Psych

New album: Tito Ramírez || El Prince

By / / Funk & Soul, Garage Rock, Psych / 2 Comments

And now for something completely different. Tito Ramírez started out as a masked mystery, but after five singles, one album (which really needs a repress!) and some exciting live shows, we now know we’re dealing with artist Pedro Poyatos aka Peter Boogie Parker (Los Granadians), who has dubbed himself “His most excellent perversity”, “The Kink of Mambo” and “El Prince”. The last two names are also the titles of his previous and new LP. On El Prince you’ll hear thirteen pieces of psychedelic rhythm ‘n’ blues, exuberant and uplifting, all danceable for people who know how to do the boogaloo. Expect a mash-up of timeless Latin soul (unmistakably the main ingredient), 60s garage beat and 50s rock ‘n’ roll, like an exotic soundtrack that doesn’t need a movie, because it takes no effort to envision a colorful world full of swinging adventures.

El Prince, produced by Óscar Martos, is out streaming and on vinyl LP through Antifaz Discos & El Volcán Música.

Add to wantlist: Discogs || Antifaz || El Volcán

New album: Les Lunatiques || Orange Flottant

By / / Garage Rock, Psych / Leave a Comment

Les Lunatiques are a garage-psych band from Québec City (Canada), who don’t really allow themselves to be pigeonholed. If you listened to the twelve tracks on their debut LP Orange Flottant and didn’t know any better, you might think it’s a compilation of different artists. And that’s a compliment on this one, because Antoine Bourque, Vincent Peake, Simon Paradis-Dionne and Alexandre Martel can do it all: from organ-laden garage rock that actually sounds too cheerful for its theme (Marie Dans Le Coma) to a guitar-driven variant (Nous Sommes De La Drogue, Toujours Les Mêmes Faces, Le Démon, Kick Of Laurie Foster), from funky post-punk (Faire Danser Les Morts) to electronic disco-punk (Toujours Les Mêmes Faces, J’ai Vomi), and from menacing psychedelic prog (Popcorn Psychédélique, 21H30) to melancholic 70s pop (Oh No, These Boots Aren’t Made For Playing Drums). Mostly sung in French, always energetic, dynamic and invigorating.



Orange Flottant is out now digitally via Dure Vie.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: Paddang || Chasing Ghosts

By / / Garage Rock, Psych, Punk / Leave a Comment

Paddang are a French three-piece that impressively capture concerns and anger about a world on the brink of collapse in their full-length debut album Chasing Ghosts. In eight dark songs, Thomas Boquel (guitar, vocals), Guirec Petton (bass) and Rémi Fournier (drums) mix mean post-punk and dynamic garage-psych to chase the ghosts of the past, to escape from a merciless daily life. This is an intense and clever guitar rock album with rich sound textures, as varied as energetic, dangerous and haunting, that leaves no doubt about its urgency.



Chasing Ghosts is out now digitally, on CD and vinyl LP through Morsure Records / Noise Circle. The beautiful cover art was created by Alligataure.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

Dusted || The 10 Best Cover Songs Of March 2023

By / / Alternative Rock, Country & Folk, Funk & Soul, Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Jangle Pop, Power Pop, Psych, Punk / 1 Comment

Not all new music is really new, as many artists cover songs. Sometimes these are songs by their favorite artists, eg as a tribute to such a musical hero for a special reason, or they simply feel that a song deserves to be dusted and polished to reacquaint fans with great songs from the past. Other times, bands cover songs as a parody. Regardless of intent, some of those cover versions are so good or so much fun, we’d like to put a spotlight on them. Chosen from a wide range, here are – in random order – ten of our favorite covers from last month – links to the pages where you can add them to your wantlist included.

March brought new tributes to Harlan Howard (by Willie Nelson), The Rolling Stones (various country artists), Sarah Records (Space Kelly) and Stevie Wonder (Family Company), cover albums from Van Morrison (Moving On Skiffle), Hether (Covered In Hether) and Jerry Leger (Latent Uncovers), and releases with some successful cover songs by Kim Ware, The Silversound, Bad Weed, Cold Expectations, The Naggs, Black Adidas, The Nude Party and The Black Crowes, but the next ten deserve the spotlight the most.

Cut Your Hair || Cover: Midtown || Original: Pavement
American pop-punk band Midtown disappeared from view after their 2004 Forget What You Know LP, as if they had taken its motto a little too seriously. Good news: they will return next month by releasing the covers EP We’re Too Old To Write New Songs So Here’s Some Old Songs We Didn’t Write (out May 26 via TAG Music). The title testifies to self-mockery, the song choices of youth sentiment, the sound of preserved skills. The first tastes in the form of Lagwagon’s Know It All and Pavement’s Cut Your Hair are very enjoyable, nice to be reminded of them.

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New album: The Silversound || The Silversound

By / / Blues & Roots, Psych / 1 Comment

The Silversound are a new project from four veterans of the Australian music scene. In the ten songs on their self-titled debut album, Shane O’Mara (vocals, guitar), Andrew Tanner (vocals, guitar), Leroy Cope (drums) and Stu Thomas (bass) take the time to show what they are capable of. A lot, it turns out. This is 73 minutes of psychedelic blues rock extravagance – not so much in the sense of lavishness, but as a groovy trip through colorful treats. The lyrics say it all: “Drink up the mystic // Dance with the Maker // Move ecstatic just like a Shaker” (from standout track Shaker). Although the playing is at times heavy, fuzzy and technically complex, it comes across as accessible and funky in terms of feel and sound. After nine mesmerizing originals, the record closes into the night with a subdued cover of Pink Floyd’s Fat Old Sun, from which the band takes its name: “The silver sound from a tongue so strange // Sing to me, sing to me.” Amazing.



The Silversound, produced by Shane O’Mara and mastered by Mickey Young, is out now digitally, on CD and vinyl 2LP through Cheersquad Records & Tapes.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New EP: PoPo || Dirt

By / / Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Power Pop, Psych / 2 Comments

Sometime in 2021, I stumbled upon a new band from Sweden called PoPo. Their music intrigued and I thought they had an interesting concept: “Sad songs, cheap sounds, monotonous drum beats and pictures of the popo.” I’ve been following them since, and not a month seems to pass by without a new release, each one with a new archival public domain (or museum) photo of police officers, always nicely credited to the owner of the photo. With some artists, the frequent notifications can be a reason to press the unfollow button on Bandcamp. Not with PoPo though, they have yet to release music I didn’t appreciate. Yet somehow, I’ve never got to write about them. Time to change that with Dirt, their most recent, and their best release yet.

Dirt has four songs, which like all of PoPo’s songs have an one word title: Stay, Hole, Girl and Stop. The songs are lo-fi pop songs hidden underneath a layer of noise and melancholy. If you like what you hear, make sure to dive into the band’s already impressive back catalogue on Bandcamp.



Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: The Lords of Altamont || To Hell With Tomorrow, The Lords Are Now

By / / Garage Rock, Psych / Leave a Comment

Exactly one year ago, The Lords of Altamont were on the road for a sold out tour, described as a nonstop party: lighting up stage after stage, night after night. This great recording of one of those raw and electrifying shows – at Utrecht’s DB’s (Studio Moscow) – gives you a pretty good idea of the noise and energy of the Californian psychedelic hard rock / garage punk band. Heavy guitar riffs and compelling solos, a driving drum beat, glamorous organ melodies and sing-along gang vocals, you wish you had been there. It also shows that the collective has written a number of fascinating hits in the past 20 years, which makes this record a nice entry point for those who didn’t know them yet.

To Hell With Tomorrow, The Lords Are Now, recorded by Guyom Pavesi, is out now digitally, on CD and vinyl LP through Heavy Psych Sounds.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Discogs || HPS

New single: Frankie || Als Sneeuw Voor De Zon

By / / Garage Rock, Psych / 2 Comments

We knew Frankie ‘Fuzz’ Lamberts from bands like The Colour Collection and The Ballet Bombs, so we realized that the Dutch singer-songwriter has something to offer, but what he now has cooked up solo is quite remarkable. His debut single Als Sneeuw Voor De Zon works like a time machine that takes us back to the psychedelic 60s. The cheerful Nederbeat song is listened to from Helsinki to Miami, and although people over there probably don’t understand the lyrics, the sound evokes both emotions and images that everyone feels. The B-side shows another side of the artist: The Babel Library (inspired by the book by Jorge Luis Borges) and You Won’t Let Down Your Hair (a fairy tale about an unworthy prince) are dreamy psych-folk songs that recall the baroque pop of Jacco Gardner’s first album.

“Als sneeuw voor de zon” translates as “like snow In front of the sun”, an expression to indicate that something disappears without a trace. However, something tells us that Frankie has created a classic that we will enjoy for a long time to come.


Als Sneeuw Voor De Zon, recorded by Arjan Spies, is out on yellow-white splatter 7″ vinyl through Soundflat Records.

Add to wantlist: Soundflat Mailorder

New album: Palooka 5 || Alien Grace

By / / Garage Rock, Psych / Leave a Comment

After Rough Magic (2018) and Ultra Marine (2020), UK sci-fi surf five-piece Palooka 5 return with their third full-length album, titled Alien Grace. Watch the video for the title track and you’ll know exactly what this band is all about. Tim Baigent (vocals, guitar, oscillator), Bethan Baigent (vocals, theremin), Alex McCallum (organ, piano), Si Fisk (bass) and Steve Bides (drums) play quirky good old rock ‘n’ roll – a party mix of 60s surf, garage rock and bubblegum pop – on original vintage instruments, without taking themselves too seriously. The six songs on side A are studio versions, quite entertaining and uplifting, fun to the max. But the four tunes that follow on side B were recorded live, showing even more what this colorful collective is capable of: blowing the roof off, so extraterrestrials can enjoy their passionate music too.




Alien Grace is out now digitally, on CD and vinyl LP through Spinout Nuggets.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Palooka 5 || Spinout

New single: Black Sea Deluge || Go / 1999

By / / Alternative Rock, Garage Rock, Psych / Leave a Comment

Chances are you missed the Concurs Pop Rock de Palma 2022 like I did, but apparently Mallorca two-piece Black Sea Deluge emerged as best band there. That prompted Espora Records to release two of their songs on a 7″ vinyl single, allowing us to discover the music of Gareth Hall and Gurri Campuzano after all. Hold on tight, because this goes beyond the average cup of tea. Basically we should probably categorize this as heavy psychedelic rock, but due to the use of electronics & loops and homemade guitars & hybrid drums the music reminds of late 90s big beat hype – as if Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees or Death From Above were jamming with Apollo 440, The Prodigy or The Chemical Brothers. Not everyone will cherish this sound, but both A-side Go and flipside 1999 are exciting rocking rave bangers, atypical but pretty cool. If you were still looking for a rousing sound for your sports routine: you’ve found it.

Go b/w 1999 is out digitally and on vinyl 7″ through Espora Records.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Espora

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