From high atop Adam’s Grave Neolithic longbarrow – the erstwhile Wodenbury of Saxon history – Avebury’s ancient people were afforded vast southern views across the Vale of Pewsey to the Stonehenge region of Salisbury Plain, seen herein spreading out beyond the Archdrude’s boots.

Hail Drudion,

Tarnation, look at all this Johnny Late-comer Caribbean weather drifting in AND just as I was decommissioning our commune/compound in time for November rains. So it’s out with the camouflage tarpaulins and Gore-Tex grundies, and back IN with the rave shades and Israeli Airforce vest. Phew, it’s a bit mind-boggling sometimes, being an antagonist between seasons. Still, our second edition of the Black Sheep Radio show TUES’DAY NIGHT/WODENSDAY MORNING ran smoothly enough, belching forth brand new sessions from Holy McGrail, Nurse With Mound and the previously unsung Lucifer NYC. This latter bunch should be releasing their own Fuck Off & Di debut in the early New Year, whilst Head Heritage is finally ready to follow up its highly successful 2002CE compilation DUE TO LACK OF INTEREST, TOMORROW HAS BEEN CANCELLED with another intriguing Various Artists set, showcasing new (and mostly exclusive) material from myself, Holy McGrail, David Wrench, Acoustika, Lucy Brownhills plus other underground legends such as Gapamari, Urthona, Kabalist, New Lou Reeds, German Motorcycle Murderers and loads more. Entitled SHIT OR GET OFF THE POT, the killer sleeve displays a photograph of that truly World Bizarre moment during the Mexican Revolution when – finding themselves positioned to take Mexico City but not wishing to endure such a huge political responsibility – both Pancho Villa and Emilio Zapata goofed around with their followers in the presidential palace and Villa posed on the presidential throne for the press; a goof that hoodwinked governments worldwide into believing that that his bandit ‘regime’ (hardy ha ha) had prevailed. SHIT OR GET OFF THE POT should be available sometime in November, as should my own new album of songs, which I will discuss in song-by-song detail in the next Drudion. So, er Look Out!

BEYOND ANCIENT SPACE by Bong

Right, over in the Reviews Section, more excellent sonic reports & infernal meditations have just arrived from Bong, those four postmen of the post-Apocalypse, with their fabulously cunted new album BEYOND ANCIENT SPACE. Released by Ritual Productions (ritualproductions​.net), this mighty, expansive and always useful work – 4 ravening afterburners fuelled on cosmic afterbirth – has occupied in my head the larger place this past month. And with so much underground music nowadays being too often, brothers’n’sisters, too often being destroyed by overt arena-styled drummers with their objectionable roto-tom fills, how fabulous this is – when considering Bong’s sonic vastness – to luxuriate in its rhythm section truly Faustian, truly Parson Sounding, truly Ash Ra Tempelian, truly tumbling in upon itself, snuffing itself out even, but inevitably and inexorably always re-building, resurrecting, teetering along upon a high Amon (Peter Leopold, D. Secundus Fischelser) Düülian precipice. Oh, and this fucker is pan-seasonal, too; an album for long winter evenings of pre-verbal relaxation, late Indian Summer (oops, Native American) summer evenings, why, even worth a knees-up in the first wet days of spring. Yup, this transcendentally muscular beast is one to buy, brothers’n’sisters.

HAPPY HORSE by Astral Social Club

As is this next mentioned. Indeed, I’ve been listening to HAPPY HORSE by Astral Social Club for nigh on a year now but keep losing the sucker due to its weird (but fabulous) kitchen cloth packaging. But so useful has this massive funkathon become that I still keep stumbling randomly upon this CD, temporarily forgotten in some CD player in the umpteen far corners of this weird house. Anyway, HAPPY HORSE is the fine work of former Vibracathedral Orchestra druid Neil Campbell plus several heavy friends, and barfs out that same dizzying unsignposted funk mission as my own RITE NOW, though from an entirely cut up and sampled point-of-view. Like some half-remembered Muslim Gauze snippet repeated ad infinitum, Astral Social Club churn out landscapes of spellbinding sound, gargantuan and unwieldy, huge fucking RSJs of sound that pitch and yaw as they bend into our view. Released on Japan’s Happy Prince Records (happyprince​.jp/​c​a​t​a​logue), HAPPY HORSE is a compelling endless rotation experience. Expect nothing less than utter personality loss. 

7″ EP by Anckor Wrack

Right, now if you gotta yen to shell out on vinyl this month, smart shoppers should pounce on the epic 7” EP from Scandinavian duo Anckor Wrack, whose four tracks occupy a fucking delightful hinterland midway between 39 Clocks, Monoshock and Incredible Hog. What? Rather, missus. Yup, imagine MASTER OF REALITY gasoline troll/strolls through the Walsallest bit o’the Midlands in Hawkwind’s DOREMI-period AEC bus, then yooz catching these suckers’ drift. Imagine Gunslingers’ GR doing ‘Mongoloid’ on a well slippery C90 and thou hast naileth entirely their scummy metaphwoar. Treated vocals, sub-Hannett production, smeared daubs of last-ditch post-punk, and all fancied up in a hefty yellow fluorescing triple opening (DUCK STAB/JOCKO HOMO-stylee) that has you from the first instant. And by releasing their wares on the highly obscure Cult Pump Records, these Pyramids of Geezer – the mythically monickered Carsten and Torsten Midgaard – are obviously going out of their way to hide from all public examination. Intuitive non-career movers … I loves ‘em!

LEAVE HOME by The Men

I’m also digging the shrieking spiritual backwash of Brooklyn’s The Men, whose debut album LEAVE HOME is a voracious teenage rush of custard clogging anger, a huge statement of portentous musical themes, driving riffy instrumentals and sniffly, bunged up Yardbirdsian chorale that bestrides punk, post-punk, metal, even Swell Maps’ ramshackle psychedelia in that same manner that greedy modern Japanese bands are wont to do. The Men swap instruments between numbers, invite guest mates, but never veer from their chosen task of unleashing upon us The Big Statement. The big Rehearsed statement. And – like every Soul Revue – the ruse works pretty damn nearly every time. Guitar walls of sonic upsurges burst forth, primal voodoo drumming, then the current singer is laying some Rob Tyner patter upon us, some ‘time to choose, brothers’n’sisters’ kinda thing, homage to the Five? Dunno but it’s a big needy motherfucker that works. Released on Sacred Bones Records (sacredbonesrecords​.com/​r​e​l​eases), this debut by The Men is a spectacular rush, a sprawling Leviathan of a debut that puts me most in the mind of that great lost Oxford ensemble Suitable Case For Treatment. 

WE ARE ALL TERRORISTS by Balata

Those with a jones for Israeli broadside outcasts should reach for Balata’s raging new live album WE ARE ALL TERRORISTS, whose meat cleaver-in-the-head sonic butchery is something to behold and endure, especially as the high endgame of its mission is to be ‘a precise observation of the latest outgrowth to cascade in the Israeli state’s decomposing moral body’. Fucking right on to protagonists David Opp and Aviad ‘Finkelstein’ Albert. Released on the oft-fabulous Heart & Crossbone Records (hbcrecords​.com), WE ARE ALL TERRORISTS is as nerve shattering as the Pop Group song that inspired it, though far more gruelling and purely nightmarish. If yooz old enough, then imagine late period Wolf Eyes tried to capture the sounds on that first primal Minimal Man LP and you’ll be part way there. Get all the way, however, by checking out these gentlemen dudes (finkelbert​.com/​m​u​s​i​c​/​b​a​l​a​t​a​-​music), for this brutal sucker doeth the rock or fucking what! Hmm, time was when outsider artists fetched up in Berlin to feel inspiration from the oppression of the Soviets just beyond the wall; now it’s the turn of the militant artists of Invader Cultures to shriek out long & Into the Night their Utter Non-Compliance. 

THE PREHISTORIC PEAK by Andrew Johnstone

Finally, I’d like to embark on a chant of ‘Motherfucker! Motherfucker! Motherfucker!’ to author Andrew Johnstone, whose exceptional book THE PREHISTORIC PEAK has, in just under 200 pages, damn near exhaustively described all of those mysterious and much battered ancient megalithic monuments located in that weird triangle between Manchester, Sheffield and Ashbourne. Having taken exceptional pains to visit monument sites even where all remains had been removed, Andrew Johnstone has finally pulled aside the Information Smog which had, for far too long, hung, across this quite remote area. Relatively small (easily overthrown) family-sized megalithic monuments, remote rural locations, constant inundation by tenacious moorland vegetation, indeed umpteen Problems of the Peak had, these past few decades, managed to thwart any author who attempted to add to John Barnatt’s bold, hefty 1960s-70s contributions. But with the arrival of this handsome field guide THE PREHISTORIC PEAK, which exhibits full colour photographs and highly detailed colour maps throughout, and which courteously even prepares readers for disappointment, should a too-destroyed site not remain worth visiting to many, Andrew Johnstone has stepped up into a different league of achievement. At £26, this is not an inexpensive book but is what I believe we all should be expecting to pay in return for fastidious fieldwork and direct new information of this rigorous calibre. So do buy this book all you Kinder Scouts and Derbyshire scramblers round the Devils’ Arse or thereabouts. O, and did I not mention? As Common Era, Andrew Johnstone is also a member of the Black Sheep. Right fucking on, sir! So readers visit click here to secure your own copy, brothers’n’sisters … and pronto, Tonto.

Finally finally, I’d just like to reproduce the programme running order for Show 2 of TUES’DAY NIGHT/WODENSDAY MORNING, and to announce that several extremely limited box sets of these first two shows will be available as prizes during Show 3, which we intend to transmit early in January 2012CE. Here was the full September programme:

1) ‘Superhero Sex Cruise’ by Party Killer, 2) ‘Rattle of Life’ by Oshun, 3) ‘Desert Meditation’ by Nurse With Mound, 4) ‘Guys Cheating With Mud’ by Lenny Bruce, 5) ‘Nuts & Berries’ by Thrones, 6) ‘Swear Blind the Alsatian’s Melting’ by Teeth of the Sea, 7) ‘Mika K.’ by Lucifer NYC, 8) ‘Zur Zwolfen Stund’ by Sturmpercht, 9) ‘Reef On’ by Stone Circle, 10) ‘Lava Tubes’ by the Black Neck Band of the Common Loon, 11) ‘The Drop & the Sea’ by Stone In, 12) ‘Sausage Egg & Chips’ by Nurse With Mound, 13) ‘A Trial In Our Native Town’ by Savage Rose, 14) ‘Ages Across Gunshine’ by Megaton Leviathan, 15) ‘Wattwurm’ by Lilienthal, 16) ‘Those That Have Control of the Heavens’ by Holy McGrail, 17) “Bull of the Woods’ 13th Floor Elevators Radio Ad, 18) ‘King Kong’ by the Kinks, 19) ‘Here in the Year’ by Billy Miller, 20) ‘Perpetu’ by Qa’a, 21) ‘Dizzy Vultures’ by Annapurna Illusion, 22) ‘P.D. Ouspensky’ by Nurse With Mound, 23) ‘Soon’ by Dexys Midnight Runners, 24) ‘Polly On The Shore’ by Andrew King, 25) ‘The Island Is’ by Teeth of the Sea, 26) ‘The Lost Motherland’ by Apryl Fool, 27) ‘Declaration of War’ by the New Order, 28) ‘Now I Am Become Death the Destroyer of Worlds’ by Nadja, 29) Kim Fowley ‘Outrageous’ Radio Ad, 30) ‘Long Tall Sally’ by Outkast (Japan), 31) ‘Cartoon Classic’ by Party Killer, 32) ‘Awe, Give Me Air’ by Flower Travellin’ Band, 33) ‘Star Palace of the Sombre Warrior’ by Seventh Wave, 34) ‘Stechapfelnacht’ by Sturmpercht, 35) ‘Temporality of Action by Tetragrammaton’, 36) ‘Misteris de la Sang’ by Qa’a, and finally 37) ‘He Who Accepts All That is Offered’ by Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine. Phew!

Okay kiddies, I hope to encounter several score of you at the forthcoming October shows. 

So until then,

Love Upon Y’All,

JULIAN (Archdrude of Wessex)