Whew! The first time we got something in from AFCGT, it was a painfully limited cd-r that exploded like a supernova and then disappeared just as quickly from the site. So, it's a damn good thing that this awesome collaboration between A Frames and the Climax Golden Twins has resulted in another batch of unbelievably good recordings. This time, it's a bit less limited, as Dirty Knobby has pressed these 8 tracks onto a 10", which should mean this thing will be around a little bit longer than the debut. The sound of AFCGT here is pretty much the same. Instrumental tunes with Mack truck rhythms, spring-loaded basslines, and giddy explosion of jagged guitar riffs that come together in what AFCGT blurts out as "New Punk." These swamp mutations of detuned Cambodian garage pop songs with an excess of stereoscopic distortion certainly have a Sun City Girls meets the Birthday vibe going on, with occasional excursions into a free noise mess of devolved noise and out of control drum fills, sort of like some of the Laddio Bollocko breakdowns. Who can complain about a Laddio Bollocko reference? Not us!
Holy shit, this is fucking great! And who would have ever thought that the A Frames and the Climax Golden Twins would make a record together? And who would have imagined that it would be this fucking awesome? It's all superlatives and all expletives in describing the first collaborative production from AFCGT. The A Frames had managed to raise some eyebrows here through their post-punk appropriations of early Wire and early Fall, but the vocals had always been something of a miss for them especially on the last Sub Pop album. But in working with the AQ-endorsed Climax Golden Twins who are a band accustomed to delivering exemplary instrumentals from literally every corner of the avant-rock landscape, the A Frames have the permission to shut the hell up and let the Climax Golden Twins dump the fucking kitchen sink all over A Frames rhythmic swagger. The album opens with a tumultuous blast of glue-huffing noise-rock, sort of like a fistfight between the Butthole Surfers and the Sun City Girls. Soon after, a series of bad-ass Birthday Party / Oxbow swamp rock riffs explode with spindly space-age gamelan leads; elsewhere, the No Wave ghosts of R.L. Crutchfield-era DNA emerge with of jagged chops across the guitar pick-ups, bloodied fingers and all. Fuck, it all sounds fucking great! It's a damn shame that this thing is only limited to 50 copies! That perhaps is our only complaint.
New York quintet The Affair make some good ol' feisty power pop in which the robust female vocals of Ms Kali Holloway take center stage. Very much in the kickass traditions of Blondie, Ronnie Spector and Katrina And The Waves. Sounding like she's got one heckuva chip on her shoulder, we'd bet Holloway's not one to take things sittin' down... and neither will you when you give this a spin. You'll be up on your feet bounding around your living room. Loads of fun!
Some time ago we reviewed a double cd featuring (supposedly) everything ever recorded by this obscure, outsider-y late '70s / early '80s UK psychedelic "hippy punk" outfit called, variously, Afflicted, The Afflicted Man, and High Speed and The Afflicted Man. It's been out of print for a while - but now, both of the albums that constituted that set's second and best disc, the one where, as we said, the fuzz really hits the fan, have been reissued again, almost simultaneously, with Permanent putting out 1981's I'm Off Me 'Ead on vinyl (only), and Spanish reissue specialists Guerssen doing 1982's Get Stoned Ezy on cd (with vinyl forthcoming as well). Both are issued under license from The Afflicted Man himself, guitarist/vocalist Steve Hall, unlike that previous collection, apparently.
Get Stoned Ezy in particular has been raved about, quite deservedly, as a Holy Grail of wah-fuzz-feedback psych insanity, kind of an unknown precursor to the blown-out speed freak sounds of Japanese heavies like High Rise and Mainliner. Bearing the not entirely hyperbolic warning on the sleeve "This Record Is Very Powerful And Could Give You Earhole Damage", Get Stoned Ezy consists of three lengthy throbbing songs of rollicking fuzzed out guitar splooge with unhinged vocal drawling and pounding repetitive rhythms from this loosey-goosey power trio, total swarming distortion jams to the max.
Meanwhile, the slightly earlier I'm Off Me 'Ead is really almost as good, just a bit different, being marginally more song-oriented (well, there's more of 'em here) than Get Stoned Ezy, more shambolic and "Messthetics-y", if you're familiar with that series of UK DIY comps. It's definitely also about the monomaniacal, messed-up distortodelic guitar wrangling, you're in for plenty of that on either album.
Charming stuff for fans of Hendrix, Hawkwind, The Stooges, Wicked Lady, Groundhogs... and with the vocals factored in, these albums also oughtta appeal to fans of aQ fave Michael Yonkers, big time!
I'm Off Me 'Ead, limited to 500 copies, features remastered sound, and a full color inner sleeve with rare pics, a previously unpublished Steve Hall interview, and more.
Get Stoned Ezy is also remastered from an original vinyl copy (cuz the master tapes are long gone), and the cd booklet contains vintage photos of the band in action plus extensive & enthusiastic liner notes newly penned by the editor of Black To Comm 'zine, Chris Stigliano.
If you need any more convincing, heed the cover sticker blurb on that release from Ripley of Wooden Shjips, who sez: "Fucking essential". Speaking of Wooden Shjips, yeah if you like them and other current practitioners of "heavy psych", like White Hills and The Heads and Carlton Melton and Mainliner and Gnod and Earthless, then really you need to expose your toughened-up earholes to both Get Stoned Ezy and I'm Off Me 'Ead, pronto.
A while back we remember running across a bootleg-looking vinyl reissue of an LP called Get Stoned Ezy by some British band from the early '80s called High Speed and The Afflicted Man. This obscurity was supposed to be an unknown precursor to the blown-out psychedelic speed freaks sound of Japan's High Rise -- in other words, a holy grail of wah and fuzz. Tom Lax wrote a review of it on his Siltblog [http://www.inblogs.net/siltblog/2006/03/superfuzz-bigmuffmudhoney-is_06.html] that said it sounded like Saint Vitus covering Les Rallizes Denudes! Can anything live up to that? Heck, if Get Stoned Ezy even just remotely came close to living up to its excellent title we'd be curious. Are you curious too?
Well that LP is long gone, but all the tracks from that and more are to be found on this new double cd collection of everything ever recorded by guitarist Steve Hall's DIY punk-psych outfit Afflicted Man (aka Afflicted, aka High Speed and The Afflicted Man). Ramshackle, lo-fi, outsider guitar blurt that reminds us of everything from The Heads to the Stooges to Human Instinct to Michael Yonkers to Zippo Zetterlink to Baby Grandmothers to Acid Mothers Temple and the Pink Ladies Blues. It's psychedelic hard rock done "Messthetics" style.
There's over two hours of music here. Disc one features Afflicted Man's three Bonk label 7" singles, and their The Afflicted Man's Musical Bag LP (which dates from "probably 1979"). The songs from the 7"s are all fairly rockin' punkers, while the Musical Bag LP is weirder and more damaged, with tracks like "Hippy Punk" and "Hippy Skin" (that's what these guys were?), the downer blues of "Glue Sniffing", and the krautrockish "Musically Insane", a track that's really a reinterpretation of their first single "I'm Afflicted", extended to eight minutes and buried amidst shimmering piano and freeform FX. It's what that song would sound like if it was covered by Moolah!
Disc two is where the really fuzz really hits the fan, comprising both the I'm Off Me 'ead LP (1981) and the aforementioned Get Stoned Ezy (1982). On both records, Hendrix and Hawkwind are obvious references, playfully roughed up by these punks n' skins. The three long tracks of Get Stoned Ezy, especially, take that hippy psych sound into a back alley and fuck it up, but all in good weird fun.
While this reish features interesting liner notes from an Aussie fan, we're not really told what happened to the Afflicted Mr. Hall after Get Stoned Ezy. At least he went out at the end of his highest and heaviest half-hour ever!
Afflux is the musique concrete collaboration between Eric La Casa, Eric Cordier, and Jean Luc Guionnet, but these folks add a unique twist to the normal electro-acoustic tricks learned from INA-GRM (i.e. Pierre Henry, Luc Ferrari, Michel Chion, etc.). This trio employs "an on-site electroacoustic device" (my guess, a laptop) to allow them to improvise with the landscape, while simultaneously recording and filtering their source material (inclement weather, faulty drainage pipes, rising tides, the resonance from long stringed instruments, the communication from a maritime navigation post, etc.). Amidst the rustling textures and swooshing environmental din, Afflux uses nearly every trick in the musique concrete book (flanging, parabolic eq-filtering, granular synthesis, razor sharp editing, stereo field spatiality, etc.) For all of its austere recordings and pristine production techniques, "Azier St. Martin-Sur-Mer Dieppe" is more of a theatrical document, capturing just one of the residues from Afflux's perfomative activity and sounding more like one of Michel Chion's laborious constructions than a live documentation.
Afflux is the seriously minded collective of French field recordists and concrete composers including Eric Cordier, Jean-Luc Guionnet, and Eric La Casa. Their goal is to construct gestural compositions by mixing and processing field recordings as they are occuring with a number of improvisational / spontaneous events, electronic filters, amplified steel strings, and broad stereo spatialization. The first Afflux album "Azier St. Martin-Sur-Mer Dieppe" was imbued with a nautical theme, and this one keeps true to the navigation / transportation themes, focusing on the A13 motorway in Bouquetot, a train platform in Paris, and a petroleum factory in Port-Jerome. In all instances, Afflux observes and re-interprets the border space between natural (rain and wind in particular) and man-made (cars rushing by on the highway or the grinding of a train's breaking mechanism) phenomenona. Within these spaces, Afflux describes some rather dramatic conflicts, or perhaps better stated, has contextualized the experiences to heighten the drama between these two forces. Within each of the three recording contexts, Afflux articulates such crescendos of activity; typified in the incremental screeching of metal from the train accompanying a nervous factory din and the spring-loaded rattle of those amplified steel strings. This is an impressive recording and well worth checking out, far beyond the gimmick value of the live / on-site production, however, valid that technique may be.
There are some of us around here at aQ HQ who just might cite The Afghan Whigs as one of the best American rock bands of the 1990s, so to say that their first new album in 16 years was highly anticipated around these parts would be a huge understatement. And is it exactly what we wanted? Is it a complete return to the classic mid '90s Whigs sound?? Is it Gentlemen part 2??? Actually no, not really. But is it totally great? Yep. It sure is. Instead of Do To The Beast being a continuation of where the Afghan Whigs left off when they broke up in 2001, it's instead more of a culmination of everything Greg Dulli's done before and since. It's sensual, seedy, dripping with lurid disdain just like classic Whigs, but it's also musically much tighter, more produced and layered, way more of a studio production, like Dulli's more recent project Twilight Singers. "Parked Outside" has all the drunken confident swagger of a man with truly nothing to lose. "Matamoros" is a jittery slither, sparking with clattering violins, throbbing bass and twisted funk guitar. The delicate piano of "It Kills" erupts into a stirring bass drum pulse, throbbing under the same kind of gospel vocal accompaniment that appeared on the 1998 Afghan Whig's album 1965. "Algiers" is a lonely dusty Western epic strummed carelessly and listlessly over a classic Phil Spector drum beat. The horror movie piano of "Lost In The Woods" plods ominously under breathy wine soaked vocals. "The Lottery" might be the closest to classic Afghan Whigs, with its cutting anxious riffing, but still has the modern flare of drum machines shuffling and scattering underneath, as well as that same tight punchiness that marks the rest of the album. And then it ends gloriously with "These Sticks" - all clattering toms, epic John Barry horns and Greg Dulli seeming to howl an acrimonious goodbye. All over this record in fact his voice is that perfect mix of grit, sensuality, sadness, anger and off key soul that has always been the perfect accompaniment to the Whigs' twisted take on late night Motown. So, no it's not really the album we expected, or the album we wanted, but we're damn happy it's the one we got. Comeback of the year? No doubt.
Available on cd or lp, the latter with download.
Heads up for another wallop of very angular barebones post punk. Yes, Aframes wear their love of early 80s Wire, The Fall and/or Gang Of Four prominently on their sleeves, and they capture the sound and energy very well. Although you might guess their hometown to be San Diego or Providence where many likeminded bands are based, this trio is in fact from Seattle, WA. Deep, deadpan vocals much like those of Nick Forte (Rorschach, Computer Cougar, Beautiful Skin) brood and proclaim while the very front'n'center chunky, choppy guitars jab and saw atop the simmering rhythm section. At times in their music as well as their lyrics and song titles ("Ionic", "Archaeology", "Modula", etc), they bring science, sci-fi and rock together -- also calling to mind the less surfy, more art-damaged side of Man Or Astro-Man?. Note: this was originally released on vinyl earlier this year in a short-lived limited pressing of 1000.
AFrames jump up to Sub Pop for their third full length. As on their previous releases, this is very raw post-punk clawed out with dirty fingernails, but perhaps leaning a bit less on their past Gang Of Four / Wire / The Fall worship. The lead vocals are of the sing-right-along-with-the-main-melody ilk, and the lyrics are fashioned into elementary school level rhyming couplets. They're delivered by a flat spoken-sung male voice that's very reminiscent once again of Nick Forte (of Rorschach, Beautiful Skin, Christmas Decorations, Computer Cougar), and actually this could very easily be mistaken for a Forte project. In addition to the vocals, it's got all the Forte tell-tale elements -- thick chug'n'churn electric guitars that sound like their strings have been slackened, plodding primal drumbeats, abrasive synthesizer blasts and an ample dose of distortion and dissonance. One difference is the occasional appearance of female vocals that serve to soften the masculine angular blows. At times this band also seems to have been influenced by the more song-y side of Neubauten, however they don't come anywhere close to achieving the total visceral immediacy of that seminal band. One thing tho' whereas the recordings are definitely no-frills, apparently they sure spared no cost in the packaging department, this cd comes in a really rad die-cut printed cardboard slipcover.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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One of the best albums by Adrian Sherwood's African Head Charge, now re-issued on cd with a bonus CD-Rom track.
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Long overdue reissue of this psychedelic dub classic (originally released in 1986, their 4th record), from this long running UK collective, whose sound is an incredible mix of classic reggae and dub, live drumming, tape loops and samples. In a weird way, we're definitely reminded of the ethnic electronica of Muslimgauze, there's the same sort of rhythmic repetition, and for the time, an unprecedented melding of loops and samples and live instrumentation.
Led by percussionist Bonjo I, the group filled out with various players from Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound stable, AHC crafted sprawling dubscapes that fused a post punk aesthetic and a penchant for experimentation with classic dub basslines, and the ubiquitous melodica. But it's how these guys put these songs together, and the way they used samples and tape loops. Their usual MO is to lock into a dense bass heavy groove, and then working around that, adding live percussion, and lots of it, plus all manner of sampled percussion (sounding surprisingly industrial at times), not to mention buzzing guitars, breaking glass, dogs barking at different pitches to create strange melodies, lots of sampled chants, all of this giving these tracks a mysterious tribal/ritualistic vibe. One song is a dubby slow groove, wrapped around a sample of Albert Einstein, while others are caustic and surprisingly noisy, and still others are melodic and downright poppy, but always heavy on the bass, heavy on the percussion, and heavy on the woozy, dreamy, druggy atmosphere. Easily one of our favorite groups ever (some of us have been listening to these guys for close to 30 years), and this is certainly one of their best. The perfect late night chill out / drift off psych dub soundtrack!
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Probably one of the more experimental albums in Adrian Sherwood's African Head Charge dub releases. Lots of off kilter sampling from Albert Einstein to Frank Zappa blended in with straight up dub. Somehow it works. Comes with CD-Rom bonus track.
Classic left-of center dub that might appeal to fans of Sun Araw!
This is some seriously smoking vintage funk out of New Orleans from the early '70s. An 8-piece outfit, they were best known as the studio band for the Jewel / Paula Soul Power label, they backed up the likes of Fontella Bass, Little Johnny Taylor and Bobby Paterson. But even without a singer their music sounded exactly the way you want your funk to sound: raw, hot and gritty. While they never received the same acclaim as folks like The Meters or The J.B.'s this is still some top notch real-deal funk. The original vinyl of this release is pretty much impossible to find so this cd reissue is a welcome arrival for all soul and funk lovers.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
As influential and prolific as Afrika Bambaata is, it's always baffled us how damn hard it actually can be to get your hands on his music. Luckily we finally managed to get copies of this, a previously ultra rare mix that Bambaata whipped up back in the day. A 20+ minute continuous-mix made in the early '80s showing off his legendary chops and demonstrating loud and clear how he was able to dig into crates of records and create an instant party.
We're still in the first month of the year but we think we'll be hard pressed to find an electronic album in 2015 that's as expansive, rewarding, and wide reaching as this debut from Afrikan Sciences. Channeling Afro-soul and spiritual jazz, this is an album that takes a left-field approach in creating rhythms and beats that reach outer and higher dimensions. We love how Flying Lotus ended up on Warp records, but think of what it might sound like if Flying Lotus covered some of Warp's earliest shining stars like Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, and Plaid - or if those abovementioned outfits were raised on Alice Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, and Sun Ra, and you start to get an idea of the kind of territory that is explored on Circuitous.
You can tell that Eric Douglass Porter (aka Afrikan Sciences) is someone who puts deep care and thought into what he creates as we can feel the true sense of an album and not merely a collection of sounds & songs. The record works its way into a groove and then slowly starts to shift into more psychedelic and darker dimensions. We even hear traces of Third Eye Foundation on one of the album's standout tracks "Feel", and the record taps into alien/sci-fi soundscapes while still maintaining an inviting warmth. Highly recommended!
The Osaka-based "ultra lunatic girl duo" who stepped in for Cotton Casino on the recent Acid Mothers Temple disc Minstrel In The Galaxy now have their own release on the AMT imprint. Afrirampo consist of Oni (vocals, guitar) and Pikacyu (vocals, drums) but it seems like there's waaay more people that just the two of them in the band. Maybe that's 'cause of all the crazy different kinds of vocals that spill out over everything here -- screaming, cookie monster grunts, shouted group chants, and chipmunk baby babble. All of which goes great with the band's music: totally energetic, catchy, bouncy, noisy, freaky stuff. If you're a musical Japanophile, you'll definitely hear a lot of early Boredoms / UFO Or Die / Melt Banana in this here album! Afrirampo's got the stomping spastic grooves, psychedelic sci-fi effects, chaotic catchiness, ethno-percussion, surfy rock n' roll licks...all that good stuff we love about old Boredoms. And the bizarro-nonsense level likewise seems pretty high. The disc ends with "Kunoichi", a throbbing 16 minute epic that builds from spaced-out insane asylum improv to crushing cosmic churn. Freakin' great. Just about what we'd expect from a band who not only hang with AMT, but also have jammed with Sonic Youth, Munehiro Narita of High Rise, Keiji Haino of Fushitsusha, and also pygmies in an African village where the duo spent several months last summer, or so we're told! Apparently this is an enhanced (with unreleased tracks and cd-rom materials) remastered reissue of what was once a cd-r release, recorded at some point early in the duo's career, which would be circa 2002. So we'll now definitely have to try and get a hold of more by this band!
At last, an Afrirampo release that's not so hard to obtain, as the duo makes their domestic US debut on John Zorn's Tzadik label. John Zorn being the guy that first clued a lot of us in to the Boredoms, coincidentally enough. Well, whether deliberately or not, it would seem that the two girls from Osaka, Japan known as Afrirampo are channelling the chaos and confusion of early early Boredoms (who also hail from Osaka). If you miss the noisiness of the Boredoms circa Soul Discharge, you might have a nice flashback from this. There's lots of screaming and singing (the wild, wide variety of their vocals is one of Afrirampo's trademarks, along with the arty costumes that feature in their live presentations) and distorted guitar and crazed percussion and boundless energy here. Lots and lots of all that. It's all very dramatic and weird and doubtless annoying to some in the same way the Boredoms once were (some of US here at AQ actually can't stand to hear this when it's being played in the store). The very first track will let you know if you're up to their test or not: almost 12 minutes that range from raging Bore-punk to vocal baby babble to mean metal guitar riffage. If you dig that, the rest of the record will be right up your alley. And anyone who is already a fan won't be disappointed with this Tzadik disc either.
A Buena Vista Social Club spinoff project. A group of Cuba's finest musicians, young and old (including a 6 piece horn section) got together to play and record for fun. Features some BVSC favorites, including Ibrahim Ferrer.
"The second All-Stars album features Havana's multi-generational big band embracing a more modern dance-oriented sound. Deploying a variety of styles, the extraordinary cast of over fifty musicians delivers a unique take on Cuban classics and Juan de Marcos' original compositions." Featuring Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzalez, Omar Portuondo, Barbarito Torres, 'Cachaito' Lopez and 'Guajiro' Mirabal. Includes a 44 page booklet in Spanish and English with gobs of full color photos. Excellent.
Latest in a series of killer vinyl-only reissues from the Secret Stash label, who indeed seem to have access to a secret stash of international groove obscurities. This rare record, originally released in 1975, was the sole album from Afro Funk, a band of West Africans based in London, England. Can you guess what this one sounds like from the band name? Yes you can! Afrobeat rhythms meet electric American funk. It's chock full of percolating percussion, chirping horns, wacka-wacka guitar, and chanted funk-shaman vocals. Also, some some JB's "Blow Your Head" style synth Moog-ery, notably prominent on side two's mesmerizing 8+ minute instrumental jam "Farewell To Ibusa". Overall, the lp's got a loose languid laidback vibe, yet the playing is tight and funky throughout. Reminds us a bit of Soundway's recent reissue by the Black Truth Rhythm Band, and also would fit in with the great stuff Academy Records/Voodoo Funk digs up, like Marijata. In fact, we now remember that their track "Afro Funk" appeared, appropriately, on the comp Afro Funk Explosion some years back, alongside the likes of Blo, Manu Dibango, and, yes, Black Truth Rhythm Band. Quite a groovy gem, well worthy of reissue. Comes with mp3 download card.
Watch out for more reviews of Secret Stash stuff as we catch up on their catalog...
The Chinese indie rock / noise pop keeps coming. A handful on this week's list, including this, the first we've heard from After Argument, who have quickly become one of our favorites of the bunch, and who, like many of the Chinese bands we've been digging, are fully channeling American nineties indie rock, but unlike a lot of those bands, After Argument seem to be leaning toward the weirder side of that spectrum. Just check out the opener - if you're like us, you're hearing lots of Polvo and Pitchblende, and those sorts of bands, twisted chords, mangled melodies, angular and atonal, mathy and almost proggy, After Argument adding some cool but strange vox, multitracked or dueling in places, some sweet stop/start arrangements, but infusing this angular crunch with plenty of hooks, not to mention, furious bursts of psychedelic noise, streaks of feedback, the songs generally frenetic and energetic, but some, like the closer, are super creepy dirges, the sound tense and intense, brooding and moody. Fantastic stuff. This gets played in the store like crazy! For fans of angular math/post rock, as well as the weirder side of classic indie rock.
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What a great title for an old-school Florida Death Metal album! Ex-Nocturnus.
After Dinner was an '80s Japanese art rock band that featured the delicate and beautiful vocals of Haco (she of but one name). This 1989 album of theirs (originally a RecRec label LP) sees cd reissue in remastered form, and it is a true delight. Haco's
We're going on instinct here, as the batteries on the Walkman are really struggling to hold any kind of charge. So the playback of these live recordings from the Brooklyn neo-kosmische outfit Afterlife is riddled with erratically warbling tape-speed variations that do make for a cool effect... but this is probably not what Afterlife intended. That said, these woozy drunken drags of tape across the playback head follow our longstanding infatuation with vinyl crackle or playing tracks intended at 45rpm at 33 instead. Here, our dying tapedeck slurs the twinkling tones of Afterlife's crystalline hybrid of Emeralds, Popul Vuh, Klaus Schulze, and Cluster, all performed live at three gigs -- Shea Stadium in Brooklyn, Upstate Artists Guild in Albany, NY, and at a house show in Wilmington, Delaware. Off to buy more batteries... Pro-duplicated, 73 minute tapes in an edition of 100 copies.
Afterlife is pretty shameless in their reconstitution of the Emeralds sound, to be completely honest. But considering how much New Age fluff that continues to emerge out of the whole synth-wrangling scene, an album that bares its teeth is more than welcome in these parts. Okay, there's no guitars to be found in Afterlife, so it may fit closer with the John Elliott pantheon of projects, but there's a density of sound and an industrial gravity that hangs upon Afterlife's churning electronics that aligns them more specifically with the foreboding and melancholy sounds of Emeralds' classic album What Happened. Details, details.
Lazer sharpened vibrations and the sparkling percolations bring the amorphous ambience of the album's opening number "Cycles" into focus with rainy-day synthmuzik passages that persist across the first side of the album's dream-shot electronics. The second side of Celestial Habitat darkens the mood considerably, especially on the two sprawling last tracks "Paths Untouched" and "Until Eternity" whose deep growling bass tones threaten to fling the needle right off the turntable (well done on the vinyl cut, Hooker Vision!). The duo tops everything off with percolating step sequencers and plenty of deep-space arcs that peer through the Emeralds lens back towards Klaus Schulze in fine style. Limited to a mere 300 copies!
Take turntablist Christian Marclay, Swiss percussionist Gunter Muller, Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo, and legendary NY via NZ experimental guitarist / bagpiper David Watson, armed with their weapons of choice: turntables, percussion, minidisks, electronics, guitars and bagpipes, and let them loose. And you'll get pretty much what you might expect. Not some mish mash hodge podge improv bullshit, these guys are masters, and these six tracks demonstrate that mastery bigtime. Lush and textured, dense and detailed, moody and evocative. Marclay's turntables are magic, a bank of primitive analog samplers, spitting out fractured rhythms, mysterious melodies, various snippets and samples, the perfect framework for the others to use as a jumping off point. But each player is perfectly capable of taking the helm, while knowing when to let someone else take over.
Lush ambient dronescapes peppered with twisted melodic fragments, all sorts of overlapping and layered rhythms, constantly shifting, changing shapes, transforming before our very ears, some tracks brood and lope, others soar and howl, all of them dizzying and elaborate. The soundfield is constantly expansive and in flux.
Lots of improv is way more fun to play than to listen to, but this stuff is totally engrossing, even for the listener with no interest in "improv", so musical, some of it in fact sounds so good it's impossible to believe these guys were making it up as they went along.
Hypnotic, enthralling, confusional in places, intense in others, hushed and haunting in still others, a wide weird world of sound that begs for deep listening, and invites the listener to let go, to become totally and utterly lost in the sound.
Pressed on super thick vinyl, and housed in really swank, heavy full color gatefold sleeves, 3 sided set, the fourth side sports a cool scribbly etching by Lee Ranaldo. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
Richard D. James -- aka The Aphex Twin -- had reportedly gone into retirement after the sexually grotesque production "Windowlicker," emerging briefly with an oblique composition on the aptly titled "Or Some Computer Music Compilation." Fortunately, his plans of retirement will be put on hold with the release of his upcoming album "Drukqs" in the near future...
All in all Richard D. James (Aphex Twin) recorded four different parts to the Analogue Bubblebath series...however this is the one to have. Warped electronics and electro breakbeats.
Recently reissued, Analogue Bubblebath 4 originally appeared in 1994 under Richard D. James' acid damaged moniker AFX. This four track EP opens with a huge, rolling techno breakbeat whose machinist rigor bears similarities to James' rhythmic structure for the Aphex single "On" and the Polygon Window track "Quoth". Instead of one of his mad-scientist melodies, James merely plants an overblown scream to punctuate the fourth measure of his rhythmic pulse. Back in the day, there were plenty of technohedz who weren't too keen on this track for its overt bloodcurdling vibe; although in comparison to the recent horror IDM excesses of Venetian Snares, this is hardly sounds like a transgressive number anymore. Solid nonetheless. James flushes out the remainder of the EP with less bombastic pieces, more in keeping with the sound of the Richard D. James LP with deftly manufactured acid percolations over midtempo fractured breaks and plenty of bubbly ambience.
It's actually been quite a while since Richard D. James has produced a a proper full length album, with the Aphex Twin double disc Drukqs being released five years ago, way back in 2001. In recent years, he's returned to his infatuation with acid techno and breakcore by releasing a series of Analord singles under the AFX moniker. Chosen Lords collects the best material from those 11 Analord singles and gives those tracks a slight trim to fit as much material on the CD as possible. No one is going to confuse anything on Chosen Lords with the repulsive electronica brutality of Aphex' "Come To Daddy" or the grotesque hip-hop bastardization of "Windowlicker", instead the tracks here harken to his earliest experiments with 303 melodic squiggliness and fidgety drum-machines struggling to keep together a constant rhythm amidst the rollicking breakbeats. James has long been an exceptional programmer; and even if there's nothing super innovative here, Chosen Lords is an absolute joy to listen to. Certainly on par with his Polygon Window and Selected Ambient Works Vol. 1 releases!
Originally released as two EPs back in 1995 before his seminal Richard D. James LP and name change to Aphex Twin, Hangable Auto Bulb has long been a collectors' rarity, mentioned with hushed reverence amongst electronica types everywhere. When situated against contemporary breakcore / drill 'n' bass artist such as Plug, Mu-Ziq, and even his own Aphex releases, Hangable Auto Bulb holds its own quite well, with clincal tones shaped into wistful melodies on top of complex skittering breakbeats and stalking basslines. Yet in the huge leaps that have been made technologically since '95, whereby beats, samples, and the digital code itself have been imploded / exploded by Hrvatski, Otto Von Schirach, Lesser, and many other post-IDM artists, AFX's Hangable Auto Bulb appears sparse in its production and curiously nostalgic for a time when "Intelligent Dance Music" wasn't a thoroughly laughable concept.
Richard James jumps into the dancehall fray, or jumps on the dancehall bandwagon, whichever you prefer. Either way, this single kicks serious ass. 'Run The Place Red' is a remix of a track from the amazing Bug record from a few lists past, and while James adds a bit more skitter and drill and rapidfire drum and bass, and does a little slice and dice, it would have fit perfectly on that Bug record. Dancehall just the way we like it, pounding and crushing and a little fucked up. The other two tracks are full-on speaker shredding noise. Weird and brutal and pretty tough to listen to. Definitely a quick fix for those of you who don't like how 'soft' and dynamic and un-Merzbow-like Merzbow has become lately. All three tracks are pretty darn great, but get it mostly for the dancehall track. Wicked.
We were pretty surprised to see an eleventh volume in the Ethiopiques series here, since we were all under the impression that the collection was slated to end at volume ten. Well, turns out we were wrong and we are happy to be wrong because 11 is an excellent disc in its own right. Of all the discs in the series, Ethiopiques 11 shares the closest resemblance to volumes 2 or 5, but only in that it's a complete departure musically from the rest -- 2 and 5 included. Ethiopiques 11 features Alemu Aga playing the beguena, a large lyre with ten paired tuned strings. The beguena is often called the "Harp of King David" because it is believed that David (as in David and Goliath) played a similar such instrument to accompany his psalms way back when. As would be expected, the beguena has always been closely tied with the church -- Coptic Orthodox -- and had a rich repertoire that was very nearly destroyed along with all the other great music and arts during the Stalinist period of Ethiopia's history which began in 1974. Twenty years later Alemu Aga (this album was recorded in 1994) and others were finally able to continue with the instrument's traditions and now, slowly, the beguena is being returned to its place in society.
As stated earlier, you won't find much similarity in the music here to the rest of the series. Consisting solely of Alemu's soft voice accompanied by the beguena songs have a mesmerising quality. The beguena's strings buzz and rattle as Alemu Aga sings both religious and secular songs in a low, smoky voice. If you skip through the tracks on the disc you might be fooled into thinking you're hearing the same track over and over again. Yet although the instrument's melodies are seemingly repetitive -- given its limited range and single tuning -- they form an interesting counterpoint to Aga's vocal lines.
From the same label that brought us the blackened witchy doomdirge of Charnel House, and the abstract black metal doomscapes of OS, and the droned out cosmic weirdness of Sky Projection, comes this mysterious new release, from a one man band called Agakus, whose debut release is a heavy sprawl of caustic abstract industrial dronescapes, bleak abject expanses of churning downtuned rumble, of crumbling black noise clatter, as well as lots and lots of space, the doom and noise coming in waves, leaving near silence in between, like the musical version of listening to the thunder to figure out how soon the storm will arrive. And thunder is definitely an apt comparison, as the sounds here are massive low end reverberations, and when the storm DOES finally hit, it's almost symphonic in scope, a droned out psychedelic skree that's a thick cloud of layered tones, a slowed down pulled apart melody, the sounds massive and dense, and so blown out that they seem to blot out the other sounds, like the dinosaur footsteps in Jurassic Park, everything in your house will rattle, books will slide off shelves, plaster will fall from the walls, as this plodding, blackened behemoth crawls beastlike from your speakers. This plodding low end underpinning sheets of hum and hiss, mesmerizing looped melodies, and stuttering textures. Elsewhere groaning slabs of blackbuzz churn beneath anguished wails and dense squalls of feedback, again separated into some strange sort of super spare, super spaced out death march rhythm, burst of bleak brutality, then hushed ominous shimmer, waiting for the next blast to come.
Dark and dense, sinister and seriously grim, this is some black sonic energy, some bleak ultradoom blackdrone minimalism that should definitely appeal to fans of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Pig Heart Transplant, Wolf Eyes, Stalaggh, Wolvserpent, Abruptum, MZ412, Pussygutt, Khanate and other similarly black spirited dronelords�
Packaged in a cool Chinatown fireworks style paper sleeve, stickered, with a full color sticker as well as a printed, hand numbered insert inside. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A few lists back, when we reviewed the (now already out of print!) 1996-1998 demos collection by this Pacific Northwest based cult, we mentioned we now realize we were quite foolish in not having paid sufficient attention to their career. Considering how much we ended up liking those early demos, seriously delving into the subsequent bulk of their discography seemed to be in order, though potentially a daunting task. Making things easier though, they've just come out with a new album, so let's focus on that. This latest from these difficult to describe grim blackened metal artists is via the Profound Lore label, who have established an admirable and eclectic track record lately of signing the best in the underground - their two other most recent releases were by extreme doomsters Salome and epic true metal rockers Slough Feg! Agalloch fit right in, in the sense of not fitting in, as they, like those bands, are nothing if not unique. Well, ok, Agalloch are nominally black metal, and "arty", and thus always draw Opeth comparisons, but that's just 'cause it's tough come up with something -really- accurate in that dep't. Another would be Wolves In The Throne Room. Or Ludicra, though they're supposedly so citified, and Agalloch are definitely of the forest.
Fans will know that Agalloch recently enlisted our pal Aesop from Ludicra on drums. One of Aesop's bandmates from that outfit told us that Agalloch sounds like Weezer doing black metal. Maybe that was meant as a criticism (of Agalloch, Weezer, and/or black metal) but for some of us it sounds like a recommendation!! And while we're not sure we really hear that anyway, we guess there is a "pop" side to Agalloch, at least, some occasional clean vocals crop up alongside the usual raspy style ones, and certainly plenty of melancholic melody factors into their exquisitely crafted, carefully orchestrated black metal onslaught, a warm and -gentle- onslaught some of the time we must say, one that even veers into post rock territory a bit, a la Explosions In The Sky or Godspeed or something like that gone black metal, maybe. And the whispery "To Drown" hints at Current 93, tremulous and atmospherically epic. So chamber rock, art rock, post rock, folk rock... Agalloch are perhaps all these things and sundry, in some small measure. But definitely black metal is the crux of this, with those vokills, and blasting beats, and the crunch and whine of the guitars much of the time... whilst Moog and piano, cello and glockenspiel, field recordings and vibraphone, even "petrified bone, glass & metal sheet percussion", all are also woven into the compositions here, making for a lulling sound easily associated with woods, smoke, antlers, mists - even without support from the artwork that suggests such things. Speaking of which, the tri-fold digipack this comes in is handsomely designed, with the band's logo subtly done in raised clear spot varnish on the front cover, likewise with the track listing on the back. Nice!
NB. for those into "six degrees of separation" games, a glance at the credits here will allow you connect Agalloch to krautrockers Faust in approximately one move! Amber Asylum also.
On sale, $2 off regular price (normally $13.98) for the next two weeks, through December 3rd!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In addition to the eagerly awaited new Agalloch full-length on Profound Lore that we're listing this week, a few copies of this ultra-limited new Agalloch 7" just walked in the door, too - originally only available at their album release shows in Portland and Seattle! The two tracks here are to be considered as missing material from The Serpent & The Sphere. Get it while you can, we're told it's already on eBay for crazy dollars. Pressed on clear wax and limited to a hand numbered 500 copies!
Herein we find some early, early material by Portland's grim forest lurkers, the artistic, atmospheric black metal entity known as Agalloch. Eight songs taken from limited edition demo tapes circa 1996-1998, recorded before they got a record deal. Only a couple of the songs, meant for a 7", were later released on a limited cdep now also long gone. And listening to this, you can hear why they eventually got signed (and went on to develop the cult following they have today). These songs are both heavy and depressive, and metallically, melancholically melodic, coming off way more Iron Maiden-y than some black metal for sure, with extra folkiness that makes us think of early Abigor. And definitely fans of old Opeth should investigate this (you'll like the 11 and 13 minute long songs). Coming as no surprise to anyone whose heard their later material, Agalloch's demo archives incorporate rasping anguished vokills, jaunty folk-like melodies, trance-inducing battery, buzzing guitars, and calm, near-ambient interludes. One song is all acoustic strum and woodfires burning.
If you're already into this band, you'll want this. And it's also as good a starting point as any (considering these songs were THEIR starting point). Actually some of us here who hadn't really gotten into Agalloch before are finding this to be a bit of a treat, and realize we should pay more attention to what they've been up to lately, as well.
It's full length number five from Agalloch, and after releasing undoubtedly the most critically acclaimed metal record of 2010 (not to mention an equally well received EP in 2012) we find these titans of earthen blackened folk metal undeniably at the height of their powers. The Serpent & The Sphere greets the listener first with sparse solitary folk guitar, the minimal plucking of strings, like the last dying embers of a bonfire - before a doom dirge erupts, layered with enormous thunderous toms and shimmering clean guitar. It's a sound that verges on funeral doom, only a few steps away from Asunder. And then things drop down again into a folky acoustic strum, before morphing into a melodic doom plod accentuated by epic harmonized guitar leads and cryptic rasped vokills. And this organic doominess seems to color much of this album. Agalloch draw not just from classic Norwegian black metal here (we always thought early Ulver was a pretty good reference point for these guys), but also from the organic expanse of latter day Neurosis and even the melodic death doom of bands like Shape Of Despair. There's a progressive flair too, some of the guitar leads bringing to mind newer Enslaved, while the hints of acoustic psych folk recall '90s Opeth. The focus on doomier plods and more midpaced driving rhythms over blastbeats or hectic time signatures really allow the melodies space to take center stage, resulting in a more streamlined and immediate Agalloch record, not to mention maybe their most headbangingly heavy metal yet!
Note, we also got a super limited new Agalloch 7" too, kind of a companion to this full-length, see our listing nearby...
Wow what a great lost discovery! Originally released in 1975, this Madrid psychedelic-pop outfit were making some of the most pleasing and colorful sounds in Spain during their all too short existence. Due to its limited release it never made its way to much of the rest of the world. Intense psych aficionados have treasured and always been on the lookout for this, their one and only release, but in order to be lucky enough to get a copy you had to be willing to shell out big bucks for one of the few copies that were still around. Luckily 30+ years later the world gets to hear what those in the know in Madrid in '75 got so excited about. With 8 songs in English and 2 en Espanol, Agamenon took a love of Sgt Peppers era Beatles, good time drugs, colorful melodies and enough quirk and charisma to make their songs jump out at you. From fuzzed out acid rock to sunny beaming psych-pop glory, this is one of those bands that deserves a place next to Os Mutantes and Love with their ability to create an album filled with so much vibrant energy, catchy hooks and a spirit that makes you want to lay in the greenest grass on the warmest day and roll around for hours.
What would you expect a solo album from the phenomenal guitar player for Japanese art-spazz-punks Melt Banana to sound like? Probably a diverse and demented exercise in guitar-based creativity...and that's what you get. Spike features 25 instrumental tracks, mostly miniatures ranging from mere seconds to a minute or two in length, though the disc ends with a ten minute live epic. It's a wild array of scraping drones and squealling chaos, sounding more like video game gunfire in parts than anything resembling conventional "guitar playing". Yet despite all the effects and electronics at play, there's for sure some guitar strings and fingers in there too. Although for the most part on the harsher side of the musical spectrum, this disc is not without beauty. If you're already a Melt Banana fan, you'll find this quite listenable and attention-span friendly. Imagine Fred Frith vs. Buckethead... Agata seems particularily fond of extreme stereo panning, so we'd recommend headphones if you're brave!
