New releases last two weeks: Psych/Garage Rock

Review: Black Market Karma return with the second chapter in their two-part Fuzz Club album series. Written, recorded, and produced by Stanley Belton, it's the imperfections and unplanned happenings that are the real joy of this ode to 1960s and 1970s psychedelic rock & roll will modern beats. A striking follow up to Wobble, it's fuzzy, crackly, angular and strikingly human considering it's fundamentally electronic. "Mellowmaker was made immediately after Wobble, I kinda see them as two sides of each other", Belton has been quoted as saying. "With these two albums I've attempted to crystallise how it feels to be stuck between a feeling of amnesia of the soul and the earthly experience of piloting a meat suit... I'm still chasing that longing intangible 'Hiraeth' feeling. The sense of wanting to find our way home to a place that maybe doesn't exist."

Review: Following a string of praised releases for labels the likes of Dreamlord Recordings, Library Of The Occult and Up In Her Room, Jonathan Parkes (Korb) and Dom Keen (Studio Kosmische) team up once more for Bongo Express, a one-off vinyl drop via Crouch End's Feral Child. This time, the pair lean hard into their mutual obsessions: dusty mid-70s textures, radiophonic wig-outs and low-slung kraut-funk. Built around rattling bongos and scuzzy analogue synths, the record rides a hypnotic groove that sits somewhere between library oddity, imagined road movie score and late-night Berlin jam session.

Review: We find ourselves lost in kosmische textures, dark jazz motifs and brushup drums, as Ivan The Tolerable (Oli Heffernan) edges us ever deeper into his singular sonic world with An Orphan Form, where wide scapes and underbrushed moodiness leaves us in an identifiable yet not entirely placeable place. There's a sense of constant movementicircular rather than linearias the music unfurls like a dream slipping just out of reach. Synth lines wobble and stretch, field recordings emerge from the mist, and the sounds of nature act as subtle anchors amid the abstraction. It's a spiritual detour after the cheekier tonalities of his various earlier cassette albums for the likes of Cruel Nature and Ack! Ack! Ack!.

Review: One of several debut singles by Khruangbin, 'White Gloves' sweltered in with a mellow sway that would soon become their calling card. 'White Gloves' rode a wistful bassline and slackened drums, built around a hazy guitar riff and Laura Lee's near-whispered vocal - "she was a queen" - as much lullaby as lament. As ever drawing from Thai funk, 60s surf and gospel, the track established Houston trio's knack for folding global references into something spare and dreamlike. Now again released via Late Night Tales offshoot Night Time Stories, it marked the start of their partnership with producer Steve Christensen, whose hands-off touch would help sculpt their fluid, lo-fi feel across their early run.

Review: What's that strange rock formation over there? Phantom Island hears King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard burrow back into their sprawling underworld Gizzverse, mixing hallucinatory narratives and a restrained sonic palette, all while returning their rock operatic thematic hand to the cartographic myth of phantom islands. First intended to lead their album Flight b741, the song (come album) took on a life of its own, and just had to be released separately. Pepys Island and Antillia are a but a few of the mythological backbones of this miraging rock masterpiece, intuiting the story of a pilot touching down on a dreamlike island, only to find the passengers unraveling into visions of gods and beasts.

Review: Throughout his lengthy career, Richard Norris has always leaned into his psychedelic influences, seemingly finding a multitude of ways to meld minds via unusual fusions, trippy sounds and - as a DJ - an encyclopaedic knowledge of "psych music" in its many forms. On this superb three-disc compilation, he leans into the latter aspect, gathering 42 cuts, most pleasingly obscure, made at different points between the 1960s and today. There's naturally tons to set the pulse racing throughout, from the heavyweight psych-blues of Wool's 'Love, Love, Love', the elongated guitar solos of 'Trip' by Emma De Angelis and the Middle Eastern exotica of Koy Kardesler's 'Shuruk', to the quirky French electronica of Juantrip's 'Shadows', spacey synth-scapes of Ugo Bosoni's 'Rullio' and the pots-and-pans-percussion of 'Time Signals' by Klaus Weiss.

Review: The Middle East has always invoked a sense of wonder and escapism, even if a singular tag for a vast and varied global region is an instant disservice. So it's not much of a surprise to find many countries currently in the throes of an explosive rediscovery of psychedelic sounds. Ouzo Bazooka is just one example of the kind of bands we're talking about. Originally solo project from Uri Brauner Kinrot - a musician, scientist and producer - the vehicle quickly grew into the fully fledged group we have loved over the last five albums and ten years, give or take. Widely considered pioneers of the burgeoning scene, Kapaim (Hebrew for 'palms') cements their status as a cut above most psyche rock bands anywhere on the planet. Informed by jazz, soul, blues, and indigenous musical traditions of the South Eastern Mediterranean, it's a smooth and intoxicating ride.

Review: Two cornerstones of rare Amazonian (!) cumbia appear together on 7" for the first time, as Vampisoul resurrect these wildly sought-after versions of 'Sonido Amazonico'. On one side is a hypnotic, percussion-heavy take by Ranil Y Su Conjunto Tropical, first and only released on LP. Led by Raul Llerena, this Iquitos band helped forge the sound of psychedelic cumbia through Llerena's Producciones Llerena imprint, now a holy grail label for collectors of such trove-bound tropical rarities. On the inverse comes Los Wembler's de Iquitos - of equal stature as one of the genre's most enduring groups - bringing their stomping rhythmoids to the same track; it also just so happens to remain one of their most defining anthems. The UK's not the only "jungle scene" out there - just listen to these killer, understoried sonic forests.

Review: Helsinki-based sextet Soft Power return with their fourth release i a richly detailed and expansive jazz-rock record that confirms their standing as one of Finland's most original ensembles. Formed in 2015, the group continues to push forward with a sound rooted in Nordic jazz and progressive traditions, but always shaped by clarity, control and sharp melodic thinking. It's a new release that leans into modal harmony, rhythmic intricacy and instrumental colour, without ever tipping into excess. 'Zeppelin' unfurls with measured power, while the title track 'Space To Breathe' delivers a slow, immersive build full of harmonic subtlety and textural weight. Lush electric keys and layered horns give the record its warmth, while tight ensemble playing keeps the edges crisp. There's a sense of atmosphere here that's as important as any solo or theme i a carefully built tension between groove, abstraction and mood. Without falling into pastiche, the band channel the mysticism of 70s European fusion and reshape it for the present, offering a record that's cool, grounded and quietly complex. A standout addition to the Finnish jazz-rock catalogue and a clear sign that this group continues to grow with purpose.

Review: This is the sound of Malian guitar mastery at its peak as Zani Diabate's Super Djata Band channelled raw magic on their 1981 album. Blending Wasulu hunter traditions, griot storytelling, Senufo dances and Fula and Mandingo sounds with psychedelic rock, blues and Afrobeat, the Bamako-based orchestra delivers a genre-bending sonic trip that more than stands up. This is where tradition meets wah-wah pedal wizardry across six electrifying tracks that blaze with intensity and infectious groove. It outlines a revolutionary sound forged for the people, by the people and in the 1980s, few bands matched their fire- could should still the same today, to be fair.

Review: Ali brings together Malian guitarist and singer Vieux Farka Toure with Houston-based trio Khruangbin for pattern-textured tribute to Vieux's father, the legendary Ali Farka Toure. The group chose to reinterpret Ali's music, drawing on a shared sense of space and groove to honour his legacy without embalming it. Recorded in just a week in a barn in Burton, Texas, the sessions came steeped in warmth and mutual respect, with the final tracklist curated by Ali's eleven children. Khruangbin's dusky, reverb-heavy style embed the earthy, cyclical patterns of the recently popularised Malian desert blues, each side subtly reshaping the other sound while drawing parallels between North American and West African takes on the same name. Though long delayed by the pandemic, what has emerged is an unhurried traditional group mind, invoked to tread newer ground in songs erstwhile deemed well-trodden.

Review: The beatdown summer of 1967 saw to many an album-length caramelisation, among them US rockers Vanilla Fudge's self-titled debut album, which saw the band take an unconventional route to psych rock pinnacling success, leaning heavily on slowed-down, dramatically reimagined covers as opposed to original songwriting. The record pairs three brief instrumental interludes with expansive versions of pop tracks, most famously their rework of 'You Keep Me Hangin' On' (Holland-Dozier-Holland), which was released in an edited single version and charted in its own right. Despite some parts of the stereo LP being mixed in mono, the record climbed to number six on the US Billboard and found international success. Critics later noted its unorthodox structure: freeform intros, drawn-out vocal harmonies centred on the Hammond organ, and explosive closing jams. Polarising in style, we've a shiftless snapshot of late-60s American psych on our hands here, leaving us in no wonder as to why it was their most successful record.

Review: Zamrock pioneers WITCH continue their remarkable second act with Sogolo, a suitably fuzz-driven follow-up to their 2023 reunion album Zango. Recorded in Berlin during a rare break in their busy touring schedule, the album peers confidently into the future (its title drawn from a Zambian word meaning just that) without losing sight of the raw psych-funk energy they helped define in the 70s. Lead single 'Queenless King' sets the tone: perky, funky and full of bite, with frontman Jagari Chanda's powerful energy driving the band forward. The track explores the fallout of a bad marriage, anchored by a sublime bassline from producer Jacco Gardner and spaced-out synths from founding member Patrick Mwondela. WITCH are still pushing forward, turning decades of invention into something timely, vital and completely their own.