Dale Cooper Quartet And The Dictaphones – Parole De Navarre (Denovali Records 2010)

Formed for the improvisation nights Dynamo in Brest, France, this quartet made of musicians covering a wide variety of musical styles creates a sound that mixes electronic (samples, cuts, sound treatments) and acoustic elements (guitars, saxophone, trumpet). They're playing moody ballads that sound as if they would come out from one of David Lynch's movies. Like in the films of Hollywood's master of bizarre pieces, there is something like a dark and poisonous colour broken by red thunderlights and blue cigarette smoke. The music spawnes some odd characters and landscapes while the listener makes out some more friendly faces that loom up out of this nowhere place: the voice of Zalie Bellaccico, Milanese streets sounds, a lazy flute, or some distant breathing swim on the surface of this deep troubled waters. "Paroles de Navarre" is an invitation for opening the red curtain of this Dark Jazz cabaret made of shimmering and whirling walls. 

For pop listeners without a feeling for depressive soundscapes it might be boring – for us it's one of the best musical outputs we've discovered in the past years. If you like BOHREN UND DER CLUB OF GORE or THE KILIMANJARO DARKJAZZ ENSEMBLE, you should be all ears.  *Denovali Records

Parole De Navarre

Various – Fac. Dance: Factory Records 12" Mixes & Rarities 1980-1987 (Strut 2011)

Label head Tony Wilson conducted Factory Records with an uneasy cocktail of quixotic enthusiasm and loose purse strings. Wilson never signed any artist to a contract, and in 1982 he plunged a good deal of the profits into the new Hacienda club, whose low ticket and bar prices ended up costing the label 10,000 quid a month. The Hacienda, however, left an indelible mark on UK dance culture, proving that, yes, it's possible to be crowd-pleasing and forward-thinking at the same time. 

Bracketed between 1980 and 1987, this long-overdue collection of Factory's clubbier 12-inch outings—mixed and curated by Bill Brewster—takes us from the beginnings of New Order right up to the moment when groups like the Happy Mondays started absorbing Chicago house and Detroit techno and fusing it with red-eyed, psychedelic pop. As a result, what you get here is largely a collection of brilliant blueprints: transitional and exploratory tracks that reflect a kitchen-sink, tabula rasa production attitude. The influence of the label's infamous in-house producer Martin Hannett, who gave Joy Division its signature icy sound, is palpable, but it's grafted onto much groovier and funkier material. 

Ranging from dubby, experimental instrumentals like Hood's "Salvation" to sugary laser-boogie like "Express" and "Look into My Eyes" by 52nd Street, Factory's wild diversity is on full display. While it's an excellent overview, the "dance" term is sometimes only loosely applicable. Most of the comp is given over to DJ-friendly numbers from Quando Quango and Marcel King, but other offerings like Swamp Children's avant-jazz stronk " You've Got Me Beat" and The Durutti Column's kosmiche guitar bliss don't exactly come across like body-movers. 

Nonetheless, FAC. DANCE offers a number of revelations for hardcore fans, like the hallucinatory Beat-poetry spoken word vocals on "Art on 45," as well as several groundbreakers like Section 25's stunning, futuristic "Looking From a Hilltop," which takes a gritty synth-pop formula and runs it through a darkly psychedelic, Bambaataa-sized ghetto blaster. Like Joy Division, Section 25 segued from abrasive, doomy post-punk into dance music—their earlier classic "Dirty Disco" shows them already halfway there, with disco hi-hats and lyrics like "I want your body…I want your mind…." yelped over cavernous snares and guitar shred. The group's closest cohort was arguably A Certain Ratio, whose "Knife Slits Water" remains one of their finest moments and serves as the compilation's high point: When else did stewing eerie melodies and twisted effects into a groovy shuffle powered by slap bass and crunchy claps make quite as much sense as on Factory? *Strut

FAC.DANCE

Sunn O))) Meets Nurse With Wound – The Iron Soul Of Nothing (Ideologic Organ 2011)

Steven Stapleton & Colin Potter twist SUNN O)))'s 2000 album "ØØVOID" inside out on Nurse's dissection table.

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Ilyas Ahmed & Liz Harris - Visitor EP (social music record club subscription series 2011)

The band Visitor is a collaboration between Portland’s Liz Harris and Ilyas Ahmed. Some may recognize the name Liz Harris as the identity of ambient folk chanteuse Grouper. Their upcoming ep Visitor is currently nameless, introspective, drowned in ambience, and harrowing– but mostly, as with all Grouper related tunes, devastatingly beautiful. vinyl spins

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Moolah - Woe Ye Demons Possessed (private 1974)

I got this record some years ago while browsing for nothing in Strange Attractor in Greece and the only thing i knew when i got it home is that it was mentioned in the NWW list

.By it's title i though it would be musically somewhere near Lucifer Rising but without all the hype. I was kinda right but it's a bit more complicated than this. Anyways if you just woke up with a desperate need of a white noise satanic mass this will make your day even worse...

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The Vyllies - S/T (Creep Records 1984)

Twenty seven years after its first release from the legendary “Creep Records”, the Vyllies EP (mini album) was re-released from the new-born Greek indie label “Geheimnis Records” in a limited edition version of 300 copies, so that it will keep haunting the dreams of generations of dark alternative fans to come… The band was consisting of 3 Swiss girls, Manü Moan, Ursula Nun and Ilona Prism. After this first mini LP, recorded in Greece in 1984, they made 2 full albums (1985 and 1987), o­ne 12’’ and a 7’’ single and then perished into eternal oblivion… Summer 1983 : They came to Greece for holidays, met the singer and front man of another legendary group (Yell-O-Yell) from Creep Records, Fill Scars (ΦιλώταΒασκαλή), then he introduced them to Babis Dalidis, owner of Creep Records and the rest was history… 5 tracks – 5 stories – 5 fairytales, like the o­nes, granny used to tell us, but in this case dark, gloomy and obscure… and with no happy end. “Purple Gorilla”, Whispers In The Shadow”, “Madness”, of course… “Babylon” and “Rare”. These tracks were - and still are - something like a baptism into the dark/goth-alternative music scene, to anyone who is not a newcomer, but, after his acquaintance with the big names of this music genre and the bizarre sounds of it, he enters in a purgatory-like state and it is necessary, in order to become a true and sophisticated member of this community, to have listened to these songs. A very hard to find record, which during the 90’s (mostly) and the 00’s, probably earned the attention it never had in the 80’s and became o­ne of the most expensive and sought-after records in Greece and all over the world. The prices and the myths behind them, that we’ve heard during all these years probably contributed even more to the legend of the band and the record itself… March 2011 :Geheimnis Records proudly announced the re-issue o­n vinyl of this “precious” album, trying to put an end to its unattainable status… 300 limited edition copies (now printed in England), with a record-size insert (for all of you who have lost the original small insert, the new o­ne is made for you !!!) and rare photos of the band. Last but not least, we must not forget, the black inner sleeve, which matches perfectly both the dark atmosphere of the record and the yellowish parts of its artwork. *
Anazitisi Records




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David Lynch – Crazy Clown Time (Sunday Best Recordings 2011)

I woke up by having a pinky's dream, and i knew that's it was going to be a good day today, which made me feel so glad.

I though i should join Noah's arc just to see a football game.

I know i had strange and unproductive thinking when the night bell with lightining and the stone's gone up.

This is a crazy clown time and you can say just by letting me to tell you that these are my friends.

Finally we got together in a speed rooster, movin' on  while we watch she rise up.

Crazy Clown Time