A hypnotic funky psych-groove jam with some neat twangy surf guitars, lead guitar lines put through a wah wah for added trippy effect while a space age synth adds further out there flavour.
*This goes right back to the dawn of the CardrossManiac2 blog. This great tune Megattera was included on the fabulous all killer no filler compilation Flipper Psychout: Original Italian Library Music From The Vault Of Flipper which was in the top 5 best archival compilations of 2011 list.
I think this is my favourite album cover ever. I like boats and boat art. Paintings should only be of boats. It's the only worthy art.
I know I have an mp3 of this somewhere or maybe it's long gone with my computer from 2010. I do recall this being one of the best library records I encoutered back in 2007-2012, the heyday of the file sharing blog era... whenever it was when they invented mediafire. The idyllic seaside cover is a bit misleading as only a couple of tracks have a charming scenic beauty, mostly the coastal tranquility sours and a bustling nervous energy darkens the tone as it all turns a bit ominous. Obviously the music would have been perfectly suited to a documentary featuring creatures living under the sea whose doom is always looming.
Porto Di Lavagna [1977]
Mostly blissful serenity with interludes of foreboding clouds.
Catamarano Baloo [1977]
Sea breezy cheese. Copacetic pleasantness with occasional swells into elated zones. A cinemascope soundscape worthy of a post-coital scene in a 70s Italian blue movie.
Nice.
Vela 6 [1977]
I honestly can't think of another piece of music like this. An impeccable sound design of layered synths and assorted keyboards. Those thickly textured serene synths combined with with those uneasy fidgety organ runs, thin melodic keyboard lines, fluttery pianos and the swirling dark aquatic synthetic bass tones bubbling away create a strange world of sound.
Circolo Vizioso [1977]
More of a suspenseful horror synth soundtrack vibe from the get go. Hypnotic and haunted.
Soling SOS [1977]
Cataclysmic thick synthetic textures and sporadic sinister percussion. Echoing keyboards of gloom and a triangle of impending doom.
[1907]
Speaking of boat art here's a great boat painting: The most perfect painting of a boat. Thanks Odilon Redon.
Well I always think Yawning Man are like the best SST band never to record an album for SST. That's mainly because on their debut album, Rock Formations (2005), they are musically like a cross between Meat Puppets and this group the underrated Pell Mell.
American Eagle opens Flow their second LP for SST.For an instrumental it is incredibly catchy and that sums up the beauty of Pell Mell, despite lacking a vocalist their tunes are incredibly lyrical with hooks galore and a thick atmosphere...
This one's pretty fuckin funky and upbeat with occasional sequences of dark twangy jangles that threaten to engulf the tune but the almost unhinged exuberance cannot be stopped as it destroys everything in its path. This goes off like a frog in a sock and gets to highly ecstatic levels, achieving similar results to that of a top rave tune.
Pell Mell - Nothing Lies Still Long [1995]
It was crazy times and a few years later they were releasing cds on Geffen. Get this straight, a quirky instrumental group that came out of the early 80s post-punk underground were now label mates with Counting Crows, Beck and Nirvana.
Make no mistake, despite the fact that I got this cd for $4 new not long after it was released, Interstate is a lost 90s classic. Its got all the driving psych instrumentals and mysterious atmospheric rock that was adjacent to happening genres of the time like slowcore, American post-rock, indie, math rock and the renewed interest in 70s Krautrock.
Thisstill sounds remarkably fresh today with its exquisite expansive production. Nothing Lies Still Long is a driving twangy instrumental rock jam that gets pretty mesmerising with its wide vistas, compulsive rhythms and dark dreamy atmosphere.
Speaking of Yawning Man here's a coupla tunes from 20 years ago, yes 20 bloody years...
This one's a pretty cool tripped out surf rock track. A bit of an eerie psychedelic summer atmosphere perfect for driving down the ocean highway, then through the secluded dessert to your secret destination. Mysterious.
Is it just me or are there are moments during this tune when it sounds like The Shadows covering Boards Of Canada? That's pretty strange when you think about it...
Yawning Man - Buffalo Chips [2005]
They up the ante on Buffalo Chips for some totally rockin' psych-surf action. This dessert dwelling trio cook up an absolute storm here. All three are on fire creating one hell of a smokin' unit. Definitely music for getting in your car at midnight and seeing where the tropical hotdog night takes you.
New music alert! For the second time in 2025 I'm bringing you music from the current year. I mean this tune coulda been made in the 80s, maybe even the 70s...
A pretty cool trippy surf rock jam. Puts me in mind of Pell Mell or maybe Yawning Man.
An outsiders downbeat vision. A really original lo-fi abstract echoing trip out that gets into a haunting yet breezy groove. An uncommon mysterious tone becoming sublime.
All around a parade of clowns
*The rock-crit consensus goes that this is from the Wipers demise era. We're supposed to believe Wipers started out with three top records then the rest were crap. Only problem is Land Of The Lost (1986), Follow Blind (1987) and Silver Sail (1993) are sterling LPs.
A fairly unknown post-punk group from Richmond Virginia who are a forgotten or perhaps a never even known influence on post-hardcore, indie math rock etc. The likes of Drive Like Jehu, Rocket From The Crypt, Fugazi and Superchunk acknowledge their influence and you gotta think Slint, Don Cabellero, Disco Inferno, Polvo, Unwound maybe even Eddy Current Suppression Ring along with many others benefitted artistically by listening to Honor Role.
Here's a few tunes from their 1986 LP on Eskimo/No Core Records where guitarist Penn Rollings was beginning his purple patch of progression on the six strings. The Pretty Song is more classic shadowy post-punk merging into lo-fi slacker rock as opposed to Honor Role's 1989 follow up Rictus on Homestead Records which was more on the experimental noisey math-rock tip.
*I get there's some lazy, atemporal and reading history backwards zoomer-like retardedness going on in the snippet reviews below but for just one day only I don't care.
Throwing Rocks [1986]
Bringing you all the 90s slacker talk-singing and lo-fi in 1986.
My Place (1986)
That lost bewildered sound filled with regret and defiance, wait for exciting classic guitar bit at 1:37.
.
Six [1986]
Layers of gloom like if Rowland S Howard collaborated with Slint.
.
Present Conditions [1986]
Downbeat 80s eeriness with Galaxie 500 (who didn't even exist yet) levels of reverbed guitar for maximum blissful day-dreaminess. Hard not to think this is a lost classic.
Care Taker [1986]
Desolate 80s. Dilapidated visions. Cold war fear. Enveloping ominousness. Tenebrous tones sonically somewhere between Gordons, Tactics and Wire circa 154.
She's kinda of forgotten these days but she ruled the charts for a year or two, having five top 40 hits in a row from 1979 to 1980. Then she promptly disappeared from the industry.
This song takes on a dark tone when you realise she left the music industry after having an abusive relationship.
You know what was wrong with Kraftwerk and British electro? Not fuckin' bogan enough!
Never fear Antipodean new wave bogans are here to give you dystopian electric dreams from down under.
I'm so future I work in an office where I nearly died of computer print out, I just finished rugby training, drank a six pack, been smokin' some Winnie Blues and now I've put on my best trendy sleeveless t-shirt, wrist band and some eyeliner.
