PREMIERE - Yerevan Tapes Serve Us Up A Psalm'N'Locker

Good morning! Sorry to rattle the cages with such a pun, but Italian drone artist Luca Garino HAS called his solo output Psalm'N'Locker, and is in a band called How Much Wood Would A Woodchuck Chuck If A Woodchuck Could Chuck Wood, so...deal with it.

The following are exclusive excerpts from Psalm'N'Locker's forthcoming Op. 1 Music For Dreamachine  out through the always intriguing Yerevan Tapes. If you aren't familiar, you have missed out on some stellar releases such as Heroin In Tahiti, Cannibal Movie and German Army, all releases I have written about and love and  that require instant perusal if you aren't familiar. Psalm'N'Locker's efforts are already at that level for me too - a one track, 28 minute exploration of beats, that idea of when two notes compete on slightly different frequencies. The entire composition has been inspired by the British experimentalist and "prophet" Brion Gysin's Dreamachine - this guy was amazing and truly ahead of his time, read more about him here. Psalm'N'Locker manages to recreate that same trance-like hallucinatory state through searching out the imperfections, whether strong or weak, of a frequency played through two air organs that are not exactly what you would call "tuned". The result is pretty immense - below are two exclusive excerpts. You can get OP.1 Music For Dreamachine here.

The Cyclical Tahitian Heroin Economy

Brian Pyle has been pretty prolific of late (well, of always), and here is another Ensemble Economique release to get desperately sweaty over. Combining with Italian Spaghetti wastoids Heroin In Tahiti (whose Death Surf LP of last year is something I inexplicably missed and need to hunt down ASAP) and put out through the No=Fi and Sound of Cobra collectives, this Black Vacation/No Highway split LP is a sight (and sound) to behold. Pyle hasn't sounded more sonically abrasive since Psychical in 2010 (my introduction to his work, in fact) - No Highway is immediate...ly desolate, a sinuous deathcab ride to the soul of the desert, and the deserted. It's cerebral madness, beyond the black rainbow, and it's where I want to be.

But before we can sell our souls to this suave devil, we find ourselves in an airport listening to multilingual departure announcements, and we have slipped into Black Vacation. Heroin In Tahiti are our hosts, and it isn't the flight you fear as much as it's the destination. Hula music for a magnetic meltdown, the only relief that comes is when you think it's over - then a static storm rolls on through, and the emptiness is infinite. Quietly mesmeric - a Western for the Arctic Circle on the cusp of a thirty-day darkness.

Black Vacation/No Highway is out now - grab it here.