Black Sheep in Gotham City? P.O.U.M. reborn? Hopefully, 2012 will see a lot more such vehicles on the streets of the west. 

Hail Drudion,
Hail to the Great Doorway of 2012 (Common Era),
And hail to all of you Heathen Horde out there (out here),

For this New Year is the biggie we’ve awaited so long, that fabled prophetic Mayan year after which everything must, well, cease I guess. But whatever bullshit the long dead Mayans cooked up in their minds for 2012, forget about all of that and instead use their prophecy to help free your minds further and further from the day-to-day drudgery of 21st century Kapitalism. After all, what was the Millennium but a chance to poke fun at organised religion and to further free ourselves of St. Paul’s enslaving Mind Games, fuck yes, take 2012 by the balls and use its fabulous aura as a smokescreen with which to prank your enemy. Dash his head against the wall and disappear even before the mists have cleared. Follow Occupy’s brazen example, or invent your own new rules. Like the Two Sevens Clash of the Queen’s Jubilee year of 1977, 2012 is your Doorway to end all doorways. Indeed, from here on we all gots to start inventing the new myths ourselves.

Self-titled by Kogumaza

Okay, so let’s start the 2012 Reviews Section with something brand new. Ladies and gentlemen, please pay total attention to the extraordinary self-titled debut by new Nottingham trio Kogumaza, whose masterful display of Glenn Branca-meets-Television stackable dynamics manifests in a riot of glassy twin guitar shards, cycling and looping Loop-like bass riffing and the ever-increasing tension and breakouts of drummer Katherine Eira Brown. Released in clear 12” vinyl on the Low Point label, this Kogumaza debut was clearly designed to be performed ‘all-of-a-piece’, its rises and sweeps, its pulses and tides all the product of an ensemble that has played deep into its trip. Better still, these druids sustain their majestic, nay, Mithraic vibe across both sides of vinyl AND heft us a righteous bonus in the form of the red vinyl 7” ‘Sevens’ b/w ‘Mara’, both of which brood like Vibracathedral Orchestra, the latter propelled by a vast almost-Tamla bass riff of Michael Henderson proportions. Yup, these are some intense meditations.

NO ON by David Cintron

Next up, it’s time to welcome back Terminal Lovers’ leader Dave Cintron, whose new album NO ON is a compelling and highly useful wipe-out. Featuring just two 20-minute long pieces, Cintron delivers a kind of post-industrial Cleveland sonic ooze, as though Gavin Bryars’ ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ had been performed not on violins and cellos but on carburettors and accelerators. Now operating as ‘David Cintron’ though still available via www​.davecintron​.com, our erstwhile Head Heritage fave should be a greedy motherfucker and demand to release albums under both names. And with meditational aids this good, Dave… ahem, David Cintron is good for another twenty years. Great fucking news.

DESCÂNTECUL AREI NEGRE by Nu & Apa Negra

On now to the turbulent delights of DESCÂNTECUL AREI NEGRE by Rumanian octet Nu & Apa Negra, whose dynamic and sometimes ecstatic musicians present herein a veritable Royal Tournament of performances. Whew, it’s an enriching experience, brothers’n’sisters. Somewhat akin to an even more rustic Brast Burn, a backporch Faust, the eight musicians of Nu & Apa Negra on this massive record acquit themselves beautifully on all manner of (to me) previously unknown Balkan instruments – divan, baglama saz„ drâmbã, tulnic, cobzã and zurgãlãi – combining these with Korgs, Moogs, eBows and other current technology. Imagine a perpetual unfolding of rustic events, hencoop cameos of sound, backporch playlets of banjo and mandolin, cascading bursts of some unknown reed instrument, sh-sh-shaking streams of bubbling single-note penny flute, then huge unleashings of ecstatic reed organ from the bowels of the earth. At times, it’s as though some Irish reel band had been forced, threatened and coerced into playing just the one monotonous chord, deeply dark and funereal as Sturmpercht at their most threatening. The final near 20-minute track ‘The Black Water’ unites all of the previous explorations, conflating them into one glorious and transcendental piece. Catch these high achievers at the excellent German label The Lollipop Shoppe and score your own copy immediately. 

YT/ST by Yamantaka Sonic Titan

On next to the superb YT/ST by Montreal octet Yamantaka Sonic Titan, whose all-engulfing choruses of muscular loveliness generate around the post-prog post‑K. Dinger rattle of shamanically-painted drummer Alaska B. and the heavy wayward gorgeousness of painted singer Ruby Kato Attwood ‘s multi-tracked voice, by way of organs, barrel-organs and all manner of keyboard sumptuousness. Mmmmmm, in places as psychedelic (and organ-heavy) as Apryl Fool’s ludicrously arch ‘The Lost Motherland’, slogging out heeevy fuzzed monoriffs à la 69-through-21st century insensibilities, elsewhere as vocally’n’orchestrally sumptuous as Cornelius’ early band Flipper’s Guitar, Yamatanka Sonic Titan are purveyors only of their own World View, and boy is it foreign! Moreover, just like the equally foreign Magma, there forever dwells underneath this Veil of Loveliness an automechanical instrumental ensemble always ready to unleash the beast through furious feedback, rhythmical burn-ups and banshee wail Yoko-outs the way the Tubes (say) would let rip whenever Fee Waybill teetered stage side briefly. Released on the Psychic Handshake label, you can contact these glorious achievers at their own www​.ytstlabs​.com or catch them at yamantakasonictitan​.bandcamp​.com. Yowzah, as ‘they’ve been wont to say.

MICHIGAN MELTDOWN by Various Artists

Hey, after my lengthy DETROITROCKSAMPLER of a coupla years back, I’ve been hefted several slices of peachy lost De Twattishness from way back, but none nearly so convincing as those no-mark Various Artists reprobates contained within the stinking vinyl grooves of MICHIGAN MELTDOWN, eleven Goddawful tracks of highly rare early-to-mid-70s fuzzerama, and mostly ill-informed (nice) by the then-prevalent Dennis Wheatley Satanism of B. Sabbath and their cumbersome ilk. Ja, mein hairies, this fulltilt-then-tractor-slow post-Altamont Beelziblubber is mostly played herein by witchy outfits by such names as Astaroth, Master Danse, Almannack and Insanity’s Horse (oo-er missus), their post-Paint It Black BÖC crank-o-thons turbo fuelled by such names as ‘Satanispiritus’, Feelin’ Dead’ and ’12 O’Clock Satanial’. Hell, maiden aunts back in ’72 surely knew their times were a‑changing when they could delight their teen nephew with a 7” single obscurely entitled ‘Apparition’ AND played by a band named Apparition! Even better still, MICHIGAN MELTDOWN terminates with two tracks of such girthsome cultural heft as to justify the shelling out solely for these sonic slabbaths alone. Played by the inspirational commune band Flying Wedge, ‘Come To My Casbah’ and ‘I Can’t Believe’ come on with all the Teutonikh sonic masonry of Amon Düül and Amon Düül 2, their massed clopping ranks of bongos, maracas, tambourines and cutlery creating an enormously vast and cinematic effect. MICHIGAN MELTDOWN is released on the highly obscure Coney Dog Records, but it’s a limited run so don’t get letdown; you can score this sucker at piccadillyrecords​.com and hurry.

MOTHER SKY/ALIEN SKY by Psychic TV

Finally, I wanna pay tribute to that beguiling and sustaining Diva-cum-Odinist lawbringer Genesis P. Orridge, whose sustained Gurdjeffian bloody-mindedness and sheer Will-to-power has fuelled his near five-decade odyssey and now sees our erstwhile Psychic TV guru re-launched within these here epic vinyl grooves of MOTHER SKY/ALIEN SKY as nothing less than an Arthur Brownian/Jim Morrison orator of the cosmos, a mush-mouthed post-Bono post-Jim Kerr Sky Speaker & Bellower for the Underground. Cosmic Jokers this ain’t. Subtle as a flying mallet it is. But then so am I. Genesis dares and has always dared. Now he is a lead singer and a successful one. And he has always been dutiful, too. Indeed, it is that V A S T sense of cosmic duty that keeps his’n’herness P. Orridge keeping on keeping on. Herein, over an at times almost library backing of Kosmische Music – crunchy but generic à la Dieter Derks conducts J. Cale’s SABOTAGE LIVE ensemble – La Megson declares, declaims and disguises nothing in his stream-of-unconsciousness rally, until eventually, wrought from the psychic gutters of the Doors’ motorik ’LA Woman’, and from the nappy rashed arse of the Stooges’ TV Eye’ something entirely new stutters, splutters and coughs itself into life. This cheeky bugger makes it work, too. Released on Vanity Case Records, MOTHER SKY/ALIEN SKY is as audacious a piece of garage revelation as we could expect from a Todd Clark type. That it comes from incandescent gob of Gen himsen makes the existence of this bizarre slice of vinyl even sweeter.

Okay, now before I go, finally finally, I forgot to note last month that my forthcoming album PSYCHEDELIC REVOLUTION is to be split across two phases, each dedicated to the revolutionary male and the revolutionary female. The opening phase begins with last tour’s set opener ‘Raving on the Moor’ and will be dedicated to Che Guevara, whilst Phase Two opens with the title track sung by chanteuse Lucy Brownhills, this phase being dedicated to Leila Khaled. Okay, with those announcements completed, I shall sod off for another month. 

Welcome to 2012CE, 

Beyond these here gates there be nothing,

JULIAN (Lord Yatesbury)