PLANKTON WAT - 'CORRIDORS'

Formats

• FC54 - LP

Details

Plankton Wat began as a home studio recording project by Portland, OR musician Dewey Mahood in the early 2000's. The playful band name was inspired by Popol Vuh, and combines the names of Krautrock producer Conny Plank and bassist Mike Watt. Mahood made several low key albums on various formats for obscure underground labels, and played occasional solo guitar gigs around the West Coast. Due to the popularity of his experimental psych rock band Eternal Tapestry, Plankton Wat signed to legendary Chicago record label Thrill Jockey in 2011. The album Spirits came out the following year, and this began the ongoing musical partnership with fellow Portland musician Dustin Dybvig aka Brass Clouds. Mahood and Dybvig also did the funk dub band Edibles, the short lived psych punk band Spectrum Control, and most recently were the rhythm section for Ripley Johnson's Rose City Band. It was while on tour in the UK with RCB that Mahood started revisiting early 1980s post punk such as New Order, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and CocteauTwins, a sound and attitude that became the foundation for the new album Corridors. Mahood played guitar and bass, and added a touch of synth and drum machine, and Dybvig played several beautiful solos using synth and piano. The songs are a continuation of ideas first heard on Future Times (Thrill Jockey, 2021), but are further refined into concise, compact musical statements reflecting on climate change (ice storms, record high temps, the changing coastline, the impact on trees, the importance of water, etc). 

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CLOUD CANYONS & STUDIO KOSMISCHE - 'UNDER NEON STARS'

Formats

• FC50 - LP

Details

The single features a collaboration between Studio Kosmische from UK and Cloud Canyons from Italy. Side A is a rework by Studio Kosmische of “Under Neon Stars”, a track from Cloud Canyon’s 2023 debut album “Dreaming Of Horses Running In Circles”: by adding a few parts and alchemically blending the original elements of the song - the relentless motorik pulse, the ethereal female vocals, the multilayers of monophonic analogue synths - Studio Kosmische’s version moulds a shrouding and lilting veil on the 9-minutes long original track. Side B features a brand new track, “Black Fruit”, also sprung from the creative dialogue between the two bands and clocking at about 9 minutes side-long. Born as an instrumental piece by Studio Kosmische, “Black Fruit” developed in a full song thanks to the vocal additions by Michelle Cristofori, Laura Storchi and Stella Baraldi (Cloud Canyons’ singers) and a rich yet minimalistic array of instrumental parts by Studio Kosmische’s Dom Keen, who ingeniously shaped the keys harmonies and rhythmic textures around the vocal lines. Accomplished by some subtle electronics treatment by Cloud Canyons’ Nicola Caleffi, “Black Fruit” ideally complements “Under Neon Stars” as a two-sided creature, hanging somewhere between krautrock and electronica.

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JAMES TOTH - 'DEMON STATIONS'

Formats

• FC36 - LP

Details

This LP is a compilation of songs from five different digital-only demo collections I released on Bandcamp between 2021 and 2023. I relied on the ears and judgment of my old friend Dom at Feral Child to curate this comp, allowing him to choose his favorites from over 60 songs. While I might have chosen an entirely different batch of tunes, I was happy to defer to Dom, as I’ve never had much perspective when it comes to assessing my own material. All of the songs on this album were recorded at home, mostly on the same day they were written. Most of them are first takes, intended to provide a template for a theoretical band to follow if and when the songs were to be re-recorded “properly” at a later date. A few have since been re-recorded for studio records, and a few others remain in contention for future studio records.

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PHANTOM HORSE / INNERCITY - 'SPLIT'

Formats

• FC34 - LP

Details

2 kraut tinged side long epics, one with a tip of the hat to Cluster | Roedelius & Moebius, the other way more lo-fi, kinda dirtier more Throbbing Gristle, Sheffield electronic scene etc....

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