Not one but TWO repeat Record Of The Week honorees, elsewhere, the latest from French alchemical post rockers Aluk Todolo, and this, the latest from Cave, whose recent instore performance totally blew us away. It says a lot about a band that can put together a totally improvised set, with limited gear and various members changing up instruments, and still sound better and tighter and catchier and more rocking than most bands playing their own songs on their proper gear NOT in a record store.
Born from the space drone psych outfit Warhammer 48K, these guys left Missouri, ended up in Chicago, added a whole bunch of new members and became Cave, a kick ass spaced out kraut-drone hypno rock collective, equal parts Circle, Can, Lightning Bolt, Wooden Shjips, and Hawkwind, but so much more. Their first record, Hunt Like Devil, was a glorious cacophony of circular riffage, frenetic drumming, woozy basslines, wild synths, and killer hooks, groovy, hypnotic, space-y, and while this record is more of the same, it's somehow transcends, taking everything we loved about the first record, and making it, well, MORE. We'd have probably loved it even if it was Hunt Like Devil part 2, but thankfully, Psychic Summer finds the band exploring some new territory, but dragging that old sound with them.
The opener begins with just a stripped down guitar, and some subtly noodly synth, before exploding in a sun dappled burst of super distorted, in-the-red psychedelia, before shifting again into a muted sunshiney krautrock groove, laced with some cool synths, and electronic filigree. The song locks into the groove and slowly builds to a triumphant climax, eventually slowing down to a sort of chiming jangly groove, which leads right into "Made In Malaysia" which might be the jam of the disc. Stuttering synths, stop start dynamics, chugging guitars, which gives way to a wild woozy twisted riffy bridge, with shouted vocals, and warble bended guitar notes, and an irresistable staccato groove, first just the synth, but then the drums, motorik and relentless, live it's not hard to imagine this track being stretched into a whole set. A single song, so hooky and loopy and mesmerizing. But it's Cave, so two seconds later, they're locked into a different kind of groove, a tribal rhythm, warm organ chords, underneath blooping effects, buried vocals, it's almost danceable, definitely groovy, like they just took one measure from some classic old school dance track and looped it into some space aged kraut disco space jam.
The other three tracks are just as mesmerizing, the muted space-y throb of "High, I Am", wrapped in a slithery bit of warped synthage, to the dense drum heavy "Requiem For John Sex", with some grinding mathy guitar and a bit of indie jangle all wound up in the tracks summery drift, before a wild super sped up free for all psych out finish, and "Machines And Muscles", which was originally released on the now out of print Butthash single, this seems to be a slightly different version, and is definitely another of the record's highlights, total hynorock bliss, little bits of keyboard pepper the stuttery rhythm, the main riff staying solid and unwavering, while all around it various other sounds swoop and shimmer, a Circle-like guitar groove, shuffling drums, very tribal and looped sounding, suspended in a field of space streakings, warm organ whir and smears of soft effects in the background, that main riff stays LOCKED in, until it begins to get a bit more tripped out, a little distorted, more effects, the synths skitter and stutter, and then finally, the song fades out in a blinding kaleidoscopic burst of warm sunshine-y synth.
And that's really the magic of Cave, we're all so partial to the dark and doomy, the buzzy and droney, that it's so exciting for a record to sound so heavy and tripped out and hypnotic, but at the same time so sunshiney, so Summery, so FUN. These guys totally rule, this record is fantastic, and if you can believe it, live they might be even better.
Chicago based rhythmic psychlords and unanimous aQ favorites Cave spark up another set of burners on this 3 song (long songs, we might add) vinyl-only ep, their first for the mighty Drag City imprint. It's great to see this band taking off, going further with each release and pretty much becoming a more focused, more realized version of themselves with each new record.
Opener "Hot Bricks" sounds a bit like a more fleshed out Moon Duo, and boy, we ain't complaining one bit. It moves with a nice organ pulse and a cool hazy groove. The vocals are in the same vein as Moon Duo / Wooden Shjips frontman Ripley Johnson, you know, kind of an Alan Vega styled bad ass croon. The song is steady and rocking but also melodic and dreamy. "Teenager" surprises us once again with a more upfront vocal presence, which we are digging quite a lot. Overall it helps Cave seem more focused AND more stoned, always a good thing, and it's clear that everyone is operating on the same psychic wavelength. The song makes great use of the spacious production complete with some vocal harmonies that sound, for a second at least, like a couple of Gregorian monks after a few bong rips. The band constructs a thick psychedelic haze with burly bass, tight ass drumming, and some incendiary riffage.
Taking up all of side 2 is "Brigitte's Trip", which starts life as a cool, compact jam with more empty space than usual. Over the course of the song, things pick up and head into a heavy midtempo groove with the rhythm section acting as the anchor while everyone goes crazy and takes things skyward. Things slow down again and sound a bit like Dead Meadow's mellower moments, leading us to wonder what these boys will cook up next. Whatever that may be, we're looking forward to it. Until then, we're going to sit back and bask in the glow of Pure Moods.
New vinyl only collection from these spaced out psychedelic kraut-punks, collecting a bunch of, as the title suggests, their singles from the last 6 or 7 years, a few we've already reviewed, so probably best to revisit those, which will no doubt give you an idea of what you're in for. Included is their single on Trensmat, which begins with the weird protofunk of "Butthash", a bouncy groover, with swirly synths, caffeinated rhythms, and buried vocals, a bit angular, a little new wave, equal parts krautrock, and spaced out shimmer, but all tangled up and kaleidoscopic, which leads directly into "Machines & Muscles" with its Circle-like guitar groove, some hand drums, very tribal and looped sounding, suspended in a field of space streakings and smears of soft effects in the background, the drums get a little more obtuse, a bit busier, but that main riff stays LOCKED in, until it begins to get ALL tripped out, distorted, effects drenched, swinging from speaker to speaker, dizzyingly tripped out, and then finally, the drums kick in proper, and we're in total hynorock bliss, little bits of keyboard pepper, the stuttery rhythm, the main riff staying solid and unwavering, while all around it various other sounds swoop and shimmer.
Also included is the B side from the Made In Malaysia 7" on Important, "Boneyard", fuzzy, spaced out, murky, krautrocky, lysergic, druggy, lots of trippy effects laden psych guitar, a propulsive garagey groove, pounding metronomic drumming, WAY more Hawkwind and Monster Magnet and especially Loop than the full length proper. Think Heads and White Hills and other purveyors of hypno space rock, and this track will definitely push those very same buttons.
Beyond that, the comp also tosses in a handful of jams from records we were never able to get, which was presumably true for some of you folks too, the tracks from their Static Caravan 7", two tracks from Giradiscos 7" and one unreleased track only available here. The Static Caravan tracks are on the more rocking side, the band winding their krautrocky synths around some seriously hard rocking space rock, again channeling the Heads and White Hills and of course Hawkwind, with the second, getting all proggy and weirdly space-funky, wild tribal drums over percolating synth melodies, like a Neu! track jacked up and spinning at 78rpm. The Giradiscos tracks are even cooler/stranger adding a sort of Ethiopian groove to the proceedings, the first track sounding like some lost slab of cosmic Ethiopian psych funk, while the second gets all blessed out and laid back, another groover, but this one sort of dashed and dreamy and druggy. And finally, the unreleased track, which might be the oddest of the bunch, adding actual vocals, almost jam band sounding, the music on its own is still pretty motorik and propulsive, but those vocals make it sound like some warped hyper-charged version of the Grateful Dead or something, which sounds weird, but we're guessing it's a comparison the band would dig a lot.
Sadly no download, but there is an insert, with some liner notes, and comes housed in a super minimal stickered jacket.
Brand new one sided flexi-disc 7" single from these aQ kraut/space rock faves, and it's a pretty sweet slab of spaced out psychedelia, the group laying down that immediately recognizable space-kraut groove, over which they lay down a fractured Rolling Stones style guitar riff, along with some woozy looped synth. Already locked into some serious psychedelic trance, then a second synth swoops in, weaving in an extra melody, even a bit of fluttery flute, the sound gradually drifting toward something less kraut-y or spacey and more toward something distinctly jammy, heck there's even what sounds like electric piano at one point, it's like Cave have decided to become a modern day jam band, fusing the classic old jam style (Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, etc.) to something more modern and kosmische and krauty, and it suits them big time. Too bad it's just a 7", cuz we're guessing this jam was way longer in the practice space. Super rad, and of course, super limited, only 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered, pressed onto a green flexi, includes a printed cover/insert.
The latest from these psychedelic krautrockers sees the band pushing in a decidedly different direction, at least on the opening track, which is straight up fusiony psych-kraut funkiness. And we're not talking slightly funky, we're talking total kraut-funk FUNK, groovy rhythms, wild percussion, slithery guitar jangle, woozy, burbly basslines, some spidery wah wah guitar leads, definitely pretty tranced out and hypnotic still, but definitely seriously funky. This IS however, Cave after all, so we were prepared for something twisted to maybe happen, yet after 4 or 5 minutes we were convinced maybe we were mistaken, and the band had decided to just go for it, but then, BAM, super heavy guitars swoop in, for some heavy rock riffage, still funky, but now a sort of seventies style heavy rock groove, like a super charged James Gang or something, totally psychedelic, and spacey, and yeah, funky and groovy, but more like Goat sort of, once those guitars kick in, a total heavy groove rock bliss out. But it only lasts a few minutes, soon, the guitars peel away, as does much of the funk, leaving just a super spare sprawl of pulsing, shuffling, grooving minimalism. Strange, but seriously cool.
From there on out, the band slip back into more familiar Cave territory, the groovy kraut-y hypnorock of "Silver Headband", that sounds like a more crystalline and sun dappled Circle, replete with constantly shifting sonic cycles, layered melodies, and again, near the end, some seriously heavy, almost metallic guitar crunch, the song exploding into yet another blast of rad riffiness. And the funk isn't gone, it resurfaces in "Arrow's Myth" but much more subtly, the band doing their best Bitches Brew, all murky freeform psychedelic space-funk, flurries of wah guitar, warm whirring organ, murky atmospheres and motorik drumming, plenty of percussion, but everything sorta blurred into a heady, druggy sprawl, until about three quarters through, when the groove proper kicks in, and in come the HORNS, and again, it's total seventies jazz-funk worship, and it KILLS. The last two tracks are classic Cave, two sprawling space groove epics, the first, sounding a bit like Stereolab crossed with Goat, and given a heavy psychedelic jazz makeover, the second more laid back and dreamily psychedelic, spaced out and droney, the band locked into one of those endless woozy grooves, that falls somewhere between psychedelic space rock, and drowsy, Spacemen 3 style bongsmoke fueled mesmer...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Listen up nerds!! So, a few weeks back we reviewed a compilation tape called the "Cave Evil Radio Mix", that was created as the soundtrack to this truly bizarre "Necro-Demonic dungeon crawl" fantasy boardgame, in which the players take on the role of evil Necromancers, vying for domination in a dank subterranean necropolis, invoking creatures, excavating tunnels, collecting resources (metals, gore, and shadowflame) and battling the other Necromancers & their hordes to control The Pit at the center of the board. Last Necromancer standing wins.
Be warned, it's not an EASY game, there are a LOT of rules (the entertainingly written and illustrated rulebook is over 40 pages long) so this isn't for folks who find anything more advanced than Monopoly challenging. It's more complex than Settlers Of Catan too (though way cooler to deal in metals, gore, and shadowflame rather than sheep, wood, and bricks...). You kinda have to be a real gamer to get with this. But if you are, and like fantasy-horror concepts and creepy artwork (amazing stuff mainly by Fort Thunder comic book artist Mat Brinkman, also by Commode Minstrels In Bullface, and others), then this might be up your alley! For you hardcore gamers out there, we'd say Cave Evil is like a MUCH more complex (and totally black metallized) version of the classic game Wiz-War. You draw cards (spells, weapons, monsters, events), move your Necromancer and the 'squads' of minions he controls, and attempt to defeat the other Necromancers before the even-more-evil-than-thou denizen of The Pit awakens and murders you all.
The game is a limited edition, DIY production (but really nicely done!), and it's more or less out of print but we were lucky enough to get a few extra copies of it from Commode Mistrels In Bullface. We also recently finally got a chance to actually PLAY the game. And now we know that not only does it look amazing, but it's a lot of fun as well. Actually, a really good game, deserving of the high score the users of BoardGameGeek have given it (7.9 out of 10).
We were learning, so it took a few hours to play, like, ten turns, and we didn't come close to actually finishing the game, but are looking forward to our next session. Allan is still talking about how his Black Wizard managed to escape certain death when attacked by an Undead Dragon by using his special ability to split into two Mini Black Wizards so that one of them could run away... An ability that we thought might have been inspired by the Emperor song "I Am The Black Wizards".
For more info, check out www.caveevil.com, there's even a short trailer there showing what life's like in the cave, for real. You'll also find a more thorough (and also positive) playtest review of the game via the folks at The Comics Journal, at http://www.tcj.com/reviews/cave-evil/, which also shows lots of the cool black/white/grey artwork found on each card in the game, and the gameboard and tiles and game box itself.
We always wondered if East Coast metallic noise rockers Cave In were named after legendary slowcore outfit
Codeine's ultra heavy jam "Cave In", and now we know! More on that in a second.
This collection gathers up a handful of unreleased jams and rarities from these post/metal/prog heavies, who over the course of their now lengthy career, have probably managed to alienate every single one of their fans, except maybe us. Starting out as a crushing downtuned noise metal juggernaut, the band gradually morphed into epic bombastic Radiohead style arena rock, and then inexplicably back again, and these days seem to hover somewhere between the two. And while that may have confused lots of folks, we frankly love BOTH those sounds, the heavy and the poppy, and we're pretty into a mix of the two. So we were psyched for this, as it gathers up a handful of tracks, some as early as Until Your Heart Stops, some later on toward the Jupiter record, not to mention some seriously bad ass covers.
The first two tracks are classic Cave In, epic and proggy, metallic and complex, the liner notes even describe "Mr. Co-Dexterity" as being a song they never played live cuz it has more riffs than any other Cave In song. Hell yeah! Next up is their Bad Brains cover, and weirdly enough they chose to cover one of BB's straight up reggae songs, and as hard as it might be to believe, they totally own it, transforming it into something closer to a heavier Radiohead (which is basically later period Cave In anyway), before letting the song sprawl into a super tripped out and psychedelic workout, all tribal rhythms, twisted guitar weirdness, loads of effects and electronics everywhere, dirgey and droney and bad ass.
The flipside starts off with their cover of the Cure's "Plainsong", which is again turned into something more heavy and psychedelic, the melodies super effected and swirly, the vocals appropriately deep and dramatic, with big BIG drums. They also tackle Black Sabbath's "N.I.B.", but totally reinvent it, and the result sounds more like Pink Floyd than Sabbath, shimmery and spacey, the only recognizable bit is the bassline. There's one more original, an alternate demo version of one of the songs from Jupiter, solidly in their Radiohead period, big bombastic stadium pop, but still proggy and metallic, and finally, the band pay homage to their namesakes, the mighty Codeine, and they tackle Codeine's "Cave In", and while we might have expected them to metal it up (as mentioned before, we dream of a FULL ON doom metal version of "Cave In"), they instead do it all pretty and acoustic-y, gorgeously hi-fi, with thick rumbling bass, stripped down and almost dream poppy, definitely a nice version, and the liner notes explain that the band did indeed name themselves after that song, and sent a copy of their debut to Codeine, but never heard back!
Totally essential collection for fans of Cave In, any or all eras, super limited, pressed on white vinyl, in old school bootleg style jackets.
Curiouser and curiouser. A radio-friendly Cave In? Yep, as hinted at by recent ep releases, these formerly crunchy, chaotic metalcore boys have gone totally...soft. Well, a lot of this still rocks but it's all melodic and pretty and taking no big chances. We thought it was cool when they came out with the career -making or -breaking "OK Computer" -ish album "Jupiter" on Hydrahead a few years ago, that was a radical move (imagine touring with Neurosis and singing in a Thom Yorke falsetto!) and really epic and excellent. But now that they're on a bonafide major label, they're REALLY emphasizing the pop, not the prog. The singer has dropped the falsetto, and things are going in a definite commercial direction. They're soon to be huge, we're sure, but now they sound like every band on MTV, when they used to be so weird and unique and metal-gone-arty. Now, at best, they're a guilty pleasure. Immediately poppy, anthemic, good at what they're doing, more power to 'em -- but do we need another Goo Goo Dolls? Really, these days the Foo Fighters are a heavier, more metal band than Cave In! And Cave In used to sound like Slayer. Still, we'll give this a chance to grow on us, maybe it'll be the next Queens of the Stone Age 'round here (note the Nirvana-y bit in track two).
Oh yeah, initial quanities include a bonus dvd with videos and bonus track.
MPEG Download: "Stained Silver" [/audio/caveinstained.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Stained Silver" [/audio/caveinstained.m3u]
A weird departure for the up-until-now brutally heavy Cave-In. 5 songs, very melodic, like a heavier Pink Floyd. 2 weird electronic ambient pieces, one acoustic song (sounding a lot like Simon and Garfunkel, really), one really catchy song, and a Failure cover!? This is a pretty good record, but don't look here for your usual Hydrahead fix.
Boston metalcore band Cave In was once described as being a mixture of Slayer and Radiohead. And usually the Radiohead part was just 'cause of some weird proggy electronic leanings, but the Slayer tag was the more accurate one. But now, with "Jupiter", they've gone and morphed themselves into a pop band. Seriously. And they're damn good at it. Amazingly, they still tour with the likes of Neurosis and Dillinger Escape Plan, playing their new, art-pop material exclusively! And the kids like it! Ornate, lengthy songs complete with falsetto vocals, and amazingly catchy melodies. Previously, we've enthused over Muse and Justin Clayton, as Radiohead clone bands par excellance, but this might just take the cake. But unlike the Radiohead clones, Cave-In don't seem so much like they're copying Radiohead, more like they're contemporaries, albeit way heavier and way more rocking. We're just so blown away by this band's transformation and metal-forged skill at creating this stuff. Perfect proggy pop, mixed with healthy doses of Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Yes, etc. Fans of the old Cave In might be a bit disoriented, but give it a chance. Heavy doesn't always mean distorted guitars and satanic growling.
So recommended.
Two new songs from the Boston-based formerly-metalcore band Cave In, who have morphed into a great heavy guitar rock band. They're as anguished and epic as Radiohead only less annoyingly arty. They're as anguished and epic as Jeff Buckley only not afraid to
Super limited ep from AQ faves Cave In. Having fully shed their metalcore skin, and become what can be best described as the heavy metal Radiohead, this ep moves even further to the proggy pop side of things. Four tracks from the their recent Jupiter record, one, very slightly reworked, and three radically different 'piano versions'. And obviously, the piano versions are the reason to
Ahhh Cave in. How we loved you. And then hated you. And then loved you again. And then hated... Oh crap, who can keep track. Took us a while to check out this release just 'cause we were worried about what we'd hear. Starting life as a churning dontuned metalcore juggernaut, these guys were one of the first Hydra Head bands to toally blow our minds. We described their debut Until Your Heart Stops as Slayer meets Radiohead, which might be pushing it. They were more sort of like Coalesce or Deadguy, but they weren't afraid to explore melodies or ambience, often forgoing metallic crunch altogether in search of something new. As they progressed, they began to move away from their metalcore roots, letting the Radiohead side of their personality come to the fore, and fuck it, we loved it. Dreamy swoonsome pop, with big hooks, soaring falsetto vocals. Who could argue with a way heavier Radiohead? This new direction found them courted by major labels, eventually landing on RCA and releasing a record that was pretty much polished pop. They were obviously going for it. Why the hell not. No point in getting there and then just giving MTV and commercial radio the middle finger. So while Jupiter was pretty cool, it wasn't much more. But as with many bands who make it to the big time, Cave In realized it wasn't for them, so they came back into the fold, rejoining the Hydra Head roster, and began to sort of tentatively dip their toes back in the metal pool. Thus we have Perfect Pitch Black. Which is actually pretty close to perfect. They have returned to being a heavy band. Huge chugging riffs, proggy Tool-like drumming, howled demonic vocals, but all that pop time was not for naught, no, no matter how hard they tried to metallize, some of that pop came back with them, which is precisely what makes PPB so cool. A track will weave wildly from churning mosh worthy metalcore, to an epic melodic chorus, to a full on fuzz pop bridge before returning to head crushing metallic crunch. Sort of how Dove and Torche took simple Nirvana-esque pop, and melded it with downtuned sludge, Cave In take epic, grandiose pop -- Radiohead, Muse, Sigur Ros, Tool, that sort of thing, but set it in a dangerously and precariously metal context. And the results are amazing. Cave In somehow manage to make those two disparate sides of their sound fit abso-fucking-lutely perfectly together. Heavy, proggy, poppy, catchy, so good. Another record, that if there was any justice in the world, would be all over the radio and MTV (or whatever channel it is that actually still plays videos). Jason told us he hated Cave In now, so we threw this on, and he immmediately started bugging us to know what was playing. We wouldn't tell him what it was until he admitted that he was totally digging it. Which he did. And he couldn't believe it was Cave In. But we could. We never really stopped liking them, but we most definitely love their perfect pop way more when it's drenched metallic crush and pummel!
The return of Cave In. Or maybe more accurately, ANOTHER return of Cave In. We might be some of the only folks who never stopped loving this band. From their crushing metallic early years, to their epic pop prog Radiohead style flirtation with major label years, to their return to indie label / heaviness, to Cave In front man Stephen Brodsky's curious but totally compelling jangly psych pop solo records, and now this, another return that sounds a lot like the under appreciated Perfect Pitch Black record from a while back, the band melding their two disparate sides, the poppy polished side, and the chugging metal side. And fuck if it doesn't still sound great. In fact, it's the sort of thing that could, or maybe SHOULD find it's way on to commercial radio. As the climate is way more accepting of metal, and heaviness in general, and Cave In have a sort of Muse only more metal thing going on, with the right push, as we've said before, these guys cold be huge.
"Cayman Tongue" opens up with some soaring guitars, big stadium drums, and Brodsky's soaring croon, and some serious chug. We're definitely hearing some Muse, but with that distinct Cave In vibe and way with melodies, before it gets seriously crunchy and the gruff vocals come out, and things get mathy and gloriously chaotic, and then for MINUTES, the band get all spaced out and doomy, letting their guitars feedback and buzz, interrupting the tangled guitar gnarl every few seconds with a big metallic crush, before a seriously grinding intense Coalesce-style outro.
"Retina Sees Rewind" has a killer main riff, all tangled Maiden-y squiggles and crunchy chug, wild psychedelic leads, and a chorus that sounds a bit like Torche meets Rush meets Queens Of The Stone Age. "The Redtrail" is all frantic punk rock with shrieked vox and tangled guitars, Greg Ginn-ish riffage and a total old school punk rock breakdown right in the middle. And "Air Escapes" finishes things off with another perfect blend of mathy metallic heaviness and quirky psych pop, Brodsky's nimble vocals draped over angular guitars and tribal drumming, that gets more and more Voivod-ish as the track progresses which is never a bad thing.
We still love these guys, hard to understand why everyone doesn't. One of the few bands as adept at pummeling metal as they are at crafting epic arena pop, and the fact that they can somehow do both at once, only makes them that much more special.
Incredible packaging as with most Hydra Head stuff, gorgeous metallic printing on the jacket and on the inside sleeve, pressed on ultra thick vinyl, and most likely very very limited.
Originally released as a cd back in 2001, Sacrifice Poles was a collection of 4-track instrumental demos, jams and audio experiments crafted during the recording of Cave In's Jupiter record. This vinyl reissue came and went in the blink of an eye, but we did manage to snag a few copies, as in less than 5, so for a handful of folks, here's your chance to nab one of these before they're gone. And it's pretty great, and weird, most of the tracks are pretty much proper Cave In songs, albeit instrumental, and sound like they could have eventually ended up on a proper Cave In record, others are more abstract, isolated guitar tracks, weird ambient interludes, plenty of synths, weird programmed drums, fans of the proggier side of Cave In who have never heard the Sacrifice Poles record, are in for a treat. Sucks that it's so limited, but these are in fact, the last copies we'll be able to get, so best grab one quick, before they're gone for good. Again.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Includes a download.
A fantastic burst of heavy pop from formerly metalcore band Cave In -- their last blast on Hydrahead as prelude to their eventual major label debut full-length. They're like a heavier Radiohead, less anguished and more into rocking. The melodies are epic and heartrending, the guitars are clean and bright, and the songwriting is excellent -- it's like you can trust them, they don't let you down with experimental bull that's best left to a Thom Yorke solo album or something. They continue to polish and refine their own developing sound, which ambles nearer pop with every release. And yet, the more 'produced', polished, or whatever that they get, the better they sound! The title track, I swear, sounds like Rufus Wainwright with bigger balls crossed with Queen. So good! Fans of the other heavy rock bands with pop leanings that're getting mainstream press -- like Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age -- should definitely give this a listen!
Brutal but occasionally beautiful metallic hardcore, for fans of Coalesce, Deadguy and that ilk. This has been described as a mixture of Slayer and Radiohead (!) and I can almost see why. Andee approved.
It's always difficult to know what to expect from these guys, every record seems to alienate their core fans. After years of being a caustic sludgey metallic behemoth, they abruptly switched gears and sounded like Radiohead style stadium rock. By the time everyone was used to that, they suddenly got heavy again, REALLY heavy. Then they tried a mix of the two. And the thing is, we love it all. These guys are incredible, whether it's a face melting blast of downtuned metallic sludge, or a soaring chunk of blissed out melodic bombast, few can beat these guys on either count. But what that DOES mean, is that with every record, it could go either way, heavy or hooky, crushing or catchy (although to be fair, all their records are heavy AND hooky, crushing AND catchy, but you know what we mean), and for whatever reason, we were guessing pop, even though they seem to have been heading heavy-ward lately, it seemed like the perfect time for them to confound again, and make another bid for mainstream success. But lo and behold, this shit is FIERCE, and fucking HEAVY, no pop pretense at all, harkening back to Until Your Heart Stops, right out of the gate, the record explodes, replete with harsh almost black metal vox, wrapped around super distorted guitars, and to be fair there's a cool melodic component, a good balance, that again could have these guys going either way, but then "Serpents" drops, and it's all out grind and crush and pummel and pound, Stephen Brodsky's vocals a glass gargling yowl, the guitars frenzied and frenetic, the drums crushing, but the whole thing laced with synths, adding a whole 'nother vibe to the sound, but not taking away from the heaviness in the least.
But you can't completely take the pop out of the band, so throughout White Silence, and amidst all the downtuned bombast, there are plenty of killer pop-isms, "Sing My Loves" is total Torche style sludge pop, "Centered" wraps glitchy electronics and thick grinding guitars around some soaring clean vox, and some serious hooks, "Summit Fever" too is pure pop but in sludge metal clothing, might be THEE heavy jam of the year, and is where the record begins to sound to us more and more poppy, the poppiness seeming to blossom as the record progresses, even at its heaviest, somehow still exuding some sort of hookiness.
"Heartbreaks, Earthquakes" harkens back to Brodsky's Beatles-esque solo records, and "Iron Decibels" defies its title by also being a chunk of super melodic jangly pop that again sounds like a Brodsky solo jam, and then finally, "Reanimation", is a gorgeously hazy bit of crooned acousticky drift with a bombastic almost Queen like crescendo, which of course leads to the obvious observation that the second half of the record is INDEED more poppy and less heavy, and after more listens, White Silence reveals itself as a pretty genius progression, from all out metallic onslaught, to hushed prettiness, each song an ever softening gradation, and as always, these guys are equally adept at both soft and hard, loud and quiet, pop and metal. And as always WAY recommended.
We hope you've seen Werner Herzog's 3-D documentary film about the incredible 30,000 year old paintings in an equally incredible cave in France, for which is is the soundtrack. If you haven't, well, you should rent it! But it's really too bad if you don't see it in 3-D, unlike a lot of other 3-D movies. For Cave Of Forgotten Dreams, the 3-D isn't so much a gimmick (though Herzog of course has a sense of humor about it) than an important aesthetic choice, rendering the otherworldly, rarely visited underground setting all the more wondrous - and real. Furthermore, the prehistoric paintings that are the subject of the documentary were of course not rendered on flat canvases, but on irregular, rocky, curving cavern walls, and the 3-D helps to capture the sense of movement that the surfaces help give to the ancient artwork. Amazing, magical movie all around, and when we saw it, we certainly noticed the beautiful soundtrack music, thinking, wow, this could almost be something on the Miasmah label, alongside the cinematic soundscapes of Kreng or Jacaszek.
Some time later, we discovered that the soundtrack had been released on cd by the European contemporary jazz and classical label Winter & Winter, known for their unique, fancy packaging as well as the musical quality of their releases (one we always stock is their lovely recording of Teodoro Anzellotti's accordion transcriptions of Satie). So, we ordered this in, and have been meaning to review it ever since, but the thing is, it keeps selling out in the store before we get to list it, without a review on our site or tag or anything - people who saw the Herzog's film, just know how gorgeous the soundtrack music is (though in the context of the movie, it's almost trying too hard, and considering that the visuals are so breathtaking!).
This week, we managed to get enough extra copies in to finally list it for you. Composed by cellist Ernst Reijseger, a Dutch jazz musician, it's a magnificent, moody modern classical score that conveys the same spiritual sense of wonderment the cave and its contents evoke. With graceful and somber strings, droning church organ, some calm piano, and haunting choirs, it's music that's both delicate and weighty at once. Somehow both grand, and intimate. There are passages of liturgical sounding singing, wordless angelic ahhh ahhh ahhhs of male and female voices raised in harmony; also the recurring spiraling motif of Reijseger's sawing, sublime cello solos, set amidst ambient shimmer... Recorded almost entirely in a church in Holland, this music indeed sounds as if emanating from a large, enclosed, and holy space. And it certainly works apart from the film, as we said, it's nice to have it on its own to appreciate, without the 3-D distractions of Herzog's albino alligators (whoops, sorry, that's a spoiler if you haven't yet seen the film). Seriously, so nice.
Warning! The singer's nasally singing style will be a dealbreaker for most folks so check the sound samples first! Comprised of a trio of folks from other bands such as Pretty Girls Make Graves, the Cave Singer's debut album Invitation Songs, actually does sound pretty inviting musically at first. However, we couldn't get past the singing which sounds like back porch caterwauling sung over music by Pinback or Modest Mouse. Almost cool, but not quite. Sorry.
Much has been made about Blixa Bargeld's recent departure from Nick Cave's backing band The Bad Seeds. With or without the Einsturzende Neubauten frontman, The Bad Seeds have faithfully rendered Ol' Nick's tunes, ballads, croons, and occasional barn-stormers, and the twin set Abattoir Blues and Lyre Of Orpheus (handsomely bound together in a clothbound slipcase) doesn't waver one bit from Nick Cave's previous songs. At times, the sentimentality of Nick's sadness and pathos can be pretty thick; but hey, it's Nick Cave, what do you expect?
Although five songs written by Nick Cave are featured, "The Secret Life Of The Love Song" is dominated by Cave's lucid and insightful explications on his songwriting, which has over his twenty-plus career of abject behavior, produced the malevolent fury of the Birthday Party as well as the sorrowful love songs of his last few albums with the Bad Seeds. The two surprisingly erudite lectures presented here tend to focus on the anger and dispair reflected in his later love songs. Of the five songs, one is an exclusive track, with the other four are different versions of previously released songs. And for these five songs, Cave has employed Jim White and Warren Ellis from the Dirty Three to accompany his often solitary piano.
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My goodness. 57 songs that span the full twenty-one year career of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (not including any of the Birthday Party or the Boys Next Door material that preceeded the Bad Seeds). Most all of these tracks have been released in some way, shape, or form as flexi-disc tracks for Australian magazines, b-sides to singles, compilation tracks, soundtrack contributions, etc; but unless your rabidity about Nick Cave is all-consuming, the likelihood of you having all of the previously released tracks is slim to none. Given Cave's dedication to the craft as a singer / songwriter, the acoustic versions and alternate takes that would soil most every other rarieties retrospective appear with new perspectives upon his recurring grim themes of love, death, and God. Pretty essential for Nick Cave fans.
A bit of a weird one here... from the glitzy title-in-lights cover art to the music contained within! It's Nick Cave all right - yes, we recognize his voice! - but for the first couple songs he's doin' a strange talk-sing over a Stones-y (circa Steel Wheels?!) loose swampy blues chug rawk rave up. After that he gets into more familiar territory. The third slow creep of a track titled "Moonland" sinks in with its seething brood as Cave delivers his moaned and hissed vocals. Then things speed back up to a standard rock driving pace for "Night Of The Lotus Eaters". Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is sort of a rollercoaster ride in which diehard latter day fans will probably find much to love, but it may continue to infuriate fans of his early music and probably those of Grinderman too.
Nick Cave's songwriting has steadily devolved (or evolved?) from the rock bombast that once dominated his early career fronting the purposefully confrontational Birthday Party. With "No More Shall We Part," Cave once again situates himself comfortably behind
Nick Cave may have stumbled slightly in trying to position himself as an elder statesman of mope-rock with his abject previous outing "The Boatman's Call." But here, Cave confidently stands tall and proud, older and wiser.
Nick Cave's partner in crime for the past decade has been the wild-eyed beardo Warren Ellis, contributing battered violin and scrappy guitar in an attempt to replace Bad Seed / Birthday Party mainstay Mick Harvey as well as the perennial malcontent Blixa Bargeld, both of whom left the Bad Seeds in the late '00s. While Cave & Ellis were responsible for the testosterone garage rock of the aptly named Grinderman, their collaborative efforts have also found them scoring beautifully maudlin yet rustic soundtracks for film. In many ways, the soundtracks that Cave & Ellis scored for The Road and The Proposition laid out a template of sorts, foreshadowing the arrangements that would end up on Push The Sky Away. Yup, this is still a mellower Bad Seeds record, but it proves to be more consistent than some of the highly acclaimed earlier records. Tender Prey is a monster of a Nick Cave record, but it is dotted with duds. The lyrics behind all of Nick Cave's cautionary tales and murder ballads demand attention, perhaps more than we can really do justice to here; but we can say that the ballyhooed song "Higgs Boson Blues" with its strange pop culture references isn't nearly as corny as the press has made it out to be. The opening number "We No Who U R" features a smart cyclical chorus that's long been a staple in the Nick Cave songbook; and the skeletal track "We Real Cool" is the only one that seeks a bit of menace through a throbbing monochord bassline that back in the day would have girded a stabbing Bargeld / Harvey guitar duet but which now swims beneath a sky full of maudlin strings and plaintive pianos.
Wish we had the vinyl too but it's already being repressed, you gotta wait a few weeks...
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When Nick Cave started playing piano full time on the Bad Seeds' records, a lot of people wondered at the softer direction Mr. Cave was headed. Though he has redeemed himself in the eyes of his more rocking fans with the Grinderman band (and with his increased skill at the keys), there is an eerie beauty to the almost entirely instrumental piano-and-violin tracks on White Lunar. This 2cd set contains music from numerous films, including The Proposition, The Road, and two rare documentaries scored by Mr. Cave and longtime collaborator Warren Ellis, violinist for the Bad Seeds and The Dirty Three. The melodies from these haunting tracks will stay with you, and even people who aren't fans of Nick Cave will appreciate them.
Once a monstrous hyperbole of the pretenses of rock, Nick Cave has nearly completed his transformation into the complete antithesis of everything The Birthday Party ever stood for. That's not to say that "Nocturama," the 12th studio album for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, is a bad album; but only that there is very little connecting the Cave of today with the Cave of yesteryear. "Nocturama" finds old Nick seranading behind the piano, and these are mostly tender love songs that he croons with a bittersweet quiver that's more commonly heard from the Tindersticks than any of the psychosexually dark tales from his albums "From Her To Eternity" and "Let Love In." As strange as it may seem, Cave's voice is welcoming, friendly, and comforting with its dusky baritone complemented by arrangements that should sound somber and mournful, but don't. On a couple of tracks towards the end of the record, the Bad Seeds may appear to be reflecting on their swam-rock past, busting out their ramshackled, barn-bustin' numbers driven by caustic hammond organ and crashing cymbals. I think The Wire got it right, stating that these songs are "like a stompier Bob Dylan with the Band." Not exactly fire and brimstone; but a decent rock 'n' roll experience.
It's been several years now that Warren Ellis from The Dirty Three has been serving double duty as a part of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds but it really hasn't been until this score that the totally distinctive Dirty Three violin stylings of Ellis and Cave's dark brooding presence have totally meshed together to create something so strikingly gorgeous! While Cave's name will probably end up the focus in most people's eyes, the truth is this record is just as much and kind of even more about the sound of Ellis as more then half of the score is instrumental, which is very fine by us. The playing and mood is as good and at times even more grand and gorgeous then recent Dirty Three outings which of course we always adore. When Cave does step to the mic it's the more subtle and creepy and less crooning side of his delivery which for the mood of this record works so perfectly. Can't tell you anything about the film The Proposition but we can tell you the music in it is pretty damn stunning!
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Melancholy song-action from Nick and co. Some say his best of recent years.
With this 1998 album, Cavity's Sabbath-fried sludge from the swamps of Florida really earned them their rightful place in the pantheon of heaviosity peopled by the likes of the Melvins, Eyehategod, Boris, and Electric Wizard. We liked 'em already, but this record stood above and beyond. Sheer HEAVY pummel, riff repetition chug fulla feedback and nasty vocals. There's quiet respites now and then, making the monster riffage even more monstrous. Definitely the kind of thing that just takes you over, relentless, submersive, and hypnotic. So, we can't believe we never listed this before! It was a HUGE fave among a bunch of us here when it came out on Man's Ruin a few years ago. It's been sadly out of print ever since that label folded, but now Hydrahead has stepped up and reissued a remixed version, complete with new artwork/design and what appear to be 2 new tracks (but, one's missing -- what happened to "Almost Blue"?). So apparently even if you have the Man's Ruin version, you've gotta buy Supercollider again. But this is one of those records you *would* buy again, it's that good! And if you don't have this already, and you like heaviness, GET IT. Cavity's best album (though their last one, On The Lam, was pretty great too). Thanks Hydra Head for giving us the chance to recommend this, again.
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Six tracks in seventeen minutes from Japan's mysterious Cavo, who just happen to be labelmates of the amazing (and amazingly monickered) Bathtub Shitter, and feature a member of Corrupted! The first two tracks are a bit misleading, a hazy pagan ritual of gutteral almost-throat singing, temple bells and slow chants. Reminds us a bit of Ghost or Comus. But the ritual quickly grow in intensity until it's a chaotic swirl of tribal drums, shouted vocals, sludgy low end, repetitive riffs, and thick viscous ambience. Like a primitive mix of the Boredoms and Crash Worship. The tribal melee continues, interrupted briefly with one more ambient interlude, all low end rumble and groaning vocalisations, sounding like Keiji Haino with strep throat fronting Earth. Toward the end of the record the sludge coalesces into a weirdly catchy Viking style sing-a-long, lots of WOOOAH OOH OHHH's until things wind down in a truly creepy ritual of spoken female vocals, clapping, manic chanting, shouts, screams and whistles. Comus meets the Boredoms? The Wickerman performed by Corrupted? Boris covers the Incredible String Band? More amazing and baffling Japanese weirdness!
Cd_Slopper is the collaborative work of Mego contributers Oswald Berthold (of Farmer's Manual) and Florian Hecker. "SaskieWaxi" features both a musical program and an HTML-executable element of text / graphics / etc. The musical format is certainly informed
I'll admit that I gave the CDrom portion only 30 minutes or so, but each attempt to view / install the software of the visual data resulted in the computer acting all funny (opening up the wrong programs, not finding the proper html link, or simply crashing). I'm reminded of so many art gallery exhibitions of "internet art" which find the computers always in a similar state of disarray... making me wonder, [1] is that what is supposed to happen (thus, making a really lame comment about the nature of computer glitch), [2] is the artist just a bumbling idiot, or [3] did the last viewer try to download some porn, thereby fucking up the system? In any event, I'm not impressed with this portion of the evening's program.
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Hip hop remix.
Two new releases from the Glass Throat label on this week's list, elsewhere, the latest from longtime aQ faves Blood Of The Black Owl, and this one the first release from Cedar Spirits, a trio featuring the husband and wife team who run Glass Throat, Chet Scott (who is also BOTBO) and Rachel Boaz-Scott. The music is dark and reflective, laced with the very sounds of nature that seem to influence everything on the label. In fact the record opens with four minutes of field recordings, just the sound of a rushing river, water flowing over rocks, wind through the trees above, and when the music does come in, it's just the reverberant ringing of struck bowls, the tones ringing out and fading into the sounds of rushing water, although eventually the tones begin to sustain, creating a crystalline dronescape, laced with tinkling chimes, hushed and minimal and quite lovely.
It's the perfect introduction to Cedar Spirit's nature folk, the record unwinding lazily, subtle steel guitar strum, chant-like vocals, all over the sounds of chirping birds, and a crackling fire, the sounds fading out leaving just those nature sounds, which are soon joined by some sort of horn, the result primitive and ritualistic, the music here simply the trio sonically communing with their surroundings. Fluttering flutes drift in, some minimal percussion, tranced out and darkly mesmerizing, it is the sound of these three performing sonic nature rituals, borrowing from seventies British folk, classic Americana, Native American folk songs, adding a bit of subtly metallic leanings to the proceedings, not so much in the form of actual metal, but more in the forms of deep dark drones, and ominous ambience, but those shadowy moments are in fact rare here, instead, the mood is mostly one of sunlight and spring, of rebirth and return to whence we came, some of the tracks here are downright jubilant, while others are tranquil and dreamily wistful, but even the songs themselves and their cyclical structures, seem to represent the spirit of the group, living in harmony with the surrounding world, creating something beautiful that works in harmony with the land and all who call it home, and letting that creation find its place in nature however brief, only to fade, and disappear, leaving everything as it was.
Packaged in a super swank oversized, six panel deluxe screenprinted digipak style sleeve.
Lily Cedar's debut album is comprised of nine pastel-hued tunes -- sweet and pretty like a bouquet of buttercream icing roses. From the fuzzy-soft female singing to the thoughtful guitar strumming, everything is ultra light and wistful with an air of daydreamy innocence. Very much in the K Records / Olympia, WA lo-fi pop camp.
We barely knew anything about Andrew Cedermark, other than that his record is on Underwater Peoples, whose releases we tend to dig, and that he was in Titus Andronicus, a band we never really liked all that much. In this case, it seems UP trumps TA, cuz this is a gorgeous slab of home brewed noisy shoegazey twang flecked dream pop. The production is super hot, a little blown out, the guitars buzz and jangle, the drums are distorted, but super minimal, and the songs, while somewhat understated and minimal, are peppered with bursts of distorted guitar, or lush squalls of swirling psychedelia, or blasts of sun dappled noisiness.
Simple steel string guitars, and plaintive vocals drift beneath clouds of explosive prismatic guitar, the drums locked into an almost techno like pulse. The sounds crashing and chaotic, but still warm and lush and melodic. Rocking yet introspective, these songs build slowly and then gloriously crumble before our ears, alternatingly personal and intimate, ramshackle and rambunctious, often impossibly swerving between the two, swoonsome garage rock collides with precious dreamfolk, before blossoming into a fantastical effects drenched noise pop. Synths add strange sireny color to some of the tracks, wood block percussion and tinkling chimes do as well, and it's precisely the balance between Cedermark's earnest and heartfelt pop songs, and his fractured kitchen sink soundscaping, that make Moon Deluxe so goddamn good. Hard to think of bands to compare this too, which is definitely a good thing, just listen to the sound samples, we're betting you'll be as smitten as we are...
Members of Unsane and Oxbow team up for some heavy, ugly avant rock, as you might expect!
The cool photos of the synths on the cover, and the band name might be enough for some synth obsessives, without any further coaxing. But also note the label: Sun Ark, home to Sun Araw. And that's who's on here: Cameron Stallones of way out dub masters Sun Araw (and Magic Lantern, let's not forget his other great psych outfit) with several of his usual cohorts, including M. Geddes Gengras. We only have the vaguest notion of the story behind this project - apparently there's a multimedia cultural center in Rotterdam called The Worm, and they have quite a collection of synthesizers, and they let Stallones et. al. have at 'em last year, and thus The Celebrate Music Synthesizer Group was born. Or something like that. Dunno if it's a one-off or what, but the sprawling double vinyl (-only) lp that has resulted is pretty nice, if gurgling whoosh and burbling bleep and rhythmic Geiger-counter clicks and other classic "synth noises" are what floats your boat. With cryptic track titles like "4P4C Slack" and "Worm = Spice" this is tech-head retro-proto-techno music, for gear lovin' sci-fi nerds, for sure! If the Creel Pone crowd went clubbin' this is the kind of synth jammage that they'd wanna get down to.
Lighter (less savage?) and more varied in tone than their 2005 debut, Celebration's The Modern Tribe possesses the druggy woozy spin of an old carousel planted very ceremoniously in the midst of a wee hours cabaret. The band has definitely honed their chops and their sound. Multi-instrumentalist Sean Antanaitis' saxophones and organ snake their way around Katrina Ford's throatily expressive vocals while David Bergander pounds out a, yes, tribal beat. Highlights include songs like "Hands Off My Gold" which seems deeply inspired by the manic genius escapades of Oingo Boingo. The band seem like they'd be just as at home in veils by a wild bonfire or ensconced in a candlelit bordello. Heck, they'd be at home anywhere alongside their comrades TV On The Radio and Yeah Yeah Yeahs (whose members make guest appearances here). Tempestuous to say the least!
