A long overdue reissue of these two rare records from this long running Scottish pop band, C86 from 1989 and Star Wars from 1991, both loooong out of print. This is actually the first time we've reviewed anything by BMX Bandits, even though most of the pop fans around here love them, their sound very reminiscent of the naive pop of the Pastels and the Vaselines, especially the Vaselines, which makes sense as the Vaselines' Frances McKee was a member of the Bandits, as was Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub and the Faith Healers, Eugene Kelly of the Vaselines and Eugenius, Francis MacDonald of Eugenius and Teenage Fanclub, David Scott of the Pearlfishers, Sushil K. Dade of the Soup Dragons and Telstar Ponies, Sean Dickson of the Soup Dragons and loads more.
The BMX Bandits specialized in super heartfelt, dreamy, occasionally goofy, sweet and fey, jangly indie pop. Their first single was declared "the worst record ever made" by British magazine Sounds, while their next was a single of the week in pretty much every publication, and at the time was voted one of the top pop tracks of the year. Anyone who digs the sound of the Vaselines and Teenage Fanclub will definitely dig BMX Bandits, in some ways, they're like the perfect mix of the two.
C86 was the band's first record, and is a perfect slab of naive pop, the sound surprisingly lush, the vocals being the most polarizing aspect, an often off key croon, that is what definitely reminds us of the Pastels, the same sort of earnest sad boy croon, but here set amidst big guitar jangle, female background vox going 'la la la la', powerful drumming, not to mention some strange and silly bits, like the weird gypsy breakdown on the title track, all fiddle and flutes, or the programmed beats and Ween like vocals on "Disco Girl 2" (one of our favorite tracks here).
Star Wars, from a few years later, is a bit more polished, a little more rocking, and with a bigger production, sounding like Teenage Fanclub fused with Belle & Sebastian, again, big fuzzy, jangly guitars, lots of acoustic strum, and those distinctive vocals, the sound on Star Wars much more nineties college rock sounding, but with that fey Scottish pop vibe that kept these songs from sounding like anyone else besides the BMX Bandits. Star Wars also peppers its songs with strings here and there, mandolin once in a while, slipping from lush bombastic pop, to personal bedroom strum and croon, a record overflowing with some of our favorite pop songs ever.
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It's been almost two years since the last Disrupt record, 1997's Foundation Bit, a killer head spinning mix of old school 8-bit Atari sounds and bass heavy dub and dubstep. A pretty potent combo for sure, and that record still gets lots of play, so we were pretty psyched to discover there were not one, but TWO new Disrupt discs, the other one, The Bass Has Left The Building, we'll review on a future list, but this one is the one that has been driving us nuts, forcing us to listen to it over and over and over. The MO is pretty much the same, but somehow, the dub is even deeper and bassier, and the video game sounds are way more pronounced, which makes for some seriously fun and funky shit.
Album opener "Bauhelm Tracker" sounds like a video game soundtrack remixed by some dub sound system, before the follow up track which is a straight dub version, complete with soulful vocals, groovy and dark and smoldering, which leads right into the dub version, which is awesomely spaced out and druggy, snare cracks careening all over the place, effects swirling and swooping, head spinning and so good.
And the rest of the record follows a similar pattern, with the 'tracker' version being the eighties video game soundtrack version, then the straight up vocal version, and sometimes a super spaced out dub version. Thankfully, Disrupt and Marley are loose enough to let diverge from that pattern whenever the mood strikes them, so a dub version will be laced with some bloops and bleeps, or a video game jam will get all dubby.
Such an incredible palette of sounds, and these two have such a deft hand at arranging, that things never sound cheesy or silly, playful maybe, fun and a little ridiculous here and there for sure, but overall these are just some seriously deep dubby grooves, that just so happen to be laced with some 8-bit bleep, which as far as we're concerned is not a bad thing at all.
Aestuarium, who put out the amazing Philip Cohran disc, now bring us some ultra-serious Fela-style jams. Dan Boadi had some huge hits in his native Ghana in the seventies, and came to New York in 1978 to record these two epic cuts of heavy, heavy afro-funk fused with disco danceability. Apparently, his music didn't resonate with Americans in the same way it did with Ghanaians, and though Boadi has continued to record in Ghana and Chicago, these mighty tracks faded into obscurity. Luckily, Aestuarium has ressurected them for us. Recommended for those with a tooth for raw, dirty disco and/or seventies afrobeat.
Another winner from the Holodeck label, who have brought us stellar releases from Marie Davidson, Smokey Emory, Troller, Survive and Sungod and others mostly from the vital contemporary electronic scene in Austin, Texas. Boan is a collaboration between Ssleeperhold's Jose Cota and Mariana Saldana (ex - //TENSE//) who, outside of their lauded individual creative efforts, are widely known as two thirds of the now defunct electro-trio Medio Mutante. We dug Ssleeperhold's grave rave synth confections, and here with Saldana's detached goth-romance delivery, the duo have crafted a superb minimal wave acid dance classic. Brooding, sultry and hypnotic, utilizing an array of modern synths, sequencers and drum machines and recorded with the best studio production from Survive's Michael Stein, Boan offers a dark flip side to the retro Italo grooves of the Italians Do It Better label, even sounds like something unearthed by Dark Entries from Italy or Spain circa 1983. Fantastic!
One of the most highly anticipated records of the year (at least for AQ staff and customers alike) is *finally* available. And Geodaddi is not a disappointment, although the record breaks no new ground. For those of you who love the Boards of Canada mellow
Until we run out, we've got the limited cd in a hardcover book-like package, and also the limited triple lp. If you order this, make sure to specify your desired format, and let us know if the regular jewel case version (which we also have, at $17.98) is ok if we're out of the special ones. PS: triple-lp vinyl back in next week, hopefully...
Reissued once again! Hi-Scores is the first EP that Boards of Canada produced for the exemplary electronica label Skam. "Turquoise Hexagonal Sun", a track that later appeared on the acclaimed debut album Music Has The Right To Children, is featured in a slightly more skeletal form. The other five tracks retain their signature rainy-day electronica (albeit a bit dirtier than their later more nuanced sound) grounded by softened hip-hop breaks and post-Eno ambience. As always, Boards of Canada makes for a very pleasant if often slightly unsettling listening experience!
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This is a reissue of the first Boards of Canada single for Skam. The song "Turquoise Hexagonal Sun" that later appeared on the acclaimed "Music Has The Right To Children" album is also featured here in a more skeletal form, with the remainder of the album taking on a dirtier, beat heavy approach to their trademark bedroom-electronica melancholia.
Reissued once again! Hi-Scores is the first EP that Boards of Canada produced for the exemplary electronica label Skam. "Turquoise Hexagonal Sun", a track that later appeared on the acclaimed debut album Music Has The Right To Children is featured in a slightly more skeletal form. The other five tracks retain their signature rainy-day electronica grounded by softened hip-hop breaks and post-Eno ambience. As always, Boards of Canada makes for a very pleasant listening experience.
Brand spankin' new four song ep from Boards of Canada. Sounding much like the material from their full length "Music Has The Right To Children", "In A Beautiful Place..." is full of morose, minor key, down-tempo electronica. Lots of grainy synth and organ melodies that pensively meander over simple beats, much like the early ambient works of Aphex Twin.
Long-awaited vinyl reissue of one of the dreamiest and influential records of the nineties has finally arrived! We were sure we must have written a review sometime back in the day, but its 1998 release long predated the list, and whenever there was a subsequent reissue, we only mentioned what an essential and classic album it is, never really needing to quantify why it was so, because basically we have to assume everyone knows about it, right? But fifteen years on, let's try to put it in words how much we love this record and what it means when we have said in so many following reviews since this came out about that ubiquitous Boards of Canada "sound".
Having released a couple of obscure singles and a hard-to find full length, Boards of Canada seemed to have come out of nowhere when they made their major-label debut. Named after and inspired by the seventies documentary film company The National Film Board of Canada, this band of Scottish brothers Marcus Eoin and Mike Sandison created one of the first IDM outfits that built off the futuristic electronic and downtempo beatscapery of genre pioneers Autechre and Aphex Twin while infusing their music with a warm, nostalgic and sun-dappled melancholy. It was hard at first to pinpoint what created that distinct nostalgic feeling, because back then not many folks were as clued into the world of library music (essentially instrumental soundtrack music made by private companies for use in commercial and industrial films including the educational-minded National Film Board of Canada) as we are now. Many of the melodies and themes on Music Has the Right to Children seem to be lifted straight from those elementary school educational films, the type that inhabited our childhoods as well. The music gives off a warbled lilting pastoral vibe that prismatizes into a sunburst of kaleidoscopic reverie, evoking memories of hip educational graphics of basic science concepts like geometrical forms, color spectrums and weather patterns that would allude to a larger sense of wonder that we, as adult listeners, no longer seemed to have. How it was made, whether through instrumental musicianship, a sophisticated sampling and filtering process, or a combination of both remains mysterious today. A few years back when the philosophic concept of Hauntology (a past premonition of a future that never was, to put it very simply) was being bandied about a lot with groups like Broadcast & The Focus Group and The Caretaker, many have spoken of this album as a key musical touchstone. It does indeed have a strange quality of being both of and beyond its time, a quality in turn that continues to bedazzle, beguile and bewitch. Essential!
Over the past decade, there has been much speculation about the myth, meaning, and men behind Boards of Canada. Aside from a very few interviews (most recently in the October, 2005 issue of The Wire), Boards of Canada have remained quiet. Perhaps it's better that way, as their music is the sole reason why they have been catapulted from being an obscure electronica project with a couple of singles under their belt to being the flagship band for Warp. As a result, there's not much for us to really say about Boards of Canada. There's no juicy gossip to salivate over, no heavy-handed concepts that preclude any listening experience, no convoluted band geneology. Campfire Headphase is simply another great Boards of Canada record, filled with a dreamy ambience that flickers between a digital clarity and the warbled drag from dirty tape heads. These cozy electronic drone phrases wrap around the same set of slow breakbeats that defined their classic debut Music Has The Right To Children. What sets The Campfire Headphase apart from the earlier Boards Of Canada recordings are the sparse melodies plucked on guitar and then spun through their liminal DSP effects. They've not entered the indie-tronica field of The Postal Service and The Notwist, but instead, they've taken the pastoral warmth of the guitar and made it their own.
It's been eight long years since we last heard from this much loved but mysterious electronic duo and every new release always seem to bring a lot of fanfare and debate. It's always a difficult proposition to have a highly anticipated release from a band with a devoted, perhaps even cultish, following, as it seems that everyone wants it to sound different enough from their classic sound yet still retain the same qualities that endeared you to that band in the first place. And of course, if it leans too close to either side of that spectrum, division occurs. Folks either find comfort in the familiar, or are completely indifferent. Or are thrilled by the new direction, or angered by it. Case in point, the last My Bloody Valentine record.
Boards of Canada have never deviated much from what they're best at: well composed and structured melodies that have a worn, warm and warbled sense of nostalgia. Aged library sounds, abstract organic design and educational nature film scores were often the heart of the bands reference points. On 2005's Campfire Phases they added more folk music atmospheres with delicate guitar work, but it wasn't significantly different from their most heralded and beloved release 1998's Music Has The Right To Children. Both records even had similar cover art, which of course had some fans crying foul!
So it's 2013 and we finally have a brand new record and it's definitely their most mature and complex record to date. We're also happy to report that it's fast becoming one of our favorite releases this year. While it has certain touchstones that make it sound distinctly like a BoC record, the feel overall is much darker, tense and moodier, reading like a score to some environmental science fiction film like Idaho Transfer or Phase IV (or more recently, Beyond The Black Rainbow!). Just check out some of the song titles: "Reach For the Dead", "Cold Earth", "Sick Times", "Come To Dust". Even the album title and the cover shot (of San Francisco, taken from the Alameda Naval Shipyards) gives off a Soylent Green vibe. The nostalgic quality that permeates the band's sound has a more toxic feel this time around too, as if hearkening back to a place now poisoned, a kind of daylight horror dread.
The opening track, "Gemini" starts out with a crackly filmstrip fanfare like from some old seventies educational film, and that sort of faded, gristly, sci-fi vibe pervades throughout the first track, a dark, blurred, fuzzy field of pulsing synths and ominous atmospheres, it's immediately evident, that the new BoC is a much darker beast than the group who brought us the pastoral, autumnal Music Has The Right To Children. Even when the second track kicks in, the sound remains shadowy and sinister, the pulsing rhythm wreathed in a field of crackle. The sound does eventually lighten a bit, processed voices drift in (reminding us of The Conet Project!), rumbling bass melodies surface from below, until eventually some of the old BoC returns, big beats, a churning propulsive rhythm, locked into a disjointed, but weirdly hypnotic groove. But almost as soon as it gets going, the track ends, leading directly into another haunting cinematic sprawl of swirling synths, and pulsating melodies, sounding like an alternate soundtrack to the aforementioned recent throwback surreal sci-fi art house film Beyond The Black Rainbow, conjuring up all sorts of lysergic images and psychedelically induced fever dreams. And so it goes, BoC fusing the old loping, meandering beat driven dreaminess, to something a shade darker. Some tracks locked into tranced out smoldering grooves, draped in chiming softly distorted melodies, others, brooding menacingly, some peppered with creepy processed voices, only adding to the seventies creepy sci-fi/horror flick vibe, and still others blossoming into time-lapse slow motion sprawling expanses of experimental rhythmic textures, shifting dreamily, tonal colors bleeding into each other, woozily prismatic, like the music from some old crumbling, planetarium show. While the old BoC sound surfaces throughout, Tomorrow's Harvest, definitely exists in a much bleaker soundworld, where Tomorrow's Harvest is perhaps meant as a cautionary tale, these sounds the score to a future world scorched and barren, a world of faded memories of what once was, and what could have been, had it not all gone terribly wrong...
Through their refined sensibility of unspecified nostalgia and willful obscurantism squeezed into a succinct form of ambient electronica, Boards Of Canada have been nothing if not consistent in what they've produced over the past decade. Even when there's been huge gaps between recordings when the currents of electronica may move this way or that, they still mine the same electric beatitudes cultivated on their still impressive album Music Has The Right To Children. So with the release of Trans Canada Highway EP, Boards Of Canada offer yet another facet of their signature sound -- you know, airy breakbeats swaddled in delicate warbles of hazy ambience and melodic interplay between synthetic patches and warm 'n' fuzzy acoustic guitars. The opening track, "Dayvan Cowboy," can also be found on the previous recording The Campfire Headphase and gets reprised at the conclusion of the EP by way of a pleasantly wandering Odd Nosdam remix.
Now that the world has fallen love with Boards of Canada's languid, pastoral instrumentals, 'tis high time for a re-release of their first ultralimited album Twoism, recorded in 1995. The original vinyl of this record goes for hundreds of dollars but you can have the disc for a normal price (and it comes with a sticker too). BoC's sound features warbly synth tones plucking out almost childishly simple melodies -- the duo's skill is more in conjuring up their trademark warm, organic fuzzy sound, a mix of shuffling arty breakbeats tapped out on the snare and mixed with early Mo-Wax-style doped out whooshing layers of atmospherics. It's really, really beatuiful, although after three full length releases I am begininng to find the melodies a trifle same-y, as if one keeps hearing the same three notes over and over, only slightly varied for each track. The Boards' peak remains their Music Has the Right to Children album, their least predictable ad most artistically inspired record. However Twoism is a fine, and previously virtually unheard by most of us, debut. Worth a listen.
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If you were to think of a seafaring vessel while listening to this atmospheric instrumental album, methinks it would be more 'submarine' than 'boat'. Indeed the very aquatic sounds emitted by this band (which features members of Hood and Remote Viewer) evoke the echo-y, shadowy ocean depths with glinting fishies and swaying seaweed. Murky swirls of sonic blues and greens, electronic pulses, fuzzy subterranean drones and occasional laidback jazzy percussion, with breathy ethereal female vocals floating lazily amidst the audio acquatic. Think Mazzy Star meets Oval, or maybe Bjork transmitting minimal glitchscapes from the bottom of your swimming pool. Considering the overall tranquil tone of the album, the song titles (such as "A Volume Of Typefaces", I Only Missed By One Word" and "All Thumbs And Thumbs") are somewhat puzzling -- not at all keeping with the theme of the band's name and album title.
The Boats come sailing back with their third full length, and their music is as lovely as ever. Tomorrow Time commences with an unfurling of soft droning veils embroidered with delicate glitch. Drowsy processed vocals slow drift along stepping gracefully around the raindrop chimes and piano keys. In stark contrast to all of this aural dreaminess are the surprisingly negative toned song titles. Geez, they're so downright harsh and jarring when taken in combination with the sweet sweet music that you might want to avert your eyes, and simply let your ears soak in the sounds.
Almost exactly a year later, The Boats (featuring members of Hood and The Remote Viewer) pick right up from where they left off on their previous full length Songs By the Sea... soothing, fluid loveliness albeit minus that album's veil of female vocals. If you're seeking a totally relaxing listen, please take the album's title as the truth. This was made for you... even if your name isn't one of the many that make up the track titles. Delicate shimmery glitches and dreamy melodic piano phrases echo through the slowly undulating ripples of bass tones. A stay inside with a good book on a rainy day kind of album.
Great sweet flowing smooth vintage soul from the late 60's. The vocal harmonies on here are stunning. A total gem that we're sure The Numero Group wish they had gotten their hands on.
Nothing new here. More lo-fi, blues explosion style, good ol' boys singing into a vacuum cleaner, shouting and whooping it up, foot stomping, 80-year-old-delta-bluesman-trapped-in-a-30-year-old-white-man's-body, swampy, dirty, barroom brawling, pig fucking, wild rhythm and blues form one half of the long gone Doo Rag, the band that started it all. The best part (and we're assuming he's poking a little fun at some other overly-self-referencing white blooz groop) is, after continuously shouting out his name, and the label's name, when he announces the fact that he's a one man band, and then announces the band members one at a time: "Mr right foot on the ol' bass drum......"
Lots of people have been talking about this fiesty British quintet for a while, and it's easy to see why. They have a unique take on the indie math rock thing, with some great melodies, weird arrangements, and with the youthful vigor of Repeater era Fugazi.
Okay, I've gotta let you know that when this cd first started I totally thought it was Blondie's "One Way Or Another". Then once the vocals came in... I was transported to Rydell Highschool in the movie Grease. The Bobbyteens are definitely a band Ms Rizzo and the rest of the Pink Ladies would approve of or even be in. Ample amounts of sass and attitude that also sorta reminded me of the Donnas. From the purveyors of fine garage rock, Estrus Records.
The third full-length from perpetual highschoolers the Bobbyteens. Another trashy rawk party with major emphasis on fun, (minor on proficiency and production). A word of historical note, if you liked the Mummies, the Phantom Surfers and the Count Backwards, you no doubt already know that Bobbyteen Russell Quan beat the tubs for those three extremely lo-fi garage outfits. Plus his BT
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Early eighties ghostly electro-acoustic compositions from this influential Swedish composer, whose music combined poetry and sound in unique timbral combinations. Disembodied voices, music concrete, and eerie high relief soundscaping in textured and nuanced electronics. Limited to 100 copies!
Burnt Up On Re-Entry is the latest from UK one man band Matthew Sweet (not THAT one), and the first we've heard from him in a while, and like the self titled record we reviewed on the list ages ago, Burnt Up is another sprawling, brooding epic, equal parts sinister folk, psychedelic ambience, and experimental electronics, the electronics playing a much bigger part than we remember. In fact the opener manages to lay out a whole new template for Boduf Songs (new to us at least), Sweet's husky, whispery vocals, over skeletal steel string buzz, simple programmed drum machines, little bits of glitch and hum, and some seriously dense distorted guitar chug, the sound exploding into what sounds like a full band, epic and lush, and downright heavy, with a wild psychedelic final stretch with tangled shards of wah guitar swirling around a weird almost calypso rhythm. The rest of the record unfolds similarly, pulsing synths, reverberating chimes, minimal rhythmic skitter, strummed minor key chords, a pulsating almost kosmische folk at times, again occasionally blossoming into driving post rock or krautrock style grooves, more chugging metallic guitars, the record laced with some fantastically psychedelic noise interludes, rumbling, corrosive thrum beneath streaks of high end skree midway through, and a closing coda, that's all haunting ambience, with strange disembodied voices, and underwater electronics. But in between, Sweet conjures up a strange sonic world, one that seems torn between minimal psychedelic folks, and lush expansive apocalyptic heaviness, the finest moments when he's able to merge the two, but there are some equally compelling tracks that fall on one side or the other, like the gorgeous haunting balladic creep of "Song To Keep Me Still", the whole track wreathed in a hazy halo of alien electronics, or the pulsing, outer space drift of "Vermin, Rend Thy Garments", or the slow burn psychedelia of "Everyone Will Let You Down In The End", replete with some weird metallic bell-like percussion, and some seriously heavy final movement riffage, and from there on out, it's a dizzying sprawl of ghostly electronics, woozy washed out psychedelic drift, swirling abstract electronic skitter, shuffling twang flecked desert drone space rock, hushed bedroom folk (again wreathed in a soft swirl of insectoid electronics), and finally, the aforementioned ambient outro.
Gorgeous stuff for sure, but also mysterious, and at times a little sonically confounding, at least for the unadventurous, but for the rest of you, repeated listens offer much in the way of sonic revelation, and will eventually let you lose yourself in Boduf Songs' increasingly mysterious soundworld.
The latest from psychedelic folk troubadour Matthew Sweet, aka Boduf Songs, is a gorgeously intimate, stripped down and haunting songsuite, a collection of hushed, blackened torchsong and achingly melancholic minimalism, on the surface, a sound much more polished and mainstream than previous releases, but this more assured songsmithery, built from an impossibly lush sonic palette of muted organ thrum, electronic pulsations, layered chordal swells, and most importantly, Sweet's delicate, about to crack, whispery vocals, drifting atop a constantly shifting sprawl of starlit moodiness and crystalline shimmer.
And while much of Stench of Exist is still spent in the shadows, a drowsy, druggy, dreamy psych folk that unfolds languorously, laced with mysterious electronic filigree, and wreathed in occasional symphonic billows, some of the record truly surprises, shifting dramatically toward a sound that touches on other groups as disparate as Iron & Wine, the Editors or the National, just check out "Thwart By Thwart" which transforms the minimal into maximal, tribal drumming, wreathed in warm, lush guitar strum, reverbed piano, even handclaps, and warm, softly crooned vocals, a lush, brooding murk, that does in fact sound a bit like a darker, more propulsive Iron & Wine, but unlike I&W, the sound if flecked with mysterious samples, and field recordings, all building to a pretty epic, and almost Godspeed like coda, gloomy and gothic, and darkly dramatic.
Other mysterious moments in a record rife with them, is the strange glitched out electronica of "Head Of Hollow-Fill And Mountain Top Removal", a warped sprawl of industrial murk, peppered with swells of staticky electronic noise, buried melodies and dubbed out FX, a softly roiling noisescape wound around a robotic processed voice, sounding almost like a blackened industrial Radiohead. Or the ambient drone of "Grows In The Small World Of Nerve", a lowercase drift of distant, barely there dreaminess, beneath a skyful of rain, and snippets of conversation, all smeared into an indistinct blur of soft psych shimmer. Or even the swampy cosmic dirge of "Modern Orbita", that again, positions Boduf Songs for some long overdue commercial appreciation, but as if fully conscious of that potential, the otherwise beautifully brooding ballad, a darkly motorik downer psych gem, dusky and deserty, sounding a bit like Earth and Scenic and Sixteen Horsepower, is pocked with strange spaced out swirls, and more druggy dubbiness, which only serves to shine a woozy black light on the twisted loveliness of the rest of the track.
It's that balance that makes Stench Of Exist so stunning, the sound constantly shifting between hushed, harrowing, super personal, bedroom-folk psychedelia, and experimental electronic soundscapery, muted downer pop and drifting dronemusic, the record's finest moments occur when those various sounds bleed and blur into each other. Simple folk tunes are transformed by skeletal programmed rhythms, or swirls of spacey effects, and alternately, pure mad-scientist sonic experimentation is grounded by dour, delicate melodies, and hushed, introspective poppiness. Many of the tracks here begin life as dark, folk flecked, psych pop, but eventually are reimagined as something much more ominous and even malevolent, a whispery, cinematic soundworld of heaving strings and prismatic melody, stately and morose. While fields of effected guitars, unfurling into spiraling sprawls of alien ambience and rainswept atmospheres, all as a crystalline frame for Sweet's heartfelt croon and delicate star dusted balladry.
Fans of King Dude, Iron & Wine, Woven Hand, Townes Van Zandt (if he were raised on industrial music and psychedelia), Sixteen Horsepower, and even Magnetic Fields (check out "The Rotted Names"), will find much to love here for sure. As will anyone into dark, lysergic, gloom-folk melancholia, twisted drum-machine-driven threnodies, and gorgeously grim psychedelia.
This mysterious release is the work of UK musician Mat Sweet, who sent a rough demo to the guys at Kranky, who in turn loved it so much they decided to release it without any tweaking or re-recording at all, for fear of sacrificing any of the intimacy or immediacy! A gorgeous chunk of neo folk, acoustic guitar, cymbals, percussion, violin bow, toy piano, manipulated field recordings and computer. At its heart though, this is just a simple and lovely folk record, reminiscent of Iron & Wine or Sentridoh, with its fingerpicked steel string guitar and hushed melancholy vocals, but unlike most of his folk brethren, Sweet adds all sorts of unlikely bits to his heartfelt songs, a swath of reverberating chimes, clanking cymbals, bells and woodblocks, occasional backwards melodies, dogs barking, shimmering drones, never so much that it detracts from the overall beauty, but more as a sort of filigree that adds depth and mystery to Sweet's gorgeously lilting folk. Fans of droney dreamy folk will dig this for sure, but Iron & Wine fans especially may find a new band to love!
Sometimes we find ourselves reviewing music that we don't necessarily have the vocabulary to describe in a way that properly references all the sonic touchstones, but in a lot of ways, those sorts of the reviews are the ones we dig the most, where the comparisons are not the ones from right off the label's onesheet, or borrowed from some other reviewer who is an expert in whatever genre is being discussed. Which is appropriate since we know very little about EBM, or electronic body music, a strain of electronic music popular in the late eighties, which is how Body 11 would most likely be classified, alongside more well known bands like Nitzer Ebb, Front 242 and labels like Wax Trax and Nettwerk. The label does mention Skinny Puppy, which definitely gets more to the heart of why we dig this so much, and we DO.
If those above bands mean nothing to you, don't despair, cuz to these ears, the sound of Body 11 is more proto-grebo, 'grebo' being shorthand for greasy bastard, a phrase coined to mean a group of bands that included Pop Will Eat Itself, Gaye Bykers On Acid and the like. And that's actually more what we hear in the music of Body 11. Super dramatic vocals, crooned, howled, drenched in reverb and delay, the vibe swaggery and almost glammy, the pulsing electronic backdrop, peppered with super distorted percussive blurts, and the occasional slash of crunchy fuzzed out guitar, which is why we'd do the musical math for Body 11 like Sigue Sigue Sputnik meets Suicide? Or Pop Will Eat Itself fronted by Gary Glitter, via the aforementioned Skinny Puppy?
Of all the Medical reissues, this is the grittiest, and grimiest of the bunch we think, and we're digging it like crazy, the first four tracks, culled from Body 11's original 1988 single are untouchable, swarthy and swaggery, creepy and crunchy, slithery and groovy, snarly and pulsing, like early Depeche Mode demos roughed up and transformed into something altogether more misanthropic. Way worth it just for those 4 tracks for sure. The bonus tracks are cool too, but are missing some of that attitude, and are a bit more polished, and thus less grimey and grungey, definitely a fun listen, but we find ourselves listening to those first four over and over and over...
LIMITED TO 650 COPIES!! Pressed on heavy 180 gram milky clear vinyl. Includes a printed insert with extensive liner notes!
Way back in 2009, we reviewed a record by a band called Body Hammer, a brilliantly dizzying hybrid of damaged hyper grind, blackened dronescapery and frenzied math metal, all housed in a dvd case, wrapped in a sumo cloth. Now here we are five years later, and the man behind Body Hammer, just walks into aQ, having moved to the Bay Area to attend Mills, and in hand, a new Body Hammer record! And while we'd like to say it's way weirder, or way more fucked up, we just can't cuz the first one was pretty demented and damaged, but what we can say, is the new one is just as tweaked and twisted, which all we could have hoped for, hell, even the first track is pretty difficult to describe, a sort of psychedelic industrial blowout, all metallic percussion, and wild electronic squiggles that could be guitar shred, but is likely something else entirely, a dizzying rhythmic workout that leads directly into a 33 second blast of furious metallic grind, only to then explode into a nearly as brief burst of power electronics, which again in turn, transforms into a blurry bit of collaged field recordings and short wave broadcasts, and then�
Well, before we go track by track, it should be noted there are lots of brief tracks here, some ambient, some blacknoise, some grinding metal, some all three combined, the metal parts are totally frenzied drummachinegun style blowouts, while the more abstract tracks are all over the map, eventually as the track lengthen, the sound becomes more harrowing, the terrifying sample laced atmosphere of "A Presence", the churning black buzz ambience of "A Disappearance", laced with buried vokills and tangled guitar shred, or the slo-mo doomdrone of "The Church", but peppered throughout are dense bouts of Godflesh-like industrial metal churn, all robotic deathmarch and machine like lumber, barely there soundscapery, cinematic and haunting, tripped out psych-noise, blasts of guitar clang, and billows of hazy FX, symphonies of feedback, and finally, a hazy long form sprawl of field recording flecked, murky industrial drift, a strangely disturbing coda, for a fantastically fucked up record.
We're not entirely sure where we first heard about Body Hammer, we're not really sure if it's a band or a guy, what we do know, is that this is some seriously fierce and fucked up hypergrind / math metal / black drone weirdness. 18 songs, all but 6 less than a minute long, some of those as short as a matter of seconds, every one an awesome chunk of sonic mayhem. The 1:41 opener is all creep and creak, moan and drift, downtuned guitars and tinkling melodies, some sort of Wolf Eyes / Goblin hybrid, which leads right into 31 seconds of ultra technical, super distorted, gnarled and chaotic noise drenched metallic grind, that should hit the spot for Discordance Axis fans and anyone who digs all that drummachinegun grind. The 14 second follow up is a brief white hot squall of harmonized guitars and malfunctioning drum machines, which leads directly into another industrial drone drift.
The first 2/3 of the records pass in a blur, lurching from haunting droney ambience to chugging churning grinding metal madness and back again, stopping for brief forays into blacknoize, dreamy lo-fi ambient drift, as well as some under 20 second hypergrind workouts, all tweaked FX and lightspeed blast beats, high end feedback laced dronescapes, and rumbling guitardronebuzzandblur.
With 5 songs to go, Body Hammer lets the songs sprawl, and pushes the sound in even more fractured and fucked up directions, a super distorted in-the-red, lurching black doom trudge through a haze of glitched out distortion and howled vokills, thick crumbling post industrial dirgescapes, all reverbed clank and clatter, thud and pound and crunch, hypnotic static guitar drifts built from layered drones and laced with clean guitar twang, warped bass, and buried vox, until the final 7+ minute track, a harrowing blackened doomic dirge, groaning guitars, and distant vocals, which leaves 5 minutes of silence, before a minute or so of white noise hiss and intercepted voices from the ether.
Fucked up and fucking awesome. Packaged in a dvd case, with a printed insert, and while they last we have the super limited deluxe version that comes with a bunch of extra goodies and is wrapped in a sumo cloth and sealed with a sticker.
The Body Lovers was the first project that Michael Gira established after dissolving his stalwart abject rock ensemble Swans. For this project (which presumably will be a trilogy of albums, if the title is an indication), Gira has chosen to concentrate on the production techniques which culminated so magnificantly on Swans "Great Annihilator" album - dominated by epic song structures built out of increasingly dense tape splices of archetypal Swans' rock grooves. Here, Gira has all but done away with the song (leaving that for his folk etherialism on Angels of Light) in favor of a beautifully ornate if nervously bleak drone album. Multiple layers of sustained organ chords resonate violently against each other as distant choruses of Branca like single note guitars and anguished non-linguistic chants build in intensity, sounding very much like a claustrophobic and highly controlled version of Hermann Nitsch's monumental Aktion pieces.
The Body Lovers was the first project that Michael Gira established after dissolving his stalwart abject rock ensemble Swans. For the Body Lovers, Gira had chosen to concentrate on the production techniques which culminated so magnificantly on Swans' Great Annihilator album -- dominated by epic song structures built out of increasingly dense tape splices of archetypal Swans' rock grooves. Here, Gira all but did away with the song (leaving that for his folk etherialism on Angels of Light) in favor of a beautifully ornate if nervously bleak drone album. Multiple layers of sustained organ chords resonate violently against each other as distant choruses of Branca like single note guitars and anguished non-linguistic chants build in intensity, sounding very much like a claustrophobic and highly controlled version of Hermann Nitsch's monumental Aktion pieces. When this record originally came out in 1998, Gira announced that the Body Lovers would produce a triology of recordings. Unfortunately, this never came to be. Instead, Gira produced a single second disc of malcontent noise as the Body Haters which was the result of 12 hour studio session fuelled by alcohol and amphetamines. Here they are together, as they should be.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Only got one of these, long out of print, LIMITED TO 50 COPIES, this one is inexplicably numbered #51. On the kick ass Black Horizons label, Body Vehicle offer up a sprawling collection of buzz and drone, of dark minimalism and creeping ambient shimmer, a little bit modern space synth abstraction, a little bit electro acoustic experimentation...
Housed in a super swank oversized vinyl case, with a full color printed cover insert, and pasted on linernotes inside printed on shimmery blue metallic paper.
Finally!!! New music from The Body, who at one time, might just have ranked as one of, if not THE, favorite heavy band around these parts. Their self titled debut is incredible (and sadly out of print), a dizzying mix of post rock, ultra doom, and sludge metal, with a penchant for mathy rhythms, lots of space, and some seriously anguished vocals.
They released a super limited cd-r a bit later (which we have more of for a very short time, see elsewhere on this list!) which was more of the same, and included a totally over the top Judas Priest cover, the original totally transformed, which then leads us to this, a brand new tour ep, ALL covers, and not the sort of covers you might expect from a band like the Body, which is precisely why we love these guys so much.
Crass, Danzig, Black Flag and, wait for it, Sinead O'Connor. Yep. Hard to believe but it works, and they don't just turn it into a pointless sludgefest, they have obvious affection for the original. But before we get to "Black Boys On Mopeds", let's run through the other covers first.
Crass's "Do They Owe Us A Living" is all buzzing low end, and tribal drumming. The vocals a processed feral bark, the whole thing lurching and lumbering and seriously harrowingly intense. Makes the original sound like a lullaby. The Danzig track is a loping low slung groove, with a fierce downtuned riff, and hysterical shrieking vocals, the band totally own it, and again, add untold heaviness and harshness to the original. Black Flag's "Police Story" is pulled apart and gutted, before exploding into a punk rock frenzy, who knew a sludge band could rock so hard? It's a muddy, murky free for all, not that far removed from the original other than the downtuned guitars and the insane vox.
And finally, "Black Boys On Mopeds", a gorgeous sprawling dirge, and wisely the band opted to get some help with the vocals, a gorgeous female voice, underpinned by howled shrieked back up vocals way off in the distance, the bulk of the song a single buzzing throbbing note stretched out into a thick undulating drone, the rhythm a metronome like clack buried in the mix, the end gets all trippy and dubbed out, but damn if this isn't creepier and prettier than the original.
The Body is back, and we couldn't be happier. Now someone just needs to sign these guys and give them tons of money so they can finally put out a new full length!!!!!
We've long been fans of burly bearded post doom crushers The Body, their sound like the classic two man pummel of godheadSilo expanded into something even more majestic and sprawling, black hole heavy, infusing their ultra doom glacial sludge with plenty of post and rock mathisms, the cinematic tension of groups like Godspeed, and heck, they even cover songs by folks like Crass, Danzig, Black Flag and Sinead O'Connor! For a two piece, these guys pretty much transcend and obliterate any sort of limitations that lineup would pose to most mere musical mortals, but that said, plenty of two pieces have seen fit to expand, say to a trio or a quartet, maybe just to record, get a few guests, or even permanently, ditching the duo which sometimes gets focused on more than the music. But few bands (dare we say, practically none) expand further than that, say from 2 members to THIRTY TWO! But that's exactly what The Body has done for All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood, their second proper full length in ages, one that marks ten years as a band, and more importantly, marks a serious sonic shift. No longer are they scrappy DIY punk rock noisemakers, setting their sites above and beyond, these guys have gone for it, meticulously crafting an album of extreme heaviness, of sonic mystery, haunting, and epic, metal for sure, even going so far as to include an actual 13 member choir, and not just for little random bits here and there, nearly seven minutes of the ten minute opening track, is just choir, lilting and angelic, lovely and otherworldly, only making the sudden shift from ethereal vocal harmony to crushing downtuned ultra doom all the more jarring. But the coolest part, is that the parts aren't clearly delineated. The choir continues on into the heaviness, so the howling churning crush, is peppered with gorgeous hymn like vocals, creating some sort of strangely liturgical sounding swirly sludge. And it's not just the vocals, there's saxophone, samples, piano, plenty of noise. And that pretty much sets the template for the whole record.
Besides the Assembly Of Light Choir, who are featured on almost every song here, the record also features Robert Lowe of Lichens offering up some additional vocals, not to mention the other 15 or 16 guests who contribute, beyond the core Body duo of drums, guitar, samples and vocals, a pretty crazy array of soundmakers, more vocals, saxophone, sousaphone, guitar, piano, keyboards, Moog, baritone saxophone and more drums. LOTS more drums. In fact, on the final track, "Lathspell I Name You" drummer Lee Buford is joined by EIGHT extra drummers!!! More on that in a moment.
The second track "A Curse" begins with a loping post rock beat, swirling synths, a melancholy melody, soaring chiming guitars, very moody and slow burning, before the band explodes into full doom, the sound shifts too, the crystalline clearness, becomes big and booming, the sound blown out, but more sort of warm and muted than in the red, the drums massive and pounding, while the guitars swirl in little chordal clouds, and the anguished vocals howl and wail, which gives way to "Empty Hearth", which sounds like some abstract experimental Swans style track, looped sample of what sounds like speaking in tongues, lurching mechanical crunch, glitched out electronics, shrieking vox, the whole song occasionally stuttering to a halt, as if the song was being remixed or was gloriously malfunctioning, there's also some awesome guttural throat singing, laced underneath the start stop, sample skitter, and super distorted bass buzz.
"Even The Saints Knew Their Hour Of Failure And Loss" starts with tarpit riffery and blurred hiss, strangely atmospheric, the drums skeletal but subtly mathy, the choir adding their gorgeous harmonies, an epic spiritual doom, tolling bells, everything dropping out, leaving just the booming drums, the shrieked vox, those bells, until a thick layer of low end washes over everything, and the track unwinds as some classic funereal doom.
"Song Of Sarin The Brave" begins all blown out and tangled up, sheets of feedback, huge heaving bursts of titanic metallic crunch, mysterious voices, finally the band launches into the song proper, and things get really weird, the drums stripped way down, the whole track slathered in strange murky blur and melting effects, while underneath, a strange sampled voice drifts, through clouds of other voices and mysterious sounds, totally creepy, and beautiful, and so mesmerizing, it goes on forever, and could have gone on way longer, but instead finishes off in a minute long blaze of shrieking black doom sludge crush.
"Ruiner" is another smoldering slow starter, haunting, downtuned minor key riffs ring out, doomic drums pound out a barely there rhythm, again, all underpinned by a strange staticky cloud of hiss and gauzy atmospheric hum, the track starting out super spare, but gradually growing more and more dense, more and more doomy, gathering momentum, not rhythmically so much as sonically, the progression laced subtly with strings and horns, little streaks of psychedelic guitars, until finally exploding into a lumbering dirge, the instruments blackened and crumbling, less riffy than a throbbing organic black buzz, pounding and pummeling before blinking out abruptly.
Which leads us to the final track, the 14 minute, multiple drummer-ed side long "Lathspell I Name You", a heaving, expansive ultra doom epic, a churning looped riff and some busy drumming start the track off, not doomy at all really, more noise rock or post rock, with some gorgeous folky melodies woven in, the choir offering up their lovely harmonies, but in this context, they sound less angelic and slightly demonic, locked into their own looped pattern mirroring, the motorik metal loop underneath, which gives way to a weirdly records, noise drum blowout, voices and instruments hissing and buzzing while a cacophony of drums pound and crash, mesmerizing and hypnotic, before the glacial chug resurfaces, along with the choir, and the band lock into a seriously slow motion, abrasive cathartic doom sludge crawl, the sound growing more and more blown out until every drum hit pegs the needles and distorts everything, making the sound that much more caustic and emotional and intense.
The roots of The Body's sound may be in doom or sludge, or even simply metal, but All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood has taken that sound so far beyond, transforming sludge and doom into something way more transcendent, way more difficult to immediately categorize, it's melodic, and poppy, and mathy, and drone-y, and electronic, and experimental, epic and majestic and mysterious, while somehow still remaining brutal, and pummeling and heavy as fuck. Fans of the usual suspects will probably dig this big time, Moss, Bunkur, Khanate, Monarch, Nihill, Otesanek (in fact the liner notes read: "All Praise To Otesanek And Man Is The Bastard"), Eyehategod, Habsyll, Fleshpress, but be prepared to look beyond the realms of traditional doom, or of conventional heaviness, because The Body are anything but traditional or conventional, and All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood just might be the coolest, weirdest, most original doom record EVER.
Incredible packaging too, heavy vinyl (3 sided, the 4th side is blank), thick, gatefold sleeve, with some chillingly striking artwork, a printed 12" x 12" insert silver reflective ink printed on black cardstock, liner notes and lineup on one side, lyrics on the other...
We've been huge fans of Rhode Island two piece sludge doom duo The Body for years now, and have raved about every recording we could get our hands on, at one point even lamenting the fact that we were dying for a proper full length, and then BAM. Their self titled full length debut hit, and it DESTROYED. Then a few years later, and the band unleashed their epic, and seemingly universally acclaimed All The Waters Of The Earth Turned To Blood. A chunk of sludgy doom unlike anything we'd heard before, sure there was massive downtuned riffs, and bellowed and shrieked vox, pummeling drums, but there also happened to be a full choir, not to mention multiple drummers, strange electronics, programmed rhythms, strange samples, all wound into a bizarre and brilliant collection of avant heaviness, and finally it seemed the world caught on, and The Body began to get the love they so obviously deserved.
The bummer is, that while All The Waters IS incredible, so are all the weird and super limited cd-r's and singles that came before, so folks who discovered The Body via that record, were missing out on a whole world of heart stopping head caving sound, that is until now. This little collection, compiles pretty much everything the band has ever recorded minus their two full lengths (the older of which is sadly out of print), including split singles, tour cd-r's and even tacks on some unreleased stuff to boot.
Their 2008 tour cd-r might be one of our favorite recordings from these guys, and definitely displayed the band's dizzying mix of post rock, ultra doom, and sludge metal, as well as their penchant for mathy rhythms, lots of space, and seriously anguished vocals.The coolest part was that it was in the context of cover songs, and maybe not the sort of covers you'd expect from a sludge/doom outfit. Crass, Danzig, Black Flag and, wait for it, Sinead O'Connor. Yep. Hard to believe that last one works, but it does, and they don't just turn it into a pointless sludgefest, they have obvious affection for the original. But before we get to "Black Boys On Mopeds", let's run through the other covers first.
Crass's "Do They Owe Us A Living" is all buzzing low end, and tribal drumming. The vocals a processed feral bark, the whole thing lurching and lumbering and seriously harrowingly intense. Makes the original sound like a lullaby. The Danzig track is a loping low slung groove, with a fierce downtuned riff, and hysterical shrieking vocals, the band totally own it, and again, add untold heaviness and harshness to the original. Black Flag's "Police Story" is pulled apart and gutted, before exploding into a punk rock frenzy, who knew a sludge band could rock so hard? It's a muddy, murky free for all, not that far removed from the original other than the downtuned guitars and the insane vox.
And finally, "Black Boys On Mopeds", a gorgeous sprawling dirge, and wisely the band opted to get some help with the vocals, a gorgeous female voice, underpinned by howled shrieked back up vocals way off in the distance, the bulk of the song a single buzzing throbbing note stretched out into a thick undulating drone, the rhythm a metronome like clack buried in the mix, the end gets all trippy and dubbed out, but damn if this isn't creepier and prettier than the original.
Also included in this collection is Even The Saints Knew Their Hour Of Failure And Loss, another killer cd-r of that immediately recognizable Body style abstract sludge doom. Think a more skeletal Khanate, with dubbed out drums, but replace Alan Dubin's vocals with a even more hysterical shriek bordering on Bathtub Shitter territory. Weird but so fucking cool and creepy. Massive sheets of blacktar guitars, sometimes a grinding trudge through a viscous cloud of noxious grime, at others, a slow motion stumble through stark post rock territory, one track features a doom dub breakdown, where the snare sort of careens lazily in a wide open space before eventually being stomped flat by a wall of anvil guitars, another track is peppered with creepy soundbites, adding to the paranoid creepiness. And they tackle another cover, "Here Come The Tears" by Judas Priest, and turn it into a blown out white noise drenched dirge, crumbling and crushing.
These guys love their covers, as is evidenced by their Cop Killer / Dead Cops single also included here, a double dose of dead cops. The Body dump their sludgy doom all over "Cop Killer" by Body Count and "Dead Cops" by M.D.C.! The originals are barely recognizable, the original riffs, transformed into cesspools of filthy sludge. Again, comparisons to Khanate and Moss and are apt, but they definitely twist these jams all up into their very own blackened shapes.
As if that weren't enough, the collection is filled out with their track from a split 7" with Get Killed, and another unreleased track from 2004, as well as their very first demo, originally released as a super limited cassette on Armageddon, which displays the band, even in the early stages, capable of unleashing thick torrents of shrieking, lurching, avant doom, the sound a dizzying mix of slo-mo mathiness, low slung sludge, and blackened post rock, all blurred into epic swaths of black hole heaviness and skull caving crush, without losing their sense of melody or mood. Awesome.
Super striking visuals/packaging as always, spare and austere, with the liner notes printed on a cool white on black mini poster insert.
The Body return with another sprawling epic of avant experimental doom, after having recently relocated from Rhode Island to the Pacific Northwest. While their last release, a sort of stopgap ep called Master, We Perish, found the band mostly ditching all the experimentalism of their debut, All The Waters Of The Earth Turned To Blood, instead offering up something much closer to actually seeing these guys live, as in pure, physical brutality, blown out ultra doom-noise crush. But here, the band continue to push the boundaries of doom, their Assembly Of Light Choir in tow, for a record that is the perfect follow up to All The Waters. Just check out the opener, and you'll be sold. After a brief ambient intro, "To Attempt Openness" unfurls a bit of hazy static, before in come the drums, the churning riffage, and the choir, all blurred into something strangely hymn-like, as if it were the music for some bizarre religious sect, a twisted pagan offshoot of some strange arcane faith, the music blurry and blackened, laced with all manner of noise, industrial buzz and caustic whir, buried melodies, constantly shifting textures, super dynamic, noisy and off kilter, the guitars dropping out at one point, leaving just shrieked vox way back in the mix, and pummeling drum pound over a field of glitch and gristle, before eventually devolving into full on noise.
And of course it doesn't end there, nor does it get any more typically doomy. "Melt Away" drapes samples over lumbering tribal drumming and glimmering shimmer, haunting and ambient, and even when the doom drops, it again is more sort of spectral and chorale-like, the choir way better integrated on this record, less singing intros and outros and now woven into the Body's blackened sonic fabric, the song unwinding as a harrowing dirge. "An Altar Or A Grave" introduces strings, transforming the song into a strange chamber music slow core crawl, that's as lovely and melancholic as it is downtuned and brutal, the sound lurching back and forth between shrieking ultra-doom and that chamber sludge loveliness.
The songs are WAY shorter this time around too, allowing the band to flit from sound to sound, a 3 minute blast of face melting sludge gives way to some female vocal driven blackened ambience, churning feedback drenched industrial doom lumber collides with ultra slow doom-drone-drift dreaminess, all ethereal vox and processed drums, electronics and rumbling whirring synths, fields of hushes static give way to churning psychedelic kraut-doom creep, until finally, "Bearer Of Bad Tidings", one of the two longest songs here at about seven minutes, closes things out with a field of tangled guitar noise, that explodes into a full on blast beat, everything distorted to the point of structural failure, grinding, blown out psych-doom-noise, that splinters into some seriously avant, out there, electro-doom, black noise dirgery, reminding us of Bastard Noise or aQ faves Geronimo. Some seriously next level doooooooooom that we are digging like crazy.
A two barrel blast from these slow motion sludge merchants. A double dose of dead cops. The Body dump their sludgy doom all over "Cop Killer" by Body Count and "Dead Cops" by M.D.C.! The originals are barely recognizable, the original riffs, transformed into cesspools of filthy sludge. If you love Khanate and Moss and other masters of the ultra slow doom, The Body is more of what you need.
Cool packaging, transparent silkscreened sleeve with machine guns obi insert.
The return of the Body! We've been chomping at the bit, waiting for these sludgelords to come up with record number two, might still be a while, but in the meantime we've got this super limited 20 minute cd-r ep to tide us over. Four tracks of abstract sludge doom. Think a more skeletal Khanate, with dubbed out drums, and replace Alan Dubin's vocals, with a hysterical shriek bordering on Bathtub Shitter territory. Weird but so fucking cool and creepy. Massive sheets of blacktar guitars, sometimes a grinding trudge through a viscous cloud of noxious grime, at others, a slow motion stumble through stark post rock territory, one track features a doom dub breakdown, where the snare sort of carreens lazily in a wide open spce before eventually being stomped flat by a wall of anvil guitars, another track is peppered with creepy soundbites, adding to the paranoid creepiness. The final track, a Judas Priest cover (!) is a blown out white noise drenched dirge, crumbling and crushing. Fuck yeah.
Packaged in a cool hand stamped cardboard sleeve. SUPER LIMITED so act fast!
Seeing this doom duo live is as much a physical experience as it is a sonic one. Standing right in front of the band as they play, the sheer force and volume of the sound, literally blows your clothes and hair back, like they have fans instead of speakers inside their cabinets. The weird horn shaped drums like sonic snowblowers. It's seriously visceral, and pure noise bliss for sure, BUT, it's on record where these guys get to flex their avant doom muscles. Cuz live, it all blurs into a nearly Merzbow-ian onslaught, sheets of ear shredding doomnoise that seems like it would be a room clearer, but instead seems to lull the crowd into a headbanging doom-noise trance.
One their last full length, All The Waters Of The Earth Turned To Blood, the band pulled out all the stops, adding a choir, multiple drummers, fucked up experimental production, some tracks ambient, others nearly electronic, their actual doom balanced by all the other sounds, making for what still ranks as one of the coolest weirdest doom records ever. On this new EP, the band balance both sides of their sonic personality, opening with a churning noise drenched dirge, the sound blown out and crumbly and in-the-red, there may be sirens howling in the background, but this is the sound of the band as a two piece kicking out the jams. The vocals a hysterical shriek, the drums crushing, the guitar a wall of churning white noise. It's not until the last minute or so that things start to get weird, electronic drums (or weirdly processed acoustic ones) lock into a loop, leading into the second track, which definitely sounds like it could have been plucked right off All The Waters, a simple minor key strum, a creepy sampled vocal, an angelic choir, weirdly clipped and effected drums, the vibe mysterious and moody, then those shrieked vox come in, then the sound of a cocking shotgun explodes into more blown out doom dirgery, the band finishing things off with a sprawling blast of dirge noise heaviness.
Finally, the EP closes with the nearly ten minute "Worship", which begins all distorto drums, swirling psych guitars, collaged sampled voices, the band locked into a tranced out tribal drum driven psychedelic noise dirge, sounding like Gnod via the Butthole Surfers, it's not until nearly 6 minutes in when the hammer finally falls, the band slipping back into their monstrously lumbering downtuned trudge, more shrieked vox, the drums WAY blown out, the band lurching wildly, before it all drops out again, leaving an extended outro of rumbling guitar buzz, more buried voices, strange abstract percussion, manipulated effects, the sound shifting in pitch, warbly and woozy, laced with field recordings, a haunting ambient drift, that easily could have stretched out endlessly...
More warped avant doom brilliance from these Portland via Providence heavies, and it definitely has us hankering for the upcoming full length.
The Body, despite having become one of the more prolific heavy bands around, have not had a proper solo full-length released since 2013's Christs, Redeemers, tending to collaborate with artists instead. But here they are on thier own again, and on No One Deserves Happiness, the Body have asserted that they sought to make the "ugliest pop record of all time". In some ways, they may have succeeded. Anyone that's heard the Body before will know that anything they touch is a far cry from Katy Perry, but nonetheless, No One Deserves Happiness is a dose of heaviness that's definitely chock full of pretty melody lines dripping with murky atmospherics. While some among the aQuarius staff are not exactly fans of vocalist Chip King's piercing shriek, the good news is that those, um, somewhat difficult to take vocals are minimal here, the album having a few strictly instrumental tracks, and others graced with the angelic croon of Chrissy Wolpert (quite a contrast with Chip). All in all, this is the best solo effort we've heard from The Body yet.
FYI while they last we have the special pink vinyl version, if you get the vinyl! And also fyi and btw, The Body also (of course) have a new collaborative cd out, with Full Of Hell, on Neurot, that we just got in, too.
A while back we reviewed an amazing record by a band called Tides. What was equally amazing was the circuitous route it took to get to Aquarius. In a nutshell, it was sent to a certain publication who deemed it too punk to review, a friend at said publication grabbed it from the reject box thinking we'd like it. We did. And well you can read that review on the AQ site. And that record ended up being a huge hit around here. The thing is, that record wasn't alone on its perilous journey. No, another record was right there along side the Tides cd making its way to AQ. That record, was this record. The Body. But The Body had a bit farther to go, before making it to the list you have right here in your hands. First, many emails with the label, then much waiting. Then finally a box of cds arrived, but somehow they had all become unglued and ruined in the mail. More emails followed, and still more waiting. FInally we had pretty much just given up. Then just a few days ago, a couple of big bearded guys with tattoos were sort of lurking around the store. You guessed it, they were The Body. Phew. So was it worth it? Hell yeah it was. That is if you like massive, pummeling, downtuned slow motion sludge metal with little bits of ultra doom and lots of post rock in there. And you know we do.
So yeah, The Body. This will definitely hit the spot for all you folks into Conifer, Pelican, Isis, The Ocean, Mouth Of The Architect, Tides and all that metallic post rock doom stuff. The first track is a crusher, a plodding doom riff spread out over eight minutes, with freaky garbled vocal samples and the whole thing building in intensity and slowly becoming more and more blown out until it's a fuzzy slab of white noise doom drone. Woah. The rest of the record trudges alternately between slow motion chugging and poundiing, moody mathy rhythmic workouts, and some truly dense tangles of chaotic riff rhythm mashup. All strung together with some seriously harrowing shrieked black metal style vocals buried WAY down in the mix. The final track is a fifteen minute long, relentless midtempo pipe to the skull, with a main riff that is repeated over and over, almost looped sounding, completely mesmerizing, before it all breaks down into a spacious plodding doom coda. So awesome.
Packaged in hand glued cardstock digipaks. This came out a while ago and was limited to 1000 copies so we can't be entirely sure how long we'll have these.
