The Anti Bubbles:

Unlike other labels subjected to exhaustive multi-disc retrospectives like this whopping ten-disc Revolutions in Sound: Warner Bros. Records – The First Fifty Years, Warner Brothers never embodied a scene or sound: they've always embodied what a major label should be – a dominant force that chronicles and dictates the sound of the mainstream. Coming out at the tail-end of 2008, when the influence of major labels is on a slow steady decline, Revolutions in Sound can be seen as a portrait of a time that's beginning to recede into the past: a time when there was such a thing as mass entertainment, when the pop audience all shared a common bond of hit records they either loved or rallied against. Perhaps the greatest things about this monumental box set is that it captures that colossus while also illustrating that for a while, majors did take risks. Of course, Warner was the riskiest of all the majors, never held back by an anti-rock & roll sourpuss like Mitch Miller, who struggled to keep CBS out of the tumult of the '60s (this with no less than Bob Dylan as the label's flagship rock artist). Instead, Warner embraced the underground, recording some of the strangest to shake out of the '60s, and that adventure fits a label that turned to rock & roll to help establish themselves as a real player at the turn of the '60s.

Ghost Power are Jeremy Novak [Dymaxion] and Timothy Gane [Stereolab, Cavern of Anti-Matter and Turn On]. Duophonic Super 45s have previously released music by both artists - Novak via a Dymaxion compilation album and 7", Gane via various Stereolab, Cavern of Anti-Matter and Turn On releases. Having previously released a limited edition 7" in 2020, Ghost Power by Ghost Power brings the two musicians together for a full length album. The tracks were recorded in Berlin and New York, both remotely and with Novak and Gane working together in each city.

2011 album from the multi-cultural band who combine Dancehall, Dub beats, Ragga and Punk Rock influences with hard hitting lyrics. A History of Now pushes the boundaries and asks questions while being different musically from previous releases. With the sound more expanded, it proves to be the band's most cohesive, uplifting masterpiece of their career. ADF is proud of what they have achieved, Steve Chandra Savale comments "in the 16 years of the band we have lived through a lot of change, how we make music, how we relate to people, we're completely transformed and this is a good way to mark that artistically."

Blending the current trend for all things noisy with something altogether more 'composed' we end up with a curious concoction of Cliff Martinez and Wolf Eyes, stopping at planet Badalamenti for a strong cup of Joe ("black like midnight on a moonless night"). Frost's primary influence (and sound source…) for the album was Michael Gira's seminal noise-rock band Swans, an influence which bubbles majestically on the album's central piece, cunningly titled 'We Love You Michael Gira'. The track starts simply enough; shifting, moody synthesized tones sitting eerily next to shivering waves of guitar noise before both give way to the sort of glacial blip-work that would make Mika Vainio jealous, and then it hits you; chunks of percussive noise that enter the sound-field like a serial killer bursting into the family home, gritty and abrasive, raw and untamed. The Swans factor isn't lost in this track, it's something that needs to be played so loud that it almost hurts the eardrums for full, visceral effect and proves as if proof be needed that Ben Frost is a rare producer who really knows how to use the loud as it should be used.