Here’s my second playlist of the year, which is shaping up to be yet another brilliant one musically with some great new releases and long overdue re-issues.   Flemish Weave by Mugstar “Rarely after listening to an album do I just want to sit in silence for a moment to think about what I have …

The Lay Llamas have been on my radar for a while, a superb live performance at the Liverpool PsychFest in 2014, and a great album, ‘Ostro’, for Rocket Recordings the same year which made our ‘Essential’ list. What I wasn’t aware of what that this had not been the band’s first release, having brought out …

This one-track 28 minute album was originally recorded in 2012, and has previously only seen a very limited cassette release the following year, Lamagaia itself was founded in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2010. Three years later from that comes a self-released vinyl edition limited to 300 copies, and for the majority of us, for whom this …

Those of you that have experienced the tumult of a set by heavy psych doom band Formes will be somewhat surprised to listen to the new EP, ‘Wake Up Lie Down’, from the band’s former front man, Steven McNamara. The EP is very much a stripped back acoustic set of songs that in many ways …

Normally when I review an album I sit down with it and really think about how it makes me feel, and generally just go with the flow. If I don’t like it, I don’t write about it…there’s enough cynicism in the world…right? When this new album from Mugstar popped into my in box I was …

If you are reading this chances are that you love genuinely independent music (not the sort that is passed off as independent by big corporations), and support bands, labels and others who love to promote music for music’s sake and not to feed a business machine. Part of this eco-system are countless numbers of radio …

The collaboration between Captcha Records and Cardinal Fuzz seems to be going from strength to strength this year with the simultaneous announcement of no less than five new albums, all of which have been reviewed here on Backseat Mafia/ Psych Insight (click the album titles for links). Three of the new releases are re-pressings of …

Every so often I hear a record which just stops me in my tracks, the sort of record that even though I’m hearing for the the first time I just have to say to myself “fuck me that’s good!”. Spectral Laundromat by Shooting Guns is one such record. Were that not enough, this album is …

If ever there was an album overdue for a re-issue it’s ‘Born To Deal In Magic: 1952-1976’ (BTDIM), the debut from Shooting Guns, originally released in 2011, is it. In fact Captcha Records/ Cardinal Fuzz are doing just that in a fantastic double whammy for fans of the band with this and a new album …

Captcha Records/ Cardinal Fuzz are taking on a real public service function here by repressing the first two albums by Australian spiritual psych rockers Dreamtime. While the band’s eponymously titled debut is reviewed elsewhere, here I’m having a look at the second album ,’Sun’, which is a considerable development from that already accomplished first album. ‘Sun’ …