Hey Motherfuckers of the West,

Hope yooz all enjoying these clear blue skies these past coupla days. As a whole slew of emails invaded the Head Heritage office this past month requesting info on how to acquire that pictured Black Sheep model Israeli ME 109 in the May Drudion, I figured I should now explain a few things about the current state of our Black Sheep trip. Kiddies, not all of this stuff is currently available for public purchase because we’re right in the process of building up the work of the Black Sheep into a formidable canon. These Drudion photos are just our opportunity to showcase our current experiments. Music, documentary film, busking, radical history blogging, scale modeling, live events: these past coupla years have been spent investing a great deal of time in several projects that require constant monitoring. But these are still very early days for the Black Sheep and the parameters of the trip are still being defined. For example, in the main photo (above), three Black Sheep are re-enacting that apposite moment back in 1857 when authors Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau – members of New England’s highly respected Transcendentalists – entertained slave abolitionist and civil war igniter John Brown, whilst on his fund-raising tour. As Ralph Waldo Emerson, Holy McGrail is handing $25 to Christophe F’s John Brown. Okay, that’s the heads up regarding the Sheep: let’s now scoot over to the H.H. Reviews Section.

ANOTHER SIDE OF NEW ROCK SYNDICATE by Kawaguchi Masami’s New Rock Syndicate

First off, I gots to say that anyone with a jones for NY post-punk and ‘70s No Wave should immediately grab a hold of ANOTHER SIDE OF NEW ROCK SYNDICATE from Kawaguchi Masami’s New Rock Syndicate, a Tokyo trio who realise herein Verlaine’n’Hell’s Neon Boys mid-70s dream of fusing inchoate sub-sub-ZUMA guitar stumblings with urgent tearass rockers of the Cycle Annie/Smokin’ Cigarette Blues variety. Better still, Masami’s cohorts exhibit enuff Blue Cheerisms to cumbersome up even the most streamlined of highway blues. Over this top-heavy brew, leader Masami alternately dumps first tearful cloudbursts of vocal paroxysms then shriekingly confident-yet-wrong wrong wrong atonal phaser axe solos like Les Rallizes Denudés never even existed! And you gotta hand it to anyone who outmoans Sir Lord Baltimore’s John Garner… but si si si, mon sewer, emotionwise this Masami fella’s just a half-a-bucket short of a full Wessex Downpour. Truly excellent stuff, m’luds, m’ladies. So grab your brollies and your pack-a-macs and bail over to Nyali Recordings (www​.myspace​.com/​n​y​a​l​i​r​e​c​o​r​dings) and score your very own copy this min.

POINT OF CONVERGENCE by Tetragrammaton

Back again at last with their superb album POINT OF CONVERGENCE are the Japan-based trio Tetragrammaton, whose ELEGY FOR NATIVE TONGUES graced our Head Heritage Album of the Month #113, back in September 2009CE. Again released on Utech Records (www​.utechrecords​.com), this is anutha mutha of considerable cosmick aplomb, often veering between Yatha Sidra’s legendary Krautrock epic A MEDITATION MASS and the demented heathen ritual of Finland’s Hääre, by way of early Cluster, even Kluster! Indeed, deploying such arcane instruments as hurdy gurdy, gong, waterphone, hydrophone, quaard plums and veli bowls at times even pitches Tetragrammaton into that same timeless territory as Taj Mahal Travellers, Marginal Consort and East Bionic Symphonia. Yup kiddies, if This Heat had experienced those six-hour-long Buddhist gagaku rituals, the result woulda been something like these six compelling cosmick Ur-gropes. So score your copy direct from Utech Records, or try www​.subvalent​.com, and let the heat haze of this record turn your horizons to mush.

SUPER HEAVY HAMOAZIAN REVERIE by Urthona

Meanwhile, high on the brutish uplands of Dartmoor, there’s a guitar eruption going down… a sonic healing of the land through gigantic Marshall stacks and Gibson Les Paul Juniors – as though POPULATION 2‑period Randy Holden had got himself blowed up Basket Ball Jones-size. Hmm, Urthona musta broken off his leash again and summoned up another coupla dozen devotees for his spectral army. At least that’s what it sounds like from the stupendous ernie-ernie-ing of URTHONA 3: SUPER HEAVY HAMOAZIAN REVERIE. What a title, what a concept! And that unyielding Townshendian tumult that he unloads upon us all doth indeed conjure up before mine eyes a righteous yammering of liquid infinity, a full three-quarter-hour medication-medication of tor-hopping guitar daub. Released on Further Records, SUPER-HEAVY HAMOAZIAN REVERIE is available in the usual lavish Urthona packaging, and should be copped immediately from www​.urthona​.co​.uk, and pronto, Tonto.

PARTY KILLER by Party Killer

Okay, we now move seamlessly from Urthona’s sublime realm into the ridiculous complain-o-thons of Party Killer, an Oregon quintet whose analogue’n’hiss infested self-titled debut sounds like the idiot bastard son of Monoshock meets Chrome’s afterbirth for a jam on some eternal street corner with early Temple of Bon Matin. Pure spew. Yes, a very pure spew. But really that deranged? That deranged, brothers’n’sisters. Vocals chunter incessantly over suppressed mike feedback as horns parp and rising’n’fading analogue synthesizers describe steam escaping in some great industrial plant. And all the time those drums just keep on keeping on. Y’see, I mentioned all of those ancestors, brothers’n’sisters, but this ensemble is the real deal. Because these babbies got some beats of their own. Yup, drummer Gordon Filemu Cady is the mighty tree of Yggdrasil around which the rest of this elaborate hoax is perpetrated. Nothing phases Party Killer, hey and even if the band drops down to a few bells and burps, singer Ron Mason Gassaway just keeps going like he’s Bono belting out at Band Aid. Colossal. So do please catch these high achieving gentlemen at www​.myspace​.com/​m​e​e​t​p​a​r​t​y​k​iller and get to hear this album fer shit damn sure!

NOW IN TECHNICOLOUR RIGHTS by Awaken!

Those of you longing for endless Psychedelick Summer backporch campfire workouts should make great effort to catch the sweet dementia of NOW IN TECHNICOLOUR LIGHTS by L.A.’s avant-twatted ensemble Awaken! Led by Jesse Rakusin, these bleary muppets traipse all over that delightfully half-light territory formerly guarded half-assedly by ESP-Disk, David Peel, Michael Hurley’s ARMCHAIR BOOGIE-period, all psychedelicized Cajuns, San Francisco’s 5‑Track and Oliver’s Oxfordshire barnyard classic STANDING STONE. Sounds class. Let’s have sum-moor o’that, then. Yup, Awaken! is the best example of sustained catchy bastard off-the-record gospel-tinged epic ninnied-out blues-buffoonry to come my way since that Todd Clark re-release a coupla years back. Check them grooves out at www​.awakeninadream​.com, specially if you’re aching for several sustained almost displays of lo-fi Nether Achievements.

IN ZAIRE by In Zaire

Finally, the Vinyl of the Month award must go to Italian curiosity In Zaire, whose two superb sides of 20+ minutes 12” vinyl are, unfortunately, spread across two entirely separate releases. Dammit! Yup, kiddies, the magnificent packshot you regard to your immediate right is a one-sided photo-etched affair released on Holidays Records (www​.holidaysrecords​.it) in high-art chocolate’n’fluoro green packaging of considerable yumminess. That the two tracks included therein contain enough seering and sustained early-Ash Ra Tempel-levels of acceleration for most bands entire LPs allows us to forgive In Zaire somewhat for their commercially inconsiderate (though refreshingly non-careerist) choices of scattered release. The other essential to check out, by the way, is their split vinyl LP shared with Scandinavian trio Skull Defects, also available on Holidays Records. The massive splurge of In Zaire’s side-long ‘Space Age’ should be required listening to anyone demanding transcendental otherness. Dial them in at www​.myspace​.com/​i​n​zaire — yeah, check out these druids prontina, Tontina!

Okay, before I quit for another month, I must mention Head Heritage’s forthcoming Internet Vinyl Sale, which will take place in the next coupla weeks before our sagging archives crash through to the floors below. All these years of H.H. reviews have necessitated such a build up of modern underground LPs that we’ve decided to dispose of them for just a fiver plus post & packaging. So do look out for this blitz in the next coupla weeks as there’s bound to be some fucking lovely sonic thangs that would suit you vinyl heads down to the ground. Come to think of it, our Digital Archive ain’t gonna be that far behind, methinks… ho-hum.

Right, that’s me off until after the Solstice,

May love reign on your every horizon,

JULIAN (Lord Yatesbury)