Doing these reviews is, I don’t mind telling you, at times an onerous responsibility, we have on occasions, whether due to time constraints or simply forgetting, lain awake at night worrying about releases we should have been on to or had promised to review, the regret list is overwhelming, we can but try.

One release that escaped our gaze, though we did briefly mention it at the time, all that good work unravelling in our failure to follow it up with a detailed full review, was an outing a year or so ago through the unquestionably underrated blue tapes imprint. By Trupa Trupa, ‘headache’ is one of those very rare melodic moments of discovery, an almost road to Damascus occasions in so much as an album that operates on so many levels sonically speamking, that you’re scarcely unable to source its reference points. The album originally out on cassette and CD has now been picked up by an equally smitten Ici d’ailleurs – a French based label who play home to the likes of yann tierson / third eye foundation et al – who so impressed have decided to release a remastered cd version of the set along with a double wax outing. ‘headache’ is all at once intense, an agitant, a sore thumb, an album that plays with your head, seesawing awkwardly at times bordering shambolic chaos at others just leaving you jaw agape hitting you between the eyes by its craft, creative awareness and muddying of the generic sound pools – part prog – well in truth – a lot of prog – a little hardcore, a little art pop all tailored in essences of psych. They sound like no one yet sound like everyone, at times its as though they’ve sneaked in to your gaff while you sleep, checked out your record stash and have tailored an album out of your record collections best moments just for you. Sometimes they sound like fugazi with perhaps a pixies itch, other times you’d swear they’d been heavily adoring of releases heading out of Vacilando ’68, I even swear they revolve around a sonic axis with the cardiacs as the primary central cog. ‘headache’ will, I guarantee, challenge you, tease you and drive you to distraction and ultimately have you peering through your record collection to check which albums they’ve been dutifully noting in order to turn you head on.

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