Full length number two from these new wave / chill wave retro revivalists, which surprisingly finds the duo ditching their synths and drum machines completely, and crafting a gorgeous blast of guitar driven, nineties style indie rock dream pop that we're digging like crazy. Just give a listen to the title track, all processed ethereal female vox, draped over acoustic guitar strum, and some shimmery swirls of shoegaze guitar buzz, simple drumming, all anchored by some murky Joy Division-y bass, a hazy swirl of killer hooks, warm psychedelic jangle, a little guitar rock crunch, all sculpted into some seriously catchy gloom poppy dreaminess, that positions Blouse Mk. II closer to groups like the Dum Dum Girls, or Beach House, their sound woozy and druggy, seemingly channeling the spirt of the Velvets and Mazzy Star, through something a bit fuzzier and janglier. Our favorite tracks tend to be the crunchier, fuzzier, noisier ones (check out "In A Glass"), but even with some sonic heft and distorto guitar buzz, the sound remains gloriously washed out, dreamy, druggy and drifty. LP includes download too...
At this point, there is most definitely a Captured Tracks sound, and thankfully it's one we love, and can't seem to get enough of, but CT keep digging up these bands who sound like they could have been conjured up in some sort of Captured Tracks laboratory if such a thing existed (it doesn't?).
Blouse might be one of our favorite CT bands so far, their sound a gorgeously dark and moody, brooding and minimal eighties style gloom pop, but very stripped down and skeletal, the rhythm section tight and muted, the female vocals ethereal and drifty, with the occasional cool reverbed guitars, the A side featuring a sultry, breathy almost 4AD sounding chorus, very brief before the group slip right back into those low slung minimal verses, while the B side is a bit janglier, still plenty dark and moody, with a very Cure like mottled bassline, the vocals even breezier than on the flipside, the arrangement similarly spare, the songs both surprisingly hooky. One of those singles we find ourselves flipping back and forth and listening to over and over, which is always a good sign...
Eighties retro poppers Blouse make the leap to Sub Pop, but thankfully, their sound remains changed. In our review of their Captured Tracks 7", we mentioned they might be one of our favorite CT bands yet, and part of that seems to have to do with how genuine their music sounds. While much of the eighties influenced pop happening these days seems kitschy and tongue in cheek, Blouse's sound doesn't sound at all manufactured, and is presented as something pure and organic, as if they set out to make music, and it just ended up sounding like it was 30 years old, or like Blouse were in fact some lost eighties band somehow transported to the present day. Low slung, slightly gloomy basslines under jangly guitars, breathy female vocals, chiming melodies, hazy dreamy, hooky, 4AD meets the Cure meets Simple Minds, total classic eighties pop, the sort of sound that has you envisioning some eighties teen comedy, it's the perfect soundtrack for that feel good montage, where the boy and girl do all the things young lovers do.
The flipside offers up more of the same, starting out slightly more gloomy, but only a bit, minor key chords draped over a loping electronic rhythm, wreathed in the whirring synths, the vocals softly reverbed, and sweetly melancholy, with a big fuzzy dramatic chorus, some seriously perfect retro dream pop for sure. Can't wait for the full length.
In our review of the most recent single from these modern eighties retro revivalists, we proclaimed Blouse as possibly our favorite purveyors of what we've come to call the 'Captured Tracks' sound, which is a sort of contemporary take on eighties electro pop and new wave, and while there seem to be about a million bands mining the same sonic territory, Blouse do manage to meld that sense of seemingly misplaced nostalgia (the eighties? really?) to a sound that is darkly cold wavey and jangly gloom poppy, and one that comes replete with actual proper songs, choruses, hooks, often sounding like, barring the strangely murky home brewed production, they could have come straight off that cool mixtape you made as a teenage goth.
Where as the band had a tendency in the past to strip things way down, many of the tracks rhythmic and skeletal, even then the sound had a distinctly 4AD vibe, and borrowed liberally from the Cure, and goths turned eighties poppers like Simple Minds, but on this, their debut full length, the sound is surprisingly lush, opener "Firestarter" is warm and shimmery, lots of high end streaks and stereo panned synth swirls, wrapped around a fuzzy low slung bassline and dreamy reverby angelic vocals, not to mention all sorts of very eighties exotic effects. The second track "Time Travel" might be our favorite, and does definitely make a serious case for Blouse hanging on to their Captured Tracks crown, darker and more propulsive, an ominous mix of Carpenter / Goblin psychedelic space synth, with a more ethereal pop, add in some killer fuzz, thick distorted bassline and a mesmerizing machinelike groove, and suddenly the idea of time travel, and Blouse traveling back in time and ruling eighties MTV doesn't seem far fetched at all. And heck that's just the first two track, the rest of the record unfurls like some eighties goth pop synth wave primer, chiming minor key melodies, crunchy echoey guitars, lush whirling jangles, lots of buzzing synths, propulsive basslines, dreamy ethereal vox, loads of spacey effects, minimal analog electronics, and some seriously killer songs. We've yet to hear a more perfect mix of modern retro-futurism, and total eighties MTV electro pop, goth wave worship, and we're thinking we might not ever. Absolutely recommended.
Second volume in Captured Tracks series of Wake tribute 7"s, released in honor of Record Store Day, and of course late great UK post punk outfit the Wake. This year, it's another two aQ faves tackling their favorite jams by the Wake, first up is Blouse, who already sounded a bit like The Wake to begin with, so if you're unfamiliar with the original, it sounds very much like it could be a proper Blouse track, gloomy and woozy, ethereal vox drifting over murky basslines and skeletal rhythms, spidery guitar melodies, lots of jangle and haze and shimmer, all floating on warm minor key synth swells. Craft Spells' cover is a bit more upbeat, a serious Style Council vibe, frenetic guitar jangle, shimmering synths, an almost disco drumbeat, wreathed in chiming melodies, crooned dramatic vocals, a fantastically washed out slab of fuzzy shoegazey new wave gloom pop.
A special Record Store Day 2012 release, already sold out and out of print, we have a bunch, but once these are gone, they are gone for good!
The Blow have primarily been the work of visual and performance artist Khaela Maricich, who has released a handful of heartfelt and slightly sassy minimal pop records with electronic undertones. A couple years ago she teamed up with Jona Bechtolt, a multi talented musician who does a wildly creative electronic project called Yacht and has been a member of Devenda Banhart's touring Hairy Fairy Band. Bechtolt has helped make Maricich's sound a more full and overtly catchy. Where past records were more about subtlety and whispered seduction, this record is all about making hips swing and heads bob. Taking their cue from folks like Tracy & The Plastics and Solex, The Blow make smart pop music that's not afraid to be f-u-n. Fans of Le Tigre, The Postal Service and Stereo Total should definitely tune in to the sound of Paper Television.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Free jazz from the Pacific Northwest, featuring Amy Denio on horns.
Besides having an awesome band name (that perfectly suits their sound), and killer song titles ("My Ice Cream Fell On The Ground And Someone Ate It!", "Rotten Demon Shit", "Boo Boo Halloween"), these NY knuckle draggers specialize in the sort of down tuned caveman creep we can't ever seem to get enough of. Thick, gristled guitars that ooze, loooong songs that rumble and lumber, the sound lo-fi but still heavy, shrieked almost black metal sounding vokills, landing somewhere between the Body, Noothgrush, Megaton Leviathan and Prizehog, or like a way more home brewed punk rock Corrupted, these guys deal in abject doom sludge misery, but one that's shot through with all sorts of sonic weirdness, be it long stretches of hushed drift, weird breakdowns of barely there drums and distant guitar twang, or wild almost psychedelic squalls of swirling feedback and black noise skree. Oh and did we mention the creepy monk like vocals, or the strings, the free jazz drum splatter? At times sounding like No Neck Blues Band, at others like some strange minimal experimental soundscape, and at others sounding like some slow core dirge gone haywire. Twisted, trippy, heavy and KILLER. Super limited of course, swank packaging too.
For a band called Bludded Head, we're a little surprised it took until record number three for them to christen an album Reign In Bludd. But Bludded Head definitely more than live up to the promise of that loaded title, their sprawling doom/sludge heaviness existing somewhere between the epic majesty of Harvey Milk, and the psychedelic sonic bar brawl of Rusted Shut. The 8 minute opener perfectly demonstrates this, with it's slow build creep, all shrieked vox atop rib cage rattling lumber and churn, only to explode into a squall of wah wah drenched psych-noise chaos. Over the course of the other three tracks, these Neanderthal noiseniks from Texas (not sure why we thought they were from NY before), pull apart the carcass of noise rock, and reimagine it as some sort of filthy plaything, the way some redneck mouthbreather might toy with a wounded animal, "Fuckitdry" lurches from math rock crush, to angular, dizzying falling-apart-ness, while "Pouring Rain" gets all Slinty, but with some extra sludgy slabbage on the side, and finally, a heartfelt, slo-mo, crumbly (and very Harvey Milky) cover of Codeine's "Pea".
Cool spot varnished covers, and includes a download as well.
New from Blue, who were previously responsible for the enjoyable Mexican Church. Less blanched out dub and more haunting darkcore drum & bass with a flare for arrhythmic drum programming a la Squarepusher.
Early '70s American power pop we'd never heard of before, but are glad got reissued! We love the Raspberries and Big Star, but the less successful Blue Ash, from Youngstown, Ohio, had slipped under our radar. As always, praise the Lord for cd reissues of obscure treats. Mercury signings Blue Ash originally unleashed this album back in 1973, and it was to be their only major label release... despite its obvious charms, critical plaudits, and the band's hard work touring it (opening for the likes of Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, and Nazareth, among others) it didn't sell, and they were dropped about a year after it came out. Their A&R guy (who also had signed the New York Dolls) was fired too, for good measure. The band broke up in '79 after making a second and final album for a smaller label.
Don't know nothin' about that one, but this here, No More, No Less, is definitely worth a spin if you like ye olde power pop. At odds with the nascent heavy metal and progressive rock excesses of the age (not to mention soft rock wimp outs and disco sell outs), Blue Ash's music, with three-minute pop songs and three-part harmonies, harked back to the British Invasion years of the '60s, bands like the Who, the Hollies, the Kinks, the Monkees, and of course the Beatles (this album includes their fine, fervent cover of "Anytime At All", delivered with gusto). Speaking of covers, they also do a song called "Dusty Old Fairgrounds", that they learned from a Bob Dylan bootleg. But all the rest of the tracks here are originals, in the same tuneful and head-bobbin' tradition as their '60s forebears, updated with extra, edgy energy. Much of this is uptempo and energetic, full of cranked up jangly guitars, thumping drums, handclaps, and nostalgically yearning vox. There's some laidback, mellow moments, as well, making their West Coast country-psych a la The Byrds influences also evident. All in all, a class act, definitely deserving of reissue. There's no bonus tracks, but we do get liner notes from bassist Frank Secich, who may have preferred rock n' roll stardom but seems content with at least cult status for his old band. Oh, and we'd certainly recommend this to those of you who dug local power popsters The Makes Nice (R.I.P.), this is right up that alley.
Plus you gotta love an album with a song called "Smash My Guitar" which does indeed feature the sound of an actual guitar-smashing, as well as much wild guitar soloing -and- sweet, sweet singing.
Figured we should list this, the third album by '60s San Francisco proto-metal acid rockers Blue Cheer (you can't get much more "acid rock" than Blue Cheer -- they're named after a type of LSD after all!), since it was recently reissued in Akarma's midpriced "karma price" series. And also 'cause on the second side of this 1969 album (titled New! Improved! with about 50 percent accuracy) you'll hear the guitar playing of Randy Holden, whose rare, classic Population II record was recently reissued on LP and subsequently purchased by throngs of old time heaviness-lovin' AQ customers. If you've got that, you've gotta have this too. Holden, formerly of LA garage rockers The Other Half, was Blue Cheer's replacement for original axeman Leigh Stephens, but Holden lasted only a few months in the Cheer, recording just half of this record with 'em, three songs total: the fairly epic "Peace Of Mind" and "Fruit & Iceburgs" and brief coda "Honey Butter Lover". Then he split to make the Pop II album as a duo with drummer Chris Lockheed, which basically sounds a lot like the second side of this album... indeed you'll find versions "Fruit & Iceburgs" on both records. That's what you want this for, the Holden side, which sounds like a more wasted, doomedelic Cream. It's the last hurrah of Blue Cheer as a "heavy" guitar band, really. Whereas the first side of New! Improved!, recorded after Holden left and featuring ex-Kak guitarist Gary Yoder, has got a lot of honky tonk piano and comes across more like something the Rolling Stones would do, either rustic and rollicking or really melodic and mellow. Not heavy at all, though certainly very hippie and of its time with songs like "West Coast Child Of Sunshine". So we're mainly just recommending this for the approximately 15 minutes of wailin' Randy Holden stuff on here.
However -- if you don't already have Blue Cheer's first two albums, Vincebus Eruptum and Outside Inside, though, get those first! Especially Vincebus, if you want to hear the REAL birth of heavy.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Also from '68, these San Francisco anti-hippies' second album, another classic of super-heavy (for its time) psychedelic proto-metal.
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When we listed this on our site before, we were pretty succinct, 17 words:
Their 1968 debut, the birth of metal? With "Summertime Blues". Dumb yet so brilliant. Essential heavy history.
And yeah, that's basically it. The first album from San Francisco ballroom badasses Blue Cheer, is a seminal heavy psych proto-metal power trio document indeed. Druggy biker blooze that taught so many later bands - from Pentagram to Comets On Fire, Fushitsusha to Dead Meadow - how to turn it up to 11. Have Dickie Peterson, Paul Whaley, and Leigh Stephens been inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame yet? Apparently not and it's a travesty.
While we like other, later Blue Cheer albums and lineups, THIS is the one that belongs in the early annals of metal history. In '68, what else was this heavy? Blue Cheer themselves never were again.
Produced by Abe "Voco" Kesh (yes, that's where that band got their name), this includes Blue Cheer's aforementioned monster cover of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues", also their killer version of Mose Allison's "Parchman Farm" (which they call "Parchment Farm" for some reason), BB King's "Rock Me Baby", and bunch of equally lumbering, blown-out Peterson originals like "Doctor Please" and "Out Of Focus". While they sound closer to Hendrix and Cream than to the yet to be birthed Black Sabbath, this is ye olde acid rock at its rawest and heaviest.
Chances are, if you're into metal and/or psych, you already have this, but if you don't, now's the time to grab it!
Blue Daisy is the murkily downtempo project spearheaded by London producer Kwesi Darko, who's one to slide between any number of electronica's microgenres - dubstep, leftfield house, soulful croons, banging trax, and lots of nocturnal ambience. These may be the same strategies towards a hauntological electric dub that Demdike Stare had used to build their epic works, but Darko's wandering, disjointed beats gravitate back to a post-hip hop structuralism instead of the cryptic crate-digging of Demdike Stare. The resultant debut album from Blue Daisy (after a handful of killer 12"s and 10"s) looks through Burial back to the opiated Bristol sound of Tricky, Portishead, and Massive Attack. The female voice - compressed through layers of static and shitty microphones - is a constant theme throughout the album, certainly alluding to how Beth Gibbons sounded in Portishead. "Firewall" (featuring the occasional Blue Daisy vocalist Anneke Warburton) situates that static-saturated, angelic voice above a grizzled, snaking bassline and echo-pulse breakbeats. The album fractures through collages of media samples and blurred ambience, re-forming into the darkcore productions of "Shadow Assassins" and "Psyche Inquiry" which come across somewhere between RZA and Dalek, complete with gnarled psych-funk guitar riffs amidst the heavy beats. Out of these subterranean cuts, sparkling ambient synth lines morph into Kompakt-styled rolling minimal techno sourced from hypnotic bloop, monophunk beats, and disembodied female vocals again from Warburton, rounding out this mighty fine album.
The oddly monickered Blue Hummingbird On The Left are part of a new black metal movement, or scene, based in California, called the Black Twilight Circle, who seem to be loosely modeled after the infamous Les Legions Noires aka The Black Legions, which included Mutiilation, Belketre, Aakon Keetreh, Torgeist, Vlad Tepes and plenty more. The scene itself consisted of a handful of members, all of whom performed under different names, and in different combinations as different groups. Similarly, The Black Twilight Circle includes the groups Volahn, Ashdautas, Axeman, Arizmenda, Kallathon, Kuxan Suum, Dolorvotre and others, as well as these guys, Blue Hummingbird On The Left. Might seem like an odd name at first, until you discover it's actually a translation of the name Huitzilopochtli, an Aztec war god, okay, well it's still an odd name, and even more odd (and cool) is that these guys also incorporate FLUTE into their black buzz.
Originally released as a super limited (and now out of print) cassette and finally available again, on vinyl (also limited of course), Bloodflower is a collection of three blasts of raw, primitive, lo-fi blackness, the guitars a black blur, the drums a chaotic stumbling blast, the vocals a crazed maniacal bellow, occasionally slipping into a freaked out almost falsetto wail, the flute seems to just shriek in the background on the opening track, but on the second track, it flutters and flits offering up a sort of Native American sounding melody, which is quickly swallowed up by an avalanche of lumbering pounding black buzz. The title track is the riffiest of the bunch, starting out all downtuned and chuggy, before exploding into another stretch of pounding black fury. Fucking awesome. And anyone who likes their black metal raw and lo-fi, should definitely dig way deeper into the Black Twilight Circle.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Each one hand numbered.
Back in the nineties, for a while there, it was all about No Depression. Or Alt-country, or perhaps the worst genre identifier ever, Y'alternative. Painful to even type. Whatever you call it, modern country folks bands were everywhere, born of a love of punk rock, and classic country, blue grass and indie rock. THE No Depression band was of course Uncle Tupelo, who would go on to spawn Wilco and Son Volt, but back in the day, Uncle Tupelo were the shit, heavy and super rocking, raucous and wild, but always with plenty of twang and able to strip down to straight bluegrass at the drop of a hat. Their album No Depression is where the genre got its name (and that record of course was named for the Carter Family song), and Uncle Tupelo and their record, and the legion of bands that followed in their wake even inspired a magazine covering all the various No Depression bands. Richard Buckner, Whiskeytown (featuring Ryan Adams), Freakwater, Old 97's, Bad Livers, Jayhawks, Waco Brothers, Scud Mountain Boys, Pernice Brothers, Robbie Fulks, �Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Handsome Family, the Sadies, Tarnation, Be Good Tanyas, Split Lip Rayfield... We could go on and on, many of those bands continue to play today, a bunch broke up but various members went on to record on their own. Then there was Blue Mountain, a band that had brief flirtations with success, but seemed to continually hover just shy of the mainstream, which is a huge shame, as they were (and are, as far as we know) just as good as any of those other bands, if not better.�
Fronted by the husband and wife duo of Cary Hudson and Laurie Stirratt, Blue Mountain hewed sonically close to the No Depression blueprint created by Uncle Tupelo, that killer mix of crunchy guitars and classic twang, but where UT came from a much more punk rock background, Blue Mountain seemed to be much more purebred country. Hudson and Stirratt's vocals sounded perfect together, amazing harmonies, crunchy guitars, incredible hooks. Blue Mountain's first proper record, 1995's Dog Days, still ranks as one of the best record of the whole No Depression era. Some of the songs were dark and brooding and heavy, others were twangy and acoustic, folky and almost straight bluegrass, most were a mix of the two. But like always it was all about the songs, and the songs here are fantastic, totally catchy and timeless, and on top of the killer songs, Hudson has one of the best rock voices since Jay Farrar. Listen to the sound samples. If you dig Uncle Tupelo and any of the above mentioned bands, odds are you're gonna dig this. Definitely sounds as good as it did in 1995.�
The reissue tacks on a whole mess of bonus tracks, new liner notes, extra photos, and comes housed in a slipcase.
The umlauted Oyster boys' fourth album, from '76, remastered n' reissued with bonus tracks etc. By this point, the Cult was getting pretty big. "Agents Of Fortune" features what must be their biggest hit, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper". Worth it for that, and
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
When we did our $5 sale list a few weeks back, we were pleased to include the first three early '70s albums from the often underrated & misunderstood Blue Oyster Cult. Those discs proved quite popular, probably the best sellers of that list! Now here's another one by them, also on sale for just $5. Fire Of Unknown Origin dates from 1981, and thus belongs to BOC at their prime, after they had attained stadium-sized classic rock status. And it features one of the band's biggest hits ever, "Burnin' For You" (a great song, for sure, with lyrics by rock critic Richard Meltzer). But there's also a lot of equally awesome 'deep cuts' here too, like the creepy/campy "Joan Crawford", based on Mommie Dearest, which features a full-on musique concrete freakout in the middle.
Listening to this album, no matter how far out and sci-fi some of the songs get, it's clear that Blue Oyster Cult were a POP band, big time. Their roots in '60s psychedelia are still manifest, but this is also a total state-of-the-art '80s pop rock album, with loads of shiny new keyboards on the title track (based on a poem by Patti Smith), and elsewhere. Their imagery and umlauts (and guitar riffs!) of course also found favor with the hard rock / heavy metal hordes, but despite their reputation, it's hard to really call BOC a metal band. Sure, there's a track here entitled "Heavy Metal: The Black And Silver", but that's 'cause apparently a lot of these songs were written for the animated film Heavy Metal - though only "Veterans Of The Psychic Wars" (with lyrics by author Michael Moorcock, and Andee's favorite B.O.C. track EVER) actually appeared on the soundtrack. Giving this a bit more metal cred, though, the producer was Martin Birch, who did Sabbath's Mob Rules and Iron Maiden's Killers the very same year. And we gotta mention how much stuff like "Vengeance (The Pact)" sounds like the template for current Swedish metallers Ghost!
Ultimately, this is a great, sci-fi-fried, slightly progged out, and even a bit experimental, pop rock record with a bit of metal to it; heavy on the synths, the hooks, and the weird lyrics.
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Remastered and reissued: the third of BOC's debut trio of masterpieces, from '74. Features 5 bonus tracks -- 3 previously unreleased songs from the "Secret Treaties" sessions ("Boorman The Chauffer", "Mommy", and "Mes Dames Serat") as well as their
Along with full lyrics and photos (each band member posing with guitar in front of a triple stack of Marshall amps), this has liner notes by Lenny Kaye (as do the reissues of s/t and "Tyranny and Mutation" as well).
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The Red & The Black! BOC's 2nd album, from 1973, now remastered and all that. Includes 4 bonus tracks: three live tracks from bootlegs, and a studio outtake version of live fave "Buck's Boogie". "The Black Side" (LP side one) rocks hard with aggro classics
BOC (that's Blue Oyster Cult, not Boards of Canada!) has always been mistakenly regarded as some sort of heavy metal band -- and while they originated and/or embraced much of the imagery associated with HM (umlauts, leather pants, long hair, occult symbols)
Contains the hard rockin' hits "Transmaniacon MC", "Cities On Flame With Rock And Roll" along with several other somewhat more obscure but equally brilliant tunes full of the surreal, psychedelic lyrics and guitar work of which these guys were geniuses.
And this reissue also includes four bonus tracks, taken from the band's rejected 1969 demos under the name Soft White Underbelly. These are released here for the first time (well, outside of the recent mail-order only Rhino Handmade release of the Stalk-Forrest Group's entire unreleased album demos, which contains 3 of these cuts). A few of the SWU/SFG tracks were later reworked into BOC tunes, like the bizarre "I'm On The Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep" found on this album. Recommended!
Before we'd even HEARD this obscure Italian instrumental library music reissue, it had a lot going for it� Groovy name and title, crude freaky album artwork (really - it's got dinosaurs, and a stonehenge, and a mushroom cloud, and what the heck is that eye in the sky doing exactly?), and also it's from the magic year of 1971! Could it live up to all that? YES. And how.
Recorded by anonymous studio musicians from Milan, intended for use as incidental music for use (presumably suitably hip) film, TV and/or radio productions, this rare collectable is vintage psychsploitation weirdness for all you proto-metal and prog rock heads, full of lumbering heavy psych riffage, often with an eerie overlay of synth. Opening cut "Diodo" immediately suggests the likes of Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" and Cream's "Sunshine Of Your Love", heavy maaaan! The Distortions title is accurate indeed when it comes to the guitars. But that's mixed with more sinister and/or romantic sounding grooviness elsewhere on the album, like the delicate (but still distorted) dance of "Compression" ferinstance.
The tracks on this disc are suspenseful, exciting, energetic, trippy, with titles like "Microchaos", 'Violence", and "Psycho-Nebulous". Listening to this, you can easily imagine kitschy retro-cool characters in black leather catsuits a la Danger Diabolik interacting with longhaired drugged out hippies in groovy psychedelic discotheques, with this music blaring and colored lights flashing. Spy cinema, spaghetti westerns, biker movies, could (and did?) all make use of these droning fuzz blasters and glammy grooves� we certainly would love to see any movie or TV show that had Blue Phantom on the soundtrack! Hmm, apparently quite a few of these cuts were used in a Jess Franco flick from '72 called Sinner: Diary of a Nymphomaniac...
Definitely one of the best (and by far the heaviest) stand-on-its-own "library music" album we've ever encountered, as good as a lot of 'actual bands' of the era, we've been spinning it quite a bit here at the shop since we got it in� which lead to a funny moment, when aQ overlords Allan and Andee were puzzling over the phenomenon of how there's still such awesome obscure stuff like this out there getting reissued that we'd never heard of of before, when some random girl walked into the store and immediately was like, "Oh, you're playing Blue Phantom! I love that record!", unintentionally showing up us record store nerds, eh?
This reissue includes a non-album bonus track, the only other Blue Phantom recording apparently known.
Pre-Frog Eyes band! Their only album before they became Frog Eyes.
With a name like Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, we were sort of expecting some kind of ironic retro heavy RAWK action. Thankfully, nothing could be further from the truth. The band describes their music as "black acid bog death, blackened noise volume assault". Woah. They had us at 'bog'. They list their influences as Crash Worship, G.I.S.M., the New Blockaders and strangest of all, Black Legions' black ambient terrorists Moevet and Mougotre. We were definitely intrigued...
And if anything, the record ended up being as good as any of the above would have led us to believe. A side long trawl though some bleak black underworld of sound, a roiling pit of blackness and despair, thick layers of black drone, processed tapes, field recordings, disembodied voices processed into still more drones, distant streaks of feedback, gurgled grunted 'vocals', rumbling, grinding stretches of abstract sound, fragments of melody drifting in a churning black sonic sea, creepy and dark and desolate and downtuned and very very evil. Besides the above mentioned bands, we also hear bits of Lustmord, Stalaggh, Wolf Eyes, Za Frumi (mostly for the Orc like vocals), Abruptum, Anenzephalia, MZ412.... which obviously means this is seriously recommended.
Limited to 300 copies, one sided vinyl, with a killer silkscreened image on the flip, hand screened covers, printed inserts, really nice... and most likely gone in no time....
Finally, the very first cd release from Northwestern blacknoize terrorists Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, not a proper full length exactly, more a collection of odds and ends, a selection of out of print tracks, culled from various 7"s and 12"s and tapes, as well as a couple previously unreleased jams.
Those new to Blue Sabbath Black Cheer should definitely beware, the sound this dastardly duo conjure up is more noise than music, more drone than metal, yet it manages to be all of those things at once. They described their sound as "black acid bog death, blackened noise volume assault", and it most definitely is that, it's the sound of SUNNO))) and Wolf Eyes and Organum, mixed with black metal and dark ambience, power electronics and minimal dronemusic, and somehow molded into harsh and harrowing blackened buzzscapes, veering from full on caustic assault, to hushed mysterious creep, often in the same song.
One of the tracks here is from the Borre Fen lp, and of the various micro-releases represented here, that was the only one that we ever managed to get in the shop, which means for many folks, ourselves included, this is practically a new record.
From the opener "Untitled" (most of the tracks are titled "Untitled"!), a swirling buzzing cacophony of crumbling industrial whir, peppered with buried percussion, howled voices lost in the mix, keening sheets of feedback, and a fierce white noise blow out, to the follow up "Untitled", a much more minimal, bit of cinematic drift, still pretty ominous and spooky, but here it's about the drone, and the strange processed gurgling sounds underneath, the heartbeat like pulse, the fragmented melodies and the overall hellish vibe, to another "Untitled", another wash of minimal scrape and creak and groan and grind, shot through with minor key moodiness, and wreathed in warm layers of deeeeeeep whirring rumble.
The record's centerpiece is the 17+ minute track from Borre Fen, which oozes to the surface, a long death march trawl some bleak black underworld of sound, a roiling pit of blackness and despair, thick layers of black drone, processed tapes, field recordings, disembodied voices processed into still more drones, distant streaks of feedback, gurgled grunted 'vocals', rumbling, grinding stretches of abstract sound, fragments of melody drifting in a churning black sonic sea, creepy and dark and desolate and downtuned and very very evil. Besides the above mentioned bands, we also hear bits of Lustmord, Stalaggh, Wolf Eyes, Za Frumi (mostly for the Orc like vocals), Abruptum, Anenzephalia, MZ412...
The record finally finishes off with another "Untitled" track, which eschews all that low end for a 5 minute stretch of horror movie high end, stretched to its breaking point, some definite difficult listening, like some sort of boiling teapot / dog whistle dronejam, all over a grinding bit of crunchy rumble, finishing off the record, if not with a bang, then an ear piercing shriek.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Housed in super cool black on black cardboard sleeves, and for those that care, mastered by Herr Hans Grusel, of das infamous Krankenkabinet!
When two of your band members are credited with playing "cement mixer", listeners can safely assume that you are loud and noisy as hell. Combined with the accepted knowledge that Blue Sabbath Black Cheer is one of the most dense and monolithically HEAVY noise crews currently in existence, it won't take long before you're either running in terror or hitting the "add to cart" button. Of course, at $29 a pop, these aren't cheap, but here's a quick rundown as to why D.D.T.T.N.B. may well worth your time and money, provided this is your cup of noise: 200 copies, awesome cardboard sleeves featuring an ominous silver silkscreened skull on each side with four insectoid/Motorhead looking shapes alongside the credits on an extended flap, and, the crowning glory - a gorgeous slab of one sided pitch black vinyl with another hand screened skull displayed prominently on side 2, a work of art unto itself.
Now lets talk about the menacing tones sunk within these grooves. At first, you will probably be thinking, "It's a cement mixer. I get it." And indeed, the horrifically grating buzzing sounds are just that. But what might sound ridiculous on paper soon takes on a life of its own, and before long the mixers blend with other overblown electronics to create a pulsing, vaguely rhythmic wall of sound. Oddly enough, it becomes comforting and trancelike, and if you allow yourself to be fully hypnotized, the results are almost soothing. If you are wondering what's up with the title, it stands for "Destructively Dedicated to the New Blockaders", as BSBC allegedly worked some of the aforementioned group's material into this piece. We say "allegedly" because more than anything we were overwhelmed by the dense sheets of sound and not really too into the idea of keeping an ear out for anything resembling melody. Not that we're complaining, as this strangely beautiful record expertly harnesses harsh, filthy sounds and works them into a endlessly writhing piece of cinematic white noise. These are already sold out at the label, so you'll probably want to act fast before being forced to hit up eBay with tears streaming down your face. Don't say we didn't warn you.
We're running out of ways to describe these guys. Out thesaurus has been bled dry. Bleak, hateful, grim, blackened, harsh, hellish... By now you should have at least an idea of where this diabolical duo are coming from. Epic slow motion expanses of blacknoize, and rumbling blown out low end, howled blackened dronemusic, ritualistic abstract guitar torture, these four tracks here, three are live, and previously released (but on tapes and cd-r's so limited, that unless you were THERE, you probably never saw one), one is previously UNreleased, well worth it for the black hearted and evil ear-ed.
The live tracks are brutal, might be the heaviest we've heard these guys, processed black soundscapes woven from grinding industrial crunch and howled hellish vox, heaving slabs of caustic low end dissipate in clouds of whirring downtuned thrum, way more effects than usual, tripped out and almost psychedelic sounding, streaked with super distorted white noise hiss. The B side begins with some gurgling black ambience, all rumble and creep, peppered with corrosive shards of amp buzz, eventually growing more and more heavy culminating in a strange assemblage of cool moaning melting riffage. That riffage then gets locked into a strangely hypnotic loop before devolving into yet more freaked out abstract heaviness.
Intense, punishing, pummeling, black as fuck and heavy as all get out, which to those of you into that sort of thing, means this is definitely recommended.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Comes in an incredible sleeve, spot varnished animal head on a rich black background, with an 11" x 11" printed insert.
Latest slab of aural sickness from these Northwestern miscreants, whose love-it-or-hate-it monicker is actually not a bad barometer of what is to be found within the grooves. Sure, if you took Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer, and melted it down into some thick ooze, you'd be close to the murky dirgey buzz of BSBC, but you'd probably have to add a heap of Wolf Eyes, Whitehouse, a pinch of SUNNO))), and a dumptruck or two full of downtuned guitars and melted down Marshalls.
This is easily the harshest and heaviest thing we've heard from these guys, bordering on some sort of full on doom sludge, with huge roiling waves of crumbling blown out distortion, shrieking feedback, all over a massive industrial pummel, wrapped in dense swirling clouds of white noise and being pelted by jagged bolts of buzzing crunch. There's even some super abstract, but almost-metal riffing drifting around in the murk, the whole thing eventually collapsing into total needle destroying chaos. And that's just the first side.
The B side is less dense, and less overtly heavy, but just as intense and brutal. A black sonic something shot through with super distorted howled vocals, grinding metallic buzz, sheets of blown out guitar blurred into burnt out blackened drones. Wolf Eyes better up their game, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer are definitely angling for the underground black drone doom throne.
Super limited new slab of sickness from these purveyors of gloriously abject noise drone filth. So limited in fact that it's already out of print, and we have the last 20 or so.
Brutal ambient filth from the Pacific Northwest, as only BSBC can do it. Moving further and further away from any semblance of doomdronedirge and more into a totally abstract free noise direction, albeit their sound still infused with an element of doom.
These two tracks are sprawling soundscapes of hissy buzz, industrial clatter, rumbling drones, post industrial ambience, an almost static wall of murky sound, but distinctly depressive and doomy for sure. A continuous grinding low end assault, that makes Khanate and Bunkur seem downright musical, which they actually are compared to BSBC, who seem to be more interested in evoking terrifying feelings with sound, of creating a bleak and soul shattering soundworld from walls of black buzz and rumbling doom drenched drones. Mission accomplished.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT. THESE ARE THE LAST COPIES EVER. Creepy black and white sleeves, pressed on thick white vinyl.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Right now, everything released by these Northwestern dealers of doomdeathdirgedrone, is out of print, EXCEPT for these two cassettes, Prossneck, Germany 1629, and the split with fellow noisemakers Drowner. But these won't last long. These two tapes are both tour only, limited to 100 copies, we got 20 of each, and judging from past Blue Sabbath Black Cheer releases, those won't last long at all, needless to say, one per customer, and even more needless to say, if you want one of these, don't dawdle! Blink and you'll miss 'em.
This one features two looooong blasts of caustic blur and buzz, murky slowed down vocals, thick waves of hiss, everything churning and roiling, heavy and noisy and brutal, heavy on the drone, built a bit like a low end Whitehouse, some strange demon with a tracheotomy proselytizing over a hellish din, soon joined in by what sounds like terrified screams, and the sound of flames on flesh. Really really creepy. The flipside is a bit more abstract, a drifting sea of crumbling distortion and blurred hiss, some grinding rumbles and buried almost-melodies, sort noise tangled up with deep black industrial dronemusic. As always, heavy and frightening and black as pitch.
Once again, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! We have 20, that is it!!
Latest in the Doom Mantra series of super limited lps comes from black noise duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer (after previous installments by Colossloth, Worship and Wicked King Wicker, as well as future releases planned for Dead Raven Choir and The Throes Of Darkness) and is split between previously released ultra limited and now way out of print rarities and new unreleased material, as well as featuring a handful of guests including Mason Jones and Rubber O Cement!.
Unlike the last few BSBC releases, this time the guys dial back the noise assault, focusing instead on texture and mood, still plenty noisy, but this time the noise is doled out much more judiciously.
The opening track sounds like it was composed using busted electronics and field recordings of actual battles, sirens wail and explosions erupt under cloud of static and glitch, wrapped in thick billows of black thrum.
The rest of the side plays out in swells of washed out minimal drift, shot through with streaks of caustic noise, intercepted voices, groaning detuned guitars, melting synths, building gradually to a full on industrial chaos-scape
The flipside begins with a looooong blast of caustic blur and buzz, murky slowed down vocals, thick waves of hiss, everything churning and roiling, crusty and noisy and brutal, heavy on the drone, built a bit like a low end Whitehouse, some strange demon with a tracheotomy proselytizing over a hellish din, soon joined in by what sounds like terrified screams, and the sound of flames on flesh. Really really creepy. As the side progresses it grows a bit more abstract, a drifting sea of crumbling distortion and blurred hiss, some grinding rumbles and buried almost-melodies, soft noise tangled up with deep black industrial dronemusic., before stumbling back into a blown out hiss drenched dronescape, harsh and heavy and intense and BRUTAL.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Packaged in super nice silkscreened covers, with a printed insert inside...
As more and more folks (foolishly & unfortunately in our view) choose to forgo physical media for immaterial downloads, it seems like it's as important as ever to make records special, as much collectible objects and storage devices for sound, as much cool tangible artifact from a band we care about as simply a conveyance for that band's music. And we're constantly amazed at the sort of incredible and unique packaging we see pass through aQ. Perhaps none more so that Equation Records who are constantly pushing the design envelope, with no regard for profit, hell, no regard for even breaking even, for them it's all about the art, the object, every release something special, that will be treasured, both for the sounds within, and all the amazing craziness that surrounds those sounds.
Which brings us to this. Amazing and crazy just scratches the surface. Three years in the works, an extended production rife with problems and complications, some deftly (and cleverly) incorporated right into the artwork. The record is in fact being sold significantly -below- its actual cost, which was appropriately exorbitant, based on the ridiculous and fantastical packaging. But before we get to that, let's talk music. This extreme packaging couldn't have been paired with a more appropriately extreme band, the Seattle doomdronedirge duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, whose infamous live Halloween night set is the focus of this release, presented here on a one sided silkscreened lp, a sidelong expanse of harrowing blackened minimalism, crashing gongs and billowing clouds of cymbal shimmer, buzzing metallic thrum, that reminds us of an Organum record gone haywire. The metal buzz gradually processed into deep rib cage rattling drones and ominous low end tones, eventually melodies creep in, and the sound is transformed into an abject tarpit doom, peppered with blown out blasts of percussive crunch, and bursts of Merzbowian white noise, but always settling back into a deep, ominous thrum. Lion roar rumbles give way to keening moaning black buzz, downtuned and crumbling, all weirdly mournful and melodic, the whole thing laced with tortured vox, seriously harrowing and amazing. And as if that weren't enough, there's also a single sided 7", with an etched B side, the music a crumbling wall of super distorted power electronics style crunch, grinding slabs of corrosive textures and heaving buzz blurred into a weirdly meditative, but still seriously corrosive drone. And as if that STILL weren't enough, there's also a cd (not a cd-r), collecting a handful of rarities from various tape releases and splits, as well as some unreleased jams, the sounds varying from percussive post industrial pipe fight bombast, to droned out feedback drenched ambience, and from militaristic minimalism, to grinding blacknoise blowouts. Phew.
NOW we can talk about the packaging, which we should preface with the word MAGNETS!!! ("Fucking magnets, how do they work?!"), more on that in a second, but if you want a visual accounting of the packaging, check this out: http://youtu.be/ZthdRUqd68w
So yeah, there is a one sided lp, with a silkscreened B side. There was an issue with the silkscreening, so there's an insert affixed to the sleeve, explaining the situation. There's also a red vinyl 7", one sided, etched on the B side, and the aforementioned cd of rarities. The 7" comes in a proper picture sleeve with two 7"x7" pro-printed card inserts, the cd comes in it's own proper sleeve as well. Also includes is a silkscreen turntable slipmat, as well as a 12" by 24 poster. Add in 4 stickers, a 2-sided 12" pro-printed card insert, and two separate silk screened covers, each one affixed with magnets, the two sleeves magnetically adhered! There's also a 2" pin, a numbered certificate, all of this is housed in a thick PVC sleeve, sealed with a circular sticker, and on the front, is a sticker, with a description of the record in Latin, and a translation in English. Wow. Needless to say, this is a beauty, an extravagantly conceived and executed labor of love, that is even more impressive when you hold it in your grubby little paws.
LIMITED TO 235 COPIES!!! Guessing this won't be around for long!
Another missive from some grim otherworld, the latest in a hellish black flow from the brackish depths, a never ending glacial eruption of blackened sonic filth and blown out white noise brutality from this despicable duo, this latest, a three song 12", is currently, due to the insanely limited nature of their releases, the only thing these guys have available, but not for long we predict, as this too was limited to a mere 525 copies, we got about a tenth of those, but as with past releases, we can't promise they'll be around for long.
More of the BSBC caustic black ambience, a cacophony of junkyard clatter, the clang of pipes, all sorts of crunch and grind, under a thick wash of high end buzz, and shifting clouds of blurred hiss, monstrous vocals buried in the murk, some riffage too (we think), but those riffs mostly exist as simply another layer of blacknoise, a never ending wash of grinding static heaviness. The second track ups the heaviness, the vocals more bellowing, more surges of black tar low end, still cloaked in sheets of white noise, but churning violently beneath the surface, a rumbling, rib cage rattling drone, that seems to be splintering and crumbling to pieces before our ears.
The flip side is much more tranquil (it's all relative though), a minimal driftscape of distant whir, twisted fragmented melodies buried way down in the mix, the grinding of alien machinery, peppered with squalls of speaker shredding buzz, the track quickly escalates, the noise getting noisier, the buzz getting buzzier, the vocals more howled and anguished, the whole thing pushing toward a Merzbowian white noise blowout. Imagine sitting in a concrete bunker with a thousand transistor radios tuned between stations, with the volume all the way up, an ear shredding symphony of static, while in another concrete bunker Wolf Eyes and Khanate play at full volume, barely audible through the suffocating cloud of hiss all around you.
Brutal, punishing, abject, harrowing, hateful, heavy, and pretty fucking awesome. As if we even needed to tell you.
LIMITED TO 525 COPIES. Amazing woodcut paste on front cover, with a printed insert and postcard inside.
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer have become the band du jour of the deathdirgedronedoom scene, their records disappear in a heartbeat, we were lucky to get 25 of this new one, it's already out of print and sold out at the label.
This sick love for BSBC makes perfect sense the second the first filthy note comes oozing out of your speakers, this is harsh, hellish, abstract black black ambience. Take the slowest sickest Khanate song, strip away the drums, slow down the vocals to a raspy gurgle, add later after layer of filth and crust and grime and you'd be getting closer to whatever subterranean pit these anti-musical miscreants crawled from.
There's two side long tracks, each previously released as insanely limited cassettes, remixed and remastered for this release, with additional sounds from Chris Dodge of Spazz and aQ pal Matt Waldron from Irr. App. (Ext.). The A side begins with slowed down vocals, a monstrous demonic murmur, slithering over a grim landscape of high end hiss and deep tectonic rumbles, distant tones pulse and throb, all manner of crash and scrape and crunch, the track building slowly to a frenzy of hellish howls, thick sheets of white noise, crumbling walls of distortion, grinding washes of thick, dense buzz and whir, a seriously fucked up, freaked out expanse of post industrial noisemusic, thick with drones and haunting textures and undulating layers buried beneath the skree. The B side begins with a low resonating drone, a thick, serpentine rumble, that is eventually subsumed by a symphony of buzz saws and crackling fires and collapsing buildings and grinding scrapes and processed vocals and malfunctioning tape machines, all wound into some sort of hellish high end ur-drone, before slipping back into another shimmering expanse of upper register skree, eventually drifting back into something much more mellow but no less ominous and intense, a creepy low end drone, field recordings, crackle, whispers, evokes hiding in the woods, terrified, as something stalks you, muted growls, the crack of dried branches underfoot, the whisper of leaves falling to the ground, all set to the boom of distant explosions. Intense, and in its own way, sort of sickly beautiful.
Akin to Gnaw Their Tongues, Khanate, Wolf Eyes, Alkerdeel, the more abstract and dismal end of the doomdirgedrone spectrum.... this definitely takes all that and pushes it even further, darker, noisier, more dismal and way more grim.
Packaged in plain white sleeves, with a screened image affixed to the front, a black and white printed inserts, pressed on white vinyl, plain white labels. SUPER LIMITED. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT. We only got 25 COPIES, once these are gone that's it!
Don't let the title fool you, Bonkers In Yonkers might have you imagining some sort of party band playing a happy hour with Jell-O shooters, but nope, you all should know by now what to expect from both of these noise making beasties. We've give much love to both bands on the list over the years, so this is a pretty dream match-up for us. And instead of a split, this is the BWSKBWC Big Band, with everybody going at once, teaming up for two lovely ditties entitled "Born To Hate" and "Scum Licker", kicking up a roiling, shrieking, brutal avalanche of distorto-brutality. Vocal shrieks, gristly electronics, huge, churning, crumblingly distorted riffage, loads of feedback, and ear shredding skree, total electro-noise mega-doom-destruction. Punishing and kinda fucking awesome.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Bright green tapes with silkscreened J-cards.
Originally released as a super limited cassette (only 50 copies), this 10" (also way too limited at 300 copies) teams up our favorite demonic duo, with the awesomely monickered Dried Up Corpse for some deep dire noise drenched heaviness.
The BSBC side is about the prettiest thing they've ever done, which means it's still vile and sick and murky and ominous and fucked up, it's just that it's not so harsh, more muted and blurred and black ambient, than some of their other outings. A sprawling deeeeeeeeep doomscape, creeping black rumbles, demonic gurgles, distant foghorn like melodies, bits of muted percussion, plenty of buzzing grit and distorted feedback, but all smeared and woozy and subterranean sounding, a darkly demonic drift, that infuses what might otherwise be warm shimmering blackened ambience, with some seriously abject miserablism and gloom.
Dried Up Corpse counter BSBC's sensitive side with a caustic chunk of chaotic crunch. Beginning with some deep whirring rumbles, the track soon splinters into full on blunted white noise, skittery and fractured and totally blown out, all the while underpinned by that initial rumbling whir, eventually the noise peels back leaving a long stretch of deep softened buzz to play us out.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!! Gorgeous super thick hand screened sleeves, with nice two sided printed inserts.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Right now, everything released by these Northwestern dealers of doomdeathdirgedrone, is out of print, EXCEPT for these two cassettes, Prossneck, Germany 1629, and the split with fellow noisemakers Drowner. But these won't last long. These two tapes are both tour only, limited to 100 copies, we got 20 of each, and judging from past Blue Sabbath Black Cheer releases, those won't last long at all, needless to say, one per customer, and even more needless to say, if you want one of these, don't dawdle! Blink and you'll miss 'em.
The BSBC side is another sea of harsh his and caustic buzz, thick waves of distortion and blurred vocal damage, squealing feedback, a million amps with AM radios blasting white noise through busted speakers, strangely beautiful, but that severed limb, horrible car wreck, utter disaster sort of beautiful. A near static expanse of washed out heavy black noise, once again managing to be surprisingly listenable, at least for those who are into that sort of thing!
Drowner offers his own chunk of thick corrosive heaviness, the sound much fuller and seemingly guitar based than BSBC, churning downtuned crumbling black buzz, shot through with shards of feedback, a monstrous low end sludge, peppered with strange buried melodies, bits of electronic shimmer, and various other sonic bits, but at its very black heart, this is a wall of blown out blackened heaviness, oozing glacially, and destroying everything in its path. The two groups make a pretty good match. And while we know we're gonna hear more from BSBC before too long, we definitely want to check out some more Drowner...
Once again, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! We have 20, that is it!!
It's definitely weird to call something like this 'pretty', but what can you do? Of all the Blue Sabbath Black Cheer records we've heard, this one is definitely the prettiest. Of course it's all relative, one man's pretty, is another's harsh head caving blacknoise, and perhaps another's ear shredding doombuzz brutality, and weirdly enough, it's sort of all of those things, but in the realms of doombuzz blacknoise, this sidelong sprawl is indeed, a strange shade of tranquil, at least at first.
It's BSBC so the ingredients should no doubt be familiar by now, the sound equal parts blackened crumbling, distorted buzz, and glacial hellish downtuned crawl, but here the crunchy, crumbling surface layer hides a slow shifting sonic interior, a whirling buried shimmer, soft sheets of crackle and whir, everything constantly bombarded by huge heaving industrial booms, like mortar shells, along with strange creaks and distant crashes, like some strange Wolf Eyes / Skinny Puppy hybrid, being broadcast through rusted out Soviet era loudspeakers, as the city literally crumbles all around you. Ambient but abrasive, tranquil but harrowing, a field recording of collapsing tectonic plates, rendered in 'music'. Near the end, the sound takes on a power electronics vibe, due in no small part to the creepy, bellowed guttural processed vocals, but still the sounds behind the demented caterwauling, continue to ooze and crumble and throb and crunch and creep.
BSBC are teamed up with an outfit called Griefer, who use their side of the lp to offer up a strangely cinematic stretch of buzz and glitch, lots of super distorted synth fuzz, peppered with strange machinelike creaks and groans, wrapped around super processed alien vox, all draped over a continuously throbbing synth pulse. Hypnotic and almost soundtracky, Griefer slip from heaving speaker destroying crumble, to whirring spaced out synthscape to blurred electronic crunch, often all three colliding in a thick noise-drenched psychbuzz synthdrone blowout, not so much harsh and brutal as intense and evocative.
Pressed on sick swirled green and brown sewage colored vinyl, housed in hand screened sleeves, with two printed, two sided cardstock inserts. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!
One of two new lps from Northwestern blackdrone heavies Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, one a split, one a collaboration.
Unlike the split (with Wicked King Wicker), Skeletal Coupla Remains finds BSBC teaming up and collaborating, and what makes that idea even more interesting is that it's with none other than dadaist soundscaper and long time Nurse With Wound collaborator Matt Waldron, aka Irr. App. (Ext.). Seems like a strange pairing, but only until you actual hear what these guys can pull off together.
Unclear if they actually jammed together, or worked in the studio, or if BSBC just sent Waldron sounds to fuck with, but however they did it, the results are pretty fantastic.
Waldron has transformed BSBC's black noise into something way more tripped out and surreal, there's still plenty of buzz and rumble, grinding low end and roiling black ambience, but there are also swooping sound effects, warped production, tinkling melodies, sounds flipped backwards, layered and then pulled apart, huge chunks of heaviness, gradually transforming into weird bits of rhythmic churn, epic swaths of pulsating synths, all spaced out and almost krauty, looped voices, twisted samples, cinematic and creepy, it's almost like some black drone Nurse With Wound, and shit, if that doesn't sound good to you, then we have no idea what would.
The B side is a single sidelong dronedoomjam, that slips from hushed minimal drift to chugging SUNN-like riffage, all tangled up with spacey synth squiggles, bleating horns, warped FX, interrupted briefly by a stretch of near silence, laced with a series of field recordings, crunches and creaks, footsteps, and some monstrous gurgling growls underneath it all.
Super cool black and white jackets, with a massive fold out poster of the same artwork, as well as a printed insert with original artwork by Waldron.
We'll keep this short, since we wanted to get 20 or 30 of these, ended up getting 10, and by the time this hits the list, we'll probably have less than that. We have way more copies of the forthcoming BSBC already reserved, but for this one, only the first lucky handful of you will likely score one of these.
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer teams up with a band called Penetration Camp for two sides of crushing abstract low end heaviness (as if you were expecting something else?). The BSBC side is 33rpm, for maximum sloooooooowness, a whirring crackling hissing rumbling drift, like the wash of helicopter rotors, the crackle of burning torches, this almost sounds like some strange field recording, and is definitely the prettiest thing we've heard from these guys. At least at first. Deep swells, warm and weirdly melodic, building to a coda of abrasive crashing chaos, thick and prickly and crunchy, before settling back down into a second movement, which sounds like the first, only the sounds have been doused in extra treble and skree, everything sharper and more jagged, laced with inhuman screams and the hellish sounds of dying electronics.
The flipside is at 45, and no matter what the title or the bastardized insert artwork might lead you to believe, sadly this is NOT a cover of Black Sabbath's "Mob Rules", or if it is, kudos to Penetration Camp for rendering it 100 percent unrecognizable. The perfect match for BSBC, a bleak bit of creeped out black ambient crawl, fucked up stretched out heavily effected vocals wrapped around bit bursts of industrial crunch, thick swaths of sinister buzz, the grinding scrape and crumbling crunch eventually overtaking the deep rumbling drones.
SUPER LIMITED, already out of print, we have less than 10 copies, cool silkscreened paste on covers, two printed inserts, sorry we couldn't get more.
One of two new lps from Northwestern blackdrone heavies Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, one a split, one a collaboration.
The split is almost too perfect, teaming up BSBC with what is essentially the East coast equivalent, Wicked King Wicker, a one man doom combo who definitely traffic in a similar sort of blackened industrial droned out doom, in fact, some folks could very well have trouble telling who was who. Not us!
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer start things off with a sidelong slab of caustic black drone, a heaving slab of brutalist industrial buzz, dense, and black hole heavy, the sounds blown out, the distortion crumbling and decaying before our very ears, it's classic BSBC, that is until the surprise of the second half, where all the heaviness is pulled back, revealing a sprawl of super abstract minimal drift, a muted stretch of creepy ambience, all processed voices, heavy chunks of buzz, the sound of foot steps, distant creaks, orchestral bursts, and lots and lots of space, almost like some strange tape experiment. But somehow it sounds logical coming after that initial black blast.
Wicked King Wicker counter with their own chunk of blackened buzz, super distorted, all rumbling low end, flecked with a weird metronomic pulse, strange heavily effected voices, buried melodies, effects everywhere, almost less like doooooom and more like some sort of metalized and Merzbowized modern minimalist drone music, the sounds layered and constantly shifting, creating overtones, and fragmented bits of melody. A little bit industrial, a little bit metal, a lot drone, HEAVY, and blackened, and finally near the end, the buzzed out drone seems to coalesce into churning sludgy riffage.
Super nice screen printed covers, with a printed insert.
A seriously grim blackened doomdronedirge songsuite from these two outfits, both of which are perfectly capable of kicking up a serious din on their own, so you might be expecting a skull splitting ear piercing onslaught, but the first track at least is downright beautiful, in a bleak and sinister sort of way, lots of space, and texture, some caustic feedback and rumbling low end, some weird demonic voices, and some glitched out electronics, but all laid over a bed of hiss and hum, and eventually morphing into a strange series of moaning chordal swells, all woven together by a barely audible sinewave tone. And the same sort of ethereal abstract ambience extends into the second track, which unfurls like some sort of super minimal abstract rhythmscape, the rhythm in this case a barely there assemblage of murky pulses and concentrated bursts of soft focus static, but it's only the first half of the track, by part two, the sound have splintered into filthy shards of blunted noise, the low end oozing and bleeding into long black streaks, the vocals a FX drenched bellow, all the elements again held together by a strange tangled bit of high end that sounds a bit like air escaping from a balloon.
Track three (they're all untitled) is the first really noisy bit, but even here, it's tempered by some serious dynamics, and some cool abstract production, with the initial onslaught soon dialed back into a strangely rhythmic textural backdrop, before exploding once again, into a churning, rhythmic blackened dirge, the vocals this time around a monstrous growl WAY down in the mix, the shards of feedback strangely melodic, the whole track with a darkly hypnotic looped vibe, super mesmerizing, and the sort of noise that ends up being more tranced out than brutal. After a short stretch of glitched out skeletal doom, which sounds like some sort of experimental death metal run through a bunch of busted FX pedals and spinning at 16rpm, the record finishes off with a nearly 14 minute epic, that spends most of its time all delicate and barely there, lots of processed electronics and strange glitches, but all smeared into the background, some creepy bellowed slowed down vox the only thing that really makes this more noise than some haunting dark dronemusic, it's not until after a long stretch of near silence, that the song finally erupts into some full on crushing and crumbling NOISE, an avalanche of roiling low end crumble, that blossoms into a speaker shredding squall of blown out amp damage and abject sonic decay. Nice!
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- MPEG stream: II
