Sacred Bones Us レコード& CD

Review: RECOMMENDED
Originally founded in 1992, Boris have absolutely nothing to do with the mop-headed World King currently refusing to leave the No.10 party like that guy who nobody really knows at 7AM. Suffice to say, at some point soon we'll all have to pretend to go to bed and then reconvene in the back yard. The gate is always open.

Digressions aside, this particular Boris represents the vanguard of underground Japanese experimental rock. Tracks that can easily help you escape the reality of a world where even the leaders can't be bothered anymore. Staggeringly, W is the band's 27th studio album, and this doesn't include another 15 collaborative long forms, many with fellow Far East noise legend Merzbow. If that name means anything, but Boris doesn't, you should still kind of know what to expect here. Thick bands of guitar scuzz, subtly developing disharmonies, atmospheric drones, and discordant refrains.

Review: German-Brazilian artist Gloria de Olivera and David Lynch associate Dean Hugely come together for an album that cerebrates the joy and escapism of dream pop. It is an album on Sacred Bones awash with eerie synth strings that are offset by De Olivera's German vocals. Drums echo the sounds of the early Cocteau Twins and the shimmering synths take you higher. It is a low key work with plenty of lo-fi aesthetics but one that makes a grand emotional impact. 'Hanging Gardens' is a real favourite with its moody backdrop of wooly synths.

Review: Canadian composer Mort Garson enjoyed an eclectic career, though in electronic music circles he's most celebrated for a string of experimental electronic albums he produced using early Moog synthesizers. "Mother Earth's Plantasia" is a bizarre but brilliant beast: a 1976 set that was designed to be played to plants to help them grow (really) and was given away free at a Los Angeles garden store. As this first ever reissue proves it remains a dizzyingly far-sighted set. Sometimes symphonic, occasionally spacey and always intoxicating, much of the material is far quirkier than contemporaneous synthesizer-fired sets. Highlights include the pulsing ambient spaciousness of "Ode To An African Violet", the twinkling, cascading beauty of "Rhapsody In Green" and the jaunty cheeriness of "You Don't Have To Walk a Begonia".

Review: Canadian composer, arranger, songwriter, and electronic music pioneer Mort Garson just keeps on giving, even now, 15 years after his death. Archival releases since have come not-so-thick-and-fast, but occasional and well thought through, with Journey to the Moon & Beyond the latest example of this. Not, as the cover and title might suggest, the score to some forgotten 1970s animated classic, but instead a collection of stuff very few will have heard before, let alone had opportunity to buy, it's really something special. On the track list, then, you'll find the soundtrack to 1974 Blaxploitation movie Black Eye, or at least part of it. Similarly splendid, but in a very different way, are the grand tones of 'Zoos of the World', originally made to accompany a 1970 National Geographic special of the same name. Then there's the music he wrote for the 1969 moon landings, as used by CBS News at the time. History bottled, or rather pressed, get it while it's fresh (and in stock).