awesome, but I hear alot of growth between the two records, with this newest release being the better of the two.

It's a bit hard to accurately describe the music that this band makes, but obviously I intend to try. Imagine a surf band from Hell, or an experimental lounge band with a really bad hangover. All of the music is instrumental, and sounds very much like the perfect soundtrack for a really weird film noir, or moreso a David Lynch movie... Actually it kind of has some of the elements of
Angelo Badalamenti's work with Lynch, they both share a great usage of space and mood, and a certain jazzy influence, though Heroin in your Veins bring way more of a surf element to the table than the former. It's part post-rock, part experimental, but all very slow, dark, brooding and original as hell...

Every single one of the 10 songs on this album rule, and I recommend you check out this project if you're in the mood for something new and interesting...

I was really looking forward to giving a listen to this new Shipwreck release since after repeated listenings to their debut 3" mcd I’ve to admit it gradually grew on me, I liked it from the very first play, but I’ve to confess after many heavy rotations it brought me to think it was a great debut. This new effort by the dynamic duo featuring Xabier Iriondo on guitar, mahai metak, taisho koto, bandonion, banjolino, field-recordings, electronics and Roberto Bertacchini on a minimal quasi-skeletal drum kit plus vocals, has been nothing but misleading, while the music in someway reflects deeply the perfect combination of Iriondo’s string-style plus Bertacchini’s Starfuckers/Sinistri alike drumming, on the other hand the vocal add some new unexpected elements. Looking at the pictures and listening to the music it’s hard to stay away from the idea Bertacchini has probably seen the light and Iriondo is helping a visionary to ascend thus we can say he’s part in the process has been that of a shaman while Bertacchini is the holy spirit. Here and there you’ll have the chance o catch some blues, American-music splinters, some deviant free-rock/free-folk/free-whatever extravaganza and some experimental field-recording, documentary/home-recording sort of combinations. Bertacchini’s vocals are even freaker than his crippled epileptic drumming, how to describe the outcome?!...hhhmmm... imagine Captain Beefheart and Dave Moss (ok, shame on you if you think I’ve mentioned him just cause he’s both a drummer and a weird as fuck singer!) and maybe a little bit of Massimo Volume’s Emidio Clementi diminished of his theatrical emphasis. Don’t expect it to be a release full of songs, all you’re gonna have are tracks, mostly skeletal, crippled tracks with that characteristical beat style on which Iriondo seems to move comfortably with his post-kraut-bluesy-rock-folk rifforama. Sometimes this music sounds vintage, sometimes it just sounds crippled and out of time, post-bomb rural crippled free rock from somebody who’s seen the light?...you can bet it.

Recorded live for the RadioNome radioshow, broadcasted by the Dutch radio and television broadcaster VPRO, VPRO RADIONOME APRIL 2 1982 is the fist and maybe last chance to know a particular band called Kaa Antilope. They produced a sort of experimental/pop mix where melancholic melodies were coupled by analog sounds creating a particular atmospheres. Since the first listening I found the ten songs of the MLP perfect as a post catastrophe soundtrack, for example. The apparent fragile musical structures are toughened by the various synth noises that create a sort of theatrical approach. Check "Red bushes" and "Rise up helicopter, like a bird" excerpts at the label's website and you'll get a good picture of their sound. The 12" is limited to 500 copies and will have also liner notes written by band's friends.

Created by Vadim Gusis, already known for Chaos As Shelter and member of Agnivolok, Thunderwheel is a particular musical project. Helped out on some tracks by Igor Krutogolov (Kruzenstern & Parohod, Agnivolok, Igor Krutogolov's Carate Band) and Slava Smelovsky (Grundik + Slava, Crossfishes), Vadim created the eight tracks of CREDO having in mind Zen philosophy and, I think, the particular structure of Japanese/oriental music. The result is a sort of surreal soundtrack where dissonant melodies, whispered vocals, percussive sounds and theremin create an oneiric world made of slow rhythms and strident sounds. Like a nightmarish orchestra Thunderwheel painted their personal picture and it's all to be discovered...

You might remember Austin TX based label Quiet Design (run by our very own contributing writer Mike Vernusky) for their original take on steel drum in experimental music (which I reviewed a couple of years ago). Similarly to that release, this compilation aims at offering a new perspective of contemporary ways of how guitar can be used in the fringe musical genres that we came to love so much. With artists joining in from everywhere around the world, "Spectre" offers ambient soundscapes, artsy noodling, minimal sophisticated playing and highly processed soundscapes, all rigorously created with the beloved stringed instrument (which sometimes is easy to forget and is still surprising every time you remind yourself while listening). My favorite pieces are the minimalist acoustic piece by Tokyo-based Tetuzi Akiyama, the poly-chromatic colorful but dark composition by Mike Vernusky himself and Erdem Helvacioglu's ethereal and crystallized experimentations; the other featured artists include: Sebastien Roux and Kim Myhr (minimalist guitar based glitch music), Quiet Design's right hand Cory Allen (eerie and melancholic ambient textures), Keith Rowe (experimentations with noise and subdued feedbacks) and the prolific, reclusive and self-indulging Jandek who just strums away his detuned guitar while doing some drunken lamenting singing and even playing some harmonica (I guess Mike made an exception for him - there's a documentary movie about him on Netflix if you are curious about his music). "Spectre" also features beautiful organic art work and photography by Michael McGill, who does all of Quiet Design's covers.