Gorgeous reissue of two long out of print cd-r's from Bay Area abstract drone drift outfit The Alps, featuring AQ staffer Scott Hewicker (Troll), Alexis Georgopoulos (Tussle) and Jefre Cantu (Tarentel, Colophon, J.C. Ledesma), who together weave breathtaking expanses of blissed out shimmer and glistening meditative soundscapes well-suited to gazing at frosty mountain peaks such as those of their namesake.
The Alps explore mysterious worlds of haunting folky foresty freeform loveliness, trafficking in dark dreamy wonder, disembodied strains of some lost Appalachia float weightless in a dusky forest of murky mumbly ambience, while muted guitars and stumbling tribal drumming swirl and sway amidst delicate tendrils of creepy ghostly falsetto croon and swoon. Elsewhere, deep pools of shimmering cymbal wash sparkle and glimmer, the sky above a moonlit smear of ethereal electronic effervescence, all run through with streaks of subtle melody. Squeaky clarinets and alien flute toots melt into whirls of swish and whoosh, all laid over ominous drones and instrument hum and tape hiss.
Think The Wickerman meets Jewelled Antler or Neu! played at 16rpm broadcast through a moss covered speaker on the bottom of the sea, or the sound of the Northern Lights, recorded onto a wax cylinder and played back through a shortwave radio, while a boy on a nearby rooftop hurls broken cymbals into the drained swimming pool next door, the entire thing subtly underpinned by the relentless throb and pulse of rain dripping on upended plastic garbage cans. So good.
The only drag here is that the label decided to leave off one of our favorite tracks, the final number on Spirit Shambles, fearing its lo-fi sprawl and clatter didn't fit in with the Alps' lush ambience and moonlit glimmer, which is precisely why it worked so perfectly. Oh well, to hear what we're talking about you just might have to do some internet searching or late night eBaying, but don't let that deter you from picking this up, even minus that burst of corrosive murk, you'd be hard pressed to find a lovelier batch of shambling sonic swoon...
Packaged with all new artwork in a cool, sleek oversized digipak style folder.
Full length number four from these Bay Area kosmische krautfolk visionaries, the sound on Le Voyage (aka IV) the perfect extension of the soundworld they created on 2008's III, and perhaps their most fully realized record thus far, as the band have developed from lo-fi drone and ramshackle free folk, abstract Appalachia and dreamy dronemusic, to something much more measured and sonically subtle, still consisting of many of the same basic elements, yet somehow more haunting and delicate, and occasionally exploring heavier more rhythmic territory.
Part of this new expanded sound is the fact that the core trio, our very own Scott Hewicker (Troll), Alexis Georgopoulos (Arp, formerly of Tussle) and Jefre Cantu (Tarentel, Colophon, J.C. Ledesma), is augmented by some serious guests, who contribute tamboura, pedal steel, bass guitar and field recordings to the already impressive (and occasionally baffling) list of sonic implements: palm guitar, 12 string acoustic guitar, Moogerfooger delay, mountain drums, electric clouds, Mini Moog synthesizer, falling piano, symphony space, radiophonic synthesizer, parabolic guitar, memory man, desert guitar, melted glass guitar and more.
But don't let the bizarre instrumentation mislead, the sound here is definitely abstract and 'out there', but perhaps not as much as that list might lead you to believe. Those instruments, subtly wielded, result in something dreamy and divine, rhythmic, propulsive, and totally mesmerizing.
The record begins with some crystalline Appalachian guitar, warm and sun dappled, underpinned by upper register shimmers, bits of piano, super minimal percussion, and some gorgeous pedal steel that gives the track a sweeping, wide open space vibe, the musical equivalent of laying in knee high grass, watching the clouds drift by in a cobalt blue sky. After a brief bit of jumbled psychedelic samplage, voices, horn fanfares, explosions, dinner party strings, applause, running water and random swirling FX drenched, the band get seriously krauty, with some stripped down tribal drumming, muted squalls of wah guitar, definitely dark and brooding, but as the track progresses, and various instruments join the fray, loping bass, steel string strum, all manner of melody, the track begins to glow, a smoldering almost space rock sounding work out, that sets its sights for the heart of the sun, but instead settles back to earth in a brief stretch of piano flecked drone, before launching into the next track, a dreamy slice of classic sounding psychedelic pop, all spare drumming, and chiming acoustic guitar, not to mention some rubbery basslines and more delicate piano, the second half of the track decidedly less propulsive and more washed out rainy day contemplative.
After another brief respite, soundtracked by a warped collage of shortwave buzz, reverbed horns, electronic glitches, swirls of hiss and grit and a brief flurry of marital snares, "Saturno Contro" commences, a lazy, lugubrious bit of dour acoustic dreampop, laced with tinkling chimes, moaning strings, softly cinematic and quite lovely.
Which leads into the records closing salvo, a three track, 20 minute fugue, that is the record's climax for sure, beginning with "Black Mountain", a piano laced buzzing raga, a gorgeous sprawling slow burn, that builds to something slightly more rhythmic, a sort of brooding chamber folk, bookended by field recordings of crickets, as if the track was merely the soundtrack for an early evening stroll through the forest. The title track is up next, a lush, loping chunk of hypnorock slowcore krautdrone drift, the drums simple and skeletal, the other instruments subtly urgent, the tone tense and intense, like the final few minutes of some space rock epic, stripped way down, slowed way down and stretched way out, still psychedelic and space-y, but more earthbound, the sound of night and day viewed in time lapse, flowers opening to the sun, and then folding back up to shut out the dark, the shadows rushing across the ground, the sky and ever shifting prismatic expanse, dark and emotional and gorgeous, eventually fading into the buzzing final track, another hazy druggy raga, thick layered buzz wrapped around a simple propulsive bassline, the song building bit time, the drums crashing, the various tones and sounds seeming to blossom like miniature supernovas, the various elements bleeding into one another, a lush cloud of swirling buzzing bliss, that could go on forever, but instead, crumbles into a fractured dubby outro before blinking out completely.
A perfectly realized hybrid of krautrock, new age, raga, Appalachia, dronefolk, an ever shifting expanse of cinematic sound, a pop music redefined and reinterpreted as something much more esoteric, hauntingly beautiful, and darkly mysterious.
SF's The Alps (featuring our very own Scott Hewicker) returns with their second full length of haunting folky foresty freeform loveliness. Featuring members of Tarentel and Tussle, the Alps traffic in dark dreamy wonder, disembodied strains of some lost Appalachia float weightless in a dusky forest of murky mumbly ambience, while muted guitars and stumbling tribal drumming swirl and sway amidst delicate tendrils of creepy ghostly falsetto croon and swoon. Elsewhere, deep pools of shimmering cymbal wash sparkle and glimmer, the sky above a moonlit smear of ethereal electronic effevescence, all run through with streaks of subtle melody. Think The Wickerman meets Jewelled Antler or Neu! played at 16rpm broadcast through a moss covered speaker on the bottom of the sea, or the sound of the Northern Lights, recorded onto a wax cylinder and played back through a shortwave radio, while a boy on a nearby rooftop hurls broken cymbals into the drained swimming pool next door, the entire thing subtly underpinned by the relentless throb and pulse of rain dripping on upended plastic garbage cans. The final track however veers into much stranger territory, but somehow still sounds very Alps. An ultra lo-fi, pagan freakout, creepy and muddy and druggy, blown out drumming, bizarre animalistic vocalisations, all seemingly captured on a hand held microcassette recorder. Weird. But very cool.
LIMITED TO ONLY 150 COPIES!!!!!
Alrakis are a little like a German Darkspace, the same sort of epic cosmic blackness, the same obsession with the cosmos, the stars and space and the galaxies around us, but instead of a blown out hypersonic blur, Alrakis conjure their spaced out blackness from something much more depressive and dismal, a mournful blackbuzz dirge that creeps and lumbers, the music melodic and melancholy, wreathed in a warm gauze of blurred buzz, the vocals an anguished wail, the drums a skeletal plod, buried in the mix, all epic and emotional, repetitive and cyclical, heaving and majestic, a loping sprawl of buzzing black mesmer, slipping dreamily from churning black trudge, to hazy celestial shimmer, all droned out and atmospheric, long stretches of contemplative hush, which gradually supernova into another burst of cosmic buzz, and the more we listen to this, the more the Darkspace comparison seems somewhat apt, if you assume that Alrakis does sound like Darkspace just at 16rpm. Which makes sense, the idea of these sounds floating weightless, a black buzz drifting against a glimmering starfield of distant flicker.
Ultimately, the cosmic/celestial focus is invoked by the music's lonely vibe, it conjures up the feeling of being lost in an inky black endless sky, of drifting alone, forever and ever, it's definitely a sad record, and based on the subject matter, we can only assume that it is the imaginary soundtrack for the final journey, whether a literal trip to the farthest reaches of the universe, or the more metaphoric great unknown, this is the perfect score, haunting and harrowing, a grim black depressive missive that is easily one of the coolest depressive black metal records we've heard, with much more going on that just buzz and plod and pound, the sounds are lush and layered, even folks not that into black metal could be lured in by some of these tracks, sounding a bit like a slightly blacker Nadja, the same sort of minimal dronedoomdirge, and many of the tracks are completely ambient, unfurling a sort of grim kosmiche shimmer that seems to drift endlessly into the endless comsos.
Way recommended for sure, one of our favorite new black metal discoveries. Comes in a super swank oversized A5 style digibook, adorned with, of course, images of space and stars...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Finally, the first two records from stoner rock heavies Altamont, originally released as cds on Frank Kozik's Man's Ruin label, and LONG out of print (as in 15+ years), have been rescued, resurrected and reissued by the fine folks at Valley King in the form of two super limited picture discs, both sporting new eye popping Alan Forbes artwork, and sounding as good as ever. For those who might not know, Altamont features none other that Dale Crover from the Melvins, but not drumming, nope, he's the frontman, guitar and lead vocals, with the bass and drums handled by the rhythm section from Acid King! And don't be expecting any sort of Melvins style avant-sludge, or fucked up sonic experimentation either, Altamont is all about rocking, much like Acid King in fact, but less sludge and more Southern, stoner style hard rock, you heard us, Southern stoner rock, big riffs, big drumming, drawled vox, plenty of hooks, lots of wah wah, some groovy shred too, we're often reminded of another favorite of ours, Raging Slab, which is most definitely a good thing. All that said though, all those years in the Melvins couldn't help but rub off, so there are plenty of Melvins-y moments, but generally like the popper Melvins moments, given a seriously Southern twist.
1998's Civil War Fantasy probably freaked Melvins vans out big time, but anyone into big, distorto riffs, and slithery almost Sabbathy grooviness, this stuff slays, and you might not even recognize the Hendrix cover ("Ezy Rider") if you didn't know the song already, which should give you an idea of the sound, and yeah, fear not, there's plenty of cowbell too! But it's really about the riffs, and the songwriting, both of which are pretty top notch, and we had sort of forgotten how good this stuff was, but hearing it again all these years later, we're digging it heavily!
2001's Our Darling is more of the same, plenty of swampy slither and big riff churn, if anything, it might be a bit heavier than the first, with Crover confidently slinging that axe like he wasn't actually a drummer, kicking out the jams, and unleashing some seriously shred throughout, and again, the Melvins influence pops up throughout, maybe a bit less subtly than on Civil War Fantasy, but still it's all Crover and crew, and their twisted world of southern rock, and there are covers this time around too, Johnny Thunders' "Pirate Love" and Mose Allison's (by way of The Who) "Young Man Blues", and again, like on Civil War Fantasy, you might not know they were covers, since they fit so perfectly with the rest of the Altamont originals, although the B-side does feature one particularly trippy stretch of abstract psychedelic drone-y drift, but it's surrounded on both sides by plenty more Southern psychedelic blooze rock stomp.
Each picture disc is limited to 500 copies, both feature all new artwork by Alan Forbes, and each comes housed in a stickered, heavy PVC plastic sleeve.
Brand new blast of shit kicking heavy rock from this local outfit, who have been pretty much out of action for close to a decade. But this new two-fer on local label Valley King finds Altamont in fine form, fronted as always by none other than Dale Crover from the Melvins, stepping out from behind the drum kit to strap on an axe and man the mic. He's backed up by Joey Osborne, from another bunch of local stoner heavies, Acid King, along with Dan Southwick, also of Acid King, and they're joined this time around by Coady Willis from Big Business and the Melvins, and Toshi Kosai, also of Big Business. And yeah, this is the first new music from Altamont since 2005, but it almost sounds like the first new music since, say, 1978!! Total hard rocking classic rock a la AC/DC, Blue Oyster Cult, etc., with a bit of extra noise rock heft, but really, "Mrs. Creech" could be some long lost seventies B side from some super obscure hippie heavies, sounding a bit like the Melvins covering Skynrd, distorted vocals over some serious Southern rock style heaviness, complete with a cool, weird feedback/harmonic solo. It's not hard to imagine some sixteen year olds parked behind the 7-11, drinking beer, making out, car doors open, tape decks cranking this jam right here.
And then on the flip, they tackle a Blue Oyster Cult classic, which if you weren't sure already where these guys are coming from, well, there's no doubt now, and they do it pretty straight, total seventies hard rocking radness...
Super limited as usual, with awesome Alan Forbes cover art. Swank silk screened sleeves, each one hand signed and numbered by Forbes, and each single includes a sticker as well.
Melvins drummer Dale Crover's side band, where he straps on a six string and does his southern rock, '70s stoner thing. The Altamont trio also includes a member of Acid King. Their last album had a Hendrix cover, this time they do one by the Heartbreakers, and a Mose Allison by way of The Who tune, among their retro originals.
It's always a little weird when a sound becomes cool, or hip, and suddenly the bandwagon is groaning under the weight of a million bands doing their very darnedest to cash in, to bask in even a little sliver of that reflected limelight. And with the advent of Facebook and MySpace the amount of time it takes now for a new sound to proliferate and make its way to every corner of the underground as essentially been whittled down from months, to weeks, to days, heck maybe even minutes. Such has been the case with the recent resurgence of interest in fuzzed out dream pop and eighties synth wave, cold wave, dark wave, all the various retro waves, besides the now hundred of new bands popping up every few weeks, it's even gotten to the point where Built To Spill recently re-recorded a bunch of their songs transforming their jangly indie pop into eighties new wave. But heck, at least it's a sound we dig, and amidst all the chaff, there is definitely some serious wheat, we focus a lot on those groups here, bands that obviously love that sound and aren't just aping it, in some cases, it's folks who remembered it the first time around, and were reminded how much they dug it, in other cases it may be a new discovery, but it ends up revelatory, and of course there are folks who take that sound and twist it all up, just another element and influence in a swirling sea of disparate elements and influences, which seems to be the case with Altar Eagle, the project of Digitalis head honcho Brad Rose and his partner Eden Hemming (who played together previously as psych folk duo Corsican Paintbrush), whose new lp under the guise Altar Eagle, is a heady swirling morass of murky dreampop, cold wave drift, eighties style shoegaze shimmer, and post industrial pop flecked fuzz, and is truly divine, but more importantly, manages to sound wholly original amidst a glut of bands attempting to create something similar.
Opener "Battlegrounds" with its bubbly propulsive beat, hazy vocal harmonies, and swirls of soft focus synth fuzz, definitely set the stage, for a sort of drugged out lazy afternoon fuzz pop drift, not all that far removed from Beach House, Mazzy Star, Cocteau Twins, Galaxie 500 and the like, but these two keep piling on the layers of buzz, letting the synths whirl and hum, the voices (and pretty much everything else) swaddled in reverb and echo, almost like some eighties classic slowed way down and doused in effects. "Honey" is similarly fuzzy and poppy, the boy/girl vocals pulled straight from some eighties C64 single, but settled amidst something much more modern, a stuttery rhythm and a tangle of warm liquid synths.
"You Lost Your Neon Haze" might be the 'hit' if bands like this actually had hits, with its looped mesmerizing rhythm, gnarled electronic backdrop, and buried in the murk vocals, a gorgeous chunk of smoldering slowcore, barely audible through the washed out dreamlike haze. Although a few tracks later, there's "Monsters", a total gloom pop anthem, like Cold Cave's "Life Magazine", that sounds ripe for someone to snap up and toss in a hip commercial. Swirling synths, a propulsive beat, a killer hook (still buried under layers of fuzz and buzz) a crazy catchy chorus, with some awesome ooohs and ahhs background vox.
And so it goes, the rest of the record unfurling like some sort of drugged out hazy sonic fever dream, eighties pop transported to the nineties, leaving a twisted spray of swirling shimmering gloomy new wave doom pop contrails in its wake, warm and woozy and daydreamy, and easily one of the best things we've heard in this new wave craze of retro synth wave dream pop. WAY recommended.
Danish doom metal, from a band who apparently don't think that calling your album "something of something" when your band's name also follows the "something of something" formula is any sort of faux pas, like for example wearing denim with denim. Something of something overkill is not of concern to them, not when they're also willing to subtitle their album "Opus 1 In D Minor". Furthermore, while we're not sure what exactly an altar of oblivion is, we might guess that sinews of anguish is the result of not stretching properly before exercise?
Ok, we're poking fun, but just to lighten the mood, 'cause these guys are really indeed quite DOOOMY. In the epic, traditional, sorrowful style of Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus, as applied to a concept album that's about WWII - as experienced by a German soldier on the Eastern Front. Don't worry, this doesn't glorify the Nazis, Altar Of Oblivion are not that sort of band, instead this is about the horrors of war, and furthermore the horrific realization comes to this album's protagonist about just who and what he's fighting for, as, demoralized by the harsh reality of war, he shakes off his Nazi indoctrination and it dawns on him that Hitler is an evil madman, leading the Germans to defeat, not victory! Imagine being likely to die at Stalingrad, fighting the Russians for a cause in which you no longer believe, hopelessly struggling for survival because you have no choice. Now that's doom.
AoO's heavy chugging riffage does its job, creating a massive mood of depressive fatalism, and evoking the crushing juggernaut of war, o'er which this inglorious tale is spun, delivered by a singer whose stylings range from deep voiced majesty to a more biting, gritty whine. Probably his "operatic invocations & ars melancholica" are what will either make or break this for you, quite compelling to some, but mere morose monotony for others. Of course, morose monotony is what doom is all about, really, and melded with metallic guitars what's not to like if you're into doom? There is plenty of guitar here, in fact, 3 of the 5 band members are credited with "lead guitar" - even including the drummer! But, as you might a expect from a concept album, an additional '70s prog edge is added as well by the use of Mellotron (also handled by the drummer) and flute (by a guest "flute mistress"). We could imagine them playing with another something of something band, Hammers Of Misfortune.
When you imagine a tribute to Austrian apocalyptic industrial / militaristic folk legends Der Blutharsch, you might not imagine it being black metal by way of Italy and the Netherlands, but that's precisely what transpired way back in 2005, when Italian black metallers Altar of Perversion and Dutch BM horde Mordaehoth each offered up their own sonic homage to DB, each taking up a side of the record with their own twisted take on DB's already twisted blackened sounds. While that slab of vinyl disappeared before we could manage to get a single copy, it's now been released on cd, with the original tracks from the 10", but with the added bonus of SEVEN Der Blutharsch tracks, over thirty minutes of grim grey sonics, the sounds which ostensibly inspired these blackened reworkings.
Altar of Perversion are up first, with a sprawling 11 plus minute epic, that blurs the line between lurching doomic creep, and frenzied black blast, the sound raw and lo-fi, the guitars murky and droney, the track a lumbering dirge for the first little bit, melancholic and depressive, the sounds seem to bleed and ooze, sometimes slipping into killer droned out stretches of blurred buzz, before slipping back into that doomy trudge. It's not really until maybe half way through that things get really black and buzzy, but even then, the production is so warped, brittle and weirdly spare, that it retains that doomy energy of the first half, while wedding it to blasting beats and soaring fast picked majestic melodies. Eventually the sound does explode into a more standard blasting blackness, still, the sound retains a sort of seasick lurch that lurks just below the surface. Hard to say if it's a cover, or just a song dedicated to the mighty DB, but either way, it definitely exudes the same sort of black energy.
Mordaehoth take up three tracks, starting off with what sounds like some wartime radio recordings, only to launch right into it, weaving pagan flute like melodies into an almost punky sounding crush, clean vocals add to the pagan vibe, lulling us into thinking there won't be much blackness until the song darkens considerable, the vocals transformed into a sinister demonic croak, the music following suit, blasting and buzzing, only to return to that opening lilting shuffling blackened folk. The second track is a bit more dirgey, and simultaneously more majestic, soaring melodies, over crumbling distorted riffage, buried lo-fi drumming, but it's the third track where the Der Blutharsch homage becomes way less subtle, after starting out with a blast of growled buzzing blackness, the song slips into a more folky buzzy sort of cadence, which is soon joined by a distorted voice, sounding like some sort of militaristic sloganeering, over loudspeakers, before the band explodes into some serious churning black buzz, still accompanied by those voices, transforming the black metal into an almost military sounding march, and then the metal is peeled away leaving, some old scratchy military propaganda record spinning, then what sounds like some super dramatic footage from a war film, all ominous horns and more mysterious voices. Pretty goddamn great. easy to imagine this is what DB might sound like if they were black metal.
But then come the DB tracks, worth it for the price of admission alone even if you're not into black metal, unclear if these tracks are exclusive, but they are fantastic, brooding and dramatic, haunting and cinematic, deep spoken vocals, all manner of samples, martial snares, woozy ominous strings, warped swirling black ambience, wheezing industrial crunch, blurred blackened melodies, darkly rhythmic apocalyptic folk, Caretaker-like fuzzy, faded atmospheric drift, mysteriously cinematic soundscapes, raga like drones, and of course plenty of military marches, snippets of propaganda films, all woven into DB's gorgeous, barren, blackened soundworld.
Gorgeous packaging too, all black on black and extremely subtle. LIMITED TO 999 COPIES.
Record number two from these Irish heavies, who blend murky blasting black metal with slow build epic post rock, their songs sprawling epics that flit from frantic riffing to soaring churning majesty, guitars slipping easily from super distorted buzz to chiming jangle, and back again, the sounds alternatingly droney and trancelike, rhythmic and meandery. AoP at their finest when they lock into a single part and the whole band hammer away, building tension, a dense repetitive sonic throb, the sound of the instruments blurred into a single epic swell, growing more and more intense, until finally splintering apart and resuming its frenetic buzz and pound. The black metal here is definitely of the soaring, epic and transcendental variety, reminding us of Wolves In The Throne Room and other outfits of a similar sonic stripe, but AoP don't shy away from ditching the heaviness for long stretches, instead weaving lush minimal drifts, the guitars clean and warm, the drums muted and subtly rhythmic, and again those prettier, calmer moments balance the heavier blacker passages, the cool thing being when the melodies from the mellow parts find their ways into the heavy bits, transforming chugging black riffs into something strangely pretty, and way more atmospheric.
All of the songs here are intense and lengthy sonic journeys, and to be fully appreciated, require close listening, parts by themselves don't necessarily have the same impact on their own, you may experience a roiling bit of drum heavy churn, only to have a surprising melody overtake the menacing minor key vibe, other parts are all about the repetition, building into a trance inducing mesmer, a quick glance hardly registering, but letting yourself get lost in the sound makes all the difference. We saw these guys live, and for some reason it seemed a little bit boring, but then there are lots of distractions in a rock club, people talking drinking at the bar, all the sort of stuff that detracts from the sort of experience these guys strive to conjure, but strap on some headphones, close your eyes, and it's a whole different story...
The phrase "post black metal" gets bandied around quite a bit these days. It's seemingly become a catch-all for any BM-leaning band that doesn't wear corpse paint and/or spikes and doesn't shriek about Satan and/or Odin, and when there's so much rampant experimentation going on in a genre it can create a certain desensitization. Nothing's shocking anymore! That's why it's all the more rare nowadays for a band to emerge from the black metal scene that could truly be considered challenging and progressive, but Ireland's Altar of Plagues are most certainly one of those bands. Teethed Glory and Injury is, first and foremost, massive. An enormously modern rebuttal to metal's often backwards-looking tendencies. The album shifts seamlessly from immersive instrumental drone to frantic blurring blast beats with a surgical precision. The decayed buzz of the ambient passages (which make up a pretty big portion of the record) perfectly compliment the more "metal" tracks without ever feeling like filler. Instead they feel just as essential, giving the record a sense of patience and an ebb/flow not often found in this sort of band. The effect is oddly hypnotic and peaceful, even if at the same time the album is often undeniably crushing and unnerving. When it isn't lulling you into a false sense of security with its more spacious moments, it's absolutely pummeling you with an overwhelming aural assault of hyper blasts, chilling frigid vokillz and calculated mesmerizing riffs, like crackling transmissions relayed from an alternate future where the decomposing urban desolation of early Godflesh and Swans have replaced the usual Bathory/Darkthrone blueprint as the primary black metal template. The result is singular and thrilling - a brief and terrifying glimpse at the ruined dystopic landscape black metal will one day become. But first we'll have to wait for all of those other bands to catch up!
Altar of Plagues hail from Ireland, not exactly the first place you think of when it comes to atmospheric black metal. But here they are with their full length debut, White Tomb, which finds the band expertly bringing together the epic sweep of groups like Wolves in the Throne Room and Asunder with that style of Isis-informed metallic post rock we all love. Throw in an awesomely guttural black metal rasp, a couple moments of Khanate styled throat abuse, spaced out ambience with cleanly strummed guitars, and an excellent balance of punishing blasts and more lumbering, slowly moving drums, and you've got one hell of an introduction to this previously unknown (to us, anyway) group.
Consisting of two very long movements, "Earth" and "Through The Collapse", made up of two songs each, Altar of Plagues' lyrical agenda, though not printed here, seems to be similar to that of WITTR's brand of spiritually informed conservation, where humankind will vanish under the indifferent and regenerative hoof of Mother Nature. The two songs in the "Earth" suite, "As A Womb" and "As A Furnace" start with a beautiful piece of slowly building depressive guitar ambience before heading into a super heavy black metal jam that does not sound too far removed from the godly Atlanta based group Withered (who, for some reason, we have never reviewed). Things slow down to a cool, spaced out Mogwai-ian moment that links the two songs, as multiple voices combine before ascending once more to a blissful post metal dirge. As this begins to sink in, we are again introduced to heavy, psychedelically informed black metal that suitably brutalizes you before fading off into the distance as layers of treated guitar ambience combine into a whirlwind of buzzing, which is soon overtaken by a sepia-tinged, slightly disquieting outro that immediately segues into the next song suite. "Watchers Restrained" is where things eventually slow to a glacial pace as disturbing, very Alan Dubin-esque vocals spit out line after line of bile while Altar of Plagues lays a foundation that manages to be both super dense and quite spacious. After being pummeled for a bit, the band pull back and the song fades into walls of crumbling decay that bring to mind the cool Cities Last Broadcast album we reviewed a few lists back. Album closer, "Gentian Truth" takes you on one last journey through a melancholy psych metal hinterland, before ending in an atmospheric soundscape quite similar to the way the album began, giving White Tomb an awesome cyclical feel that will undoubtedly bring out more truths with each listen.
Thank the always right-on Profound Lore label for unleashing this mighty beast upon the world, as White Tomb comes as a nice surprise from a group we certainly hope to hear more from in the future.
Not sure what it was about Altar Shadows that intrigued us more, the fact that they're from Lithuania, or that their record is called Speckledy Falcons. Probably a little of both, but the two taken together, well, they were virtually irresistible to the aQ weirdo black metal obsessives.
And rightfully so. Altar Shadows offer up a blend of majestic Viking tinged black metal, midtempo Burzumic buzz, traditional Lithuanian folk music, black ambience and some field recordings, burbling brooks, birdsong and other sounds of nature. A strange combination, but the band are pretty deft at assembling them into something cohesive and compelling, black and heavy, melodic and mysterious.
Many of the songs start off with field recordings, invoking the spirit of the forest, of the wilderness, which is carried through to the music, even with the riffs are buzzing blackly, they are underpinned by strummed acoustic guitars, mournful melodies, woozy waltz like tempos, often breaking down into a sort of lilting folk interlude, peppered with guitar leads, before swooping back into full buzz.
One track eschews the buzz completely, instead offering up dark brooding acoustic folk, clean crooned vocals, glistening acoustic guitars, melancholy melodies, while another blends the two, turning a folk song into a strange lurching loping blackened jam, with strange staccato drumming, and super emotive melodies, soaring leads, and growled guttural vocals. Their version of a traditional Lithuanian folk song follows a similar pattern, the guitars spread out in long streaks of downtuned buzz, the vocals a demonlike roar, but woven into a strange folky framework, big drums pounding out a rhythm over harmonized melodies, and some simple strumming, strange but quite cool.
But don't let all the folk throw you off, Altar Shadows are indeed a black metal band, who offer up some gorgeously grim black buzz, blast beats, furious riffing, it's just that their black buzz is infused with the spirit of the past, and informed by the folk music of their ancestors, which more than anything, makes their blackness all the more unique, and their sound something special. Plus, SPECKLEDY FALCONS!!!
Awesome archival release from Alter Echo and ERS-One, featuring Dr. Israel, who aQ folks might remember from his killer dubbed out Sabbath cover. But this here disc is a killer chunk of low-slung, proto-dubstep, a thick slithery dubby groove and some super filthy buzzy low end, cranked the whole store shook, gunshots and toasting here and there throughout, the whole vibe hazy and ghostly and druggy and laid back, but that bassline and the minimal rhythm is totally irresistible.
One sided single, in a plain yellow sleeve. WAY LIMITED.
Not to be confused with the Italian Alter Ego who collaborated with Philip Jeck and Gavin Bryars on the recent reinterpretation of Bryars' classic The Sinking Of The Titanic, although come to think of it, it might be pretty amazing to hear THESE guys interpret Bryars' super somber epic.
This Alter Ego is from Germany, and they tend to mine similar ground as folks like Justice and Daft Punk, that sort of high energy, dance floor destroying good time techno, lots of heavy buzzy synths, swooping squiggly melodies, bouncing infectious rhythms, fun and funny, goofy and a bit wild. Super playful and funky, but also pretty weird.
The opener sounds like a Basement Jaxx instrumental, super fuzzy and groovy, synths snarling all over the place, some awesome fuzzy melodies, but then out of nowhere the track breaks down into this weird stumbling percussive sounding rhythmic stutter, all strange pizzicato strings and arpeggiated beats, hard to explain, completely interrupts the flow, but sounds so perfect anyway, the band effortlessly slip back into, it, only to drop out and do that weird confusional breakdown a few more times. Which is precisely what makes this disc, and these guys so appealing.
All of the tracks begin with a similar template. Block rockin beats, fuzzy throbbing synths, woozy melodies, bits of dubstep, dancehall and techno, all wound up weirdly tangled electro / techno hybrids, but then things get all wonky, in a very good way, some tracks get all epic and majestic, the synths swelling into huge grandiose melodies, others fall apart into angular new wave freakouts, some sound like experimental synth jams, others end up super minimal, like some squiggly slightly tweaked take on the Kompakt sound.
On the surface, this stuff will totally hit the spot for anyone into any of the abovementioned bands, folks who want to just hit the dancefloor and get totally lost. But for those of us with an aversion to the dancefloor, but who still dig dance music, this shit is thick and heavy, layered and off kilter, weird and cool and just a bit fucked, without ever losing its groove.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
New album from the fab Tokyo jazz/prog/rock trio lead by Uchihashi Kazuhisa (recently profiled in Guitar Player magazine as part of a feature on Japanese avant-guitar). He and the drummer are also members of Otomo Yoshihide's Ground Zero. Weird and wiggly.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
SORRY.
Avant jazz from Japan featuring guitarist Kazuhisa Uchihashi, who you may also know from Ground Zero and various duos, including several with Tatsuya Yoshida of Ruins.
Awesome instrumental heavy prog with an aesthetic appreciation for noise and experimentation (read: these guys aren't overly wanky or cheeseball like some prog outfits) from this Japanese trio. Featuring Ground Zero alumni Uchihashi Kazuhisa (guitar), Nasuno Mitsuro (bass) and Yoshigaki Yasuhiro (drums), this "supergroup" of sorts is recommended to anyone intetested in the Otomo Yoshihide ring of Japanese improv.
Japan's Altered States, featuring guitarist Uchihashi Kazuhisa (also known for his work solo and with Otomo Yoshihides' Ground Zero, among other things), are one of our favorite undefinable, adventurous jazz/rock/prog/improv combos. Here they tackle a selection of standards, from "A Night In Tunisia" to "Mood Indigo", from "Over The Rainbow" to "Hello Dolly"! Not for those afraid of jazz, but also not for those attached to the "normal" versions of those songs...
Members of Stereolab, Add N to (x), and (the unfortunately named) Hairy Butter join forces to noodle about with their analog toys for a soundtrack to some upcoming movie I'm sure we'll hear more about.
A couple years ago, we discovered a musical gem someone had dropped by the store which had sat unnoticed for awhile until it finally caught the eye of AQ staffer Andrew. It was a double cd-r set of coldly seductive improvised instrumental synthscapes called Tripping The Dark Fantastic, by a little known five member group from Scotland called Altres. Most of their music was recorded in 1983-84 and released in limited cassette runs. The band went on hiatus in '85 but has since reformed 17 years later! We described the group's sound like this: "Altres manage to recall some of the best things throughout the history of electronic music as well as some of the hazier realms of rock n' roll (their website lists Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Philip Glass, Throbbing Gristle, Faust, the Doors, and the Church as influences; at various times we also picked up on Cluster, Heldon, Popul Vuh, and Zombi's coked out disco side), but the end sound is clearly their own. The songs effortlessly ooze deep, krauty melodies with a sustained and cinematic ambience, and when they break out the drum machines things can head into high speed Moroder territory, always a good thing."
After we reviewed it, we ended up selling a ton of 'em. Well, that review was noticed by Dark Entries label head honcho and aQ pal Josh Cheon, who became a fan and got in contact with Altres, and now 30 years after the band was formed they finally have made their vinyl debut! Archives selects seven of the best tracks from their five cassette releases. For those thinking there may be a lot of overlap between this record and the 2cd-r set, fear not. There is in fact only one song, "Icefield" that's on both releases, which we initially described as a darkly unsettling interlude that makes you think of, yes, ice fields, and probably some foreboding windowless compound as well. Coming at the end of side one, it's a great connecting piece between the two sides, showcasing the rest of the killer new-to-us material. It's really quite special to see some attention being paid to this ambitious but short-lived group, who managed to sound both cold and melodic, cinematic and claustrophobic, robotic and utterly human.
The sheer array of equipment used on these recordings is staggering as well and enough to make any synth geek salivate: Casio MT40 Moog Prodigy, EDP Wasp, Roland SH-101, Casio VL-Tone, Korg MS20, MS50, SQ10 Poly-61, Ibanez guitar and vocoder. All of the instruments are fed through various effects and echo units and yet, amazingly everything is played and recorded live - there are no overdubs - which is pretty incredible to think about as so much of their work is so complex and rich that an extraordinary amount of musicianship seems to be at play to bring forth such strong compositions. The pieces here are less minimal wave than one would expect, but instead seem to come through as a hybrid of provocative pulsating kraut-inflected atmospheres, Moroderic overdrive, a futuristic foreboding and cinematic robotic woe. We're reminded at times, of Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury's recently rejected score for the new Judge Dredd reboot, which gets played a ton in the store, especially on the second track, "Panic". Of course there's been no shortage of synth-worshippers past and present that we could compare this to, but there is something so stirringly visual about Altres' music that makes it beautifully all its own, probably stemming from the fact that when this music was made, the members didn't have a quarter of the contextual relationships with similar music and movements that we can easily nowadays connect them with. We're proud to have been instrumental in the group's rediscovery, and we hope more folks discover them because of this record.
The vinyl comes housed in a neon green jacket featuring the original design from the "Rise" cassette by Mike Nelson. Each lp includes a photocopied clear acetate with unreleased photos and notes for each song. Fantastic!
Working at Aquarius brings all kinds of new sounds to our lives. It's always great coming across something you have never even heard of and wondering how you could have gone on for so long without it, and we literally get new stuff sent in from all over the world. Sometimes it can be difficult to get to everything, we try our damnedest, though. And as unfortunate as it is to say, sometimes it can be simply overwhelming dealing with scores of random things that may, sadly, just miss the mark. But there are certainly exceptions to all that, and we can't think of any one greater in recent memory than this amazing double disc from Dundee, Scotland's Altres. One of the members was in San Francisco months back and dropped off a couple copies, which sat unlistened to for a bit too long. Then, curious one day, we threw it on and we were immediately blown away by the majestic electronic sounds pouring out of our speakers. Songs that just sounded, well, CLASSIC. Altres manage to recall some of the best things throughout the history of electronic music as well as some of the hazier realms of rock n' roll (their website lists Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Philip Glass, Throbbing Gristle, Faust, the Doors, and the Church as influences; at various times we also picked up on Cluster, Heldon, Popul Vuh, and Zombi's coked out disco side), but the end sound is clearly their own. The songs effortlessly ooze deep, krauty melodies with a sustained and cinematic ambience, and when they break out the drum machines things can head into high speed Moroder territory, always a good thing. It would just be unfair to the world if we didn't put this on our list, and we have no doubt that many aQ customers will be immediately taken with this. And while you're scratching your head wondering why you have never heard of Altres (we sure hadn't), there is, in fact, quite a story behind everything.
The group initially came together in 1983 before calling it quits two years later. In that time, Altres managed to play a handful of shows and produce a number of limited run cassettes, which make up the first disc of Tripping The Dark Fantastic. Even though these songs are coming from what you can imagine is an archaic source, they sound amazingly clear and powerful. Disc 2 features songs from the regrouped Altres, who decided to get back together a staggering 17 years later. Whatever cynical thoughts about band reunions that might be running through your head can be put to rest, because these songs (spanning from 2003-2006) are clearly the work of the same dedicated soundsmiths. Things sound a little more "modern" at times, we can assume that by 2003 the Altres guys had probably snagged a digital synth or two, but what's special is how they use their instruments, and like the early material, these songs are super melodic, slightly ominous, and darkly evocative.
The album begins with the 13 minute "Golden Country", with arpeggiated synth pulses guiding you into a world that is both spacey and strangely pastoral. It's like looking out across some expansive future horizon with the dramatic synth sweeps making you unsure if you are in sinister or friendly territory. Either way, it's intriguing and a good way to set the stage for the rest of the album. "Snakebridge" is like a high speed chase through some futuristic world of uncertainty. Heavy basslines and a relentless driving rhythm take you all over the place, and the best part is the fact that the song is 11 minutes, giving you plenty of time to get lost in it. There's a cool mid-song break that makes you feel like you've just ducked into some back alleyway before starting up again. To give you a reference point, it actually *sounds* like this stuff could have been a heavy influence on Trans Am's Futureworld. Disc 1 ends with "Icefield", another darkly unsettling piece that makes you think of, yes icefields, and probably some foreboding windowless compound as well.
Disc 2 kicks off with the catchy "Earworm", another romp through a future of back alleys in post-apocalyptic slums. On "Dusktreader", lightly played acoustic guitars that would sound at home on a nice, private press stoner folk lp mix with wispy synths that are rhythmic despite a lack of actual percussion. Recorded live, "(Shadow Of A) Broken Mirror" utilizes another arpeggiated synth sequence with a simple drum machine beat. It has a very cool buildup with some slashing guitar chords, and it makes sense that this is live, as it sounds like the result of a band rather than just someone's half assed electronic project. Closer "Throb" is something that will probably appeal to fans of Circle, it's almost like some electro-jazz hybrid cranking out murky underwater melodies that bring the album to a close as perfectly as it began.
Wow, we could go on and on about what an awesome surprise this is from a band that deserves your attention. Thinking of the music you are familiar with from the band's initial run, you may question why and how Altres could have gone unrecognized after making such original and self-aware music. But better late than never. Highest recommendation possible.
For months now, we've been trying to list a cd from a local one man black metal band called Wikkid. And the way we know it's a one man black metal band is it says so right on the front of the cd, along with the location "Bay Area California". It's a damaged chunk of extremely weird outsider blackness, that we really want to share with you all, but the man behind the band is extremely elusive. When he initially showed up here, in a 49ers jersey, a big black straw hat, and smoking a cigar in a cigarette holder, we weren't expecting the cds he wanted to consign to be anything like Wikkid. And before you knew it, they were gone. So we pestered him for more, instead he brought in some Wikkid T-shirts that he had printed at home with spray paint. So we kept pestering him, but this time, instead of Wikkid cds, or more spray painted shirts, he brought in THIS, the first release from his "black metal influenced organ/keyboard instrumental" project. We were intrigued, not knowing at all what to expect, and while there is definitely some sort of sonic thread tying the two together, Alturaz is a whole different beast, in fact without the above backstory, this could definitely pass as some modern minimalism or spaced out psychedelic kosmische. The first track is just church organ, the chords unfurling ominously, over whirring organ drones, haunting and liturgical, sounding a bit like a black metal intro stretched out into a song proper, we're reminded of Jacula too, sinister and ritualistic, haunting and darkly cinematic, super simple for sure, but really, it's more about mood and vibe, and the sound has plenty of both to spare. The second track is even more minimal, a super spare sprawl of processed organ blurts, rumbling low end thrum, fragmented melodic swirls, lots and lots of space, creepy and soundtracky and very abstract.
It's on track three, "Split Demonic Versonalities" that things get cosmic, the organs now wreathed in space-y FX, the sound swirling and shimmering, sounding like a planetarium show composed by John Carpenter, pulsing and sinister, swirling and ominously cinematic. And then finally, another super hushed, ultra minimal, barely there coda, all low end pulsations and super subtle colorations, like black billowing ripples in a sonic pond, tranquil and hypnotic, but like the rest of the record, infused with a strange ineffable dread.
Recommended for fans of psychedelic space synth, and abstract kosmische, as well as creepy soundtrack music, and it just might hold us over until we can finally get us, and you some WIKKID!
It seems many moons ago now that a mysterious man sporting a black cowboy hat with a cigar (in a cigar holder!) perched upon his lips first strode into the aQ shopfront to thrust upon us some of the weirdest, most damaged outsider black metal we have ever heard, under his one-man solo project Wikkid, and since then we've had further unexpected visits where we've been blessed with weird home made spray painted t-shirts along with cut and paste printed cassettes and cds by Alturaz, this same mystery man's "black metal influenced instrumental organ" outfit. And now here we have a split between those two projects - Wikkid and Alturaz (a split between two one man projects that both feature the same one man! How amazing of a concept is that??), and it's just as fucked up as we'd hoped. Not only in the music disarmingly bizarre, but even the little details are bewildering. The album cover simply features the same cover art from both previous Wikkid and Alturaz releases, but squashed together so they'll both fit on one cd sleeve (but make no mistake, this is all new music!). The track names at first seem to be delineated by Roman numerals, except when you get past "III" they just become "IIII", "IIIII", etc.! The beauty of these bizarre Easter eggs is it's truly impossible to determine whether this is totally calculated, or just genuine weirdness on the creator's part (but personally, we're betting on the latter.) As for the music, Alturaz starts off this strange journey with "In the Name of Self", a full 37 seconds of genuinely creepy horror movie ambient reverb accompanied by some truly bizarre pitch-shifted echo chamber death growls. The second track "Forbidden" (and second Alturaz track) is literally just three minutes of desolate Arctic tundra winds. It's not until track three where Wikkid first emerges and the weirdness truly begins. "Worship of Fire" kicks off with some guitar work (the word "riff" doesn't really apply here) that sounds like someone chewing on metal, before the song dizzily tumbles into some crazy d-beat drumming, constantly drifting in and out of time. The vocals exist on some other audial plane, like a nervous muttering goblin having a panic attack. The affect is a bit like Hellhammer crossed with The Shaggs (Shagghammer??), or as one aQer puts it: Wikkid make Striborg sound like Steely Dan. With the next Wikkid track, the sound quality totally changes (a real trademark of this split - things like levels have no meaning here!), getting way louder with much more low end. "The Unreleased One" is an instrumental mid paced plod, all chugging guitars and intermittent double bass that seems to start and stop with little regard for the song's timing. And then there's this sudden abrupt high pitched beep, way way louder than anything else in the mix, like something's being censored, and suddenly "Putting The Black Birds Blood In Your Veins" (what a title!) bursts forth with some truly demented blast beats and tinfoil tremolo guitar, before Alturaz returns to close out the proceeding with more lonely howling winds and creepy instrumental clean guitar. Needless to say, if you're interested in the shadowy fringe areas of black metal, you need to check this out, but really, we'd recommend this to anyone truly fascinated by those strange outsider records that seem to exist free of any genre constraints, and any petty earthly concerns like "listenable" or "musicality." Utterly weird, utterly fascinating, and totally amateurish but all the better for it. How could we not love it??
Most aQ customers are familiar with Roland P. Young, whose Isophonic Boogie Woogie album, reissued a while back on EM from Japan, blew our minds sky high. The ultimate culmination of Young's quest to create what he called "Afro spiritual minimal electronic space music" which is exactly what it sounded like, minimal free jazz, but cobbled together out of strange unlikely instruments, woven into long stretches of dronemusic, or freaked out almost psychedelic sounding swirling murkiness, the whole record was an otherworldly mind expanding avant jazz masterpiece for sure.
So somehow it makes perfect sense, that Altz, an electronic musician and DJ from Japan, who we know mostly from remixing the Boredoms, wanted a crack and remixing this records and creating his OWN isophonic boogie woogie. So here you go.
It's kind of a tall order since the original is pretty awesome, and way wacked already, but what the heck, Altz does his thing, chops and edits, adds effects, loops flutes and introduces fuzzy synths and skittery bits of buzz, distant voices, but what he does mainly is add beats, it's definitely cool and groovy, but does tend toward the cheesy here and there. The best moments are weirdly enough the most beatless, where the free jazz is matched with some seemingly free drum freakouts, or when the original drums are somehow looped into a fragmented beat, or when the various elements are blurred into a weird buzzy drone, rife with buried horns, and rumbling bass. A lot of the more beat heavy tracks chop up and recontextualize the originals so much, that if you weren't familiar with the Young original, you might not even know they were samples, you might just assume they were some cool weird sounds. Which they most definitely are. Check out the sound samples. This won't necessarily appeal to the same folks who loved the original, but if you're in the market for some twisted up free jazz avant beatmaking, then this might just hit the spot.
A few months back we bellowed loudly about the impressive Berlin Super 80 DVD / CD compilation, which presented the parallel activities of the nascent German DIY film community and the incendiary musical scene which collectively qualified themselves as The Ingenious Dilletantes in the late '70s and early '80s, after a huge arts festival co-curated by Einsturzende Neubauten's Blixa Bargeld. Exasperated by the pressure cooked environment, the members of this very loose community which also included painters, performance artists, actors, etc. embraced an aesthetic of bleak nihilism often tinged with post-ironic absurdity. While not being featured on the musical program of Berlin Super 80, Alu was one of many bands mentioned in passing in that document, having played alongside the likes of Sprung Aus Den Wolken, Neubauten, and Malaria back in the day. Like many of those terminally obscure but often exceptional electro/post-punk projects that Vinyl-On-Demand has reissued in recent years, Alu set forth Frankensteinian, synth-punk and monotone grooves, upon which they chanted dead-pan German vocals sounding not too far from early SPK, Throbbing Gristle, or even Suicide. What's curious about Alu is not the fantastic sound of this, their only studio recording Autimenschen (which actually never saw the light of day back in the '80s, and only now has been discovered and released by the good people at C.I.P.), but in the fact that the two members of Alu also hailed from the obscure '70s Krautrock trio Sand. The morose hallucinations and sprawling psychedelia of Sand are a far cry from the tense, motorized bleakness of Alu; but nonetheless both Alu and Sand stand out as magnificent discoveries from their respective genres.
Finally, the first full length from these mysterious French post black metal krautrock alchemists. And if you think calling a band French post black metal krautrock alchemists might be overdoing it, you haven't hear Aluk Todolo.
An offshoot of black metal horde Diamatregon (who have one record on tUMULt, and another one coming soon), this trio, just guitar, bass and drums, are most definitely alchemists, working some sort of ancient magic, turning the simplest of rock band instrumentation, into something massive and mysterious, heavy and haunting, brutal and mesmerizing, repetitive and motorik. Crafting songs, that manage to be both pieces, in the classical sense, abstract and intellectual collections and arrangements of sound, subtle shadings, tonal color and timbre, harmony and dissonance, and SONGS, in the rock sense, fucking kick ass jams, that seem to go on forever, killer riffs, and relentless head nodding rhythms, like krautrock, only heavier and darker and way way blacker. Like black metal but without all the buzz and howl, stripped down to its very essence, to just mood and rhythm, ambience and propulsion.
In the review of the previous 7" we described the band's sound as: Ominous krautrock rhythms over Einsterzende style industrial clatter, some lost seventies psych rock holy grail channeled through modern post rock. Dreamy and dark and mesmerizing. Hypnotic guitar lines and simple shuffling rhythms that build into clattery propulsive jams, all clanging angular riffs and dense tangled drumming. VERY This Heat like, and reminiscent of the late great Laddio Bolocko. Some sort of dangerous and mysterious postrock / krautrock hybrid, lo-fi but thick and dense and amazingly heavy.
And the full length essentially still sounds like that, but having loosed themselves from the shackles of the way too brief 7" format, the band can take all those elements, and lay them out, an epic massive post rock, krautrock, dronerock, experimental post black metal sprawl. These are the kinds of songs and sounds that need space, and time, need to lull the listener in, to entrance, ensorcel, the rhythms are stripped down and repetitive, looped and hypnotic, simple, but surprisingly and subtly complex at the same time. It's not hard to hear other hypno rockers in Aluk Todolo's sound, Circle, Salvatore and the like, but also space rock masters of repetition, Hawkwind, The Heads, and of course krautrock legends Can and Faust. Especially Can, with their focus on the power of the rhythm, no mater how seemingly simple or plain. But more than anything, it's legendary UK experimentalists This Heat whose, haunting mysterious rhythmic influence is all over Descension.
The opening track is the heaviest, a brutal slab of in the red distorted riffage, the actual riffs barely discernible, more like a heaving mass of crumbling distortion and space rock FX, but the rhythms that frame the whole record are already in place, pounding steadily beneath the buzz and skree. A head nodding pulse underpinning the swirling distorted clouds above. A bracing and white hot burst of blackdronekrautpsych that has the speakers rattling for all of its 8+ minutes.
But that track mostly serves as an intro to the complex and moody rhythmic sprawl that makes up the other three tracks. "Burial Ground" begins with what sounds like a slowed down This Heat rhythm track synched up to the free abstract drift of legendary seventies dronepsych collective Taj Mahal Travellers. The drums unwavering, but the background constantly in flux, swaths of black buzz, brief flurries of chaotic FX, distant low end swells, haunting fragmented melodies, a gorgeous spare kraut rock jam dropped into the abyss.
"Woodchurch" is a dense wall of high end buzz, all swirling distorted hum and keening feedback, tones all tangled up, a chordal wash of tuned vacuum cleaners, a sort of Sunroof! Style urdrone, but beneath it, the simplest of bass lines, distorted and downtuned, a heartbeat like throb, only a handful of notes, just enough to tie into the even simpler drum part, just kick drum and snare, a two step tattoo, as completely mesmerizing as it us utterly simple. The background buzz, swaying and pulsing, like some massive black sea, or clouds of insects ravaging a blighted sonic landscape.
The disc closes with "Disease" which opens with an ultra heavy slide guitar, unfurling a slow motion blues riff, caked in black buzz and thick distortion, the notes left to hang, ringing out until the tones slowly transform into feedback, immediately being swallowed up by the riff right behind it. It's like Robert Johnson playing SUNNO))), and then suddenly, the sound shifts, and the band reverts to its murky trawl, a thick throbbing bass line, another Can like rhythm, guitars warm and warbly, more like a layer of wet fuzz than distinct riffing, but occasionally, bits of that opening salvo return, offering up brief blasts of speaker destroying crunch, or brief bits of grinding buzz, a sudden start that almost, but doesn't quite wake you from your soporific reverie. Near the end, the distorted slide guitar returns, and drums drop out, and the track finishes with a thick coda of pealing guitar roar and shimmering chordal drone�
Intense and hypnotic and heavy and fucking genius. Ritualistic sounds, both black and brilliant, pulled from the void, a mysterious and sonic netherworld. Definite contender for record of the year.
It's been two long years we've been waiting for this, another mysterious rhythmic communique from French blackened post krautrock alchemists Aluk Todolo. But it's not like they've been idle. Since 2007's Descension, two thirds of Aluk Todolo have recorded a record and toured the world as Gunslingers, and all of Aluk Todolo do double duty in French black metallers Diamatregon, who recently released a new full length on tUMULt called Crossroad.
But as much as we love those other two bands, and we do, there will always be something magical about the strange sonic world Aluk Todolo are able to conjure up. Especially considering they're a three piece, a power trio, drums, guitar, bass. Nothing else, no synths, no strings, just the basic rock band instruments. It's testament to the power these three wield, that they can do so much with so little. Or more accurately, so little with so little. As the music of Aluk Todolo, is disarmingly simple, subtle and minimal, but in its minimalism, lies its power. The power of rhythm, of texture, of mood, these five long pieces are so evocative, so expressive and strangely emotional. Even at its most spare and skeletal, the sound is palpable, almost a physical presence, which is surprising again considering just how stripped down Finsternis actually is.
Descension, Aluk Todolo's debut, was heavy and space-y and rhythmic, we described it as a buzz-less black metal, some of the songs were thick and caustic, others were loping and motorik, but on Finsternis, it's as if the band decided to strip away all the extraneous sounds, leaving just the core, the root, the heart of the music, and that heart beats out a simple, hypnotic rhythm.
The record is split into 4 parts, with a brief interlude, but those four parts are split into two distinct movements. The first, which comprises the first two parts, is much of what we described above, simple skeletal rhythms, surrounded by minimal guitar whir, bursts of grinding distortion, fragmented jangle, keening feedback, but it's all about the rhythm. After a brief burst of mathy chaos, the track reverts to its initial rhythm, this time the bass more prominent, fuzzy, distorted, woozy and mesmerizing, the band locked in tight, the bass and drums solid and unwavering, while the guitar sings in the background, moaning and keening and howling, giving the track an ominous otherworldly vibe, a trudge across some hostile alien landscape, a weary, washed out deathmarch.
Then the interlude, a haunting abstract percussive sprawl, simple percussive thuds set amidst a sea of warped distorted low end, bits of glitch and hiss, and grinding shards of industrial clatter, which gives way to the second, noisier movement, the drums transformed into a simple machinelike pound, snare and cymbal crashing over and over and over, the guitars whipped into a frenzy of blurred buzz and warped swirling blackened chaos, what at first sounds noisy and harsh, soon reveals itself as strangely textural, and as hypnotic as the more stripped down first movement, the guitars slip from monochromatic whir, to insectoid black metal riffing, constantly swirling around the motorik pound and pummel, the final track finds the guitars slipping into ever higher registers, blissing out, laced with feedback, smoothing out into warm smears and blurs, before a brief deconstruction, and a surprisingly tranquil last few minutes, the drums back to a woozy lope, the guitar offering up warm swells and shimmering thrum, the bass throbbing beneath, eventually stumbling to a halt in a cloud of creaking metals and static-like tape hiss. Woah.
Just like Descension, Finsternis is an intense and emotional journey through sound, a haunting and hard to describe exploration of rhythm, mood and texture, a slow shifting otherworld defined by This Heat, Geronimo, Laddio Bolocko, Can, Faust, accessible only via the three shadowy figures that make up Aluk Todolo, whose magic and mystery has been rendered in these glorious black rhythms.
Housed in a multi panel jacket with super striking original artwork by Stephen Kasner, on the always impressive Utech label (whose other two new releases, from Gog and Olivier Dumont, we'll review on the next list, although we do have both in stock if you want 'em, and we're fairly sure you do!).
Third album from French post black metal instrumental kraut-psych occult rock trio Aluk Todolo, and third time Record Of The Week! We've just resigned ourselves to the fact, that every record from these guys is gonna blow our minds, and by extension, we imagine, yours as well. In the musical math that makes up many of the bands we love, the convoluted equation that resulted in Aluk Todolo is tough to beat. Featuring members of black metal horde Diamatregon (whose last two records were released on Andee's tUMULt label) and psych rock outfit Gunslingers, AT takes some elements from both of those groups, but also This Heat, Faust, Can, the Necks, Circle, Hawkwind, and Taj Mahal Travellers... They are most definitely sonic alchemists, as we've described them in every review so far, distilling all of these disparate sounds and influences into something all their own, and something that obviously pushes all our buttons.
This latest double disc takes everything we dug about them before, and somehow makes those things more, and better, given the space to stretch out, the songs become MORE epic, MORE intense, MORE tranced out, MORE heavy. There's 8 songs over 2 discs/lps and 2+ hours. Imagine a super charged Necks or Circle fused to the blaring psychedelic heaviosity of Psychic Paramount, and the furious grim buzz of some obscure black metal horde, the sounds repetitive and cyclical, hypnotic and mesmerizing, the opener here displaying their black metal roots, and just how those roots can be sculpted into something trance-y and droned out, while remaining pretty goddamn grim and blackened. Launching immediately into a fierce frenzied blast, all tremelo picking and blast beats, a churning, roiling single riff, overlaid with soaring minor key melodies, slipping easily from classic black metal blast to dense static mesmer and back again, until almost 4 minutes in when everything is swallowed up in a blast of whit noise, before the frenetic riffing tapers off, leaving just the bass and drums to churn frantically, beneath thick swirls of effects, only to gradually build back up, and during the last three minutes, unleash the sort of dense, brutal, buzzing black metal, most proper BM bands can barely pull off.
If that opening track is sort of the shot across the bow, the second track is when things get serious, slowing things down to a super distorted post-rock lope, the drums driving and the guitars thick and distorted, keening melodies, the Slint vibe looms large, before the band dial it down, and lock into a totally mesmerizing, dizzyingly dense roiling 'groove', that sounds like amped up Circle, grinding away hypnotically, peppered with occasional bursts of metallic crunch, and near black metal blowouts, always slipping right back into that mesmeric churn, the guitars impossibly distorted and fuzzed out, the bass super melodic, the sort of track you never want to end, slipping easily from progged out psychedelic buzz drenched tangle to warped noise rock minimalism and back again.
The rest of disc one finds AT dialing back the buzz and crunch, and weaving lush landscapes of woozy melody, and darkly driving hypnorock, the songs wreathed in keening feedback, moaning melodies, lush layered guitars, swaths of melodic jangle, of shimmering chiming harmonics, the sound drifting from minimal chugging dirge to loping psych rock meander, and from wild krautpsych blowout to swoonsome Slintish slither.
Disc two offers up 4 more sonic invocations, heavy on the noise rock, but dipping into super minimal minor key mesmer, low slung almost gothic sounding dirgery, the seriously Circle-like seventh track, that takes the sound of our favorite Finns, and douses it in clouds of shimmering noise, and freaked out freeform psychedelic shimmer, and finally, the record finishes off with an epic doom jam, the band pounding away malevolently, the bass distorted and blown out, shards of feedback everywhere, noisy and psychedelic and a bit chaotic, but all anchored to the unwavering rhythm section, the song gradually losing momentum, slowing way down, getting doomier and doomier and dirgier and dirgier, transformed into a slo-mo tarpit crawl, the riffing bleeding into long droned out tones, the sort of doom-noise creep that folks into Bunkur and Monarch and the like will flip over, but here it's more atmospheric, a heady doomic coda, the sound seeming to decay naturally, shedding layers along the way, until finally the drums go too, the record continuing to fade away, to drift heavenward, eventually dissolving into a cloud of feedback.
Like past Aluk Todolo releases, the sounds and songs here are so intense and hypnotic, heavy and heady, it's the rare sort of record that somehow appeals to metalheads and post rockers as much as experimentalists and avant gardists, a sound transcendent and tranced out, dense and sinister and somehow still strangely beautiful, and obviously well worth Record Of The Week honors for sure. And then some.
Finally, the long awaited return of these mysterious French audio alchemists, whose sound is a strange amalgamation of black metal buzz, krautrock mesmer, and psychedelic ambience. And the aforementioned mystery lies not with the group itself, whose lineup features members of black metal outfit Diamatregon and psychedelic rockers Gunslingers, both big time aQ faves, but rather in their sound, and how a sound so minimal and spare, how seemingly reductive on the surface, manages to transcend, to exist as something wholly other, a band who at times can sound like other bands that came before, but only fleetingly, those sounds subsumed and reimagined, and spit back out in a shape that is distinctly Aluk Todolo.
This ritual is not a new recording, but in fact archival material recorded at the same time as their Descension record, and is a This single track, spread out over both sides of a 10", and begins with a loping dirgey rhythm, pounding through clouds of swirling cacophony, shards of jagged guitarnoise and layers of chordal shimmer, an electrified field that seems to crackle around the groups core pulse/groove, the surrounding noise, not so much just noisy as haunting and ominous and textural. A brief bit of super creepy, deep garbled vocals intone what must be some sort of warning, as the sound continues to drift, mesmerizing and hypnotic, dense but at the same time almost ethereal, seasawing between noisy and chaotic, washed out and woozy, until eventually the noise recedes, leaving just long streaks of hiss and glitch and static, all wreathed in a blurred melodic haze.
Finally an even slower, more spare rhythm begins, this one plodding along through a black haze, pelted by squalls of super distorted buzz, quick blasts of blown out crunch, those blasts themselves strangely melodic, as if they were spaced out notes to some other, mysterious melody, the sound eventually building to a much more rocking final blast, organ like whirs underpinning muddy riffage and still more explosive bits of grinding guitar crunch.
The flipside is much more relentless and abrasive, the dynamics ditched in lieu of something more textural, a wall of buzz and crumbling crunch, the drums an anchor, buried in the murk and mire, the noise surprisingly nuanced, textural one minute, caustic the next, blurred and melodic, but also hissy and harsh, creating all sorts of constantly shifting and evolving textures and overtones. A washed out spate of abrasive guitardrone fashioned into something almost riff-like, wrapped around that constant motorik beat, that krauty rhythm that definitely reminds us of German Oak, albeit way noisier and more blackened, the track pounds and drones and buzzes away before finally finishing off with a surprisingly woozy, buzzy, drifty dramatic outro. Wow.
As always, super striking packaging, pressed on heavy vinyl, and yeah, most likely very very limited.
Holy fuck, this record is amazing! You'd never guess it, but Aluk Todolo is the occult trance rock side project of French black metallers Diamatregon. OK, maybe it doesn't seem that off the wall, Diamatregon definitely dabbled in strange rhythms and distinctly non-black metal sound forms. But this is definitely something else altogether. Ominous krautrock rhythms over Einsterzende style industrial clatter, some lost seventies psych rock holy grail channeled through modern post rock. Dreamy and dark and mesmerizing. Hypnotic guitar lines and simple shuffling rhythms that build into clattery propulsive jams, all clanging angular riffs and dense tangled drumming. VERY This Heat like, and reminiscent of the late great Laddio Bolocko. Some sort of dangerous and mysterious postrock / krautrock hybrid, lo-fi but thick and dense and amazingly heavy.
Gorgeous packaging, white and silver on black, a fold out die cut sleeve with a Japanese style obi, and a cover image that manages to be totally familiar ('got yer nose') but somehow creepy as hell.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
AQ has been all Gibbons Brothers all the time lately. First these Bardo bros hit us with maybe the best record yet from their main band Bardo Pond, Ticket Crystals, which has stayed in seriously heavy rotation all summer long. Then we got floored by Alaeshir, another of their many side projects, that one a sort of headbanging rock meets daydreaming bliss-out. And then Vapour Theories with its droning sax and psych guitar offerings, AND a super limited ultra kick ass live Bardo Pond release on Archive, and now... --pause to catch breath-- this two track, 40 minute disc of deep in the forest ethno-drones, drenched in buzz and shimmer. Sitar, guitar, cumbas and all sorts of percussion create exquisite layers psych drone Nirvana that will transport you to another dimension. Strangely peaceful, the music we hear in our heads when we lay in grass at night staring at the stars. So very nice!
The most calm and serene of the four Bardo Pond related lps from Important, Alumbrados documents the mystic explorations of John and Michael Gibbons through the hazy scope of loosely arranged cosmic atmospheres and acoustic psychedelic ethno-droones. Though it probably goes without saying, Monochord reaches out from the deep ringing center of an ancient gong, sending soaring tones of bowed acoustic guitar, buzzing sitar, and ritual percussion high into the midnight sky. A short step away from the driving, more rockin' sound of their Alasehir project, Alumbrados shimmers with the distant glow of woodland lanterns and dreamy grasslands, all effortlessly sculpted into a somber raga-esque drone masterpiece. Calm acoustic finger picking in the distance, ritualistic percussion thumping away, all drenched in an eastern wash of buzzing strings and far off flutes. Limited to 500 copies, this one will be gone in no time, so pick it up while you still can!
Soft, sleek pop that harkens back to '70s AM radio as well as '60s space age lounge-y flair. Aluminum Group is primarily brothers Frank and John Navin, however on this release the band roster is a veritable orchestra of 19 members including Chicago starlets John McEntire, John Herndon, Doug McCombs, Rebecca Gates, Rob Mazurek, and Jeff Parker. Bubbly synths fizz and flutter amid Mangione-esque horns and crisp percussion while the suave gent croons in dulcet tones that bring to mind ELO, the Moody Blues, the Alan Parsons Project or more recently Kings Of Convenience. Occasional female vocals add an extra prettiness to the already glistening proceedings. That said, they may be from the Midwest but their music sounds as though it's coming to you from some euro jetset club - maybe having a nightcap with Air, the Style Council and Burt Bacharach. Laidback and smooooth! And there's more to come, apparently this is the first installment of an Aluminum Group trilogy.
With a name that recalls Stereolab and a bunch of guest appearances from indie-cred names like Jim O'Rourke (sickly-sweet avant-pop production, guitars, piano, etc), Sean O'Hagan (High Llamas dude on banjo), Sally Timms (Mekons vocalist doing backing vocals), Edith Frost (also on backing vocals), and Doug McCombs (from Tortoise adding his 6 string bass), this Chicago band brings together the corniest aspects of Eno, Steely Dan, the High Llamas, and the Sea & Cake into a cute pop album.
Hey didn't Stereolab already apply a heavy dollop of Os Mutantes-style Tropicalia to their aloof space age bachelor pad sounds? In case you need to hear more of the same, here's the second album from Chicago's Aluminum Group, complete with a Laetitia impersonator.
This mysterious all-female avant-chamber-rock trio from Florida, who wowed discerning attendees with their performance at the '98 Terrastock II, and who released their first album on John Zorn's Avant label, make their return with this disc of strange and wonderful songs. Perhaps this could be described as mostly instrumental, almost Carl Stalling-like cartoon classical music combined with improv and no-wave. Unique and excellent.
About a year and half ago, Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto) dazzled us with the Transall trilogy of cd eps that bristled with crisp sinewave shards and low slung rhythmic blasts that sounded down right funky from time to time. For is an entirely different facet for Mr. Nicolai, as he's soothed the systematic sex machine grooves for ionized molecules into a shimmering palette of elegant vibrations. As Nicolai explains in the liner notes, For "brings together disparate recordings created throughout the last four years, unified under a theme of dedication. All nine studies share the history of being made specifically for someone or for a project that for one reason or another remains open ended." And those individuals earning dedications include John Cage, Jhonn Balance, TVPow, Jeff Wall, Peter Roehr, Ernie & Bert (we can only assume he means the Sesame Street characters), and a few others. Nicolai gently crafts each of the dedications into a polite, electronic ambience cobbled from intertwined sinewaves and hushed rhythms.
Part two of Carsten Nicolai's (aka Alva Noto) apparently ongoing 'For' series, in which he composes songs for specific people, the first volume featured tracks dedicated to and composed in honor of John Cage, Jhonn Balance, TVPow, Jeff Wall, Peter Roehr, Ernie And Bert (!) and several others. This time around it's A Garment, Chain Music, Marta Feuchtwanger, two for Heiner Muller, Andrei Tarkovsky, Camera Lucida, two for Dieter Rams, Phill Niblock, Evgeny Murzin and the kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland. Don't recognize most of those names? Neither do we, it doesn't matter that much though really, the important thing is that these people inspired Nicolai to create some of the warmest and most melodic music of his career. Like the first volume, this is anything but cold sterile glitch and click. The tracks here and lush, and elegant, warm and melodic, rhythmic, dreamy and quite lovely. Opener "Garment" could have gone on forever, a woozy downtempo groove composed from short bursts of static, beeps, smears of hiss, all draped over a looped low end melancholic melody. Some of the tracks are quite brief, field recordings, room sounds, planes passing overhead, lush bell-like tones stretched into hushed streaks of whispered ambience, glitched out high end bleeps and bloops, but those act more as interludes for the longer form pieces. "Argonaut" is breathtaking, long slow tones woven into a sweet soft melody, peppered with looped melodies, soft streaks of barely there hiss, tinkling chimes, while "Stalker" is a haunting stretch of subterranean outer space minimalism, the various tones and textures heavily reverbed, wrapped in a blurred sonic gauze, while that low melody from the previous track resurfaces, plus a creepy spoken word part, intense and beautiful.
Elsewhere Nicolai dabbles in glistening crystalline pop ambience, fuzzy spaced out dream dub minimalism, thick layered dronemusic, and the cool thing is, the more you listen, and the further you get into the record, the more you realize, Nicolai is using mostly the same sounds, recontextualized for each track, for each person, a slowly shifting, interconnected song suite culminating in a strange snare driven buzzscape, and the almost jaunty sounding final track, that sounds almost like traditional chamber music, filtered through Nicolai's buzz/click/glitch/hiss/hum approach to soundmaking. Gorgeous!
Recording with addition of Alva to his Noto moniker, Carsten Nicolai hasn't altered his palette of sine wave oscillations, modulating tones, rhythmic clicks, and other electronic gizmos, all bathed in a clinical purity of sound. Surrounding himself with these machines, Nicolai sets up little repetitions that build to, dare I say, catchy complexities full of rhythmic invention and hinting at melodies.
Two new batches of ultra clinical, vacuum sealed, glitched out minimalism from Alva Noto and Raster-Noton. The difference this time around is that these tracks are FUNKY. Well, sort of. Gorgeously packaged in oversized cardboard sleeves, printed with tripped out geometric patterns and pressed on those 3" cds embedded in 5" clear plastic, and assembled in such a perfect way, it's obvious that the Raster folk are designers first, musicians second. And that feeling comes across in the music as well. Painfully precise, perfectly constructed, and completely sterile. But in a good way. From the song titles ("Funkbugfx") to the head nodding rhythms contained within, this is obviously Alva Noto's funk record. But it's unlike any funk you've ever heard. Sine waves, and test tones and rumbling bass frequencies, white and pink noise, are all painstakingly constructed into a delicate lattice of alien funk, an extreme (and extremely rigid) dance floor music for some unimaginable outer (or inner) space dance party. Where the guests are all blocks of crystal, or swirling clouds of molecules, or pools of gelatinous ooze that sort of undulate sexily to the glith and click of this unfunky funk. These are the kind of grooves that you can picture scientists in sealed vacuum suits rocking out to in their lab on their ipods. Or maybe imagine Ryoji Ikeda and Sachiko M getting together to "jam" and running through some James Brown tunes, but in their inimitable, barely there style. Weird but pretty wonderful too.
The third in a trio of new releases of ultra clinical, vacuum sealed, glitched out minimalism from Alva Noto and Raster-Noton (the other two, Transrapid and Transvision we listed last time). What's Alva Noto up to with thise? These tracks are FUNKY. Well, sort of. Gorgeously packaged in oversized cardboard sleeves, printed with tripped out geometric patterns and pressed on those 3" cds embedded in 5" clear plastic, and assembled in such a perfect way, it's obvious that the Raster folk are designers first, musicians second. And that feeling comes across in the music as well. Painfully precise, perfectly constructed, and completely sterile. But in a good way. From the song titles ("Funkbugfx") to the head nodding rhythms contained within, this is obviously Alva Noto's funk record. But it's unlike any funk you've ever heard. Sine waves, and test tones and rumbling bass frequencies, white and pink noise, are all painstakingly constructed into a delicate lattice of alien funk, an extreme (and extremely rigid) dance floor music for some unimaginable outer (or inner) space dance party. Where the guests are all blocks of crystal, or swirling clouds of molecules, or pools of gelatinous ooze that sort of undulate sexily to the glith and click of this unfunky funk. These are the kind of grooves that you can picture scientists in sealed vacuum suits rocking out to in their lab on their ipods. Or maybe imagine Ryoji Ikeda and Sachiko M getting together to "jam" and running through some James Brown tunes, but in their inimitable, barely there style. Weird but pretty wonderful too.
