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Shūko No Omit – 秘密の回顧録 (Secret Memoir)

Ramble Records out of Australia have published a unique album here – one that should be seen as a modern psychedelic rock masterpiece.  From their Bandcamp site:

Shūko No Omit, the name of the band, featuring Yonju Miyaoka on guitar and Vocals, his older brother Taiju Sugimori on bass and chorus,and his cousin Yuya Yamazaki on drums and chorus, is a mix of Japanese and english. Yonju told me he came across the word omit while reading an old English dictionary. Shuko (終古) is old Japanese. A word no longer used. One lost to time.

The characters 終 + 古mean end and old, but, he says, when put together, they mean something like “eternity, timelessness, from ancient to forever”; The の “No” character in the middle means of. Like omit of Forever.

As far as names as descriptors go, Shuko No Omit is pretty good. There is decay and damage in this music. And pain and sadness and the dangerous but essential fascination required as you stumble through that damage to the unknown whatever that lies ahead.


The music feels like it is on the edge. There is desperation that you hear from the opening moments. Most of the looseness comes from Yonju. The Rhythm is slow and steady. Yonju says there are many mistakes. The parts of it that people generally want to omit. It sounds to me like a raging fire. Blazing up one minute and smoldering the next.

Heavy listening.

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Music

Sula Bassana – Nostalgia

Though he have nearly 20 years under his belt with this band, I have to admit that I never heard David Schmidt’s music until this evening.  Sula Bassana’s latest release, Nostalgia, is a gloriously slow wade into space rock.  It’s heavy, sludgy, and exactly the sort of thing that I want to relax my mind to at the moment.  Dense, but rewarding, listening.

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Music

The Cosmic Kangaroos – .​.​.​improvise!

Our comrades at German’s finest psych label, The Lollipoppe Shoppe, release a wild album of heavy-duty psychedelic rock by The Cosmic Kangaroos that sounds more like a 1960’s California (West Coast) indie monster rather than a gem recorded in the 1990s.  This label has a knack for absolutely incredible rare gems!

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Music

Shin Joong Hyun & Yup Juns – Shin Joong Hyun & Yup Juns

repsychled Records out of Peru are known for releasing scorching garage rock from their native country, but they have dipped their fingers until the shimmering pools of South Korean psychedelic music as well.

Shin Joong Hyun is considered South Korea’s ‘godfather of rock’, and he has been comfortable working not only with psych but with folk-rock, pop and soul.  This particular album with done with Yup Juns, his backing band, and you can hear influences from blues rock to Jimi Hendrix in this disc.

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Music

Various Artists – Weedian: Trip To Germany

Though I’m not much of a metal guy, I have grown fond of things like desert rock, stoner rock, drone metal and other variants.  The online label Weedian has been releasing free (or pay-what-you-like) compilations of bands in local scenes, and this one covers Germany in 62 tracks.  Most of these bands are surprisingly good, and those of you into things like Saint Vitus or Black Sabbath will find plenty to enjoy in this album.

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Music

miserable.noise.club – Frost Confinement

miserable.noise.club is a collective of incredibly talented musicians based in Jordan, China and the US + other collaborators in East Asia and the Middle East.  The music they make is, by some miracle, a solid blend of experimental music, a paean to post-punk and lo-fi psychedelic rock.  It’s hazy enough to remind me of some of the great music coming out of New Zealand in the late 1990s revolving around luminaries such as Roy Montgomery or The Dead C.

Once the radio podcast begins, I have a feeling these folks will be featured heavily.  Very impressive.  Much respect to Abood Ashqar for telling me about this most fascinating project.

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Music

The Myrrors – Hasta La Victoria

Sunday is going to be hectic, so today, I wanted to impart to you an album by The Myrrors, easily one of America’s finest psych bands.  The music is all instrumental and sounds like the outtakes of a more relaxed Blue Cheer or some of the modern drone composers like Terry Riley. I never would have thought would be referenced by a psych band, but has been done so perfectly).  Let the hot Arizona winds flow on top of you today.  This album is worth your time.

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Music

Igra Staklenih Perli – Igra Staklenih Perli

Igra Staklenih Perli were one of the greater monster progressive/psychedelic rock bands to come out of Yugoslavia (the band themselves were Serbian) during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and though some of their work could be seen as taking cues from legendary western groups like Pink Floyd, I hear elements of Can, Hawkwind, Jimi Hendrix and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, about the only metal period I like short of Black Sabbath.  The only gripe I have with the album is the low mix.  Music like this should be listened to at high volume, so the punch isn’t quite as strong as I would like it to be, but all in all, the album is worth its reputation as a cornerstone of Yugo rock.

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Music

Euphemia Rise – Born a Cow

Euphemia Rise is a rather remarkable project run by Wim Lankriet.  Born a Cow is Wim’s debut album, and it’s quite a fine work, combining an acidic psychedelic music which reminds me of Syd Barrett in parts while maintaining a 1980’s-1990’s gothic feel.

Lyrically, it is a heavy album covering such topics as. “being (sexually) different and facing people’s judgments – but also venture into darker subjects such as drug prostitution, sadomasochism, rape…”

Wim notes, and I would strongly agree, that the tone is never negative.  I’m not sure this music put a smile on my face, but it left me intrigued.  A solid debut.

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Jodi – Spherical Distortions

Guerssen Records out of Catalonia, Spain is known for putting out some amazingly weird psych and lo-fi music, but this one has to be one of the most charmingly weird ones in their catalog.

Two Paraguayan brothers of German origin, Joern and Dirk Wenger, self-released an album in 1971 called Pops de Vanguardia and had a deal with EMI-Argentina for a series of albums which came out and gained them a bit of fame, but Joern was also a student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, so you know his weirdo bona fides were going to be solid.  This album does not disappoint at all, as one can hear Stockhausen’s powerful influence as well as touches of the music of The Beatles (naturally, as they were as huge in South America as they were everywhere else) and The Beach Boys (listen to some of the vocal harmonies and you will notice what I mean.

I’ve said this before in the past, not perhaps on this blog, but on the previous one: we live in an amazing time where so many of these lost artifacts see the light of day and show us what might have been with just a little more development and a push from more forward-thinking record labels.

Thanks to Guerssen for their continued support of freak rock.