30 Sept 2012

Rocket Probes September Playlist



Hookworms - Pearl Mystic
(We were lucky enough to be sent this just after it was finished...and it sounds great, lovelly psyched out songs drenched in some awesome fuzz wah, cant wait to hear it on vinyl!!!)

Swans - The Seer
(Amazing new album from the mighty Swans...one of the albums of the year so far!)

Hills Have Riffs -
(Two great droned out space folk jams, from a forthcoming album)

Teeth of the Sea - Only Fools on Horse (**K remix)
(Great remix by **K of "Only fools on horse", one of the highlight tracks off Teeth of the Sea's debut 'Orphaned by the Ocean', see earlier post to hear this)

Section 25 - Sakura
(Where Gnod and Happy Mondays meet)

Drunk in Hell - live in Leeds
(Love this band!!!...cant wait to see them again at Supersonic)

Toy - Drifting Deeper / Dead and Gone
(Two tracks from their debut, the first is a nice Hawkwind meets Silver Apples instrumental track, the second sounds like Six by Seven covering Stereolab)

Nope - Revision
(Fuzzy and repetitive noise rock with a nice psychy edge from this Leeds band)

Cherrystones - Red Nails
(New album of psyched out breaks from Godsy, comes in a very nice handprinted sleeve)

Fabulous Diamonds - Commercial Music
(Blissed out lunar-rock)

Various ‎– Underground Wave Volume 3
(Gnod introduced us to this Belgium Electronic comp, featuring S, M Nurse)

Fairport Convention - Quiet Joys of Brotherhood
(If Spacemen 3 did folk music)

Various - Beyond the Calico Wall
(Fuzz drenched 60's compliation)
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28 Sept 2012

Goat....The Guardian's 'new band of the day'!!!



The Guardian has chosen Goat to be their 'New band of the day' on their site:

"The background: Goat may not be the G.O.A.T., but they are getting serious praise for their album World Music, acclaimed as one of the best of 2012. It's a heady soup (see what we did there?) of funk and tribal rhythms, kraut and prog-rock repetition/extrapolation, psych freakery and astral/acid folkisms. It's Parliament covering Can's Tago Mago with Bhundu Boys and the Incredible String Band, or a super-jam involving Faust, Funkadelic, Fairport Convention and Fela Kuti. Think Womad curated by Jerry Garcia and Holger Czukay, Edgar Broughton and George Clinton in 1973...."

See the full article here

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26 Sept 2012

Supersonic Festival reveal first footage of Goat appearing live



This video here has just been revealed by Supersonic Festival.

It shows the band playing the track Goatlord live in their Korpilombolo based temple, and gives you a good idea of what their up and coming live shows are going to be like.

See the Supersonic website for more information

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Black Bombaim / Gnod Collaboration
























The guys in Black Bombaim are releasing a live collaboration with GNOD called 'Black Gnod', it will be available on the 6th of December via the Cardinal Fuzz label.

Black Bombaim described it: 
The completely-improvised-50min-kraut-worship show with Gnod in Milhões de Festa 2012.

Cardinal Fuzz albums are available to buy here: cardinalfuzz.bigcartel
Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/CardinalFuzz
Optical Sounds: opticalsoundsfanzine

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Shit and Shine live in Stadtwerkstatt / Linz in June



Here is some great footage of a whole Shit and Shine show from their recent European tour in June.

Their Collisions with Gnod is out on October 15th

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Revolt of the apes reviews Shit & Shine / Gnod Collisions 03


Revolt of the Apes have written some very nice words on the next Rocket release, volume 3 of our Collisions series by Gnod and Shit & Shine:


"– beast lies at the heart of the third “Collisions” release from the always fiery Rocket Recordings, a split release from Gnod and $hit and $hine. Rather than the individual, the focus here is on the collective; rather than the irrelevance of time, the focus here would appear to be in the eradication of time – eradication with great prejudice.

The impact of Gnod upon our listening habits over the past couple of years can hardly be over emphasized. At the time of our interview with the shape-shifting UK wizards of sound late last year, we were very close to declaring the band to have released both the best and the second best albums of 2011 – and this was before we had been set deep into a cosmic-coma via “Genocider,” the crushing tomb of sound from “Chaudelande Volume II.”

Both Gnod and $hit and $hine bring to “Collisions 3″ the full weight of massive, world-crushing force that comes from near complete disregard for convention, mysteriously expanding and contracting line-ups, and the willingness to wield the sharpest points of any number of sounds in order to achieve their goals. With both tracks clocking in around the fifteen-minute mark, dub aesthetics merge with combustible Detroit-bred explosions of raw power, synthesized beats antagonize a world of synthesized violence, chanting codas mesh with the hot breath of levitating bass riffs, and all limits are fast eroded.

May the collisions never end."

See the review in full here

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25 Sept 2012

Red vinyl and Green vinyl Goat LP's have landed


We have just heard that the repress of Goat's World Music on Red (800 copies) and Green (200 copies) have landed at our UK distributors Cargo.

These copies should be hitting shops in the UK by the weekend and in the US and Europe next week.

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20 Sept 2012

Teeth of the Sea 'Get in to this'


Here is a great piece by Peter Guy for 'Get into this' on website/promoters 'Behind the Wall of Sleep', which is run by the mighty Mugstar.

The piece has a lovely write up and photos of Teeth of the Sea which they claim as 'possibly the best live band on the planet.' Plus mentions of Gnod and former Rocket band White Hills.

Well worth a read, check it here

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The Quietus ask Goat some questions about Supersonic Festival


The Quietus have done a quick Q/A with Goat about their up and coming performance at Supersonic Festival:


"Goat's debut album World Music was one of our favourites of this summer. Here, the band mix together a bewitching stew of "Afrobeat, Latin disco, post punk, kraut drone and rampant acid rock. It's as if Spacemen 3 ate Funkadelic's Maggot Brain and a random Fela Kuti album". We discuss what's in store for lucky punters to this year's Supersonic festival, where they are playing live.

You lived in a commune in Korpilombobo, Sweden. What was commune life like? How did that lifestyle inform the music you make?

Read the answer to this and other questions here

And buy tickets for the festival here

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19 Sept 2012

Gnod to play this years Supersonic Festival


We are very excited indeed to announce that Gnod will be celebrating their release of their split album with Shit & Shine with a performance at this years Supersonic Festival.

Gnod join Goat on Sundays line up to make it a double of Rocket bands!

So buy a ticket before they sell out here

And to wet your appetite, above is some footage of a show from their very recent tour across Europe

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Review of Gnod at Incubate


Incendiary Magazine have were lucky enough to of witnessed Gnod's amazing set at this years Incubate festival:

"…the venue was packing out for GNOD, who have quite a following in the Lowlands, (as seen the previous night when they pulled a good crowd at Cab03). GNOD have a brutally simple modus operandi: their aim is to get as out there as possible with their audience; and for the wondering crowd it became increasingly apparent that the band weren’t looking at any pit stops on their road to sonic oblivion. They lay down a gig that can be both unforgiving and enchanting, akin to some sort of prehistoric rite of passage. Sound-tracked by a crushingly primordial beat, the band’s determination pushed the gawping, nodding, subservient crowd through the into the chamber’s inner sanctum towards the omphalos. Neil’s pixie vibes ensured enough gold dust entered the atmosphere: playing the Daevid Allen / Scorp Murtlock rôle for all he was worth and lost in a world of his own making, he wailed, screamed, rolled around and lost his mic countless times; inducing a frenzy of buck-like hedonism amongst those nearest to him. Like the Roebuck in the thicket ever destined to escape, Neil danced about in front of the audience, throwing out enough incantations to create a brilliant visual counterpart to the determined and solid rhythm section who, in the sweet smelling fug of the Extase, began to resemble renegade members of the Diggers or New Model Army (the army not the band, that is). Suddenly, and after a particularly pulsating and marrow crushing 15 minute drone, they stopped. The audience, breathless and wondering what to do now the spell had been broken, staggered out."

Read the review in full here

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18 Sept 2012

Win tickets to the sold out Rocket party in October



The Quietus has put up a competition up to win two tickets to our sold out Rocket party featuring live sets by Gnod (launching their Shit and Shine split), Teeth of the Sea (debuting new tracks from their forthcoming album) and Goat (playing their first UK show)/

For a chance to win these tickets, go to the Quietus site here

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Mat.C (Teeth of the Sea) co-starts a new Cosmic Space Disco night


Check this Cosmic Space Disco mix compiled by Mat.C and Dr Kruger, for a new night based on L'Incal universe...

More infos L'Incal (Club) :
https://www.facebook.com/mbslncl

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Gnod play with Expo' 70


Behind the Wall of Sleep are putting on one of their regular nights this coming Sunday (23rd September) at Mello Mello, Liverpool.

Gnod will feature alongside Ancient Ocean & Expo'70.

For further Details: facebook.com/events

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17 Sept 2012

'Nothing is...' this Friday



'Nothing is...' returns this friday:

Cage and Aviary / Walls have ears
Cherrystones / Brutal
Little Dirty / Head Nod
Rik Motör / Rocket Recordings

The Alibi / Dalston / London
Friday 21st September
9-3 / Free Entry

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14 Sept 2012

Gnod European tour transmission


As Gnod limber up for their show at the Incubate festival tonight with the Membranes, here is a transmission we have found of one of their shows on their current jaunt across Europe.

And below is footage of their show in Brussels earlier in the year



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13 Sept 2012

Nice Gnod poster


The Quietus give their praise to Goat



The Quietus have written a great review of the Goat album, to follow up their interview with the band:

"'World music' is a loaded term. Taken a certain way (late 80s Womad, say), it evokes dainty divisionism - 'world' encompassing pretty much anything that may fall outside the established rock & roll continuum. On the other hand it means music. Listening to Goats debut LP ensures the title makes absolute sense: primal, pulsating sound that uncorks the elemental to miraculous effect. Goat draw fascinating dots between psych, kraut rock, doom and disco. Imagine Amon Duul, Electric Wizard and Roy Ayres collaborating in a ganja-wreathed 70's summer Harlem brownstone on a lost soundtrack to a Kenneth Anger film. You won't be far off - hard driving analogue freak music, real hotness..."

Read the rest of the review here

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Another great review of Goat's World Music...



...this time by Eyesore Merch:

"I have been waiting for the full length release from Goat for some time now, Rocket Recordings released the Goatman 7″ single and we have been teased for a number of months with a cassette release (which I was too slow to pick up) and some uploads to YouTube.

These releases gave a hint to what we could expect from Goat… the dark, voodoo feel of the music is often picked up on as is the afrobeat feel of the rhythms but what sets this music apart is how these grooves are alloyed with wild shrieks of awesome guitar work and chant-like, soulful vocals which often build up through the tracks dragging the music higher, the percussion making you dance faster and the lead guitar throwing you into some kind of pyschedelic trance when it cuts through the mix… then the track ends and you are left dazed, confused and ready to do it all over again...."

Read the rest of the review here

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12 Sept 2012

Drowned in Sound review Teeth of the Sea at Green Man festival



This is what Drowned in Sound thought of Teeth of the Sea's performance at this years Green Man festival:

"I’m ready for some weird by Sunday afternoon. Mogwai satiated the loudness, and then R+S took us into the early hours of this morning with Lone, Airhead and The Chain. But Teeth Of The Sea, well they’re unlike pretty much anything else on the bill this weekend. You can see the reaction as they begin to unfurl a set that’ll become pinioned on tribal drumming, squalls of guitar rushing over it with a ferocity hitherto unseen this weekend. Children look terrified, their parents though, who used to wig out to this sort of stuff, wander into the tent with eyes lit alive and heads nodding. Teeth Of The Sea are wonderful live, a psychedelic rock group in the heaviest sense, theirs isn’t a world of flowers and kaleidoscopes; it’s ferocious, a relentless sonic attack that pulverizes the mind into a lucid state."

See the full review here

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11 Sept 2012

October's Teeth of the Sea / Goat / Gnod show has sold out



As predicted our Rocket party in October with Teeth of the Sea, Goat and Gnod has sold out.

As far as we know there are still tickets available for Goat's show in Newcastle and of course you can see them at the amazing Supersonic Festival.

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Head Medicine give Goat's World Music 10/10



Head Medicine has written a great review of Goat;s World Music and found some interesting footage of the inspiration for one of the tracks:

"Goat, a collective of musicians from the darkest corner of the Swedish netherworld, might very well be the most mysterious and electrifying band on the planet at the moment. until earlier this year, noone outside of their remote village had ever heard of them. they have never played a live show outside of their commune. their hometown of Korpolombolo was, according to legend, a hotbed of voodoo worship for centuries after a traveling priestess and her followers were led there by a cipher hidden in their ancient texts. the practice went on for hundreds of years until the Christian church found out what was going on and the village was burned to the ground, the survivors cursing the land as they fled, a curse which still haunts the area to this day. the band members claim that, when they were very young, the village elders initiated them into the entrancing, percussion-heavy musical traditions of their ancestors and that Goat is merely a continuation of a generations old ritual. maybe their backstory is a work of fiction, or maybe it's true. all i know is that if in fact there is a centuries-old voodoo curse coursing through the veins of the music of Goat, i wouldn't be the least bit surprised. there is something almost otherworldly about the music on their debut album "World Music," that much is certain....

Read the full review and see the videos here

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9 Sept 2012

Beard Rock review Shit and Shine / Gnod Collisions Vol.03



The great Beard Rock has written their review on the next Collisions LP in our series:

GNOD / $hit & $hine / COLLISIONS 03 Split

According to internet folklore GNOD are a rather elusive, ever-changing amoeba who take shape within the darkened walls of Salford’s biggest creative space, Islington Mill. It is there where they bubble and toil over a huge vat of gloopy drones, raspy beats and stodgy bass. On this track though, they have pushed aside the live drums to make way for a darker, much more brooding synthesized beat. Bordering on 'witch house', this mesmerising repetition pulls you into a vortex that resembles a fifteen minute salvia trip. The broadened Manchester accent shouting away in the distance is eerie but strangely comforting (what the fuck does this 'Amy' know? I wanna know too).

The second side is of a very similar ilk to GNOD’s (tedious genre name alert) ‘progressive chamber step’ masterpiece, this time by Texas-based Kraut juggernauts Shit & Shine. With one massive fucked-up ,disjointed amalgamation of noise, techno and guitar they hammer a huge throbbing clusterfuck straight into your ear hole. The guitar sound is pretty much identical to that of Led Zepplin’s No Quarter; this alone gave me a bit of a twitch in the downstairs department. However, don’t let this trite comparison lead you to think that the structure of the track has any other similarity. S&S carve a stuttering delay-charged slab of marble with a sythesised hammer and chisel, to create a monument to their kraut forefathers. From start to finish, I must have looked like a right cunt nodding profusely back and forth like some kinda semi-aroused walking duck. Awesome proggy synth sounds emanate from what sounds like my old Farfisa organ. I might be wrong but if it is they definitely have the ‘Extra Men’ button switched on. (One for the synth geeks…)

Nothing grand happens in either of these tracks, no key changes or huge epic crescendos but is that not the whole point? They don’t become boring after a few listens, I didn’t feel the need to skip on, it just unfolds with newer and more interesting details with each listen.
Honch

You can see the review on the Beard Rock site here

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The Heads Live at the Louisiana October 2002



Here is some footage Paul from the Heads has put up from a Heads show back in October 2002. We at Mission Control remember the show very well, and Rocket's very own Johnny O' was responsible (like most Heads shows) for the lights.

If I remember rightly this was the show where they first had the At Last CDR with the 'Bloodrock' sleeve for sale. In fact this set was a live run through of the 'At Last' tracklist.

The much talked about Heads DVD which has been in the pipeline for several years now has recently seen heaps of activity and the continued trawling through hours of footage is going strong and we really hope this will see the light of day sometime in 2013.

And don't forget that Paul from the Heads solo project Anthroprophh is being released in January 2013 and from what we have heard so far, it wont disappoint you Heads fans out there.

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Shit & Shine to play 'Adventures in modern music' festival



Shit & Shine who have their split album with Gnod called Collisions 03 released on Rocket in October have been invited to play Wire Magazine's 'Adventures in modern music' festival in Chicago on October 5th.

You can find out all about it here.

Definitely NOT to be missed!!!

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7 Sept 2012

**K remix of Teeth of the Sea


**K's remix of Teeth of the Sea's Only Fools on Horse has popped up on YouTube for those of you who have not heard it.

The original track is off their debut album Orphaned by the Ocean, which is hoping to be rereleased on vinyl early next year, also Teeth of the Sea's third album is being made as we speak.

**K is playing Supersonic Festival this year as one half of Moonn, another great reason to go along (if Goat wasn't enough!!

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The Big Naturals - Hear the night roar video


Friends of Rocket Big Naturals have released a video for the track 'Hear the night Roar' from their self titled debut album.

The video was made by Paul Allen from the Heads whose debut 'Anthropropph' LP will be released on Rocket in the new year.

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4 Sept 2012

Teeth of the Sea present Beyond the Transfinite



From the Bestival website:

Teeth of the Sea present Beyond the Transfinite
A mission inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001-A Space Odyssey

In a follow-up to their audio-visual assault that was Reaper, commissioned by and performed at Branchage Film Festival 2011 in Jersey, sonic adventurers Teeth of the Sea return with an even bigger, more ambitious beast.

Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece has eternally loomed like a mysterious monolith in the headspace of Teeth Of The Sea, London’s most adventurous and intrepid psychedelic rock band. Therefore, in a performance assembled specifically for Bestival 2012, the band will explore their relationship with 2001 with an audio-visual odyssey that fuses the impact of its transcendental awe and existential dread on both their consciousness and their cosmically-aligned music. Collaborating with a variety of similarly inspired visual artists to create an overwhelming barrage for the senses, Teeth Of The Sea will, to paraphrase HAL-9000, be putting themselves to the fullest possible use at Bestival, which is all any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
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Teeth of the Sea's performance at Bestival is this Saturday and it is NOT TO BE MISSED!!
Also, if you are going to the festival, try and get to see Beak> play their metallic kraut rock

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Big Naturals get the seal of approval




Friends of Rocket and Heads collaborators Big Naturals have been grabbing some well deserved attention.

First Julian Cope has reviewed their self released debut album in his monthly address.

And Drowned in Sound has some nice words to say about them in their on going feature on the Bristol music scene.

You can get their debut album on ltd vinyl or download from their bandcamp

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The Beat Surrender say a few words about Teeth of the Sea's Green Man performance



A few nice words about Teeth of the Sea's recent performance at Green Man Festival, courtesy of The Beat Surrender:

"...then up on the far out stage, Teeth of the Sea, a group of noiseniks from London blew away everybody with a devastating aural assault, instrumentally ill soundscapes for the mind and body, my new favourite band."

Read the full review of Green Man here

Don't forget Teeth of the Sea are playing a very special and 'one off' show at this weekends Bestival.

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3 Sept 2012

Aquarius records makes World Music album of the week


Aquarius Records, possibly the best record shop in the world, has made Goat's World Music it's album of the week. This is what they say about it here:

Records Of The Week :
GOAT "World Music" (Rocket)

We've been waiting for this one for ages. After an insanely
limited 7" single, which was so scarce, no one we know has actually
ever even seen a copy, let alone bought one, and a teaser video on
YouTube, and all sorts of rumors about this Swedish band who were
influenced by African music and voodoo and came from some mysterious
village no one had ever heard of, well, needless to say, we were DYING
for the full length, and it does not disappoint.

So the story goes, in a tiny village in Sweden called
Korpolombolo, there has existed a band called Goat for generations,
this is just the first incarnation of the band that has captured any
of their music on tape. Supposedly the village was cursed by some sort
of voodoo witch doctor, who was put to death for being a witch, and
introducing voodoo worship to this tiny village. It only takes one
Google search to discover that there is no such village, or so say the
skeptics, but we choose to BELIEVE, and that village is just so
obscure and tiny and tucked away, that it has even escaped the notice
of Google. And whether it's true or not, the IDEA of it definitely
influences the music of Goat, whose sound most definitely has a
serious African vibe, the percussion, the vocals, it's heady
concoction of wild psychedelic space rock, all driving krautrock
rhythms, and tangled squalls of electric guitar freakout, and dense
rhythmic percussion, and almost double dutch sounding vocals. When we
first threw this on, our first impression was that it sounded like a
weird mix of Konono No.1, The Heads and (believe it or not) the Go!
Team, which even now, after constant listening doesn't seem that far
off.

The tracks are dense, and psychedelic, heavy, fuzzy, definitely
Stooges-y at times, Hawkwindy at others, several of the tracks display
a Miles Davis style grooviness, sounding like a SUPERCHARGED ultra
heavy Bitches Brew, others pound away sounding exactly how you might
imagine some ancient voodoo ritual would sound reimagined by some
modern Swedish psychedelic space rock outfit. "Goatman" (from the 7")
is the perfect intro, after a strange sample, and some tribal
drumming, the guitars come cascading in, wild squalls of psychedelic
wah guitar, and keening high end wails, then the vocals come in,
belted out over the fuzzed out bass, the percussion wild and groovy,
it's total Swedish Afro-psych, or something, if this one track
stretched out and filled up the whole record, it STILL would have been
Record Of The Week.

The band do have a surprisingly broad palette though, whether
it's the subdued acid folk Appalachia of "Goathead", or the organ
driven Afro-groove of the appropriately titled "Disco Fever", with its
percussion heavy funk swaddled in progged out organs, and then there's
the equally funky "Golden Down", that sounds like some Southeast Asian
Sublime Frequencies jam, but here cranked up, the guitars super
distorted, the bass dangerously buzzy, the sound blissfully in-the-
red, the drums wild and loose, the ultimate heavy psychedelic dance
band, for those three minutes you can almost imagine these guys
jamming out at the edge of the world in some alternate dimension seedy
dive, with a dancefloor full of damned souls. Sweaty and swaggery and
fierce as fuck. "Let It Bleed" delivers a more laid back groove, and
even introduces some saxophone, which gives it the vibe once again of
some psych-ed up Ethiopian groove. "Run To Your Mama" melds serious
Sabbath-y riffage to some wild tribal percussion, and wailed vox,
while "Goatlord" unfurls some dark psych folk, replete with super
distorted heavy psych leads, over urgent strumming and cooed echo
drenched vox, sounding a bit like a more psychedelic Comus in fact.

And finally, the record finishes off with the epic "Det Som
Aldrig Forandras", with its bagpipe sounding opening, that quickly
explodes into a heady psychedelic groove, droned out and hypnotic, the
sort of jam that should/could have been ENDLESS, but instead, works
its way back to a seriously heavy psychedelic coda, bookending the
brief 3 minute opener, again, the sort of jam they could have
stretched out for another twenty minutes, and we would have been in
heaven, but the fact that it loops back around to the beginning, only
adds a strange sort of endless ritual vibe to the proceedings, and
makes it that much easier to play it all over again. And again. And
again. Forever.

Super swank, die cut, eye popping artwork too, on the cd and lp
both!

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