This grew out of a performance where Air provided instrumental backing for Allessandro Baricco reading from his novel, City. Baricco is a well-known contemporary Italian author, and City is about a young Mathematician with a vivid fantasy life.
Baricco reads his stories while Air play soothing, kind of creepy soundscapes. Baricco has a deep, lovely voice and the music of the Italian language makes this something strangely soothing to put on in the background. Dark and dreamy with lots of rumble and warm sonic blur, with field recordings of wind and chimes and all sort of other atmospheric ephemera. Nice.
MPEG Download: "Bird" [/audio/air_bariccobird.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Bird" [/audio/air_bariccobird.m3u]
MPEG Download: "Pat Cobhan Ride" [/audio/air_bariccopatcobhan.mp3]
Dead Rails is the second full-length from Air Conditioning, now quite at home on Load after a debut disc on Level Plane. They're from the same Allentown, PA scene as Pissed Jeans, and even (much more, whoah) noisier than those guys! They also were on a 4-way split LP we listed last time, the Tiger Tongue Pussy Cactus: Terminal Fantasies For Malefic Youth on Hospital Productions. Regarding that, we said Air Conditioning sounded like a supercharged noise rock Tim Hecker, all blown out buzz and buried melodies, and this follows suit.
Air Conditioning combine vacuum cleaner guitars with industrial-strength drum pummel for a noise rock delight, stress on the noise. Sheets of feedback shriek accompany indecipherable angst ridden punk hollers, all subsumed far below a tsunami of rumbling distortion. Although Dead Rails has its quiet, dare we say pretty side too, on the more ambient droning likes of "I Run Low". But when on the disc's final, 16+ minute track, Air Conditioning ask us to "Accept Your Paralysis", they've probably also caused said paralysis with their amped to the max geetar STATIC and mind-numbing rhythmic throb. Here, their noise rock gets almost psychedelic, like one of them Japanese bands, maybe Up-Tight or LSD-march veering into Hijokaidan territory!
An awesome 4 band pile up, the state of modern black noise, or blackened noise rock, or whatever the fuck you want to call it. This stuff is fierce and heavy and demented and so great. From the same label that brought us the primitive black metal of Malkuth (reviewed elsewhere on this list), the raw black fury of Bone Awl, those killer Akitsa reissues and a recent MB reissue, comes this killer 4 band anvil to the head. Up first is the Vegas Martyrs, featuring Hospital head honcho and Prurient mastermind Dom Fernow, and just like the recently reviewed lp, it's another gloriously blown out and beautiful slab of blackened pop flecked noise rock. In the red and on the verge of destroying your speakers, VM offer up a killer Maiden-like riff over super distorted drums, garbled FX drenched vocals, super hypnotic and repetitive, all wrapped up in a crumbling stereo killing production, finishing off with several minutes of glitchy grinding murky noise...
Up next is Air Conditioning, who sculpt their noise into something sorta pretty, huge swaths of blown out buzz over blurred buried melodies, layer upon layer upon layer, all shifting and shimmering, it almost sounds like a super charged noiserock Tim Hecker. Abrasive but surprisingly lovely. Up third is The New Flesh, show kick out the jams, ultra lo-fi style, a noisy practice space sounding garage rock sludge jam, all downtuned guitars, distorted trash can drums, and a weirdly deep voiced vocalist, who occasionally let's loose with a glass gargling screech. Dirgey, grimey, almost like some long lost Swans rehearsal tape. Finally, finishing things up are the Coughs, who weave some strange drone-y dirge with skronky sax and buzzy bass, fuzz guitar, all in short sharp bursts, creating a weirdly spacious plod, looped and cyclical, until the wild female vocals come in, and suddenly the Coughs sound like they're channeling old school Riot Grrl through new school noise. Out of nowhere comes a blast of spastic drum freakout before returning to that gorgeously relentless sludge-y pulse...
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Geoff Marx, Thomas Muer and Derek Greenberg are the brains behind this sound installation from '98. Just now in at Aquarius, it is constructed using three simultaneously playing cds. One containing found environmental sounds, one of beats and one of melodic and harmonic content. Each collection of sounds is fragmented and randomly mixed up by the shuffle mode of the cd players, thus creating a constantly changing sonic environment.
Mr. Gerard Cosloy and Ms. Claire Pannell return with their third album of indie-skronk. If you and your best friend were really good at improvising on a processed guitar, an analogue synth and a drum kit after listening to DNA, Handful of Dust, and Fushitsusha, then yes, you too could be as good as Air Traffic Controllers... then again you too might be CEO of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.
Gerard Cosloy & Claire Pannell's improv-skronk guitar/bass duo returns with a new album, recorded live to minidisc in various downtown NYC locations. Two guest saxophonists feature on one song, but despite that the aforementioned "skronk" element has in fact been reduced a bit from previous outings--"Existence Period" seems a bit prettier than earlier Air Traffic Controllers discs. Very nice.
We loved this record before we even heard a note. C'mon, the band's called Air Waves, the record is called Dungeon Dots, and the cover photo is a bearded man and his baby, both sporting chainmail made out of what appears to be beer can pull tabs. How could we not be smitten? And even though we loved it already, when we finally heard the music inside, it wasn't at all what we expected, yet we still loved it. In fact, we might love it even more for precisely that reason. With all the music coming out these days, that relies so heavily on atmosphere and ambience, echo and delay and reverb and lo-fidelity and buzz and drone, not to take way from that stuff, it's stuff we most definitely love, but enough of those things and much can be forgiven in the way of songwriting and performance. So we were sort of expecting another chunk of eighties beholden lo-fi lysergic garage pop, but instead, we were greeted by big jangly, strummy, sunshiney, melancholic warm, swirling pretty much perfect pop music. Softly crashing, dreamily bombastic, the basslines woozy and warm, the guitars chiming and lush and layered, and the vocals, well, let's just say we got so used to boys singing super high, and sounding female, that we were surprised to discover that Air Waves was in fact a one woman band, her vocals plaintive and emotional, the perfect balance for the jangle and strum, the shuffle and shimmer. The songs striking a similarly delicate balance between wistful and melancholy, sunshiney and dreampoppy.
Opener "Knock Out" sealed the deal within seconds, simple jangle guitars, some sorta twangy melodies drifting around that main riff, the bass warm and liquid, the drums crashing and loud, but not overwhelming, and the vocals, immediate and intimate, weary and emotive, all wound up into the sort of jangle pop we just can stop listening to. "Bisous" is another favorite, that starts out all brooding and melancholy, the vocals so bittersweet, over hazy minor key chords, a ballady dirge, drifting and droney, and subtly sad, but slow building too, eventually bursting into a super propulsive stretch of distorted fuzz pop, rocking and rollicking, but still retaining the pathos of the intro.
And so it goes. We could definitely go song by song, and sure there's reverb and delay and echo, but it's used way more judiciously here, cuz really the songs don't need 'em, but they are subtly colored by the various effects, the chords and arrangements, the melodies and the vocal lines powerful enough to carry even the most barebones sound, but thankfully, Dungeon Dots is anything but, it manages to be lush and lustrous and layered, but still simple and minimal and pretty and hooky and catchy. And sneaking in just hours before the end of the year, which will most likely require an adjustment to our year end top ten, since this definitely is one of our favorite pop records of 2010. Anyone who dug recent aQ faves like Jaill, No Joy, Avi Buffalo, or who loves stuff on Captured Tracks and Sacred Bones, or who digs classic modern pop like the Shins, Built To Spill, Neutral Milk Hotel and all that amazing nineties indie rock that still sounds so great, odds are you're gonna love this too!
Remember that Arktinen Hysteria compilation of '60s-'70s underground electronic/avant-garde music from far-off Finland? Pekka Airaksinen was one of the composers whose work made that comp such a great freaky blast of Arctic creativity. His career has stretched from the late sixties 'til today, from his membership in the notorious Finnish underground 'rock' outfit The Sperm to solo recordings now being released on his own cd-r imprint. This anthology makes a valiant effort to wrangle some of the best of Airaksinen's diverse and bizarre output onto one disc, and also includes a second disc of 'remixes' of his stuff by a surprising array of current sound makers, among them Nurse With Wound, Es, Simon Wickham-Smith, Mira Calix, and Curd Duca. From proto-Industrial noise to electronic beats to free jazz to massive drones, Airaksinen's work is interesting and always avant-garde. We'd actually have preferred that both discs be given over to his original recordings (how 'bout a reissue of the entire 1970 Sperm album Shh!?) rather than get the remixes, but we're not complaining, this is a cool comp and doubtless more will be forthcoming especially if the presence of the big-name remixers get folks to buy this who aren't already intrigued by the pioneering Finnish sonic weirdness on offer.
Longtime readers of the aQ list probably remember a strange lp by a group called Sperm, a mysterious collection from 1970 of experimental sound from the Finnish underground, the project of a man named Pekka Airaksinen, who under the moniker Sperm, created a series of haunting soundscapes, and 20th century tape music, experimental landscapes of wild skronk and skree, out-jazz, lots of drones and weird rhythms, that as we said at the time puts the modern noisemakers to shame.
Well this little artifact was just unearthed, or at least, finally reissued/released, a recording made by Airaksinen in 1972 as his Sperm project came to a close, shortly before he gave up music for a decade. And its proximity to the Sperm record timewise definitely reflects the sonically similar sound, an extension of sorts of the recently laid to rest Sperm, if anything the sounds here more intimate and reserved, less noisy, and more electronic, more rhythmic, with long stretches of barely there minimalism peppered with haunting electronics, disembodied melodies and murky percussive thumps.
Like the Sperm record, the sounds are all over the map, with some strange ineffable something linking them all together, mysterious mechanical rhythms that sound almost like some sort of primitive home brewed techno give way to droned out free folk reminiscent of countrymen Avarus and Anaksimandros, chaotic drumming and layered high end tones, which drifts into more of a moody futurescape, all swirling effects and muddy electronics. The flipside begins with a long stretch of warm subtle ambient drift, which splinters into some awesome, but awesomely maddening looped high end skree, before slipping into some strange cosmic crunch, and then finally some blissful spaced out drift.
Gorgeous, strange stuff, anyone who bought the Sperm record will probably want this, and all you Finnish weirdo music obsessives, this one is for YOU.
Here is a new ep from this power pop trio of twenty year olds from El Paso Tx. They sound like emo boy rock, ala Slint (only harder) Drive Like Jehu or June of 44. You know what im talking about. three songs. Full sounding and driving with dual vocals.
Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout have assembled an album's worth of material that just as well could (should? would?) be GBV. This is the second full length from this recently reunited pair of extremely prolific songsmiths. As with other
Mr Robert Pollard has been quite prolific as of late. This is #13 in the Fading Captain Series. All new material and the first full-length collaboration between Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout, since 1996's Guided By Voices 'Tonics And Twisted Chasers'. Of
Oh, those familiar voices and just as familiar chord changes of Bob Pollard and Tobin Sprout. In my opinion, the most successful tunes here are the more upbeat ones, the slower ones tend to somewhat trudge along. The title track I've fondly renamed "Hold Your
We had first heard about this local SF duo via various blogs, hyping them to high heaven, as the next big name to watch out for in the ever expanding world of 'shoegaze black metal', but from the very beginning, their sound was at the most tangentially black, the blackness implied in their gorgeous hazy, blown out, blissy shoegazey gloom pop sound. And even at their most buzzy, their songs still oozed pathos and passion and more importantly, melody, and moodiness, this new one is no different, if anything, it's their best sounding records yet, but also maybe their heaviest, but that heaviness is again tempered by a masterful command of melancholia and minor key melody. The opening title track should tell you all you need to know. Beginning with a slow progression of crumblingly distorted chords, sprawled beneath a female spoken word, everything hazy and reverby, we'd honestly have been happy if that's all it did, but then when the song proper kicks in, it's not with a bang, but a strange oozing melty drift, the programmed (?) drums spare and skeletal, multiple guitars winding around each other, spidery melodies and fuzzy strum, all beneath the vocals which are breathy and wistful, and just on the edge of sinking below the surface of the dreamily gauzy mix. But hold on, near the end of the song, the guitars slowly build to something more frenzied, the drums following suit, blossoming into something more Godspeed like, but then into a proper double kick blast, but as mentioned above, the sounds themselves continue to soar and swirl.
But it's not all cotton candy guitarchords and prismatic dreampop buzz. The second track gets all post punky, with yelped swaggery vocals over more powerful drums, the guitars though, still a bit soft focus and fuzzy, and then in swoop more layers, and some oooohing and aaahing background vox, the drums flitting into blast beat mode occasionally, but really barring the strident vocal yowl, this would still be pretty dreamy and shoegazey. Which is right where the sound ends up on the third track, channeling Swervedriver and Spacemen 3 through something more urgent, the vibe post punk death rock, like a super charged Joy Division, given a slightly metallic makeover, the vocals slipping back into something more poppy, Airs delicately balancing urgent gloom punk churn, epic emo, and shoegaze dream pop, and not just on that track, throughout the whole record, and we presume, their whole career.
There's definitely a sonic thread holding these songs together, but they definitely shift pretty dramatically over the course of Adore. "Missing" is a wistful dirge of a distortion doused ballad, a creeping tempo, lots of guitar buzz and rumble, but the vocals, super emotive and heartfelt, the main melody wistful, a potent combination of sonic heft and dream pop delicacy. Which is followed by "Adrift", another stripped down sprawl of psychedelic downer pop, multiple vocal lines intertwined, lots of swirling sheets of feedback, thick swaths of buzzing riffage, but all blurred and smeared into something much more dreamlike, building again to a soaring majestic Godspeed like coda, swirling and noisy and chaotic, but still lush and lovely.
The rest of the record plays out similarly, a churning, driving, nineties style blast of heavy shoegaze pop, that's a dead ringer for pretty much everything we listened to and obsessed over in our twenties, but maybe supercharged a bit, gives way to some noisy, mathy, post punk, frenetic and a little bit jagged, and with a cool bombastic stop start breakdown, but still swathed in shoegazey shimmer, and finally finishing off with a short burst of what sounds like shoegaze screamo, which if it wasn't a genre already, it is now, or really should be, cuz that last two minute blast, will most definitely leave you wanting more. Tripped out, heavy, psychedelic, gloomy shoegaze blackened buzz pop bliss of the highest order.
While not necessarily recommended for black metal folks, if your BM tastes rung more towards Alcest, Amesoeurs, Les Discrets, Deafheaven, Hypomanie, Lonesummer, Lifelover, then this could very well be your new jam. And really anyone into broody, blissy shoegaziness of all stripes, Tied To The Branches to Swervedriver, My Bloody Valentine to Foreign Cinema, Moonbell to Grave Babies, will definitely dig this big time.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!!
Of the three recent releases / discoveries from the Los Angeles Free Music Society through the Cortical Foundation, Airway's "Beyond The Pink" is the strongest, if not the most listenable. Joe Potts -- one of the more prominent players in the LAFMS --
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Hurrah! The much anticipated third album from our favorite world-weary pop angels has arrived! Very '60s Brill Building girl group style production but with less naive, sugarcoated lyrical sentiments. Sooooo sssplendid! Beautifully recorded, with layer upon layer of beautiful melodies and instrumentation. This band really does just get better and better. Their recordings have the hugeness and details reminiscent of Phil Spector or Joe Meek. And the use of reverb is flawless. The soft echoey lovely vocals just melt my heart and the songs are so individually rad that they stand on their own and apart from each other. This record is softer and sadder in some ways, perhaps their darkest work to date. Less poppy or optimistic than previous songs I've heard. I really can't take it off my stereo at home. Absolutely, totally and completely recommended!!!
Hurrah! The beloved Aislers Set return with this 3-song 12". It contains two versions of the title song (sung in English and Spanish) as well as "I'm So Glad To See You Go". Super splendid pop once again from Amy, Wyatt, Yoshi, and Alicia. Slinky'n'jangly guitar, low-key organ, a vibrant horn section and the always welcome vocal pairing of Amy's unmistakable sweet, drowsy lilt and Wyatt's gentle, boyish charm. Sooo good. And this is just a little hint of what's to come in their third full length due in February - certainly cause for celebration. Can't wait!
This is the debut album from the highly anticipated new project from Amy of Henry's Dress/Go Sailor, Alicia of Poundsign, Wyatt Trackstar, and Yoshi of Scenic Vermont. And what a debut it is! There's certainly no shortage of fine songsmiths in this SF combo, and the resulting pop chemistry is pretty darn magical. Soft, pretty and a bit droll, but with ample bounce and feist when required. Superb indie pop gems that are not to be missed... really! You need this now... or bear the wrath of Sadie!
Local popsters Aislers Set finally return with their second, super anticipated full length. Unabashed mod-pop fans of the Postcard Records/Belle&Sebastian/Zombies variety, the Aislers' first album Terrible Things Happen has been a steady bestseller at AQ ever since it came out 2 years ago. Look for the same to happen with The Last Match -- it's that toothsomely good and that insanely catchy. Warm, jangly with honest to goodness real songs. Belle and Sebastian are rumored to be big fans, and coincidentally enough, when we play this in the store some folks mistake the Aislers Set for B&S when Wyatt, not Amy, is singing.
SF pop heroes return with a newly recorded version of "The Red Door", from last year's highly acclaimed LP "The Last Match". Also included are two new songs, a live cover of Girls At Our Best's "Warm Girls" and "Summers Reprise".
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A Henry's Dress reunion of sorts. Side A is more lovely pop from local favorites The Aislers Set, while the B side is from her ex-bandmate, now in How, engaging in a little blatant Who worship.
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Split single from two beloved local groups doing the noisepop so well. The Aisler Set track is a version of the French pop classic. Lovely artwork and foldout poster by comic book artist Adrian Tomine of Optic Nerve fame.
These once local legends have their two full lengths reissued for a legion of new fans who missed their winsome noisepop the first time around in the nineties. Basically they are the band that defined the sound of Slumberland. Here is what we said about them way back when, in the days of briefer reviews:
This is the debut album from the highly anticipated new project from Amy of Henry's Dress/Go Sailor, Alicia of Poundsign, Wyatt of Trackstar, and Yoshi of Scenic Vermont. And what a debut it is! There's certainly no shortage of fine songsmiths in this SF combo, and the resulting pop chemistry is pretty darn magical. Soft, pretty and a bit droll, but with ample bounce and feistiness when required. Superb indie pop gems that are not to be missed... really!
For fans of Grass Widow, Belle and Sebastian and any of the above bands.
Oh, and their third and final album, How I learned To Write Backwards, released on Suicide Squeeze back in 2003, is also now available again, just ask!
These once local legends have their two full lengths reissued for a legion of new fans who missed their winsome noisepop the first time around in the nineties. Basically they are the band that defined the sound of Slumberland. Here is what we said about them way back when, in the days of briefer reviews:
Local popsters Aislers Set finally return with their second, super anticipated full length. Unabashed mod-pop fans of the Postcard Records / Belle & Sebastian / Zombies variety, the Aislers' first album Terrible Things Happen has been a steady bestseller at AQ ever since it came out 2 years ago [now 16 years ago!]. Look for the same to happen with The Last Match - it's that toothsomely good and that insanely catchy. Warm, jangly with honest to goodness real songs. Belle and Sebastian are rumored to be big fans, and coincidentally enough, when we play this in the store some folks mistake the Aislers Set for B&S when Wyatt, not Amy, is singing.
For fans of Grass Widow, Belle and Sebastian and any of the bands on Slumberland.
Oh, and their third and final album, How I learned To Write Backwards, released on Suicide Squeeze back in 2003, is also now available again, just ask!
One guy from Stars of the Lid, one guy from Labradford. Making lovely sounds together not unlike those of the aforementioned bands. Spacious. Soothing. Pretty. Kranky. (The label, not the feeling.) We like.
Pounding Finnish black metal hell. Super heavy. But also simple and melodic, with swirling keyboard textures and vocals alternating between harsh screeching and clean sort-of-chanting. (Courtesy of the singer from Amorphis, apparently relishing this
Second album from these Finns, equally blackend and pounding as the first.
Tyhjyys (whatever that means?) is this Finnish black metal band's third album. Getting no argument from Ajattara's fans at AQ, they haven't strayed from their successful formula of dark, midtempo, heaviness -- adorned with eerie keys and underpined by pounding drums. And they still 'sing' in Finnish. Although a crushing proposition overall, some melody emerges amid the guitar riffs and vocal rasps. It's bouncy death march music for industrial goblins.
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Some super experimental low end doom drone minimalism from Brad Rose, who besides playing in The North Sea, Corsican Paintbrush, Jade Emperor also runs the insanely cool Digitalis label.
Up until now, most of what we've heard from Rose has been on the folky side of things, who knew he had this in him. A seriously grindingly dense churning buzzscape. Caustic and thick, huge slabs of heaving low end, layer upon layer of black hole heaviness. Dentist drill high end surfaces here and there, but overall, every track here is some sort of leap into sonic tar, struggling to breath or even hear, your ears clogged with crumbling back grit, your body pinned to the ground beneath wave after wave of slow motion blacknoise pummel.
You know if you need this. If you're into the slow, and low and HEAVY, you probably do. But this was LIMITED TO ONLY 72 COPIES. It's out of print. We have 15. Do the math.
Red cassette cases, red cassettes, cool full color sleeves on nice textured paper, each copy hand numbered.
The fourth cassette from this East Coast minimal drone duo, half of which, as we've mentioned before, just so happens to be Brad who runs the Digitalis label.
This tape takes up right where the last one left off, a dark slowly expansive exploration of deep black minimalism, this one begins less heavy than the others, murky and mumbly, looped low end drifts out from the speakers like doomy ripples, soft pulses, distant throbs, part way through the sound gets all airy and swooshy, almost like some blackened new age. But that's just about when the sound thickens, and grows slightly more corrosive. A crumbling, grinding muted flow more soothing than heavy.
But flip the tape over, and we're back in the heavy guitar realm, with swirling streaks of buzz and pulsing effects, droned out chordal whir, intense blown out squalls of freaked out noise, dense swells of high end skree, everything warped and warbly and wrapped in damaged electronics and strange sonic glitches, an avalanche of fragmented riffage building to a Total like rrrroooaaar. Cool.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!! Comes packaged in a full color fold out cardstock insert, the tape wrapped in a cassette obi, screen printed on heavy textured paper and each one hand numbered.
Third release in almost as many weeks from this relatively new drone-doom duo, half of which just so happens to be Brad Rose, Digitalis head honcho, as well as member of the North Sea, Corsican Paintbrush, Jade Emperor, the Golden Oaks and probably a few more that we're forgetting.
But don't let that fee folk pedigree fool you. This new outfit, Ajilsvga is certainly free but not folk at all. Exploring a world of near static heaviness similar to like minded folks in SUNNO))), Sunroof!, Vulture Club, Half Makeshift, but leaning toward the lugubrious sludgey ambient doom side of the slow and low spectrum.
On Winter Hunt, it's a thick squall of buzz and rumble, guitars, or organs, or synths, but mostly guitars we think, all set on stun and allowed to unfurl thick waves of thick viscous low end. A swirling morass of grinding glacial low end, sheets of crumbling distorted chordal whir, off in the distance, keening tones floating above the roiling rumbling below, a heaving heaviness, strangely soothing and meditative as much as dense and intense.
Fans of the above mentioned bands will dig this big time, as well as anyone into the low, slow and heavy, the dark, dense and drone-y.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Package in full color two sided sleeves.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Holy crap is this beautiful, two cassettes in a big oversized white vinyl double tape case, like the ones that language tapes used to come in, or noise tapes after that, a 4 way split of related bands, all integral parts of the Digitalis label family. The bad news, is that this is limited to only 85 copies, and is already sold out. We got 15 of those, and once those are gone, we WILL NOT be able to get more sad to say. Another awesome record that WAY too few people will get to hear. As much as we love cool limited stuff, and special releases and all that, at some point we would probably be willing to trade more releases for more copies, good music is meant to be heard by more than a handful of folks, and if your release sells out in one hour or one day or one week, then probably you could have sold a whole lot more, and a bunch of folks are gonna miss out. But heck, you all know all that, you just want us to pipe down and tell you about this super limited double cassette so you can throw it in your cart and move on. OK, then...
Up first Ajilsvga, the doomdronedirge project of Digitalis label head honcho Brad Rose and his partner in low end crime, probably the nicest thing we've heard from them, a long stretch of crumbling rumbling droney heaviness, but all tangled up with ghostly voices, soaring soft harmonies, giving the track a definite SUNNO)) meets Arvo Part vibe. Cool. Flip the tape over and we've got 4 tracks from Mass Ornament, Rose's partner Eden, who supplies much of the artwork and is responsible for those vocals on the Ajilsvga track. MO offers up some droning drifting, brooding ominous doom folk, multi-tracked vocals over moaning low end, glistening melodies, creepy and crawly and so beautiful. Fans of Inca Ore and Grouper should for sure check this out.
Tape 2 starts out with Alms which just so happens to be the other half of Ajilsvga, and treads similar ground, big billowy low end rumbles, deep and resonant, throbbing and shimmering blackly, building in intensity, all sorts of FX join the fray, and the drone gets more and more caustic and buzzy. Good stuff. Another doomdirgedeathdrone artist to look for more from.
Flip the tape over, and it's the North Sea, Rose's long running solo project, who in the past has explored the fringes of free folk and ambient drone, but lately has been exploring the world of low end heaviness, as he does here again, offering up a seriously dense and thick dronescape, a gorgeous undulating, pulsing, heavy, slow motion tarpit drift.
Definitely amazing stuff. First come, first served, one per customer, hopefully, they'll repress it or release it on cd or something, but for now, be quick or be happy without....
Brand new tape from this mysterious Texas three piece, Old Norse Mara marks aQuarius' first exposure to the sounds of Ak'chamel. They seem to be the latest in a long line of iconoclastic badasses from their home state - going back to Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leadbelly, the 13th Floor Elevators, Jandek, and so on - where the rules of the game are continually ignored, rewritten, and used at the band's convenience to create a sound that refuses to fit within any specific label, recalling everyone from the Sun City Girls to Moondog to Dead Raven Choir, often in the same song. Dark, folk-tinged melodies merge with a warped punk sensibility, but these songs surely exist in their own fucked up world where categories are pretty much useless. Beginning with the awesomely titled "Pussy Gloating The Give", where banjo and murmured vocals clatter below weird chipmunkish voices and an unsettling atmosphere, the tape gets weirder from there. Things get sunny for a brief moment with "Slalom", a quick Meat Puppets/Minutemen styled jam, before getting more evil sounding. "Mountain Of The Sleeping Lady" comes off like some Sublime Frequencies field recording of a street performance in Cambodia being reprocessed into weird quasi-industrial ambience. The tape is strangely and surprisingly cohesive despite its lack of easy reference points and Ak'chamel's voice is truly their own. A killer surprise from a band we can't wait to hear more from!
'The Bringer of Illness' reads the subscript on many of Ak'chamel's releases; and it's a fitting tag for the mysterious outfit of Texas witch-doctors, who seem intent on opening portals into this world to spread ill-will and malcontent from unseemly dimensions. We were immediately intrigued by Master Chemical Society's description of The Unseen Traveler: "If Smithsonian Folkways published the Necronomicon as a book on tape, it might sound like this. Psychopompic incantations and hypnotic gloom captured on cassette." That's about right for this group dedicated to crafting a fictionalized Crowleyian temple musick for tranced-out splutter on gut-strung guitars, kettle drum processionals, and deep-throated incantations. Ak'chamel's deliberately lo-fi, murky temple music conjures not only the post-industrial rituals lusting for the pagan days of Druidic Britain but also the pantheistic, impishly playful rhythms from Thai temple music as well as some choice nods to the occult ethnomusicology of their professed influences, The Sun City Girls. Super limited stock on this one, we gotta say.
Whoo-hoo! Here's a whole disc (or double lp) of music by a band from that great Those Shocking Shaking Days compilation of Indonesian '70s fuzz/funk/psych/prog we made Record Of The Week not long ago... one of the bands we liked so much we picked 'em for one of the sound samples accompanying our review of that comp. This best-of AKA collection is the first release on the Strawberry Rain label, formed by the very fellow who compiled Those Shocking Shaking Days, to reissue more vintage Indo-rock treasures. We're already salivating at the prospect; with this anthology Strawberry Rain is off to a pretty darn badass beginning. We imagine you'll agree, if you're into the international language of screaming vocals, acid rock guitar, swirling synth, and seriously funky grooves. Hard Beat is aptly titled.
According to the liner notes provided here, AKA started off in East Java, giving wild live performances playing material by such Western artists as James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Grand Funk Railroad... and listening to this, we'd guess that some Deep Purple was probably part of their repertoire too. Eventually they started writing their own stuff, got signed to a label, and made eleven albums between 1971 and '77, selected songs from which are presented here - including the two tracks comped on TSSD, "Do What You Like" and "Shake Me", along with 12 others (13 on the cd, it's got a bonus track), all of 'em equally awesome, but varied between ants-in-the-pants JB's style funk (including their #1 in Australia hit, "Crazy Joe"), groovy psych-pop, and Purplish heavy rockers... several songs somehow managing to combine all of that, all at once, in fact!
For fans of sundry other purveyors of hairy funk freak rock from around the world, say like Los Dug Dug's, Speed Glue & Shinki, Modulo 1000, Black Merda, Bunalim, Ngozi Family, Juan De La Cruz, etc. Highly recommended; good grief this is good. Here's hoping Strawberry Rain do a Hard Beat volume two someday, though of course there's other bands from Those Shocking Shaking Days we'd like to hear more of too!
Compact disc packaged in gatefold mini-lp style sleeve, the double vinyl also in a gatefold, both limited editions.
Super limited release from the very cool Sewer Records in Sweden. This 3" cd-r deviates from Sewer's ususally harsh/noisy/brutal aesthetic and explores a dark shimmery, Eastern tinged soundscape, with creepy reverbed female vocals, warm dark rumbles, gentle ripples of swoosh and whoosh, and the occasional clang and clatter. Quite nice.
Tatsuya Yoshida is insane and Atsushi Tsuyama is even more insane. Here are some of the bands they're involved with: Ruins, Omoide Hatoba, Ruins-Hatoba, Acid Mothers Temple, Mainliner, Tairikuotoko vs. Sanmyakuonna, etc. Akaten is the two of them together, just fooling around. They specialize in short, conceptual, almost-non-musical tracks. For instance, "4" features their attempts at simulating various bird calls.
Two of the underground Japanese music scene's most proficient, prolific, and (sometimes) silly figures team up yet again for the duo project Akaten. That's bass-playing trickster Atsushi Tsuyama (Omoide Hatoba, Acid Mothers Temple, etc.) and drummer
This is the first we've heard from Akatombo in more than three years. The last cd from this Scotsman living in Japan came in the form of Unconfirmed Reports, a record we sold tons of back in the day, and even after several years, False Positives seems to take up pretty much right where Unconfirmed Reports left of. A killer collection of programmed beats, layered samples, dark atmospheres, thick guitars, and droney-ambience, sounding at times like Muslimgauze, or like a more chill Necro Deathmort, or one of those bands who might have shared a compilation with Techno Animal or Sidewinder back in the day. The vibe is definitely on the isolationist tip, murky and claustrophobic, the beats are crunchy and caustic, more often lurching and lumbering than skittering or shuffling, and those beats are set amidst thick swells of grim sinister ambience, and blackened latenight atmospheres. And as we mentioned in our review of Unconfirmed Reports, that really is just the way we like it. A sort of dubbed out downtempo dance music that's not so much for dancing, but lurking, hanging out in the shadows, in empty clubs in empty cities, everything crumbling and decayed, a seriously dystopic soundtrack for some wasted scorched earth future.
The opening track is super misleading, a Kompakt style house music rife with samples, and dubbed out snares, it has us thinking that maybe things had in fact changed, but then the second song kicks in and we're back in the dark dank world that Akatombo seems to call home, sounding like a backing track for some Sensational B Side or a long lost Spectre jam, all low slung and dirgey, twangy Morricone guitars over a loping blackened groove, very cinematic, almost like Barry Adamson by way of Techno Animal, but then it just keeps getting darker, the beats more muted, the textures more blurred and dense, the vibe sinister and malevolent, murky pulses beneath thick swirls of tarpit thrum, clouds of blackbuzz driven by a machinelike industrial pound, stuttery rhythms wrapped around fragmented samples and the occasional stretch of almost big beat groove, which gives way to some blackened slithery downtuned dirgery, which in turn becomes a gauzy almost Tim Hecker like sprawl, before once again, splintering into another stretch of abject rhythmic miserablism, or tranced out blackhole propulsion.
Packaged in an oversized full color sleeve, inside are liner notes, as well as random newspaper clippings, and like Unconfirmed Reports, False Positives also includes a dvd-r with a handful of videos.
We weren't sure what to expect from this one at all. An oversized sleeve, with Japanese characters adoring the front, as well as the sticker sealing it shut. Inside, a handful of random newspaper clippings, some oversized full color inserts. The work of a Scotsman, who once lived in SF and now lives in Japan, with a previous record released on Colin Newman's (of Wire) label Swim, and this record engineered by one of the guys from legendary Japanese psych rockers Les Rallizes Denudes... No clues at all to what it might actually sound like, but we needn't have worried, as Akatombo traffic in some seriously dark electronic throb, all deep rumbling bass, and minimal drum skitter. A strange hybrid of more modern dubstep, and old school post industrial soundscapery, the mood is ominous and haunting, the melodies minor key and sinister, the beats aren't big, although they are dense and powerful, but the bass most certainly is, we find ourselves cranking the bass on our system, and every track sets the whole house a rumbling. A super thick throbbing low end shock wave of sound, that pulses beneath the muted rhythmic pound, and the strange processed voices, the chopped and looped samples, a swirling, roiling blackened sea of low end, that sprawls and oozes. Fans of stuff like Spectre, Scorn and Muslimgauze will definitely dig, in fact, Akatombo does in some ways sound like a composite of those three. Some Eastern influence here and there, some deep bass dub dynamics, some serious industrial leanings, all woven together into a minimal/maximal songsuite of seriously deep listening blackened chillout music, a smoldering smear of some slow motion dancefloor density. We even hear some Portishead in there too, a little jazziness as well, some Bohren maybe? This is definitely some seriously aQ style electronica, a heavy, murky, lowslung late night blackend drone groove, that is more mood music than dance music, which is generally the way we like it.
Packaged in an oversized printed envelope, each one hand numbered, with multiple inserts, newspaper clippings, as well as a dvd-r featuring three video clips. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Having recently reissued hard rocking Turkish '70s pop star Edip Akbayram's self-titled 1974 debut, now Pharaway Sounds moves on to the man's next album, done with his killer band Dostlar (Friends), originally released in 1977. It's a severe collision of Western electric rock and Middle Eastern folk, akin to other vintage Turkish psych faves like Mogollar, 3 Hur-el and Erkin Koray, but particularly '70s-sounding in a polyester suit, shag carpet kind of way.
The very first track might throw you for a loop, but past that sappy, poppy number with its soft-rock strings and horns and tinkling piano, this record suddenly gets a whole lot rockier, heavier, and funkier. Imagine an Anatolian Pop score for some groovy car-chase flick... the schlocky, sizzling vintage '70s synths enhance the kitsch value and sound good amidst the traditional ethnic instrumentation (arranged by one of the Mogollar guys). Edip and the Dostlar dudes dish out the hard rock and funk with a groovy bottom end, plenty of psych guitar riffage, Edip's powerful vocals and wah-wah augmented Turkish saz. With proggy weirdness like flute attacks and studio tape speed manipulation, this is some badass 'exotica' for sure. Anyone addicted to the Turkish psych rock scene-sound from back in the hazy day like we are will find this a fine addition to their collection. Remastered, includes extensive new liner notes by Andrea Sawyer of Weirdo Records.
Glad tidings for Turkish psych freaks, or those soon to become Turkish psych freaks (just give this a listen!): here's a new must-have collection crammed full of swirling, fuzzed-out electric saz, impassioned vocals, and traditional Turkish folk gone funk! If you are indeed into the groovy East-meets-West psychedelia that flourished in Istanbul back in the '60s and '70s, artists like Mogollar, 3 Hur-el, Baris Manco, and Erkin Koray, chances are you may already be familiar with Edip Akbayram and his band Dostlar (formed in '73), as a while back we reviewed a compact disc reissue of Edip's circa '76 album Nedir Ne Decildir and gave it a hearty recommendation. This new Edip Akbayram double disc on the Shadoks label contains 24 tracks, including ten of the 14 cuts found on that previous reissue (meaning, if you already have that cd, you still will want this for the whole disc and then some of songs you don't have... and you can't get rid of the Nedir reissue either if you want those four songs that don't overlap). So this is definitely the Edip set to get at any rate.
The colorful music of Edip Akbayram and Dostlar is pretty much the hardest-rockin' all the Turkish psych acts of the era we've heard... darn heavy in spots. The Anatolian folk-rock of the sixties is blended with a polyester '70s wah-wah funked-up progginess here. It's vibrant and colorful music to make you feel like you're in some smoky, swinging nightclub on one of the warren of narrow, twisting side-streets off of the hip main drag Istiklal in the Beyoglu neighborhood of Istanbul, back in the day, sweating on the dance floor or sitting back, sucking on a hookah.
The cd booklet is full of cool photos, and a page of liner notes, giving Edip's bio but no info on the tracks themselves, we're just told that they're from his first two albums and singles. However, they do include English translations of the song titles, which should give some idea of Edip's seemingly dire outlook on life (or the outlook shared by his Turkish folk sources), with such songs as "Sorrow And More Sorrow", "Miserable", "In Vain", "Our Village Is Full Of Smoke", "Don't Touch My Sad Soul", "Tyrant", "Gallows Pole" and even "My Car Broke Down"! Sounds like a bummer, yet many of these tracks are amazingly upbeat musically!
Edip definitely belongs high up in the reissued ranks of all the incredible, obscure, groovy sixties/seventies psych sounds from all around the world that we can't get enough of here at AQ: Os Mutantes, San Ul Lim, Mogollar, Blo, Bango, Brincos, Krysztof Klenzon, Juan de la Cruz, Los Dug Dugs, He 6, the stuff on comps like Cherrystones Rocks, Welsh Rare Beat, Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word, Studio One Funk, etc. etc. etc.
You can tell a lot about a band by how they creatively they describe each member's role, what they play, and what they do, this is mostly applicable to metal bands, but avant Japanese grinders AKBK (featuring members of recent aQ faves, progressive space psychedelic death rockers King Goblin!) put most metalheads to shame with their liner notes, no 'drums' or 'vocals' here. Instead it's: 'Judas Preacher', 'Hard Puncher', 'Dirkschnoise', 'Anal Backfire' and 'Noise Gigolo'. And those aren't their 'rock names', those are the instruments they play, or at least the roles they fulfill in the band. And heck before we even get to the music, we might as well mention the amazing song titles: "Bug In Your God's Ear", "Have A Jail Lunch", "Let Me Eat Whales", "Sexual Response Of The Intact Male", "Give Back My Horse", and the super cool colorful abstract collaged artwork, and before we make our spiel about how amazing these guys are, and how twisted and gloriously fucked up and heavy this record is, have a look at the obi which features testimonies from a few metal, noise and grind luminaries: Rich Hoak of Brutal Truth, Tabata Mitsuru of Zeni Geva, Lasse Marhaug of Jazkamer, and Analtoshit of Butcher ABC, who describe AKBK as "a non-stop terrorist attack in the brain" and "like being crushed by a mountain" and as "a prog rock grind metal excursion", and Marhaug even wants AKBK to be played at his funeral!
But don't just trust those guys, take our word for it, this stuff is incredible, the core sound is definitely grind, with shrieked vocals, blasting chaotic drums, wild flailing gnarled guitars, and there's probably some bass in there too, buried under an avalanche of blown out crunch and howling ultra distorted chaos. But like Agoraphobic Nosebleed, AKBK twist everything up into super intense, ultra complex, and skull crushingly heavy prog-grind-metal weirdness, time signatures shifting constantly, riffs turned inside out, lurching start stop arrangements, super intricate tangles of melody wound around lumbering almost doomy dirges, which lead right into freaked out psychedelic math rock grind, and then back into some primitive D-beat pound, a furious stumbling confusional outsider grind juggernaut spitting swirls of atonal melody, insane blasts of woofer shredding double bass and pealing streaks of feedback drenched powerviolence. Yet the thing is, for all of this record's weirdness, it's not goofy at all, maybe the guys making this are funny guys with great senses of humor (the song titles and various non-musicial stuff seem to indicate that might be the case) but AKBK's music is anything but, this is some serious, and seriously devastating heaviness, furious and frantic, experimental and avant for sure, but essentially just a beautifully brutal chunk of twisted metallic grindcore. We imported these direct from the band in Japan, and only have a few on hand...
Improv guitar duets between Akchote and Ribot, and Akchote and Chadbourne (who's also responsible for some banjo and, on one song, vocals)...several Ornette Coleman compositions are essayed, and the whole thing seems to be inspired by the disturbing/erotic photography of Japan's Nobuyoshi Araki. Indeed, Lust Corner is beautifully packaged with an assortment of Araki's photos.
Artists and title says it all, eh?
