Been a busy year. Two tours, bunch of sweet new releases. Planning to burn it up next year too. Chalaque tours in Europe (Jan) and the US (April), Float Riverer Europe and US tours in the pipeline. Plus there’s gonna be a bunch of new releases that will look something like this:

* Serfs – Moon Mellowed River cassette (ROWF 26) – finally ready to be unleashed in the new year – sorry for the delay folks!

* BREAD issue 2 (ROWF 29) – 4 x cassettes plus a book of writings and drawings housed in a chunky plastic case. Contributions from Michael Flower, Neil Hagerty, Pekko Kappi, Karen Constance, Dylan Hughes, Taylor Richardson, Joincey and more.

* Sunroof! LP (ROWF 30) – just had confirmation from Matthew Bower that this is gonna be happening. Very psyched indeed.

* Float Riverer LP (ROWF 31) – second album from me and Kate. You can hear the first song off it on our blog floatriverer.blogspot.com

* Chalaque LP (ROWF 32) – I’m going on tour in the US in April and those folks don’t take you seriously if you don’t have a slab of wax with you.

* Howling Hex live box set (ROWF 33) – currently sourcing HHX live recordings from over the past ten years in conjunction with Neil Hagerty for what is gonna be a monster of a release, probably in a very short run.

Damn, it’s tough getting hold of tapes these days. While it’s still possible to find them, though, I’m doing what I can to put out as many as possible. So, in December, I got four fucking fuckers of badass gems coming out. Got one from Serfs, that glorious Mancunian guitar duo, this being arguably their finest release to date. It’s structured in places, free in others, considered and beautiful throughout. Then there’s a tape from The Zero Map, a droning, psychedelic, multi-instrumental sprawl of an A Band side project from Brighton. From Brussels via Paris, there’s a short electronic tape by Carrageenan, demonstrating some nasty tonal spew with transcendental hums and tics. Sounds like having your teeth drilled by Shiva or some shit. Finally, my first Chalaque tape, which is me mostly playing one guitar through two amps. Feedback drone loops, solos, spasticated acoustic thrashes and spontaneous vocal humming. Serfs cover above. Pre-orders are available on all.

Price for each tape: £4 per copy + postage, as below.

UK:
£1.25 for the first item, £0.50 for subsequent

Europe:
£2.00 for the first item, £0.75 for subsequent

USA/Canada/ROW:
£3.00 for the first item, £1.50 for subsequent

Pay by paypal to goldenlabrecordings@hotmail.co.uk

Former Bullies – Golden Chains 45rpm LP (CF Records)

Two things wrong with this record – it’s too short and there are too many damn’ hits on it. What I mean is, once it’s finished (and it’s 45rpm so that doesn’t take long), you have to get back up and flip it over and play it again and again and again and again just to take it all in. Some of us have lives to live and other records to listen to, yet Former Bullies have gone and created the only record you really need to own and made it so that you can’t pull yourself away from the speakers for more than five minutes without going back for another blast. It’s the Infinite Jest(I refer to the fictional film within the novel, not the novel itself) of vinyl. God, I can’t get enough of this.

Essentially, what we have here is a beautiful slab of classic ’90s-style indie rock recorded in a way that mimicks the methods and effects of classic ’60s garage psych, which on paper doesn’t sound all that exciting considering the plethora of other bands that have been doing the same thing over the past five or so years. The difference is, Former Bullies have got the songwriting juice to back-up the sound references. And this record sounds a lot like The Bachs LP, Out Of The Bachs. There are two standout mind-melters on here: ‘God He Lives’ and ‘The Sea’, neither of which scales the psychedelic frenzy of a ‘Tables of Grass Fields’ or a ‘Minister to a Mind Diseased’ by their stylistic gurus. Instead, we get in these two songs a sense of restraint that threatens the same kind of frenzy but never allows the immediacy of the songs to be overpowered by unnecessary wig-out. Plus there are only three of them on the record and they’re just not an overdubs band, Nick Ainsworth never veering from his head-down chord-chugging drive. The only embellishments are provided by the warm tube amps, reverb pedals and vintage analogue recording methods (courtesy of engineer du jour Patrick Crane) and that’s embellishment enough.

It’s about time this record existed. This is only the band’s third vinyl release (they’ve had a 7″ and a split 7″ out too) in a career spanning eight years or so. Personally, I’ve seen Former Bullies live more than any other band – they’re the perennial Manchester indie rock band and, as such, have kind of escaped close attention from the audiences to whom they play over and again: their ever-presence has made them kind of translucent. They’ve always written immediately gratifying pop songs with imagery-laden lyrics (sometimes sublime, sometimes dumb as hell) but never has anyone had a chance to let those songs really stick because the band simply stops playing them after a while. Well, here’s the first long-playing document of a band that deserves not to be stared through. Oh, I just realised that there’s one more thing wrong with it: it’s not a 5 x LP box set anthology. Maybe next time…

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