Someone has to say it, it might as well be us. C'mon!!! You studied music at Mills for fuck's sake!!! You were honored alongside RYOJI IKEDA and OVAL by the Ars Electronica, the biggest honor in digital music, beating out everybody ever featured in The Wire, EVERYBODY! But all you do is sing stupid songs, terribly off key, to retarded programmed nursery rhyme electronica, about boobs and butts and stuff only grade schoolers think is funny. Christ, this is depressing/embarrassing. But people (those Ars Electronica folks for one, and possibly Fred Frith who actually appears on this disc) seem to like the Blechdom thing, so maybe we're missing something. Some sample lyrics: "There's a boob-a-que in here, my tits are on fire / My ballpark boobs are about to explode." Ugh, well, whatever we might be missing doesn't sound like something we want to get.
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Blectum From Blechdom's mutant electronica has been coupled with the post-Aphex tricknology of Chris "O.S.T." Douglas for this super limited lathe cut 10" produced for Dial Records. One side is more rhythmically based, with algorithmic workouts of erratic shortwave bleeping situated above a mock house drum machine build. The other side is far more whimsical, entirely unconcerned with their audience's intellectual sensibilities. Kevin & Blevin Blectum present a vocal mimicry of tapes made by teenage girls as they sing along, completely off key, to their favourite boy bands, squealing with delight. Broken calliope melodies plink and plonk along with the embarassingly quaint vocals. Yup, the covers are actual buttprints by Kevin & Blevin... if you get lucky you might find one or two very long black hairs accompanying your buttprint. (Blevin Blectum claims this is not one of theirs but is the result of the detritus found in Mike Dial's house.)
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Blectum From Blechdom keeps on getting better and weirder with each release. "De Snaunted Haus" is the fourth release this year for San Francisco's carnivalesque electro-shock / horror-techno duo. There honestly hasn't been much that sounds like Blectum From Blechdom, it's almost like somebody took a baseball bat to the head of Laurie Anderson and made her act, punch-drunk, in some really silly horror skits, scored on a Casio keyboard by somebody who has never listened to anything but Thinking Fellers albums at the wrong speed. Their warped electronica simulates child-like melodies as reflected through a funhouse mirror of distortion and exaggeration, and in-between these songs Blectum From Blechdom set up surreal skits that involve mad ducks, bloodied children, and the undead, all of which end in somebody screaming (nice touch). So we say: Blectoids, keep hammering away at Laurie Anderson's head with that baseball bat! If only.
We told it like it really is last time with our harsh-but-honest assessment of Kevin Blechdom's "Your Butt" ep...so there's no going back now. But perhaps this new disc from quite a few people's favorite female Oakland electronics and cabaret duo is deserving of a better fate. Or perhaps not. From the vaginal themed artwork to song titles like "Shithole" and "Toilet Trouble" this celebrates the side of BFB that we just don't appreciate, their not so much childlike as childish aesthetic... Of course, ample warning is given where it says on the sleeve that "this is a compilation of BFB's most drunken and messy live musical moments." Still, the resulting glitchy sound-world of computers gone bad features plenty of crunchy bleepy beats and drones, that, seemingly mechanical and random as they are, aren't unpleasant. But, when the duo start singing, that's when this slides from "kinda cool, kitschy instrumental electronica act" to "annoying, noisy joke band that's just not for us"... Again though, it can't be denied that BFB do indeed have their fans, and doubtless fans will want and need this disc, more power to 'em. We'll just agree to disagree, no hard feelings. Apparently, this is to be the last ever BFB release, but now have two separate full-fledged solo careers to, er, look forward to.
Blectum from Blechdom's "Haus de Snaus" is a collection of the previously listed but currently out of print releases "Snauses And Mallards" (their first EP, originally on Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork) and "De Snaunted Haus" (their 4th release on Tigerbeat
So here's what we've previously written:
"Snauses and Mallards" from Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork label is from Blectum From Blechdom - the work of two local technicians showcasing their electronic output from the Mills College conservatory. This eight track 12", while playful and childlike, has a distinctly creepy and maniacal element, sort of like the sounds of scary funhouse at an evil carnival. Or something. It's full of dense sample mutilation, constructed into spasmodic yet anthemic rhythmic complexities. The music hints at both '80s electro and at early computer music with all of its nerdy whimsy & tinniness. Quality stuff for, say, fans of Matmos' textured 'organica' (to use Hrvatski's term for it).
Blectum From Blechdom keeps on getting better and weirder with each release. "De Snaunted Haus" is the fourth release this year for San Francisco's carnivalesque electro-shock / horror-techno duo. There honestly hasn't been much that sounds like Blectum From Blechdom, it's almost like somebody took a baseball bat to the head of Laurie Anderson and made her act, punch-drunk, in some really silly horror skits, scored on a Casio keyboard by somebody who has never listened to anything but Thinking Fellers albums at the wrong speed. Their warped electronica simulates child-like melodies as reflected through a funhouse mirror of distortion and exaggeration, and in-between these songs Blectum From Blechdom set up surreal skits that involve mad ducks, bloodied children, and the undead, all of which end in somebody screaming (nice touch). So we say: Blectoids, keep hammering away at Laurie Anderson's head with that baseball bat! If only.
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The second release from Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork label is from Blectum From Blechdom - the work of two local technicians showcasing their electronic output from the Mills College conservatory. This eight track 12", while playful and childlike, has a distinctly creepy and maniacal element, sort of like the sounds of scary funhouse at an evil carnival. Or something. It's full of dense sample mutilation, constructed into spasmodic yet anthemic rhythmic complexities. The music hints at both '80s electro and at early computer music with all of its nerdy whimsy & tinniness. Quality stuff for, say, fans of Matmos' textured 'organica' (to use Hrvatski's term for it).
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After their "Snauses & Mallards" ep for Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork, the Bay Area computer / sampler duo Blectum from Blechdum has finally released their debut album. And what a debut it is too! Like V/VM's best moments, Blectum from Blechdum appear at times to be unconcerned with the bastions of good taste in attempts at unadulterated electronica silliness far removed from the stodginess of typical IDM. Whimsical vocal cut-ups and demented childlike melodies dominate their wacked machine music. But far from being a comedy ensemble, Blectum will turn to the bleep groove of early Warp singles filling their sound with stuttering percolations and warbled electronics.
There's a certain kind of electronic music we used to love that seems to have gone M.I.A. lately. That kind of off kilter abstract experimentalism that seemed to be an offshoot of IDM, like IDM's deformed younger sibling that was kept locked up in the basement, thankfully with a full complement of recording gear and electronics. Lesser was one of our favorites. And at times, so too were Blectum From Blechdom. A motley crew who sort of skirted the 'mainstream' creating their own sound, their own scene, taking the electronic music of the day and twisting it all up. While Lesser seemed to do no wrong, or if he did wrong, it was so gloriously wrong it was right, BfB were a bit more hit and miss. The two personalities pulling in two distinctly different directions. And to be honest, we much preferred Blevin's trajectory to Kevin's. As later records demonstrated, Kevin leaned more toward the bratty and puerile, a much more Chicks On Speed vibe, mixing Karaoke with damaged versions of commercial pop, while Blevin (aka Bevin) was much more academic, and experimental, with an ear for texture and rhythm not that far removed from her hubby Lesser.�
Apparently the two have reunited and are once again a going concern, but more immediately, Blevin has finally released a new solo record, the first in 4 years, and it's pretty damn great. And actually, the fact that the opening track is a cover of a song by the mysterious Reverend Fred Lane just blows our minds. We've been trying to track Lane down to reissue his long out of print Shimmy Disc records, some of the most twisted genius EVER. And BB's version is equally twisted, but in a whole different way. Lots of rhythmic skitter, thick throbbing bass, she sings too but here voice is twisted and processed into strange stutters and streaks, the whole thing has a weirdly prog feel, a bit like a damaged Squarepusher covering some obscure lost seventies prog rarity, but all chopped up and reassembled. It definitely doesn't sound that much like the original, but the concept! And the sound. Fucking awesome. The rest of the record holds up pretty well considering there are no more Fred Lane covers, "Cygnet" with its snippets of soaring strings layered over dark meandering beats and ominous whirring ambience, "Foyer Fire", a glitchy, hiss, static flecked 8-bit carnival jam, each track is totally unique but manages to link to the sounds before and after seamlessly, from chaotic cut and paste, to woozy backwards warble, to hiccupping warbly fractured jungle, to blissed out smears of skitter and flutter, reminding us quite a bit of a more subdued (slightly) and�less caffeinated Stock, Hausen And Walkman.�
The record finishes off with the truly haunting closer "Avian Enamel", with its chopped and processed harmonies, muted rhythmic thump, mysterious voices, weirdly groovy beats, all peppered with little flurries of glitch and crackle, buried samples, woozy loops, everything smoothed out into a drone-y beatscape both moody and mesmerizing. A fine return for sure. Now if we can just tempt Lesser out of hiding...
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During the past six months or so, Blevin and Kevin Blectum have taken separate paths away from the fictional agendas of Blectum from Blechdom, which earned the pair an honorable mention at the 2001 Ars Electronica festival. While Blevin had previously released an album for Phthalo as D84, this is her first album as Blevin Blectum and is, not surprisingly, a very silly piece of DSP-filter-happy electronica. While both Blevin and Kevin have put aside the punch-drunk deranged mythologies of snauses and mad mallards of their solo albums, they have maintained Blechdom's post-ironic stance of building electronica out of purposefully ugly, arrhythmic, or just conventionally 'wrong' fragments of whimsical sound, in direct contrast to their impressive technical prowess over their gear. The first half of "Talon Slalom" is a discombobulated mix of garishly bubbly 8-bit sonic cavacades, insipid melodies, drooling information overload, and whimsically clumsy rhythms. Occasionally some seasick techno develops over the course of the first half of the album, with asynchronous samples splattered randomly across the rhythmic scaffold of a simple 4/4 beat. While the first half of the album seems maybe a little too silly, Blevin makes a conscientious effort to develop like-minded funhouse fragments into spiralling passages of surreal looped electro-waltzes. And the results are actually quite impressive. Fun and funny, but still complex and thoughtful and truly inspired. This latter half is certainly enough to balance out the opening follies of "Talon Slalom."
Originally released in 2008 and reissued on Cold Spring with a bonus track, haunting modern chamber music from this one man composer / soundscaper. Looped pianos, layered strings, barely there vox, and all sorts of manipulated atmospheres. Soft noise and lush landscapes of sound, dark and mysterious and quite lovely. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES.
Maybe the most instantly compelling thing we can say about Country Agenda is that every single time we've played it in the store, we've seen customers unabashedly and openly dancing along. The psych-folk vibes on this album are straight up groovy, no question about it. Alex Bleeker also plays bass in the sunshiney, dreamy rock group Real Estate (there are two Real Estate-rooted solo ventures on this list - check out Martin Courtney too!); Country Agenda is the third full-length from Alex Bleeker and the Freaks, a group of friends who have been making music together since college. With the knowledge that this band made their rounds this summer playing Grateful Dead tribute sets with everyone from Kyle Field of Little Wings to Jenny Lewis to Lee Ranaldo to Mr. Bill Kreutzmann himself, the Dead inspiration on Country Agenda is no surprise. The troubadour-folk vox bring a little bit of a woozy Neil Young sensibility to this collection as well. At the same time, maybe due to the collaborative nature of the music, something about AB&TF's concoction of down-to-earth guitars, stand-out bass lines, and swooping keys is really all their own. The jangly, laid-back strumming paired with marine references and track titles like "California" and "Downright Stinson" make this the perfect California-coastal roadtrip album, which is delightfully ironic coming from a New Jersey transplant. Bleeker's unique croon, especially beautiful on "The Rest" and "Sealong Hair", feels carried to us on a distinctly Pacific Ocean breeze (the Atlantic can suck it), and we've been humming along ever since it arrived.
All most folks will probably need to know is that Alex Bleeker And The Freaks features a bunch of the guys from Real Estate, and the sound is a bit like a less twisted, more groovy, woozy, jammy Real Estate. But first you have to make it past the cover art, which as we discuss briefly in the review of the Frat Dad 7" elsewhere on this list, features what might be Underwater Peoples weirdo aesthetic, a sort of jock / dude / bro thing, the Frat Dad 7" features two bro-looking dudes doing karaoke, and this record features all the Freaks, poolside, in sweaters, and lost of flip flops, a little dog, plenty of khaki, collared shirts, sweaters, Dad style leather jackets. Hard to tell whether it's a put on, or if these guys are just in fact regular Joes, who just make music, when they're not doing whatever it is they do in their normal lives. It doesn't really matter, it's just the first thing that catches your attention.
The music though, sounds a bit 'regular guy' too, not in a bad way, but unlike the distorted lo-fi weirdness of Real Estate, the sound of AB&TF is more straight ahead rock, somewhere between the lugubrious country of Palace, with the tangled leads of Neil Young, a little Grateful Dead too, plenty of strum and jangle and shuffle, loads of tangled guitar melodies, the occasional psychedelic shred freakout, but for the most part, loping and strummy and laid back, a little druggy, but not lysergic, more just sort of fuzzy and baked. Definitely nice to listen to, but maybe not far out enough for folks who dig other UP bands like Real Estate or Ducktails...
Cold winds hardly ever blow in the sunny climes of San Diego, California; but that city is the home to the goth-cult, dirge-punk duo Blessure Grave whose grim, icy moods certainly match any of their contemporaries like Zola Jesus, Former Ghosts, Blank Dogs, or any of the more grim tones pushed forward by Wierd Records. It's true that many of the current crop of post-punk and minimal wave revivalists are triangulating their sounds through very specific references. Zola Jesus' operatics harken to Diamanda Galas but with a very DIY grit about her arrangements; and Blank Dogs really enjoy a good Joy Division bassline, and who could find fault with that? But it took a while to place the exact references that Blessure Grave evoke. Alien 8 offers Killing Joke, Death In June, and The Cure, all of which are close, but not quite familar enough with Blessure Grave's dungeon claustrophobia and dour expressionism. To us, Blessure Grave suggests a Frankensteinian construct of the grim and twisted. On one side, there's the glum goth-punk band Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, and on the other there's Michael Allen from the early '80s when he founded the quixotic post-punk bands Rema Rema, Mass, and The Wolfgang Press.
Judged By Twelve, Carried By Six is the debut album for Blessure Grave, following an acclaimed 12" for Captured Tracks, a split 7" with Cold Cave & Crocodiles, and a couple of tiny edition cassettes, creating quite an underground buzz around this band. All of Blessure Grave's songs are skeletal in nature, built around rumbling basslines, moody synths, minor key guitar melodies, booming vocals, and tons of chorus & reverb. The vocals from T.Grave on "Stop Breathing" bellow and chant in an untrained, art-punk manner, that pretty much follows the mannerisms of Mick Allen in his early days. And those drum machinations of the band do recall the Lorries, guiding the darkened, claustrophobic tunes along a militant lockstep. "Open Or Shut" is a bit more expansive through the slower plod that the band takes and the expressive guitars that alternate between an anxiety provoking drone and languid moping."A Thousand Drums" is downright frantic in all of those drum machine pulses sputtering behind the barked vocals and excessive reverb. "Hope For The Worse" is probably the closest that Blessure Grave come to anything off of Unknown Pleasures with the spiked guitar lines and galloping rhythms, although Martin Hannett would have made such a track sound completely different... and not the lo-fi, naked expressionism and sometimes atonally brutish constructs found here. This homecrafted grimness is certainly one of Blessure Grave's many strengths; and we're already eager to hear more!
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WOW. And do we mean WOW!! Fifteen classic free jazz records from the late sixties / early seventies, long out of print, finally getting the ULTRA deluxe reissue treatment. Incredibly limited, these will probably be out of print before you know it.
Comes in a gorgeous diecut fullcover three panel sleeve, with new artwork, as well as a huge booklet with the original album sleeve notes, new liner notes in french and english as well as a bunch of cool photos. So nice!
Not-as-free-as-a-lot-of-stuff-on-ESP New York free jazz from the Paul Bley Trio: Paul Bley, Barry Altschul, and Steve Swallow. Really nice and dark and sort of late night sounding jazz.
Pretty cool new disc from R&B star Mary J., who also boasts a cool new haircut in her cool new video.
Blight was a short lived and misunderstood band that came out of the vibrant early 80's Midwest (more specifically Michigan) hardcore scene along with better know groups like Negative Approach, Necros, Crucifucks, Meatmen, The Fix, etc. Blight was made up of former members of The Fix, along with Tesco Vee of The Meatmen doing vocals here as well as "playing" trumpet! Yeah, these guys all held Ph.D's in "Hardcore 101" but Blight was about branching out from what had become a confined attitude/scene and thus the racket these guys created together as a band was more akin to Flipper or the Germs or Throbbing Gristle. There's even a bit of NY No-Wave going on with all the repetition and discordance and skronk that that entails. During the time Blight was active they released one 7" EP and played out only a handful of times. 23 years later, Touch and Go finally does this band justice in releasing this long lost (and hard to find) EP along with five unreleased songs from that same session, a pair from an earlier demo and the disc closes with a short live set from 1982 in Detroit. Fucking killer! Anyone into Butthole Surfers, Stickmen With Rayguns, Scratch Acid, Flipper and all of those bands who trafficked in gloriously abrasive thud and chaos should hear this.
Great packaging and extensive liner notes help make this exactly how all posthumous releases SHOULD be, an amazing, well researched, perfectly assembled reissue designed to preserve the past and expose folks today to a band who should definitely not be forgotten.
A truly unique band that stood out in a sea of clones even back in the day...
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This is one of the earliest found sound documents from Ash International. To take the most literal definition of a UFO, Blind's 45 minutes of air traffic control broadcasts track the movement of an unknown vector traveling across the air space of the Atlantic. Tense silences are broken up by harsh eruptions of shortwave radio transmissions which merely recount the position of the craft as it passes eratically from one sector of air space to another. While no communication is made with the craft, the controllers maintain an absolute calm and lack of spectulation that is more than a little eerie.
Ever wonder, why are so many blues guitarists blind? Talk about an occupational hazard. This is the fourth blind blues guitarist the Monk label has featured after Blind Willie McTell, Blind Willie Johnson, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Perhaps it's the visionary contradiction of their particular affliction, that gives them such an incredible insight into the human condition. Like biblical prophets and ancient oracles, the only ones who 'see' things as they truly are happen to be blind. Blind Blake (not to be confused with the calypso Blind Blake of the fifties) may be the most obscure of the four (at least to us), but he was immensely successful for the Paramount label in the twenties and early thirties. Hailing from Florida, Blake was known for being the "King of Ragtime Guitar", for his unique guitar style that sounded like he was playing ragtime piano using the six strings of the guitar. His technique was so formidable that it has been little copied. Recording at least 79 songs in his incredibly short life span (he died at the age of 40 under mysterious and rumored to be scandalous circumstances), this collection covers 17 of his earliest and most popular recordings and is not to be missed for any fan of vintage blues.
This is Monk's second Blind Blake collection, and like the first, it showcases some of the most impressive and mysterious blues guitar work ever. Like many of the original bluesmen, Arthur Blake's personal story is a mystery. His music is his legacy, and though categorized by many today as blues, these songs cover a wide range of styles and show a serious command of the guitar that has led to much speculation about Blake's formative years. Indeed, his reputation as king of the ragtime guitarists may be the result of some jazz training and time spent in ensemble groups. His polished East Coast style went over quite well with audiences during his active years from 1926 to 1933. Despite this success, Blake's death under mysterious circumstances blurred things even further. Luckily he left behind a strong legacy that has led to scores of imitators and an assured status in the history of recorded music. For this one, Monk ventures beyond their usual graphic design, completely aping the artwork from a Yazoo Blind Blake collection instead. Still, looks pretty nice. The music, of course, speaks for itself.
Yet more stoner rock from the deserts of Scandinavia!
Jesus here it is, what might be the most highly anticipated 'power metal' release of 2002. German metal gods Blind Guardian are a worldwide phenomenon these days, even making headway in the US of A. At least, we here at AQ have been waiting ever since their
German power metal masters Blind Guardian take a long time between their albums. And there's a reason. No churning out of easy cookie cutter stuff here. Each BG opus is a magisterial production, epic in scale and breathtaking in execution. You can tell that they probably needed the three years since their previous album, just to record this. The Blind Guardian guys probably never see the sunshine, sequestered in a recording studio 24-7. But their pastiness is our gain! A Twist In The Myth is, of course, magnificent. All the bardic bombast and medieval pomp we could hope for! It's barreling full bore heavy metal (a new drummer, new energy?) with of course glorious, singalong choruses. In a uniquely spirited fashion, they've managed to mix Celtic folk motifs with much more modern metal moves on this album, successfully so.
And it bears repeating, Blind Guardian stand apart from their Euro-power peers with an extra dose of ballsiness in both the guitar and vocals departments.
FYI: true fans will want to stay tuned at the end of the disc for the bonus interview track, though we're not sure its inclusion rings as classy as this band otherwise is...
It's not the long-awaited new full length album from these Tolkien-obsessed German heavy metallers, but it IS two new songs, one of 'em a bona fide epic clocking in at 14:07, and that's cause enough for rejoicing 'round these parts! We've been waiting for a
Ouch. Three songs, ten bucks?? (Actually it was a more painful 13 but we knocked it down since that seemed like too much.) Um, well, you have to be a really, really big Blind Guardian fan to shell out for this. And we're guessing at least one of the songs will end up on their presumably upcoming album, making this even less of a value in the long run. However, Allan HAD to buy one for himself, not just 'cause he IS a really, really big Blind Guardian fan, but also 'cause they do a cover of Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" on here, believe it or not. And he loves Iron Butterfly too. Of course, a pomptastic German power metal band doing that song is a bit of novelty. The other two tracks here are excellent BG fare, by the way.
Wow. This first domestic release by veteran German pomp-prog-power-metallers Blind Guardian kinda blew us away (Andee and Allan that is). Expecting ultra cheese in the vein of Hammerfall, we instead found this to be immense, amazingly produced (like, 124 track) epic concept album, at once lush, melodic and aggressive. Imagine a more metallic Queen doing a record about J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, and that's what you get here! No wonder they're so huge overseas.
Even though this is their 6th or 7th full length (and that's not counting three collaborations with outsider psych rocker Michael Yonkers), this is somehow the first time we're reviewing a record from this Minneapolis trio, which as usual has us scrambling to nab everything we've missed, cuz Breakfast Of Failures is everything we could want in a stoner-garage kraut-psych post-punk noise pop record - all droned out riffs, frantic drum pound, echo drenched Oh Sees-style vocals, and a weird sort of space-y sci-fi vibe throughout. It's swagger and sorta heavy, distorted but crazy catchy, with the usual garage rock-isms peppered with weird alien psychedelic squiggles, plenty of angular crunch, super dynamic arrangements, a little proggy at points, the sound falling somewhere between Ty Segall's hard rocking combo Fuzz, and recent Castle Face garage rockers the Meatbodies, in fact fans of any of the Castle Face jams (not to mention In The Red, and Goner obviously), will find this pretty much totally irresistible.
Maybe the coolest part is that there's no bass player. And no it's not one of those two pieces (where we usually end up wishing they were in fact a three piece), instead, it's guitar, drums and baritone guitar, which while occasionally filling in where a bass would normal be, more often gets all tangled up with the other guitar, the two weaving heady, hypnotic sprawl of buzz and thrum, that gives a lot of this a sort of motorik hypnorock vibe, which we're guessing you dig as much as we do.
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Hip hop remix. Rhythm = "One Minute Man" (Missy Elliott).
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Hip hop remix. Rhythm = "One Minute Man" (Missy Elliott).
You know how you can 'hear the sea' when you hold a conch shell up to your ear? Well imagine listening to a conch shell and hearing not just surf but also some gentle, haunting improvised psych-folk sounds inside there as well. That's what you get with this new Blithe Sons disc. Yes, Jewelled Antler drone minstrels Loren Chasse and Glenn Donaldson (1/2 of Thuja) return again with recordings from their travels to some of the more scenic, out of the way spots in the Bay Area. Did I say scenic? I mean sonic. The darkness of a dank old abandoned army bunker might not be the most picturesque sight 'round these parts, but the sounds Loren and Glenn conjure within its confines are a moody delight. Of course that bunker (and other sites these two visited) are near the quite picturesque Pacific, the ocean providing the seashore/undersea imagery and inspiration for Arm Of The Starfish. The hiss and hum of the Blithe Sons' field recordings of their own musical activities could be the sea in the distance... This cd is really lovely and droney and it makes me imagine that they have overloaded a ramshackle rowboat with their 'instruments' -- guitars, harmonium, bells, tape recorders, bits of driftwood, glassy pebbles, rusted metal, who knows? we're just guessing -- and floated out on an ancient lake, becalmed in the evening dusk, to sing softly as their boat slowly sinks and the sun sets.
Loren Chasse, proud owner of a brand new cd-burner, began the Jewelled Antler label as an outlet to release small cd-r pressings of a variety of warbled psychedelic projects that have spun-off from his bands Thuja and Knit Separates. The Blithe Sons is the first such release, featuring Chasse and Glenn Donaldson (from Mirza as well as Thuja / Knit Separates). Despite hailing from San Francisco, Chasse and Donaldson have tapped into a vein of melancholic UK psychedelia which runs from the Wicker Man soundtrack through to the early instrumentals of Eyeless In Gaza and the pensive sounds of Richard Youngs. While Donaldson's expressive guitar lines are central to the Blithe Sons arrangements, the album's uniqueness is found in the production work which often positions the quiet instrumentation in the pronounced foreground making the songs so intimate, as to seem played right inside your ears... or brings in some quite textural noises (very common to Chasse's solo sound investigations and manipulated field recordings) as a 'duet' with the melodic lines of the guitar. Very nice work! Based on this, the next Blithe Sons release deserves be a "real" cd release on a proper label (although the musical quality, beautiful packaging and reasonable price of this release shows that cd-r labels are sometimes quite worthwhile).
Blithe Sons are the duo of Loren Chasse and Glenn Donaldson, who last graced us with the lovely We Walk The Young Earth disc on Family Vineyard back in March. You know Loren and Glenn from Thuja and Franciscan Hobbies and much else as well. Now they're back with another Blithe Sons installment on their own Jewelled Antler cd-r label. And not only is it a great record in its own right, it's also a sort of present to us here at Aquarius, Loren and Glenn's way of celebrating Andee and Allan taking over the biz, as it's only gonna be sold here and we're burning the discs ourselves and reaping the profits -- it's sort of an AQ benefit disc, really. Thanks guys!!
As they tell it, the story of Green Mansions is thus: somehow (via a secret garden? a rabbit hole? a mystical waredrobe?) Loren and Glenn found themselves alone at an empty English manor house. Going out on the grounds of the estate, they set up various stringed instruments in the fields, strewing them with grains so as to attract woodland creatures to venture forth in the dusk to "play" the instruments. A nice story...and sure, yeah, Green Mansions does sound a bit like that! Magical, natural. Glenn's delicate, wispy vocals and the general folk-psych atmosphere remind us of Richard Youngs, and even Jandek a bit (in a good way). Warm warbly tape hiss, acoustic guitar, bell-like synth, harmonium, and field recordings amongst other sound sources are blended into beds of shimmering drones that make us imagine the pastel sounds of a child's mobile slowly twirling in the "heavens". Really really nice in other words, and we're not just saying that since it's "our" release. Seriously recommended.
Recorded this past spring in the open air of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Waves of Grass is the second release from The Blithe Sons, an offshoot of the improv-drone ensemble Thuja, featuring Loren Chasse and Glenn Donaldson. Like miniatures of the
Lo, the Great Orthochromatic Wheel (?) dost turn! And with it, comes a happenstance that shall bring happiness to Jewelled Antler fanciers the world over: yes, a new album from the very special Blithe Sons duo, our friends Loren Chasse (Of, Ov, Thuja, Child Readers, etc. etc. ETC.) and Glenn Donaldson (Skygreen Leopards, Thuja, The Ivytree, Jex Thoth, etc., etc., ETC.). They'd been on a bit of an unofficial hiatus for far too long, taking a little 'time out' as it were, and we were both surprised and pleased to hear tell of not only this album's impending release but also to attend the 'reunion' show they did a couple months back, opening for Van Der Graaf's Peter Hammill at The Great American Music Hall here in SF. At that show they previewed some of what you'll hear here, and it's the usual Blithe Sons naturalistic improv-folk magick conjured from stones and branches well as actual instruments like acoustic guitar, harmonium and recorder. Field recordings suggest the hum of twilight grasses, a pleasant place to find Glenn's gentle Richard Youngish vocals whispering elegiacally o'er the drones and chimes of the Blithe Sons' abstract, organic, mutedly melodic soundworld.
And, they've woven some cover material into their own compositions/improvisations here, doing Jewelled Antlerized interpretations of ye olde progge songs by, we believe Genesis, and perhaps others... prog fans, listen close. Makes sense they'd play with P. Hammill!
There's no cd version of this LP, but it does come with a coupon to allow you to download mp3s of these tracks to your computer.
These days, any band that uses improvisation with heavy doses of loose, opiated psychedelia, lazy comparisons will inevitably be drawn to the No Neck Blues Band. It has to be said that The Blithe Sons, who have warranted a number of such comparisons, sound ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like the No Neck Blues Band. And actually they are much better off because of it... The Blithe Sons, of course, are the Jewelled Antler Collective's most active members Loren Chasse (Thuja, Child Readers, Id Battery, Coelacanth, etc.) and Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Skygreen Leopards, Bird / Ivy / Olivetree, etc.), having literally embraced their philosophy that "making music should be a picnic." Thus, they've taken to hiking all across coastal California, recording their pastoral avant-folk songs and empathic minimalist actions in direct communion with the landscape around them. The two sites which are particular to the Sons' third album "We Walk The Young Earth" were a wooden bridge in San Gregorio and the concrete bunkers scattered throughout the Marin Headlands. The latter were sites that have played a large role in many of the textural amplifications that Chasse produced in Id Battery; however, Chasse doesn't return the Blithe Sons to the smoldering abrasions of Id Battery. Rather, "We Walked The Young Earth" turns their minimalist hymns and melancholic drones toward a space that is even quieter, more introspective than anything yet produced by the Jewelled Antler collective, as if they've become hypnotized by their own reverberating drones in the confines of the bunker. It's true that in these spaces, Chasse and Donaldson spend a considerable amount of time listening to the environment around them, and shaping sounds that are sympathetic to those spaces. That's something with which the No Neck Blues Band has never really ever succeeded, instead opting for more of a druggy improv stumble. A sleepy album for sure, "We Walk The Young Earth" is another gorgeous album from these perennial AQ staff favorites.
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 CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Experience the chilling terror of.... BLIZARO! Thrill to the nightmarish sensation that is... BLIZARO!
Enjoy the lovely melodies of... BLIZARO! Space out to the swirling sizzling synths of... BLIZARO!
Puzzle at the schizophrenic doom-prog-metal-soundscapes conjured by... BLIZARO!
Oh yeah, we've been waiting for this one for a while! Keen readers of the AQ list might recall mention of Blizaro in our review of the debut Crucifist release on Profound Lore, earlier this year. We mentioned that the guitarist from that blackened death-thrash entity, John Gallo (also of true doomsters Orodruin), had an awesome, eccentric synth-based side project called Blizaro, whom we'd experienced via some self-released cd-r's. Thus we were looking forward to Blizaro's upcoming full-length cd, and at long last, it's finally here! Like a mad scientist's lo-fi, DIY mashup of Goblin and Black Sabbath, Blizaro is right up our dark and creepy alley. Yours too we might imagine. It almost makes up for that Tony Tears album having gone out of print.
There's definitely plenty of metal bands who have taken inspiration from the classic Italian horror/suspense "giallo" cinema (and soundtracks), we're thinking Necrophagist, Hooded Menace, Cathedral, Moss, Acid Witch... and of course other musicians too, recent good examples being Zombi, Majeure, Magda, and Umberto. (Oh, and NightSatan, whose album we should soon have, too.) But Blizaro kind of take it to another, weirder level of worship. Blizaro is bizarro, yes that's for sure. Their sinister synthesis of Goblin/Sabbath has some off-kilter, confusional, sorta Sun City Girlish elements to it as well. It never really gets very metal, actually, but also stays away from the disco thing too.
Divided into two halves, one "Physical" and one "Mental", this disc offers up a deranged range of strangeness, from the fuzzed out Sabbathy psych riffage of "Midnight Lurkers" to the purely synthesized spacey suspensefulness of "Violet Cosmos". The eight minute opening epic, title track "City Of Living Nightmare", is a progged out tour de force of both gentle, eerie melodies and jagged martial metal riffage. It certainly sets the stage for what follows... cinematic symphonics, whispered vocal incantations, organ drones, monkish moans, sickly grooves, acid guitar soloing, druggy atmospheres... with song titles like "Eyes In The Caskets", "Catacomb Man", "Portallucinations", and "Ceremonial Bone Ritual". And then, at the opposite end of the album, as if to give credit where credit is due, Blizaro wind up the disc with a spot-on cover of Goblin's theme to Suspira! Almost unnecessary, after what's come before, but a nice touch nonetheless.
Quite recommended, especially to those who dig, say, both Osanna and Witchfinder General, or Fabio Frizzi and Paul Chain (all artists, among many others, that Blizaro cite as influences). Man, if only this were an actual soundtrack to an obscure old giallo, in the tradition of Argento and Fulci, we'd sure love to see that movie!!
So, people, if you dare, feel the embrace of the purple-hued, witch-haunted horror that is... BLIZARO!
To quote ourselves, prepare again to "feel the embrace of the purple-hued, witch-haunted horror that is... Blizaro!"
Yup, in reviewing this double disc journey into the violet cosmos of the prog/doom/soundtrack obsessed, mostly-one-man-band Blizaro, we would find it hard to top what we said about 'em before, in our review of the album we made a Record Of The Week back in 2010. That disc, City Of Living Nightmare, we likened to a mad scientist's lo-fi, DIY mashup of Goblin and Black Sabbath - a hybrid of psychedelic doom metal, synthesizer prog, and Italian giallo soundtracks that totally blew us away. That was followed by a split with female-fronted occult doom-deathsters Wooden Stake, also really great.
But what came before? Well, several homebrewed cd-r's worth of Blizaro music preceded the compact disc debut we had made Record Of The Week. Some of us here had tracked down copies of those, and ever since we've been hoping they'd get reissued so we could share 'em with you. In fact, we liked 'em so much, we got in touch with the man behind Blizaro, John Gallo (guitarist for Rochester, NY doom metallers Orodruin), and were "in talks" with him to re-release the these cd-r's together on a proper cd, via aQuarius, like we did with our White Hills and Carlton Melton Record Store Day discs! But then the Italian label I, Voidhanger stepped in and snatched Blizaro away from us - which is perfectly okay 'cause they really did such a great job putting together this nicely appointed package, which they expanded to two discs, not just one, incorporating not only the material from Blizaro's three pre-City cd-r's, but also a more recent recording we hadn't yet heard, plus a whole bunch of unreleased bonus tracks too.
Disc one of Strange Doorways consists of the tracks from Blizaro's The Old Wizard Of Winter (2009) and Black Magicians (2012) cd-rs, along with three extra unreleased tracks. Disc two's got the Horror Rock (2006) and Blue Tape (2008) cd-r's, and five extra cuts. 40 tracks in all! It's quite a varied array of material, all of it proving how amazingly talented and creative John Gallo is as a musician and songwriter. The music here ranges from creepy groovy stuff in the Goblin-y realm, to full on '70s hard rockin', to quirky prog epics, to strange synthesizer experiments, to classical guitar styled fantasias, and even echoed-out synthbass bunkurfunk. Lots to listen to, lots to like. The Old Wizard Of Winter stuff is heavily synth-based (originally recorded as a Christmas gift for relatives!!), mostly all Moog and organ, whereas elsewhere Gallo puts his electric guitar and quite a few other instruments to good use, his voice too, and gets a bit of help from friends, including his bandmates in Orodruin, and members of Revered Bizarre. BTW, Blizaro now has a membership of three, Gallo plus a drummer and bassist, so here's hoping they go on tour and we get to see 'em!
The thick cd booklet features pages and pages of track-by-track liner notes from Gallo himself, discussing his ideas, inspirations and equipment, how each track came together. Kinda writing his own review, he namechecks everyone from Goblin and Paul Chain to Vangelis and Tangerine Dream to Atomic Rooster and Arthur Brown. We can hear it all, for sure. Wow. We've heard plenty of bedroom recorded indie pop and electronica, black metal too, but eccentric progged-out proto-metal? Blizaro does that - and more - quite convincingly. Highly recommended of course.
