Ultra were one of the shadiest of the post-Industrial avant-experimental groups, with next to nada available in terms of info and a deliberately cryptic/parodic stance. They were in fact the brainchild of Jon Carlson with contributions from Christoph Heemann and Achim P Li Khan of HNAS, inspired in part by their response to the early Whitehouse and Come Org releases. But in their attempt to lampoon and amplify the urges behind the most transgressive Industrial noise they went well beyond the remit, birthing a form of subtly psychedelic avant garde that is as beautiful as it is hilarious. There’s a sophistication to the recording that bears Heemann’s unmistakable thumbprint (he appears on 11 of the 18 tracks), with hazy drone sunsets that are pure Mirror, elegiac avant piano instrumentals and great barracking Industrial/rock assaults in the mode of Whitehouse/Ramleh, including the classic “New Centurion” and their amazing take on The Sodality’s “I Can’t Stand A Bitchy Chick.” The schizophrenic atmosphere makes for the perfect confusion, lurching from fizzy, melancholy tone-poems to fists full of Industrial brutalism. If you’re at all attuned to the more experimental/avant garde side of Industrial music, the side specifically inspired by the NWW list and articulated by labels like Pinakotheca, then might wanna move in. This deluxe double LP reissue restores their classic 1997 Roman Holiday album complete with additional stray singles and a bonus 7” featuring unreleased material from the Zoll sessions. Edition of 500 copies. Highly recommended.

Stunning archival unearthing of late-60s/early-70s electronic works from minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine in an edition of 380 copies: recorded as experiments towards his ‘lost’ masterpiece L’Avventura, inspired by the Antonioni film of the same name, these pieces feature dense, overlapping settings for filtered sine tone generators and variously manipulated tape-works. The first side features a 1970 composition that is one of the wildest and heaviest recordings of Palestine’s career, with Industrial strength monoliths consisting of constantly shifting and elementally powerful steel tone drones pitched against each other in great hurricanes of sound. Commissioned as a dance piece for Gus Soloman, it’s one of Palestine’s most radically organic electronic environments. The second side features more love-level electro-drone works, with overlapping oscillators generating time-killing fluctuations. A massively heavy side from Palestine, with a set of recordings that create a spectacular vision of the future. 

First in a series of inexplicable classic rock tributes from the duo of Christoph Heemann (HNAS/Mirror et al) and Timo Van Luijk (Eloide/Af Ursin) on Heemann’s newly activated DOM BW imprint: Heemann remains one of the premier European drone thinkers, with a feel for space and place and for the precise workings of memory and tone that is truly singular. Timo’s work in Af Ursin has seen him move towards a synthesis of improvised music, avant classical drones and filmic soundworks and this beautiful record successfully blends those concerns with a slowly-unravelling setting for heavenly drone works and small instrument interventions. There are aspects of the more ‘fantastical’ Organum settings, even Nurse With Wound’s Soliloquy For Lilith, but with a darker European ancient/future feel. Beneath the enveloping drone odd, nagging melodies appear, like vague memories or barely construed shadows, giving the whole piece the feel of a reverie or a fever dream. Classic drone under the guise of classic rock – highly recommended!

Second in a series of inexplicable classic rock tributes from the duo of Christoph Heemann (HNAS/Mirror et al) and Timo Van Luijk (Eloide/Af Ursin) on Van Luijk’s own La Scie Doree imprint: a little more, uh, ‘rock inflected’ than Rumours, Frampton Comes Alive consists of a series of movements that confuse stasis and development, with minimal/modal keyboard works that are somewhere between the evocative ritual of Hermann Nitsch and the whole ‘Canterbury’ sound, combining aspects of progressive rock with devotional drone works. As ever Heemann’s use of sunken field recordings makes the recording feel more like an environment you can actually explore than simply a piece of unfolding music and at points the effect is uncannily affecting, with the music dissolving like the sudden absence of colour into stately black and white snapshots of the sound of yesterday, somewhere.  When the music picks up again it’s like its sounding a memorial for what came before, riding into the sun with some beautifully evocative and forlorn piano statements. A major work, one that combines diary, monumental sound work, free improvisation and subtle poetics. Highly recommended.