Psych / Garage Rock

Review: Black Market Karma return with the second chapter in their two-part Fuzz Club album series. Written, recorded, and produced by Stanley Belton, it's the imperfections and unplanned happenings that are the real joy of this ode to 1960s and 1970s psychedelic rock & roll will modern beats. A striking follow up to Wobble, it's fuzzy, crackly, angular and strikingly human considering it's fundamentally electronic. "Mellowmaker was made immediately after Wobble, I kinda see them as two sides of each other", Belton has been quoted as saying. "With these two albums I've attempted to crystallise how it feels to be stuck between a feeling of amnesia of the soul and the earthly experience of piloting a meat suit... I'm still chasing that longing intangible 'Hiraeth' feeling. The sense of wanting to find our way home to a place that maybe doesn't exist."

Review: Four years, a lot of gigs, and a change of lineup are all that have stood between Vyvyd and The Uncanny Extravaganza. New Candys triumphant return after the best part of a half decade is exactly that, unleashing some of the most powerful tracks in their oeuvre after no less than two years spent writing, recording and producing them. Which is ironic, given the raw, unfettered distortion that makes much of what's here so compelling and utterly devastating. It would sound off-the-cuff, it it weren't so complex. The Uncanny Extravaganza is one of those records that makes you genuinely excited about the prospect of seeing a band live again. It's loud - even if you've got the volume down - and its disharmonious, it's soaring and distant yet immediate and up front. It's psyche-infused garage rock with a dusting of raucous shoegaze (if that's possibly a thing), at times nodding to the likes of Ringo Deathstar or Death In Vegas, in other moments Spiritualised. Or maybe that's just us.

Review: 'Behind The Green Door' understands the power of lunging rhythms. A one-man-band by some estimations - the 'group' has just a single permanent member, Danny "Lee Blackwell" Rajan Billingsley, with the founder, drummer James Traeger, only involved intermittently. And this isn't the only norm defied. Psychedelic garage rock for some, to us it's a kind of hypnotic, swampy, choral thing with shades of rhythm and blues and soul. With plenty of encouragement to chant. In 2023, Night Beats dropped a sixth studio album, Rajan, and then promptly ran back into the same ether that's been obscuring them from many views since 2009. Still, if you caught a glimpse then, or rather an earshot, and took the brave decision to follow, here's where we've wound up - and it sounds awesome.