Quite the tease that Thomas Carnacki, giving us only five copies of this mini-opus for nightmarish collage before declaring it out of print. 40 of these were produced in conjunction with a rare daytime performance at Amoeba Records in Berkeley for the suitably nocturnal Carnacki. Spooky drones culled from electrical hums and jagged artifacts get matched with elongated bowed-metals and haunted violin tones at the beginning of this 20 minute piece, gradually deflating into catacomb-like drips and clanking bells that later get coupled with subterranean moanings and bellowings coming to a ghastly conclusions of varispeed tape machinations churning over strange motorized sounds and elliptical looped patterns. The sonic references to Nurse With Wound, Andrew Liles, and irr.app.(ext.) are still quite evident on these recordings, although the cabal working for, with, under Carnacki (aka Gregory Scharpen who is Mr. Carnacki's doppleganger, Jim Kaiser of NF Orchest & French Radio, and Gregory Hagan of Common Eider King Eider) are building a stronger and stronger case for their own aesthetic in the wide-open field of post-surrealist / post-industrial sound design, which is always haunted and often very compelling. Like we said, super limited - and we only got 5 copies.
In an interview for Re/Search sometime in the early '80s, J.G. Ballard quipped that San Francisco must have the highest population of deviants with college degrees. Back then, the Bay Area did boast a sizable contingent of acid-damaged drop-outs, sexpot performance artists, transgendered punks, mischievous hucksters, members of Caroliner, and the unclassifiables, all flying their freak flags, with those numbers gradually dwindling, relocating, and/or aging over the ensuing decades. The weirdos and the degenerate artists still exist; yes, they do! But San Francisco should be a little ashamed that most of them live in the East Bay. Berkeley denizen Gregory Scharpen is one such character, who sometimes goes by the pseudonym Thomas Carnacki and sometimes is the absurdist bandleader for various minstrels operating under a banner of the same name, that being Thomas Carnacki. A gnomish / wizardly type with an old-growth beard and extraneous tentacles dipped with ectoplasm, Scharpen / Carnacki is a larger-than-life character who toils in film, theatre and sound design, with his expertise finding sympathetic ears and fingers in irr. app. (ext.) and Nurse With Wound.
This split release marks the first slab of vinyl for Carnacki, and finds him / them working in parallel with the equally obtuse but less flamboyant outfit Vulcanus 68. The Carnacki ensemble for this 20 minute track includes stalwarts Jesse Burson and Gregory Hagan (the latter also being in Common Eider, King Eider) and occasionalists Sheila Bosco and Cheryl E. Leonard. What these five are doing in a room is really anybody's guess. Huffing glue and fumbling with Tibetan bowls? Channeling the spirits of grizzled thugs and wrestling with those ghosts? Ripping apart a piano and putting the whole thing back together all wrong? All of these could be the method acting principles behind these nocturnal collages and strange actions of slow-moving events. Oakland's Vulcanus 68 (nee Jared Blum and Dominic Cramp) dial in something not too dissimilar to Homotopy To Marie, with plenty of gurgling noises, radiophonic allusions, backmasked gestures, and hauntologically challenged puffs of smoke. These too could have originated from similarly liver-destroying acts of sound immolation as on the Carnacki side of things. Yeah, this really could have been a United Dairies release circa 1983. Limited to 250 copies and comes with a download.
Blazing fast, super melodic swedish death metal, ala In flames/At the Gates.
Welcome to the wonderfully eccentric world of SF's Ralph Carney - such an amazingly skilled musician able to jump genres and instruments at the witty wink of an eye and blends them together at whim. He's worked with an astounding array of artists, some of which include Tom Waits, Marc Ribot, the B52's, Bill Laswell, and William Burroughs. Plus, if you were one of the many who packed into AQ a few months ago to catch the Jonathan Richman in-store you would've also been entertained by Carney's accompaniment. Carney's music is as far from run-of-the mill as you can get, and his oft-bizarre aural trips might not be for everyone. Some might even find it all to be a bit overwhelming and disorienting at first, but that's the splendor of his work. He's so adept at completely transporting the listener to... somewhere else! You're never quite sure where he's led you nor where you're off to next! The record label makes reference to Roland Kirk and Capt. Beefheart and these are certainly right on the mark, but we'd also add the Residents, the Lonesome Organist and the criminally unsung, fellow-SF genius Graham Connah to the list of those dextrously imaginative akin. Just nine seconds shy of a full hour.
You might say that the illustrious, seemingly tireless Ralph Carney is sorta the musical equivalent of a colorful traveling circus... uh, carney! Such a remarkably chameleon-like multi-instrumentalist / entertainer both on his own in the spotlight and in collaboration or support of others (Tom Waits, Jonathan Richman, B-52s, Marc Ribot, Beth Custer, Bill Laswell, Tipsy, Victoria Williams, Drizzoletto, Jim White, and Oranj Symphonette, to name just a few of the folks he's played with over the years)! Ever on the go, you just never know what he's gonna pull out of his hat or his bag of tricks or his magical wardrobe next. But you can pretty much bet that it'll be a little (or maybe more than a little) bit tweaked with an unorthodox yet seamless blend of styles (Dixieland, prog, bluegrass, lounge, pop or any fashion of jazz -- you name it!), and that the chops (musical that is, not his mutton chop sideburns!) will be bulletproof. Such is the case with this, the debut cd by his latest mostly instrumental project he formed with Kimo Ball, Scott Johnson and Allen Whitman (fyi: they also released a live cd-r last year which we also have in stock). Their horns, woodwinds, guitars, piano, percussion and sporadic vocals come together, become pals and have a rollicking coloring fest, shading both neatly inside and more rambunctiously outside of each track's lines. For a particular highlight, check out the third number "Interstellar Low-ways / Watusa". Great stuff!
If you always buy the weirdest, most fucked stuff that we recommend on our lists, then doubtless you already have Carnival In Coal's previous disc in your collection, the absurd/astounding "French Cancan". That's the mostly-all-covers disc on which this
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To say this record is the most amazing thing I have ever heard wouldn't be all that far from the mark. But at the same time it would be fairly accurate to say that this record is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.
This French duo is definitely metal, definitely on the black side of metal; raspy evil vocals, crazy leads, pounding programmed drums, but with healthy doses of electronics, crazy sound effects, some bizarre lounge style vocals, and some truly questionable cover songs. The record starts off with a fairly straight cover of Ozzy's 'Bark at the Moon', albeit with weird electronic warbles and silly over the top vocals. But then it gets really weird. They tackle the eighties classic 'Maniac' (the theme from Flashdance) and it's nothing short of baffling. So baffling in fact, that I can't even explain it. Then comes a cover of the fm radio classic 'Baker Street' by Gerry Rafferty, the infamous sax melody played by blazing electric guitars. So stupid , but so so great. Seriously. And to finish it all up, they do a truly inspired version of Pantera's 'Fucking Hostile', Phil Anselmo's shouted '1,2,3,4,' segues into a calypso cabaret that has to be heard to be believed, with a lisping chorus '....definitlely hostile...'. Andee recommends this. Above all other things on this weeks list. Everytime we play this in the store, someone laughs hysterically, someone looks perplexed, and someone buys it. You could be one of those people. Or probably all of those people.
Buy it.
This one's a long time fave! Gene Moore's creepy organ soundtrack of eerily offkey, slowed down carnival music for this low-budget 1962 cult classic by producer/director Herk Hervey set a lot of standards for the use of these sounds in future horror films. According to the liner notes by screenwriter John Clifford, the idea was for the music to take up as much of the soundtrack as possible, in order to save money on having actors read lines! So it's close to being a silent film, with the organ music music actually being integral to the plot of the film, which involves a talented young female organist, um, haunted by her involvement in a car accident. The music perfectly complements the film's striking black & white visual imagery, the hordes of dancing ghouls that increasingly inhabit her waking nightmare world... it's like she's lost in her very own, very goth, Day Of The Dead celebration. This soundtrack reissue consists of 37 tracks over 49 minutes, including some snippets of the film dialog, given titles like "First Trip To The Carnival", "You Can't Live In Isolation", "Church Is Just A Place Of Business", "Dark Entry", etc... 4 of 'em are cues that were actually unused in the film, and all were apparently sourced from slightly scratchy old acetates, which just gives this even more creepy atmosphere.
German progressive folk-psych with female vocals from 1978, originally a private press rarity now reissued on cd with some bonus live tracks (including a song called "Sweet Heroin", not too pastoral that).
In 1979, Nigel Ayers and Caroline K began recording as Nocturnal Emissions, a project then that was spurned by the nascent Industrial Culture of Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, and SPK. Their early recordings - Tissue Of Lies and Drowning In A Sea Of Bliss especially - are classic recordings of information overload aesthetics through abrasive drum machines, electronic noise, tape psychosis, and aggressive sequencing. At the same time, the two began Sterile Records as a means to put out their own recordings and those of likeminded malcontents (i.e. Lustmord, MB, Controlled Bleeding, Konstruktivits, etc.). By the early '90s, Caroline left Nocturnal Emissions to Ayers and disappeared from the public eye; but she did manage one solo record in Now Wait For Last Year.
By the time that Caroline recorded this album, Nocturnal Emissions had grown disenchanted with Industrial Culture, especially all of the blood and horror from the requisite medical imagery that went hand in hand with the punishing electronics. At the same time, Sterile Records had transformed into Earthly Delights promoting an agenda of post-Eno driftscaping. Now Wait For Last Year was actually the first lp to land on Earthly Delights, standing as a fantastic and underappreciated swath of industrially tainted ambience.
Sodden loops of melancholic dronings open the album which all spiral into a 20 minute mantra of murky haze reminiscent of some of the Zoviet France recordings from around the same time period (Mohnomische, in particular), furthered along by a lurching set of mechanical rhythms buried deep in the background. This is followed by a nocturne synthesized from medieval chants and percussion not unlike, the earliest Dead Can Dance or the Fairlight driven works of Coil. The dirge-paced synth number Chearth is more in keeping with John Carpenter score (although certainly less bombastic). Klanggalerie had acquired three bonus tracks from Caroline's estate (she died in 2008), featuring her in more of a Suspiria meets Richard Pinhas vein of mood engineering.
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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 brand new cd-r version of the 1999 lp from these demented SF old timey, dayglo, detuned, industrial post bluegrass weirdos...
There was a time a few years back, that if you lived in San Francisco, you could stumble into a bar, or a club, and find yourself transported to some fucked up and freaked out otherworld, an eye popping blacklight, dayglo world of huge cardboard buildings, and weird costumed, big headed characters, a musical world, set to the strains of some sort of demented detuned, industrial post bluegrass, a noise drenched 1800's hoedown, all detuned banjos, screeching violins, wheezing organs, scattered percussive splatter, little bursts of frantic bluegrass with twisted falsetto vocals, set amidst, thick streaks of undulating drones, and shards of crumbling noise, it was a bit like a stage production of Oklahoma, as performed by members of Faxed Head, stumbling and demented and confusional, a massive crumbling sprawl of sonic whatthefuck for sure.
In keeping with their confusional / obscurist approach, Caroliner took on a different name for every record. The Sabre Waving Saracen Wall originally released on vinyl in 1992, found the band christened Caroliner Rainbow Fingers Of The Underground & Their Breakable Bones, and was yet another document of the group's fractured faux historical sonic explorations, equal parts avant rock prankery, pure demented songsmithery, and an unhealthy interest in musics of the past, not to mention a visual aesthetic that fell somewhere between special ed kindergarten and drug addled Keith Haring, all blobby shapes and retina burning patterns, geometric constructions, and of course gallons of dayglo paint. The perfect backdrop for the group's unhinged pageantry. On record, it plays out like some unearthed wax cylinder, a recording of some sort of educational radio play, about the old west, but translated into some alien language, the soundtrack a demented deconstructed noise drenched country / folk, complete with random sound effects, strange voices, and what sounds like a small chamber ensemble wrestling with a bluegrass band, as the various players begin to lose brain function, resulting in a gloriously stumbling, lurching soundtrack, that starts out weird, and only manages to get weirder.
Not sure why suddenly this reissue popped up, but Grux from Caroliner just popped in with a stack, packaged in that distinctly Caroliner fashion, all strange folded multi color papers, glued and photocopied, the sort of packaging that once you open, you can never reassemble, which when you think about it, suits the group's sound to a 'T'. Not necessarily limited, but they are pretty fancy and handmade, so when we run out, it might take us a little while to get more...
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Tee Pee brings us the rousing debut full-length from this Pittsburgh based band, who put out a 7" last year in Mind Cure's single of the month series. The Carousel quintet are another in the current crop of '70s worshipping heavy rockers (a crop of which we heartily approve), taking their cues from such classic bands as Thin Lizzy, Thin Lizzy, and (you guessed it) Thin Lizzy. Catchy rockin' songs with lots of tasty guitar harmonies and real singing. And they remind us in particular of a couple other bands we like a lot who've been drinking deeply from the same well of inspiration: Gypsyhawk and, even more so, Bible Of The Devil. In fact, some of us were fooled into thinking this was a new Bible Of The Devil album the first time we put it on in the store; especially as the cigarette-damaged, whisky-soaked vocals are a dead ringer for those in that band, melodic but gritty.
Carousel are well worth checking out for any fan of the retro stoner metal sound, who wants to hear it done right (i.e. with the correct amount of cowbell!). These boys mix in some other influences besides the aforementioned Thin Lizzy too, ferinstance giving a tip of the hat to the NWOBHM on such songs as speedster "I'm On My Way" which rips along like a vintage Diamond Head or Savage number, or trying their hand at a full-on power ballad on the relatively mellow "Nightfall".
So, "RIYL" bands like Bible Of The Devil, Gypsyhawk, Kadavar, Horisont, Scorpion Child, et. al.
Oh, and another thing we dig about Carousel: the font choice for their logo. Yeah, it's the same one used on the James Gang's Rides Again album, which means it's the same one WE use for the aQuarius logo!
Originally released in a run of just 100 copies, Black Swallow & Other Songs is yet another gorgeous bit of minimal abstract ambient folk experimentation from this prolific musician. We've reviewed several of his releases under the name A Broken Consort, as well as his fantastic Landings record on Type, but that's only the tip of the iceberg, an iceberg consisting of multiple releases, all amazing, meticulously composed, recorded and packaged, each a musical love letter to his wife who passed away in 2004, thus each recording, besides being sonically compelling, carries serious emotional weight, emotion and energy that seeps into the sounds, only making them sound that much more personal and intense.
Black Swallow & Other Songs is a songsuite of dark wistful dronefolk, all spidery tendrils of melancholy melody and the droning buzz of violins and other bowed instruments. Long stretches of muted buzz underpin spaced out slow motion ragas, the vibe darkly contemplative, the arrangements spacious and spare. Lush garlands of dark hues piano are draped over haunting metallic shimmer, female voices surface here and there. The guitars are introspective and plaintive, mediations on loss and loneliness, miniature soundtracks to lives and loves gone but not forgotten. The sound evokes grey skies, wide expanses of rolling hills, skeletal branches on trees having shed all their leaves, a wintery twilight, lit by flickering firelight, these sounds, warm and hopeful, holding off the chill and the ever encroaching darkness. So so lovely.
LIMITED TO 700 COPIES!!!
Their first record in three years, Norwegians Carpathian Forest return with their dark and primitve 'Misanthropic Black Metal' but with some new twists. Their overall sound hasn't changed too much, a noisy thrash metal assault tempered with the primitve buzz of
All right, we'll admit that we were a bit doubtful about this at first, just from reading the hypesheet/liner notes, which claim, in part, that this is one of the "last great Kraut secrets" and because of its discovery, "the history of Krautrock has to be rewritten". And we're still not entirely sure if the person who wrote that was actually joking or not. But, while this is definitely not some undiscovered classic on the order of a Can, Faust or Neu! (or even the more obscure likes of Siloah, Kalacakra, Necronomicon, etc.) it IS pretty cool. And weird. Especially weird. Imagine Reynols or Yahowha 13 gone lounge, trying to entertain a bunch of jet-setters at some hip, swinging '60s party... It's called Fantastic Party after all and that's what it was meant as, a party record! Some cheesy German record label in 1970 put this together, presumably paying (with drugs?) a bunch of studio musicians to create a one-off psychedelic exploitation album by a nonexistent "band". A dime a dozen back then, maybe, but these guys really really went for it. It is pretty darn tripped out. Groovy but really off kilter and demented. Maybe we'd compare it to the children's songbook funk of Stark Reality, if you've heard the reissue of that. Or some totally dosed jazz combo doing porno music. Good times. Yup, it's got stinging fuzz guitar solos, flute warbling, hiccuping percussion, damaged "singing", bizarro titles... this has LSD written all over it. If you went to this "fantastic party" you'd know that Peter Fonda would be there for sure. And go-go dancers with dayglo body paint. And Timothy Leary, and midgets, and people who look like extras from a Terry Southern penned movie too.
A track from this appeared on the Kraut! Demons! Kraut compilation from a few years back, and if you have that, well rest assured, the entirety of this album is of the same high quality of fucked-upedness. So, true krautrock classic or not, we're glad it's been reissued, we're digging it! We only have to wonder, why did the reissuers hate the original cover so much that they felt the need to provide a new, totally ugly one?? Fortunately the LP's real (and actually quite rad, despite what they thought) cover is reproduced on the tray card, featuring a bevy of good-looking, polyester-clad partygoers truly having a FANTASTIC time.
Death Waltz alert! John Carpenter alert! Awesome soundtrack alert! Death Waltz finally gets to this Carpenter soundtrack, at last. And they've put it out on compact disc (in stock and being reviewed now) as well as of course on vinyl, which we're told should be here next week possibly. Heck they even did a cassette version, sadly much too limited for us to get.
Assault On Precinct 13, a low budget action thriller from 1976, is one of our favorite Carpenter flicks - and film scores. Like so many soundtracks, this mainly consists of variations on a theme - a pretty damn cool theme, though, simple and effective. You'll probably remember it as soon as you hear it... dah dah de dah dah dum dum duh de dum, sorta sounds like it could have been used as the triumphant theme for some Rocky-like boxing movie, except that it's way too sinister for that. Just a few fat distorted synth notes, over a drum machine driven rhythm. The whole soundtrack is drum machine driven, sometimes nothing BUT drum machine, very atmospheric and "old school", sounding like Schoolly D ought to be rapping over it. Which totally fits in with the "urban jungle" race-riot paranoia of this suspenseful, violent movie, which as you may remember is about an enraged street gang attacking an isolated police station in the ghetto of South Central LA. The plot and vibe were inspired by George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead, as well as the western Rio Bravo.
Composer/performer Carpenter crafted a taut and minimal synth based score (recorded in just 3 days) that has come to be regarded as a classic. Among the memorable sonic elements found on it are a melodic electric piano motif, and, of course, an ice cream truck jingle, also laid over the usual creepy drum machine tick tick bip bap, for the crucial, shocking scene early in the film involving said ice cream truck.
The Death Waltz edition of this previously hard-to-find soundtrack is remastered, boasts excellent new artwork as per DW tradition, and comes with plentiful liner notes in the swank digipack.
Now that Death Waltz has done this, clearly the next one up has GOT to be the soundtrack to Walter Hill's The Warriors, are we all agreed? Let's hope!
The 20th anniversary edition soundtrack. It certainly is pretty damn cool that two of the pioneers of horror films (John Carpeter and Dario Argento) scored their own films. The soundtrack for Halloween is a tense pulsing score of piano and synthesizers that comes off as an evil fusion between Terry Riley and Mike Oldfield. Lots of soundbites from the movie also make their way onto this CD as the remastering of the disc was probably done directly off of a print of the film.
We have VERY few copies of this, so we won't get too in depth. Sadly, as always, it seems, Mondo made way too few of these, so we got as many as we could, which was not nearly enough, so all you soundtrack nerds, grab one while you can, cuz this is a super amazing version of Carpenter's classic score to his 1978 horror classic Halloween. Many arguments can be made as to which of Carpenter's soundtracks are his best, Escape From New York, The Fog, They Live, but few could argue that Halloween is by far his most iconic, if not just for THAT theme, you know the one, that creepy, instantly recognizable, dread inducing refrain, and while that theme pops up all over the score, in different iterations, like all Carpenter soundtracks, there's so much more. Carpenter is a master at evoking fear through simple sonic soundscapery, and never was his mastery more on display than right here.
Not sure if this has been on vinyl before, certainly not this expanded 28 track version, and even then, it definitely wasn't this deluxe. A super swank, double lp (pressed on Halloween orange wax), the lps 180 gram vinyl, the records cut at 45rpm as well, all housed in an eye popping heavy gatefold sleeve, the cover art a super creepy close-up of Michael Myers' mask, and if you look closely at the detail, the mouth is actually a painting of the Myers' house, complete with glowing jack-o-lantern, and Myers' shadow. Open it up and the inside gatefold is yet another painting of the house, with Myers carrying a body onto the porch, and flip it over, and there's Myers again, lurking ominously in the darkness amidst the clotheslines. So cool. And again, SO LIMITED. Already out of print, so these are the last copies we'll ever get. Fans of Death Waltz, Waxwork, and Mondo of course, who have been collecting all of these deluxe horror vinyl reissues, will want this one BAD.
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The super spooky soundtrack to this 1979 horror film, newly reissued, complete with bonus tracks (including a radio interview with star Jamie Lee Curtis done back in the day, that kinda spoils the mood at the end of the disc, but is pretty funny, like when she talks about looking for diversity in the roles she takes: like the difference between her characters in Halloween and The Fog!). Anyway, this is great creepy horror music, similar to Carpenter's classic score to Halloween. If he wasn't already a filmmaker it seems that he could have found success simply as a composer.
This really kind of had to be Record Of The Week. We're darn excited about it, and we're sure as heck not the only ones. John Carpenter, as you probably know, is a director of horror films and sci-fi thrillers, who also composes the soundtracks - suspenseful, powerful, pulsating - for many of his movies (often with collaborator Alan Howarth). We've reviewed reissues of many of our favorites: Halloween, The Fog, Assault On Precinct 13, Escape From New York� classics, all.
In recent years, as you probably also are away, there have been many, many, MANY artists who are hugely, obviously, inspired by the film music of John Carpenter. We're talking artists like Zombi, Umberto, The Night Terrors, Majeure, Nightsatan, Steve Moore, Roll The Dice, Zombie Zombie (who did a whole disc of Carpenter covers), Crypt Vapor, and quite a few others. So, in our reviews, we're constantly saying stuff sounds "Carpenter-y", "Carpenter-esque", referring to "John Carpenter worship", and in general using the soundtracks of John Carpenter as a necessary reference point for all these bands who indeed do worship him. (Italian giallo soundtrack greats Goblin, of course, are also another big influence on this crowd, but the synth-ier side of things is especially Carpenter-y.)
So it's about time John Carpenter himself got in on the act, and put out an album of his own, of music for the music's sake, not associated with any particular, actual film. Sacred Bones has scooped everybody with this brand new album of non-soundtrack music by John Carpenter. Carpenter recently formed a trio with his son (who is in a rock band) and godson (a film composer) and they jammed in his home studio until they came up with these pieces, freed entirely from the constraints of scoring specific scenes in a film. Instead, YOU provide the mental images� Despite the title, these tracks weren't ever meant for any of his films - it's not like they're from the cutting room floor, or were intended for movies that never got made - although, he could always use some of these themes in something in the future, we suppose.
In light of what we said above, you know it's tough for us to review this without quite tautologically saying it sounds very John Carpenter-y!! Which is EXACTLY what we all want it to sound like, obviously. Heavy on the spooky '80s sounding synths, and propulsive chase-sequence grooves. The nine tracks here are each given a simple but evocative title, almost like this is Carpenter's own collection of "library music". There's thumping opener "Vortex", urgent and ominous, haunted by a repeated piano motif, followed by the melodic nightmare romance of "Obsidian", its powerful throb taking on epic proportions. Next, "Fallen" is another suspenseful transmission from the horror-zone. Then, side one (on the vinyl) closer "Domain" takes on some more uplifting qualities, but evokes many moods, propelled by Euro-disco beats and colored by heavy synth and organ flourishes. Powerful stuff, big grooves, stirring melodies, lots of atmosphere, and a bit of that "training montage" vibe we love.
And so it goes, the remaining tracks ("Mystery", "Abyss", "Wraith", "Purgatory", "Night") replete with eerie tinkling synths, creepy organ, soaring guitar soloing, minimal percussive skitter, hypnotically repetitive rhythms, thick synth bass, and the miasma of droning electronics.
Very, very satisfying; recommended to all fans of Carpenter and his acolytes! While we won't say "accept no imitations" (we LOVE the imitations), it is nice to get the real deal from the maestro.
Now if only they'd go on tour... and if SB would reissue the rare record JC made in 1985 with his band The Coupe De Villes, pressed only for friends...
Note: there is vinyl of this too, but we didn't get as many copies as we'd ordered, and have already run out - but, we're told a repress is on the way, possibly around the end of March.
Whew! People were starting to panic 'bout this, cause it seemed that this desirable Death Waltz release was so terrifically limited that none of 'em were gonna make it across the pond from the UK. But thankfully the label relented and pressed some more, so now we have some - but still not very many, so act fast if you want one!
And you DO probably want one, 'cause of the many awesome soundtracks that John Carpenter composed for his movies, this is one of the best. The film The Fog itself may or may not be among his best - there's a difference of opinion at aQuarius about that, we'll argue about it offline - but we all agree about the soundtrack. Of course, whether 1979's The Fog is for sure worth the rental if you haven't seen it lately, after all (spoiler alert!) it's got ghost pirates in it (undeniably a cool concept, if perhaps not the scariest idea ever), and Jamie Lee Curtis, and of course the titular fog. Fog is always spooky.
But the soundtrack, that's what we really remember from the movie. And it's not actually as typically John Carpenter-y as what we usually mean when we call something John Carpenter-y in our reviews. It doesn't have the groovy '80s disco-synth beats, not so much. Really, it's more of a drone record. Slow and low stuff, y'know. Inspired, no doubt, by fog horns! But played on electronic synthesizers, of course. At times, it's not unlike what what a lot of today's experimental drone artists might come up with - if they were scoring a horror film, that is. Distorted whooshes of sound, ponderous piano plinking, crushing church organ chords, subsonic detonations, ringing electronic pulses forming into slow building, nerve-wracking rhythms... just imagine the best Umberto album ever.
This soundtrack has a creepy ambient quality that's really engaging, completely apart from the story or visuals. It's beautifully ominous, and also in a way quite HEAVY.
Furthermore, the eerie, melodic main theme, a few notes tinkling in sinister sequence, reprised of course throughout the album, is a classic, up there with our faves from Goblin. By itself it would keep the hairs on the back of our necks up all night.
Well we could go on, but we suspect there's no need. Get it while you can, and we apologize in advance if we run out.
This Death Waltz version is an expanded edition of the soundtrack (also recently made available in the States as a double cd by the Silva Screen label, which we will list soon too), featuring 33 tracks over four sides of 180 gram gold vinyl, including a large number of cues from the movie not found on earlier versions. Also, of course, course, Death Waltz provides brand new artwork by Dinos Chapman for this release, along with new liner notes by John Carpenter, Dinos Chapman, and Randall D. Larson.
Seems like UK vinyl horror movie soundtrack reissue label Death Waltz is slowly working its way through all the John Carpenter movies (and scores), they've done Escape From New York, Prince Of Darkness, Halloween II, Halloween III, there are so many others we were waiting and hoping they'd get to, but probably none more than this one, THEY LIVE. One of our favorite movies EVER, Carpenter or otherwise. The movie itself is great - pro wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper discovers that aliens are living amongst us, and via subliminal messages, are controlling the humans. The only way to see these aliens is with special sunglasses, which when worn, not only reveal the true faces of the aliens, also reveal that almost every surface is covered with slogans meant to control us and make us meek. That's it in a nutshell, but the movie looks great, the concept is awesome, the special effects too. It also includes one of THEE longest, and thus most uncomfortable fight scenes ever, where Piper fights Keith David, in order to convince him to put on the glasses. There are classic lines galore including the almost Evil Dead worthy "I have come here to chew bubblegum, and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum." So before we even get to the soundtrack, if you haven't seen They Live, probably best if you go watch it, RIGHT NOW. We'll wait.
OK, so besides looking amazing, and being hilarious and scary and over the top, as always Carpenter and his musical partner Alan Howarth have whipped up another stunning score, that perfectly suits the movie, this one a bit bluesier than other Carpenter/Howarth scores, as the two were trying to capture the feel of LA, and of Piper as a down on his luck drifter, the opening (after a TV broadcast from the resistance about the aliens), is all low slung blues creep, a bit twangy, with some woozy harmonica, a little slide guitar, a bit of sax, it's the perfect intro. But then things get classically Carpenter-y, with the creepy synthy "A Message", all drones and haunting minor key melodies, deep chordal throbs, or "The Siege Of Justiceville", which is minimal and skeletal and ominous, with more brooding synths, martial snares, mysterious percussion, there are even a couple melodies that harken back to Carpenter's classic Halloween score. The rest of the score splits the difference between the bluesy swagger of the opening, and the haunting synthiness of the creepier tracks, often mixing the two, like on "Return To Church", "Kidnapped" and "Transient Hotel" which meld the harmonica, and bluesy dirge of the opener with sinister synths and ominous swirling ambience. "Underground" might be the coolest track, with its glitchy noisy opening, its haunting minimal throb, and its tense sonic sprawl. And it was 1988, so closer "Wake Up" is a sorta eighties end credits bluesy synthy funky jam, revisiting the theme of the opening, and creating a template for the warped retro pop of folks like James Ferraro and Ariel Pink. SO GODDAMN GREAT!!!
Like all Death Waltz releases, the packaging is over the top, super swank gloss varnish full color covers, with new They Live artwork by Gary Pullin, liner notes from both Pullin and Howarth, and a huge fold out poster of Pullin's new artwork.
Easily our favorite of the Halloween movies. And oddly enough the only one without Michael Myers. Instead it focuses on a company that makes Halloween masks for children, who have a seriously sinister agenda... if you haven't seen it, we don't want to give too much away, needless to say it really is a classic: atmospheric, super creepy, totally original, and WAY weird. And of course, director John Carpenter along with longtime collaborator Alan Howarth, whipped up what might be one of our favorite Carpenter scores EVER, which is saying a lot.
This hard to find soundtrack joins the already amazing lineup of classic horror scores on the Death Waltz vinyl reissue label, and it's a perfect fit. One listen to the main title music, and you'll be sold. That first weird electronic effect, that is constantly surfacing throughout the move, so much so that listening to it while we review this reissue, gave us goosebumps. Creepy buzzing synths, murky rhythmic pulses, disembodied melodies, lush layered textures, sinister chordal swirls, it all sets the mood perfectly, the whole movie oozing with a creeping atmosphere of dread. Carpenter at his best, both as director AND composer.
Most of the tracks are variations on the main title theme, with pulsing synths, brooding and rhythmic, all wreathed in ominous drones, in fact much of the soundtrack is drone based, Howarth and Carpenter letting tones drift and slowly decay, before introducing the next melody or texture, and it's incredible effective. And fear not, there's plenty of pounding tense synthscapes, the sort Carpenter is so good at, the chase scenes, even here sans the visuals, will have you compulsively looking over your shoulder. And of course that weird electronic effect that opens the movie pops up again and again, perfectly creeping the listener out.
And while the whole soundtrack is pretty incredible, we can't neglect THE SONG, the one you hear constantly throughout the movie, the commercial that plays on TVs all the time, getting the kids psyched up, and counting down the hours to the special horror-thon and giveaway and whatever else Halloween might bring, a maddening jingle that will stick in your head like crazy, and once you've seen the movie, that jingle will sound even more terrifyingly ominous. SO goddamn good. And so utterly recommended. As is the movie. If you haven't seen it, well it IS almost Halloween...
Like all Death Waltz releases, super fancy packaging, this one in a glossy full color jacket, with a full color rendering of a TV screen, which of course plays such a big part in the plot, not to mention a logo for the mask company. Notes from the composer on the back of the jacket, the inside sleeve featuring extensive liner notes AND a beautiful poster of the cover art.
Ah, this record is bloody gorgeous, introducing us to Kate Carr's wondrously droned-out field recordings and somnolent avant-folk strum. Carr is a peripatetic soul, spending her formative days in Sydney, Australia and currently plunked on the other side of the world in Belfast, Ireland with numerous travels that hardly make a straight line between the two locales. On these travels, she tireless collects field recordings - her soundcloud page sports an ever growing archive of fragments of wind, metal, birdsong, subterranean echo, mechanical purr, and nocturnal street emptiness. In her composed work, she'll find sympathetic textures within this archive, and turn these worldy sounds inward to illuminate a dreamlike radiance and an introverted otherness in these sounds. These hushed lulls and emotional pregnant impressions interweave with the more archetypically musical figures from guitar, synth, and their cohabitating shoegazed wash. The utterly downer track "I Remembered It All Somewhere Near Glasgow" centers on a particularly maudlin ellipsis played on acoustic guitar, dripping with sadness as reverberant pools ripple outward from her treated field recordings and distilled environmental hum. The drone is central to her work, but it is one that meanders as coaxed by the wind striking an Aeolian harp, rather than adhere to the plumb line of microtonal adjustments. That organic quality of her harmonics in conjunction with the sodden field recordings and the rainy-day song fragments make for quite a beautifully sad album. Limited to 70 copies.
Seven tracks of absolutely positively soothing music. Very pretty and a bit wistful; full of reverb drenched, lilting guitar arpeggios. 'Home Movies' could very well have been issued on Temporary Residence or Kranky. Hop aboard the ambient post-rock hovercraft and drift along to the sounds of Carrier.
A Pauline Oliveros project, with Peter Bode and Andrew Deutsch. For this release, they've taken stuff from the technical notebooks of electronic instrument pioneer Harald Bode (Peter's dad?) and with the use of the Bode Vocoder have made his writing part of their improvised drone composition. Other elements include Harald's demo tapes, Oliveros' "Difference Box" device, and Deutsch's synthesizer.
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Barton Carroll might not be a household name, but he's certainly made his presence felt on numerous other artists' albums and live performances. He's not only the multi-instrumentalist for Crooked Fingers, but he's also shared the stage with the likes of Azure Ray, Micah P. Hinson and Dolorean (not the metal band, duh). Love & War is his second solo folk album. The simple white text on black background on the front cover reflects the music's dark starkness, while the splash of green foliage on the back cover photo hints at Carroll's well manicured earthiness. His evocative lyrics' subject matter focuses on war history and literary works. Hence, the album's dominant mood is decidedly somber, at times evoking an almost funereal tone. Includes a stirring cover of "The Dark End Of The Street".
If you know who Corky Carroll is, it's 'cause chances are, you're into surfing. But besides being one of the top champion pro surfers of his era ('60s/early '70s), and in fact considered possibly the first ever professional surfer, he was also way into music. In 1971, at age 23, he released this album, his first of many, on a private label called Rural that he ran with Dennis Dragon (of the Dragons and later of the Surf Punks, and brother to Darryl, aka Captain of the Captain and Tennille). Corky and Dennis brought mobile recording gear with them to visit fellow surfers/musicians all along the California coast, that's where the "& Friends" comes in, as this, in addition to Corky's own guitar strum, features contributions from a variety of fine musicians, including some exquisite Hawaiian slack-key guitar picking by island-born board-crafter Raymond Patterson. Also appearing: Denny Aarberg (lead guitarist from the Santa Barbara hippy-surf band Farm, also later co-writer of the John Milius surf film Big Wednesday), David Lyons, Al Oakie, Kathy Dragon, and the members of the band Hana. All of these people were serious surfers like Corky, though the music they made doesn't sound like your typical "surf music" (though it is warm and beach-ily idyllic).
Mellow, folky, mostly acoustic, largely instrumental, a little bit bluesy in spots, of course this would get reissued by Japan's wonderful EM Records, who have previously brought us a bunch of "psychedelic surf" albums in the past, in their "EM Under Water Series", like the Farm's soundtrack to The Innermost Limits Of Pure Fun.
Certainly this is aptly titled, Laid Back, being so sunshiney and stoned, what what some folks here, who (ahem) know what they're talking about, would consider a perfect "wake 'n' bake" album, that you could file with David Crosby's If I Can Only Remember My Name ferinstance.
Anyone who liked the These Trails album Drag City recently reissued and wants another trip to the islands in their imagination, should check this out!
Packaged in the usual EM cardboard gatefold sleeve, the insert bearing interesting liner notes from Corky himself. Pricier vinyl version also available, fyi.
SF local faves, now on cd.
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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Carta is the coming together of two music vets, Alexander Kort (also of Subtle) and Jared Matt Greenberg (also of Charles Atlas). The duo make post rock music of the pretty kind, incorporating a bit of shoegazer dreaminess and folky earthiness in there too. While they're not breaking any new ground, they do the tried and true quite well.
The Glass Bottom Boat is their first release, an instrumental album for the most part, the one exception is the album's lengthy title track which is graced with some lilting female vocals. It's a bit of a surprising appearance late in the mostly mellow proceedings as is the sudden burst of dissonance in that very same track. For fans of Hood, Eluvium, Tristeza and Kammerflimmer Kollektief.
Does the Carter Family really need any introduction? Family Patriarch, A.P., his wife Sara, and their sister-in-law Maybelle are probably the most influential country music band of all time, and with good reason. Well-versed in hundreds of British and Appalachian folk songs that A.P. collected in their native Virginia, they managed to save these timeless songs for generations to come. Bluegrass music pretty much wouldn't have existed without the Carter Family. First playing as a husband and wife duo in 1915, they didn't get label notice until the addition of A.P.'s brother's wife, Maybelle (June Carter Cash's mother!) on guitar in 1926 right before they first signed to Victor. They stayed active until 1956 even during bouts of financial stress from the Great Depression and A.P. and Sara's divorce in 1939. This beautiful record compiles the best of the early Victor recordings, including their hits, "Single Girl, Married Girl", "Wabash Cannonball" and "Keep on The Sunny Side of Life". What we find most amazing about the Carter Family is their consistent use of Nature as spiritual metaphor. Though their songs are rooted in the Gospel tradition, the positive force of God is always represented lyrically by the Sun, Trees, and The Sea. This no doubt added to their populist appeal, especially in the folk revival of the fifties and sixties. Essential!! Go Monk label, go!
Country music pioneers the Carter Family really need no introduction at this point (check our review for the previous collection on Monk, I'm Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes...). With their encyclopedic knowledge of old American and British folk songs, the Carters helped to bring this music into the recording age where they stood as a link between old and new. As the world was rapidly changing around them, groups like the Carter Family were essential in documenting American traditions which were rapidly fading. This collection, containing songs recorded in 1929, finds the group at the height of their commercial and artistic powers with some amazing renditions of many old time classics, such as "Motherless Children", "Wabash Cannonball", and the title track among others. All in all, another essential compilation of some of the most timeless music ever recorded.
Carter Tutti. Chris & Cosey. There may be a semantic difference somewhere to be discussed, but this album brigades what those differences may be as the pair of Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti have crafted an album of material mined from the back catalogue of Chris & Cosey albums under the moniker Carter Tutti. Over the past four years, the couple has been touring vigorously, with the set including revamped / recorded / reengineered versions of the older Chris & Cosey material. So many people approached them with requests for the live recordings of these newer versions that they went into the studio to properly sequence these tracks for an album. And we gotta say that Carter Tutti offer up one hell of a recapitulation, and at times, they really do better themselves than what they had done back in the '80s. When Throbbing Gristle broke up and Chris & Cosey ventured out on their own, they adopted the seductive electro-pop subversion facets of TG to their own devices. Their albums eagerly consumed technology and fused any and all forms of electronics into the sexual / somatic rhythms of the human body. Admittedly, some times their ideas were hindered by the technologies that were at their disposal. Samplers that could only fire so fast and so much. MIDI programming that was limited by latency, memory, and timing issues. Jump several decades, and what Chris & Cosey did in the '80s with a bank of synthesizers and sequencers can now be done on any given phone. So many of these recapitulations work with the same set of melodies and sequences, but smoothed out the technological stumbling blocks. "Driving Blind" was one of the better tracks on their 1984 album Songs Of Love And Lust; and here, the two flesh out the arpeggiation of the sequences with a dense polyphony of streaming electronics above their whipcrack techno production - and Cosey's skulldrill monotone mantras are as compelling, delirious, and sexy as ever. "BeatBeatBeat" is one of the most refreshing recreations, mostly because the original was pretty damn annoying, again with a minimal, surgical set of cybernetic techno and Cosey reworking the vocal chorus into more of a celestial chime and less of a mosquito irritant. The S&M inspired "Sin" finds Cosey channelling Siouxsie more so than she's ever done in the full-throated bellows of sexual depravity above another finely tuned machine of chome-plated techno. One can hope that whatever new material comes out of this redux, it will follow this template which is pretty fucking great.
Of the three generations of country music's royal family -- the Carters, Anita (sister of June) possessed perhaps the most perfect voice, so bell clear and pure that it's almost unearthly. This compilation on the esteemed country-reissue label Bear Family contains mostly recordings from 1961-64, 26 tracks in all, featuring crystal clear, spacious production. Just amazing Anita and acoustic guitar. This record has made me cry. Highly recommended!
