The last pair of Trensmat releases for 2011 see out our successful resurrection year with a big bang, split across 4 A-sides.

First up, California's 'dome-rock' sentinels Carlton Melton melt our minds and our faces with their good 'Company' - a four and a half minute mid-tempo distillation of their M.O. - all dripping guitars, piercing electronics, and exploding stoner grooves; blindly blissing-out amid a near-impenetrable fug of unchecked fuzz. The dome is cracking - get a helmet!

Our longtime fellow travellers, Liverpool's Mugstar, turn your liver into a pool with a booze-fuelled, desert rumble entitled 'Black Fountain'. After three minutes of tribal drumming and ominous twanging, the cymbals come in and it inevitably kicks off - a ferocious duelling guitar ruckus. It's brief and bloody; the dust storm settles and the last tumbleweed rolls past.

As always, each release comes with additional goodies for immediate download (including, of course, digital copies of every track featured on its respective vinyl). Carlton Melton offer 'Death Whisper' (the mellow 5AM tail-end to one of their ritualistic jams in that geodesic dome of theirs) and the near 12-minute full version of 'Company'. Mugstar float off into the sunset with the dreamy, skittering 'Never (Part 1)'.

Pre-orders will be immediately sent a link to the download package.

VERY limited edition 7" in heavy wraparound picture sleeve (+ 4 downloads).

Dec 2011, TR025.

Company
Black Fountain
We've said it before, and we'll say it again, sometimes it feels like some records were just made specifically for aQ. And this is one of em. So thanks Trensmat, for picking two of our favorite bands, and putting them together on one record, with exclusive (and killer) tracks from both. SF's very own Carlton Melton, offer up a gorgeous bit of thick psychedelic haze called "Company", a serious slow burner, and maybe one of their heaviest yet, a simple stripped down beat anchoring thick undulating layers of blurred guitar buzz, shot through with warm spidery melodies, a brooding chunk of pulsing hypnotic sonic mesmer with a seriously blown out heavy heavy explosive finish. Be sure to download the bonus material (the link's on the sleeve) to get the epic nearly 12 minute long version, which is how this was meant to be heard, sprawling and druggy and EPIC. Too short for us even at twelve minutes. Also with the bonus download you get another track, "Death Whisper", which is another murky brooder, a hazy minimal lo-fi raga, which lopes and lumbers dreamily through fields of buzz and static and dreamy chordal swirl.
Former aQ Record Of The Week-ers Mugstar offer up another fantastically epic psychedelic space jam, thick driving buzzing bassline, dense busy drumming, shimmery guitar jangle, churning moody riffage, a sinisterly slow build, that manages to grow more tense and ominous and intense, without ever actually getting louder or exploding into a crashing cacophonous climax, instead, weaving a dense sprawl of churning psychedelic krautrock-style hypnorock that almost sounds like a more muscly Circle. And with the bonus download, you get a second track, the hushed minimal "Never (Part 1)", which is all sun dappled and dreamy, hushed and hazy, all soft swirls, skittery rhythms, whirring organs, definitely shades of Spacemen 3 or Loop, a sort of druggy blissed out spacepsych drift. So great.
Nice full color sleeves, and as mentioned above, a download with tons of bonus material, SUPER LIMITED of course. Already sold out at the label, which means these are the last copies we'll ever be able to get.
Aquarius Records


A fine Permanent pairing of two of the best contemporary psych bands on one of the best UK (sic) psych labels! Trensmat in all their infinite wisdom, finally and very wisely combined likeminded groups Mugstar and Carlton Melton to create this barbaric beast of a psychedelic split single.
If you dig one or both of these bands, you already know this single mustn’t be skipped. If yr familiar with neither, here’s your chance to sample some fine examples of intercontinental psychedelic rock for the nice price. We highly suggest you ingest this one aurally before the dose disappears into the ether.
Permanent Records


Record of the week 23rd Dec 2011
Piccadilly Records


Just when you thought the record rack pantry would be threadbare leaving you in fear to face the grim reality of maudlin seasonal sentiment being you’re chosen poison for turntable treatment and up pop the esteemed trenSmat to save the day and weigh in with not one - but two - double headed bad boys. As ever strictly limited and no doubt sold out on pre orders alone (though the Norman and Aquarius online outlets may save the obligatory tears of woe) Ireland’s finest noise purveyors bring out the big guns with a curtain closing yuletide thud.
First up Carlton Melton (last heard here by way of appearance on that killer record store day 12 inch via agitated) and the mighty Mugstar share the sides of what can only be described as a frankly awesome slab of wax (of the 7 inch variety). As though carefully excavated from the deepest strata of stoner psyche’s founding bedrock, Carlton Melton stump up the monolithic ’company’ - a brooding beatnik grooved slab of primitive skull skree that whirrs insidiously burrowing its trance like transmissions deep into your fried psyche, like a big bearded Mountain gone native crafting crudely locked groove primordial patterns out of old Vertigo records this spliff tipped taps and trips to a mind melting dialect that purrs with an archaic Eastern tongue.
Over on the flip scouse spacemen Mugstar deliver up ’black fountain’ a dust ridden bonged out crossroads apparition emerging from a psychotropic haze and sounding for all the world like some mind re-arranged offspring borne of a opiate orgy of brian Jonestown, spacemen 3 and the black angels types in the throes of some fever stricken withdrawal. Darkly demurring stuff.
Now we here have been firm favourites of mugstar since - well - when dinosaurs ran roughshod across the earth - and do indeed count their debuting self titled full length for critical mass / sea as one of the finest things to have ever graced our record collection. These days signed to the much admired important imprint Mugstar can be found operating in the un-chartered nether worlds of the deep cosmic void. What first appears to sound like the genteel forlorn opine of a slow turning lunar cycle softly wrapped in the delicate décor of dissipating shimmering orbs on initial encounter sees the Mugstar ones venturing territories once upon a time the pre-occupation of Stars of the Lid and LaBradford soon though and once used to its new found sonic skin ‘never (part 1)’ emerges and terraforms elegantly awash with a magisterial glow as though ‘ghost riders in the sky’ had been lysergically enhanced and sent out into the mystic wilderness in search spiritual enlightenment. Elsewhere there’s two additional helpings of Carlton Melton - first up the full on sub 12 minute pure uncut primitive psyche fix of  ‘company’ - a mind altering dope dipped dream weave of colossal proportions that shapes up like a shit faced stoner dude in Spacemen 3 / brian Jonestown threads. And while ‘company’ would on any another day have us gnashing at the leash its ‘death whisper’ that gets the plaudits, to the slow purr of a tribal recital the doom drilled tone of an archaic sonic tongue from a long since forgotten prehistory hangs heavy in the air with a wearying sombre dryness - macabre, mesmerising and above all masterful. 
Losing Today


Bit of an exciting one, this. Both of these bands are consistently strong performers on the modern psych landscape, as you’re probably already aware if you’re reading this, and on this split they both deliver quiet similarly paced repeato jams with tribal rhythms and not many notes, picking out deep psychedelic grooves. The Mugstar side’s a bit krautier, the Carlton Melton side’s a bit more freak-folk, but ultimately it’s the same churning, rumbling psychedelia. I bet this sounds ace after a few bongs.
Norman Records


Carlton Melton is more spaced out so you will recognize this side of the record when you play it. The track is called Company and it is repetitive with a charactistic low-fi distorted sound and a very spaced out guitar as the track slowly takes off with some cool spacey stuff. The artwork says 45rpm on the Mugstar side. Their track is called Black Fountain. It starts off driven by the intense drumming as the guitar slowly builds up over the repetitive riff as they build up some tension and you really wait for what happens next. A solo guitar starts to play but is mixed to the back and then it really picks up with a heavy guitar riff as they repeat the drum, bass and guitar riff over and over and it ends. There are extra tracks by both bands that you get as downloads with your purchase of the 7” record. Death Whisper is one by Carlton Melton.
Writing About Music


Absolute signature Trensmat sound from both of these groups - coiling thug-psyche instrumentals with nods to Spacemen 3 and stoner rock of all varieties. Carlton Melton are a qunitet from Northern California who wallow in it. Mugstar are a Liverpool quartet who take the basic impulse and apply it in a variety of different ways. This time, they drive into a boatload of Ummagumma gestures. Which seems like a dandy idea.
The Wire