Fifty Foot Hose - Cauldron (1968)

Holy shit. How is this album even from 1968? This tragically overlooked psych rock release offers an awesome mix of acid soaked pop songs on some tracks and dark, angular freak outs on others. Songs like "Red the Sign Post" or "If Not This Time" sound to me as if they'd fit in better in 1978 than 1968. This is a truly amazing album and I highly recommend it if you enjoy good music.

My brain imploded down to cinders
Growing new senses to feel
Seeing, hearing all that is real
If not this time
Maybe never

The Scene Is Now - Burn All Your Records (1985)

Now here's an interesting band. You might know this band because Yo La Tengo covered their song "Yellow Sarong," The Scene Is Now were a weird band from mid 80s NYC so they often get lumped in with no wave. But trust me they aren't anything like your Circle X or your Swans or Y Pants or any of that. In fact it's really hard to tell what genre they are. They're sometimes defined as "postmodern jug music" but I prefer just calling them jangle pop, really schizophrenic and disoriented jangle pop. The album consists of 20 relatively short tracks that are poppy but also dissonant. In some tracks its almost as if they try to sound bad, and it ends up giving it a really endearing and cute sound. This album might take a few listens to click but I ~highly~ recommend this album.

A man in the moon
Taps on the window
How will we know your silhouette
How will we reach you (Are we real?)

Mami Chan Band - Live! (2001)

Mami Chan Band are the multinational experimental pop project of Andrew Sharpley, with all members contributing vocal work, ranging across multiple languages, even lapsing into a Dénudé-esque blend of french and japanese, recorded live between 1999 and 2001. The music on this disc is incredibly eclectic, ranging from the deranged yet cutesy melodica and bass waltz of "mon pére communiste et ses amis fume de l’herbe sur la patinoire"to the breathless toybox pop of "la valse", yet always retaining a sweetness and charm that soften the band's experimental edge. Pop music that's like nothing else, and the kaleidoscopic Louis Wain cover is pretty neat as well!

love & beauty

Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.- "La Novia" (2000)

Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. are an extremely large "spirit collective" from Japan who stand as monoliths in the current experimental rock scene as one of the most prolific and varied bands around, going from ephemeral noise rock blasts to strung-out psychedelic droning.

Mercury Rev - Yerself Is Steam (1991)

Mercury Rev, hailing from New York, USA, originally formed to soundtrack their experimental films, but at the insistence of experimental filmmaker and composer Tony Conrad (who's work with Faust will definitely see the spotlight sometime on this blog), released this, their debut album. Their follow up, "Boces" was another magnificent album, following the wild psychedelic noise rock blue print thrown down by "Yerself is Steam", but sadly for fans, after singer David Baker left the group, they became far more tame and timid, although they did receive. But "Yerself is Steam" and "Boces" still stand out amongst the teeming masses of bands that populate the Underground Rock scene of the early 90s as two albums that are so unique and sound fresh and bizarre even by todays standards.

The Spoils of War - The Spoils of War (1969)

The Spoils of War was an Experimental Psychedelic Rock group which remained completely under the radar throughout the 60s and 70s. Though the advent of the internet has allowed us to learn a lot more about previously unheard of bands like The Spoils of Wars, we still know very little about them. What we do know is that the band was headed by a man names James Cuomo who, as it seems, was a bit of a control freak, in the sense that he was in charge of nearly all parts of the album, he wrote all of the songs, wrote the lyrics for most, and performed a lot of different instruments on a lot of the tracks, he was also the producer. We also know that the group released at least two albums, The Spoils of War and The Spoils of War II. Other than that details on the group are very murky. One thing that is more obvious is how ahead of its time the album is.

Momus - Blibliotek (2012)

Momus is back for another review, this time for his 2012 album Bibliotek. For those of you who didn't read my first review of his debut album Circus Maximus, Momus (who also quite fittingly named himself after the Greek god of mockery) is an author and a musician, born in Scotland in 1960, he's consistently released music as Momus since 1986. Even the loss of the use of his right eye in 1997 didn't stop Momus from keeping up a pretty prolific discography and from writing for magazines like Wired and Vice. One of the great things about him is that he offers an ever changing sound, as we'll see in this album.

Tiere der Nacht - Hot Stuff (1991)

Tiere der Nacht (literally "Animals of the Night") was a band that could probably best be described as Krautrock (albeit Krautrock is more of a scene than a genre, I've always considered it a genre). The band consisted of  Mani Neumeier and Luigi Archetti who together released 5 albums as Tiere der Nacht from 1991 to 2005. Before Tiere der Nacht, Neumeier led successful Krautrock band Guru Guru, Luigi was also a member of the band at one point, but he also had a pretty strong solo career. The duo's experience really shows in this hidden gem.

Monks - Black Monk Time (1966)

One of the most unique and ahead of their time bands ever. From the introduction of Monk Time, the authoritative call of Burger rings out over the driving, noisy and hypnotic instrumentation, and as the Monks launch into their first song, you know you're in for something special.