Another two songs from one man slow motion doom merchant Amort. We keep hoping for a full length, maybe even an lp or a cd, but there's something about this slow seep of Amort's miserablist music that just seems appropriate, the sound of some massive black beast painfully excreting each and every sound, captured on tape, which does in fact enhance the sound, this one especially, as some of the notes were so blown out, the tape so saturated, that it actually sort of made us dizzy listening to it on headphones.
While past missives have focused on ambience, sounding more cinematic, riffs and stretched into long sprawling dirges, the sound here is much more primitive funereal doom, at least on the A side. The guitar massive and churning, the vocals as deep and demonic as possible, any more and it would just turn into a puddle of black sludge. The cinematic element is restrained to haunting little interludes, a creepy speech over a gurgling sea of hiss and electronic burble, the massive riff always poised just out of earshot, ready to crash down and swallow everything whole.
The flipside begins with gently picked downtuned guitar, the low end cranked, a thick pulsing rumble, another guitar unfurling a plodding chug, another loosing little trills of high end shimmer into the blackness, the vocals again, a gurgling black cloud. But with a little flutter of clean guitar surfacing here and there, drifting through the throbbing black expanse.
Transparent green cassettes in black and white covers, and with a black and white hand numbered insert. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
This cassette just showed up in the mail one day, with a short note asking us if we wanted to sell it in the store. Hard to tell what it would sound like: band called Amort, two songs, cover image an oil painting of wild horses, very striking, but still no clear sonic picture. The tape came wrapped in a flyer, with the words "Slow end sonic destruction" printed in thick black letters across the top. Our first clue...
So we threw it on, and were first greeted with the sound of lilting piano, notes hanging suspended in wide open expanses of near silence, but soon that piano was joined by a slow lava like flow of glacial riffing, a downtuned low end thob, a la SUNNO))), Earth, Corrupted, but draped over a delicate slowcore background, then in came some incredibly low, gurgling vocals, and suddenly all was revealed to us, gloriously hauntingly beautiful slowcore sludge. The massive riffing and monstrous vocals, drift in and out, often leaving just a lilting minor key guitar, to gently pick out the melody, hushed and minimal, like some sort of super abstract post rock, before the guitars pour back in and the vocals croak forth, but even at its heaviest and sludgiest, it's strangely pretty, the melody a minor key lament, the sound more murky and muddy than pummeling and heavy, like Corrupted covering Low maybe... The tempo gets upped a notch or two, sounding like the band might lurch into full on rocking, but instead, the riff just loops over and over, becoming more of a rhythmic drone than an any sort of actual rock riff, eventually fading to black.
Side two creeps along similar ground, beginning with abstract minor key guitar figures, allowed to unfurl and drift through an empty space, joined by simple piano, before launching into a slow motion ambient doom, all burnt out guitar and reverb drenched vocals. Very reminiscent of the Tomb Of... cassette, a strange melding of abstract ambient piano and dirgey doom drenched sludge. The interesting thing about Amort is there are no drums, this is all just huge walls of guitar, harsh demonic vocals, and tinkling piano, on the second track, the guitar becomes weirdly harmonized, creating super tense harmonic melodies, like some displaced Iron Maiden lick, slowed down to 2 or 3 rpm. This track two sort of wanders back and forth between forlorn slow motion cabaret, just piano and undistorted guitar, and pummeling drone doom crush. But in the hands of Amort, they sound so perfect together. The ultimate post rock downer doom...
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
Brand new tape from one of our favorite purveyors of 'ambient slowcore doom'. Influenced heavily by bands like SUNNO))), as well as bands on the blacker and more metal end of the sonic spectrum, Amort, have their own unique angle, at once mysterious and cinematic, heavy and atmospheric. Like most of their songs, the proceedings start out with plodding abstract piano, throbbing low end notes, ringing out and reverberating, drifting in vast expanses of near silent hiss. With hushed whispered vocals, and the occasional distant wail of anguish and oddly, NO DRUMS (although it took us a while to even realize there were no drums, the sound is so thick and dense). Eventually, the guitars roll in like some thick black fog, and the band becomes some sort of black glacial beast, slithering and lurching in slow motion. The piano picks out mournful melodies beneath a thick wash of rumbling crumbling distortion. It's definitely closer to Thergothon or Skepticism that SUNNO))), not so much a static drift as a plodding trudge, the guitars beating against each other, pulsing and throbbing, the piano pounding away, buried way down in the mix. Sort of what you might imagine SUNNO))) covering Low might sound like, or even some Mazzy Star / Khanate mash up!�Essential listening for the ultra-doom obsessed, and slow core fans looking for something a little darker or heavier should definitely check this out....
Now on lp, a killer compilation of jams from abstract doomlord Amort, mostly culled from various cassettes, that we've raved about on past lists, but with an unreleased track included to sweeten the deal...
Amort is one of our favorite purveyors of 'ambient slowcore doom'. Influenced heavily by bands like SUNNO))), as well as groups on the blacker and more metal end of the sonic spectrum, Amort, have their own unique angle, at once mysterious and cinematic, heavy and atmospheric.
This collection begins with the sound of lilting piano, notes hanging suspended in wide open expanses of near silence, but soon that piano is joined by a slow lava like flow of glacial riffing, a downtuned low end throb, a la SUNNO))), Earth, Corrupted, but draped over a delicate slowcore background, then in comes some incredibly low, gurgling vocals, and suddenly all is revealed to us, gloriously hauntingly beautiful slowcore sludge. The massive riffing and monstrous vocals, drift in and out, often leaving just a lilting minor key guitar, to gently pick out the melody, hushed and minimal, like some sort of super abstract post rock, before the guitars pour back in and the vocals croak forth, but even at its heaviest and sludgiest, it's strangely pretty, the melody a minor key lament, the sound more murky and muddy than pummeling and heavy, like Corrupted covering Low maybe... The tempo gets upped a notch or two, sounding like the band might lurch into full on rocking, but instead, the riff just loops over and over, becoming more of a rhythmic drone than an any sort of actual rock riff, eventually fading to black.
The next track creeps along similar ground, beginning with abstract minor key guitar figures, allowed to unfurl and drift through an empty space, joined by simple piano, before launching into a slow motion ambient doom, all burnt out guitar and reverb drenched vocals. Very reminiscent of the Tomb Of... cassette, a strange melding of abstract ambient piano and dirgey doom drenched sludge. The interesting thing about Amort is there are no drums, this is all just huge walls of guitar, harsh demonic vocals, and tinkling piano...
The flipside begins like most Amort songs, with plodding abstract piano, throbbing low end notes, ringing out and reverberating, drifting in vast expanses of near silent hiss. With hushed whispered vocals, and the occasional distant wail of anguish and again, NO DRUMS (although it took us a while to even realize there were no drums, the sound is so thick and dense). Eventually, the guitars roll in like some thick black fog, and the band becomes some sort of black glacial beast, slithering and lurching in slow motion. The piano picks out mournful melodies beneath a thick wash of rumbling crumbling distortion. It's definitely closer to Thergothon or Skepticism that SUNNO))), not so much a static drift as a plodding trudge, the guitars beating against each other, pulsing and throbbing, the piano pounding away, buried way down in the mix. Imagine a Mazzy Star / Khanate mash up and you might be getting close!
The next track begins with gently picked downtuned guitar, the low end cranked, a thick pulsing rumble, another guitar unfurling a plodding chug, another loosing little trills of high end shimmer into the blackness, the vocals again, a gurgling black cloud. But with a little flutter of clean guitar surfacing here and there, drifting through the throbbing black expanse.
Essential listening for the ultra-doom obsessed, and slow core fans looking for something a little darker or heavier should definitely check this out....
And in addition to those previously released grimdoom jams, the record tacks on another slow and low epic, the previously unreleased "Desert Of Ice"!! Sweet packaging, the lp housed in a super thick black and white sleeve, the record pressed on nice thick vinyl and LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Latest from long time aQ fave one man ultra doom outfit, Amort, here expanded to a quartet, with extra members handling gong, keys, saxophone and extra guitar. Here teamed up with crusty black metal punks Ives.
Amort offer up a single 14 minute track, the begins with haunting female vocals, over deep reverberating piano, and rumbling low end drones, very ritualistic and choral, it's not until nearly 3 minutes in, that the song splinters into what sounds like some sort of abstract free jazz doom, the gong rippling out thick metallic waves of sound, the sax skronking and squeaking, all wrapped in thick whorls of rumble and thrum, a monstrous ominous slo-mo creep, until finally, the song proper kicks in after about 5 minutes, an impossibly glacial chunk of slow motion doom sludge, drumless, and surprisingly melodic, the melodies nearly pop, but the guitars oozing and blackened, the vocals a demonic gurgle, a strange combination for sure, this filthy downtuned evil sound, but the song itself almost happy, like some pop song slowed waaaaaaaay down and then filtered through Corrupted and Nortt and Bunkur, the prettiest, most melodic slab of ultradoom you'll ever hear. It does build, and get louder and louder, there are spidery guitar leads, and more piano, but the sound never gets any less melodic.
Ives are pretty much on the other end of the sonic spectrum entirely, spitting out blasting, thrashing crusty blackness, minor key riffing, furious pounding drumming, harsh vokills, sonically quite akin to the punkier Darkthrone sound, or classic Discharge, but for every bit of D-beat pound, the band unleash a blast of face melting black metal buzz, the sound lo-fi, but still heavy and frantic and frenzied, brutal and blasting, galloping and churning, crusty but plenty grim and black. Killer stuff from both bands, the Ives stuff is from an old cassette, so a little curious to hear more recent stuff, and Amort, well, we can never get enough of their/his gloriously abject slow motion piano pounding dismal doom...
Tape number two from ambient slowcore doom outfit Amort, whose first tape we dug heavily. A dense drifty blend of SUNNO))) style ultra doom, and lilting Low like atmospherics. This time they're teamed up with the strangely named Comfort Wives, who based on the name were ready to be disappointed by, but just like Mom always told us about books and covers, The Comfort Wives actually kick up a pretty mean din. The strange thing is how different Amort sound here. Actually to be honest, the labeling is sort of confusing and we just assumed Side A was the Comfort Wives but in fact appears to be Amort unless the tape was mislabeled. Either way, both sides are awesome, we'll go by the label for now. So Amort sound much more like a band, than a man crafting bleak dronescapes on his own. A plodding midtempo, noisy blackness, huge guitars so low and blown out they threaten to overwhelm the whole recording, which is in no way a band thing, in fact, it's the sort of guitar sound most bands would kill for. An in the red throbbing downtuned buzz, wrapped around a sort of melodic noise rock. The sound here is not so much black metal as it is taking bits and pieces of black metal and incorporating them into their own sound. And the sound here is more of a mournful minor key midtempo dirge rock, with super catchy melodies, simple drumming, some cool harmonies, all wrapped in a blacker than normal production, with some harsh howled vocals. Like a poppier, noise rockier version of Bone Awl or Beherit maybe? Cool stuff regardless, but a strange direction for Amort, while The Comfort Wives end up sounding more like Amort did on the last tape, but somehow darker and doomier and sludgier and much more black metal. An epic and corrosive sonic sludge, that unfurls like some thick black fog. Slow minor key guitar figures drift amidst wide open space, vocals gurgle and growl, all swallowed up by a MASSIVE glacial downtuned dirge, before the low end abates and leaves a simple strummed, almost out of tune guitar to sort of meander, before the blackness falls again. This is not so much BM as ultra doom, or black ambience, the guitars rumble and reverberate, single chords stretched out over vast expanses, the vocals another layer of low end, the riffs so slow they seem to be single plodding thuds that ring out and bleed into the next crusty note, a bit like Abruptum, a ritualistic black minimal doom, epic and murky and hellish and muddy and massive and seriously scary...
Ms Tori embarks on another immersive concept album, this time embodying five starkly contrasted female personas over the course of twenty three songs. The music is just as startlingly varied in style as her satiny fashion choices for the cover photos. She has (or her team of stylists have) radically transformed herself in appearance with wigs and wardrobe. However, it's not to the degree of, say, Cindy Sherman or Laurie Anderson. No, Tori knows the market value of a flawless pretty face and doesn't sully hers to become anything unconventionally beautiful. No fat, no zits, no wrinkles.
Amos addresses her current concerns and critiques via Greek mythological references, rock star bombast, diva swoonings, earth mother embraces and battle cries. Of course, when you get right down to it, this kind of social and political criticism can be more than a little sticky, maybe even hypocritical at times -- lambasting the same systems (corporate, psychological, etc) in which she is profiting from the sales of her wares. Hence, our feelings about this album vacillate between thinking it preachy and long winded versus it being amazingly ambitious and her most spirited work to date. Seriously, there are moments on this album that are absolutely breathtaking (yes, some of them being her glorious, elaborate piano dramatics!), while others teeter into head-scratcher territory. Brace yourself.
Tori's music circa 1996 is very full and heavy, yet at times clear and light, as bent as PJ Harvey though of course imbued with Tori's own crotch-grabbing attitudinal eccentricities. Featured instrumentation: harpsichord, flugelhorn, bagpipes, harmonium, clavichord, and the very soft sound of her fingers depressing the piano keys.
None of us here are huge Tori Amos fans, but part of me really wants to be. She is such a rock star. Bizarre and perplexing in interviews, aloof but good to her fans, and sort of political (as much as a rock star can be these days). In the past she's
Attention all Tori lovers! Aw heck, you probably already know this but... she's just released a brand new full length and this version comes with a dvd! Taking a slightly different approach this time around, the ever enigmatic Ms Amos' eighth album The Beekeeper is a conceptual work. The cd is comprised of nineteen songs which, as the liner notes tell, have bloomed from a half dozen "gardens" such as "the orchard", "rock garden", "the greenhouse", etc (although rather puzzlingly this is not at all reflected in the songs' running order on the album). Such a beautiful sentiment! This version even comes with a wildflower seed packet for your own garden. To boot, the dvd includes an interview and one exclusive song. This audio and visual release coincides with the publishing of her written autobiography, Piece By Piece which she co-wrote with music writer Ann Powers. This much Amos goodness is sure to delight her legions of fans!
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
The latest from aQ beloved Mississippi Records is in fact sort of a three way label split, with Mississippi sublabel, Change, as well as Sahel Sounds, who recently released that amazing Music From Saharan Cellphones compilation. This fantastic album features live 'stream of consciousness' recordings of Agali Ag Amoumine, a griot (a West African storyteller/singer who is a repository for oral tradition) from Timbouctou, who plays in a distinctive style called Takamba, which is essentially a droning electrified guitar, or in this casea more lo-fi electric 3 string lute called a terhardent, accompanying himself with a simple haunting rhythm on a calabash, which is a sort of hollowed out gourd used as percussion.
Fans of the Sublime Frequencies series, especially Group Inerane, Group Bombino, and the other sort of African desert blues groups will find much to love here, as will folks into hypnotic droned out ragas, as Amoumine unfurls glorious gouts of fuzzed out steel string buzz, all anchored by that simpler percussion, all accompanied by Amoumine's emotive vocals, the result is a droned out desert blues, mesmerizing and trancelike, the 'guitar' playing incredible, wild squalls, flurries of notes, warm shimmering buzz, the sound almost looped sounding at times as Amoumine locks into a groove, and while the sides are separated into songs, the whole record plays like one epic continuous psychedelic desert trance jam. The lp also comes with a bonus 7", the A side featuring a much more mellow, acoustic version of the sound found on the album proper, accompanied by a handful of female vocalists, some of them perhaps children, changing the vibe of the sound completely, while the B side is still acoustic, but is just as frenzied and frantic, droney, tranced out and psychedelic as the electric version.
So completely amazing! And so totally recommended. A new unanimous store favorite. And absolutely required listening for Sublime Frequencies fans for sure!
Well over a decade ago, Bristol was the birthplace of a community of psychedelically inclined art-rockers. At first, there seemed to be an open door policy to the projects that emerged, with members rotating between Flying Saucer Attack, Third Eye Foundation, Crescent, and AMP. Eventually, all of these projects settled into their own particular aesthetic with Flying Saucer Attack continuing an overblown 'rural psychedelia,' Third Eye Foundation completing the project that Kevin Shields never finished of bridging darkcore drum 'n' bass with snarling guitar distortion, and Crescent sinking into an abject grit of narcolepsy. AMP had been the most elusive of the four, shifting between luminously smeared space rock and ungrounded electronics-plus-guitar noodling. When AMP were focused on their somber tunes, the smoldering washes of distortion and fuzz worked very well (i.e. their debut album Sirenes and their two proper albums on Kranky); but the exploration of guitar drone and post-Eno ambience proved to be less successful for AMP. This triple cd collection of singles, compilation tracks, and rare material from AMP showcases the highs and lows of their career. Fortunately, the less than inspired ambient noodling merely drifts into the background of this collection. It's never offensive, but just lulls and drifts, waiting for one of AMP's exceptional, slow burning crescendos balancing between Bardo Pond at their druggiest and the early '90s shoegazing contingent.
Once closely affiliated with the Bristol post-rock crowd alongside Flying Saucer Attack, Movietone, Third Eye Foundation and the underappreciated Crescent, Amp has all but completely dissolved the post-MBV guitar luminescence found on their first records. Nevertheless, the core duo of Richard Walker and Karine Charff has held onto strains of that scene's sleepy miserablism in the form of languid, vaguely trip-hopped rhythms swathed in hazy atmospheres, distant guitar delicacy, and Charff's pleasantly downer voice. Strange as it may seem, Amp has slowly been turning into a rougher version of Coldplay or Doves.
Amp's Richard Walker and Karine Charff were once members of a loose Bristol collective of "rural psychedelic" outfits featuring bands like Flying Saucer Attack, Movietone, Crescent, and Third Eye Foundation, all having sort of interchangeable members. Over time, each of those individual groups took on more distinct aesthetics and lost their member swappin' interconnectivity. While
I had begun to wonder if Richard and Karine would do anything worth while again, as their debut Sirenes clearly stands above everything they have done... until Stenorette. Working with producer Robert Hampson (Main, Loop), Amp has traded in their four track fuzziness for the crystal clear digital purity of Hampson's studio. In doing so, they have written a beautiful album of gossamer electronica / pop songs that nonetheless maintains their ghostly sadness.
The debut release from this SF pop combo. Eight highly hummable songs of pretty jangle and boy/girl vocals. Fans of the Swirlies, Marine Research, Go Sailor or Wedding Present, take note!
Kim Deal's new band (all boys).
First full length in seven years from former Man Is The Bastard noisemaker Henry Barnes, who since leaving the Bastard fold, has been crafting a strange mix of Xtian home brewed psychedelic folk, and avant experimental noise, a worshipful hybrid of spaced out ragas and lilting pastoral avant Appalachia. An instrument builder as well as a musician, much of Amps' music is created on home built kitchen-sink contraptions of Barnes creation, which helps give AfC its strange, haunting, otherworldly sound. If you ever saw MITB back in the day, you know doubt saw Barnes huddled in the corner in front of a huge pile of weird electronics, and amplifiers built from plywood, all adorned with primitive drawings of trees and winged guitars, that spirit eventually blossomed into Amps For Christ.
On Canyons Cars And Crows, it seems very little has changed, opening with a lilting bit of devotional psych folk flutter, with Barnes' plaintive vocals, draped over simple strum and fuzzy soft psych filigree, which leads directly into "Miss You Mother", which finds a harmonium like drone buzzing beneath a washed out and woozy guitar melody, dreamily sundappled and drifty. In fact if anything, on this new record, the whole vibe is a lot more laid back and blissed out, it's not really until the fifth track, "Hills Of Padua", that we hear that twisted Amps For Christ electronic bagpipe avant jig that peppers much of the Amps back catalog, a buzzing analog melody, crumblingly distorted, but weirdly and noisily lovely, and then it's right back into more dreamy psychedelic strum. Fans of the Woods will definitely find much to love here, like the Woods more eccentric older brother, the one that lives in the basement, and spends all day and all night 'tinkering' with weird machinery, we always just assumed he was building a time machine or a weapon, but in fact, he was making strange musical instruments, and using them to create beautifully twisted music like this!
The newest release from this mostly one man folk/noise project. Barnes, the man responsible for the 'noise' in Man is The Bastard and Bastard Noise, returns with a surprisingly beautiful record of soothing songs his mum used to sing him played on a variety of homemade instruments that sound a bit like saws, harpsichords, and bagpipes, and sung by lovely voiced Tara. Like a impossible cross between His Name Is Alive, the Sun City Girls, and (at points) even the Ruins! Really a genius band.
More bizarre ethno-renaissance punk folk skree (performed mostly on homemade and invented instruments) from ex-Man Is The Bastard noisemaker Barnes. Sounds like an odd collection of electronically malfunctioing zithers and bagpipes and kazoos, all playing turn of the century traditionals from some other world. Beautiful and baffling.
AQ's favorite Xtian acid-folk n' electronics outfit (we could call 'em, in an attempt to classify the unclassifiable) Amps For Christ are back with a new album. Yay we say! We're always happy to check in with ex-Man Is The Bastard member "Ranger Barnes" and his coven of collaborators to see what's going on in their strange and wonderful world. And Every Eleven Seconds is about what we'd expect from AFC: a mutated take on traditional folk tuneage, Barnes the mad scientist instrument builder doing his thing on home-built stringed things, all sorts of distorted electronic wavelengths heightening the vibrations of soulful hippy-punk weirdness. Beauty, noise, and more beauty.
There's many gems on here, from the gentler side of power violence displayed by "I Hate This Dumpster" to the bagpipes-in-a-UFO stylings of "Scotland The Brave", though apparently these days it wouldn't be an AFC album without a few brief blips of unwanted "spoken word" poetry to wince at for a moment before the Amps with their fuzz and grit and old timey melodies kick in again...
We don't mind. This long-running outfit on the outskirts of "New Weird America" is the closest any of that crew have come to true Outsiderdom. They've definitely carved themselves a unique niche. Comparisons? Dunno, how 'bout psych-folksters Six Organs Of Admittance performing in a malfunctioning video arcade, with the ghost of Eddie Hazel sitting in on Maggot Brain guitar? Or you maybe could call 'em a Judeo-Christian Sun City Girls. While the SCGs can be rather smarmy and smartass, AFC are more emotionally sincere. Sure like the SCG's they're still plenty cryptic and confusional, but with a warm and holy embrace.
One of our favorite bands offers up another disc of their unique, unclassifiable sounds. This one really embraces a '60s hippie vibe, with occasional outbursts from their "power violence" past (AFC leader Barnes was the "noise guy" in California's seminal
DIY instrument-builder Barnes and friends are back with another Amps For Christ opus. And y'know, an Amps for Christ record is just a bit like a box of chocolates...well, you know in general that you're gonna get their unique brand of electronics-laden folk music but there's always the odd track out with punk rock mayhem or (bastard) noise or whatnot.
Because of this, compared to Terrascopian favorites like Six Organs of Admittance, there's something about Amps For Christ that's just so much more "authentic" in terms of psych-freakery. No slight against Six Organs, who are great, but Amps seems more like actual outsider folk music. Of course, it's some of their idiosyncracies that we don't always like, such as their recent prediliction for including spoken word beat poetry on couple tracks. But this naive hippy eccentricity is part of their charm, too. Who else would do Aud Lang Syne (twice!) on their record? Anyway, if you liked their last cd, The Oak And The Ashes, you'll definitely like this one too. As with TOATA, you might want to use the programming function on your cd player when listening to this. Not 'cause any of the 23 tracks here are bad (well, the spoken word ones kinda are) but 'cause even though I like the noisy/rock stuff, I'd rather hear their lo-fi drone, electric folk ragas uninterrupted.
Solo noise (and folk guitar!) project from an ex-member of California political "power-violence" heroes Man Is The Bastard, in which various new forms of electronic amplification are built and abused. Diagrams included.
A fine medley of acoustic & electric strings, tabla, piano. Barnes (ex-Man Is The Bastard) seems to be the mastermind here, with his own homemade instruments taking a lead role, but this disc develops a much more entrancing, subtle folk-noise than MITB's harsh "power violence". Recommended.
Long-haired guitar rawk from the obscure Midwestern band known as Amulet, circa 1980. Reissued for your hessian pleasure by Monster Records, alongside the likes of Ultra, Full Moon, and Truth And Janey (all of whom we've previously listed). Amulet started off in '78 as a cover band doing stuff by ZZ Top, Van Halen, Hendrix, UFO and suchlike. Though a popular local concert draw, they still barely managed to save enough dough to record and self-release this album in 1980. No money for overdubs, so it's got that live feel, appropriate for their party hardy high power hard rock format. How much you're gonna like this kinda depends how you feel about lines like: "She was seventeen / young love machine" (from "Just Like A Woman"). Good times badass boogie rock wank fer shure. Actually, they had a heavier, more serious side too, with religious/philosophical themes ("Do You Live Again", "Life Is Living"). But don't look for a lot of sophistication and deep thoughts -- this mostly about groovy stuff like the unintentionally funny "Funk 'n' Punk" or "Radar Love" re-write "Person To Person". Fun and authentic.
...and they play 'em so well! These two ladies have definitely captured that ol' homey country sound on their debut album with a barebones acoustic assembly of banjo, fiddle, guitar and voice. They cover the likes of The Carter Family, Bruce Springsteen, Woody Guthrie among others and a couple of traditional numbers as well. Lovingly packaged in a screenprinted cardboard sleeve too! For fans of Freakwater, Virginia Dare, Trailer Bride.
Finally worked our way through the last batch of tapes from UK weirdo tape label The Tapeworm; over the last few weeks we've reviewed tapes from Wouter Van Veldhoven, Hanno Leichtmann, Robert Curgeven, and Elektro Guzzi.
Which brings us to Amy Winedeath, who's shown up once before on a Tapeworm tape, a collaboration with the Automatic Group, and like that tape, Speakeasy is another fantastically noisy and confusional affair, this new one starting off sounding a bit like a more corrosive, blown out Conet Project, all fields of gristly static, fragmented shards of high end skree, buried rhythmic pulses, a dark playful melodic sense pulled apart and recombined into a blurry, smeary, dizzyingly abstract squall, shortwave interference, low end pulsations, hiss and hum, weird intercepted female voices, the whole thing sounding like a collage of mysterious radio transmissions, haunting and otherworldly, and definitely the sort of thing Conet nerds will dig. The second side is more of the same, maybe even more abstract and textural, droned out and darkly hypnotic, a staticky landscape of slow shifting textures and murky glitched out thrum. LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
The Pitchfork blurb on the sticker proclaims this record to be "the trippiest record in the history of the world". While that might be a wee bit of an exaggeration, this most certainly is one of the weirdest wildest psychedelic spazz prog grind pop records EVER (C'mon, Pitchfork, at least when we spew some ridiculous hyperbole, it's absolutely true!! Haha)!! Not that there have been a whole lot of psychedelic spazz prog grind pop records, but there's a reason for that. This shit is NUTS. So freaked out and dense and complex and hard to pull of. Anyone can crank their keyboards and channel an inferior version of the Locust, but An Albatross seem to have some real link to classic prog, although it's filtered through some impossibly skewed, cracked and demented postpunk, grindcore sensibility. 18 songs, 26 minutes. One's even a three part epic clocking in at a whopping 4 minutes. Keyboards wiggle and slither, whipping wildly like a garden hose turned on full blast and let loose to swing like a mad cobra dosed with angel dust, striking at everyone within reach, drums are spastic, and hyperkinetic, like BB's fired from a cannon, a dizzying splatter, guitars grind and churn, melodic one second, harsh and screeching the next. ALl of these elements tangled up into hyper complex, ultra obtuse knots of super complicated, multi part mini grindprog epics, stop / starts, blazing bursts of hyper blast, brief stretches of serene acoustic dreaminess, warm washes of thick synth whir, blissed out drones and crunchy bouncy blasts of new wave, even some horns find their way into the chaos. Above it all, the vocalist screeches and growls, diving and twisting and turning, dodging and ducking, offering shrieked unintelligible platitudes tucked between jagged shards of post punk stutter and epic convoluted prog. This is like a spazzy, grindy, confusional 21st century Magma, mixed up with bits of Locusts and Lightning Bolts maybe, but with a truly unique sound, due perhaps to their prog rock heart of gold. One of our favorite new records. Furious and freaked out, fast and fucked up but still so goddamn catchy and listenable. And so so so great!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A little over 8 minutes total, 11 songs, each clocking in at WELL under a minute. That's all you need to hear to know that the curiously monickered An Albatross have sent The Locust to the back of the new-wave-metallic-skronk line. All of the elements that make us love The Locust, AA have in spades, but they also have some chops that The Locust don't, mixing in some seriously damaged, ultra complex prog, impossible math rock, and some almost black metal bursts. Think The Locust battling Melt Banana to the death, but with the guys from Orthrelm blasting Italian prog on their boombox and throwing rocks from a safe distance. Insanely chaotic, ultra precise, massively heavy, brutally noisy, and pretty fun n' catchy too. It's over before you know it, but you'll still feel like you got your $10 worth. Especially if you listen to it 6 times in a row like I just did!
Look out! The Anaal Nathrakh attack continues, with the long-awaited full-length studio follow-up to what was pretty much THEE black metal album of 2002, The Codex Necro. Domine Non Es Dignus is still a mighty juggernaut of dense and diabolical black metal, but the Anaal guys have also introduced some new, more melodic elements, including some clean vocals that will make you think you're listening to a Hammers of Misfortune album for a moment. Seriously. And while some might look askance, we're stoked that they're always willing to do something new, while remaining necro to/at the core. How necro? Well the first song is a blast of distortion lovingly entitled "I Wish I Could Vomit Blood On You....People". So no, they haven't mellowed. You can expect a mind-boggling blend of wretched noise, blurring speed, distorted buzzsaw guitar, belching gargling throat-sore vocals, keyboards piled high, and yes, some oddly operatic male singing that makes this even more bombastic than they were before. Seat belts and crash helmets required -- except that seat belts and crash helmets aren't cool (or necro) so I guess you should just die, that's what these guys would want anyway. See you in hell.
Wow. Does the dictionary definition of brutal have the words "anaal nathrakh" in it? Well it should. We've loved this brutal British band for years, from back in 2001 when their devastating debut The Codex Necro blew us away with its ultra-extreme black metal, uh, necro-ness. Well, what's amazing is that Anaal Nathrakh (their name comes from one of Merlin's incantations in the movie Excalibur, btw, if you didn't know) has evolved, from raw black metal to a more melodic hybrid of black and death metal, with some crusty punk grind etc. thrown in, maybe having to do with their inclusion of members of Napalm Death for live gigging and some studio sessions too. And yet, they've stayed about as brutal as can be, even with the clean vocals (i.e. actual singing, and not just cookie monster grunts or shrieking vokills) that pop up on some tracks, amidst the other sorts.
The blasting drums are insane, the keyboards deranged, and the guitars killer -- it's quite a piece of work they have here for those into both the necro, and the slightly more nuanced. Frenzied yet technical. Maniacal yet melodic... you get the idea. If you liked Codex's follow-up Domine Non Es Dignus, or the one after that Eschaton (which we bizarrely failed to review, though the black metal fans here all own it), then get set for another treat. And if you're a black metal dissing death metaller (if that breed still exists at this late date), well maybe this album will be the one to win you over...
Anaal Nathrakh isn't just "extreme" metal. It's extremely extreme metal. And only an extremely extreme metal band could manage to combine all the stuff that AN do, ferinstance just in the vocal/vokill dep't, everything from necro black metal shrieks to death metal grunts to, yes, clean majestic melodic singing too. And the vocals are only ONE of the insane things about this album. We can't really classify this UK band, they're part hyperspeed grindcore blurr, part black metal mayhem, part power metal majesty (but that part is buried and rotting under even more blasting black/death brutality). Let's just say our extreme metal needs have always been met by a session of Anaal Nathrakh abuse, and THIS album is definitely doing the trick as expected... A dense, chaotic, utterly over the top assault of very very extreme, very very metal. Yet amidst all the intensity, Anaal Nathrakh somehow can cram in a catchy chorus or melodic hook (or weird electronically glitched out part) alongside each ultra distorted, utterly outrageous throat-torn scream or chunk of crushing grind frenzy. Fans familiar with their last few albums know the score. For those new to Anaal, we could say maybe imagine old Carcass mixed with Watchmaker mixed with Immortal mixed with something with actual singing, sometimes. But nothing you can imagine will really quite prepare you... you've been warned. The liner notes say it best: "We will fucking kill you."
The return of this grinding extreme black metal duo, another blast of sonic sickness that offers up everything we've come to expect from these guys, insanely furious riffing, impossible blasting programmed beats, throat shredding vokills, twisted, convoluted arrangements, seemingly continuing in their quest to create the sickest, blackest, buzziest metal ever. But weirdly enough, for as heavy and black and buzzy things are this time around, there's also a lot of other weirdness going on, which seems at odds with their core sound. But you know how we are - the weirder things are, and the less they make sense, somehow the more the record in question hits the spot. So Anaal Nathrakh circa now, are mixing in lots of clean vocals (something they began doing back on Hell Is Empty... or thereabouts), dramatic and almost operatic, giving much of the music here a Borknagar or Code vibe, not to mention, even the heaviest bits here are surprisingly melodic. Plus there's twisted stretches of effects drenched tunefulness, some downright psychedelic flourishes, midtempo grooves, industrial ambience, tripped out electronics, all woven into the band's core black buzz, and while on the surface, it could seem like weirdness for weirdness sake, it actually sounds more like those various not-strictly-black elements were borne out of vastly improved songwriting, cuz goddamn these songs are catchy, the riffs are killer, and none of that weirdness sounds at all out of place. Sure, a lot of the time it doesn't sound as much like Anaal Nathrakh as it does Khold or Code, but often those moments splinter into some blurry black blast that couldn't be anyone else.
As much as we loved their debut Codex Necro way back when, this new one, as different as it is, might just be catching up...
Thank god (or Satan) that this record is as good as it is, because of all the trouble we had to go through to get it! We became aware of British black metal act Anaal Nathrakh from first seeing ads for this album in Terrorizer magazine (the UK's metal version of The Wire), then Terrorizer named it record of the month, and then one of the top 40 records of 2001! Yet no metal distributors in the United States had ever even heard of Anaal Nathrakh. Not even the band themselves could help us out, and the one distributor that did offer the album only had TEN COPIES. Our tiny little store wanted at least twice that many.
But, many frustrating conversations and unproductive emails later, we finally have The Codex Necro in stock and are happy to report that it is as heavy, as weird and as completely cool as we had hoped. The formula is still blasting black metal mayhem, but A.N. up the intensity a notch as well as mixing in all sorts of fucked weirdness: bizarre ambient electronic soundscapes, creepy cloying melodies buried in the mix, strangely hypnotic vocal chants, light speed fuzzed out blast beats, found sound interludes, and totally processed and INSANE vocals, from growling guttural bowel-shaking grunts to maniacal high pitched, electronically fucked-with shrieks. Plus the riffs are ultra catchy, and the guitars are so distorted and recorded so hot, it feels like demonic claws are being scraped across your ear drums. Take the raw, "necro" sounds of Nordic black metal pioneers Darkthrone and give them the bombastic force of the best-produced, over-the-top Cradle of Filth stuff, and you're thinking Anaal Nathrakh. When they say necro, they mean it. And they say it a lot. Like in the liner notes: "Anaal Nathrak plays Fucking Necro Exclusively!...Fuck Everything".
What could be more 'necro' than the debut album "The Codex Necro" from the truly disturbed, demented and totally necro UK black metal outfit Anaal Nathrakh?? You know, the ridiculously-hard-to-find black metal masterpiece we raved about last year? Well, how about their demos? Thus this disc is appropriately titled, as it contains both of AN's early demo tapes, plus some equally necro bonus tracks. If you loved "The Codex Necro" like we did, you'll be happy to know that "Total Fucking Necro" is just as good -- in fact some folks think it's better. It's a bit less bizarre than their full length, being much more melodic and traditional in the Norse style. Which is not a bad thing. There's definitely some major Mayhem worship going on here (witness the TWO Mayhem covers) as is evidenced by the distinctly "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" sound. But even then, their very own cult-necro-blackened weirdness is quite present as well. Demos, side projects (Frost, Mistress): it seems these guys are necro geniuses and can do no wrong -- we await their upcoming "When Fire Rains Down From The Sky" ep with grim delight...
NB. And for those of you who dropped the ball first time around, we've just managed to get a few copies of "The Codex Necro" back in as well!
A new half hour, six-song blast of total fucking necro mayhem from these UK metal maniacs. A blast it is, a worthy follow up to their godlike The Codex Necro album that was one of our favorite records of 2002. On this ep, the duo of VITRIOL and Irrumator seem to have shed the overtly weird bits that made The Codex Necro so instantly distinctive, production-wise. No studio fuckery, no space-y ambience, no found sounds, no samples. Just 100%, furious, lightspeed, grim black metal. Which is just fine -- the songs and performances speak for themselves in sinister tongues, without the need for sound fx to tweak things further. This is simply some seriously sick, blazing fast, dark and damaged black metal indeed, with insane blast beats, all sorts of off-kilter stops and starts, maniacal leads, and last but not least, a litany of ghostly howls, anguished screams and cries of utter and abject fury -- some of which are provided by guest cult black metal vocalist Attila Csihar (of Mayhem, Aboyrm, and Tormentor infamy)! We also like the fact that there are photos of the band members on the inside and they look like librarians! Necro librarians that is.
MPEG Download: "Cataclysmic Nihilism" [/audio/anaalnathrakhcataclysmic.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Cataclysmic Nihilism" [/audio/anaalnathrakhcataclysmic.m3u]
King Of Techno??? Hmm. Well, the story of Bruce Haack is a tough one to tackle. He was an introvert of sorts, wildly imaginative, innovative and certainly the odd man out. A small town boy from Alberta, Canada that moved to NYC to make it big, only to become disillusioned by the soul sucking corporate music industry. What remained constant was his cosmic vision and communication through his visionary and otherworldly music. Until the late nineties, he was an obscure footnote in the history of early electronic music. But thanks to underground tape trading and rabid fans spreading the word, reissues and compilations have surfaced, resurrecting the legacy and world of Bruce Haack. Thankfully, we can now place a visual element to the imaginative sonics of Bruce's electric language via this newly produced film documenting the composer's life. In addition to archival television appearances and rarely seen photographs, we get wonderful stories from Bruce's colleagues and collaborators (Ted Praxiteles Pandel, Miss Esther Nelson, Chris Kachulis), and anecdotes from some of the original children featured on the Dimension 5 records! The rare television segments are the highlight of this documentary, including the legendary I've Got A Secret episode in which Bruce plays his Dermatron (*see footnote below*) on pianist Ted Pandel, as well as the 1968 episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in which Bruce demonstrates his musical computer! Unfortunately, the television appearance of Bruce performing the Dermatron on twelve girls (each pitched according to the western standardized chromatic scale) is not mentioned or shown.
And there are a few other omissions...for instance, as Don Bolles (Germs, 45 Grave, Kitten Sparkles, Three Day Stubble) was integral to the introduction of Bruce Haack not only to the filmmaker himself, but to the American underground throughout the nineties via his radio shows and travelling sound system, it would have been interesting to hear his take on Haack. Bolles, a longtime Haack fan and record nerd, was largely responsible for spreading the word as well as the distribution of cassette dubs to many friends. In fact, my first introduction to Bruce's music was via his gushing words about the man. Furthermore, experts like Irwin Chusid, Robert Moog, Russell Simmons (who commissioned the unreleased, yet widely pirated Party Machine) and like minded folks who long knew of the genius of Bruce Haack could have brought forth some insightful perspective.
So while Philip Anagnos' debut as a documentary filmmaker is a wildly ambitious one, some fans of Bruce's music will certainly have issues with context and some of the interview subjects. The large work of Bruce Haack transcends the limitations that the word "techno" conjures, as there is a massive genre of electric music that isn't necessarily "electronic". Once again, techno is a topic of controversy here as Anagnos got a lot of flack for this film's subtitle. Admittedly, he states that he called it as such simply because it "sounded really good", so don't let that turn you off this film completely. Definitely a door opener for those new to the music of Bruce Haack, just don't close that door on the way out...
*footnote* FYI The Dermatron was an early invention of Haack's, somewhat similar in design to the theremin. With the theremin, human hands control electronic capacitance via metal rods connected to the oscillators which emit variable frequencies. The Dermatron's capacitance is controlled not through metal rods, but through two separate currents which are connected to two separate human bodies. These two bodies act as the controllers of the oscillators, so when the two bodies touch, variable frequencies are created with the variable placement of flesh to flesh. Or something like that...cool!
Ohhhh so dreamy! Here's the sophomore album from Anagram aka Mr. Eric Holland (formerly of AQ faves Milk Cult) and Ms Jessica Congdon (formerly of Vervein). Anagram splendidly marry the strengths of their old bands; the textured, atmospheric layers of the former and the pop prettiness of the latter. The follow-up to 2005's Songs From Far Away features a baker's dozen of the Bay Area duo's lushly composed pop songs. Swirling effected guitars and heavenly sweetheart vocals take centerstage amid an assortment of mood-deepening electronic and synthesizer embellishments. They strike an ear pleasing balance of shoe-gazin' and star-gazin' that alternately brings to mind The Cranberries, Lush, The Breeders and The Organ. Actually many tunes struck us as being remarkably feature film and tv soundtrack ready, and wouldn't you know it? Anagram's already had a bunch of songs featured in movies, tv and radio programs. There's guests a-plenty too: Faith No More's Bill Gould, Mike Morasky of Steel Pole Bathtub, The Enablers' Joe Goldring, and Nathan Petty of Rogue Wave among others. Keep your ears peeled!
It's been refreshing to see a new wave of female experimentalists emerge over the last few years. Grouper, Inca Ore, Avocet, there's something sweetly sinister about these female vocalists, like a siren's call from a distant sea. And thankfully Important records has answered this call, and brings forth a truly incredible new release from the female duo Anahita, the divine collaboration between Helena Espvall, distinguished cellist and member of the widely known Espers, and Tara Burke, also known as Fursaxa. Anahita, named after the Iranian goddess of fertility and water, together sculpt an absolutely gorgeous post-apocalyptic soundtrack, Eastern melodies bowed over layers of flute and secret hymns, deep drones emerging from cracks in the earth, the desert is still and bleak, but the air is filled with somber melody. Recorded straight to 4-track, Matrkaria was recorded between 2005 and 2008. Quiet, organic percussion sets the pace for desert dirges, and distant mirages appear and vanish all at once. Super beautiful and super bleak, Matrkaria is one of the most compelling and magical debuts we've heard in awhile. Think of a darker, dronier and more mystical Suarasma, not as rhythmic and much more transcendental and free-form. Take our advice and don't miss out on this incredible release from these two drone-folk priestesses!
Brand new full length from this South Carolinian dronelord, a sprawling two track epic of haunting bleak minimalism, each sidelong track an oozing black expanse of layered drift and roiling blackness. A Monstrous Dose Of Poison is in fact of monstrous dose of poisonous sound, the A side a billowing cloud of high end skree and bowed metals, wrapped in effects and blurred into a swirl of deep rumbling thrum, a black ambience that pulse and pulsates, and splinters into stretches of muted crumble and crunch, before again stretching out into cinematic expanses of harrowing blackened atmospheric drifts, finally culminating in a strange coda of sci-fi gurgles and buried barely there percussion.
The flipside offers up a similar soundscape, a sort of second movement, this one a bit more symphonic sounding, the opening a massive keening swell, soaring string-like melodies, the sound darkly majestic, eventually crumbling into more of a roiling blackdrone churn, shot through with more of those soaring high end shimmers, the sound growing ever more dense and blurred, a muted buzz wrapped around buried pulse and muddy abstract rhythms, smeared into nothing more than rhythmic spectral swirls.
LIMITED TO 259 COPIES. Housed in a gorgeous, intensely full color, and ultra creepy, super glossy extra heavy jacket.
A sort of sonic addendum to the Anakrid lp reviewed nearby on this week's list, this finds Anakrid teaming up with another Black Horizons mainstay, Warmth, for a brief bit of droned out mesmer. A lush expanse of thick layered thrum, pulsing beneath a field of glistening high end glimmers and soft swirls of tinkling melody, that low level background hum building ominously to something much more sinister, a blurred black buzz, that swells into soft squalls of cacophonous crunch, before settling back into that deep rumbling drone. The various elements seeming to bleed into each other, becoming a heaving wall of slowly crumbling sounds, streaked with feedback and sine wave tones, and pocked with weird chittering barely there rhythms, eventually blossoming into a cloud of soft black swirls. The flipside plays out like a field recording of some futuristic industrial wasteland, all blurred greys and streaks of smeared hiss, a Wolf Eyes-ian landscape of apocalyptic drones and swirling low end hum, the sound rife with buried melodies and hushed tonal colors, everything infused with a sense of dread, an ominous foreboding in the form of multiple layers of lower register rumbles and blackened drones. Harrowing and haunting, and strangely lovely.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. Nice packaging too, black and red offset printed, metallic green cardstock 4 panel J-card, and silver stickered hi-bias chrome tapes.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another installment in stumbling, chaotic, percussive, free folk weirdness from this Finnish troupe made up of members of Avarus, Kemialliset Ystevat and more. This is dark and shambling, playful and naive, reptetive and bizarre. Like No Neck Blues Band or Sunburned Hand if you took away all their guitars and drums and 'real' instruments, gave them a bunch of rattles and sticks and stones and noisemakers, and let them loose in the forest with nothing but a tape recorder. Primal and primitive. Caveman drum circles punctuated by strange strumming and otherworldly chords and melodies, as well as the occasional pagan ritual chanting / vocalising. Cool.
