Full length number three from this mysterious Texan one man band, whose blend of Burzumic black metal and blown out distortion drenched shoegaze has made this a longtime favorite around here. And even though the record opens with the most overtly metal track we've heard from this guy in ages, with its bellowed demonic vox and angular riffage, it still manages to be super warm and lush and in-the-red, with the guitars SO distorted they seem on the verge of crumbling.
And that feel and vibe becomes even more pronounced as the record proceeds, slow, pounding, woozy weeping expanses of mournful melody, washed out guitar fuzz, loping basslines, with some seriously gorgeous poppy moments, like the strange looping bridge on "Ashes In Her Mouth", with its spidery little repeating motif, or the almost Alcest / Amesoeurs sounding main riff of "Lifetaker", the whole record is weirdly pretty, and melancholy, it's the black metal equivalent of looking at the world on a rainy day through a window streaked with water, the rivulets, distorting everything, making shapes twist and blur, smearing forms into one another, adding a surreal quality to everything, gauzy, fuzzy, indistinct, the tone of the guitars, so dripping with distortion, evokes the same sort of soft focus feel, even though the notes and vocals and songs are still plenty black and quite METAL.
The mood is mournful, but not despondent, more like the sun struggling to shine trough pitch black clouds, the minor key melodies so intense and emotional, draped over simple driving rhythms, not blast beats here, and those guitars, to a certain degree, the defining sound of Brown Jenkins, even at its grimmest and meanest and most brutal, those guitars can't help but sound warm, washing over you, dragging you into whatever lurks below. So good. Definitely one of those rare BM records that manages to be simultaneously intense and heavy and seriously grim, but also dreamlike, mesmerizing and so so hypnotic. For the buzz obsessed, this makes some serious transcendent late night drifting off music...
Latest entry in God Is Myth's ongoing series of 3"cd-r homages to horror author H.P. Lovecraft, and this one was really a no-brainer, inevitable considering the mysteriously monickered Brown Jenkins in fact took his name from a Lovecraft story (as did about a million other bands, but Brown Jenkins is one of the stranger ones) and whose music is obviously influenced by Lovecraft's writing. And according to the liner notes, Brown Jenkins is also influenced by Joy Division, Burzum, Bethlehem, Voivod, Godflesh, Possessed, Morbid Angel, Slayer, Merzbow, Gang Of Four, etc. Sounds like our kind of metal band. And BJ is in fact our kind of metal band, as we've gone on and on about in past reviews of Brown Jenkins full lengths, all of those disparate influences wound into a dark and gloomy blackened metal, that hardly adheres to the strict tenets of BM, instead, stretching them to their limits, incorporating blissed out drones, odd off kilter chords, strange melodies, as well as shades of pop, new wave and goth, but all wound into something distinctly, if not traditionally, BLACK METAL.
So here, Umesh, aka Brown Jenkins, gets to honor the man who plays such an important part in his music.
The sounds here are not particularly Lovecraftian, the lyrics are though, the music itself is twisted and angular, obtuse chords, mid tempos, the guitar not so much buzzing as thick and layered with lots of finger picking, melodies and chords shifting, more loping than blasting, the Voivod influence is especially prevalent here, tightly wound, almost new wavish at points but more sort of dark and moody, washed out, black metal for sure, but more mathy than buzzy. The closing track sounds like a black metal Codeine, a moping slowcore wrapped in jagged shards of black metal guitar, a descending melody, melancholy and minor key, before slipping into something more propulsive but no less 'downer'.
Like the full lengths, this is challenging off kilter stuff, especially for the grim black hordes, but it's most certainly buzzy and black enough to push all those black metal buttons, while remaining melodic and moody enough to fit on that mixtape right between Codeine and Seam.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES. Already sold out and out of print. We got only TWENTY, we tried to get more, but that's all they would let us have, and like past installments these for sure disappear quick. Packaged in a normal slimline cd case, with black and white covers, liner notes and lyrics, and a sepia printed cardstock insert with a photo and a brief biography of Lovecraft.
Another winner from Slumberland, the debut from Philly psychedelic sunshine poppers Brown Recluse, who weave warm lush orchestral pop epics, that manage to be mysterious and experimental, but at the same time timeless and classic. Equal parts Elephant Six, Brazilian Tropicalia, sixties symphonic pop like the Zombies and the Bee Gees, as well as the usual reverby pop suspects like Phil Spector and Joe Meek and Brian Wilson, not to mention, there are plenty of modern groups whose sounds are reflected here, whether by design or chance:
Belle And Sebastian, Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, High Llamas, Cardinal, and the way more obscure but HUGELY aQ beloved the Rollo Treadway...
Brown Recluse create their own fantastical pop other world, everything bathed in sunlight and painted bright primary colors, candy coated and wreathed in sparkling glimmering shimmer, all assembled from strange soft shapes, wreathed in reverb, layered and lush, melodies chime and drift dreamily, organs and calliopes evoke some mysterious carnivalesque pop past, the vocals are warm and mellifluous, the harmonies divine, guitars jangle, sometimes fuzzy and crunchy, just as often clean and crystalline, the arrangements are intricate and dynamic, each song like a mini pop(era), lilting and melodic and hooky and catchy and fuzzy and ethereal, soaring strings, horns, fluttering flutes, simple programmed beats, shuffling drums, all woven into one of the dreamiest collections of hazy classic psychedelic power pop we've heard in ages. Blossoming a little bit more every time we play it, this is fast becoming contender for pop record of 2011!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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A mix of traditional Asian music and traditional jazz - commemorating the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.
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The minute we first heard this we knew it was something weird and wonderful. Not to be confused with the Bobby Brown of "My Perrogative" and Whitney's boy-toy fame, this Bobby Brown was a Hawaiian surfer dude (check out his hair / shirt / puka shell necklace on the cover as well as song titles like "My Hawaiian Home") who in 1972 decided to share his "Universal One Man Orchestra" as well as his bizarre personal message of physics and religion (that's the Enlightening Beam Of Axonda, dig?) that his one man orchestra was designed to accompany. Confused? The Universal One Man Orchestra was a homemade percussion / string instrument incorporating elements of various instruments as varied as the Irish harp, sitar, hammer dulcimer, thumb piano, flute, koto and more, with a total of 311 strings in all, some of which were adapted to be played with the feet. The whole contraption designed so Brown could perform all of these songs live, as a one man band. As weird as that all sounds the end result is gorgeous, and darkly romantic, and not on the surface noticably 'weird'. A rich bed of buzzing sitar strings, throbbing bass and keening distant sonic wails, over a complex rhythmic framework, sort of African, sort of tribal, but very subtle and simple. Brown's voice is probably the most distinctive element, a thick, rich throaty croon, sounding at times quite a bit like Nick Drake. Supposedly Brown had a vocal range of six octaves (!) but the only time it's really noticable is when he pitches down to a chest rattling rumble, before soaring right back up to a tenor or almost-falsetto. These dreamy, slowly developing songs are scattered with all sorts of bizarre sound effects, presumably also produced by his home made orchestra, but sounding remarkably like some primitive synthesizer or ring modulator. In addition to creating the 'orchestra' he also built his own electronic pickups from discarded computer parts! If it weren't for the instrumentation and the bizarre lyrics, The Enlightening Beam of Axonda is so sweetly melodic and darkly beautiful, it definitely sounds like it could have been really popular outside the trippy hippy folky crowd that dug it at the time. There's even testemonials in the liner notes from Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys and Kenny Loggins! Here's a description of the record in Brown's own words: "An original contribution to the field of Religion And Science -- based on physics -- to my knowledge not yet discovered by other humanoids -- more Evolutionary than Einstein's revelations of Newtonian physics -- the application of this physics will perhaps (in fact) lead to the most significant change in the history of humanity (plus total religious unity.)" Wow. Not so sure about that. But we can guarantee that this will find a perfect home amidst all of your other wild and weird, folky and freaky cds. Note: this is an Italian import and everything's closed there for the month of August, so if when we run out we won't get more 'til September, so act fast or please be prepared to be patient.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Now that Byram, our resident reggae / dub expert has moved on (he's in Poland now, teaching English) we are left to fend for ourselves and review all the reggae and dub he used to handle so deftly. We all love this stuff, but unlike Byram, we don't have nearly the encyclopedic knowledge of studios and Jamaican history, so we go pretty much on the sound and the songs, and what little background information we can dig up. So here we have yet another amazing archival release from relatively new label Hot Pot. These recordings are all from the early seventies, and while Brown often worked with lesser knowns, often helping them get the exposure they so richly deserved, Rhythm Master Volume Two features plenty of reggae legends like Tommy McCook, Prince Jazzbo and Big Youth. Brown ran multiple labels in Kingston before moving to NY in the eighties. All of his releases were clouded in mystery, due in no small part to random addresses, confusing acronyms, and liner notes that often bore no relation to that actual release. Another element that added to Brown's mystique. The music here is thick and lush, with warm warbly hammond organ, dreamy wheezy melodica melodies, throbbing bobbing loping rhythms, cool, distorted blues guitar, all wrapped in that gorgeous Glen Brown production, and occasionally topped off by amazing vocals, from traditional reggae almost-toasting to haunting soul style crooning. So nice.
The first two volumes of "James Brown's Funky People" (collecting tracks recorded for Brown's early '70s People Records imprint by his revue's various sidemen and associates) have long been essential funk must-haves, and now we get a surprise third volume! These tracks have never before been released on CD, it says here. Featuring the likes of Bobby Bird, Hank Ballard, The Believers, Sweet Charles, Beau Dollar, Fred Wesley & The J.B.'s, Lyn Collins, Vicki Anderson, Marva Whitney, Dee Felice Trio, and A.A.B.B.
Ok, we didn't make this record of the week or anything, but it would be hard to argue that this package doesn't contain two of the best musically-impregnated plastic and aluminum discs reviewed in this week's list! Heck, the 19 minutes of "It's A Man's Man's
Can't go too wrong with early '70s JB funk, now can you? This compilation of unreleased (live and studio) tracks circa 1967-1973 was first issued in 1988, now it's been reissued with 2 bonus cuts. Though these 13 tracks didn't make it to wax back in the day, that's only 'cause the Godfather was so prolific, and like it says in the liner notes: "he sometimes released forgettable recordings and forgot releasable tracks". Tracks here include a live "There It Is" from the Apollo, 1972, a nine-minute extended version of "People Get Up And Drive Your Funky Soul" from the 1973 soundtrack to Slaughter's Big Rip-Off, also the full-length version of single-only cut "I Got Ants In My Pants (And I Want To Dance"), and a couple instrumentals, one untitled, certainly funky but with uncertain personnel, and eight others. James Brown fans may recognize vamps and lyrics used elsewhere in the JB canon, as Brown was often re-recording, re-using, re-arranging, re-forging the funk, so that a 1956 composition, radically altered, could become a 1974 hit, that sort of thing. For instance, the bonus track "You've Changed" (1969) uses the words to "What Do I Have To Do To Prove My Love To You" as previously sung by Brown diva Marva Whitney. This collection IS definitely a motherlode (stress on the word mother) of unearthed funk. Get down and check it out.
Okay, in case the "Live at the Apollo Volume II" deluxe 2cd set that we listed in AQL #118 wasn't enough for you, here's a special anniversary edition of this previously unreleased 1968 James Brown concert extravaganza (which means it came out in 1998, but we
2006 ended on a sad note for music lovers everywhere as the Godfather of Soul passed away, but in true JB style he picked one of the highest profile days of the year (Xmas morning) to make his grand exit. It was a pretty fitting way to go out, as his whole life was about exclamation points, fierce grunts, dynamite dance moves, hard earned sweat and full throttle expression. Since his passing we have been digging in our record collections pulling out all his recordings and listening in awe to what the amazing legacy he left behind. There is no doubt that he was one of the greatest songwriters and performers of the last century!
With that in mind we wanted to highlight a record of his that maybe not everyone was familiar with but we think shows the range and undeniable power of his presence. Reissued a few years back, Soul On Top was recorded in Hollywood in 1969 with the Louie Bellson Orchestra conducted by Oliver Nelson. And wow, what a standout performance... Brown belts it out with a conviction that shows his long running love of jazz jammed right up next to the soul and funk spirit he helped cultivate. Soul On Top is so over the top in all the right ways! Huge drums and horns creating such a big sound that JB then slams right out of the field with his voice, sounding as strong as ever, radiating in its prime. Almost like some magical version of James Brown doing a Vegas show but not as a bloated lesser version of himself as most Vegas performances tend to be but at the very peak of his performing prowess. This has some of the best howls and screams ever to come out of that man's mouth for sure, and it also shows the great range and versatility he had as we works his way with some big band and pop standards, a totally smoking version of Hank Williams "Your Cheatin' Heart", as well as reworking some of his own classics. While it's unlike most everything else he did, we think Soul On Top is one of his most shining and captivating achievements!
This could be the funkiest five dollars you ever spent. Payback came out in 1973 as a double album, making the most of those four sides of wax, its eight tracks for the most part consisting of sprawling, seemingly endless grooves that run for like 7, 8, 10, even 12+ minutes. There's a couple gorgeous soulful slow jams ("Doing The Best I Can", "Forever Suffering"); the rest are hard-hitting, extended, mesmeric funk workouts. All crammed full of oohs and unghs and squeals from James Brown, as he preaches it, rasping and rapping about real-world subjects like jobs, poverty, hunger, and inequality. And, of course, "Payback"! Also "Mind Power". What it is, and what it is. He gets immediate support, whenever he asks for it, from the funky horns of Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker and the rest. He's got a call-and-response thing going too with a bevy of sweet soul sister backup singers. Not to mention the always crucial drumbeats of John "Jabo" Starks. It's a groovy tour de force, 73 minutes of pure funk with the Godfather in charge. Payback was originally conceived as the soundtrack to the Blaxploitation film Hell Up In Harlem, but was rejected (!) believe it or not. Released on its own, it was a big success, and it's now a classic in the JB canon.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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We haven't listed too much Marion Brown before, save for an early ESP label release, though his name is often spoken of in the same revered tones as Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, and John Coltrane. We loved his playing on Harold Budd's Pavilion of Dreams, and he had famously played on Coltrane's Ascension (two very opposite sides of the alto saxophone spectrum and really the only extremes of that instrument we dig) so we were very excited to get this latest entry in Impulse's "two-fer" cd reissue series to see what Marin Brown as a bandleader is all about, and this doesn't disappoint.
Brown, who died in 2010, was a more understated (and underrated!) player than his better known contemporaries, often marking his playing with noted hesitations and tentativeness that most jazz giants readily avoided. The influence of poetry, ethnomusicology and southern folk tropes also took him into stranger and less popular directions than most jazz at the time. Geechee Recollections and Sweet Earth Flying from 1973 and 1974 respectively, are the second and third installments in what is considered the "Georgia Trilogy" (the first installment, Afternoon of a Georgian Fawn, from 1970, was recorded for ECM), based on the tone poems of Georgia poet Jean Toomer and Brown's Georgian upbringing. Both records are largely built around suites of songs, with Geechee Recollections more horn based and Sweet Earth Flying largely based around piano and fender Rhodes compositions.
Geechee recollections starts with the loping bass groove of "Once Upon a Time (A Children's Tale)" propelled by ethnic percussive rhythms and energized alto sax playing. Toomer's poem "Karintha" is recited by Bill Hasson over an avant backdrop of intersecting violin, sax, kalimba chimes and other percussion. Passages of martial New Orleans style jazz open up into soft abstract spaces in the Tokalokaloka suite, that have a slow languid heat full of humid tropical associations. Mostly sheets of metallic percussion and tinkling bamboo surround Brown's intuitive and often introverted horn improvisations in fertile bursts of sound.
Sweet Earth Flying may be more satisfying for those looking for a deeper, more inviting, immersion. Focused on two suites, the title one, along with one called "Eleven Light City", "Sweet Earth Flying" begins with a soft and graceful solo on fender Rhodes before jumping full flight into a percussive free jazz excursion. Part 4 of that suite features a swirling recitation by Bill Hasson of an invented hybrid language drawn from a variety of Latin, Afro-Caribbean and regional American vocabularies. "Eleven Light City" has a more late-night low-key feel, slightly noirish, but not foreboding. It has a spacious genteel quality that belies its more muscular undertones. But the chief beauty of this record is the genius pairing of Muhal Richard Abrams and Paul Bley on acoustic and electric piano that make this a truly exciting listen.
This is the first time both records have been released on cd, and it's about time! So good!
Another essential ESP reissue, this time from Marion Brown, who was an integral part of sixties free jazz, having played on Coltrane's 'Ascension' and collaborated on Archie Shepp's 'Firemusic'. This record features the legendary Rashied Ali on drums and
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Rova Saxophone Trio founding member (and former AQ-er) Ackley's debut as leader, with Masada members Greg Cohen and Joey Baron rounding out the trio. "...moves from conceptual improvisations to lovely ballads and straight-ahead swingers, showcasing one of the great soprano saxophone jazz soloists around." Truly.
Found a little handful of these tucked away in the closet, way out of print, last copies ever of this chunk of heavy noisy weirdness...
A greatest hits of sorts from these Wisconsin noisemakers. After several outrageously limited self released albums, mostly given to friends over the course of 4 years, this psycho redneck power electronic duo have remained almost totally unheard until now.
You did see the words power electronics above, so you know this ain't gonna be no easy listening, in fact, this is some seriously difficult listening, but surprisingly enough not in a harsh noise sort of way, this isn't just a continuous wall of Merzbowian white noise, the sounds here are surprisingly listenable, warped and cracked and damaged and fucked up, but for the iron eared, surprisingly pleasant. Jagged shards of fractured synths, chopped into strange rhythms, radio broadcasts buried in effects, loops colliding and overlapping, dense clouds of detuned instruments, amp buzz and tape hiss, howled distorted vox, some almost songs, tons of melting tones, babies crying over throbbing low end rumbles, thick billowing sheets of pulsating distorted crunch, tangled melodies so dense and blurred they become one huge squirming amorphous lump, distorted percussion, damaged tape player rehearsal tapes, and whatever the hell else these guys could come up with, all pulled apart, and jammed back together into heaping piles of thick droning, fucked up free form percussive and FX laden noise.
Definitely cool stuff, and for folks averse to truly harsh noise, Bruce Carkiss might just be your entree into a filthy, grimy, crusty soundworld you only dreamed about.
Never before released on cd recordings "from Lenny Bruce's private tape stash."
Two new, 7"s of delicious skweee here folks! From the same Portland label, Poisonous Gases, that previously brought us Lazercrotch. Now they've gone and signed up a genuine Scandinavian skweeer, Daniel Savio from Sweden, as well as Portland's Michael Bruce (NOT the guy from the Alice Cooper Band we're pretty sure).
Bruce's 7" is squarely in the skweee tradition, dropping the bass and the blip-bloop of 8-bitty sci-fi video game SFX across two groovy instrumentals. Very cool, glad to see US skweee making a showing. Too bad Bruce didn't come up with a catchy monicker like Lazercrotch though, we've probably be guaranteed to sell more of 'em...
The plurally named Bruces is actually lone gent Alex McManus. If his name doesn't immediately ring a bell, the folks he's played with sure will -- Lambchop, Vic Chesnutt, Bright Eyes. The multi-instrumentalist McManus has crafted a mesmerizing album of hushed, earthy folk. Very haunting and atmospheric, especially on songs like "Pilot Light" and "Nerviosa". Fans of the above mentioned artists as well as Mountain Goats and Will Oldham should certainly lend an ear to The Bruces. Wonderful!
Alex McManus -- longtime member of Lambchop, musical collaborator with Vic Chesnutt, and touring member of Bright Eyes -- releases a second solo album under the moniker The Bruces. Super sincere, quiet, singer-songwriter material in the vein of the aforementioned acts, plus Wilco. McManus' voice has depth, somewhere between Jay Farrar and Jimmie Dale Gilmore.
Solo improvisations for oboe, English horn, and Chinese suona by the frontman of Chicago's Lozenge. Pieces range from ear piercing sonic attacks ala Peter Brotzmann to calm, intimate gestures reminiscent of Kaoru Abe or Evan Parker. The liner notes claim that Entymology was recorded in a living room, quite convincing given the personal nature of these pieces. The lo-fidelity of this recording is quite charming as you can hear the gasps for air between notes as well as the clanking sound of the keys of Bruckmann's instruments as he renders them unrecognizable! Look out for an upcoming CD of duets between Bruckmann and various improvisational luminaries!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Using very lo-fi technology (mostly just broken tape recorders), Anton Bruhin has constructed a stunning musique concrete album of geometric irregularities, natural delay effects, and spiralling acoustic layers. A great example of lo-fi creativity.
An archival release of '70s cassette-tape works by this odd Swiss sound artist, consisting of environmental sounds, ping-pong recording techniques, and other spatial / audio experimentation. Byram thinks most of this is the sound of good European arts funding gone to waste, except for the last piece, which is an absolute mindnumbing half-hour palindromic recitation of German
On a side note: If you come into AQ fairly frequently you may have observed this customer we have that is always knocking shit off the counter. We want to say something to him but we're too embarrassed to confront his hamfistedness, so we're passive-aggressively mentioning it here, for 6000 people to enjoy. Well, said customer has acquired a young apprentice now, and one night the two of them came in together to polish up their anti-social skills. Anyway, the younger fella comes up to the counter to ask about this cd, if we have two of them -- cuz of course these guys must be peas in a pod -- so they can both get one. Well, turns out that the nicely sealed copies we showed 'em both had ever so slight dimples on the upper right hand corner (like a light impression made by a pointed object, so slight as to be practically invisible). Because of this, annoying apprentice desired the display copy instead. But if YOU can deal with the "invisible dimple", we've still got a couple copies.
Mexican drug-lords playing metal? Ok, nobody believes that anymore. But will you believe that there's members of Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir on here? Well, apparently that's drummer Nick Barker. Anyhow, the mysterious metal might-be-Mexican supergroup known as Brujeria have a new record.
Greatest hits record from the only metal band made up of Mexican drug lords on the run. Or not. This band of extreme metal bandits may or may not contain members of Faith No More, Fear Factory, Cradle of Filth, and Dimmu Borgir. But they most definitely spit
Another strange sonic missive from this mysterious (black? doom?) metal outfit, whose first record was a big hit around here, the strangely monickered Uterine Acid Swishes, a confusional sprawl of clean post rock guitar jangle, downtuned noise drenched doomic dirgery and grim blasting blackness, all wound up into a seriously twisted chunk of outsider blackdoom metal weirdness.
Like Uterine Acid Swishes, Last Living Dream is made up of three ultra long songs, the shortest about 15 minutes, the longest nearly 27 minutes, and that half hour jam just so happens to be the opener, and begins with some spidery skeletal guitar (some slide guitar too it sounds like), a little piano, all wreathed in echo and reverb, melancholy and minor key, before the sound of birds leads us into the song proper, and explosive blast of frenzied riffing, pounding drum damage, and some seriously gurgled demonic growls, the melodies insectoid and buzzing, the track slipping from blown out and dense to more muted and melodic, but fierce at all time, lurching from frantic blast, to midtempo pound and back again. Dizzying and chaotic. About 7 minutes in, the track peels back in a chorus of shrieks, leaving some atonal clean guitars to drift over the echoey drum crunch and guttural vocal bellows, the vibe sort of twisted and poppy, but still blackened, leading into another blown out blast of black buzz, before finally stumbling into a funereal ultradoom plod, the distorted guitars dissipating, leaving just weirdly recorded drums, distant jangle and those vokills, only to burst into another wave of pounding fury, and finally unfurling with a weird abstract post rock jangle meander.
"Where Ghosts Go To Die (The Swamp)" is almost like a second part of the first song, a pounding churning blackness, laced with mesmerizing melody, the drums boomy and low fidelity, their strange sound only adding to the already strange vibe, this track too slipping from relentless blasting, to lumbering sonic death march, to cool tangled midtempo mathiness, with plenty of chug and grind and pound, finishing off with some creepy classical piano, before finally slipping into the final number, "Through A Tunnel Of Trees", swirling winds, strange percussion, spidery guitars, a tangled haunted ambience, almost militaristic sounding with those drums, the heaviness creeping in, a super sludgey doomy drift, the vocals and guitars spreading out in a black fog, over the pounding drums, minor key melodies drifting up from the deep, a few bursts of black blast and a few twisted bits of blurred fuzzed out guitar churn later, the track shifts gears and settles in a spaced out, Hypothermia like outro, all booming drums and chiming, crunchy guitars. The whole thing more polished and songy than the last record, but no less grim, twisted and doomy... black, bleak and HEAVY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Another mysterious metal missive from the fringes, a record recommended to us by our customer Logan, from the strangely monickered Brulvahnatu, and an even more strangely titled album, Uterine Acid Swishes.
We weren't exactly sure what to expect, even after we threw this on, the opening is all chiming reverbed jangle guitar, we knew it was metal, but beyond that we were ready to be surprised, and surprised we were, the band kicks in and it's all epic majestic and melodic, haunting melodies over doomic crunch, and then the band switch gears again, and we're off, buzzing, blasting, a flurry of muddy, murky, frenzied riffing, the low end monstrous, wrapped around everything like a black cloud, the vocals a deep monstrous growl, the sound some warped black metal / funeral doom hybrid, slipping from spare, skeletal slo-mo melodic drift, to classic sounding melodic metal, to fierce grim buzz and back again, and that's just in the first song. The tracks are looooooong, none shorter than 17 minutes, the longest a whopping 26 minutes. The other two tracks tread similar ground, although "Autopsy In Mourning" gets WAY doomy, crushing, and heavy, before stumbling into a more stripped down murky plod, super moody and mournful and miserable, building to a chaotic climax, before lurching back into a sludgey death march.
The final nearly 30 minute track "Suffer Long", begins with just piano (or maybe it's dulcimer), haunting and melancholy, a funereal creep, with cool tangled guitar leads over the top, eventually launching into a lumbering doomic crush, and over the next half hour, the song drifts from weird sample laced dronedoomdirge, to pounding almost classic sounding doom, to abstract ambience, to churning riffage, ultra doom obsessives will be in heaven (or is it hell?!).
Killer stuff, and according to the back cover there are 7 more releases in the Brulvahnatu series, all released in the last 3 years, so if this pushes your black doom buttons, there's plenty more where this came from!
One of many characters in the whole post-industrial diaspora who we have not really carried in part due to the difficulty in getting a hold of many of Brume's releases on small European imprints and in part due to not knowing where to start, especially with a catalog that tracks somewhere around 100 releases over 25 years. So, we'll take our cue from Drone Records and their Subtantia Innominata series of 10"s for this introduction into the woolly musique concrete and viral electronics from the French artist Christian Renou. His is a very creepy type of sound design with B-side backmasking, nightmarish vocals all laced throughout atonal, sci-fi tension, squiggled radiophonic explorations, and dark ambient swells, it's almost a cross between the incidental moments of the Logan's Run soundtrack and Coil's Musick To Play In The Dark. The A-side situates a low-end thrumming that's all brooding and ominous in the Svarte Greiner and Deathprod means of shadow-sound manipulation; but out of nowhere comes a crushed horn that's probably a saxophone, but sounds way more like a Tibetan horn with an unkempt scratchiness and apocalyptic fervor made all the more evident through a slow and heavy mechanical iron-on-stone hammering that brings this track to its definitive end.
Oh how we fancy field recordings here at AQ - of both the unaltered, pristine kind and the modified, manipulated variety. The man behind this release is one Mr. Jon Brumit, and as the title states, he captured these sounds at the city dump. In the liner notes, it is specified that no effects processors were used. Sound sources and equipment included minidisc recorders, a dr sample, a cheap microphone, a full drum kit, a Mac G3 computer and the impressive array of stuff that the dump had to offer... among them were a Nerf Ballzooka, joggin trampolines, a Hello Dolly soundtrack lp, an espresso maker, a mint children's drumkit, bowling balls, a 16mm projector with a silent cowgirl film, a marquee sign, a 100' tape measure, a chandelier, a wetsuit and an assortment of boom boxes and clock radios.
MPEG Download: "Dawn of Time" [/audio/jonbrummitdawnoftime.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Dawn of Time" [/audio/jonbrummitdawnoftime.m3u]
Jon Brumit's last audio outing was a a sonic tour through the city dump, a dark delirious soundscape of found sounds, rickety malfunctioning equipment, all manner of scratched records and discarded tape decks, broken down computers, all cleverly and gorgeously woven together into one of the coolest weirdest records we've heard. On Vendetta Retreat, the soundtrack to a yet to be released film, Brumit seems to have honed those already impressive organizational and compostitional skills, resulting in a record that had both Allan and Andee running to the front of the store to see what the heck was playing. In fact everytime we play this in the store everyone wants to know what we're playing as well. Vendetta Retreat starts off as a super minimal slab of "skipping cd" style plunderphonia, a super intense and spare soundscape of ultra brief fragments of found record, bursts of electric guitar, the briefest snatch of a vocal line, tiny frgaments of record crackle -- not sure if Brumit's sound source is still the junkyard, but it definitely sounds like maybe it is. These sparse musical fragments create a strange disembodied melody, jagged and compellingly imprecise. Eventually, the empty space behind these bursts and shards fills up with a darkly propulsive electronic framework, minimal and murky, a distant framework for the Brumit's strange Jeck-style broken turntable workout.
The second track takes the rough edit sound collage of the first track and fills it out with wild octopoidal tribal drumming, massive swells of cymbal sizzle and percussive bombast and wave after wave of layered drones, guitars thick with distortion and other effects, hiccupping loops buried beneath, barely audible, adding more texture than anything else, a huge swirl of rumble and whir like a noisier more abstract Growing, or Finnish hypnorockers Circle at their most unhinged and densely ambient. The final track is the logical extension of the track before, taking a dense swath of droney dirge as its fundamental loop, a repeating hypntotic stuttering krautrocky groove, that goes on and on and on (and if we had our way would keep going on and on forever). Imagine your favorite Circle record or some classic Faust track, with a scratch right in the middle, so it skips repeatedly, an unintentional loop, the perfect pulsing hypno riff, the best chunk of hazy repetitive riffing you can imagine, then over the top drape bits of gentle guitar filligree and clouds of disembodied notes. So amazing. One of those tracks that need never stop, we'd be happy to just drift off and bliss out until the end of time. The track evenutally falls apart, the riffs fade and dissipate, the jagged bursts of sound fragments return, this time even more strangely obtrusive, and wreathed in dense halos of echo and delay that send those shards reverberating into the ether, while underneath, the original minimal groove returns, also a bit more affected and damaged, until the whole thing fragments into its constituent parts before finally blinking out with one final blast of disembodied sound. Wow. Can't wait to see the film. And actually the film will be a compilation of clips and shorts collected over the next year, there's information on how to submit footage inside the cd. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
One-sided lp of fragile loner folk by Linda Bruner, the female singer of recently discovered sixties psych band, Pisces. One original and five covers. Just her voice fraught with sadness and a guitar. Spare and lovely. The B-side features an etching of the cover photo.
