Zoom Unit - Sine Cosine Tangent

New releases from this Mansfield duo are always welcome so it's great we never have to wait too long between them. It's been less than a year since Astrocone Copperneck and Cyclops and we've had three excellent singles to keep us warm since then. This new album includes those three singles, a Leonard Cohen cover and a bunch of previously unheard tracks that do more that mould any expectations built up over that time into a form that exceeds them. The result is arguably their best album to date.

But Zoom Unit - who comprise Andy Whitehurst and Andy Pidluznyi - have been delivering for so long now any kind of misstep now feels unthinkable. I'm playing In a Lucid Dream in my FSK show this month (hear the show on-demand here) a track that combines dense electronic backing with the kind of out-of-control guitar thing some bands do which I just never get tired of. It's like taking some kind of sonic sledgehammer to something much-cherished and somehow managing to make it even better.

If other tracks are less frantic, and perhaps more representative of the anticipated Zoom Unit sound, they're no less pleasing for it (the breathy The Stars At Night is a particular favourite) and there's an unexpected delight at the end of the collection when the cover of Cohen's Tower of Song metamorphoses into something so immediately recognisable as Zoom Unit you'd swear they'd resurrected the bard of Montreal as an unofficial third member. Overstating it a bit, perhaps, but I'm prone to that when something excites me as much as this album does.

You can get the album as a CD or NYP download here. 

Osees - Off Course (Deathgod Corp.)

It's hard to overstate my feelings about Osees, John Dwyer's musical vehicle that's been churning out great tunes since the late 1990s and barely threatened any periods of inactivity ever since. Even when Dwyer switched home from San Francisco to LA, leaving his old line-up behind, there was barely a pause before he turned up with a new one.

Over the last dozen years of so, Osees (currently the preferred variation following Thee Oh Sees and Oh Sees) have shifted from a garage rock sound underpinned by Dwyer's erstwhile collaborator Peter Dammit!'s unique bass sound achieved by using a modified six-string guitar.

If Osees' style since then has become heavy, aided by the double drum attack of Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone, recently it's veered into something close to freakout territory, a move which these ears have been happy to approve. Off Course is this year's second release, following on the heels of spring's Cara Maluco EP and finds the deepening continuing. I'm playing the title track in my Dandelion show this month, while my FSK show features the extraordinary Hecate's Reflection is a Trick.

The idea of a year with an Osees release always feels wrong. This year we get two. Dive in here.

Vert:x/VX

Following yesterday's foray into the world of The Chasms, it seems appropriate to follow that with a journey into another fascinating world, that of their sometime collaborators Vert:x.Vert:x recorded four sessions for my show in 2010, 2018, 2019 and 2021 and VX, the solo offshoot of main man Neil Whitehead, have recorded two more and there was also a joint session with The Chasms in 2012.

Basically, listening to the show means Vert:x beoome difficult to avoid, and why would you want to? Like The Chasms, there's a krautrock foundation to what they do, sprinkled with lashings of psychedelic guitar and electronica, the latter very much the focus of the VX project. If you have somehow managed to miss them, their fascinating series of albums, including a couple of great collaborations with Pete Hope, can be found here. 

A couple of those sessions are available there too. 

If that's not enough - and why would it be? - you can get all the VX material on their bandcamp site.

In my Dandelion show this month, I'm featuring the extraordinary Full Fathom Five, from the 1947 album that was released on my Unwashed Territories label back in 2018. I only had time to play the radio edit in the show but you can still get hold of the full release here or at the Vert:x site, including the full 15.56 version which made the Festive Fifty that year.

The Chasms

This Isle of Man three piece remain, for me, the band against whom all others in the current millennium must be measured.

Their existence spanned a mere three years and, in that time, they produced four stunning albums and became a mainstay of both my show and the wider Dandelion Radio landscape. They didn't misstep once, producing a glorious motorik-driven drone around which Mike Seed's loosely weave.

Reviewing their Alchemical Postcards album in 2011, I called it in my now defunct Unwashed Territories blog 'the latest in a series of mesmerising releases by what we must now surely label the world's best band.'

Their appeal hasn't waned with time. Assisted by Neil Whitehead of Vert:x, they released one final album - Winter Arcade - in 2012 before disappearing from our lives. Mike Seed and Richard Quirk have released some fine solo material since then but it's no disservice to their solo output to say that nothing - either by them or anyone else - has matched the chemistry that this band conjured up together during that period.

In this month's Dandelion show, I'm playing a track from their first Dandelion Radio session, recorded for Pete Jackson's show in September 2009. You can get it at the band's bandcamp site, which also has all four albums available for download:

Advance Paranoia, Advance (2009)

Index of Spirits (2010)

Alchemical Postcards (2011)

Winter Arcade (2012)

Also available on the site are the two Pete Jackson sessions, a session they recorded for my show in collaboration with Vert:x and a Christmas tune specially recorded for my show in 2009.