Mong Tong
道火 Tao Fire

The latest in a long line of largely forgotten Yasuaki Shimizu albums and side projects, originally released in Japan by Better Days back in 1981. "Kakashi saw the jazz man-turned-ambient explorer join the dots between melodious, post-punk era jazz-fusion, new age influenced downtempo grooves, dub, ambient and eccentric, hard-to-pigeonhole experimentation. While musically diverse, the album hangs together beautifully. This is primarily down to two key factors: the ubiquity of Shimizu's evocative saxophone, flute and clarinet playing, and the richness of the multi-instrumentalist's superb production.

Melbourne auteur Andrew Wilson (Andras, A.R.T. Wilson, Wilson Tanner) soils the ‘Australian songbook’ with a collection of fragile, private and deranged songs of parrots, pancakes and gelignite amidst the Victorian Gold Rush of 1850s.Old Gold is filled with fakes and fools, rumbling stomachs and acousmatic terrors - a lonely, self-pitying search evoked by faintly medieval folk music that sounds almost period-perfect but somehow, oddly, wonderfully spoiled.Gut string guitars, water-logged mandolins, bar room banjos and no-fidelity piano all sound perfectly organic - except they’re not. No acoustic instruments were handled in the making of the record, including environmental sounds which were generated during a MESS residency. The reproduction of familiar sounds via inorganic means situates the record in a moonlit, melancholy hole of its own.Old Gold by A.R. Wilson

Essential 1979 debut from UK post-punk/ new wave band.

Ace wonky psychedelic wave LP from Brussels based duo - Clara Vellin and soFa elsewhere. One of the best of 2021 for sure. Big fave!

Next level, deep + tense/ atmospheric downtempo 2LP - with dub + jazz influence - from Melbourne duo on The Trilogy Tapes. Includes poster.

1978 debut at 18 years old! Self-produced, written & arranged! Featuring "In Love", "Crazy You", "I'm Yours", "Soft And Wet", "So Blue"...