[engl] The debut album from pre-grunge crunch merchants oldboy: oldboy formed as a past-time - like golf or knitting - between old friends with a love of having a loud good time. created by Max and Chris in an industrial estate rehearsal room back in 2019, get togethers were few and far between but something was popping - it felt like fun. Since then, practises were again few and far between but after recruiting an old friend - Ryan - on bass (they didn't want to be a two piece - lightning bolt have that covered) they decided to try a little bit harder and as the world went into reverse they somehow wrote what you have here - their debut album 'bloody'. Recorded at the Total Refreshment Centre in three days with Jonah Falco (fucked up, chubby and the gang, the chisel) and then mixed in three hours in the basement of rough trade west you get exactly where oldboy are at. it's fast and relentless. it swings in places. It's super raw and the sound of three people having a high ol' time. Mucho influenced by the prime / premiere cuts of the late 80s / early 90s Chicago / US noise, as once released by Touch and Go, Amphetamine Reptile and Sub Pop.. pummelled home with a British post punk thWACK... it’s pop music, it’s just nasty pop music. For fans of: Tar, Shellac, Precious Wax Droppings, Helmet, Scratch Acid, Tad.... Play loud… …and often

[engl] Swedish alternative rock group Omni of Halos enters the stage with their self-titled debut album. ”Omni of Halos”, a guitar-driven explosion of noisy pop music, contains the four tracks from the 2022 EP ”Care Free” (previously only released digitally) from plus six new, until now unreleased songs. This collection of skewed, bittersweet, and beautiful tracks was recorded and produced by Per Stålberg (Division of Laura Lee, Pablo Matisse, etc) in Welfare Studios. Offering a unique mixture of distinct vocals, vibrant rhythms, and rich pedal steel guitar melodies, ”Omni of Halos” stands out from its kind while still communicating a sound firmly rooted in the expressive soundscapes of the alternative ’80s and ’90s. The album was mixed by John Agnello, known for his work with Dinosaur JR, Sonic Youth, and Kurt Vile, to name a few.

[engl] "The space-age songsmiths of Once & Future Band have been ting-tinging away on the truly heavy anvil of hominid perspective and emotion again to bring you this singing scape of songs. Annealing for over a year now, until it was cool enough to hold in your ears, nested in the pinnae, the time has finally come. Dew drops pop and hiss as they settle on the gliding guitarmonies. Once & Future Band have outdone themselves this time around, in my opinion. If songs could stop heated exchanges by mere presence, these are the ones, and more needed than ever. As I tuned in to each new transmission, each step closer to this perfect platter, I had to stop and do nothing else, and merely absorb how wonderful this album is. Each tune exists in the company it was born to live with. There are haunting chorale escorts here...long trains of room warmth...the belting of the machine heart...lofty guitar and bass melange...and just beautifully laid to magnetic tape with a sure hand by the throbbing brains that are Once & Future Band for fans of Roy Wood, Idle Race, ELO, Roxy Music, Head Hunters, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, The Lord Bowie, The Band, and the soundtrack from every movie that ever pierced your cold, cold heart” - John Dwyer

[engl] In the vapor trail of “How Does It Make You Feel” you can smell the burnt ozone of a seventies-full-orchestra-nebula-pop-odyssey, the flakes floating down and landing on you like snow and giving you the grave-chills…the ash of a masterpiece pop song. Once and Future Band: this incredibly accomplished cabal of total prog wizards has circled the earth, but then, these are the accomplished gentlemen of many former pursuits (the formidable Drunk Horse among them) and all of them comets themselves. The very mid 70s vibe at work here surpasses pastiche, and crests that lovely anachronistic conceptual peak: a fully realized and meticulously arranged psych record, meant to be listened to from top to bottom, with the lights down low and in a comfy chair perhaps, or while gazing out the window of your life pod. A Dark Side of the Moon feel, with shades of early Yes’s technicality, a dash of Steely Dan’s vocal prowess and effortless sheen, and some seriously outsized hooks that call to mind the mighty ELO, Le Orme and yes, even the unsinkable Queen powered on Brian May’s tape echo jet fuel and sequined power cells…this is a head record in the classic sense but we swear to The Dark One that you will be trapped and infected by the pop-parasite. That it is largely self-produced (with tracking/engineering on three of the songs by Phil Manley at El Studio) makes it all the more jaw dropping. We didn’t realize how much we needed Once and Future Band in our life, but now that they’re here we can’t get them out of our brains or off of our stereo. Making prog cool again, again, and then slightly more complicatedly, again.

[engl] """Sonically comparable to ""Soundgarden"", ""Nirvana"" and early ""Dinosaur Jr., ""Orange Baboons"" fabricated a wall of nasty volume."" (Concert review 1993) Welcome to the Noise Appeal Records ""History-Series"": Orange Baboons. The Styrians released countless records between 1990 and 1996, among others on Gash Records and Sacro Egoismo, until they landed at Sony, where their major label debut ""100% Homeless"" was released on CD in 1995. 27 years later, they have come full circle. 200 copies, incl. DL, colored vinyl, printed innersleeves, side D incl. 5 unreleased demo-tracks

[engl] The Oscillation’s continuing journey into the centre of the mind and beyond shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. Indeed, new album Untold Futures is less a consolidation of all that we’ve come to love and expect from the cosmic explorers and more a leap forward into an upcoming reality. Redefining the possibilities of altered states through audio stimulation, Untold Futures finds The Oscillation at their most daring and breathtaking. A multi-layered assault on the senses, this is an unexpurgated experience for the seasoned connoisseur and unspoiled novice alike. Its power is felt in the multi-layered dissonance and undying throb of Dilated Mind, the metaphysical possibilities that beat at the heart of metronomic pulses of Forever Knowing and the face-melting attack of The Inner Void. Heart Of Nowhere is a mantra for the profane, while the dissonant beauty of Obscured realises re-birth and resurrection. Revelatory in its brilliance and an intersection between the individual self and the collective unconscious, this is music to fuel the inner technology of the mind. So load up to the brim and give yourself up to Untold Futures. Veering between krautrock edginess, droning medicated tones and noise driven no wave fuzz, The Oscillation recalls the music of Neu! and Tangerine Dream and Loop interpreted with an eye on Pil’s dubbed out punk funk, Miles Davis’ experimentalism and Spacemen 3’s strung out blues rock. Beginning in 2007, when DC Recordings released the debut “Out Of Phase”, The Oscillation have released many albums and e.ps, both self released and with labels (Fuzz Club and Hands In The Dark and Cardinal Fuzz). Recent releases include the mutant kosmiche techno of “U.E.F”, the pounding and otherworldly “Wasted Space” from 2018 and the epic exploration of the inner landscapes with “Droneweapon”. Now The Oscillation return with a new face-biting album questioning our strange relationship with reality as “Untold Futures”.

[engl] PAINTERS AND DOCKERS are a Melbourne institution – one of those extraordinary live acts that never lets up. Following their debut album, the band unleashed this legendary live album which fans are still clamouring to get hold of today. Bucket presents the band in all of intense over-the-top live glory. This reissue of the CD contains a bonus live recording of “Bad”. On vinyl, Bucket has not been available since the original 80’s pressing, and this new edition comes on ultra-rare coloured vinyl.

[engl] Palmiyeler (Izmir born, Istanbul grown surf-pop-indie-dance-rock quartet) invites you for a drink by wavy beaches where you can enjoy their fun-psychsurf-pop sounds with serious lyrics darken by Istanbul’s genuine chaos. Founded as an Istanbul based garage rock trio comprised of lead vocalist/ guitarist Mertcan Mertbilek, bassist Tar?k Töre, and drummer Rana Uluda?. They recorded their debut 'Palmiyeler EP' in 2013 and released it on vinyl and all digital platforms in 2015. After the release guitarist/keyboardist Bar?? Konyal? has joined the band. They spent time touring, making videos, and recording their debut album ‘II (Venus)’ with the singles 'Senden Haber Yok' and 'Karbeyaz'. 'II (Venus)' was released by Tantana Records in 2017 as a limited-edition LP and through all digital formats. Palmiyeler released their 2nd studio album ‘Akdeniz’ including lead singles 'Derine' and 'Kalbim Seni Arar' on May 25, 2018 as a digital file. Green Cookie Record released 'Akdeniz' as a limited-edition vinyl on May 25, 2020. ‘Ben-Hür’ is their 3rd studio album so far. A singles compilation which contains songs from 2019 and 2020, as well as two new songs.

[engl] The fifth studio album of Palmiyeler '?kimiz' which started right after the band's second US tour with PAINT and Jared Mattson of the Californian Jazz duo The Mattson 2, was released on June 21, 2022. There are 9 songs in the album, all recorded and mastered in Istanbul. The iconic cover design of the album was made by Mertcan Mertbilek.

[engl] Palmiyeler stands for soothing melodies, cinematic landscapes and groovy beats! Unlike the majority of neo-psych bands, Palmiyeler are the proprietors of a distinct style, so familiar and at the same time so original, that makes it hard to categorize: blending garage-rock classicism with some Morricone cool, the Turkish quartet explore dark themes under a breezy Mediterranean sunny feel, the end result sounding hauntingly smooth, like Steely Dan writing for The Jesus & Mary Chain!

[engl] Paper Dollhouse is the work of Astrud Steehouder; dark minimal gothic folk which comprises haunting vocals, acoustic guitar, effects pedals, found sounds, slide projector and minimal electronic atmospherics. Her debut album ‘A Box Painted Black’ is set for release this winter on Bird Records, the femme-folk off shoot of the Finders Keepers family. Inspired by early 60s electronic pioneers Delia Derbyshire and Eliane Radique, bleak British television soundtracks, minimal dark electronica, Scott Walker, Arthur Russell, Christine Harwood and France Galle, the music combines simple folk songs with environmental and electronic tex- tural sounds and visuals to create a pared down, beautiful experience. Named after the 1988 cult horror film Paperhouse “I watched the film when I was about 10 and was really drawn in by it. Something about the quality and tone of it, the psychology and aesthetic of that struck a chord and been with me ever since. I'm into actual dollhouses and models of things as well. I used to make these little viewfinder boxes containing lit- tle scenes in them as a child for fun, I found them magical.” Steehouder has created a new kind of (black) magic on her debut release. ‘A Box Painted Black’ was recorded entirely in the kitchen and garden of her London home amongst the incidental sounds of trains passing, children playing, door slams and running water. The songs retain the ambience of the place they were recorded. Often first takes and recorded as soon as the songs had been penned, they combine an immediacy and raw quality which fills the work with a naivety and emotive dark tonality. Dense in simplicity and thick with silence the songs are restrained, intense, lingering and decorated with white noise. Steehouder names “bewildering post nuclear landscapes, bleak fields, forests, thunderstorms and archaic industrial objects in the middle of nowhere” as influences, rather than the listing the much and over cited normal singer-songwriter fare. The songs possess a folk pop sensibility rich in mysterious hooks that creep up on you from around a dark alleyway, following you on the all the way home at night. Steehouder has recently been working with photographer and writer Nina Bosnic in a live capacity using a variety of sonic and visual techniques including an old slide projector, a dictaphone and prismatic imagery, to create a live show which is as haunting as it is bare. There is a raw completeness to the work, the body of which is clearly a deep and evolving spectrum. Hypnotic, meditative and a midnight look through the keyhole of Paper Dollhouse’s secret garden “the album’s like a Pandora's box of messages. It was kind of a dark solace for me, the slight way the album happened. Almost hidden.”

[engl] When the Tree Bears Fruit is the debut album from Melbourne four-piece Parsnip. Following on from two 7-inches in the last two years, Parsnip’s first full-length is playful, poetic, propulsive punk. An album perpetually in motion, When the Tree Bears Fruit is just over half an hour of absurd, understated energy. There’s an immediacy to the sheer joy, velocity and whimsy of Parsnip’s delivery. Bass player and most-of-the-time lyricist Paris Richens is the first to admit that she finds inspiration in children’s verse and the sonics of nursery rhymes – “Sprouts” is an ode to plants in their first form, and “Trip the Light” is about the sheer joy of dancing. That said, Richens’ bandmates – drummer Carolyn Hawkins, guitarist Stella Rennex and keys player Rebecca Liston – are quick to remind her that nursery rhymes are almost always pretty twisted. No one is being baked into a pie in a Parsnip song, but they deal in themes of loneliness, longing, the unknown and the mundane, almost as much as they dream of travel and make a romantic spectacle of the everyday. Across the album, transport and movement recur as an image, mostly alluding to a dreamy sense of possibility: lead single “Lift Off” is a plea for a quick flight away, “Seafarer” is a voyage against nature’s adversity, and “Lighthouse Beacon” sees a hope in the distance. Ultimately, this is an album that invites its listener to join in its celebration: the record’s title, inspired by the ideas of guru and poet Sri Chinmoy, refers to the idea that a tree will grow fruit and it will be offered for anyone and everyone to share in. The band see this principle as it applies to their work – to sharing their joy and nonsense with the world, and hoping people will enjoy it.

[engl] "As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get the sense that your life is thinning out and will continue to thin out, until it thins out into nothing. And you sometimes say to yourself: that went a bit quick. In certain moods, you may want to put it rather more forcefully. As in: OY!! THAT went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!!... then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered continent. This is the past." – Martin Amis 2024 marks 40 years of Pete Astor making records, a suitable anniversary point at which to take stock and double back on songs that first appeared on records by Astor-fronted combos such as Creation Records trailblazers The Loft and The Weather Prophets and Matador recording artists The Wisdom of Harry, as well as selections from solo albums that appeared on labels such as Danceteria and Static Caravan. Astor’s motivation for TS&NR, as his extensive notes below make clear, is manifold. Some songs are effectively re-examined in the way one might linger over a resonant picture from a box of old photographs – connecting with the essence of a younger self. Other songs are newly recast in wiser and more reflective hues, while others simply demanded exhumation from wilfully opaque, lo fi non-production. The songs chosen are not the obvious ones - there’s no "Up the Hill and Down the Slope" or “Almost Prayed” here - but have been selected for more interesting, often esoteric, reasons. Astor is accompanied by an estimable band of co-conspirators, evolving out of many hours spent playing music together on records and at shows over the last decade. They are drummer Ian Button, (Death in Vegas, Papernut Cambridge, Go Kart Mozart), bassist Andy Lewis (Paul Weller, Soho Radio and Blow Up DJ), guitarist Wilson Neil Scott (Summerhill, Felt, Everything But the Girl) and keyboardist/ multi-instrumentalist/ producer Sean Read (Dexys, Mark Lanegan, Dave Gahan, Iggy Pop, Manic Street Preachers, Beth Orton, Chrissie Hynde...). Together they’ve revisited these lost gems of songs in a manner that has allowed Astor to balance the way that they still make sense to him now, looking both to the future and to that big and interesting new country, the past.

[engl] "The new and already 5th album has been made with even more care and effort. For five months the band and a team consisting of Alexandr Vatagin (Engineer for Kronos Quartett, Pauls Jets, Dives, Electric Indigo), Gerhard Potuznik (GD Luxxe, Mäuse, co-owner of label Angelika Köhlermann, producer of Chicks On Speed), Alexander Lausch (Engineer for Die Buben Im Pelz, Paul Plut, Mynth, The New Mourning) and Tobias Wöhrer (Leyya) was involved in producing, consulting, recording, mixing and mastering. Remixes were made by Industrial/Dark Ambient icons Brian Williams aka LUSTMORD (Current 93, Nurse With Wound, SPK, Graeme Revell, Terror Against Terror, First Reformed) and JARBOE (The Swans), two musicians who have had a fundamental impact on the band’s work."

[engl] Pastels by candlelight, a spilled bottle, cigarettes burnt to the filter, the outline of a face being tanned by a flickering neon light, the vinyl debut from NYC's Phantasia is hard to get out of your head. A polytropos of black lace tinged beachfront kitsch melted together with the clever gloom of prime-era American indie, all topped by the wavering and haunting vocals of what could be likened to a baritone Siouxie Sioux. Elements of death rock, pure pop, punk, and rock and roll are all here fighting for space amongst lilting synths, reverb-soaked guitars, and muscular drumming. Recorded and mixed by Sasha Stroud, this captures both the spirit of their influences — the Feelies, Alaska y Dinarama, Bruce Springsteen, and Pylon — but holds nothing back in terms of what these songs are capable of sounding like in the 21st century. Each record comes in a jacket adorned with art by Phantasia's own Dylan Cameron.

[engl] Originally out in 2004 as a CD-only album, PILOT TO GUNNER’s Get Saved finally sees the light of day in a proper analog release. This album was pressed in order to support and celebrate their long-awaited 2014 european tour.?  Forget about your crappy indie looking hipsters with synthetizers and clean guitar sounds, for PILOT TO GUNNER is the raw and real deal. They inspired me back in 2000 to grab a guitar and write my own songs when their first album came out. Because they know what a good tune is. It’s all about the melody, the beat and the chorus. It’s all about the riffing conversation. It’s all about the guts and the blood you spill while you play in that sweaty basement in front of 20 people. PILOT TO GUNNER is a band that will stay forever because they’ve got the heart and the spirit.