Black Sheep Christophe F. hangs loose in the Sixteen Chapel as Michael O’Sullivan investigates his 1/32 scale Israeli Messerschmitt 109G, the latest delivery from Black Sheep Art & Craft Division’s curious ‘Doorway Series’. Still regarded as a terrorist state and shunned by the major Western Powers, the fledgling Israeli Air Force was – highly ironically – forced in 1947 to fly these Nazi-designed warplanes sold to them illegally by the Czech government. The highly-detailed boxes are handmade by Common Era, the bases emblazoned with an essay by the Archdrude.

Hey Cosmic Brothers & Universal Sisters, 

Now you all know me well enough to have observed that – considering I’m a rampant anti-Nationalist – I’m still a fucking full-on repper of these here isles. So it should come as no surprise – even to those Anglophile Yanks amongst you – that this here Royal Wedding has made me truly embarrassed to be British for the first time in… well, weeks I guess. So, as I can’t even consider being bothered enough to write some scathing putdown of the aforementched Highbred/Inbreds, suffice it to say I hope Old German Liz stays put on that throne until Young Prinny is as furry and Corporal Jones-like as his old dad. Wear ’em all down, QE2, let none be thronéd after you! Hey, I feel a new Republican anthem a‑brewing…

TO THE OTHER SIDE by Be My Delay

Meanwhile, over at the HH reviews section we been feasting our lugholes on the righteous’n’tumultuous Lunar rhythms of TO THE OTHER SIDE by Italy’s magnificent Be My Delay, whose tranced out Ur-Velvets drones and ecstatic Shirelles-in-space vocals evoke feelings of the past decades of great radio songs as though experienced from within your mama’s belly. C’mon! Released on Italy’s quite shockingly consistent Boring Machines label (www​.boringmachines​.it), Be My Delay are the vision of singer Marcella Riccardi, whose incessant and cyclical S. Morrison rhythm guitar propels, nay, drives this entire superb (and still extremely new) ensemble, keeping its muse intense, dizzying, yet precise and useful throughout. Better still, on the sleeve Be My Delay represents itself with a classic William Blake banner quote. So dig this record, babies, and send word to the band at www​.myspace​.com/​b​e​m​y​delay. Awl-fucking-righty!

QUMRAN ORPHIC by Carlton Melton

Next stop, we done been sucked into the gaping maw of Californian quintet Carlton Melton, whose epic 3‑track vinyl LP QUMRAN ORPHIC burns here with all the undulating shamanic fury of a pre-dawn human sacrifice. One entire vinyl side is dedicated to summoning the ancestral dead by berating them in a manner similar to Odin’s battering at the megalithic tomb of his dead grandmother. Sheesh. I mean, this mouthy fucker just won’t let up. Imagine Agitation Free setting up at dawn at the foot of the Pyramids then getting a rat-arsed and inchoate bingo caller in on lead vox. Sounds dreadful? Whaddya mean! It’s truly da bomb, kiddies, da best, da pig’s business. Over on the flipside, this ensemble become purveyors of such obsessively monotonous and incessant sludge-trudge that even turning the volume up has to be done whilst in a state of trance. Eventually, amidst a whole festival of feedback and poorly earthed hi-fi equipment, their rusty and overcrowded space freighter docks with mucho fuss’n’bother and brings this Uber-excessive-yet-totally-nessa display to a reluctant conclusion. Luvverly! Released on America’s Mid-To-Late Records, Carlton Melton’s whole approach is guaranteed to smoke your psychic pole down to the very root and microwave your melted plastic mind to boot. So please contact the band at [email protected] and do demand a UK tour, m’Luds me Ladies!

PYRAMIDEN VON GEIßEN by Datashock

Oo what’s this be-gatefolded Kraut-outing I see before me emblazoned with manicdotes and universe of seemingly some other lost time, its colossal sonic ooze ritualizing our cranials and Dynorodding our deepest secret fears, then? Hell, it’s PYRAMIDEN VON GEIßEN, the fucking brand new German double-vinyl epic commune sprawl from Berlin/Hamburg ensemble Datashock, and it’s a splendidly righteous motherfucker with futuristic lobes for pointy-headed people. Don’t know what they put in the wasser during this Datashock sesh, but it kicks Balzac in the ballsac and I want some now or a tantric tantrum approacheth. Kiddies, you doshed enuff this month for just one purchase, perchance, then make sure you buy THIS motherfucker, got me? You’re on the dole you, you NEED new music it’s this one. Why? Because not only comes its sound from the bowels of the fucking Absolute, but it’s all housed & decorated like these visionary motherfuckers truly CARE! So grab your bargain by rushing to Dekorder Records’ website at dekorder​.com, or hassle those beasts themselves at myspace​.com/​d​a​t​a​shock.

THE FURTHER I GET FROM YOUR STAR, THE LESS LIGHT I FEEL ON MY FACE by Theologian

Okay, now we’re gonna slow everything down and slomo the collective world voice about a full octave. Am I listening to Suicide’s ‘Frankie Teardrop’ at 16RPM? No? Then maybe it’s Iggy and J. Williamson’s spectrally eternal versh of B. Dylon’s ‘Ballad of Hollis Brown’ at the aforemenched OAP gait. Nope, this cosmically languid, nay, totalitarianally languid release is the first from American band Theologian, whose masterful debut goes by the catchy bastard monicker THE FURTHER I GET FROM YOUR STAR, THE LESS LIGHT I FEEL ON MY FACE. Whoa, and boy does the racket within justify the portentous title. Barfing forth six vast eternities on synthesizers larger than a Howard Hughes flying boat, this Theologian debut crackles and burns with the Ur-spark of the early Universe. It’s as though some clued-up King Kong had tied the gorgeous astronomer Dr Fiorella Terenzi to her university telescope and was wielding her Fay Ray-stylee invoking Ragnarok chaos whilst charging amok across our Solar System. Demented, deliriously demented and breathtaking simultaneously. Very nice indeed. You can capture this item in its highly artful black super-package through the well-achieving Crucial Blast label (www​.crucialblast​.net) and you can praise the artistes themselves while you’re there by pressing www​.crucialblast​.net/​t​h​e​o​l​ogian. Easy peasy — a Righteous Result Totale. 

VLOED by Machinefabriek

Let’s follow this with another monolithic motherfucker in the shape of VLOED by Dutch soundscapemeister Machinefabriek, whose similarly cosmic-sized music is of a far more post-industrial variety. Indeed, much of this album – like Nadja and To Blacken the Pages before them – exists in a seemingly burned-out post-apocalyptic environment in which walls of tsunami guitar ramalama populate the distant horizons as nearby broken machines still wish us a happy birthday from below tons of rubble. Unlike either of the aforemenched, however, Machinefabriek at times also unleashes a gorgeously sonorous and beautiful side, as here appear Disneyesque gospel choirs à la FANTASIA and there fly euphoric snatches of CARMINA BURANA. It’s a preternatural union indeed. Performed solely by Dutchman Rutger Zuydervelt on guitars, FX and samples, VLOED is available on England’s highly excellent Cold Spring Records (www​.coldspring​.co​.uk), whilst the artiste himself should be reached through www​.machinefabriek​.nu. Right on.

WOVEN MUSIC by Shinji Masuko

Finally, I’m gonna conclude these reviews with a look at WOVEN MUSIC, the latest vinyl LP from Boredoms guitarist Shinji Masuko, who brings forth two compelling sidelong pieces of massive meditations. Released on the American Jagjaguwar Records (www​.jagjaguwar​.com), side one’s “Woven Music For Blue Steppe’ ripples like ten thousand balalaikas describing a vast yellow Ukraninian wheatfield, as ascending spectral choir navigate an escalator into the stars, while side two’s ‘Woven Music for Silver Ocean’ opens with a gorgeously gratuitous and weepy Glam Rock guitar fanfare before enflaming into some extraordinary and tumultuous companion piece to Fripp & Eno’s legendary ‘The Heavenly Music Corporation’. Yes, these are ecstatic meditations indeed. 

Okay, here endeth this Right Royal Balls-up of a Drudion. Come on, fellow islanders, let’s get back to abnormal and forget perhaps for a few moments that we Brits still inhabit an oft-ridiculous and medieval world full of dowager duchesses, ladies-in-waiting, Labour peers and in-bred princesses who grow plump in the night. Ech! It all mex me vom and that’s a fact.

Love on ya, kiddies,

JULIAN (Lord Yatesbury)