Various
Ghost Riders

boomkat: ...Properly overdue reissue of Hydroplane's long out of print 1997 debut album, a beguiling concoction of lo-fi pop, shoegaze, early electronic blips and billowing ambience. So good!Back in 1997, Aussie jangle pop outfit The Cat's Miaow formed Hydroplane after their drummer headed to London. They filled the gap by using samples and tape loops, and developed a startling new sound that gave a new resonance to Kerrie Bolton's cool, deadpan vocals and the band's hybrid experimentation. The self-titled album works because it refuses to stay in the same spot for too long, lurching from bit-crushed breaks and dry guitar plucks on opening track 'Wurlitzer Jukebox' to mucky noise and regurgitated piano guts on 'Piano Movement with Percussion', before settling into a dream pop groove on the beatless 'Song for the Meek'.The album's best moments though are when they ignore songs altogether, like on the sci-fi tinted analog synth jam 'I Hear a New World', or 'House Warming', a ghostly spoken word track accompanied by a wavering electronic drone. The band recorded this material in their Brunswick flat using a bare-bones setup including a Jupiter 4 synth, sampler and tape equipment, and the album was released at the time only in the US on CD. Now it's available again, it feels like high time to rediscover a band that nestle comfortably between Slowdive, Stereolab and Hood.

"People who are sort of more the outcasts of society tend to tell it like it is" – Scott Seskind, 2015.Sky Girl is a mysteriously unshakeable companion, a deeply melancholic and sentimental journey through folk-pop, new wave and art music micro presses that span 1961-1991. A seemingly disparate suite of selections of forgotten fables by more or less neverknowns, Sky Girl forms a beautifully coherent and utterly sublime whole deftly compiled by French collectors DJ Sundae and Julien Dechery.From Scott Seskind's adolescent musical road movie to Karen Marks' icy Oz-wave, the charming DIY storytelling of Italian-American go-getter Joe Tossini and the ethereal slow dance themes of Parisian artists Nini Raviolette and Hugo Weris, Sky Girl resonates on a wide spectrum historically, geographically and stylistically. It unites in a singular, longing, almost intangible ambience.If the names sound wholly unfamiliar that doesn't matter, the nature of the compositions swiftly nurtures an intimacy with these lonely, poignant, openhearted wanderers. Most were available in a very limited capacity at the time of their release, some were never really released at all - Gary Davenport declined to release Sarra after he split with the girl for whom the track is named - years later a friend convinced Davenport to allow him to put 100 copies online to sell and DJ Sundae was quick enough to snare one. Beyond their scarcity, these tracks are bound together by a certain raw beauty that's achievable when music is made and no one is listening.Sky Girl comprises of fifteen officially licensed songs, a two year international scavenger hunt through long-folded home label operations, the depths of internet forums and traceless acetates. Both compilers are well trained record sleuths - DJ Sundae's labels Hollie and Idle Press have reissued Arthur Russell affiliate Nirosta Steel and DIY relic Pitch, while Julien Dechery previously compiled 'Fire Star', a retrospective on Tamil film composer Ilaiyaraaja, for Bombay Connection.Released by Noise In My Head offshoot Efficient Space, Sky Girl is enriched with artwork from Perks and Mini mutant Misha Hollenbach and appropriately elegant sleeve notes courtesy of Ivan Smagghe.

Pierre Bujeau is an expert at creating temporary escape zones - musical structures to evade the everyday. Sometimes he works collectively as part of the mysterious French groups Omertà and Tanz Mein Herz. But it’s when he’s on his own, performing as Megabasse, that he offers the most complete break from reality.His kit is simple: a few bottles of cheap lager, twin Fender amps, and his double-necked guitar. An instrument like this normally signals maximum rockist excess - think Jimmy Page, Geddy Lee, or that dude from the Eagles. In Pierre’s hands, it becomes more like a zither or a dulcimer, producing soft chiming patterns that build against themselves until the sound of the room, passed back and forth between his two amps, starts to blur everything, and we are away in another world. Wait, though - let down your yoga bun and don’t light the palo santo yet. The new space he creates has nothing to do with smug wellness. It’s a rough, do-it-yourself psychedelia, scuffed but hopeful. Not a perfect blank space to be your best self in, but instead a communal dreaming, an uncanny place where all are welcome.Until now, without catching him live, the Megabasse experience has been difficult to find: CD-Rs, short-run tapes, and one blink-and-you-missed-it LP. Thankfully, this record on Efficient Space, a... morecreditsreleased March 28, 2025Recorded in November 2023 with D'Incise at the Pacheco' Chapel,BrusselsTracks originally released on cassette via MascarponeDiscos, 2024Mixed by Guilhem LacrouxMastered by Mikey YoungOriginal woodcut by Valentin CaponyDesign by Steele Bonus

Lost icebergs off the arctic, hollowed out memory, an acerbic embrace.Third Space presents his first long-player via .jpeg artefacts. Venturing from previous, punchier, swinging percussion found on previous releases, the LP delivers careful introspection, experimentation, and rich conceptual development.The beatless iterations and encompassing walls of sound that stuck their heads out on earlier EPs are embraced in full here; it’s claustrophobic but space is found in the right areas. Tension and release to the nth degree, but without becoming a trope. Percussion remains, but slowed to a crawl.The release calls on memories of Ambarchi’s Oystered (as well as, notably, Grapes from the Estate) and the clicks and hums of Pan Sonic, but it’s the development past this that allows Scissor Kick to shine. The areas where intimacy is pushed through field recordings, live scattered percussion (from R.Rebeiro, as well as TS), and those subtle reminders that Third Space still has an iron-firm grasp on percussive rhythm, is where this record stands on its own solid ground. What was foggy red-roomed speaker stacks has given way to arctic tundra, vast expanse, acid rain.Layer up.~~