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Elvis Coffee Records are that very rare breed. A label started up for the sole purpose of releasing their own music they now actively release any recordings that they feel are interesting no matter what that musical genre might be. Though initially predominately concerned with the burgeoning South Wales electronic / ambient / experimental scene they quite happily have thrown their doors open to all comers. Nothing rare in that you might say. What if I told you that they release these recordings to usually 50 - 75 copies only apiece. Again…nothing new there. Ah…but what if I told you that these recordings are FREE!! All you need is to pay for the postage. A rare breed indeed.

The eagle eyed amongst should have spotted something by now. Let’s see how switched on you all are.

ECR have kindly sent along four of their latest releases for review, their back catalogue unsurprisingly having sold out ages ago, so next up for review is ECR 11 by Psychic Space Invasion. ‘And the cows go mu’ is the sixth recording put out by this shrouded in mystery group. A Welsh Residents if you will, not in a musical sense, but without the huge eyeballs and top hat and tails. Well I hope not anyway. The music of Psychic Space Invasion on ‘And the cows go mu’ sounds like a more floating into space Maeror Tri. All electronic drones and weird sound collages. That sort of stuff. In their promotional guff they mention how the music represents the constant move between states of awareness and consciousness and blah, blah, yada, yada, but it ended up being to intellectual for my feeble brain to comprehend. What I heard was four tracks of genuinely exciting stimulating music. The sort of recording you put on, chill out and lose yourself to. There are subtle intricacies at wo rk as the electronics burble away and resonate producing an almost dark ambient feel to proceedings. Psychic Space Invasion were the best act on the ‘The Breath of Forgotten Places’ ECR compilation and with ‘And the cows go mu’ my respect for their musicianship has just got stronger. Housed in a piece of Chinese funeral money just adds to the feeling that here is something special and substantial you wouldn’t want to miss. A fabulous piece of work for all you experimental / drone lovers everywhere and as it’s basically FREE you should bite their hands off pronto to get yourself a copy.

ANM