The Creation were one of London's premier Mod bands, along with The Small Faces and The High Numbers (The Who). The recent movie "Rushmore" uses the song "Makin' Time" in it's TV ads.

2nd CD by the San Francisco duo that has been loved and recommended to me by NCP Music Director Paul Collegio for some time now. Matmos is the US contribution to a pool of artists that include Berlin's Pole, England's V/VM (Volume Versus Masses) and Stock, Hausen, and Walman. There are 7 songs on this CD, and each have an explanation of how they were made on the inside booklet. 1: Balloons, whoopee cushion, sysnthesizer, 4: Samples taken from "silent recordings". The set up is as follows; a 4-channel tape recorder, with nothing input into it, records. Two walky-talkies are held above the recorder and both are placed in "transmit" mode- the resulting waves of interference can be gesticularly in the manner of a theremin. Silent interference registers upon the circuitry as sound. 5: composed entirely from samples of improvisations on a five string banjo. 7: all sounds generated by manipulating a stretched wet latex t-shirt. You can tell this will be something different from usual. It is that and more.

Pip's favourite band finally see's some proper reissue action on this series of reissues on the UK Snapper label. Each of the disc's have bonus tracks, and well as CD-ROM video's and photo galleries that are top notch. This is The Pretty Thing's first album from 1965. The Pretty Things were the baddest at the time. You remember the way the Stones were thought of in comparison to the Beatles? The Pretty Things were that far dirtier and wilder than the Stones. Bowie covered 2 songs(!) from this record on his Pin Ups CD ('Rosalyn', and 'Don't Bring Me Down')

We have the 'London' 7inch in this series too, on this subsidiary label of Guided Missile. Yummy Fur have a strong song recorded in the 'Sexy World' (their latest album) sessions. The song ("Shivers") kicks, and features the current long song-good production plan the band has been practicing lately, as opposed to the (still great) minute long spazz out bursts they used to record on 4 and 8 track studios. Mogwai have a short instumental that features their bass heavy sound. El Hombre Trajeado (The Suited Man) also have a CD on Guided Missile. They play mostly instrumental songs that sound like the instrumental parts of Arab Strap crossed with Hendrix (a listener gave the Hendrix reference when he called to ask what he was listening to). The Karelia used to be called the Blisters. We have songs from them under that name on the 'Prole Life' CD compilation in our library, which came out on Cherry Red Records to chronicle the Glasgow bands in 1995.

Their brand newest 4 song release. Most of these songs are on the K Records Make-Up CD, but now , after seeing them headline over ? & The Mysterians at the Middle East last Friday you can hear them the way they were meant to be, on the original 12".

Improvisers with a difference: S, H & W aka Matt Wand, Dan Weaver and Andrew Sharpley use sampler technology to access sounds from all available sources: B-Movie soundtracks, documentary, modern dance, hapless voices liberated from the air waves, white noise. These are overlaid and spontaneously organised (?) according to the dictates of their wicked, subversive whims.