We Actually Like…Halloween Special

"That's right Winchell's Donuts do magic things to your mouth."

Tom Waits
There's loads of horror house, there's loads of sci fi/horror eighties boogie, there's loads of mental illness inducing krautrock, but there's only one Tom Waits – and when he hits his terrifying stride he could reduce a rod of iron to a quivering mess. Taken from the masterful Mule Variations album, this is Tom in all his freaked out glory, muttering incoherently under his breath with an air of the Josef Fritzl's about him. Frightening. (Joe)

Rhythm & Sound – No Partial
R & S have always had some bewitching voodoo going on, as if the singers are intoning occult spells while Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald vitalize the atrophied flesh of dub and techno, compounding the two in some new, skulking colossal. This one has that furtive gait and those cryptic semblances but still rumbles and throbs viscerally, rattling guts and tingling spines. (#1)

Wooden Shjips – For So Long
Almost has that 'motorik' pulsation perfected by Neu, but is more unhinged, reeking of leaking diesel and spilt whisky, as it hurls and surges onward, driven by a lysergic-powered throttle. (#2)

Sycorax – Flip Got Switched (Steve Summers Remix)
Jason Letkiewicz has a whole host of guises; Innergaze, Two Dogs in a House (with Ron Morelli, who incidentally have just put out the latest L.I.E.S. release, which you can check out here), Malvoeaux, Sensual Beings, Confused House – sufficient for diagnosis of some kind of personality disorder. But its with the Steve Summers moniker that I think he's made some of his best. Here, he twists the dancefloor fare of Sycorax's original, with its 'I'm so wounded' R & B mantra, into lustrous, viscous acid-smarts, sedating it with airy drifts, but maintaining an entranced creep. (#3) (Tim)