In A Dark Cell - The Hands Of Cain

The Hands Of Cain - In A Dark Cell [1983]

Unknown Greek goth gold. 

Rocking your dystopian nightmare hard in psych-post-punk electro manner.

The Hands Of Cain didn't release a record during their existence in the 80s but somebody tracked down these lost tapes, digitally restored them and in 2009 the compilation LP The Only Sound was released.

The Hands Of Cain - Pristine Passion [1983]

Mental psychedelic goth jam with ott anthemic synth touches. 

The Hands Of Cain - Two Steps To The End [1984]

Absurd Bowie-isms, phased drummage, classic goth bass, gloomy synths, Barney-esque one string guitar lines and dark space rock flourishes all put through a gothic echo chamber. 

The Hands Of Cain - Deadlips [1983]

These guys could get pretty weird too with their fx, synths, psych guitars and echoed vocals. This one's for fans of early Chrome.

Wagon Christ - Spotlight

[1995]

Spotlight paid homage to old school electro with its vocoder robot amongst the woozy noir funk.   

The funky trip hop hop sounds of pioneer Wagon Christ get a bit forgotten in the historic lineage of plunderphonics to sampledelia to instrumental hip hop to hauntology to whatever but he was a master of the nocturnal downtempo tune. 

Back in the day when it all used to, literally, be all about the beats. Sometimes all I ever heard in a tune was the beats, the actual beats and we were beat connoisseurs. 

CHUCK BROWN & THE SOUL SEARCHERS - BUSTIN' LOOSE

]1978[

I feel like bustin loose from this fucking blog. I know its bullshit and nobody reads it anymore so why am I botherin' ?

anyway... 

This is just a fuckin funky funk jam! 

Stone cold classic!

With bad arse cowbell!

Get get get get get get on down!

Get get get get get get on up!

Freak freak-a-deek!

God Almighty!

Yellow Swans - Drowner Yellow Swans

[2007]

Apocalyptic noisey ambient drone classic. It's got the feeling and texture of Daydream Nation and F#A#∞ without the Beatles rock band dynamics and instrument definition just a crushing, chaotic and catastrophic looming clusterfuck of a sound. Drowner Yellow Swans is ominous hovering amorphous sludge and yet it still feels a bit like a rock album because of the loud propulsive racket created containing an array of swirling and fluctuating distorted tones and hidden melodies. The band described it as their gonzo psych rock record... er just don't go looking for a beat or anything.   

Michael Hedges - Aerial Boundaries

[1984]

The dawning of a new age with dazzling displays of acoustic guitar prowess. Hedges conjures a trompe l'oeil affect creating picturesque splendour and an exquisite spacious atmosphere. On Aerial Boundaries he explores his instrument to its maximum potential pushing the American primitive folk-prog thing out into another dimension. However daggy it may be, it's an undeniable jam.

Difference Engine - Bugpowder

Difference Engine - Bugpowder [1994]

A barnstorming slice of neo-psych dream-gaze. Great drummage!

Difference Engine - Breadmaker [1994] [Full LP]

Totally missed these guys at the time as they were a bit late to the gazing of the shoe party but I gotta say Difference Engine's 1994 cd Breadmaker is top tier second wave shoegaze. They had a real tight nit band aura and thankfully weren't doing exact replicas of the genre's pioneers. Amongst the dreamy atmospheres and ethereal reverberations they would sometimes whip up an incredible disorientating maelstrom. Pretty psychedelic and hypnotic. 

Get mesmerised. 

*The final track at 35:08 is a bonus track added to the 2015 Breadmaker reissue cd. It was originally recorded a year later for the unreleased follow up album. To me it doesn't really fit and the album should always end with the spectacular epic Epiphany...

Difference Engine - Epiphany [1994]

The aforementioned spectacular epic that closes the original cd. Epiphany is an xpressway to your disintegration today and forever. 

猫 シ Corp. - A1 - Palm Mall

[2014]

The opening 22 minute title track to Cat System Corp's Palm Mall. The vague distant muzak reverberations and the field recorded atmospheric buzz of shoppers and mall staff in Palm Mall, as opposed to the rest of the album's vaporwave tunes, has become a minor ambient landmark in certain quarters. A sound design triumph, this soundscape is a soft, wistful, immersive and hypnagogic journey that needs to be experienced at least once. 

Strangely soothing and serene consumerism ambience - Have a nice day.

MediaFired - 04 pixies

[2011]

A vaporwave eccojam video masterpiece. They sample and loop Kate's Wuthering Heights with the looped slow mo vision of a Pepsi Cola ad featuring legendary 90s supermodels Bridget Hall, Tyra Banks and Cindy Crawford. 

*Who the hell would deliberately choose to drink Pepsi when you could have the greatest soft drink/soda/pop of them all Coke?

Tom Recchion - Flying Weather

[1986]

A classic plunderphonic exotica jam with possibly a ye olde Esquivel record on the turntables add in loops and fx, all done in real time. Experimental avant-garde is better when it's fun.

Vomir - Claustration 1

[2007]

When noise becomes ambient, ultra minimalistic and psychedelic. To me it sounds like relentless weather occurring on my roof for an hour. Someone described this as every sound all at once. You could just listen to the first few seconds to get what the entire hour sounds like but that would be missing the point. The hour needs to be experienced.

The first comment on yt says: 

"No ideas, no change, no development, no entertainment, no remorse" - Vomir. 

I'm not sure if the dude behind Vomir said that but it's pretty cool except of course there is an idea behind it and disappointingly there is a slight alteration to the sound in the final few minutes. You could just stop it at the 57 minute mark to keep the concept pure. 

Actually it's worth trawling through the comments, these people are funny and insightful. Here are some other great quotes on the internet about this piece of sound.

"This is what I imagine the sun sounds like"

"Very quickly I started seeing stuff"

"Finally, something relaxing to listen to"

"Its like being dead"

"This cured my anxiety"

"It's psychedelic stuff"

"It just stays there and doesn't do anything at all for an hour when it ends just as abruptly as it had started"

"This shit is great for studying/concentration"

"Such a bop"

"It's like when I was 9 and used to stick my head out the car window"

"Great for noise cancellation, can't hear my mom"

"No art, no soul, no creativity"

"How to Vomir: Press REC on your phone, open your car's windows while driving on the highway, hold your phone out of the car's window for one hour (be careful not to drop it)"

"Love the chorus"

"Had this stuck in my head all week"

"Romantic"

"Awful"

K. Yoshimatu - Cosmic Colors

[1985]

Uplifting.  

DIY lo-fi outsider pop from the 80s Japanese cassette underground.

Cosmic Colors is like a naive art version of city pop. Pure beauty and innocence sans the too slick soulless sheen.

This guy released over 35 cassettes in the space of five years from 1981 to 1985.  None of these albums were issued outside Japan. Cult status in the western world awaits for K. Yoshimatu. 

 

[1982]

K. Yoshimatu - Spherical Voyage

Low key evocative minimal instrumental spacey ambience juxtaposed with strange almost cartoon-like clangorous percussion. 

This cassette seems like a precursor to hypnagogia with its vaguely psych prog aura mixed with echo-y new age touches.

[1985]

Juma - Lunar Lavender

Juma is a K Yoshimatu alias. This guy's just got a knack for gorgeous guitar and synth melodies, like he just can't help it. 

The Goslings - Sanibel

[2006]

Blown out hypnagogic metal. 

The rumbling no-fi drone-y-noise-doom-gaze of The Goslings Grandeur Of Hair LP still seems pretty unique almost twenty years later. 

Good fun Stuff.

Bermuda Link - Exit

[2009]

From the noise-y ambient drone end of hypnagogia was Bermuda Link and their underground limited run c-30 cassette Exit. This is the outer limits of music, if it's even music at all. More like the sound of trying to tune a radio dial on a spaceship in another galaxy but the signal is jammed and all you get is is an interrupted transmission with confusing hints of life and music amongst the static and blurred radio waves. 

Arthur Verocai - Na Boca do Sol

[1972]

Bringing you all the misses of the 70s with divine funky grooves, splendid symphonic arrangements and luscious melodies. Na Boca do Sol is the ultimate in baroque samba soul. 

Sublime and smooth. Nice.

Mohave Triangles - Haze for Daze

[2011]

Peak hypnagogia. This lost tape of the hypnagogic pop underground is on the off kilter tropical new age side of the genre. 

Lo-Fi: Check.

Hazy: Check. 

Dreamlike: Check. 

Layers of heavily echoed sound: Check.

Tripped out backwards new age: Check.

Blurry beats: Check. 

Tropical aquatic atmosphere: Check.

Nostalgic flashbacks: Check.

Limited run cassette: Check.

Haze for Daze indeed. 

Rick Cuevas - The Birds

[1984]

Starts out with glistening Vini Reilly-esque guitars then goes into hypnotic daydream pop elation years before dream pop was used as a label to describe what AR Kane were uo to and way before shoegaze or original post-rock. This tune was on that top compilation Fingertracks: Vol 1 from 5 or 6 years ago which i just happened to listen to this golden autumnal afternoon in my backyard. I still know nothing about Rick Cuevas but I am curious as to whether his music goes down a more dreamy jangly route or further into trippy echo chamber laden pop opulance Arthur Russel style. Then again it might just be a one off anomaly.

I was going to say this is the best unknown song from 1984 but a quick look on spotify reveals it has now been played over two million times. 

A rarely obtainable blissful vibe.

Bill Bruford - Hell's Bells

[1979]

Like a BBC sports theme but with great drummage. It gets pretty off the wall for a minute in the middle thanks to the guitar shenanigans of the legendary Alan Holdsworth. Synth goodness supplied by Egg/Khan/Hatfield & The North keyboardist Dave Stewart.