alex nelson & richard youngs - road is open life - celebrate psi phenomenon – cd – 16$
Oh yippee... another demo to listen to. I have to confess that listening to music can be a chore sometimes. After a hard evening on the 8-track all I can usually bare to put in my ears is the easy-listening pleasures of Judas Priests greatest hits. However, having witnessed these two weave such a serpentine spell under Jandeks live morose wanderings, would it be wrong to expect a little magic from these two? JESUSMARYJOSPEPH! What was supposed to be a quick listen as I tidied up the shed turned into an hour or so of utter drooling epiphany. I was typing my 'yes! yes! YES!' email before the end of the second song! The finest Richard Youngs record since 'Lake' and 'Advent'... which I suppose means EVER, saddled high on the horse with the glorious ear of master collaborator, Alex Neilson. Shimmer, hum, twinkle... so SO masterful. These two should be knighted by the Queen. Gah... muh... awww, the english language fails me. Absolutely superlative. Without a doubt, the Record of 2006 for me
-cpp
campbell kneale -pink stalingrad - celebrate psi phenomenon – cd – 12.99 $
Imagine... a SOLO album! Some kind of loose-as-hell rumination on human tragedy of a magnitude beyond imagining. Take the everlasting, golden-superchord of Birchville Cat Motel, the growling tectonic, under-par riffage of Black Boned Angel, and the 'Burzum-o-phonic', cassette-left-on-the-dashboard fidelity disruption of Ming. A white-knuckled ride through snow and smoke and blood and fire. SHOSTAKOVICH!
-cpsip
nether dawn - outer dark - celebrate psi phenomenon – cd – 12.99 $
Filthy, ragged, drone-damage from the mastermind behind the insanely credible Pseudoarcana label, and recently crowned third member of Black Boned Angel. Crackle and smoldering fuzz turn over and over on itself at ever more terrifying pace until everything within its gravitational grasp begins to smell of burning plastic. Frightening, shamanic, and dare-I-suggest BLUESY (think Fushitsusha not Gary Moore!) yet set within a down-on-the-farm, Antipodean, post-Xpressway context. The future of drone. The future of rock. The future of goddamn everything!
- label
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greg malcom - hung - celebrate psi phenomenon – cd –12$ sold out
Hooray! Boy am I happy to be putting this cracker out. Recorded live, without the cumbersome weight of newfangled techniques such as 'overdubs' (gee-whiz!) which may seem a little commonplace for you hip-to-be-square cats until you realise that the good Mr Malcolm plays two guitars and percussion with his feet. His third guitar, the guitar he actually holds in his hands, has about half a million strings and a number of contact mics imbedded where the sun-don't-shine to amplify a host of springs, triangles, and other junkyard ephemera. This is a second-to-none ride through a world of sunshine, as viewed through net curtains from a darkened room in suburban New Zealand. Charming, stupifying, and profoundly accomplished. The noise of music!- label
seht - communion longplayer - celebrate psi phenomenon – cd – 12$ sold out
‘Application Antarctica...'s sister release, performing a function akin to an exclamation mark at the end of Stephen Clovers brilliance. The routine transfer of electrons from wire to amplifier (resulting in tiny pulses of air that can only be detected by your eardrums and the hairs on the back of your neck). Golly, it never seemed quite so IMPORTANT before. Further proof of my theory that states ‘if you leave a tap on for long enough, you can carve your own Grand Canyon''.
- label
kneale.francis.milton -hiss methodologies- celebrate psi phenomenon – 2xcdr –15$ sold out
A collection of collaborative trance-symphonies brought to life over the airwaves of Melbourne and Sydney on the recent Birchville, A.M, Esosteel tour of Australia. Late night drone-frazzle, reveling in the under-appreciated comforts of creased clothes, decadent breakfasts, and furry teeth. ‘Hiss Methodologies' represents a near-perfect meeting of minds... Richard brings the ssss-boom-clunk, Antony lowers the signal-to-noise ratio, Campbell brings the snooze-anticipation. Very special guest, Nathan ‘Sandoz' Thompson even chips in a little of his trademark angular peculiarities. It's a vast, red, featureless landscape baby.
- label
birchville cat motel -chi vampires - celebrate psi phenomenon – cd –14$ sold out
Unleash the bats! Taking yet another quantum-physics-defying leap towards the pulsing, stereophonic ‘om', Birchville Cat Motel reaches out for the moon once more from his precarious ladder of pins. Aided by a reflection-destroying sense of... er... 'one-note melody', the level of spiritual catharsis contained within these zeros and ones out-bleeds even the most core-shattering moments of ‘Beautiful Speck Triumph'. Shadowy powers are hereby summoned... blackening forces creep... and ‘Chi Vampires' gallops into town promising a stake through the heart and a silver bullet through the ears. Talismanic hymns of fear and redemption. And the rain came crashing down...
- label
mirag - black temple carved in smoke- battlecruiser – cd –8$ sold out
matthew bower of sunroof, total, skullflower, hototogisu
Urgh, my aching head! All that flange and phase and tremelo and wah-wah and incense and wrinkling up of the spacetime continuum... cleaving a hole through my frontal lobe and transmogrifying my spindley legs to boneless black jelly. AAAAargh... argh... urrrh. Right before I passed out I had a split-second vision of Blackie Lawless telling me his band was "back and stronger than ever!". I thought I had either died and gone to some kinda cat-piss stinky heaven or I was doomed to spend eternity in a gothic girls wardrobe. I dont mind telling you I was really, really frightened. Im never gonna listen to this record ever again.
- battlecruiser
rst - other machines - celebrate psi phenomenon – 3xcdr -16$ sold out
Remember rst? In my mind at least this hopelessly under-monikered giantcrusher was responsible for one of the sweeeetest Corpus Hermeticum releases to see daylight... fabulously deep, warm pools of demagnetising guitar brilliance. Andrew Moon seemed to disapparate as smoothly as he had appeared in the first place and many of us record-goobers wondered what had become of him. Well, lie awake no more! If 'Other Machines' doesnt qualify as a triumphant return then Im selling my domain-name on eBay and emigrating to Norway. With straightfaced titles like 'Worlds', 'Earth', and 'Ages' you know you are in for an earthquake of quite some magnitude. Each disc a slow-motion exhalation through the everlasting nothingness of the national grid. Without destination or purpose. An electrical godhead in waiting for its copper-wire coronation. So majestic.
-cpsip
simon wickham-smith - three4listnin- celebrate psi phenomenon – 3xcdr –20$ sold out
Us plebs trapped here in the Celebrate Psi Phenomenon offices couldnt be more chuffed to be circulating for your pleasure this magnificent treasure trove of lost & found, gold-encrusted goodies from the inimitable Simon Wickham Smith. Grand scale live-in-the-flesh and bedroom-studio outings dating from pretty much NOW all the way back into last century. Kinesthetic voids and canyons of universal ache, jiggling, shuffling, itching to be free and spread their love. A document of true majesty. Awe-inspiring.
-cpp
birchville cat motel - birds call their home dead - celebrate psi phenomenon – cd –16$ sold out
Gigantic. White-hot stars suddenly huff off their outer layers of gas and debris and collapse into their own gaping void of everlasting density and nothingness. Hammered into shape in the glowing furnace of their most recent European tour, these monolithic tracks are the closest Birchville Cat Motel has come to capturing the gargantuan shoegazing nirvana of their monsterous current live assault. A ritualistic, full frequency, bulldozing of superheated twitter and swirl, swimming in a turbulent undercurrent of molten, sub-metallized, dream-rrrock. A hurricane of sound singing the everlasting lullaby of the universe.
-cpp