Machines Learning – Pendragon’s Lullaby

I’ve been alerted to this six track EP by Machine Learning’s guitarist/vocalist Paul Balmer, one third of the band’s line-up alongside bassist Bradley Botbyl and drummer Mario Quintero. Can’t tell you much more about them, but they tag themselves as akin to Smashing Pumpkins (with justice), shoegaze and space-rock among other things, and as San Diego so I’m guessing that’s where these folks hail from. What they play is a glorious mess of noise and melody, all fuzz and distortion playing across something sweeter. Remember when Jim Reid claimed that he didn’t realise that the Jesus & Mary Chain were making so much distortion and that he thought he was singing like a bird? (Yeah, right). Well, that’s something of what happens with Machines Learning.

The contrast is in the switch from the noise-fest of ‘Bulletproof Tiger’ and ‘Punching The Rabbit’, frantic conflagrations of sonic attacks meshing themselves over Balmer’s vocals, and the cleaner sound of the title track with Bobyl’s determined, dominant, bass lines as it switches from its rough-hewn but un-fuzzed origins into another tightly played melodic cacophony that Billy Corgan himself might have been proud of. ‘satAMcoffee’ delves, probes, even deeper into gritty denseness while Quintero gets particularly punchy on ‘010710’, another one that sharply blends its dual characteristics of grunge with melodic underbelly and, again that Pumpkins analogy, sits square into Machina/The Machines Of God territory, which makes it exciting and very worthwhile in my book.

‘This Destroyed Me’, plays it all out with a pensive, haunting and melancholic mood-swing that lingers in the mind and adds substance and atmosphere to what’s gone before it. Very Smart Stuff.

Machines Learning @ Bandcamp

Oresund Space Collective – Give Your Brain A Rest From The Matrix

Regular blog followers will undoubtedly know the score with Oresund Space Collective who are a revolving group of space-rock musicians from, variously, Denmark, Sweden and America, with Scott Heller taking a pivotal role and this time out including Steve Hayes among the musicians involved. Scott gets over to the UK on a semi-regular basis for the same concerts as I'm always aiming to attend and very rarely actually make so though we've corresponded across the ether I've never actually met him – though we were in the same bar at a gig in Oxfordshire a few years back and didn't realise it. I'm looking forward to catching up with him some place, some time, but in the meanwhile there's always his great CDs to look forward to and the latest batch brought this new OSC recording and one that Scott's had a hand in recording and mixing by Danish 'space psychedelic krautrock band' Troldmand – Live At Loppen – which I'll write-up over the next few days.

OSC's Give Your Brain A Rest From The Matrix notes itself as being a call-out to people to disconnect from the smart phone Internet generation and kick back with relaxing sounds instead. Seems sound advice to me and this collection of four extended improvisations is exactly what the doctor ordered to slip out of the pressures and demands of the modern workplace and society and get lost in some psychedelic travelogues that takes us to Eastern, Far Eastern and Interstellar head spaces.

These are tracks cut back in September 2010, during the sessions that also conjured up their Entering Into The Space Country and Phaze Your Fears albums, albeit with modestly different line-ups contributing to the free-flowing jamming that is the OSC modus operandi. As always, there's a looseness to the playing on these tracks that allows the various players to follow their muses around a central theme or idea, or just a particular tone, and it's that sense of aural exploration and freeness to take a tangent or a deviation from the starting point that creates such a meditative luminance to their work. The title track has an Eastern flavour to it in principle but it that flows in and out of what they're playing so that it's a texture without being an overpowering 'flavour' to the music. On first hearing it I pegged it into having something of It Is The Business Of The Future To Be Dangerous about it and yet when I sit down to write about it with it running through my computer speakers I hear it differently and wonder where that notion derived from – and then it's shifting sands and perhaps that notion on another listen in another context on a different day would resurface.

I think that's what's so captivating and interesting about the OSC works that I've heard over the last few years, that spirit of improvisation and following where the music leads somehow becomes imbued into the pressing of the music onto physical format so that it's spirit shifts and moves on each listening – maybe because the music wanders so much from its inception to its close. 'Mainstream Is The New Acid' suggests track two, a light and spacious dream world that seems to float out of the speakers, melodic and hallucinogenic and the absolute encapsulation of that notion of freeing ourselves from the always-on demands of today. 'Step Into The Other World' is, for more, Far Eastern, Oriental, mysterious and ancient, civilized but of a different civilization and yet my kids, perhaps more properly now that I hear it again – that sense always of taking different things from the music on different listens – picture it as being Indian in its Eastern vibe; pictures painted musically. A lovely piece.

'Cerebral Massage' plays this one out, a more lively and innovative piece that bubbles up with freshness and vitality. Heavier than what has come before with some sharp and robust drumming propelling the musicians along in the most space-rock track in this set. A very smart collection in total that I see for European customers to the OSC website is priced at only €10 (I assume this the album that Scott notes on the OSC website as having been produced by the pressing company as CD-R instead of glass master CD and reduced in price by the band accordingly). It's a bloody bargain and restricted to 500 copies so please get in early and get your head out of the social networking matrix for an hour in the company of some great sounds.

Oresund Space Collective Website

Oresund Space Collective @ Bandcamp

Fruits de Mer Current Releases

I said in Record Collector recently that Fruits de Mer are quickly becoming a collectable label in their own right; they've a quality to their selection of releases that's extremely strong and though I don't get to review everything that they send over for promotion purposes there's always a little thrill of anticipation when one of their CDR review copies for their vinyl-only catalogue drops through the letterbox. I don't love everything they issue – in any case their psychedelic-folk range is far encompassing and never going to be consistently to any particular person's liking – but the attention to detail from the outer envelope through to the inner promotional material and on to the music itself is just so impressive.. and, frankly, it mostly is to my liking, for sure! So I just think that what these guys do is provide an immense service to musicians and listeners alike and I absolutely cherish being privileged in being on their review radar.

Their release of Permanent Clear Light's 7" 'Higher than the Sun' (b/w 'Afterwards') is a case in point. Due on 13^th October, it's a limited to 800 copies coloured vinyl that continues a Fruits de Mer trend of releasing records where one side is an original and the other a cover version. PCL are a Finnish band, formed back in 2009 to play experimental, avant-garde jazz-rock though the A-side here is a beautiful and warmly melancholic song that's far more approachable, involving and immediate then sometimes those epithets suggest or deliver. There's a suggestion that it contains shades of 'Golden Brown' and I sort of hear that ... sort of ... and it could indeed be likened to just beyond that era of The Stranglers, but honestly I just hear it as a deliciously absorbing slice of sunshine lightness with a contrasting emotional depth. 'Afterwards' is a cover of the track from Van Der Graaf Generator's The Aerosol Grey Machine LP. I'll admit that although I've reviewed some Peter Hamill and some VDGG releases over the years, neither Hamill as a solo artist or VDGG themselves have ever really been significant in my listening, so I'm not going to be able to make a sensible comparison between this cover and the source material but again PCL's version has an appealing lightness to it that I'd not particularly associate with Hamill's work. I really liked both sides here.

American 'psychedelic maverick' Anton Barbeau has a three-track 7" on the same day, again one original song, the whimsical and up-tempo 'Psychedelic Mynde of Moses'. Here's what I mean about FdM's promotional material: "In a better world," they say, "everyone would still buy music on vinyl, this would be a hit single, Anton would be a superhero and bags of fruit pastilles would have no green ones in them." They are so right, my friends. Barbeau is firmly in a place where musicians such as Paul Roland, Robyn Hitchcock and Bevis Frond are sometimes found to inhabit – indeed Nick Saloman turns up to provide a guest turn on guitar on the lead track. The covers here are an anarchic take on Hitchcock's 'Sometimes I Wish I Was a Pretty Girl' and one that my old mates Keith Topping and Martin Day would both greatly appreciate, a minimalist, lo-fi but still effects-and-fuzz-laden version of Julian Cope's 'Out Of My Mind On Dope And Speed'. Ah it reminds me of happy days playing Marty's copy of Skellington up at his Kensal Rise bedsit after a beer-heavy Thursday night at the Fitzroy. (You've no idea what I'm talking about, have you?). I bloody loved everything on this one as well.

Links:

Fruit de Mer Records

The Eccentronic Research Council – 1612 Underture

Last time I was writing on a record steeped in Lancastrian occult folklore and delivered with Krautrock trappings was in Record Collector and the release was Earthling Society's Stations of the Ghost album, of which I noted "It's a heavy cauldron of oppressive moods that also takes in dark folk and their trademark lo-fi Krautrock vibe." Here's another album founded in the same surroundings and also dependent to a large extent on similar textures, this time by Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer, The Eccentronic Research Council.

1612 Underture is, in their words, "one part political commentary and feminist manifesto and two parts theatrical fakeloric sound poem. Exactly 400 years since the trials and executions of the 12 women now known as The Pendle Witches, a purpose assembled collective ... pay homage to the legendary Lancastrian sisterhood." That collective includes the actor Maxine Peake – a smashing performer who is never less than excellent in everything she does and, if I recall correctly, someone who in a past interview alluded to being something of a, perhaps lapsed, Hawkwind and Gong fan – whose no-nonsense delivery of Flanagan's words is the emotional heart of a record that, from their own description, would sound depressive and introspective but which masterfully blends a very serious and rightfully righteous indignation with a well-defined sense of character and humour. It might have a soundtrack that largely depends on being akin to the output of the bastard lovechild of Delia Derbyshire and Dik-Mik Davies, Radiophonic Workshop bleeps and signals merge with intricately minimalist Krautrock patterns and experimental electronic tunes, but it's an immensely listenable, compelling and absorbing record (CD currently, vinyl LP to follow).

Some of the material seems designed to play to the strengths of their key collaborator; 'Trial by Jiggery Pokery' is a thought-provoking rumination on the nature of justice and the manner in which the process that delivers 'justice' can be distorted, with Peake's impassioned recitation being a Martha Costello-esque performance straight out of an episode of Silk, all passion and determination and a need to say that this isn't right or that what we do here, this doesn't equate to justice. Elsewhere they play to strength, with Peake's broad northern accent giving a deadpan delivery to the notion that the A666 might be misnamed as 'The Devil's Highway' since "I can't believe the Devil came from Bolton ... and I don't believe he was ever a fan of Chris Rea". It's simply deliciously sardonic but genuinely humorous stuff that really brings the colour and shade to this work.

It's clear then that their homage to the Pendle Witches isn't a dryly historic rumination but something that juxtaposes light and dark, and it's also a starting point for a very contemporary opinion piece that at times, whether that be through its examination of the nature of law or particularly on the final track, 'The Ghost of Old Elisabeth Southerns Returns...', which with its list of modern curses (the Jeremy Kyle/Matthew Wright audience, Rabid Cameron, crocs and flip-flops, the ancient law books [still] used today...) is withering and sharp in the manner that it finds things mediocre, lacking in substance, or archaic. And in being that sharp, that direct and to the point, actually it's intriguing and challenging. It's quite the best new record that I've heard this year so far.

Best Track: 'Curious Morbids'. "We pulled into a heritage centre with Doctor Who as a narrator..." OK, not, not the best track – though for Peake's delivery of that opening line alone I'd so want it to be, but actually I'd pick out the arrangement of 'Another Witch is Dead', a conflagration of sound poem and song with Peake and the vocalist Philly Smith working alongside and across each other in unsettling call and response.

Links:

The Eccentronic Research Council Website

Alan Davey – Cyber Tooth

There's a lot of material that's been backed up for review here since the blog has been on an unintended hiatus over the spring and what laughingly passed for the summer months so I suspect that blog entries in the coming week will focus on new records by 'friends of the blog', since I've received new albums from Alan Davey and Sendelica, and the next in the sequence of extended and amended reissues from the Paul Roland catalogue, to name just three in addition to the excellent new Litmus album already covered.

In some ways, holding off from reviewing Cyber Tooth, Alan Davey's latest solo offering, has been a good thing. I know that Alan feels this record to be his strongest solo release to date, whereas for me it has been something of a grower as opposed to the immediate WOW factor of Eclectic Devils, its most recent predecessor. I started off somewhat nonplussed on this album, or more probably not understanding the change in direction that Alan has taken with here, but have enjoyed it more each time I've come back to it. So I'm that at point where I'm finding it a much stronger, more cohesive album than, for instance, Human on the Outside, even if I still want to mark it lower than Eclectic Devils which, in any case, contains the majestic 'Encounter', probably the best track on any Davey solo LP, and the hugely impressive 'Angel Down' with Simon House's guest appearance – so it's a damned hard act to follow.

Cyber Tooth has been on sale for quite a few months now, so I suspect that blog regulars will either have it already or at least know something of the concept of this one but for those needing to catch up on all things in Alan's world – and by gosh this is a driven musician with such a lot of range and so many projects on the juggle to demonstrate that – this, in his own words, is about a computer virus that "eats PC flesh but can't eat Apples... yet."

It's a fairly dark album in texture and in tone – and heavily into its instrumental sequences. Davey's bass lines and keyboards have rarely sounded so brooding, and on tracks such as 'Harmonic Orgone', the whole instrumentation – Davey plays everything on this record – is introspective and moody in a way that we've probably never heard from him before. In that respect, we're getting an unexpected record here, one of maturity and considered experimentation that doesn't rely on what the artist has done before but looks for new avenues and pathways to expand the range of music being played. It's as though Gunslinger has absorbed the full-on rocker within Davey's musical personae and this solo album – much like the path he took with Bridget Wishart on their Djinn collaboration but in a less pronounced way – has been the conduit for a different style and approach.

Perhaps this is what took away the immediacy from this record – they way he's working is still familiar in parts and if you were played most tracks cold then you'd finger them as being by Alan Davey pretty much from the start but it's still enough of a deviation, or more properly I guess an expansion, to have you running to catch up with the new routes that he's taking here. And perhaps that in part is because he's nailed his concept material, the whole inner-workings of computer technology thing, its impact on us and the way that we've created for ourselves a new method of our own destruction through computer viruses and spyware programming.

In Record Collector this month (September cover date) I'm reviewing Paul Hayles' Lastwind album, Return of a Sonic Assassin,and contrasting its cohesion with what I'd previously felt to be the more ramshackle scattergun of the latest Hawkwind release, Onward. The same would apply here, really. I mean, hell, the same would apply to all of Alan Davey's post-Hawkwind solo albums. There's a sense of flow and continuity to this record that knows its history and realises how to build on that by keeping core musical themes while spreading out to new bases so that it's the quintessential space-rock that we're craving but with a flexibility and an ambitiously roving creative eye. So I'm pleased I didn't review it on receipt and, while I'll stick to my guns on Cyber Tooth in comparison to Eclectic Devils, I'm pretty pleased with what I'm getting from this record's repeated plays.

Pick of the album: 'Cyber Tooth'. The title-track, though it's situated at midpoint, really sets up the concept at work here. 'Cyber Tooth has a nasty bite / cyber tooth gets in at night / cyber tooth will eat your disc / invisible spyware fist'. It's gritty and relentless.

Links:

Alan Davey Official Website

Litmus - Slaughterbahn

Has it really been six months since I've had the opportunity to work on updating this blog? It seems so, looking at the most recent posting and discovering that it was uploaded back in March. It's been a fragmented few months since then, with the writing highlight having been my free festivals bands feature in Record Collector's August edition, while I've also done some work on a second edition of Sonic Asssassins and am a long way into finishing an update of Strange Boat – Mike Scott & The Waterboys. The latter will be an e-book only release for the moment, whereas there may be some positive news on the Hawkwind update/rewrite before the year is out. Festivalized, however, is in a bit more of a state of flux, looking either for a new publisher or for a slot in the schedule to reformat it as an e-book and print on demand. More on that one as it develops, really.

That six months pales into insignificance really; can it really be three years since I was interviewing Martin Litmus on the occasion of the release of the third Litmus album, Aurora? It seems it was, and since then we've been left wondering what was happening to British space-rock's Kings-in-waiting. They'd already self-issued their debut LP, You Are Here, and gotten themselves the attention of the modern Hawkwind audience, had a clutch of great reviews for Planetfall, released by Rise Above Records, supported Julian Cope – this blogger saw them go down a storm with Cope's packed audience at the Fleece in Bristol – and then really compounded their potential with the excellent Aurora, also on Rise Above.

And then they sort of faded away. They had a few line-up changes, particularly behind the keyboards and synths and, I guess real life possibly also got in the way of taking things further, and it seemed for a while as though we might not be treated to fourth album. But then Slaughterbahn arrived, recorded by the core trio of Simon (vocals, guitar, synth, audio generator), Martin (Vocals, bass, mellotron, synth, audio generator) and Marek (Vocals, drums, synths). They've added James on keyboards for live dates and I see they've secured the opening slot for Hawklords at their tour gig at Hastings (The Carlisle) on 7^th November. So I'm hoping this is the start of a well-deserved resurgence for this band.

As with Aurora, there is a real continuity from You Are Here inherent in Slaughterbahn that sets the three records apart from Planetfall. I described that one as having an industrial influence back when it was released, a notion that if you revisit the interview with Martin from 2009 you'll find he didn't really agree with, but it's certainly a heavier and colder affair than any of the other three Litmus records and if I'm honest I'm very happy that again they've eschewed that approach in favour of the melodies and harmonics that make their other albums approachable and highly appealing.

In an unpublished review of Aurora I talked about this album's immediate predecessor as showing that Litmus had broken free of convenient journalistic shticks with a contemporary sci-fi swish that might be possessed of elongated improvisation but was based on solid verse, chorus foundations and noted how on Planetfall, they'd produced a juggernaut heavy rock album that obscured the more thoughtful parts of their work. I felt they'd avoided repeating that on Aurora by recording the guitar/bass/drums at Foel Studios in Wales and then overdubbing with well-judged keyboards back at base, before commenting that saturating their basic sound in this way produced an immensely satisfying album of depth.

In fact I'd comment on Slaughterbahn in very much the same terms. Its twelve tracks are generally focused, sharp and to the point, with only a handful exceeding the five minute mark. They've retained their trademark vocal style which is based on an almost chanting methodology, as though they are descending down on to the Earth to preach their interstellar message but where last time out they were declaiming "We are Kings of infinite space" now they are appealing to be given "the stars / the future" or talking about how "with endless possibilities / standing senseless / the future stretches out before us." I don't know why we've not treasured what we've got in this band so much more quite frankly; I'm not hearing many other bands ploughing this furrow with so much fire, verve and accuracy. To my ears they've completely nailed that amalgamation of driving riffs, bass lines that cut right through to the heart of the sound, keyboard soundscapes and sci-fi imagery that really is the foundation for great space-rock. Slaughterbahn is a dynamic and exciting collection of songs which are going to go down so well in a live environment and, going back to that notion of resurgence, I'm hoping that this record, self-released and self-promoted though it is, is a positive restatement and restart for Litmus – it bloody well should be.

Pick of the album: 'Streamers', a genuinely brilliant, up-tempo and life-affirming three and a half minutes. "Head on through a wall of sound ... scion magenta / yellow corona / white star supernova ... see the streamers tearing through the walls."

Links:

Buy Slaughterbahn direct

Read Anton Stokes account of designing the artwork

Astralfish – Far Corners

Here's another album that I mentioned during the Christmas blogs sequence; essentially an off-shoot of Spirits Burning – or more to the point of the Spirits Burning with Bridget Wishart sequence of records – Astralfish is Don Falcone and Bridget Wishart in instrumental mode producing sixteen tracks that "mixes space, ambient, jazz, rock and symphonic," with support from Daevid Allen (who appears on the track 'Far'), Richard Wileman of Karda Estra, Martin Plumley of Chumley Warner Bros, Culture Shock's Jasper Pattison, Mooch's Steve Palmer and a number of other members of the space rock, Spirits Burning, fraternity.

Don and Bridget certainly do explore all of those genres that they identify in their press release, but the record still sounds like a cohesive whole. These are short, sometimes almost thumbnail sketched tracks – none of the elongated movements that so often appear on records reviewed here – and it's fresh and approachable because of that. At the same time, the textures through the pieces have a nicely varied feel due to the revolving cast of musicians and instrumentations. So 'Summer Snake', gloriously smoky and atmospheric, derives its sense of identity from Purjah's tenor sax, while 'Riding The Seasons' is informed by Cyndee Lee Rule's violin and across all of the tracks there's Bridget's EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument) delivering a range of tones from violin to oboe, French horn to pipes, synths to guitars. 'Key Rings' has a bright ease about it that colours-up its repeated electronic rhythms, 'Cloud Gather' cuts a heavier line with some nicely distorted guitar work – it's all about that sense of range.

So, while it's not really possible to describe this simply as a diverting change from standard Don Falcone / Spirits Burning fare, since there are other diversions from the SB format that Don's been releasing recently, such as the ambient-industrial Grindlestone album Tone from late last year, and because SB fare is 'non-standard' and unpredictable in any case, Far Corners clearly represents another angle both on Don's work generally and his collaborations with Bridget more specifically. It's a little 'background' perhaps but again that's part of what makes it work – I do like to have this sort of thing easing the work along when I'm writing – and it's multi-faceted enough to intrigue the listener into following its gentle meanderings, listening out for the next texture change and picking out its nuances and moods.

Band Website (MP3s on-line)

R2 (Rock N Reel) – March/April 2012

Issue #32 of R2 Rock N Reel landed here over the weekend. This issue I've got an 'Insight' interview with Mr Bevis Frond himself, Nick Saloman, on his recently ended sabbatical from the music industry and the marvellous new Frond album The Leaving of London and another 'Insight' piece with the wonderful Hazel O'Connor on her recent three-way album with Claire Hirst and Sarah Fisher, I Give You My Sunshine. Both interviews ran much longer than the 600 words of an R2 Insight piece and 'unused' bits may well appear here in due course. I'm also in the review pages writing about a number of new CD releases of which the most interesting to blog readers will be the intricate and intelligent album by Andrew Keeling & Otherworld [Keeling is an author of a King Crimson study and has collaborated with Crimson violinist David Cross), Bells of Heaven, and the folk, sometimes dark folk, album of Totnes-based Mae Karthauser's Mae and the Midnight Horses album Black Horses. Next issue is their annual festivals special – watch out for that one in a couple of months time.

American Hollow – Whisper Campaign

I mentioned this band from Salt Lake City during one of my Christmas posts and following on from that received a copy of the their debut album Whisper Campaign, released back in 2010, which is an intriguing and enjoyable mix of styles that doesn't particularly wander too far from their progressive metal modus operandi, even while it delves into some stuff that's more spacey or even ambient, but which still delivers ten distinctively powerful and atmospheric tracks. American Hollow are Kyle Mullikin, Chronos, Jameson, and Nathan Alan Gilbert.

They kick-off with a brooding and militaristic instrumental , 'Terronoia', which sets up a heavily oppressive mood in its drum patterns while a more optimistic chink of light breaks through before letting rip with some very strong songs that have a density and darkness to them that reminds somewhat of Porcupine Tree in places – I'm thinking particularly of 'Variable' here but it does apply across the ten tracks of this record. Partly perhaps that's the deliberateness that they seem to move their way across their songs, there's a coiled spring within their work that keeps straining to break free but is held-back, properly restrained, by the musicians, and that adds to the layers in the texture of their work very effectively.

That sense of holding back and holding down the songs, led by the considered bass lines and drums also gives their songs a pensive quality and a tension that is palpable – 'Gravity' delivers this musical tautness in spades, the song straining at its leash and creates a claustrophobic aura that demands a rapt attention.

Elsewhere it's conflagration of grinding guitars against clear and sharp vocals that imbues their tightly-sprung energy with an urgency and life, alongside the manner in which they splash different pallets of sound against the more traditional rock elements of their music – it's not that they want to imbue these tracks with lots of experimentalism but in each number there are moments of the unexpected – the where did that sound come from and the how did they get something to sound like that – which expands their aural range.

When they finally cut lose – 'Blow Wind! Bring Forth Storm' – they really pounce on the listener and the track is sharply named for the maelstrom that's produced – but there's still an eye in the storm for reflection and a reminding that whatever you think you're getting with this album, American Hollow will turn it around and give you something different. When those militaristic drum patterns return – 'Terranoyed' – they underpin a different mood and musical tone altogether – melancholic and reflective. It's that sort of record, you think you've got a handle on it and it's moved on again.

http://www.americanhollowband.com/info.php

Record Collector – March 2012

Just picked up the latest issue of Record Collector wherein I'm covering some very good new CDs and a really quite excellent book. The most relevant to the blog is a new compilation of psychedelic-progressive Russian music that's been released by friends-of-the-blog Trail Records in the US and is entitled Tripwave. The review is also currently on-line on RC's website and can be found here. Over the Christmas period I enthused here about the latest Paul Roland reissue, 'Masque', and in this issue I'm reviewing it in print, along with New Church, the new studio from former Shane McGowan collaborators The Popes and Fantagraphics' exhaustive study of Black Power music, Listen Whitey!, written by Mushroom musician Pat Thomas. Great releases all.