Back catalogue: Psych/Garage Rock

Review: Mick Harvey has collaborated with Mexican artist Amanda Acevedo on a series of duets that make up this new album, Phantasmagoria in Blue. The 14 tracks have been taken from a mix of already existing duets, songs that were not duets, as well as some translations from Spanish and one of two original new pieces. The themes running through out it are common to us all - mortality, love and our endless, hapless search for meaning. The resulting record plays out with lush melodies and lots of richly emotional sounds that provoke plenty of thought and reflection.

Review: Commonly regarded as the first official release from avant-garde prog/space rock outfit Heldon; Electronique Guerilla (also known as Heldon 1), served as a pioneering piece of studio experimentation and manipulation, utilising a myriad of guitar effects, tape delay and electronics, collated together by the genius of Richard Pinhas. Building the pieces from a Schizo (the earlier incarnation of Heldon) track together with solo guitar loops and electronic works, while warping elements from another collaborative cut with guitarist Alain Renaud, the fruitful, cosmic, proto-wave machinations are often credited as some of the earliest influences from King Crimson's Robert Fripp (who Pinhas cited as a major influence and master of the guitar) and Brian Eno, yet while in no way shying away from their inspirations, Pinhas has since specified that "Heldon 1 was released in '74 at the same time Muff Winwood released the first Fripp & Eno", so while similarities and comparisons are welcome, more attentive ears should be able to extract the nuanced differences with which Heldon crafted their hallucinatory, boundary-pushing early opus. Originally released on Pinhas' own Disjuncta Records and limited to 1000 copies, this long overdue reissue won't stick around anywhere near as long as these swelling brain-pieces.