***"A gradual arc from low key tropical travelogue into full blown fantasy exotica. Born Of Earth's Torments is the most varied of the three, registering somewhere between Martin Denny and Jules Verne. Tracks such as 'Body Core' bubble and fizz roots and stems of various traditional styles, as though a transistor radio is simultaneously receiving Japanese percussion and music from the inside of a bazaar. Effigy Mounds was created as 'an imagined field recording in a hallucinatory cave, where collaged snippets of tape reveal the gradual opening of a deep portal'. Meanwhile, other tracks such as 'Flight Of The Westward Star' are fuggy and intense, as though early indigenous psychedelics are permeating back through cave rock—a kind of stoned ape theory, conjuring images of eerie Neolithic ritual. Magic Mirror mixes in 1960s sci-fi TV vibes, with tracks like 'Tower Of Preserved Magus In Egg' suggesting unidentified artifacts glistening at the edge of your vison. Corum's work avoids the mere emulation of exotica and its tropes through the sense of adventure that his landscapes present."—Spenser Thompson, Wire Magazine
3XMC $29.50
03/08/2024
***A newly unvaulted Fake Hospital Group Operators band performing Never Use the Same Door Twice in a live transmission celebrating the 10th anniversary release of album by the same. Recorded live & transmitted on radio in Los Altos, California by KFJC 89.7.
MC $10.00
03/08/2024
***"Corum's work avoids the mere emulation of exotica and it's tropes through the sense of adventure that his landscapes present. This is most evident on Never Use The Same Door Twice, originally released prior to the Beguiling Isles trilogy in 2011. Comprised of six parts, these pieces are heavy with slow-moving tension and fuzzy as though scathed by repeated replication. A compelling listen and an engaging early piece of the Psychic Sounds puzzle."—Spenser Thompson, Wire Magazine
MC $10.00
03/08/2024
***“Place of the Hidden Sun is a minimal abstract mystery of human beatbox style hyper rhythmic arrangements weaved with strange fields of glimmering melody to create lo-fi spiraling pop ambience. Hailing from Milan, Italy, Adele H. uses looping repetitive flowing vocals worked into beautiful circular figures adding pulses of breath, claps and hand percussion paced on repeated short spoken pieces. There's so much going on, and the vocals are more like another instrument, like a more psychedelic, more augmented textual brilliance. Corum plays soft focus prismatic choral shimmers underpinned by woozy high end melodies molded into new warped shapes of sound. The result is is strangely hypnotic, not just the words, but the percussive elements of recorded female vocals that are transformed into beats sprinkled amorphous shards of choral synthesizer, creating weirdly meditative trancelike expanses.”
MC $10.25
09/29/2015
***Mercury Vineyard Surgeries is an emerging album by Grant Corum, and in this occasion he introduces a new entity from his domain; The Orchardist, a Mercurial cryptopodian-like astrologer, magician and pianist whose melodies induce surgeon vines to heal, in this case, the listener… These nine atmospheric tracks sound very ethereal and sparse, compared to older works by Corum, where rhythm reigned his zones. This time he abandons the drums and flutes, and uses electric, wind and water sounds, the cycles seem less automatic, evoking tension, relaxation and confusion, like organic machinery at the Akashic pavilion operating your systems... noted upon its initial bloom in 2018 by Nonlocal Research, who originally released this album as a limited edition for a full U.S. tour across the States in which the cassettes were scattered like seeds... Intended as a prelude for a larger body of work, due out later this year, Psychic Sounds has released a fully remastered vision, with new artwork, by Corum, which includes a stunning hand-numbered double-sided 2-color screen-print insert depicting the scenes of the science & mystery involved. Edition of 100 copies.
LP $35.95
TBD