THE CHEMISTRY SET An Introduction to... double CD (Fruits de Mer)
One of my favourite bands on Fruits de Mer Records, The Chemistry Set, are the latest to have a selection of their back catalogue compiled as part of the label's An Introduction to... CD series. There are a whopping 32 tracks here spread across two CDs, drawn from their singles and albums on Fruits de Mer, as well as a number of songs from their pre-FdM album This Day Will Never Happen Again, and both songs from their single on Hypnotic Bridge Records. As this band's releases sell out fast, this new compilation will give listeners a chance to catch up on material they may have missed out on - but be quick as there are again only 300 copies pressed.
The music here is an effective blend of classic 1960s-style psychedelia and influences from the 1980s/90s indie scene which the band were aligned with in their early days, with records out on the Imaginary label (also home to bands like Cud, The Mock Turtles and The Bachelor Pad), and people like John Peel and Factory Records' Tony Wilson among their supporters.
Come Kiss Me Vibrate and Smile straddles shoegaze and psychedelia, coming across somewhat like a more psychedelic version of Ride. Elapsed Memories also recalls Ride, combined this time with touches of psych-folk and an epic cinematic atmosphere. They do a gloriously swirling version of Jimi Hendrix's Love or Confusion, ornamented by sitar, tablas and warbling flute. Lovely Cuppa Tea is very English and whimsical, with shades of The Kinks, or perhaps more accurately, Britpop-era Blur playing Toytown psych. Paint Me a Dream is a perfect pairing of ultramelodic pop and intense, mindbending psychedelia.
She's Taking Me Down and If Rome Was Meant to Fall are true indie-psych classics, the latter track bursting with that chiming jangly sound that's impossible to resist. The Fountains of Neptune is driving psych-rock taking in spacey instrumental sections with burbling cosmic synth. The Open Window is laid-back, mellow sitar-psych. Pink Felt Trip sets sci-fi lyrics to noisy distorted music best described as psychedelic grunge, whilst the final part of the track takes an unexpected detour to the 1950s. Psychotronic Man is dedicated to the late Steve Lines of Stormclouds and Acid Tapes, who released a tape by The Chemistry Set back in the late 80s. Musically it's a kind of dark-edged, Middle Eastern-tinged psych, while the lyrics work in references to Stormclouds song titles in a way that will surely bring a smile to the face of anyone who remembers that band. A fitting tribute to this important figure from the underground tapes scene.
This collection is an excellent introduction to The Chemistry Set's later output, very highly recommended. Out May 9th 2025, available at www.fruitsdemerrecords.com

KITCHEN CYNICS / MARGERY DAW / GREY MALKIN To The Green Round cassette / download (Cruel Nature)
These prolific psych-folk experimentalists combine their talents again on this beautifully presented cassette with on-body photo art depicting awe-inspiring nature in microcosm. Ghosts Walk Through You is darkly beautiful folk, its immersive arrangement taking in clanging zither and eerie bowed bass. Spoon Ra is a surreal horror-filmic soundscape with woozily hypnotic bass overlaid by chattering, juddering and whooshing sound effects. Wayland's Smithy (Corn Bunting in a Thunderstorm) features the genteel vocals of Margery Daw over an evocative blend of dark ambient soundscaping and experimental folk. The traditional Scottish folk song Jock Sheep appears here wrapped in a mindbending psychedelic swirl. Consumption sees Daw reciting a macabre poem by 19th century writer Eleanora Louisa Hervey over a feverish, nightmarish sound painting.
A Solitary Whooper Swan is written by Mayuko Fujino, who appears on the piece along with Pat Gubler (PG Six, The Tower Recordings, Wet Tuna, etc). It's unsettling and horror soundtrack-esque, with dissonant strings, psaltery and recorder creating chilling tones. She Was Poor is an unusual juxtaposition of music hall song and surreal sound art. Woodghost harks back to Kitchen Cynics' indiepop beginnings, the guitar having at times faint echoes of The Field Mice's Emma's House. The indiepop-ish melody is however the setting for gothic horror-steeped lyrics ("ivy clad, arboreal, feasts on your dreams") shrouded in an otherworldly psych-folk atmosphere. This track is maybe my favourite here, effectively bringing a number of my musical interests together into a single cohesive piece.
This is a highly creative work of aural art with a strong folk-horror focus combined with psychedelic experimentation. The tape was limited to 100 copies and sold out fast, but the album can still be downloaded at thehareandthemoon.bandcamp.com/album/to-the-green-round. More from Cruel Nature at cruelnaturerecordings.bandcamp.com

SIMIAN LIFE Hermetic Tonal Briefing CD/LP/DL (ATOM)
Debut album from Los Angeles' Simian Life, who are centred around the brothers Andy Campanella (Stevenson Ranch Davidians, the black watch) and Rob Campanella (The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Quarter After). The music here is a well crafted, highly creative brand of psychedelia, full of atmospheric, dreamlike beauty.
Indescribable Dream is languid, ethereal psych-pop with liquid synth and glorious chiming guitar. Wake Up Summer is perfectly titled sunny pop joy, somewhere between Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys and Fleet Foxes, with an extra layer of psychedelia. May Grey is thoughtful acoustic balladry based around guitar and piano, coming across like a psych-tinged Nick Drake. Colors All Around combines psychedelic whimsy with epic prog drama, the ever-changing arrangement taking in quirky whirring sound effects, cello, vocal harmonies and much more besides; a big ambitious piece that taps into a similar vibe to The Moody Blues. Wonderman, co-written by Andy's four year old daughter Cora and featuring her vocals, is dreamy, hazy, summer pop with shades of late 60s Beach Boys, splendidly arranged with atmospheric tamboura drones and soaring flute.
If you missed out on Simian Life's 7" on the excellent Hypnotic Bridge label, you can find both tracks from that on the CD version of this album. Another Way Down brings together aspects of 60s psychedelia from both sides of the Atlantic, the eccentric poppy British kind and the rockier American kind, taking in a section that has something of an I Am the Walrus thing going on, while Briefing is an orchestrated instrumental including cellos, violins and sitar.
While Simian Life take their cues at times from familiar names from the past, they transform these influences into something new and fresh through their own originality and creativity, transporting the listener into a colourful floating dreamworld. The album really is something very special, an absolute must for fans of psychedelic music both vintage and modern. Visit www.atomrecords.com

LA NOUVELLE MUSIQUE s/t LP (Fruits de Mer/Friends of the Fish)
Debut album from this London duo who comprise theatre and film score composer and sonic artist Joanna Beck, and Ian De Sylva who was previously in 1990s band Silver who had records out on Rough Trade, The Medicine Label, and Liberty Place Recordings. The Mirror is superb late 60s/early 70s-style folk, sophisticatedly arranged with piano and strings, which would sit comfortably alongside the likes of Vashti Bunyan, Shelagh McDonald, or Midwinter. New Blood features 60s beat verses with a colourful, Swinging London vibe alongside stylish orchestrated pop choruses; Catalonia combines Spanish motifs with blockbuster action movie drama; and Polestar is melancholic and moving, with an understated yet sophisticated pairing of gentle piano and acoustic fingerpicking. Sandy Denny fans won't want to miss the pared down acoustic version of Crazy Lady Blues which is simply beautiful. Whilst most songs here are sung by Joanna, Ian sings Spirit Level, a piece that starts off sounding something like Nick Drake gone slightly gothic, taking in some effective use of eerie electronics. The track then builds up to a crescendo of mariachi horns, before morphing into a song on the rockier edges of Britpop, incorporating an inventive mix of horns and scuzzy guitar noise in the break. An excellent album, bringing folk, pop, psychedelia and film soundtrack together into a cohesive whole. Out on Fruits de Mer's Friends of the Fish offshoot, available at www.fruitsdemerrecords.com

HIMMELAYA Lost Horizon double LP/CD (Fruits de Mer/Regal Crabomophone)
Himmelaya, a play on Himmel, the Swedish and German word for heaven or sky, and Himalaya, is an international collaboration between Marc Swordfish of Astralasia (UK), Britt Rönnholm and Anders Håkansson of Us and Them (Sweden), and from Germany, Jochen Oberlack, founder of Bellerophon Records and member of various bands on that label such as Das Blaue Palais and Scarlet Utopia. The album also includes guests such as Adam Geoffrey Cole of Trappist Afterland (Australia) and Jon Chinn of Trace Imprint (UK). The music draws from the motorik and kosmische sounds of 1970s Germany, with influences worn proudly on sleeves in track titles like Ashra Shirley and Autobahn to Dusseldorf.
Black Forest's motorik chug and psychedelic swirl is overlaid by a short, catchy verse in English repeated many times over a background of quietly spoken word in Swedish. Ashra Shirley combines dark folk with spacey ambience and world music influences. Celestial Orb opens with a heady mix of oud, tablas and wordless vocals, while the song itself is dark-edged and folk-tinged, at times mantra-like in its repetition, backed by meandering psychedelic guitar and spacey drones. You know a track called Autobahn to Dusseldorf is going to be influenced by Kraftwerk, though Himmelaya give the piece their own flavour by bringing the Kraftwerk motorik rhythm together with fluid spacey psych and spoken recitations.
As well as the double LP, the album also comes with bonus CDs featuring remixes by other artists including Schizo Fun Addict, nick nicely, and the Lost Stoned Pandas. Available at www.fruitsdemerrecords.com

THE BLACK WATCH For All the World CD/double LP/DL (ATOM)
Twenty-fifth album from this long-running band headed up by novelist and former English professor John Andrew Fredrick. The album falls broadly into the category of indie-psych, while incorporating a wide variety of additional influences, from the darkly swirling post-punk of Achilles Past to the bossa nova-tinged There's a Place. Surely You Rally combines Beatlesque aspects with the sonic sprawl of neo-psychedelia and the chug and clang of indie-rock. The Hook Stuck is darkly psychedelic folk with shades of the Kitchen Cynics. Lord Marchpane imports the more whimsical and observational side of 60s UK psych into an expansive indie-rock setting. Much More is perhaps the most overtly psychedelic track here with its hazy, drawn-out, swirling musical atmosphere, distorted vocals and rich cello accompaniment.
Maybe Tomorrow is an effective mixture of Boyracer-ish noisepop, angular post-punk, shoegaze haze and touches of psychedelia. The Knife Cliche sounds in many ways like a lost classic from the heyday of jangly indiepop, combining hints of early Lightning Seeds with the general feel of much of the music on Sarah Records circa Shadow Factory, while the lush string orchestration and Mellotron provide an extra layer of sophistication. Spanish Vamp combines Spanish and North African musical motifs with an evocative cinematic atmosphere and sardonic lyrical wit. If Only is inventively eclectic, featuring indiepop sections along the lines of early 14 Iced Bears punctuated by instrumental parts based around ethereal, prog-tinged Mellotron, spacey sound effects and meandering jazz bass.
This album is full of creative genre combinations and strong memorable tunes, indiepop at heart but unafraid to break out of the confines of the genre to explore other territories. Find out more at www.atomrecords.com

VARIOUS The Shape of Things to Come double CD (Fruits de Mer)
Double compilation album available free to Fruits de Mer club members who buy both of the label's current releases. The album features a couple of familiar FdM names alongside many bands who are new to the label. There's an emphasis on spacey and proggy sounds, the former represented by the likes of Chakra Vimana, Astral Magic, The Bird Inside, and Øresund Space Collective, and the latter including Kris Gietkowski's prog-infused avant garde organ music and the multi-genre-spanning, prog-adjacent tracks by Space Debris and Giant the Vine. There's also the atmospheric laid-back psych-rock of The Decadent Dayze, a driving, bluesy psych jam from Astralasia offshoot Mushroom, the fairground pop-psych of the Soft Hearted Scientists, and several tracks from The NoMen, an eclectic instrumental band whose output spans intense heavy psych, woozy hypnotic retro electronica and spacey experimentation. More info on the Fruits de Mer members' club at www.fruitsdemerrecords.com/members%20club.html

BABAL Running in the Gutter LP/CD/DL (Fruits de Mer / Friends of the Fish)
SENDELICA Nirmata LP/CD/DL (Fruits de Mer / Friends of the Fish)
Running in the Gutter is the thirteenth album from Babal (formerly known as Babble), a band who have somehow managed to escape my attention until now. One Big Family pours scorn on social media and its power to brainwash and bewilder with information overload, within a bendy, woozy, prog-pop setting following in the footsteps of bands like Cardiacs or Sleepy People. The World that We Know is a kind of proggy art-rock that combines juddering angularity and surrealism, the lyrics calling for environmental awareness and action. Cake Music brings together a Captain Beefheart-ish eccentricity and aspects of prog, punk and rap, its lyrics a biting satire on commercialism.
Sendelica's latest album Nirmata is an example of creativity borne of adversity, its inspiration leading on from two of the band members' health crises, with hospital field recordings and a talking blood pressure monitor being incorporated into the music. Often tagged as spacerock, Sendelica are this and much more, their music combining aspects of a variety of genres into a cohesive whole. Wish You a Good Health takes in a bright, melodic pairing of guitar and cello, samples of the aforementioned talking blood pressure monitor, electronically processed at times for extra spacey effect, a 'drum beat' that's actually Pete Bingham's heart valves opening and closing as heard via an ultrasound scan, spacey ambient electronics, spoken recitations, and a sax solo that ranges from smooth and chilled-out to ecstatic and optimistic.
Singled Out and Strangely Left in Limbo is an intense spacerock instrumental with proggy keyboards, while Blood One is an epic, cinematic piano and synth-led piece with neo-medieval and classical tinges, giving something of a sword-and-sorcery vibe, melting into meandering, hypnotic psychedelic interludes.
Both albums are out on Fruits de Mer's Friends of the Fish imprint and are being sold by the bands themselves, not FdM. Order at babal.bandcamp.com/album/running-in-the-gutter (only a few copies left of the physical formats) and sendelica.bandcamp.com/album/nirmata

DAVID CW BRIGGS People Like You CDR/DL (Folk Archive)
BAKER & BRIGGS s/t CDR/DL (Folk Archive)
David CW Briggs' ultra-prolific DIY CDR label Folk Archive has reached its 100th release with the latest collaboration between Briggs and Gavin John Baker (also starring Gavin's son Albert on drums), preceded by Briggs' latest solo album. People Like You, limited to just 15 copies on CD, covers an eclectic mix of homemade sounds. The 14 minute, meandering, squalling improv-psych-blues of People Like Us involves a level of chaos that may be far outside the tastes of more pop- or folk-oriented listeners, but there is plenty here to appeal to those too. Algebra Girl seamlessly combines psychey blues and airy atmospheric indiepop into a cohesive whole. Round Window Round is darkly psychedelic folk that makes banjo sound Middle Eastern and comes across like a more lo-fi version of bands such as Trappist Afterland or Stone Breath. Run to Ground is lo-fi psych-pop with a punchy powerpop backbone, taking in a mindbending guitar psych-out as well as jangly moments. The album closes with Albatross Girl which combines the melancholic beauty of early Sarah Records bands with a raw bedroom pop aesthetic, a truly lovely piece.
Meanwhile, Baker & Briggs' CD, limited to 25 copies, explores a variety of largely American-influenced sounds from folk to indie rock and more besides. Tree House filters mellow West Coast psych vibes through a homemade indiepop lens. The Village that Ran Away combines the chiming jangly folk-rock of The Byrds with an off-kilter underground aesthetic. Draw Me a Drawing is homespun Americana ornamented by melodica and glockenspiel. Lanterns is an exhilarating noisy track coming across something like a psychedelic Pixies. You've Got to Be a Surrealist Today is eccentric psychedelic rock 'n' roll, with skittering noise guitar over a chugging, bouncing rock 'n' roll rhythm. Both albums are well worth checking out, as always with these artists. As well as the highly limited CDRs, the albums are available for download at davidcwbriggs.bandcamp.com

US AND THEM The Lights and the Shadow LP/CD/DL (Fruits de Mer / Friends of the Fish)
Latest album from the Swedish duo of Britt and Anders, their fifth I believe, the title encapsulating the kind of sounds and moods contained within. View from Sky Road is beautiful introspective pop taking in acoustic guitar, woodwind and birdsong. Around the Maypole (Once Again) is a perfect balance of dark folk and warm, bright pop. Me and the Ones Before Me is eerie yet inviting contemporary folk swathed in a filmic ethereality, sure to appeal to fans of the Kitchen Cynics or Trappist Afterland. Self-titled track Us and Them is slightly psychedelic pop with some nice juxtaposition of acoustic instrumentation and electronic effects. A truly lovely mix of folk, psych and pop from these very talented artists. Orders are being fulfilled by the band not Fruits de Mer - order at usandthem2.bandcamp.com

CRYSTAL JACQUELINE & FRIENDS Smoke Road LP (Fruits de Mer / Regal Crabomophone)
Crystal Jacqueline is joined by various guests including Leo O'Kelly of Tir na nÓg, Mark McDowell, Icarus Peel, Mordecai Smyth, Rob Gould and Jay Tausig on this psych-tinged dark folk album that features lyrics by folkloric fantasy author David Greygoose. Barbara Ann isn't a cover of the Beach Boys song but wistful, evocative contemporary folk with a sophisticated piano arrangement. The Green Man's menacing gothic atmosphere emphasises the song's urgent warning of environmental catastrophe. Slow the Dark Wind Blows is superb dark folk with vivid poetic lyrics perfectly accompanied by a delicate yet powerful arrangement. They also provide some darkly psychedelic Americana in Smoke Road, and give a forceful edge to Celtic folk in The Tides that Turn, which sounds celebratory yet with a sinister gothicness smouldering within. The album is sold out at the label but try the third party stockists listed here: www.fruitsdemerrecords.com/stockists.html

DAVID REID Midnight Invisibles CD/DL (Secret Shark)
David Reid of The Contrast, ReidGraves, and Lightbulb, returns with a second solo album of imaginary film music, the sequel to 2023's Shadows and Shades. Like that album, Midnight Invisibles comprises tracks that use a single guitar to create a complete arrangement, recorded live with no loops or overdubs. Some tracks draw from folk music, such as Nae Man Can Tether Time or Tide which recalls Martin Carthy, and the medievalesque folk beauty of A Hair-brain'd Sentimental Trace. Such a Lot of Guns Around Town and So Few Brains is a meeting of intricate blues and vintage detective movie suspense. Half-Mad, Half-Fed, Half-Sarkit veers towards country territory, while Flickering Static in the Haunted Sky and Bottlinger's Rings are darkly swirling, atmospheric cinematic pieces. While drawing from a variety of genres, the album holds together cohesively, with Reid's distinctive playing style providing the common thread. Visit www.secretshark.co.uk

SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS The Phantom of Canton triple LP (Fruits de Mer)
Prolific Cardiff psych-pop outfit the Soft Hearted Scientists appear on Fruits de Mer with an expanded triple vinyl issue of their recent album The Phantom of Canton, originally released last year on CD through The Hip Replacement. The album shares the ambition and scope of prog rock, that genre's love of concept albums and often lengthy tracks that chop and change genre within a single piece, though the Soft Hearted Scientists thankfully eschew the pomposity that prog sometimes suffers from, opting instead for an ultramelodic, joyous, pop sensibility, with vivid lyrics that reveal an intelligent wit.
A Phantom Hello is bouncy eccentric pop-psych with a lilting interlude hinting at Middle Eastern musical motifs. Hello Hello is a perfect slice of pop, its catchy melody adorned with harpsichord and pealing jangly guitar. Fly By Dragonfly combines eerie psych-folk and similarly spooky pop with heady psych-rock guitar work. The Laws of Physics takes all manner of disparate genres, including American folk-rock, doo-wop, analogue synth music, and Victorian hymns, and seamlessly blends them into three-and-a-half minutes of pop joy. Song for My Sunflower is one of the darker-toned tracks here, an incredibly moving sense of melancholy wrapped in a tapestry of laid-back West Coast psych-rock guitar, spacey analogue synths, delicately tinkling piano, and Wild West movie twang.
This edition also includes a whole LP of bonus material, namely The Phantom of Canton Express, which brings together the album's key themes in a near-18-minute side-long suite, and instrumental and backing vocal mixes of three album tracks. This excellent, inventive album can be bought at www.fruitsdemerrecords.com

BHOPAL'S FLOWERS Poivre Rose CD/DL (self-released)
Latest album from this excellent psych-pop band from Montreal. They have had previous releases on Hypnotic Bridge, Sugarbush, Kool Kat, Sound Effect, and the Snowflakes Christmas Singles Club, but have chosen to self-release this time. The CD comes in a digipak with lyric booklet, the design of which is as sumptious as the music contained within. The songs seem designed to delight the listener's taste buds as well as their ears, with titles like Vanilla Dream, Saffron Vision, Mango Moon, and of course the pink peppercorn of the title track.
Purple Revolution combines contemporary indie music with 60s psychedelia and Indian influences, taking in sitar, lilting psychedelic keyboard, and jangly guitar. There are parallels with Kula Shaker, one of the few famous bands I actually liked back in the 1990s, and indeed there is a link here in that Bhopal's Flowers' Lionel Pezzano has contributed sitar to Kula Shaker's recent single Good Money, and Bhopal's Flowers had previously supported Kula Shaker at a Montreal gig in 2025.
Miroir Miroir is loaded with vintage cinematic grandeur, bringing together elements of Ennio Morricone's Western soundtracks, the luxury of Bond theme songs, sophisticated 60s French pop, and classic psychedelia. Morning Sun is laid-back psych-folk-pop that enfolds the listener in a mystical Eastern atmosphere. Saffron Vision is the kind of ultra-jangly psych-pop that's always a joy to hear, the anthemic, earworm-y chorus and sitar/tabla ornamentation providing additional bonuses. Vanilla Dream features vivid, surreal lyrical imagery set to music that's part psychedelic-era Beatles and part woozy atmospheric neo-psych.
A truly lovely album that I wholeheartedly recommend. Available at bhopalsflowers.bandcamp.com

ASTRALASIA An Introduction To... 4 CD set (Fruits de Mer)
A massive 40-track collection spread across 4 CDs, compiling material from Astralasia's Fruits de Mer releases plus tracks originally released on other labels including Voiceprint, Fungus, Talking Elephant, and Tonefloat, and a sizeable number of previously unreleased tracks. As well as Astralasia, you also get material from other projects involving Marc Swordfish: The Fishheads, Mushroom Project, Patience Saints, Salt Tank featuring Neve, and an early 80s compilation tape appearance from Commodore 64 Choir, as well as remixes of other bands, namely Hawkwind, Superfjord, and The Chemistry Set.
There are pieces that stand at the intersection of cosmic psychedelia and electronic dance music, such as Cresta Run with its combination of acid house, ambient, and floaty spacey psych, and the dub house of Zhala Dub Dubber, with its sci-fi whooshes and bleeps and angelic wordless vocals. Alooland combines shimmering ambient soundscaping with relaxing Eastern-tinged melodies and soft calming birdsong. A selection of outtakes from their Something Somewhere album tend towards chilled-out soul and psychedelic synthpop. Their Superfjord remix, Deep Magick, is hypnotic psychedelic dance music with Indian percussion, while their Hawkwind remix, Flesh to Fantasy, combines dreamy, spacey electronica and vigorous dance beats.
They venture outside of this core psychedelic dance sound in Darkest Voyage Dream Sequence, which incorporates elements of American folk, ethereal jazz sax, and filmic neoclassical harp flourishes, while their cover of Johnny Remember Me, originally performed by John Leyton in the early 60s, is similarly eclectic and inventive with its mixture of Western theme music, gothic country, soaring psychedelic flute, and cosmic electronics.
Then there are the various offshoots and precursors. Patience Saints are more of a pure house act, their Can You Read Me? sounding like an Ibiza dancefloor stomper. Salt Tank featuring Neve's Butterfly is melancholic yet danceable electropop. Commodore 64 Choir's Girls Talk features giggling teens chatting about parties, makeup and hairdos over dancey synth music which sounds pretty pioneering considering it dates from 1982. The Fishheads are a more guitar-oriented offshoot whose output ranges from the instrumental psych-rock of Zigzag to the joyous summery janglepop of the Monkees cover, Pleasant Valley Sunday. The Mushroom Project are also a more guitar-based band, their Invisible Guitar being a heady instrumental with spacerock, prog and psych elements.
For anyone curious about Astralasia and related bands, this enormous career-spanning and musically varied compilation is a great place to start. It sold out fast at Fruits de Mer, but check the stockists page at the FdM site for info on third party sellers.

DAVID CW BRIGGS The Hide & Seekers CDR/DL (Folk Archive)
Latest album from this prolific hometaper whose music has much to appeal to fans of psych-pop and indiepop alike, while also venturing into more experimental territories. Maggie Magnolia bridges the gap between indiepop and psychedelia, getting increasingly heady as the track progresses. Deckchairs combines lo-fi bedroom pop with a chuggy rock 'n' roll rhythm and airy, meandering psychedelic accompaniment. The Countryside is Indoors opens with an intro that hints at Pictures of Matchstick Men, leading into off-kilter fuzzpop which in turn gives way to an atmospheric instrumental wall of sound that highlights the psychedelic roots of shoegaze. The songs are interspersed with instrumental interludes such as the woozy sci-fi whirr of Stalled, the hazy summery psych of The Hide & Seekers, and What If Blues which brings together a collage of samples and found sounds with a quick burst of raw throaty blues riffage. Good stuff as always from this artist. Limited to just 25 copies on CDR, or available as a download. Visit davidcwbriggs.bandcamp.com

MMM Lunistice Alignments CD/DL (self-released)
Nick Jonah Davis (solo guitarist who has also worked with Sharron Kraus, C Joynes, and others), Gayle Brogan (Pefkin, Burd Ellen, Electroscope), and Liz Still (Haress, Redpanda) were brought together as MMM, through a shared interest in ancient sites. Their album Lunistice Alignments was inspired by the Calanais Stones on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, and was recorded to mark the Major Lunar Standstill that aligns the site with the moon's cycles. It was recorded at Black Bay Studios, the nearest studio to the ancient monument, and comes beautifully packaged in a high-gloss card gatefold sleeve with evocative photos of the stones.
The title track opens the album, setting a brooding, cinematic guitar melody to a mix of icy drones and sound effects, twittering birds and solemn wordless chants. Hands to Stone, Eyes to Stars pairs ominous synth minimalism with darkly evocative, soaring chant recalling Dead Can Dance. Starshift and Moonrise features thrums and drones that may or may not be electronically processed hurdy gurdy and harmonium, as backdrop for otherworldly synth music. Horneblende and Quartz is centred around bleak filmic guitar music that sometimes brings to mind some of David Reid's recent solo work, atmospherically accompanied by woodwind and bookended by the sound of lapping waves. Lunar Tempel is a combination of doom-laden guitar distortion and ritualistic chant that sounds both menacing and ecstatic. The Re-Gleam is experimental psychedelic folk, with woozy slide guitar over rustling, swooping and tinkling sound effects akin to what you might find in incidental film music.
An immersive album that brings the melodic and abstract together into an atmospheric, cohesive whole, with cinematic sounds that evoke the awe-inspiring quality of standing stones and wild nature. Available at mmmtheband.bandcamp.com

SCHIZO FUN ADDICT Desolate Ecstasy LP (Fruits de Mer / Friends of the Fish)
The press release for taster single Pasteline Dream claimed Schizo Fun Addict's then-forthcoming album Desolate Ecstasy was inspired by a band of that name whose formation was chronicled on a home video recording from the 1980s found in a charity shop by SFA co-founder Jet Wintzer, a tale that seemed, as I put it in my review of the single, "a little too astoundingly serendipitious to be true". The band have come clean now and admit that Desolate Ecstasy is in fact a concept album about their own 27 year career, and a tribute to bands they love. The album is a distillation of 1980s alternative music, some of its 1960s predecessors, and a few surprises rarely heard in indie or psychedelic music. The influences are, at least sometimes, easy to spot, but the way they are combined creates an end result that, as the band boldly but honestly put it, "nobody sounds like except us".
Pasteline Dream's squall and jangle and shoestring girl-group harmonies sounds like something out of a legit 80s indiepop classic, while the band put their own spin on this style with the addition of spacey analogue synth whooshes. Cathedral Sunshine is darkly atmospheric, hypnotic neo-psych, something like a meeting of Spacemen 3 and the most gothic side of the Jesus and Mary Chain. Scent of Heather shrouds wistful melancholia in a hazy dreampop shimmer. Coming to You is an innovative mix of ethereal pop and vigorous disco beats. Believe is plaintive, bittersweet folk-pop. Tease Murderess sets sleazy, horror-filmic lyrics to music that seems inspired by a combination of The Velvet Underground and the aforementioned JAMC, though again SFA add their own twist by bringing in additional elements not usually heard alongside those, in this case bossa nova beats. Very much recommended! The LP has sold out at the label but check the Stockists link at the Fruits de Mer website for info on third-party sellers. Also available as a download from the band at schizofunaddict.bandcamp.com/album/desolate-ecstasy

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