Video Vacuum - The Body, Velcro Hooks, Giggly Boys, Noveller

I'm struggling. I've been putting off super important work for the past two weeks - and now I am neck deep in it. So while I should continue to knuckle down and just get the job done,

Need your mind scoured? You could always do worse than to embrace The Body. 'The Fall and the Guilt' is one of those noise wormholes that would be considered a pop noir ballad in a different universe - and the film clip, of a couple caressing and kissing each other, complements this idea...except for the constant ambient noise humming underneath, the dip into existential terror at the flip of a pedal, the white static flickering underneath, a constant reminder that this is no erotic high, but a psychological haunt.

Let's stay off-kilter and aggressive. Bristol bastards Velcro Hooks have crafted this video for 'Chinchilla Woman' as they prepare to build their debut LP from the blocks up. The film clip sees two of the band sitting in the street, before sauntering off to knock on a door and take a verbal spray from the woman who answers it. They then saunter off down the street, the scurrilous cheeks. And that's it.

Giggly Boys are rough and ready to explode on 'Darker Shade of Pale', a film clip that shows the band in a container, strobe lights and ultraviolets highlighting a heroin addict's idea of a nightmare gig. It also highlights how bracingly visceral and explosive these guys are - and how everyone needs to be launching themselves into their depraved camp.

With all the angst, let's cool down a bit. Noveller has had two of her earlier albums, Glacial Glow and No Dreams, reissued, and she has released a video for a track from the former.  The neon-lit paint shifting and squirming over people as they walk through a forest, the trees and water lighting up as they come into contact, is the perfect accompaniment to these celestial guitar tapestries.

Now get back to work!

Novel Place In Space On A Fantastic Planet

Sarah Lipstate’s work under the Noveller moniker has been a masterclass in subtle delineations of guitar squall - . With her latest release Fantastic Planet (out through Fire Records), she has embraced her love of cinematic soundscapes and held an elliptical mirror up to the landscape of her native Austin, The LP is a journey through eclectic sonic terrain, blending rich waves of synth with soaring cinematic guitar lines, guiding the listener through Noveller's most diverse and compelling release to date.

Kicking off with the brooding behemoth 'Into The Dunes' (which is surprisingly less than five minutes long, such is the power of its desolate muscularity, playing like Slint and Earth collaborating on scoring a lurid, ominous, hallucinogenic arthouse Western), Fantastic Planet seems intent on transporting the listener from one lurid landscape to the next - 'No Unholy Mountain' as a lime-green-and-lilac alien moon dune, the crystalline cyber-synth effects undulating like an otherworldly Exorcist score; the surreptitious drone underpinning the sparkle of 'Rubicon', evoking glistening distortions of light-headed fantasy; the 8-bit hiccups and harmonising of 'Sisters', taking the listener into a synapse-frayed mainframe dream. The light majesty of 'Concrete Dreams' aims for the same heartfelt stars as fellow Texans Explosions In The Sky albeit with a sparser, more synthetic edge (the song's title fits well). 'Pulse Point', the longest song here at seven minutes, is most interesting when the myriad effects at Lipstate's disposal all intersect into a static-infused quagmire of pulsating dark light - its alienness makes it the most entrancing track here. 'In February' has some some of the Morricone-meets-science-fiction cadences; 'Growing' is underpinned by a beating heart, the throb ever present and domineering the oscillating-on-a-knife's-edge guitar - and when the beat disappears, the darkness truly seeps in.

Live, Lipstate is renowned for the amassed gear and equipment she has collated in order to replicate these looped and oscillating sounds in a live setting, and one imagines that such an experience can be quite awe-inspiring in itself. The beauty of Fantastic Planet is how identifying how each note, shimmer and shudder is created isn't as important as the apocryphal journeys that fluidly come into fruition - a silken opiate for the enlightened masses. Grab Fantastic Planet (in aqua vinyl) here.

Novels In The Dunes

I have somehow missed the myriad delights that solo guitarist Sarah Lipstate has put into the ether under her Noveller moniker, but with Fantastic Planet due out on Fire Records next year, there is no excuse. She has been around since 2005 though, so I have a lot of catching up to do. Plus she has collaborated with the likes of Lee Ranaldo, Cold Cave and Parts & Labor, so her explorations of the electric guitar form is well versed and admired. And my first taste of it rose the hairs on the back of my everything. The haunting ethereal grind on album opener 'Into The Dunes' is spacious, dark, gritty - it's as if Lipstate has taken some of the contemplative latter-day musings of Dylan Carlson, run it through a crystallised synthesiser, distilled it in a modular vacuum, headed back to 1968 and handed the results to Stanley Kubrick. It could go for seven times the size and still be as astrally hypnotic. Fantastic indeed.

You can pre-order Fantastic Planet (on delectable aqua vinyl) here.