Back catalogue: Post Rock/Experimental

Review: La Perversita is something of a seminal French underground record first released back in 1979 but still sounds way ahead of its time today. It's a concept record and collage of found sounds, guitars and synths that was designed to "sublimate sexual perversion." It comes from Jacques Pasquier who was the founder of S.C.O.P.A./Invisible Records and a key part of the alternative scene that was rife in Paris in the 70s with producer Hector Zazou amongst other creative talents and outsiders. This remastered reissue comes with extensive liner notes from people in and around the project at the time.

Review: Time Is Away is a lovely sonic daydream that takes you on a heady trip through beautiful and weird, romantic and exotic, intimate and hard-to-define sounds. It has been selected and arranged by London duo Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney and is one of those brilliantly beguiling collections that invite you into all new musical worlds. The pair behind this are well known to NTS listens who love their cult show and often span musical, literary and filmic worlds with their selections. While far-flung and obscure at times, this is an absorbing and rewarding listen.

Review: Skep Wax's first Under The Bridge compilation, released in 2022, reunited the bands, songwriters and producers who populated cult early '90s indie label Sarah Records. This hotly anticipated follow-up repeats the trick, presenting 20 recently recorded cuts from the Bristol-based imprint's original roster of artists. It too, is a hugely successful - and understandably nostalgic - exercise, with hi9ghlights including the bright-and-breezy indie jangliness of Action Painting's 'Just Who Are The Cockleshell Heroes', the shoegaze-influenced dream pop haziness of Soundwire's 'Everything Is Real', the near Balearic soft focus shuffle of 'Double Nine' by GNAC, and the saucer-eyed excellence of The Orchids' 'A Final Love Song'.

Review: Here's hoping you've got your super-weird hat on. As the title of this latest Soul Jazz compilation suggests, the tracks on here are anything but by numbers and cross so many genre lines it often becomes impossible to differentiate between the rock and electronic bits, simultaneously teaching us all something about the connectivity of everything, and how real creativity has never been siloed by style.

Of course the likes of 'Guten Abend, Leute' by Deutsche Wertarbeit are firmly in the synth end of things, a building track that uses phaser noises and accordions to create something that could definitely work on today's dancefloors. And next on the list, 'Wolf City' by Amon Duul II, is a strange rock brew of post punk and jazz. But elsewhere work such as 'Pink Sails' by Klauss Weiss, 'Ballet Statique' from Conrad Schnitzler and the heartbreakingly beautiful pianos of Roedelius' 'Halmharfe' make differences harder to identify.

Review: Despite the style's influence and enduring legacy, shoegaze has not been celebrated with a raft of compilations and retrospectives. Waves of Distortion attempts to set the record straight via two discs of classic (and occasionally overlooked) shoegaze gems recorded and released at different points between 1990 and 2022. It offers a neat overview of the sound and some its greatest practitioners, flitting between the glistening, reverb-laden dream pop of Slowdive, the bowl cut-sporting loved-up swagger of Ride, the densely layered country-shoegaze haziness of Telescope, the jaunty jangly-ness of AR Kane and Spirea X, the psychedelic heaviness of Ringo Deathstarr, the tactile bliss of Beach House and the slow-burn, post-rock majesty of Mogwai.

Review: "Rich-poor divide widens. Unemployment soars. The East and West eyeball each other on the brink. 2022 isn't too far off the 1980s. Contort Yourself know this." A second collection of distortion soaked didactics from across the globe, all created specifically and exclusively to express wanton abandonment; marginalisatioan and alientation via tiny tape runs, but lovingly rustled up into a 21 track gem of a compilation. Rusted guitar strings, cobbled drum machines and fire in the belly - a soundtrack of despondent despair, a lament of languid lechery, an anthem of what was then and still is now.

Review: Do you ever stop and wonder where we'd all be without Soul Jazz in our lives? Whether the answer is yes or no, we often do. The label manages to do the business with both archival and brand new releases, straddling genres like an experienced jockey on race day, riding whatever gem of sound it has between its legs all the way to the Must Buy pile.

The last time we had one of these Deutsche Elektronische Musik compilations it made a lasting impression, and now here we are again, gifted aural visions of a future that never materialised, and yet remains embedded in the common conscious. A place of whirring synths and windswept effects, awkward time signatures and glittering chimes, a sonic realm that gave us the likes of Neu! (a track of theirs appears on this excellent album) and Can (sadly missing here). Innovation that's very hard to label.

Review: Fantastic Voyage: New Sounds For The European Cannon 1977-1981 is one of the most grandiose titles for a record we have come across in a while, but we like it. Fortunately for those involved, the music on this new gatefold heavyweight double album stands up to scrutiny for lovers of sounds that collide electronic, post-rock and experimental with synth, new wave and even a touch of new age ambient. The track list is a big one with tried and tested names like Patrick Cowley, Cabaret Voltaire, the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, Peter Gabriel and more all featuring. It makes for quite the trip and a fine reminder of the magical newness of electronic music back then.

Review: This cosmic electronic offering comes from Greek musician Yannis Veslemes. Opening track 'The Oracle Freaks' is somewhat reminiscent of the more avant garde side of British glam rock and synth pop - think Pet Shop Boys if they were from the moon. The industrial twinge Veslemes puts on his downtempo electronica gives it a slightly odd, retro futurism feel like on 'Psycho Thermo' that wouldn't be out of place in a dystopian video game - something like F-Zero or, point and click adventure games. His echoing vocals against the liquid bass is intrinsically fantastical, and 'The Well' as a whole just feels like a soundtrack. To what is up to the listeners imagination, and you will need a big one to decode the multi-layered and avant-garde 'The Cure'. In short, 'The Well' is a record that is hard to put in to words and best listened to yourself - an shareable experience.

Review: Alongside Gilbert Artman, Guigou Chenevier, Jean-Pierre Grasset and Cyril Lefebvre, Dominique Grimaud's new 1979 adventure along side Monique AlbaVideo is made up of instrumentals that recall Henry Cow, Suicide and John Barry. It is a hugely improvised record that makes use of the AKS synth and was the start of the agitation around the Rock in Opposition and saw Musique Pour Garcons rise to the higher ends of the NEW independent charts. Electronics augmented by lap-steel guitar, tuning pop and more all feature.

Review: Virgin Prunes' If I Die, I Die album turns a remarkable 40 years old this year and as such it gets a special anniversary re-release. The original music has all been fully remastered and now included alongside it on the 2 x CD version is a selection of never before heard rarities and remixes which take in some unheard rough mixes of tracks such as 'Ballad.' This clear vinyl press has one of the band's best-known tunes in 'Baby Turns Blue' which was produced by Wire's Colin Newman and is an examination of purity and beauty. A real rock classic.