Hail Drudion,

I’m writing this message as Wessex’s autumn sun rises up into an enormous battleship grey curtain of thunder cloud that hangs over Avebury Trusloe three miles to our south-east. Are we ever really ready for this transitional time into the darkness of winter? I don’t believe so; most of us are always instead looking for evidence of one last Indian Summer day on which to hang our memories of the recently dead season. Still, I have good reason to be happy right now, as DARK ORGASM looks and sounds superb and will be available any time in the next week or so. Officially, we’re putting out a release date of November 21st, but our Head Heritage administrator Wendy H. reckons she’ll be ready to take orders well before that date.
DARK ORGASM comes in a similar package to that of CITIZEN CAIN’D, being again a two-CD item in order to make the record easier to negotiate. Disc One is 27 minutes in length and contains seven songs: ‘Zoroaster’, ‘White Bitch Comes Good’, ‘She’s Gotta Ring On Her Finger (& Another One Through Her Nose)’, ‘Mr Invasion’, ‘Nothing To Lose Except My Mind’, ‘I’ve Found A New Way To Love Her’ and ‘I Don’t Wanna Grow Back’. Disc Two is entirely taken up by the hefty 21 minutes of ‘The Death & Resurrection Show’. For me, the most interesting early comments from those who’ve heard the record is that it reminds them of JEHOVAHKILL. This is particularly timely as I’m currently in negotiations with Universal Records (who own all my Polygram and Island back catalogue) as they wish to release a special double-CD edition of that album in the early spring of ’06. The comparisons between JEHOVAHKILL and DARK ORGASM became rather too close for comfort a coupla weeks back, when two printers refused to print the tray of the new album on account of its blasphemous spine proclaiming ‘Fuck The Pope’. I gots to say that 2005CE is a pretty late date to start having problems with such schoolboy gestures, but JEHOVAHKILL was held up for the same reasons back in ’92, and the Jehovah’s Witness-owned CD plant won their battle AND held up my album for three weeks!

DARK ORGASM is, however, a pretty straight-ahead statement, being dedicated to the equality of womenkind in the face of a clampdown from fundamentalists both in Christendom and Islam. It was during an interview with John Vidal of The Guardian last year that I got the idea for the songs, after he suggested that he should mediate a meeting between myself and the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens. Unfortunately, that meeting has yet to take place, but my feminist hackles have continued to rise with the increasingly overt patriarchal attitudes of both Blair’n’Bush in the West and the manner in which modern Islam’s refusal to take a good look at its scarily ‘protective’ attitudes to its women are starting to overflow into the Western worldview. Most irritating is the fact that some greedhead is currently offering feminism​.co​.uk for sale to the highest bidder!

By the way, I shall be touring with my band throughout February of next year, and am hopeful that several righteous motherfuckers will be able to fill the support slots. We’re also gonna try to show some more rock’n’roll movies where the venues permit. For those of you who hate navigating the Head Heritage news pages, here are the dates in full:

February 13th – Cambridge, Junction
February 14th – Oxford, Zodiac
February 15th – Bournemouth Opera House
February 16th – London, KOKO
February 18th – Nottingham’s Rescue Rooms
February 19th – Wolverhampton’s Wulfrun Hall
February 20th – Bristol Academy
February 22nd – Newcastle, Northumbria University
February 23rd – Leeds, Metropolitan University
February 24th – Manchester, Academy 2
February 25th – Glasgow, QMU

Those of you who await the release of the new Brain Donor LP WASTED FUZZ EXCESSIVE should stop holding your breath (at least temporarily) as the record has been held up, due to our still awaiting the arrival of the contribution from our guest vocalist Dan McGuire. That said, it was not Dan’s fault at all, more a question of too much choice and too little time. However, as his ability to daub righteous thang over the most unlikely music, Doggen and I are happy to hang fire on the record’s release.

Man, there’s been so much excellent rock’n’roll released this year, I gots to lay some of this shit upon y’all. For a commencement, the second Residual Echoes album PHOENICIAN FLU & ANCIENT OCEAN is another motherfucker of an onslaught from the boy Adam, whilst California’s Thorean power trio Zebra Attack has a sensationally gruelling slab of orange vinyl out entitled HYPERSONIC DISORIENTATION. I call them Thorean purely because they represent Thor by rehearsing only every a Thursday night, much to the despair of their neighbours, who are featured complaining into the answer machine on “Thursday Night Torture” at the start of side two. Fuck ‘em, says I. If those busybodies don’t recognise great art after five weeks, why don’t they just go out to see the new Wallace & Gromit movie? I should also mention Berlin’s Nasoni Records, who pride themselves on releasing extravagantly packaged vinyl weirdness in hefty gatefold sleeves, and who put out the vinyl version of that wonderful Earthling Society debut LP ALBION. My current favourite from them has to be the Cleveland quartet Where The Moon Came From, whose electrifying first album sounds somewhere between Tractor, EMERGE-period Litter and TIME & A WORD Yes. Side two is a disappointment, but probably only because that first side is such a fucking gigantic slab of combustibles. Up in Liverpool, ex-Spiritualized sax player Ray ‘Moonshake’ Dickaty has scored big with his free-blowing Solar Fire Trio – their 26-minute stellar opus ‘Breakthrough’ is something beautiful to behold, while the solo artist that’s currently smoking my pole has gotta be John Heron, with his bizarre EMBRYONIC HERALDRY, which comes in sideways like a Donovan’d Barrett doing a Michael Hurley’s ARMCHAIR BOOGIE-meets-an-archaic-Robin Williamson type-of-thing. Okay, one more thing and I’m off – I’ve been exercising to side two of the red second Grand Funk Railroad LP for the past nine months, but I just discovered that side four of their MARK, DON & MEL 1969–71 compilation works equally well… revelation! So, after that masterblast through the recent past, I’m a sonic gonner and that’s a fact.

Soon, brothers and sisters,

JULIAN (Lord Yatesbury)