Since 1994 Seattle's Climax Golden Twins have been digging a deep fucking furrow between the kind of furiously exclusive small group models of free improvisation established in the wake of the formal revolution of the late-60s while simultaneously re-drawing the map by demolishing all of its most useless architecture and replacing it with lots of crude handmade shit. Over the space of a shadowy career that would make even Sun City Girls seem like desperate self-publicists they have dropped a ton of the most puzzling brain-massaging artefacts of the post-MX-80 age while never really enjoying much of a hoo-ha from what passes for an always-overweight underground cognoscenti except when someone got them mixed up with James Toth and Tovah Olson's old Golden Calves orchestra. So here's their new record, is what I'm trying to say. And it's long time you turned on. On 5 Cents A Piece the Twins whip through the kind of surf/modal/psych/doof three-way wild style that will remind you of why they're so tight with Alan and Rick Bishop while having you leap up to check the sleeve for lamination after you suddenly catch yourself like, wuzzat?, did I stick on The Blops box or Traffic Sound's Virgin by mistake? Their grasp is pan-temporal while their cultural reach is prodigious, capable of reconciling teenage Summer All Year Long surf licks with the kind of eschatological avant-garage birthed in the Cleveland flatlands by Rocket From The Tombs, Chocolate Monk/LAFMS-style hands-on avant and smoky middle eastern zazz. It looks good too and comes in a limited run of 500 copies on the Sun City Girls' own label on 180g vinyl.

Soundtrack recording featuring a bunch of tracks by J. Spaceman aka Jason Pierce of Spacemen 3/Spiritualised alongside a clutch of tracks from Sun City Girls, all of which were recorded to accompany Harmony Korine’s film Mister Lonely. The Spaceman tracks are in the classic wasted/come down gospel style of Pierce’s Spacemen/Spritualised mode while Sun City Girls combine evocative instrumentals and vocal chants in a zoned, devotional style.

Deluxe LP from this group that features Sir Richard Bishop of Sun City Girls with Robert Millis and Jeffery Taylor of Climax Golden Twins and Mr David Knott. Compiled from jams improvised and recorded between the years 2002 and 2008 with microphones set-up in living rooms and at Sun City Girls Blue West headquarters. I haven’t heard Richard sound quite so much like Derek Bailey as he does here, working hermetic acoustic scrabbles and lighting runs across the fretboard with all of the skewed tonal logic of a Company week trips festival. Some of the lonesome percussion work straddles the whole Folkways/Sounds Of The Junkyard aesthetic but with an intent that is deliberately psychoactive, ending up somewhere between NNCK circa A Tabu Two and Spiral Joy Band’s Pleasure Is The Headlight. Other parts of the disc touch on the ethno-forgery style of SCG and CGT but with a slightly more abstruse and dilated approach. The usual classy job from Uzu, with heavy vinyl and wraparound gatefold sleeve featuring an original photograph mounted on the front. 

Beautiful solo LP from Sir Richard Bishop of Sun City Girls in an edition of 500 copies on clear 140g virgin vinyl: The Unrock Tapes presents a major public service by compiling the best of his privately-released and only barely available tour CD-Rs while bundling them with two exclusive new jams. Bishop ranges over a bunch of core styles here, weird Arabic/Middle Eastern raga forms rendered with a ton of mystery, loner frontier ballads cut with the hallelujah style of Albert Ayler, classic SCG-style rips through cannibalised Indonesian pop... Like Bill Orcutt, the seeds of Bishop’s creative trajectory can be traced right back to the earliest SCG sides and The Unrock Tapes present his evolution as an unbroken continuum, factoring in all sorts of stray influences, from John Fahey and Bola Sete through flea market folk and fourth world devotionals, while transforming them all via his own uncompromisingly inventive logic. A beautiful set from one of the great string-thinkers of the modern age. Highly recommended. 

Ain't much argument that Sun City Girls' 1990 album Torch Of The Mystics remains the major centre of gravity in their lurid back catalogue, with its inspired higher-mind synthesis of eastern/Asian/sub-Saharan folk song, electrified modal juice and unknown tongue death-jams. Anyone with a serious jones for the beautiful sounds of that era were left with the tough task of mopping up alla the hard-to-score single sides that the group released in the wake of Torch..., hermetic looking 7"s that bundled unreleased material from the same sessions. Eye Mohini is the third volume in a series of comps that brings together alla the Sun City Girls' most devastating singles for the first time, with a focus on the Torch Of The Mystics-era sound. Gathered together in one place, this plays like the dream follow-up, with totally cranky instrumental run-throughs that combine classic snake-charming guitar moves with the kind of improvising that has more to do with gravities of blood than any kind of post-jazz wack. Bundles tracks from the Eye Mohini single, the Borungku Si Derita set (including a raucous twin electric guitar take on Torch Of The Mystics’ “Esoterica Of Abyssynia”), tracks from Three Fake Female Orgasms, a studio version of “Kickin’ The Dragon” and a bonus live rip through Torch Of The Mystics’ “The Flower” from 1992. Totally fantastic, highly recommended.

Gorgeous limited vinyl edition of this brand new song-based project from Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls: the result of two years work, The Invisible Hands was recorded in Cairo with a group that featured members of the popular Egyptian group Eskenderella and guest players like Sam Shalabi on oud and Mohamed Medhat on violin and viola. Less ‘frenetic’ than Uncle Jim or his Alvarius B or Sun City Girls work, this is a set of beautiful executed fourth world psychedelic pop/rock stylings with the lush, cinematic feel of the final Sun City Girls album, Funeral Mariachi, married to some of Bishop’s pithiest song writing. Bishop really *sings* on this record, and there’s a ton of non-manufactured soul here, with nods to weirdo one-offs like Skip Spence or even Neil Diamond on acid, as he croons his way through parched, doomy country environs, oddly melancholy cocktail jazz numbers and some killer electric guitar rips. The most ‘cohesive’ and ambitious set from Alan in an age, one that somehow brings together and reformulates for the future alla the various strategies that have defined his back catalogue. Vinyl edition features two sides sung in English and two in Arabic, same songs, slightlly different mixes. Comes in a heavy gatefold sleeve with full-colour artwork and lyrics in English and Arabic.