palace of swords

We’re as pleased as punch to have taken delivery of the latest Palace of Swords set, must admit we’ve been looking forward to this since Peter Lyon got in touch alerting us to its imminent arrival. Limited to just 100 copies – ours is # 100 / 100 in case you were taking notes – this set – incidentally out via reverb worship – comprises of a two track white vinyl 7 inch along with an additional CD featuring the wax tracks plus three additional cut and an extended mix of the vinyl flip side most of which we’ve covered in previous despatches except for the sets two main attractions and all featuring a host of guest remix edits by the likes of future disguises, snide rhythms, joe foster, midwich youth club and the hare and the moon. Within what you get is a silver age astral ride, Joe Foster’s ‘echoes from a distant star’ opens proceedings emerging as a trance toned slice of retro minimalism, a pulsing lunar lullaby crafted out of the same rarefied substances that fix the very stars in the night sky, a distant cosmic platform pirouetting in the deep voids emitting mesmeric mosaics as though a watchful lovelorn lighthouse seeking to make contact with visiting galactic travellers. ‘ringstone round’ finds the Hare and the Moon applying their bewitching folkalia to more star bound climes and into the bargain concocting a deeply captivating slice of mind morphing musicalia where ghostly echoes of ritual flower dances are subsumed into a hypnotic grooving that’s delicately carved in a stately pulsar like panoramic procession. First of all apologies to Midwich Youth Club who recently sent over downloads for a new album which will be getting some deserved attention and no doubt love very soon, for now though their take on ‘we are the new hyperboreans’ is something of a deceptively bonged out beauty that coils elements of tangerine dream into the multi-faceted mainframe of a shroom dazed Orb. Equally admired in the turntable tastiness stakes Snide Rhythms apply all manner of sonic boom styled Dadaism to ‘Aesthete cured’ to emerge from the dark side of the dream machine sounding somewhat like an abstractly playful and minimalist quando quango  which leaves the woozy kosmiche happenings of the future disguises retelling of ‘live at the Aberdeen Witch Trials 1597’ to send you packing off to sleepville pricked by a sense of unease courtesy of a retro sci-fi shimmered ghostly fantasia – acquire on sight – need I say more.