Not having journeyed to the Dead C extravaganza in LA, I'm glad to see this LP by Burning Star Core, who opened that show. A project of C Spencer Yeh, whose name I've been seeing around for years, not knowing he was such a fine noisemaker. Side one of the LP is prime dronological beauty encased in fiery treated violin and carefully used electronics. The effect is a sizzling wall of
Side two is Yeh on computer and I sort of miss the violin but it's also good, unpredictable, and detailed. It seems like lots of people are stepping up to the drone plate these days, and it can be hard to sort the dilettantes still in search of their own style from the true dronemakers. Fans of the Sunroof! / Skullflower / Richard Youngs axis will like this.
Limited to 500 copies. Recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
First in a three part series from C. Spencer Yeh and his Burning Star Core. The last BSC we made a record of the week, as Yeh began to harness his noise into something way more compelling and cohesive, a propulsive melodic droneworld of sound. And this shit just keeps getting better. And this is one of those singles that's so good, it most definitely should have been a full length (and will merit much in the way of repeat plays).
Side one is a dense blurred of processed strings, guitar, violin, it's hard to tell, let's call em guitars, but the buzzing and reverberating strings are smeared into a densely layered Niblockian soundscape of pulsing looped guitars, hovering beneath squiggles of psychedelic scrawl and streaks of effulgent feedback.
The flipside is way more laid back and tranquil, a sort of Tangerine Dream-esque muted synthesizer workout, minor key tones fluttering and whirring, peppered with swooshes and space age bloops, while atop this slow moving stream unfurl melancholy melodies, stretched into long smears of warm shimmer, all coming together in a chaotic crescendo at the end, reverbed voices tangled up with the guitars, everything becoming more and more blurry and fuzzy.
Sounds just as good at 45 as it does at 33, packaged in a super spare black sleeve, on Hospital Productions.
The violin is probably the last instrument you think of when you think of underground cd-r noise drone music. Okay, maybe not the last, but it's pretty far down the list for sure. Yet Mr. C. Spencer Yeh has forged a career with his trusty violin, creating a sizable body of work, ranging from full on blown out noise assault, to breathless delicate beauty, to propulsive krautrock infused space rock, and various mixes of all three. We even Record Of The Week-ed his Operator Dead album a while back. But where that record was more of a group effort, this latest disc, Challenger, finds Yeh returning to his solo roots, getting a minimal amount of assistance on just a couple of tracks, but handling the bulk of the soundmaking himself. And while there is no list of instrumentation, we have to assume that violin is not the only instrument present. NOBODY is that good. But even so, Yeh is really really good, and with a violin and whatever else he has in his soundmaking arsenal, he has once again conceived something of great beauty and import, a collection of sounds, of SONGS, an album that is cohesive yet varied, personal and introspective, yet somehow epic and expansive. If anything, this new disc finds Yeh moving his BSC into the rarefied world of spaced out Krautrock. Neu!, Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, A.R. & The Machines, Brian Eno. Much in the same way aQ faves Expo '70, channel seventies space kraut, so does Yeh, but where Expo '70 create thick heavy spaced out dronescapes, the sounds on Challenger are much more melodic, and drifty, dreamy and mesmerizing. There is plenty of noise to be found, but it's doled out sparingly, melodies are sometimes halo-ed in buzz, or delicate rhythms wreathed in feedback, but it's always muted and minimal, allowing the melody and arrangement to shine, and shine they do, each track, a gorgeously repetitive stretch of space-y abstract groove, looped, but slowly shifting and changing shape, propulsive but subtly so.
The opening two track salvo is some of the most blissfully beautiful soft noise we've heard. In fact, even calling it noise might be doing it a disservice. The opener is a slow burning slab of minimal murmur, laced with soft tinkling chimes, an abstract ghostly melody over a softly pulsing drone, eventually augmented by some shimmery hiss and random sampled ambience, but instead of distracting, these sonic events, cars driving past, wind, tape hiss, they only add texture to the glimmering drift beneath.
The second track begins with a riff (played on a violin?) that is quickly wrapped up in corrosive swaths of warbly effected buzz, the two elements twisting around one another, creating a strange churning soundscape of stretched out space rock riffage and crumbling distorted drone, that manages to be absolutely riveting.
The next few tracks offer up some more experimental fare, brief chunks of ambient weirdness, one of plastic cup percussion, heavily reverbed, in a wide open stretch of distant whir and tangled electronics, another a symphony of processed vocals, looped and chopped into a hiccupping stuttering soundscape, eventually joined by soft shimmery chords and warm chordal buzz, yet another a collection of crinkles and crackles, like someone stepping on bubble wrap, balling up wrapping paper and a campfire, all draped over the sounds of children laughing and playing.
All before returning to the blissed out dronedrift of the opening few tracks. Reverbed jaw harp floats in a field of static hum and twinkling fragmented melody, deep tones are woven into gentle lilting melodies, symphonic snippets are looped and assembled into a slow building drone, underpinned by fuzzy droney melodies, totally stirring and epic, haunting and mysterious, a bit of Jeck mixed in with BSC's usual glorious buzz, maybe one of the most moving (and possibly one of the best) tracks we've ever heard from Yeh and his 'Core. The final track is an Avarus like coda, sheets of hiss like rainfall (might very well be), bits of percussive chime and clank, plenty of hiss and whir, over the top, a shimmering high end electric melody, that drifts and stutters dreamily, like some alien lullaby.
Absolutely stunning. And thus, entirely and unequivocally recommended.
It seems like many of the least prolific noisemakers are suddenly releasing tons of material, many of them releasing more in a matter of months than they had in the last few years. That seems to be true of C. Spencer Yeh and his Burning Star Core (that is if you don't count the tons of self released and insanely limited tapes, most of which no one we know ever saw let alone heard), with at least three new releases, al of them pretty dang great.
Released on Ultra Eczema, this BSC finds Yeh abandoning the violin, his usual weapon of choice, instead opting for voice, electronics, tape, synths and 'objects'. The result is a lot different than his usual sound, this is not so drone-y or expansive, instead it's dense and busy and really really weird. Opening up with a squall of grinding crunchy insectoid chirp and stutter, draped over abstract chimes and bells, it sounds like some alien effects unit gone haywire. Not long after slow and simple, sad piano is introduced, and it too is wrapped in strange FX, swirling clouds of shimmery buzz and glitch, swooping slabs of reverb drenched pulse and pound. The record continues on, freaked out and acid fried, vocals are slowed down and chopped up, tangled into all manner of industrial crunch and buzzing squelching glitched out electronics.
Probably the biggest surprise is about halfway through side two when Yeh locks into some weird new wave groove, a simple piano and drums eighties rock break down, off kilter and mildly demented sounding but still weirdly groovy, complete with haunting melodies and fuzzy atmospheric synths.
Pressed on opaque grey vinyl, packaged in a GIGANTIC six panel fold out poster sleeve, one side a dizzying metallic silver and black optical illusion sort of pattern, inside a similar metallic gold and black pattern, but surrounding a creepy bug eyed figure and all manner of acid fried nightmare visions.
ALREADY SOLD OUT AND OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL. So act fast...
Not sure what it is lately, but there seems to be a strange occurance of not-so-prolific bands releasing a bunch of records all at once. For BSC it's three releases in the last few months. Which is actually cool since they haven't really had all that many proper releases and have been recording since at least the mid-ninties. BSC is mostly the work of C. Spencer Yeh, and Mes Soldats Stupides '96 - '04, as the title implies, collects lots of random recordings from the last 8 years or so. Limited cd-r releases, cassettes, compilations, rehearsals and a few unreleased tracks. Disc one is really strange, sounding like it was mostly constructed using voices, distorted and affected, chopped up and reassembled, slowed down and sped up layered and multi tracked into random and abstract free-noise workouts, sometimes spastic and noisy, but more often sort of droney and hypnotic. Very organic and natural sounding but quite alien sounding in their new noise rock context. Disc two is a lot more free noise, abstract rock, with stumbling percussion, feeding back guitars, lots of tape hiss and amp buzz, more along the lines of the Dead C or Total. Buzzing droning chaotic free rock splatter that slips into smeary soundscapes as often as it explodes into freenoise fragments.
Double disc packaged in a spiffy double digipak with an extensive track listing / insert.
Normally the solo project of 'noise violinist' C. Spencer Yeh, on Operator Dead... Post Abandoned, Burning Star Core has been expanded to a four piece, with Yeh on violin, voice, electronics, junkbox and trumpet, Trevor Tremaine on drums, percussion and objects, AQ fave Mike Shiflet on computer, electronics and voice, and Robert Beatty on electronics, who is also credited with being "acoustic appraiser."
As much as we've dug past BSC records, this one is definitely shaping up to be our favorite. This Burning Star Core Quartet thing really suits them. The opening track alone, "When The Tripods Came" is a serious contender for best 'noise rock' track of the year. Maybe ever. Calling it noise rock is hardly fair though. It's a rambling sprawling slow moving driftscape of buzz and distortion. It's almost how you might imagine a modern, noisier Taj Mahal Travellers to sound. In fact the whole record sort of has that same sort of spiritual organic vibe. Taking bits and pieces from other purveyors of longform drone noise, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Total, Sunroof!, mixing in some ultra-free jazz, some raga like buzz, some old school improvised ambience, then running it all through a battery of modern effects and unleashing this thick viscous, incredibly heavy, yet impossibly beautiful (especially for a 'noise' record) sound.
A lot of it has to do with the drums, a relentless chaotic octopoidal rhythmic frenzy, skittering as often as pounding, giving the thick snarling ambience direction and propulsion. Turning a record of drifts and shimmers, into something aggressive, something fierce... but the drums are just the framework, supporting the massive sonic weight of the swirling, churning lush noisiness above, beneath and around them.
The first two tracks, nearly 40 minutes, are some of the finest drone-dirge-space-improv EVER. Some impossible dream jam, The Taj Mahal Travellers vs. Crystal Fist vs. Wolf Eyes, mix in some strange disembodied horns, some Tim Hecker like blurred melancholia, add copious amounts of extra buzz and distorted crumble, wrap everything in a bleary eyed crystalline shimmer, and let the whole thing just ooze out of the speakers.
The third and fourth tracks are much more brief and less dense, balancing the bristling buzz of the first two, in the third, a muted warble underpins shimmering high end harmonics, strange muted mechanical whirs and creaks underneath, as well as burbling underwater bass, random bits of percussion, metallic thrum and long streaks of feedback, eventually building into a sort of an abstract tribal space drift, like the members of No Neck and Sunburned Hand jettisoned from the airlock into deep space mid-jam. The fourth is a rhythmic free for all, the drums a constant splatter and shimmer, spreading out like percussive ripples, the cymbals sizzling out a thick layer of constant buzzing whir to compliment the groaning blown out shimmer and reverb drenched washes of sound, everything growing gradually more distorted until it reaches a fever pitch, a lumbering swirl of crumbling low end and pounding drum damage.
A new Burning Star Core record, but not exactly a NEW record, more like a NEW record made out of OLD records, as in 4 loooong tracks, assembled and edited from 66 live recordings from the years 1997-2008, a pretty cool idea for sure and it definitely suits BSC, their songs are long anyway, but here they're transformed into epic space drone collages, a plunderphonic chunk of psychedelia.
The first part is a dense chaotic sprawl of total space rock, the drums wild and blown out and frantic, all of the other instruments in a frenzy of swirling effects and in-the-red freakout, which gives way to some glistening upper register ur-drone, like Sunroof! or Pelt, or heck, even Burning Star Core. The second half of the first part is yet more abstract drift, dense layered sound, streaked and blurred and smeared into giant swells of fuzzed out rumbles, peppered with bits of percussion and electronic glitch, finally finishing up with some murky industrial thump.
Part two explodes with some super distorted psychrone freakout, the drums so in the red they distort and change shape, the violin and/or guitar grind and scrape and squeal and howl and shriek, the drums a chaotic cacophony, like a dozen free jazz bands battling it out in an empty swimming pool, before things get a bit more mellow, the band slipping into something a little more Dead C, a meandering dirgey noise rock stumble, that works its way through still more space rock, and several clouds of crunch and clatter and creak.
Part three begins with some garbled processed sort of beatbox vocals, which gradually get more and more effected before things get noisy again, bleats and skronks, quickly subsumed by a thick wall of crumbling buzz, a thick skull rattling thrum, that dissolves into still more abstract free noise damage and haunting ambient drift.
The final part opens up with some whirring drones beneath creaks and clatters, deep bass pulses, which slowly build into some sort-of-free-jazz, which in turn transforms into some blown out industrial rumble, only to finally finish up in a blurred buzzy tangle of spidery violins and groaning low end drones. Phew. Pretty intense stuff, and while you can't necessarily HEAR the 66 source tapes, these tracks do feel dense, as if you can FEEL the fact that 66 tracks were somehow cut up and crammed and layered into just 4.
Heavy, heady, trippy, noisy and psychedelic, a cool way to experience the last 11 years of Burning Star Core in just 66 minutes...
For a band that's been around for a while now, Burning Star Core has kept a pretty low profile. Plenty of vinyl only and limited cd-r releases and loads of shows, but still they've remained pretty well under the radar. That all seems about to change with the release of three, count 'em, THREE new compact discs!! The first of those three to reach our ears, The Very Heart Of The World, was recorded between 2002 and 2004 and is everything we've come to expect from these guys (or this guy, as BSC is mostly the work of one C. Spencer Yeh), a gorgeously expansive soundfield of ruptured drones, skittering scraped violin and gurgling electronics, very gritty and crunchy, but still completely dreamy and soothing. Employing the unlikely instrumentation of violin, guitar, electronics, clarinet, organ, percussion, drums, trumpet, piano and voice, BSC conjure up a weird washed out cinematic soundscape, equal parts the Dead C, Wolf Eyes, and Birchville Cat Motel, where drone is obviously the order of the day, but with brief excursions into weird dada-ist voice experiments, blissed out post rock rhythms, skronky free space-jazz, soaring and epic spectacle and even a little full on noise. Haunting and harrowing, brooding and beautiful, this sounds like a seriously Dead C'd Godspeed You Black Emperor, but a GSYBBE with less Canada and more midwest, less Fellini and more Romero, less Constellation and more RRR. Awesome!
Three new tapes this week from aQ beloved tape label The Tapeworm (out of four new releases, we'll list #4 next time, it's a doozy!), running the gamut from solo piano to opera to bedroom recorded tape experiments to this. A wild skronked out blast of Norwegian free jazz from his drum/sax duo, described by the label as "harsh free jazz" which this most certainly is, the drumming relentless and intricate and wildly chaotic, the sax bleating and squealing and spitting out insane atonal melodic runs, the two instruments sparring constantly, like dueling solos, the method to their madness surfacing here and there, but for the most part a head spinning barrage of sound, that will probably hit the spot for folks into the wildest free jazz, think Borbetomagus meets the Jooklo Duo and you'll be in the ball park.
Dizzyingly intense and wildly relentless, file under the Borbetomagus coined descriptor: 'snuff jazz'.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES.
FINALLY!!!! The reissue all DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM heads have been waiting for! The monolithic BURNING WITCH! For those of you that don't know, before SUNNO))), before Khanate, Stephen O'Malley, along with Greg Anderson at least in the beginning of the band, were digging a mass grave of tortured, drugged to hell, low as fuck, abstract blood smeared DOOM in the band Burning Witch. We're pretty sure most people knew that already and are eagerly awaiting this dark treasure. First off, this is probably my (Matt) favorite doom band EVER, so I'm biased, but this record changed me forever, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. This record makes me want to hide in my room.
The sound of the Witch is everything you can hope for in a heavy band, BRUTAL guitars downtuned to the center of the earth, plodding, fucked up rhythmic patterns, twisted harmonics beating against each other, piercing feedback, noisy textures, and ANGUISHED vocals, courtesy of the ultimate goth, Edgy 59. The vocals range from high pitched, bamboo shards under the fingernail, tortured screeching, to low pitched, classic metal crooning, and even some death metal grunting to boot! All of these songs are structured in interesting ways, the sounds stretched out to the point of transcendence, spacious and demented, but strangely melodic. Every sound on these discs is allowed its own room to live and breath/wither and die, fully resonating in your cavernous skull, until your eyes glaze over, and catatonic fugue state is achieved.
This collection includes both the Towers... EP, which is more of a pummeling, savage slab of heaviness, and also The Rift.Canyons.Dreams EP, which is maybe a little darker and more abstract...both totally inhuman, both completely menacing, and essential to any fan of DOOM. Also includes some tracks from the Goatsnake split, which is loooong out of print, and also a "drop card", which is a thing that lets you download a killer live set, plus some never heard BW demo material. SICK!
The packaging is also AMAZING, This double disc set comes with a beautiful bound booklet, filled to the brim with cryptic occult iconography printed in stunning gold ink, and some appropriately scary band photos, along with some commentary from that fella Aaron Turner, you know that dude? Totally scary, completely demented, innovative, weird, HEAVY as all the laments of hell's dammed souls combined! Pretty much essential for fans of all things, uh, doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomy!
RECOMMENDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A few weeks back we gushed and gushed like crazy over this legendary doom classic, all gussied up and elaborately re-packaged and re-issued by the fine folks at Southern Lord. Well, we just got our hands on the Japanese version, now a triple cd instead of a double cd, the packaging very similar, the only real difference being that the Southern Lord pressing came with a download card, so you could download some demos and live shows, well, that's what's on the third disc here. So if you already downloaded those tracks, you don't really need this unless you want to own those tracks on cd. And if you somehow missed this the first time around, and the $42 price tag doesn't scare you off, then by all means grab one! It's worth it. And be warned, we only got a handful, so when we run out, be prepared to wait for us to get more from Japan.
FINALLY!!!! The reissue all DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM heads have been waiting for! The monolithic BURNING WITCH! For those of you that don't know, before SUNNO))), before Khanate, Stephen O'Malley, along with Greg Anderson at least in the beginning of the band, were digging a mass grave of tortured, drugged to hell, low as fuck, abstract blood smeared DOOM in the band Burning Witch. We're pretty sure most people knew that already and are eagerly awaiting this dark treasure. First off, this is probably my (Matt) favorite doom band EVER, so I'm biased, but this record changed me forever, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. This record makes me want to hide in my room.
The sound of the Witch is everything you can hope for in a heavy band, BRUTAL guitars downtuned to the center of the earth, plodding, fucked up rhythmic patterns, twisted harmonics beating against each other, piercing feedback, noisy textures, and ANGUISHED vocals, courtesy of the ultimate goth, Edgy 59. The vocals range from high pitched, bamboo shards under the fingernail, tortured screeching, to low pitched, classic metal crooning, and even some death metal grunting to boot! All of these songs are structured in interesting ways, the sounds stretched out to the point of transcendence, spacious and demented, but strangely melodic. Every sound on these discs is allowed its own room to live and breath/wither and die, fully resonating in your cavernous skull, until your eyes glaze over, and catatonic fugue state is achieved.
This collection includes both the Towers... EP, which is more of a pummeling, savage slab of heaviness, and also The Rift.Canyons.Dreams EP, which is maybe a little darker and more abstract...both totally inhuman, both completely menacing, and essential to any fan of DOOM. Also includes some tracks from the Goatsnake split, which is loooong out of print, and also a third bonus disc with a killer live set, plus some never heard BW demo material. SICK!
The packaging is also AMAZING, This double disc set comes with a beautiful bound booklet, filled to the brim with cryptic occult iconography printed in stunning gold ink, and some appropriately scary band photos, along with some commentary from that fella Aaron Turner, you know that dude? Totally scary, completely demented, innovative, weird, HEAVY as all the laments of hell's dammed souls combined! Pretty much essential for fans of all things, uh, doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomy!
RECOMMENDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We've got just a handful of these expensive new Burning Witch 4lp/dvd boxes, they're fancy and SUPER limited, so odds are once we sell out we won't be able to get more. Seems likely that only super obsessive fans are gonna want this, but just in case, here's the aQ lowdown on Burning Witch, via our review of the 'complete' Burning Witch double cd we reviewed a while back, we'll get to the box and all the craziness it contains in a moment�
FINALLY!!!! The reissue all DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM heads have been waiting for! The monolithic BURNING WITCH! For those of you that don't know, before SUNNO))), before Khanate, Stephen O'Malley, along with Greg Anderson at least in the beginning of the band, were digging a mass grave of tortured, drugged to hell, low as fuck, abstract blood smeared DOOM in the band Burning Witch. We're pretty sure most people knew that already and are eagerly awaiting this dark treasure. First off, this is probably one of our favorite doom bands EVER, so we're maybe biased biased, but this record changed us forever, and we're not entirely sure if that's a good thing. This record makes us want to hide in our room, lower the shades, and never come out.
The sound of the Witch is everything you can hope for in a heavy band, BRUTAL guitars downtuned to the center of the earth, plodding, fucked up rhythmic patterns, twisted harmonics beating against each other, piercing feedback, noisy textures, and ANGUISHED vocals, courtesy of the ultimate goth, Edgy 59. The vocals range from high pitched,bamboo shards under the fingernail, tortured screeching, to low pitched, classic metal crooning, and even some death metal grunting to boot! All of these songs are structured in interesting ways, the sounds stretched out to the point of transcendence, spacious and demented, but strangely melodic. Every sound on these discs is allowed its own room to live and breath/wither and die, fully resonating in your cavernous skull, until your eyes glaze over, and catatonic fugue state is achieved. So this new vinyl box set includes these 4 lps (and we're including all the pertinent technical details direct from the Southern Lord):
--Towers� LP: Recorded by Steve Albini during the vernal equinox 1996 at Robert Lang Studios, Seattle. Originally released as a demo tape in 1996 then released by Slap-A-Ham on vinyl in 1998. 2k were pressed. Southern Lord released a cd version (including Rift.Canyon.Dreams) in 1998. Remastered from the original 1/2" master tape (lost until this version) by Mell Dettmer.
-- Rift.Canyon.Dreams: Recorded by Aaron Evil during the autumnal equinox 1997 at Robert Lang Studios, Seattle. Originally released by Merciless Records on LP in 1998. 500 were pressed. Not only is this lp super rare the covers were very flimsy so most existing copies have a lot of cover damage! Southern Lord released a cd version (including Towers) in 1998.
-- Bleeder b/w Rift.Canyon.Dreams.: Bleeder was a unreleased track from the Towers... (Albini) session. It originally came out on the split cd with Goatsnake on Hydra Head in 2000 now out of print. This song has never been released on vinyl (although test pressings for the Goatsnake split were made finished vinyl was never produced), the Rift.Canyon.Dreams track was an unfinished outtake from the Rift.Canyon.Dreams session. It was mixed/completed by Dahlquist & Randall Dunn circa 2003 and then released on a split with ASVA (BW bassists Stuart�Dahlquists' then new project). 475 copies were pressed. The track was remixed by O'Malley and Dunn in 2007 released on the "Crippled Lucifer" 2xcd reissue via SLR and is the version presented here.
-- Live at the China Club 1996: Raw, grimm live evocation is the only Witch recording ever released with original 2nd guitarist Greg Anderson. This incantation was captured in Ballard, WA at the China Club (previously known as the Red Dragon) in 1996. The Witch was opening for At The Gates and Napalm Death. Anderson played 2 shows with Burning Witch, this being the second (and last!) This is the first time this is available on vinyl. Although not as realized as the studio recordings this give a dark vision of the horror that was to come!
Wowsa! There's also a perfect bound 40 page 12" X12" book that the label describes as "an aggressive visual documentation of the History of Burning Witch", packed with rare photos and liner notes from Aaron Turner (Hydra Head Records / ISIS) and Chris Dodge (SPAZZ, Slap-a-Ham Records). There's also a DVD of never before released Burning Witch performances. Including the band's first ever live show in Seattle from 1996, and features SUNNO)))'s Greg Anderson on second guitar. Also included is an infamous Burning Witch performance on Public Access television!! All the lps are 180 gram vinyl, all housed in Stoughton printed tip-on and direct to board jackets. Everything packed in a heavy duty�Stoughton made slip-case. Phew. You know you want one. We sure do!
Yes, it's the fellow from that Nickelodeon children's show Blue Clues, and yes, he is an admitted big fan of the Flaming Lips. So what does an admitted big FL fan and respectable songwriter who wants to shift career paths do? Answer: Hook up with his heroes (or a couple of his heroes namely the Lips' Steven Drozd and producer Dave Fridmann - if you were really cynical you might be saying "heh, bring in the ringers why doncha?" but I'm sure you're/we're not... really!), record his own debut album and capture the attention of the Play It Again Sam America record label to release it. Sometimes it's that... er... easy.
At any rate, this album suits us just fine, thank you very much. The first few songs lean very heavily on the Flaming Lips/Fridmann blow-out sonic grandeur. Big clouds of fluttering textures and snare drum shuffles linger just above Burns' boyish, sincere voice and the soothing melodies played out on piano, strummed acoustic guitar and thickly distorted electric guitar. However, further on into 'Dustmites you'll find tunes that seem much more personal to Burns both lyrically and stylistically. As the album progresses, things generally mellow out into gentle, down-to-earth, sweetly romantic singer/songwriter stuff, but Burns definitely has some twisted pop sensibilities of his own.
Latest from old-time bluesman Burnside, now kinda making a bid for the alt rock electronica market a la Beck (or at least, his label is). Includes a respectful remix by Alec Empire. And, when it comes right down to it, this is actually pretty darn good.
It seems you can hear each and every one of R.L. Burnside's 73 years whenever he opens his mouth. It's clear he's had his share of hard times. It's in his amazing, raw, weathered voice and in his brooding words. He can sing the true old Mississippi blues like no one else. And that's definitely the best way to hear him - on his own, but on this album, he's chosen to blend his blues with seemingly unlikely more modern styles and artists. Beats, scratching, synths, sampling, and definite ProTools editing pepper these recordings creating a respectfully unobtrusive yet lively backdrop for R.L.'s vocals.
The long awaited debut from these East Coast metallic grinders who up until now only had a few singles and a split cd available. I have to say the record kind of took me by surprise. If you took out the two or three blasting grind parts from each song you'd
Furious blast of political punk rock / grind, with ultra complex arrangements, weirdly atonal licks, thick, downtuned riffs and incomprehensibly wicked drumming courtesy of drum god Dave Witte from Discordance Axis, Melt Banana and about a million other bands. BBTS stretch their wings a bit this time around with lots of midtempo groove, some almost-straight-ahead punk rock, and some Neurosis-y sludge, but it all comes back to the grind eventually, with wild bursts of blazing blast beats and buzzing riffs.
Man, there sure are more and more amazing grind bands these days. It's like all kids do these days is practice blast beats instead of doing their homework. But who's complaining? This is a split from two of grinds brightest pupils. Both are fast and furious, the production is top notch, and the songs from both bands are completely fucking brutal.
Another glorious blast of blown out bong smoke free rock dope jams the way only these Burnt Hills cats can do it. We won't bother going into too much detail as this puppy is limited to 50 COPIES, we got a bunch, but they won't last long.�
Burnt Hills, on this particular evening in May of 2007 consisted of NINE members, seven guitars, five drummers, one bass, folks obviously swapping back and forth, and it sounds like it.�A super fluid, chaotic confluence of sound. Like some lost subterranean Crash Worship Drum jam wrapped in thick sheets of Haino-like guitar skree, everything enveloped in thick clouds of smoky FX, like some musical opium den. The bass and the guitars are thick and slippery, swooping amidst the relentless percussion, and the wild squalls of psychedelic freakout. At times it almost sounds like some DJ rocking multiple turntables, playing several different No Neck and Sunburned Hand records as the same time, a blurry, drugged out free folk tribal mash up... Awesome.�
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES. Each disc hand numbered. Full color artwork in a mini cd sized dvd-style clamshell case, inside a sticker and printed vellum insert.�
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest blast of skull caving psychedelia from this constantly shifting collective, on this 2 track lp shifting from 5 members to 9, from two guitarists to FOUR guitarists and two drummers, not to mention a xylophonist!!! But none of that is as important as the monstrous sounds these guys and gals conjure up, and it is MONSTROUS.
The A side is a riffy sprawl of blown out bong smoke psych sludge crush, chaotic, relentless rehearsal space drumming, churning, chugging riffage, wild tangled chaotic leads, totally burnt out (of course) and endlessly hypnotic, definitely sounds like this was a 20 minute chunk extracted from an all day, all night drug fueled orgy of psychedelic excess, which of course means FUCK YEAH, and WE WANT MORE.
All you have to do is flip it over, and voila, more. WAY more. The flipside is slower and dirgier, almost doomy, a swirly mass of garbled psych-drone freakout, crashing speaker punishing drum damage, total free for all pound and skree, like the A side, epic and endless, and no doubt part of a massive whole that had Burnt Hills' entire neighborhood, stuffing cotton in their ears and pushing furniture against the doors and windows.
This is about as heavy and druggy and noisy as improv space rock gets these days, and we LOVE it.
LIMITED TO ONLY 99 COPIES! Each one hand numbered, in cool paste on sleeves, got very few of these, so be warned.
Found a small stash of these in the back room, long gone and long out of print, we have 6 or 7 up for grabs...
We've sung the praises of Burnt Hills before. Their epic basement jams are the stuff of legend, sprawling lysergic blowouts that shift from droney and krauty to full on Japanese style psych freakouts, multiple guitarists, sometimes as many as 4 or 5, even a xylophonist (although we have a hard time picking the xylo out of the din), the recordings all start out suddenly, and end the same way, as if someone reached over midjam to push record, and then the tape just runs out, and it's not til the next day, when some hungover dude shuffles down to the basement to collect the tape. Fucking awesome. And this live set from 2007 is no different, a nearly hour long jam, the drums all lo-fi and practice space, the air filled with wailing howling guitars, scrabbling leads, gnarled riffs, long buzzing feedback drenched drones, all stretched waaaaaay waaaaaay out, the band unfurling a glorious sprawl of lysergic, blown out, in-the-red drunk and druggy psychedelic space rock bliss. RAD!
This was LIMITED TO 99 COPIES when we first got it in, each one hand numbered. Again, this is WAY out of print, so these are most definitely the last copies we'll ever get!
In pretty much every review of every Burnt Hills record, we mention that it simply sounds like someone decided to push record on the tape machine mid jam, and then the group just played and played until the tape ran out. Which is what it really sounds like. Set the needle to the groove, and suddenly the listener is thrust into an already-in-progress mega-psych-jam, multiple guitarists, multiple drummers, and one thing that few other space/psych rock outfits can boast, a xylophone player (!!). The sound is a wild, loose, unhinged, drug addled free for all, that against all odds, constantly coalesces into proper grooves, or thick chordal swells, the sound shifting from what sounds like premeditated composition, to full of mind melting freakout, which is pretty much what makes this psych rock collective so endlessly listenable. Their weekly jams, that often feature a traveling musician just passing through, the sound lo-fi, but loud and lively, it's all captured in a suburban basement after all. The thing is with this record, not only does it sound, like the others, as if this was just a random sampling of an even bigger jam, but suddenly, we get the impression, that the jam never stops, that there's some sort of endless jam, with rotating players, around the clock psychedelia, the collective shifting out members and rotating constantly, and every once in a while, someone remembers to press record, and someone else, maybe on a run for more weed, or beer, or LSD, makes a quick stop, presses up some lps, and sends em off, before returning to that smoke filled, sound filled basement.
Live At The Elevens though does bear some distinctive elements, it starts off much more stripped down and rhythmic, the drums driving the show, still tripped out and psychedelic, but way more rhythmic, pounding drums beneath clouds of processed guitars, mesmerizing and hypnotic, some heavy krautpsych for sure, laced with squiggles of melody, before the sound begins to grow more and more dense, and then more chaotic, the multiple guitarists unloading a blissed out cacophony of buzz and howl and crunch, the xylophone unfurling those distinctive chiming melodies, buried beneath the cascade of psychedelic swells. The flipside finds everyone stretching way out, the sound getting way more washed out and almost ambient, blissed out and dreamlike, the sounds all blurred and smeared into thick swaths of buzz and thrum, sheets of caustic distorted crush, softened into billowing chordal swirls, heavy and tranced out. Killer!
Packed like past Burnt Hills records, full color art pasted on to a plain black lp sleeve, LIMITED TO 99 COPIES, each one hand numbered on the lp label. We usually only get one shot at these, so we're guessing once the batch we got sells out, it's probably gone for good. You know what that means.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In reviewing past records by this ever mutating psychedelic space rock collective, we've joked that they must be jamming 24 hours a day, never stopping, just rocking relentlessly tag team style, members playing til near exhaustion, before tagging out, grabbing some winks, a bite to eat, and then tagging right back in. Their core membership bolstered by all sorts of visiting psychedelic dignitaries, but masterminded by the tireless Jackson Wingate, who we can only imagine as some bearded wizardy type, who somehow hasn't slept ONCE in the past decade, for as long as these legendary basement jams have been going on. Hunched over a guitar, his beard nearly obscuring whatever alchemy he's working on the fretboard, while the surrounding musicians do everything they can to keep up. And here, on Non Compos Mentis, much like the handful of BH records we've reviewed before (out of TWENTY full lengths so far), the process seems similar, like someone just wandered down into the jam room, pushed record on the tape player, and just captured the jam already in progress, until the tape ran out. And like those other records, the sound of Burnt Hills continues to be loose and chaotic, noisy and blown out, heady and heavy and hypnotic, not sure if they still have a xylophone player still but we could never hear it anyway, just part of the group's glorious din, and glorious it is. Multiple guitarists, maybe multiple drummers, it almost doesn't matter, in a way, the sound is totally organic, a pulsing, pulsating, ever mutating cloud of psychedelic noise. There are definitely dynamics, and some interplay going on, but really it sounds like it's pretty much full bore, all the amps on 11, a sky full of tangled psych-shred soloing, all wound up in sheets of blurred riffage, and wild drum damage, it's almost ritualistic, an ecstatic communion of sound, the players attempting to reach some sort of musical nirvana, an ear drum shredding, knuckle busting, brain melting mindstate, attainable only through extreme psychedelia. And we're lucky enough to get a little glimpse once in a while.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!! In fancy hand screened jackets. As always, these disappear super quick, and odds are, once we run out, we won't be able to get more.
Another in Noiseville's awesome new Outer Bounds Of Sound lp series (Gary Mundy's Kleistwahr is reviewed elsewhere on this list), each release hand assembled, with custom paste on artwork, each one limited to only 300 copies!
Everyone went nuts for the most recent Burnt Hills full length, Tonite We Ride, reviewed here a while back, and rightfully so, a heavy dose of druggy improvised spaced out psych rock, recorded live in the basement of their house / jampad, as is everything they release, we think, all the product of a long running weekly jam, with an ever shifting lineup, but with a pretty consistent sound. In fact, it wouldn't be all that far fetched to posit that Burnt Hills NEVER stopped jamming, holed up in that basement wreathed in bong smoke, soaked in alcohol, playing on and on and on and on, every day, on through every night, and each release we get, is just a snapshot, a snippet of sound snatched from the frenzied endless riffing and the infinitized drone-space-kraut rocking. It does sound like that, these are not songs as much as movements, and they don't start and develop like a normal piece of music, it's the recorded equivalent of walking down the stairs, pushing the door open, and finding yourself immediately immersed mid-jam, and said jam continues until the record ends, or you get up off that ratty sofa in the corner, the one under the Christmas lights, and head to the stairway, the song only REALLY ending when you get up to the kitchen and finally slam the door.
Raw and lo-fi, chaotic and free, with brief stretches of lucidity, an extended free jam, wrapped in sheets of feedback and tangled riffing, the drums mostly locked into a simple motorik rhythm, but just as often splintering into flurries of free jazz splatter, the tracks themselves, two sidelong ones, veer from locked in distorted druggy groove, to total outsider abstract freeforall, drifting more toward Sunroof! or Skullflower than Acid Mothers Temple. It's a strange brew, equal parts heady experimental noisemaking, and classic garage rock riffing, blown out dronemusic, and tripped out space rock, those two disparate sonic sides get mashed together and the result is, well... THIS. A gloriously cacophonous effects drenched, outsider, heavy riffed, acid soaked, garage kraut space rock freakout. Which obviously means that this is WAY recommended.
Cool handmade covers, pasted on front and back, and again, LIMITED TO ONLY 300 COPIES!!!
Used to be that a single lp could contain the freaked out cloud of head tripping ear splitting sonic bliss unleashed by this sprawling basement psych rock collective, but it seems this time around, this latest batch of cosmic free rock drift, these new heart of the sun, lo-fi drug soaked jams, or more specifically, JAM singular, required more space, and thus spilled out onto 4 whole sides of vinyl. Which makes sense, this is the sort of stuff that benefits from time and space, especially SPACE, the band loose and ramshackle, obviously improvising, but equally obviously in tune with each other (each other being 9 members at this point we think, multiple guitarists, maybe multiple drummers, and a XYLOPHONIST last time we checked), and while maybe not as all out freaked out all the time as on past records, these guys have dialed into some serious spaced out krautrock heaviness/grooviness, sounding at some points like a noisier German Oak, or a way looser and wilder Amon Duul, the drums chaotic but propulsive, the guitars, ALL of them constantly unfurling thick peals and howls, spidery, chugging chords and warped harmonies, a massive psychedelic steel string, amp-melting tangle, all draped over a loose loping rhythmic framework. Long stretches of hypno rock dirge give way to loose free explorations of the outer reaches of psychedelia which in turn occasionally give way to dense gnarled bits of intense drum heavy psych, the guitars taking a backseat to some serious pound and crash, but it's not long before those guitars, ALL of them, swoop in and explode in another blast of blinding sonic effulgence. So good.
LIMITED TO JUST 99 COPIES, each one hand numbered, we have about TEN. Housed in beautiful silkscreened orange and green, eye popping ultra heavy gatefold sleeves, with paste on inner artwork!!
The return of Burnt Hills, a gloriously freaked out, damaged and deranged, psychedelic garage stomping space rock trailer park stage destroying, instrument thrashing drug drenched sonic dervish. We dug the last record tons, and if anything, this one is even better. One looooong hour long drugspacepsych jam that actually tends more towards the krautrock than the noiserock, with its motorik beats and looped sounding riffage, but fear not, it's still chaotic and noisy, the relentless groove filtered through some Dead C and Liquorball free noise filters. This time, there's lots of space, guitars are angular and detuned, in the backgrounds little squalls of distorted buzz drift in and out of range, vocals buried in the mix spouting some wild and wooly mumbo jumbo, getting all tangled up in the spidery guitar melodies and the shimmery sheets of feedback, while over the top, the drums stumble and sputter, a sort of freenoise freejazz mash up, with the various instruments clicking every once in a while into one of the aforementioned krautrock grooves, only to splinter into weird jagged pieces moments later. Burnt Hills are most definitely the Stoner's Pot Palace house band, and odds are they probably get paid in weed...
Packaged in handmade gatefold sleeves, with various artwork and photos affixed to the inside and outside, some hand drawn designs inside as well, LIMITED TO 99 COPIES, each disc hand numbered, the cd-r's cool faux vinyl discs complete with inner label.�
Latest batch of super heavy, blown out, in the red, psychedelic space rock from this ever shifting collective, recorded live, in the Burnt Hills / Flipped Out basement presumably, with FOUR guitar players, a bassist, a drummer, and someone playing XYLOPHONE (!), this is some serious freaked out heaviness, a constant barrage of tangled psychedelic riffage, wild swirling squalls of smoldering leads, the drumming dense and frenzied, the bass more a low end presence than an actual bass, adding to the thickness and the viscosity of the sound, a cacophonous sidelong basement jam, but played as if the house was a starship, and if these folks just rocked hard enough, the house might lift off and carry everyone in it into the heart of the sun, and play hard they do, constantly slipping from thick drumless guitar drones to full on flurries of free noise freakout, but always returning to the mesmerizing space rock groove that seems to run through the whole jam. Thick and explosive and freaked out, druggy and deliriously over the top, a sonic homage to Fushitsusha, White Heaven, Aural Fit, High Rise, Les Rallizes Denudes and all the gods of psychedelia. Fucking fierce!!
LIMITED TO JUST 99 COPIES, we have about TEN. Housed in beautiful green and silver, almost metallic looking, silkscreened sleeves, each one hand numbered.
This is the sound of burnt hills, the smell of burnt hair, the black musical smoke from a burning methlab in an abandoned trailer park, a glorious blown out, burnt out, drug addled freak rock free for all. Imagine the Dead C if they had grown up in Modesto, skipping school and doing lots of speed in the 7-11 parking lot, or if they had spent their formative years in Texas in the early eighties smoking pot and huffing glue. Or imagine a Hawkwind practice space jam session moments after each band member received a partial frontal lobotomy. How about a playground fight between Liquorball and Faxed Head, the 'Ball armed with flaming wadded up balls of black aluminum foil and the 'Head flinging guitar picks dipped in lighter fluid and an rusty guitar strings. Weird and wonderfully fucked up. Fans of freaked out psychedelic punch ups, dizzying clattery outsider free rock and getting super high and diving head first into a huge pile of drums and guitars will feel right at home.
Been a while since we've heard from Burnt Hills. Our fault entirely. They may have been absent on the list, but they have most definitely not stopped releasing records, or partaking in a weekly jam at the Burnt Hills HQ, which is where we assume this massive psych jam blow out was captured on tape.
For those new to Burnt Hills, the group seems to be an ever changing collective, sometimes a duo or trio, other times, like here, expanded to a seven piece, heck they even got someone on XYLOPHONE this time around. No that you'd really be able to tell. The sound of Burnt Hills is a sonic mushroom cloud of grinding psych guitar squall, practice space drums, throbbing earthquake bass, all woven into a sprawling space-psych-kraut jam that could have gone on forever. Heck it could have started weeks ago, as the track opens jarringly mid-jam, just explodes right into it, expanding into a hazy, woozy, effects drenched expanse of druggy psych bliss. Folks who eat up every last thing by Acid Mothers Temple, Heavy Winged, Titan, all that modern psych shit, have no excuse for not being crazy obsessed with these guys too. Equal parts all those bands as well as plenty of Hawkwind, Monster Magnet, German Oak, Boris, White Heaven, just imagine a dingy black lit basement, packed to the rafters with amps, and a bunch of folks hunched over their instruments, probably high as a kite, channeling some mysterious otherworld spirits through the speakers into physical sound, into THIS, whatever this is.
You can almost imagine the whole neighborhood gathered around this unassuming house in the suburbs, clad in slippers and robes, bleary eyed and a bit terrified, staring at BH HQ, a dilapidated little house that seems to be coming alive, the whole thing shaking on its foundations, emanating kaleidoscopic lights, emitting a deafening roar unlike anything these normal folks have ever heard. They call the authorities, the police, the F.B.I., but by the time they arrive, the house is dark, and quiet, and empty.
Absolute ear candy for psych-kraut maniacs into blown out heavy psychedelic space rock freakouts, which as far as we're concerned should really be just about everyone reading this.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another massive sprawling live psychedelic experience from this space / psych / kraut rock collective, who get together with whoever may be in town ever week, and blow the roof off their humble Midwestern abode. And while the abode may be humble, the basement is most definitely not, as it seems to be where some of the sickest psyche rock is produced these days, most of it going unheard, some of it captured on tape, and released as crazy limited documents of these ecstatic sonic experiences.
This most recent release is scant on info, but by now, we know how it went down, multiple guitar players, sometimes as many as 5 or 6, multiple drummers, and a xylophone player, playing for what we imagine must be hours and hours, as there's no way to tell from the record, it fades right in mid song, fades out at the end of the side, and right back in again on the other side, and then fades out at the end. It certainly feels like this chunk was grabbed mid-jam, and these wild sounds continued on and on in both directions. And like their BH lps, this heavy, heady, tripped out, hypnotic stuff. The drums and bass hold everything together, and the guitars go wild, swooping and soaring, melodic one second, caustic and crunchy the next, fuzzed out riffage, the sound shifting from droned out and hypnotic to chaotic and free, the performance surprisingly dynamic in places, considering its extended improvised origin. One notable thing about this recording, is the xylophone, which on most of the recordings is totally inaudible, but here is finally way more present in the mix, which gives the sound a whole different vibe. Yet another fantastic slab of druggy, dreamy, krautrocky blissed out psychedelic space rock from these basement psychedelic warlords...
LIMITED TO 139 COPIES. Housed in a beautiful jacket!
Finally! A new full length from these psychedelic sixties style garage murk masters, the first in fact we've actually managed to get (it's their third apparently), and it's a doozy, washed out and warped, drowsy and druggy, but super catchy, and impossibly lush and psychedelic. The opener "Pulse" sounds like the Kinks, albeit a way more wasted version, the sound fabulously muddy and murky, melodic and catchy as all get out.
We first discovered these guys on the second Group Flex flexi-book on Castle Face, then on the Castle Face Velvet Underground tribute, and most recently, on the I Need You Bad comp on Polyvinyl. In each case, we inevitably found ourselves going straight to the Burnt Ones' tracks, and then playing them over and over. So, Gift is totally hitting the spot, a gloriously prismatic and cracked collection of paisley pop doused in LSD and sent sprawling through fields of slow motion motorik marches, hazy organ wheeze whirls, and blurred guitar shimmer, the sound super amorphous and abstract, and then without warning, the sound will suddenly come together into a blast of practically perfect baroque pop, albeit still swaddled in fuzz and buzz and hiss, in fact "Money Man" does just that, spending its first two minutes in a sort of bleary suspended animation, before erupting into a riffy, psychedelic stomp, equal parts Kinks, Beatles and Bee Gees, but then roughed up and sent careening wildly into the fray, replete with a final burst of falsetto crooning. And so it goes, the whole record lurching druggily from woozy psychedelic gem to warped dirge pop ditty, every song blossoming like some prismatic sonic flower, revealing more and more as the sounds unfurl and unwind, melodies swoop in from nowhere, hooks hover, fade out, and then suddenly pop up minutes later, lilting, chiming loveliness wrapped in grunge and gristle, there's some crazy primitive drum machine weirdness, some glammy swagger, some 8-bit bleep bloop, plenty of fuzzy synth swirl, FX all over the place, but none of the noisiness or damaged sonic weirdness can disguise the perfect poppiness lurking within pretty much every single of of these twisted psych-garage gems.
Killer blast of Bay Area garage rock / fuzz pop from two of our favorite groops, on this new split from local label Mt. St. Mtn., the A side a brand new jam from sixties styled, organ driven garage psych troubadours Burnt Ones, who deliver a delirious chunk of baroque-pop styled fuzz, all hazy vocals and jangly guitars, swirling and hypnotic and dreamily psychedelic, while the flipside is a new (old) track from sadly now defunct aQ faves The Mallard, whose track here is all lo-fi lope and reverby jangle, with washed out vocals, swirling soaring psych guitar melodies, crunchy riffs, and loose limbed drumming, with a cool stuttery bridge that pops up throughout, giving it a weirdly mathy vibe in places, and ultimately once again reminding us again how much we miss The Mallard!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Housed in a super swank, 4 color debossed sleeve, and pressed on crazy colored swirled vinyl!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Our pal Jason's Ormolycka label is home to all sorts of warped electronic music, from Southern hip hop, to lo-fy synth pop, to total summer jam radio pop, to woozy witch house to THIS, a glorious blast of super distorted blown out, boomin' system, big beat bumping Miami Bass music, but constructed entirely from samples of Middle Eastern music!! It's so nuts, but so amazing, Middle Eastern folk music, Bollywood loops, chants and prayers and all sorts of unlikely sounds wedded to booty shaking beats, nasty rapping, female call and response vox, it's like 2 Live Crew if they did a record for Sublime Frequencies, total what the fuck GENIUS. This is most definitely what we'll be blasting next time we're driving down the coast with the top down and the bass BOOMIN'!!
WOW. And do we mean WOW!! Fifteen classic free jazz records from the late sixties / early seventies, long out of print, finally getting the ULTRA deluxe reissue treatment. For some reason these are incredibly limited, so these have been a bit tough to get, so we're going to list a few at a time as we can get them. First up is After Love, originally released in 1970 by pianist Dave Burrell. Accompanied by Roscoe Mitchell on reeds, Alan Silva on cello and violin, Ron Miller on double bass and viola, Michel Gladieux on double bass and Bertrand Gauthier and Don Moye on drums. The opening track is a massive twenty two minute psychedelic free-jazz freak out. Super rhythmic, amd tribal, clattery and confusional, wild skronking horns and skittery percussion, pizzicato strings and rubbery bass and slippery string scrapes. Track two mellows out a bit into some smooth and sultry piano, and some creaking droning horns. The final twenty minute track starts off with gorgeous solo piano, languid and melodic, before the whole thing slips into some more traditional bop, but flecked with plenty of free-isms, eventually getting more and more dense and beautifully tangled. Comes in a gorgoeus diecut fullcover three panel sleeve, with new artwork, as well as a huge booklet of liner notes with the original album liner notes, new liner notes in french and english as well as a bunch of cool photos. So nice!
Some choice American freedom-energy-jazz-in-exile recorded in Paris on August 13, 1969. Pianist Burrell is joined by Archie Shepp (tenor sax), Alan Silva (bass), Sunny Murray (drums), Clifford Thornton (cornet), Grachan Moncur III (trombone) and Arthur Jones (alto sax). If you dug the fab Silva LP also recently re-issued in this series, check this one out too. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl,
Super heavy, surprisingly melodic metallic hardcore from Sweden, mixing the thrash and roar of Coalesce and Converge with the anthemic melodies of fellow countrymen the Refused. Moody and intense, heavy but totally catchy. Swirling guitar melodies and
