What else to say about Bathtub Shitter at this point? We've gushed and gushed in review after review. If you're a loyal AQ list reader, you probably know all there is to know about these guys. But for those of you who have somehow missed out on the goofy grind glory that is Bathtub Shitter, check the AQ website to read all about Japan's masters of shitgrind! But in a nutshell, BS are a whirling blast of super technical downtuned metallic grind, with plenty of groove and surf rock (!) and any other weird musical bits they choose to incorporate. Fast and furious and sometimes funny. A buzzing blasting metallic maelstrom, topped with some of the coolest, weirdest vocals EVER! A grunting guttural death metal growl, gurgling and demonic, but that in the blink of an eye, can suddenly switch into hysterical falsetto, like a screeching cheerleader, or a yapping lap dog. So weird, but somehow so goddamn perfect too. They are Japanese after all, and seemingly any idea that sounds too ridiculous or dumb, can be pulled off by a Japanese band without even breaking a sweat.
Shitter At Salzgitter was recorded in Germany back in 2004 and features tons of BS 'hits': "War Of World Is Words", "Bathtub Shitter", "Fuck Hip Raper" and the brilliantly titled "Everybody Has The Wet"!
Nothing dramatically different, just some alternate versions of your Shitter faves as well as a handful of killer tunes you probably haven't heard. Between song banter is always the best part of a live record, and while BS keep it to a minimum, it's cool to hear the songs introduced in either haltingly polite English or raspy monster growls, sometimes both!! Rumor is these guys will make it over here this year so we can experience this stuff LIVE!! We can't wait.
ALL HAIL THE 'SHITTER!!!
OK. By now any avid reader of the AQ list doesn't need to know anything more than this: NEW BATHTUB SHITTER. If you're like us, that's more than enough to send a tingle down your insane Japanese grind metal lovin' record nerd spine. But if that's somehow not enough. How about 5" vinyl ep? SO much cooler than a boring old 7". Still not enough? Okay, this has to do it, the lyric sheet is printed in shit brown ink on a PIECE OF TOILET PAPER!!! So just do it. You know you want it. NEED it. But just in case you need more, or this whole 'Shitter business is new to you, let's go back to an old review where we summed up the whole Bathtub Shitter experience as perfectly as we'll ever be able to:
"Imagine some strange mix of Drop Dead, the Boredoms, Brutal Truth, CSSO, death metal, grindcore, and well....um...shit! Crunchy riffs swing from almost-surf rock, to Zeppelin groove to metallic crunch, but spend most of their time in grind mode, splattered and speeding out of control. Crazy drumming, farting bass and some wicked guitar noodling add to the sick sonic stew. But the vocals are where things get really weird. The main vocals are of the burping, grunting, cookie monster death metal variety, belching out indecipherable tales of shit and shitting, but their foil is a squealing, squeaking little girl of a man voice, sounding either like a babblingly hysterical middle age housewife shrieking at the top of her lungs or a horror movie cheerleader being evicerated, screaming in that terrified way only dying cheerleaders in horror movies do. The two vocal styles swing and switch and battle and butt heads like some sort of bastard grindcore Beastie Boys. Or imagine Chuck D as Chris Barnes in his Cannibal Corpse days and Flavor Flav as the aforementioned shrieking dead cheerleader. With the everpresent S1Ws made up of members of S.O.D. and Angelcorpse. Other sorts of vocals are occasionally introduced like the 'dog barking underwater' and the 'asthmatic yodel'. The truly strange part is that all of the various vocals come from the very same guy!"
Yeah, we know it seems lazy to just crib that description from an old review, but that's EXACTLY what they sound like. Not sure we could describe it any better than that first time we discovered Bathtub Shitter. In fact, just reading that again gets us all excited about the 'Shitter all over again!!
Packaged in a striking full color mini lp style sleeve, with aforementioned toilet paper lyric sheet, and as with most things like this, very very limited!
We won't go into too much gushing detail about our obsession with Bathtub Shitter. For more on that, check the review of their debut Lifetime Shitlist. Needless to say, Bathtub Shitter are the greatest band ever. And definitely have the best band name ever! Okay, so hyperbole aside, the Shitter are the kind of band only Japan seems capable of producing, a chaotic, pounding grind metal juggernaut, with a lead vocalist who switches from demonic gurgling growl, to shrieking hysterical old lady squeal, often within the same verse, and an unhealthy obsession with all things shit. Yep, Japan is amazing. And so is Bathtub Shitter. Heavy enough to please metalheads and grind freaks, but weird enough for everyone else! This is a reissue of their out of print 10", on cd for the first time and with bonus tracks!
When it comes to heaviness - interesting heaviness - the Seventh Rule label is pretty dang reliable. This list we're getting caught up with some of their latest, with THREE new Seventh Rule releases reviewed. This one's the follow up to this NYC band's mammoth full-length debut Furnace, a hate-and-pain-fueled aQ fave back in 2011. Again Batillus punish the listener with mammoth industrialized sludge. It's total deathmarch of doom, uber-distorted noizerock churn that's equal parts Godflesh and Eyehategod, super blown out and often epic, their "blackened doom metal" sound strangely, rhythmically catchy and wide open to loud/soft post-rock-like experimentation, sometimes finding the desolate beauty amidst the ruins. The vokills and loosely-strung guitars vie for which can be harsher, while the machine-like (but not drum machine) percussion grabs you and maintains forward momentum down, down through the glorious, hellish realms of Batillus's sick sound. The lyrics deal in decay and despair and the music follows suit. The Sanford Parker production is the icing on this crushing cake. Nicely done, definitely recommended to all those who liked their earlier effort, or dig similarly antisocial, ultra-heavy doomcore (and doomed-out post-rock) a la The Body, Thou, Cough, Fleshpress, Kowloon Walled City (who turned us on to Batillus in the first place), etc., & also fellow Seventh Rulers Atriarch and Author & Punisher for sure!
Vinyl version also available, via Vendetta.
Thanks to local noise rock heavies Kowloon Walled City for introducing us to these guys. And as we've mentioned before, when a kick ass heavy band, goes on and on about how kick ass and heavy ANOTHER band is, well, then you best pay attention. And boy are we glad we did. These NY doomlords, named for a massive seventies supertanker, are most definitely as heavy as their namesake, their sound a heaving, churning slow motion crawl, the riffs tarpit thick, the vocals caustic and wreathed in effects, the drums a lumbering pound, the band unfurling epic swaths of creeping slithering sludge, an oozing sonic blackness that reminds us of groups like Cough and Thou, who they seem to be compared to often. The band lace their sound with woozy, slightly detuned clean guitars, stretches of swirling ambient shimmer, and sometimes infusing their sound with a seriously epic post rock vibe, some of the songs building to surprisingly melodic crescendos, the opener deftly balancing some extreme ultradoom, and some unlikely hookiness. The rest of the record slips from lumbering death march doom, to pounding almost noise rock churn, to near static, Monarch/Moss/Bunkur like black sludge, fusing bits of Eyehategod like groove to total black hole doomdirge crush. Fucking killer. And WAY recommended for fans of the above mentioned groups as well as The Body, Atavist, Human Quena Orchestra, Fleshpress, Habsyl, Wicked King Wicker, Trees and other similarly sludgey heavies.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The first release on North Carolina's Now Sound label to *not* feature a naked lady painted by the label president's dad! Congratulations, Jeremy! Masaki Batoh of the awesome Japanese band Ghost, who give hippies a good name, mind you, plays acoustic guitar, marimba, harmonium etc, and covers Can's "Yoo Doo Right".
Yep that's Masaki Batoh, the visionary leader of Japanese modern day hippie psych legends Ghost, looking rather more futuristic than his usual shamanistic self, on the cover of Brain Pulse Music, his new solo album for Drag City. The elaborate science fictional headgear Batoh is wearing, a tangle of wires, electrodes, metal bands, and for some reason goggles, is the eponymous Brain Pulse Music machine he helped invent. Apparently in clinical trials for therapeutic medical use, it somehow helps to stabilize one's brain waves, by electronically transmitting them in the form of audio signals that can be controlled via a biofeedback procedure. So this high-tech augmentation of Batoh's traditional acupuncture practice has applications to his musical activities as well, as heard here on this disc dedicated to the victims of the 2011 Japanese earthquake and ensuing nuclear disaster. According to Batoh, the BPM machine can promote healing for both the user employing it, and hopefully more widely as a tool for literally higher-minded music making.
So, what's it sound like? High pitched electronic drone-tones, rising and falling, sometimes soothing, sometimes noisy, not unlike the "onkyo" music of fellow Japanese experimentalists such as the sine-wave artist Sachiko M, for instance. We'd assume that depending upon the brains involved (of both user and listener!), the sounds the BPM machine produces could be perceived as either blissful or possibly piercingly aggravating. But, Batoh includes a lot more than straight BPM recordings on this album. The machine's drones are (usually) mixed with more traditional, ethnic Japanese acoustic instrumentation, such as wood block percussion, drums, gongs, bells, and shakuhachi flute. While some tracks are all about the BPM whines, others foreground the simple ceremonial ancient sounds (indeed, a few omit the BPM machines entirely), with the disc's 10+ minute final cut utilizing two BPM machines at the same time, alongside plasma theremin, springer FX, and shinto chant. That one is particularly amazing, pulsations indeed, by the end sounding like at least one of the BPM machines must have been plugged into Merzbow's brain.
Interesting stuff conceptually of course, but also the BPM meshes well with Batoh's less high-tech, more timeless Ghost-like musical rituals.
Nice silver-and-black graphics and design, with personal liner notes from Batoh himself.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
1996 recordings by Batoh, leader of Japan's epic psychedelic folk-kings Ghost. Solo, he emits beautiful, dark, drone-folk, ambient with nocturnal nature whisperings around the blurry edges of his instruments. This lp is a follow-up to his previous solo lp...both of which are available on one compact disc, as well. Side A concludes with "Death Star," making for another timely tie-in. Strictly limited to 700 vinyl copies.
I know we've said this before, but the more crazy animal sounds we here, the more we wonder why musicians even bother. Sure, you'd be hard pressed to get a pop song out of a sled dog or a purring kitten or an insect or a croaking frog, but for any other sounds all bets are off. Be it rumbling or clicking or squeaking or whirring or chirping or some impossible mix of all of those, or even (especially) those sounds we're not exactly sure how to describe, the animal kingdom has us beat. Thousands of years of evolution, technological advances, every manner of sound making device imaginable, and somewhere, there's some little furry thing that can make those same sounds with its mouth or by rubbing its legs together, or using some parts only they possess. That's what makes records like this totally fascinating and completely humbling.
Most of us have seen bats at one time or another, flitting overhead, barely visible in the dark, or maybe at the zoo. But who among us has ever really heard a bat, until now? And these recordings aren't the mewlings and scratchings and other various sounds that small animals make, no these are the sounds of the bats' ultra sensitive sonar, recorded by expert Michel Barataud using a heterodyne detector and a simple tape recorder, culled from a study that lasted from 1988-1995 and covered 251 different bats of 20 different species! The neat thing about this collection is the fact that there are two discs, one with the original recordings, the other with those same recordings slowed down 10 times (we we can hear what the bats are "hearing"). So cool!
The first disc is an expansive series of creaks and clicks, percussive knocks and thumps, strange melodies that sound like analog synths, high pitched pulses, shortwave-like squawks, chattering, sputtering Geiger counter-like rhythms, all very minimal and totally hypnotic. Sounds so much like a record on ultra-minimalist label Raster-Noton it's not even funny. One can almost imagine Ryoji Ikeda or Alva Noto, after spending years locked in a pressure sealed white cube of a studio, packed with state of the art sound modules, liquid cooled speakers, hard disc recorders, every bit of sound recorded and played back in a perfect listening vacuum, each click and tone painstakingly crafted and carefully placed, stepping outside with finished disc in hand, and then upon hearing the delicate fluttering pattern of clicks and chirps of the bats' sonar, throwing their disc to the ground and stomping it to bits, uttering in their best Simpsons Comic Book Guy voice, "Oh... I've wasted my life."
Gorgeously spare and hauntingly musical, an uber-minimal intricate rhythmic soundfield with impossibly abstract barely there melodies and surrounded by the sounds of no sound. Lovely.
On disc two, those very same sounds are slowed down, and thus become less like percussive clicks and more like melodic chirps. The slowed down versions sound remarkably like bird calls, but unlike the trills and songlike elements of birdsong, each note here is suspended all by itself, floating in a soundscape of ambient whir, before it is supplanted by the next. An extended melody spread out over minutes instead of seconds, like a 45 rpm record of bird calls played at 16 rpm. The sped up sounds on disc two are occasionally joined by the sounds of insects and the surrounding landscape, filling out the sound with the chirp of crickets and the croaking of frogs, a distant cacophony underpinning the bats' mysterious melodies.
Included is a 50 page oversized book which contains all of the field notes, recording details, notes on each track and each animal, complete with charts and graphs, very dense and scientific, and there's even a page with a blank chart so you can go out there and take some field recording notes yourself!
Hey, nature lovers! We've recently gotten a ton of great field recording cds of frogs, bats and other earthly wonders (to be listed soon, we promise!!). So that means we must be extra dilligent to make sure we don't confuse the critter-monikered bands with the actual creatures of the same name. That said, these Bats are most certainly human, and their latest album (their first in about a decade!) At The National Grid is filled with the wistful, finely crafted and composed pop that made these folks along with fellow New Zealanders Tall Dwarfs such pop fan favorites back in the late '80s and early '90s. Indeed these new songs sound strikingly like The Bats of old. Their tunes are sure to give ya the warm fuzzies much like those of the Go-Betweens do. Imagine a less mature gent sounding incarnation of the latter band and you'll get a pretty good idea of the former. However, that description probably won't help you if you're somehow not yet familiar with either band. If that's the case, and you do have a soft spot for really good and intelligent gentle pop, all we can say is, what the heck are you waiting for?!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This reissue of the very first recordings from NZ pop legends the Bats, was one of two special Flying Nun reissues from the Captured Tracks label (who are starting a comprehensive Fn reissue campaign, YAY!) released to commemorate this year's Record Store Day. The other was the debut self titled 12" from another amazing NZ outfit, Snapper, which you'll find reviewed elsewhere on this week's list. Sadly, the records didn't show up here until well after Record Store Day, but that means a handful of mailorder folks get a chance to nab copies. And we mean handful, as right now we have just FIVE copies of this left, and it's already sold out and out of print.
Originally released in 1984, even now, this remains a practically perfect chunk of Kiwi indie pop jangle, one that most definitely inspired legions of groups to come, this reissue an exact reproduction of the original 12", right down to the super striking cover art. The songs were later compiled on the Completely Bats compilation in 1990, but this is the first time this 12" has been available since the eighties, and it's so good, jangly, and fuzzy, catchy and dreamily twee, but also raw and energetic, passionate and emotional, the music is rough and a little bit lo-fi, but so obviously has aspirations to sound massive, and those aspirations shine through, transforming these songs into pop classics that have obviously stood the test of time.
No need to go on at length, odds are these will be gone in a flash. Highly recommended though, so do grab one if you can, you won't be sorry. Anyone into indie pop, jangle pop, fuzz pop, noise pop, this is definitely a pantheon worthy classic. Here's hoping the rest of Captured Tracks' Flying Nun reissues aren't so limited...
Includes a download code!
One of the greatest indie pop records ever, gets a long overdue vinyl reissue! This classic slab of eighties bittersweet jangle pop from legendary New Zealand pop combo the Bats, still sounds as good as it ever did, originally released on Flying Nun in 1987, Daddy's Highway was the group's debut after handful of eps, and found the band effortlessly creating a template for pretty much all of the Kiwi pop music to follow. Robert Scott, one of the best (and perhaps most unsung) pop songsmiths of the last 3+ decades, delivers these heartfelt tunes in a gorgeous clear croon, his guitar playing understated and so sublime, the traditional rock band arrangement augmented by long time aQ fave Alastair Galbraith on violin, giving the songs a dark gravitas, and an even more melancholic vibe, some of the songs bouncy and bubbly, but many of them moody and brooding, laced with subtle drones, sounding at times like a janglier Velvet Underground, while at other times hinting at the more new wave sounding pop going on around the same time, but more often occupying some pure pop space, every song here, rife with warm jangle, sweet melody and dreamy hooks, all wreathed in lush instrumentation, and presented heart on sleeve. So great!
Strange and introspective Italian prog-rock ballads from the one and only Franco Battiato. Based on themes of creation and rebirth, this first release from 1972 in his eccentric experimental mode is more song-oriented than later synth-prog efforts Sulle Corde Di Aries or Clic, but no less exceptional. A student of Stockhausen with a singing-style reminiscent of Pugh Rogefeldt or Tom Ze, Battiato combines the synthy arpeggios of Tangerine Dream with musique concrete-like manipulations of found recordings and ecstatic bursts of orchestrated pop. Awesome! New reissue includes liner notes from Jim O'Rourke.
Although it's only a very small section inside our store, many of our most devout and curious shoppers have found gem after gem in our Italian Prog section. Franco Battiato is one of those gems for sure. One of those endlessly creative artists who completely defies categorization. Sweeping in scope and eccentric in all the right ways it's no surprise that Battiato has finally begun to get the attention he so rightly deserves, as folks like Jim O'Rourke have gone out of their way to champion these forward thinking sounds from decades ago. Released in 1973, Pollution is a psychedelic synth masterpiece foreshadowing so much of what was to come in the landscape of electronic music. With out-of-this-world synths that make Rick Wakeman's playing seem pedestrian, and an otherworldly dimension orchestrated to perfection. Like David Axelrod getting super psychedelic and arranging a record for Ash Ra Tempel. So extravagant yet totally coherent. These sounds are so alive, so full of color, wonder and beauty. It goes without saying that as more folks discover this record it will probably be sampled to death, and we wouldn't be all that surprised if Four Tet, DJ Shadow, or Plaid hadn't already borrowed a bit here and there. Like Jean Claude Vannier's L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches, this is an early '70s psych-prog masterpiece that is an across the board AQ favorite!
Minimalist avant piano and voice from 1970s Italy. This composer, we've been told, is much beloved by the Chicago Tortoise crowd. We will also soon be restocking his Jukebox which is a lovely, soaring soundtrack to an older Italian TV movie.
MPEG Stream: "Dio Mio No" [/audio/lbattistidio.m3u]
Lucio Battisti, a major star in the sixties and seventies in his native Italy, has never had a following here, which is surprising since his romantic psych-inflected ballads are not a far cry from anything Scott Walker or Caetano Veloso produced during the same period. Umanamente Uomo: Il Sogno marks the beginning of an experimental phase for Battisti, dwelling into lushly dramatic arrangements of electric piano, wah guitar, church organ, culminating in the outstanding instrumental "Il Fuoco". While not as far out as say, Franco Battiatio's synth-prog experiments around the same time, we think folks will find a lot to like about Lucio Battisti's unique arrangements of baroque psych-pop.
Just dug up a small handful of these, the only release from this killer California black metal horde who weirdly enough craft a very wintery and frosty sort of ambient technical black metal, very reminiscent of the Norwegian elite, Emperor, Immortal, Satyricon, but stripped way down, like a more raw and primitive take on that sound, trancelike and hypnotic, the tracks super repetitive and hypnotic, pounding relentless drumming, soaring epic riffage, howled hellish vokills, blurred bursts of furious buzz and blast. The sound is awesomely murky and muddy, all the various instruments smeared together into heaving black swells, the band do get super moody and depressive, and those stretches are especially compelling, dark and intense, the minor key guitars creeping through clouds of swirling black ambience, the vocals growing more and more tortured, sorrowful and miserable, the perfect downer balance to the rest of the record's frantic sonic frenzy.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Hopefully you've delved into the metallic weirdness of the Max Planck compact disc reissue Kill The Pain we highlighted a few weeks back. Eccentric true cult heavy metal from the depths of the eighties. It was one of the first three releases in the Stormspell label's new archival "Red White Heavy Arcane Collector Series For The Initiated" (and if you read our list, consider yourself initiated), dedicated to rescuing obscure '80s metal demos that they consider hidden gems.
Now we've got the other two they've done so far, Fist Of Steel from SoCal's unfortunately named Aerian Rage, and this one, Cry Of The Warrior by Belgium's Battlecry, who offer up six tracks here, nearly a half hour of their galloping European metal glory, originally from a demo tape recorded in 1985. Battlecry live up to their name with high pitched wails o'er pounding metal. This is straight up, stirring stuff in the grand tradition, the band obviously inspired by Priest and Maiden (and Pretty Maids and Accept...). Despite the obvious quality of their material, they didn't rise above the glut of all the other metal bands back then. Maybe they were a couple years too late, and it probably didn't help being from Flanders. However, nowadays, hearing their authentic old school stylings is nothing but charming! To our ears, well deserving of being unearthed again, so thanks Stormspell!!
The 12 page cd booklet contains liner notes about the band's brief history, plus lyrics and vintage b&w live photos of the Battlecry guys enthusiastically rockin' out in their shredded shirts and spandex pants. Limited to 500 hand-numbered copies.
Ordinarily, we'd think, there were enough rad bands back then that put out actual albums that still need reissue, is it really necessary to dig up demos too? Well, Stormspell answer that question with a resounding yes, it is! Killer metal is killer metal, even if the band in question broke up before they got a real record deal - and sometimes, some of the most interesting bands were not quite commercial enough, or based near enough to LA or London or wherever (Max Planck on both counts) to get signed. Lookin' forward to more in this series, volumes 4-7 announced so far, from Hades, Cold Steel, Chalice, and Oppression...
Battles seems to have a thing for EPs. Well, why not? Might be the best format for their brand of attention-span sapping math rock. And you do get a full half-hour here, filled out with these five tracks of advanced instrumental action. This band -- featuring (ahem, selling points here) Ian Williams from Don Caballero/Storm And Stress, Tyondai "Son of Anthony" Braxton, John Stanier of Helmet/Tomahawk and Lynx's Dave Konopka -- are pros at making impressively complicated yet undeniably enjoyable post-rock music, as lively as it is listenable (which we mean in a good way). Often hectic but never harsh. It's as if these guys are taking King Crimson's early '80s comeback classic Discipline and giving it a fractured, abstract and electronic makeover. Venturing into totally deconstructed Starfuckers-ish territory, the twelve minute "BTTLS" might be the highlight, or at least the most abstract track on here by far... but the whole B EP is a fine dose of Battles for their quickly growing legion of fans.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This is one pedigreed post-rock combo here! Battles consists of Ian Williams (Don Caballero, Storm And Stress), Tyondai Braxton (son of jazz genius Anthony and solo artist in his own right), John Stanier (Helmet, Tomahawk) and Dave Konopka (Lynx). These gents have joined forces to tangle their guitar strings, various drum implements, and electronic gadgetry into a big knot that might seem loose but is probably really tight if you were to try and unravel it. And while their compositions might be 'difficult', listening to this is not. Battles sounds like a post rock band (a la Don Cab or Lynx) playing the music of Conlon Nancarrow on Raymond Scott's Manhattan Research equipment. Or Gershon Kingsley making math rock. Weird, complex, delightful. And rather than debut with a full length, they've released two new eps in various formats. There are the five tracks of EP C cd ep, and the two-song limited Tras 12" vinyl and cd ep (the latter of which also includes a video clip).
Two of the three killer Battles eps (C and B) on a single import cd (note: both eps are still available separately) from this far out post Don Cab post Helmet post-prog-jazz-mathrock-whatthefuck-supergroup! Here's what we had to say about the two eps when we first reviewed them a while back:
EP C:
This is one pedigreed post-rock combo here! Battles consists of Ian Williams (Don Caballero, Storm And Stress), Tyondai Braxton (son of jazz genius Anthony and solo artist in his own right), John Stanier (Helmet, Tomahawk) and Dave Konopka (Lynx). These gents have joined forces to tangle their guitar strings, various drum implements, and electronic gadgetry into a big knot that might seem loose but is probably really tight if you were to try and unravel it. And while their compositions might be 'difficult', listening to this is not. Battles sounds like a post rock band (a la Don Cab or Lynx) playing the music of Conlon Nancarrow on Raymond Scott's Manhattan Research equipment. Or Gershon Kingsley making math rock. Weird, complex, delightful.
EP B:
Battles seems to have a thing for EPs. Well, why not? Might be the best format for their brand of attention-span sapping math rock. And you do get a full half-hour here, filled out with these five tracks of advanced instrumental action. This band -- featuring (ahem, selling points here) Ian Williams from Don Caballero/Storm And Stress, Tyondai "Son of Anthony" Braxton, John Stanier of Helmet/Tomahawk and Lynx's Dave Konopka -- are pros at making impressively complicated yet undeniably enjoyable post-rock music, as lively as it is listenable (which we mean in a good way). Often hectic but never harsh. It's as if these guys are taking King Crimson's early '80s comeback classic Discipline and giving it a fractured, abstract and electronic makeover. Venturing into totally deconstructed Starfuckers-ish territory, the twelve minute "BTTLS" might be the highlight, or at least the most abstract track on here by far... but the whole B EP is a fine dose of Battles for their quickly growing legion of fans.
Battles are back with another spright, tight outburst of their (rather unique) rhythmically percolating math-pop post-rock. This time focussing on a kind of 8-bit steel drum tropical blow-out with less of the pitch-shifted vocals that figured greatly on Mirrors. Tyondai Braxton quit the band after that last album, but you wouldn't notice, and they make sure to make up for his absence with an impressive array of guests in any case, including Kompakt's Matias Aguayo, Eye from the Boredoms, and freakin' GARY NUMAN!
Gloss Drop sure is relentless and jaunty and technical and all, but we have to admit, maybe their schtick is starting to wear thin with us. We can't help but think of the Munchkins' Lollipop Guild song from the Wizard Of Oz every time we listen to Battles... Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, is it, though?
So if you're still digging on your old Battles records, you'll probably be into Gloss Drop too. Some previous Battles have won us over, for sure, and this one is doing so too, but we kinda wonder if they'll really win the war in the end...
With only a couple ep's under their belts, Battles have been taking their sweet time creating their first proper full length and wow, has all that time and patience paid off! Mirrored is one of those records that grabs you right off the bat and sucks you in, intense and immediate, but with a staying power that has had us listening to this record over and over, finding new things to love about it each and every time. Math rock may be an equation that's been solved and worked out to a point of no return, but Battles have taken the polyrhythms and driving elements from their individual math rock roots (Don Cabellero, Helmet, Lynx) and added so many exciting ingredients to the mix. Fantastical prog like arrangements, spacey excursions, dance floor flirtations, a dose of oddly alien vocals, and a mesmerizing infusion of elements from 20th century composition, all whipped up together to make a record that sends you soaring into another galaxy with a fury and energy that can't be denied. In lesser hands all these elements could sound clumsy or forced, but Battles have found a way to make it all sound so seamless and fun! Like Goblin hijacking a Steve Reich composition, and dumping bags of glitter and the spiciest spices all over the place, creating the most beautiful and supercharged kind of mess. Some of our favorite artists, many who are maybe too prolific for their own good, could learn a thing or two from these guys. Sometimes truly honing your craft and perfecting that vision is worth it when the results are this glorious!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This is one pedigreed post-rock combo here! Battles consists of Ian Williams (Don Caballero, Storm And Stress), Tyondai Braxton (son of jazz genius Anthony and solo artist in his own right), John Stanier (Helmet, Tomahawk) and Dave Konopka (Lynx). These gents have joined forces to tangle their guitar strings, various drum implements, and electronic gadgetry into a big knot that might seem loose but is probably really tight if you were to try and unravel it. And while their compositions might be 'difficult', listening to this is not. Battles sounds like a post rock band (a la Don Cab or Lynx) playing the music of Conlon Nancarrow on Raymond Scott's Manhattan Research equipment. Or Gershon Kingsley making math rock. Weird, complex, delightful. And rather than debut with a full length, they've released two new eps in various formats. There are the five tracks of EP C cd ep, and the two-song limited Tras 12" vinyl and cd ep (the latter of which also includes a video clip).
Please note this is Vancouver band THE Battles, not to be confused with the post-rock Battles (no 'the')!
This is The Battles' follow-up to their 2001 debut Lycanthropy. While their record label has stickered this cd's shrinkwrap with mentions of "stylistic nods to Todd Rundgren, Mayo Thompson and Robyn Hitchcock", we hear The Battles' veering more towards Split Enz / Crowded House territory. That's a-ok with us, 'cause those Finn brothers are a couple of mighty fine songwriters with expressive voices and on the first few songs of Tomorrow's Eager Hands, The Battles' mainman Steve Wood sounds like he could be their younger brother. Later in the album, the abovementioned nods become more apparent as they draw in closer to the sound of their Vancouver brethren Destroyer (a few of whose members also appear here as well as a few from New Pornographers and Loscil). As well, they take a brief spacey soundscape detour which is much more in line with their five-years-ago selves, but seems somewhat incongruous here. Overall though there's plenty of retro pop smarts and poetic penmanship to sink your ears into... good stuff!
25 years? Oh my god. Well, if you're at least that old you'll remember the movie/TV show Battlestar Galactica, a Mormons-in-space allegory that gave the world those Cylon baddies and inspired George Lucas' even more successful Star Wars cycle of films. Oh, ok, maybe it was the other way around. Ahem. Anyway, here (at last) is a remastered cd reissue of the soundtrack, which proves to be a pretty fine faux-classical bit of work composed by Stu Phillips and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Play it for your hoity-toity symphony goin' friends and tell 'em it's a rare 20th century classical thing from Russia or a new Jonathan Bepler Cremaster score or something... then see what they think when the bonus track, the *Disco Version* of the main theme, comes on at the end! Lotsa fun. And the cover art bears mentioning: it's hard to believe this was the actual movie poster, but it was -- it looks so much like you'd imagine the Mad magazine parody to look like. I mean, that's a caricature of Lorne Greene, not a proper portrait, right?
Back in 2012, we raved about a cd from some mysterious French instrumental math/post/noise rock combo called Poles. At the time, we compared them to Psychic Paramount, Dazzling Killmen, Laddio Bolocko, Don Cab, Breadwinner, needless to say, these guys fit perfectly amongst those math/post rock elite. We had been hankering for more ever since, and recently, the band got in touch to let us know, that there might finally be more on the horizon, but in the meantime, one of the Poles had a new record under the name Batwan, but warned us right up front it was NOTHING like Poles, and he was not kidding. Instead, the music of Batwan is a sort of blackened industrial soundscaping, the opener a long sprawling field of pulsing guitar thrum, and dense sweeps of gnarled noisiness that ebb and flow, all over a constantly roiling field of ambient noise, and industrial whir, but that noisiness soon abates, leaving hazy drifts of softly reverberating thrum, shot through with barely there melodies, and buried percussion, not to mention what sounds like human voices processed into a chorus of croaking frogs, not to mention what sounds like some scissor snipping, some abstract drumming, some keening sine wave tones, little electronic squiggles, bells and chimes, all woven into what eventually becomes a sort of Caretaker-esque bit of faded melancholic drift. And that's just the first track. The rest of the pieces are much shorter, but share a similar sonic palette, from a throbbing sort of minimal industrial house music, all muted and muddied and draped with cleaning metallic melodies, to a blurry little stretch of kosmische synth swirl, peppered with bits of crunch and clatter, to creepy haunted house noisescapes, to hushed minimal avant rock creep, to warped electro weirdness, to harrowing cinematic ambience, and finally to a harrowing, droned out slow build, that takes an unsteady raga, and transforms it into something woozy and melty, and gradually more and more soul stirringly ominous, before finally fading out completely.
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Second of two releases on the newly launched UK label Tapeworm, the other being a killer solo bass record from long time aQ fave and turntablist, Philip Jeck, while this one, well, this one is a bit harder to describe. A spoken word record by two mysterious ladies called Patrica And Ellen, reading a work by legendary (anti) post modernist Jean Baudrillard. Recorded By Vicki Bennet of People Like Us, these readings are riveting, due in no small doubt to Baudrillard's tangled wordplay, but also due to the strange delivery of the two women, who take turns, in their thickly accented voices, reading the texts, sounding like they're perhaps seeing those words for the first time, struggling through pronunciations, little giggles and asides, brief breaks as one hands the text to the other. We'll be the first to say, that we're not much for 'spoken word' records, but somehow this transcends, becoming some sort of art, or sound poetry, especially when the two are reading together, those moments are fantastic, playful, silly, and the delivery of the two, slightly off, with both randomly dropping out, or stopping for a breath, makes the reading sound less 'read', and more weirdly musical.
Obviously, this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it's definitely fun, and interesting, and quite strange! Like the Jeck tape, LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, we got about a dozen...
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Found a little stash of these. Already out of print so these are the last copies...
Another strange (but then again, maybe not so strange) collaboration. Karl from Axolotl and Elisa from Magic Markers get together to make some beautiful and slightly noisy music together.
Elisa's guitar seems to be taking center stage on the A side, scrabbly and angular, chaotic and scarping and grinding, dense tangles of high end squiggle and scrape laid over a distant hum of tape hiss and other abstract ambience.
The flipside is more bluesy, kind of. A sort of ghostlike disembodied folk, a bit of twang, lots of clunk and clatter, stumbly and spacious, the notes and melodies gnarled and twisted into strange atonal shapes, deep rumbling swells here and there, clouds of high end shimmer, soft washed out buzz, a dreamy creaky blissed out noiseflecked abstract guitarscape. Haunting and strangely pretty.
San Francisco has quite the impressive (and ever-growing) grassroots folk / country / blues music community, both past and present. Jolie Holland, Sean Hayes, Dieselhed, Virgil Shaw, Crooked Jades, Waycross, Court & Spark... the list goes on and on. Of course, there's always room for one (or two or three) more, isn't there? Well, over the last few weeks, a few folks have been comin' in asking for a gent known as Matt Bauer (not to be confused with Skullflower / Total / Sunroof! / Youngsbower's Matthew Bower, mind you!). Apparently Mr. Bauer had a new self-released cd out, but after much sleuthing about we were unable to track the elusive fellow down... that is, until last week! Yes, we're pleased to report that he's surfaced, and kindly brought in some of his cds himself. And it was worth the wait. Nandina is a fine album of earthy, comforting, melancholic folk songs with warm and weathered male vocals.
As the temperature and leaves gradually fall into autumn, a fittingly dusky and haunting album from former Bay Area now New York based folk troubadour Mr. Matt Bauer has arrived! It's a devastating song cycle inspired by the story about the mysterious death of a girl (posthumously known as Tent Girl) which took place back in 1968 in Bauer's old stomping grounds in Kentucky. Absolutely heart-rending and beautifully realized, The Island Moved In The Storm is a wonderful progression from his 2006 Wasps And White Roses cdep. Unquestionably his best work to date! The artfully Spartan arrangements allow much room for his achingly withered voice and deeply affecting words to sink in. He was ably assisted by many musical luminaries: Elizabeth Dotson-Westphalen of St. Vincent, Alela Diane, and Dirty Projectors' Angel Deradoorian to name a few. Fans of M. Ward, Jolie Holland, Sean Hayes and maybe even Calexico too, please take note immediately! This just may be your new favorite album and artist! Recommended.
Wow, do not miss The Jessamine County Book Of The Living. Matt Bauer's third full length is another deeply moving intimate work. Once again, he's gathered many of his musical friends around him for this lush bluegrass-y embrace. His nimble banjo picking and fine piano playing are now accompanied by strings, woodwinds, brass and more. Wonderful. The string quartet was recorded here in SF, the vocals of Garrett Pierce in Davis, and the rest of the production took place in Brooklyn and Lexington. And by "the rest", in part we mean some gorgeous female vocals from the likes of Jolie Holland and Mariee Sioux. Bauer's hushed voice is mournful yet comforting, and is perfectly complemented by the ladies' luminous delivery. Perhaps the album's crowning jewel is the fourth track "Blacklight Horses", a solemnly lovely Bauer and Holland duet. Just might move you to tears... actually many of Bauer's songs have that effect. Needless to say, this album is heartily recommended. Definitely for fans of Ms Holland, M. Ward and Iron & Wine.
A familiar face around this neighborhood -- you might recall his debut cd Nandina a couple of years back -- Mr. Bauer caught us off guard recently when we received a package from him addressed from New York. He'd pulled up anchor and moved across the country! Fortunately his brother still lives around the corner from our shop and can supply us with Matt's latest cdep. It picks right up where he left off on the final somber strains of Nandina's closing track "Jordan In A Plastic Bag". Such achingly beautiful, weathered folk melancholia, this time with the added pleasure of female vocals accompanying Matt's on a pair of songs. Who might those ladies be? Why, noneother than Ms Jolie Holland ("Carve It Out") and Ms Mariee Sioux ("Wasps And White Roses"). Each voice compliments the other so well! Also making a couple of appearances are fiddle player Alisa Rose ("White Horse" and "Poor Robin"), and Nathan Wanta guest sings along on the last number "Poor Robin" too. Seven songs of which five are originals (three with vocals, two without), plus two traditional numbers. Wonderful!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Documenting these Goth superstars' recent live reunion tour, two discs worth. At first listen, one thing we can say is that this is surprisingly damn HEAVY. Yes, this includes "Bela Lugosi's Dead" amongst other black eyeliner hits. And, this has a new studio track too, their first in like 15 years, a cover of Dead Can Dance's "Severance".
