One Unique Hoopsnake

It's Record Store Day, so I assume most of you are out and about taking in some excellent free music and picking up some bargains and rarities (and avoiding the represses and reissues that the bigwigs put out for no other reason but for financial cynicism, clogging up the narrow vinyl pressing waterways for smaller labels for the rest of the year). I managed to find a relatively cheap copy of Swervedriver's Raise at West Norwood's Book & Record Bar and a couple of other nice little things, and am heading to Greenwich to watch Tess Parks play. But my biggest purchase has been a new one that isn't RSD-exclusive, and which is already one of my favourite albums of the year - One Unique Signal's Hoopsnake. An oscillating demon of a double LP, Hoopsnake sees the droning maestros joined by 20 renowned psych musicians, including Demian Castellanos (The Oscillation) and Steven Lawrie (The Telescopes), who all created a piece of music inspired by a single riff, and are woven together into four immersive songs that swirl, coalesce and lurk, a menacing mantra coated in fuzz and distortion, an apocryphal sarcophagus of noise. It takes the metronome maximalist approach, holding down a singular idea, funnelling the focus down to blue-flame intensity, and allowing the fissures to explode/implode. My favourite track has been '03', starting and ending with bird chatter, but in between corralling an incrementally approaching squall, an electrical storm of pregnant intent that envelops and weighs down yet is nothing short of mesmeric, before suddenly dissipating; '04' an understated synth chamber extension, somewhere between John Carpenter and Mogwai's Les Revenants works. Utterly breathtaking.

You can get Hoopsnake in sexy white vinyl here - One Unique Signal are playing their new label Fuzz Club's May edition of the Under The Arches on the 7th, with The Entrance Band and The Oscillation - get tickets here.

Video Vacuum - Angel Olsen, Tropical Strength, Gentlemen, The Entrance Band

Final week of work for the year; Australia wins the first Ashes Test - it's a pretty good place to be for me right now. I still have a mountain of work to get through though, and hence the procrastination. So - let's have at the vids!



Angel Olsen is a beguiling chanteuse. Firstly due to her musical endeavours up til now have involved skeletal, atmospheric, cavernous folk, all shadows, smoke and mirrors. Secondly because the first cut from her upcoming album is the complete opposite of that. 'Forgiven/Forgotten' is two minutes of chugging rock, Olsen's vocals strong and bold, the video a frenetic edit of car window views. It's not a total backflip - the 'Sweet Dreams' single from earlier this year was a haunting number with a more prevalent guitar, but Olsen is more operatic there - it feels particular and staged. It's light years away. It's bizarre, because I love Olsen's old stuff (especially her album on Bathetic Records, Half Way Home) - and yet I love this track. Guess I just love Angel Olsen. The new album Burn Your Fire For No Witness will be out early next year on Jagjaguwar and Dead Oceans - can't wait.



Here's some Aussie dudes making a lysergic number with birds chirping in the background, a mega-slowed down video of a guy falling into a wake pool by the sea and ink dispelling into water. It reminds me a bit of Snowman at their lightest at the beginning, then becomes spun out wasteland of nude swimming and barbecues. Tropical Strength is their name (you know, after the insect repellent?) and 'Wake In Fright' is the song's name (you know, like the gritty outback existential nightmare novel written by Kenneth Cook, or the film directed by a young Bruce Beresford?). It's all weird - and fucking amazing. I really need to see this band, stat.



London band Gentlemen aren't usually my kind of band. 'Late Nacht' is an OK song too, don't get me wrong. But it's this film clip that gets me listening to the song over and over. The screaming and feverish drumming? Then the slip into a hypercoloured set of landscapes? It's pretty genius in my opinion. Bashing skin as catharsis. True that.


Spider from Paz Lenchantin on Vimeo.

Now I'm probably being blasphemous here, but I knew very little about Los Angeles' The Entrance Band before I saw this clip for 'Spider' - and I still know very little. All I know is that this song is a pretty good slice spaced-out and decadent garage pop, and the film clip - all arthouse surrealist noir, arachnid nightmares, Bunuel masturbation - is even better. I'm keen to check out their new album Face The Sun, if that's any consolation.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!