[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] 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] 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] 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.

[engl] I’m going to say “I” because I think I can’t write about my music other than in the first person. I’ve been playing drums since I was fifteen years old and I’ve always had bands since. Even if I always contribute artistically, to different degrees, my latitude of action, from a creative point of view, has always been limited by the fact that I am a drummer. Like many people, I learned to play very approximately the guitar and keyboard, and I spent years going over obsessions and recurring patterns, in my room and in my head, without doing any of that, and knowing that even though I was and still am extremely involved in my past and present bands (Skategang, La Secte du Futur, Marietta to a lesser extent, and ), the music we were making was only partially representative of me. I’ve always listened to a lot of reggae, dancehall, music from Ghana, Nigeria, Congo, and overall music that is based more on repetition and intention than composition, and that’s something I could never really develop in there. In 2015 my brother and friend Benjamin Dupont, the human behind Bryan’s Magic Tears, moved into my flat share / Noah’s Ark at 35 rue Clignancourt, in the 18th arrondissement, and it was him who unlocked everything by showing me how to record music by myself ; and one September morning, lying on my back, I saw the light. It’s really a new world that’s opened up to me, I started recording at a pretty intensive pace, just letting myself be carried away by what I’ve had in my head and fingers for years; I’ve accumulated a lot of material, including a lot of unfinished pieces, and I’ve tried – I’m still trying – to understand for myself what my point really is and to learn how to systematize and channel my obsessions to make it something personal. Recording a lot, without any constraints of format, group or expectations, by letting myself be totally carried away by what was coming out in the moment, it allowed me to give myself a certain insight into myself; I am not one of the people who compose music by having an idea of where they want to go, but by repeating the exercise, something coherent ends up taking shape. I would say that it oscillates, for the music, between synthetic krautrock, dancehall lo-fi, Manchester sound recorded with toys, rock à la Velvet and Memphis rap for children; and between Les Négresses Vertes and Julien Gracq for the texts. I still write the basis of my lyrics without music, and I attach a lot of importance to it; French has become obvious because I want to say something true and I would not be able to do it otherwise – even if the text of “The Fur” is in English, but it was to seduce a girl (it didn’t work), and it won’t happen again. This is my friend Paula from J.C. Satan and Succhiamo, who sings on “Mariposa” and “Venera 16”, because I had no idea what to do about it; I sent her the songs and she sang on her phone, it was great so we recorded it. This first album is a kind of best-of from 2015 to 2018, the songs that held up best, the ones I had lyrics on, the best finished drafts, basically. I owe its existence to my friends at the Megattera micro-label who, after hearing my songs at home at night, decided to release them confidentially on tape first; without them, they would still be on my hard drive. Under the spell, Born Bad Records then entrusted Olivier Demeaux de Cheveu/ Heimat with the mission of mixing the “best” tracks to give them the lustre they deserve and make these few crazy and scattered tracks a full-fledged album. I asked Adam Karakos, from Villejuif Underground, Guillaume Rottier, from Rendez-Vous, Nikolaj Boursniev, from Quetzal Snakes, and Milia Colombani, who plays in half the bands in Paris, to play live with me. Pleasure Principle is located somewhere within a triangle formed by Francis Bebey, Add (n) To X and Ludwig Von 88; it is a solitary race to the outside, an ode to the forward flight, a way to escape in the peaceful expectation of the great liberating flash. I often find myself dancing like a monkey who forgets the world when I record at night in my room, and I hope to provoke the same reaction in people. Paul Speedy Ramon

[engl] Four years into Preening’s existence and the Bay Area trio hasn’t shown any signs of stagnation–they remain committed to the urge to move forward, to push themselves and their audience. Thus, the restless and relentless motion of Preening’s new 12” EP on Ever/Never Records, who also released 2018’s excellent Greasetrap Frisbee 7”. Preening sounds more than ever like no one but themselves–Max and Alejandra’s duel (sic) vocals and sax/bass interplay is masterfully augmented and driven by Sam’s all-hands-on- deck drumming. “Twinning” exemplifies all of these aspects, achieving a head-spinning velocity occasionally interrupted by sections that mimic drips and chimes amidst the cacophony. This is dance music for sleep-deprived geniuses and those who love them. “Rapt Fashions” demands to know “Whose body is this anyway?” And then, to drive the theme of dislocation home, the EP ends with a wigged-out “Extortion” dub mix by Andy Human (of The World/Naked Roommate/ Reptoids) & Brett Eastman (Reptoids). Dragged Through The Garden proves that Preening and Ever/ Never continue to deliver the goods, and then some.

[engl] Rory Heane and Jonno Ross-Brewin have been best mates since their first year of primary school in Melbourne's south-east, and have been playing music together since forming two-piece SeeSaw when they were 18 years old (Rory has also kept busy with the likes of The Blinds and The Stroppies). The seeds for Program were sown in the duo's sharehouse in 2016 when they began writing songs together on guitar for the first time, and the band sprouted in earnest the following year when old friends James Kane (The Faculty, Meter Men) and James Tyrell (Meter Men) were roped in on bass and drums respectively. Since then, the group has graduated from jams and house shows to regular gigs around Melbourne, adding keyboardist Jessie Fernandez (DARTS) along the way. October 2018 saw Program record with Anti Fade mogul Billy Gardner in his Geelong studio. The lightning sessions yielded the band's debut LP, Show Me. Also mixed and soon to be released by Gardner through Anti Fade, the LP will be the band's first release of any sort. The nine tracks on Show Me channel the deeply personal and often unfathomable nature of modern being through snarling, tangled riffs and power chords into a fresh brand of unhinged, modern Australiana - just as easy to dance to as is it to cry to. "It's personal heartache, disappointment, broader social panic, everyday confusion and a general acceptance of it all" says Jonno of the record's themes. The lead single "Motorbike", penned by Rory, showcases the band's knack for tight guitar harmonies, effortless noodling and endless charm. It's the electric twang of Neil Young with the cool swagger of Pavement. The Go-Betweens burning the Midnight Oil. Rory describes it as an anthem of frustration and self-doubt: "The protagonist sits static in traffic while a woman on a motorcycle whizzes past. It's a metaphor for your position in society: feeling stuck and watching haplessly as someone else zooms ahead".

[engl] Puberty (the band, the lifestyle, the etc.) though, belongs entirely to Susanna Welbourneand Lars Finberg. The band was hatched during a pocket of uncertainty, a time when signals seemed to point toward the half-promised oblivion of this duo’s day-job in The Intelligence, a favorite Whip-Wave unit and guardians of The Underground’s coveted Golden Drink Tickets. During these uncertain 2010 evenings, the tag team launchedTrainwreck, a monthly musical happening held at Seattle’s deepest, dankest karaoke dive, The Orient Express. Dance, dress-up (drag?) and debauchery were of principal concern, with a soundtrack tailored to exalt such values. Guess there’s really something to all of that revolting gonad-signaling after all. The by-now-trad’ Art-Punk that most would associate with These Intelligence Kids negated their mere insertion as house-band at Trainwreck, so The Intelligence’s assumed influences were swiftly replaced in Puberty by (as confirmed by Finberg) Trainwreck playlist regulars like U-Roy, Tones On Tail, Fun Boy Three, prime sleaze Roxy Music and other grandiose splatterings. This was to be the inverse of what the duo had been doing musically in terms of mood and motivation. The Intelligence’s air-tight guitar jerking delivered with (ahem) casual professionalism was to be largely displaced by big-band arrangements with wildly unexpected turns, delivered via eccentric theatrics and playing upon classically sexual, sultry and moody Rock’N’Roll with odd atmospherics. Plus pink outfits.

[engl] For nearly ten years, songwriter and sound-sculptor Geoffrey Bankowski has been digging secret tunnels through recorded sound with his project, Quietus. Like all the best home-recording artists, Bankowski seizes the limitations of his medium and shapes them into brand-new spaces with a physics and logic all their own. Bankowski's songs are deceptively simple, relying on no more than two or three chords, without bridges or choruses, building tension and momentum from subtle dynamic shifts and bursts of noise that serve as settings for his idiosyncratic narratives and plaintive singing. It passes for rock 'n' roll but comes closer to a sort of ambient-country music, populated by ghostly woodwinds, electronics, and voices that huddle around the bar band at the end of world. Each Quietus record lights the music from a different angle. This fourth untitled volume lets a touch of light in through the shades. A couple of the songs scrape the periphery of pop music, emphasizing vocals (Geoff's, but also Alejandra Foerg's, who lends an eerie touch to "House Finch" redolent of Gene Clark's "Silver Raven"), jauntier rhythms, gorgeous clarinet passages by Steve Goldstein, and Joseph Harms's quarrelsome lead guitar, which, implausibly, recalls both John Morton in the Electric Eels and Robbie Blunt on The Principle of Moments: the secrets in the attic, the return of the repressed. Recommended to listeners of Pink Reason, Leonard Cohen, U.S. Saucer, Cowboy Junkies. -e/n!