Edition of 350 copies LP on 180g vinyl and presented in heavy stock linen paper hand-screened sleeves, Lovers… represents the first ever vinyl release from this wild Chinese guitarist with a bunch of releases on PSF. Two sides of extreme amplifier worship and squealing solo guitar. The first piece has the kinda suspended planetary gravity of Robert Fripp’s work circa his collaborations with Brian Eno, only pushed into a post-High Rise heavy psych environment. The second side is even more amped-up, with screaming single notes soaked in F/X and building to the kind of climactic end-of-the-world bombast previously the domain of Keiji Haino. An iconoclastic psych guitar side, sure to be a heavyweight in years to come. Highly recommended.

Inspired split LP that pairs two contemporary NZ outfits with tentacles that run deep into that country’s singular drone scene. Nova Scotia is the quartet of Richard Whyte, Rick Jensen, Guy Nicholls and Dean Brown and they play a form of hands-on eternal music that touches on the previous experiments in horizontal guitar tones and bowed electricity of Surface Of The Earth, Sandoz Lab Technicians, Thela, CM Ensemble, Flies Inside The Sun etc. Manipulated guitars and distant horns relocate the ritual aspect of Heathen Earth to the very edge of the world while aggressive free form drums ala Robbie Yeats/The Shaggs push the whole deal into a primitive free jazz zone where punk aggression and endlessly smeared tones combine in staggering vertical take-offs. Pretty amazing. On the flip the Eye quartet – featuring key NZ players Peter Stapleton, Peter Porteous, Jon Chapman and Nathan Thompson – perform a haunted electro-séance with arcs of sighing electricity cut-up with distant audience noise and obsessively minimal hovering melodies that build to claustrophobic architectures of feedback sounds and overheated amps until it feels as if the instruments are playing each other and the melodies are buckling under the strain. Beautiful grid-locked psychedelic drone from a bunch of masters of the form. Who knows what it is about New Zealand but the end of the world never sounded so magnetic. Edition of 250 copies on 150g vinyl with silkscreened sleeves by Alan Sherry. Highly recommended!