A very timely release in light of the last few years' acute rash of no-wave revivalism. Actually it would've been good to see it even sooner! This box set arrives to shine a spotlight on one of the major players in the NYC no-wave scene back in the late '70s and early '80s. The man in question? James Chance (aka James White). The four cds compile his rare, out of print and unreleased skronky sax-laden white boy funk/jazz/rock tracks along with his four albums including the awesome, rare Buy This. Actually, four discs is really quite a bit of Mr. Chance - sure to thrill his most ardent of fans! But for the rest of us, perhaps a more welcome and more wallet-friendly release would've simply been that of the aforementioned album. Ask yourself, can you afford to contort yourself this time?
A genre-defining album finally receives its deserved reissue (along with a bunch of other James Chance / James White releases yet to be reviewed here). The genre? New York No Wave! Fingers crossed that it stays in print! Buy is well worth... uh, buying for the one song "Contort Yourself". Totally unbridled angular art jazz skronk sax no wave madness! Soooo good! If you have purchased anything current (i.e, last five years - on Troubleman Unlimited, etc) that falls under the banner 'no wave', buy this immediately and find out that 'no wave' was invented, defined and has yet to be bettered by anyone using the James Chance formula found on Buy The Contortions.
A couple of lists ago we raged about the recent reissuing of the Contortions' awesome BUY album. Well NYC No Wave fanatics, if that got you itchin' for more of Chance & co., you might wanna nab this live album that was reissued at the same time.
The recording effectively captured the insistent energy of the band as they whipped the audience into a frenzy at Bains Douches, Paris, France back on May 13, 1980. Opening with a speedy cover of Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough", this live show breaks down into super loose acid sax jams, then more covers, a pause, more jams. The musicianship is constantly on the brink of falling apart but wildly energized and in the moment. The performance comes together for a finale of "Contort Yourself" leaving the crowd in a wild fervor. Highly recommended for all Chance and Contortions fans.
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When we first heard Chancha Via Circuito's debut a few years back, it was one of the those magical moments when a record by an unknown artist seemed to stop time and everything around us as we became completely emerged in their dubbed out, Latin American cumbia-inspired sounds.
With the follow up, Chancha Via Circuito prove that record number one was no fluke, as this album melts and sizzles with its own seductive flair. Sonically it's like some awesome mix of Twilight Circus Dub Sound System, Fauna, Kit Clayton, Massive Attack, Prince Far I, and Rainbow Arabia.
Mixing elements of cumbia, minimal techno, dub, and adding strains of traditional folk from the sprawling roads they've traveled near their home outside Buenos Aires, which has taken them across the border to Bolivia and beyond. Like one of our other favorite modern South American psychedelic music makers Las Malas Amistades, Chancha Via Circuito have this amazing ability to incorporate their surroundings and heritage and bring it into the future without compromising its integrity.
Chancha Via Circuito is not only the train that Pedro Canale rides back and forth from his hometown to nearby Buenos Aires, it's also the name he's chosen for his dubbed out, free flowing, and more nuanced and minimal approach to "Cumbia digital." We've been entranced with this record since the very first time we heard it, as it's equal parts soothing and moving, slow burning and dance inducing. We're reminded a lot of the great Mad Professor vs. Massive Attack outing No Protection, as it has that same blend of cut and paste dub, along with more recent blasts from that Cumbia scene. In fact it wouldn't surprise us if Gang Gang Dance had gotten a copy of this before they recorded their latest record as it has that same kind of tripped out and late night dance vibe they latched on to. This is exactly what you would want blasting from the speakers in a club as you waited for M.I.A. to take the stage, or in your ears as you roam late night streets, moving at ease as these seductive beats intertwine perfectly with the flashing lights of the cars zooming by.
Changeling are another band we've been wanting to hear more from, having so far only gotten our ears on half a tape from these guys, a tape they shared with AQ faves Quetzolcoatl, which should give you some idea of where they're coming from sonically. Where as Quetzolcoatl (and Q-offshoot Bonecloud) tend to explore vast dronescapes a la Taj Mahal Travellers, Changeling seem to exist in some alternate universe where time functions differently, where everything is slowed down, lazy lugubrious low end sonic sprawls, where melodies take minutes to unfurl not seconds, and vocals are more indistinct blurs, or haunting moaning drones, it's almost like Changeling are the avant garde underground cd-r DJ Screw, taking gorgeous tranquil freefolk and shimmery soft soundscapes, and slowing them waaaaaaay dooooooooown, sometimes adding effects, reversing some sounds, a warped sonic funhouse mirror, everything warbly and subtly twisted, a dark, sprawling musical crawl, everything oozing and drifting glacially, tones turned inside out, overtones allowed to ring out forever, a dreamy and divine world of soft slow motion ambience.
As with all Twonicorn, gorgeously packaged, pro printed tapes, textured paper sleeves, and of course super limited, ONLY 100 COPIES!! Each tape hand numbered.
Compilation of version sides recorded by Ernest & Jo Jo Hookim at their Channel One studio during its heyday (between 1974-79). Though not always known necessarily for the innovation in their own productions (an incredible exception here being the Natty A
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The new project from Joe Pernice is just as pretty as you'd expect from the former frontman of both Scud Mountain Boys and the Pernice Brothers. With ample doses of Leonard Cohen, Joe Jackson, and Elvis Costello, this is more 'orchestrated' than any of Pernice's previous work, with warm strings adding fullness to the sound. Also features a delicate New Order cover: "Leave Me Alone".
What can you say about Dave Chapelle? Other than he is one funny motherfucker. Funny AND offensive, taking on sex and race and everything else that gets people all riled up! But in a way few can actually pull off. Season one of the Chapelle Show was maybe one of the funniest things we'd seen since Mr. Show, and those of us without cable have been dying for season two. We've only watched the first episode so far, but if the rest of season two is even half as funny we'll be spitting milk through our noses for weeks. Highlights of the first episode include the racial draft (we won't give away all the results but the Jews pick Lenny Kravitz!), Samuel M. Jackson beer, and how things look cooler in slow motion. The rest of the season includes the now infamous Rick James bits and LOTS more. Looked like season three was a wash with Chapelle going nuts and heading off to South Africa for some mental health care and relaxation, but it has recently come to light that maybe that was all a big 'ol joke on us and we can actually look forward to more Chapelle!
Wu Tang Financial! Diversify bitch!
What can we say? We don't know a single person who wasn't devastated when Chappelle ditched his show and took off. And we also don't know a single person who has not been chomping at the bit for these lost episodes, the bits and pieces Chappelle filmed before freaking out. Meant to be parts of a third season, Chappelle's partner decided that it would be a damn shame if no one got to see these skits and he's right. So here you go. A handful of episodes, quite probably the last we'll ever see of Chappelle's Show. The only really good thing to come out of this, is that the new episodes are hosted by Charlie Murphy, who, if you've seen the first two seasons, pretty much gives Chappelle a run for his money EVERY time he's on screen. SO RECOMMENDED.
We were floored when we first heard this four song ep that was dropped off by the band a little while ago. We just assumed they were from San Francisco and we were so stoked to have a new favorite band in town, but we kept looking for flyers with their name on it to go see them live, and kept asking local folks if they knew who they were. Well, we were off by a few thousand miles, as Chapter 24 actually reside in the UK and just happened to drop us a copy on a visit to the states. Luckily we tracked them down and got enough copies of this to list and damn if it's not some of the most urgent, intense, and melodic post-punk that we've heard in a long time. Think of Erase Errata, Wild Flag, Wire, and The Slits, all full of youthful energy and wide eyed possibility and you get close to the kind of terrain Chapter 24 so wonderfully explore. This immediately has us jumping up and down with fists in the air with sweat dripping down our bodies (not at work though of course!).�
Grab one of these fast as once this first batch sells out we won't be able to get more until mid-November when Chapter 24 make their way back to the States and San Francisco.
After being blown away by their awesome self released cd-r a few months back we were stoked to get the first slab of wax from this young, energetic post punk band out of the UK who are blasting our ears with such immediate and intensely satisfying sounds. These two new songs find the band getting tighter and their sound even punchier, without losing one bit of the infectious intensity that won us over on their cd-r.
Both songs display a wonderful ability to strip away all the fat and make sure that every single moment of the song packs a bright colorful punch. These jams make us bob our heads, and even jump up and down when no one is looking. It's also so refreshing to see C24 develop their chops the old fashion way, not relying on blog-hype, but actually touring non-stop, and you can get a feel for how invigorating it would be to see them live from these two killer tracks. Awesome!
It wasn't long ago that Cherry Red Records rescued Reading's shoegazing Chapterhouse from near obscurity by reissuing their first album. Now, they've gone and done it again with the band's markedly different sophomore effort Blood Music. Where as Whirlpool was a hybrid decidedly indebted to Spacemen 3 and bands like the Seeds, this album sees them learning and progressing, updating their sound, and moving into their own distinct sound. If the Cardigans had a male singer and made a record in the wake of the Stone Roses, this might be it. Basically, the first record was proto-shoegaze, and this, the second record, adopted some more distinctly pop leanings. If you missed out on them in the past, or you lost your original copy, you need this beautiful slab of '90s British catchiness in your life! Recommended.
Long overdue reissue of this shoegaze classic. Out of all the bands dubbed shoegazers in the UK in the late eighties, Stone Roses, Primal Scream, Ride, Slowdive, Swervedriver and especially My Bloody Valentine, for some reason, Chapterhouse never really received their due. Sure they sold some records, had a few hit singles, but no one spoke about Chapterhouse with the same hushed reverence as they did when name dropping Slowdive or My Bloody Valentine. Every single band since the nineties, with even the slightest hint of noisiness or spaciness never hesitates to reference MBV as a huge influence, but now that we're finally getting a chance to listen to Whirlpool again, it definitely reminds us how fucking great Chapterhouse were, and what a unique take they had on the whole spaced out bliss out shoegaze thing. Swervedriver may have been the heaviest, My Bloody Valentine the wildest, but Chapterhouse managed to be the most interesting, dipping their toes into both Stone Roses-y dance tracks, and blown out druggy psychedelia a la Swervedriver or MBV. In each instance the band made the sound their own.
The heavier tracks here, "Breather", "Treasure", "Guilt" are packed with dense squalls of heavily affected guitars, big swirls of droney ambience, all of the elements that defined the shoegazers, but Chapterhouse were much more subtle, the result sounding much more druggy and droney like Spacemen 3 (their sonic inspirations) than freaked out and wild like MBV. And when they chose to, like on "Pearl" or "Falling Down" they could whip up an ultra danceable groove, albeit still swathed in a good amount of guitar fuzz and blissy psychedelia. Either way, Chapterhouse at their core, were a pop band, and at the heart of each song was a pop song, a catchy hook, that would either get buried in a thick wash of blissy fuzz, or draped over some sort of funky groove. Either way, we love it!
This reissue includes the Whirlpool album, the Freefall ep, the Sunburst ep and the Pearl ep. Huge booklet with liner notes, band interviews, photos, original album and ep artwork and all of the lyrics printed for the first time!
Here's a very limited (to 500 copies) 10" from Texas trio Charalambides, whose delicate, ghostly guitar and voice meanderings get more and more so with each release. On Ana/Kata we hear long spaces of woozy guitars weaving in and over and between themselves, then ethereal female voices quietly add themselves to the proceedings... and the queasiness factor triples. Quietly squealing guitar adds to the haunted house effect. A fractured blissout record for the very experimental-lovin' readers of our list, the type who usually confine themselves to static, glitch, and noise.
- RealAudio clip: Kata
- RealAudio clip: Ana
Our friend Adam who runs the super cool Crucial Blast label, has, for over 6 years now, been quietly (and not so quietly) putting out some of the coolest shit around. From crusty Finnish metal to droning electronica to sparse folk to brutal power electronics. This new series of cd-r's, limited to 100 copies and nicely packaged in oversized DVD cases will only be available via Aquarius records (unless you get them directly from Crucial Blast). So don't blow it...
AQ faves Charalambides contribute what has to be their quietest and most minimal collection of tunes yet. The sound takes their minimalist psych-folk a step further, exploring spaces as much as the notes that seperate them, with Christina Carter's fragile croon even more ghostlike and ethereal. She seems to be making sounds, more than singing, gentle and haunting, rich but delicate. Tom Carter's guitar is equally spare, with the notes spread out, and pucked tentatively, sounding like a Fahey record played at 5 r.p.m. Distant melodies drift lazily as stray notes wander off and get lost in the foggy ambience. Quiet, and quite gorgeous.
- RealAudio clip: One
- RealAudio clip: Three
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Oooooh. Witchy.
Gorgeous double lp reissue of Charalambides' amazing 'Historic 6th Ward' record, until now only available on cd. And this reissue isn't just for vinyl lovers, as the cd is long out of print -and- this lp version adds 7 extra tracks not found on the cd. Charalambides play hazy, dreamy, spaced out acid-drone folk, with ethereal female vocals, using minimal instrumentation and lots
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Lovely Texas acid-folk-space trio (how's that for buzzwords?) who release records, tapes, and cds in small quantities that only serve to add to their allure, predictably enough. But they deserve it. Ethereal female vocals over pleasantly disturbing drone.
A remarkable precursor to the current fascination with all things acid-folk, Our Bed Is Green came out as a self-released 90 minute cassette back in 1992. Then a couple of years later after Charalambides earned considerable praise and adoration for the Market Street 2LP (which still ranks as their best work), the Charalambides duo of Tom and Christina Carter reissued Our Bed Is Green in a condensed version as a single cd on their Wholly Other label. Now as Kranky has undertaken a campaign to reissue the bulk of their early work, Our Bed Is Green sees the light of day once again, with all but the two covers songs featured from that cassette release. Within this sprawling set of minimally composed sketches and song fragments, the Charalambides conjure a drug-addled haze that settles gently upon their fuzz guitar psychedelic stupor, replications of early Americana folk, and post-Fahey improvisations. In their doped-up introversion, the Charalambides have always had a knack for rapturously free-falling moments rendered in slow-motion, and it's clear from Our Bed Is Green that they strongly developed this aesthetic from early on. Certainly fans of Six Organs of Admittance, Animal Collective, and the Skygreen Leopards would do well to check this out.
Latest release from the duo of Christina and Tom Carter known to the underground psych-folk world as Charalambides. This is actually a reissue of a long out of print cd-r orignally limited to 300 copies and released on the band's own Wholly Other label. Like all of their records this is a dark and folky, primitive and ethereal, spare and gauzy chunk of psychedelic folk bliss out. So so beautiful.
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These Unidisc Music reissues aren't necessarily new, but they are new to us here at AQ, and we've found them to be quite intriguing and enjoyable listens. On this 1968 album it's clear that Robert Charlebois' collaborative work with Louise Forestier were just as high on dramatics (and at times as loopy) as her solo albums... if not more so. The chemistry between Quebecois artists Charlebois and Forestier is not unlike two old friends getting together to bend a musical elbow over a glass of wine (or two or three). Heck, on songs such as "C.P.R. Blues" and "Egg Generation" they get downright unhinged -- lively frolics that verge on the mad or chaotic. You also get a duet version of the song "California" which appears as a solo-sung number on Forestier's Avec Enzymes album. Great!
Could Charles Atlas' wistful atmospheric music possibly be made any more airy and blissful? You betcha! Especially when put in the able hands of (the mostly likeminded) Magnetophone, Pram, Sybarite, Isan, The Telescopes, Marconi Union, Nudge, Strategy, Park Avenue Drift, Stendec, Casino Vs. Japan, Signaldrift, and Telefunken. Sooo mellow and soothing, these glistening tracks just wash right over you. Go on, unwind!
Local guy Charles Wyatt along with Matt Greenberg returns with a second Charles Atlas full length, this time released on the dependable Static Caravan label. Looped haunting guitar, lulling stereo-separated pulses, softly-uttered melodies, plus some
Only available here at aQ! Even if you're already well-acquainted with Charles Atlas (the band, not the bodybuilder!), you won't want to miss this 'introduction'. It's an absolutely lovely summer-melting-into-fall sort of album. Breezy but not lightweight, drifting melodic tendrils of horn, piano and organ are accented by chiming vibes. Despite the gentle chill of melancholia, the whole proceeding is warmed by lots of reverb and warbled by lots of tremolo. Sure to appeal to fans of Sea & Cake and High Llamas!
A fine new album from local darlings Charles Atlas, on UK's Ochre label who've released music by similarly dreamy outfits Windy & Carl, Fuxa, Magnetophone, Kawabata Makoto, A.M.P., etc. This is organic instrumental blissout music -- warm and human -- consisting mainly of heartbreakingly pretty arpeggiated piano and guitar chords whose gentle notes articulate themselves separately yet are moodily sustained for many seconds, a sonic tactic we've also heard wielded by Boards of Canada, but Charles Atlas is more sad and emotional. Reminds me of Sonna, Pan American, David Kilgour, and Tarentel, although Charles Atlas sets itself apart using gorgeous flourishes on warbly musical saw, quiet tinklings, female oohs and ahhs, cool trumpet, hollow ticktock clicks (a la Young Marble Giants). The chords are minor key and tension-filled yet still pastoral and hushed -- a very pleasant combination that prevents the album from becoming boring or sickly sweet. Very restrained, mature and introspective. Had enough of Boards of Canada? Give Charles Atlas' fresh take a try. Beautiful.
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Two cds of off kilter, screaming fastcore. This collection is everything ever recorded by these crazy kids from Dekalb Illinois. Cd one contains 96 songs, in chronological order, from their stumbling retarded hardcore roots, to their emergence as the reigning kings of absolutely pummeling powerviolence. Disc two is all unreleased stuff, including a really long movie, that contains 30 second blasts of CB live intercut with scenes from actual Charles Bronson movies. With truly comprehensive and completely illegible packaging. Absolutely amazing. Essential for fans of Crossed Out, Man Is The Bastard, Drop Dead, etc.
Bay Area-based jazz sextet, Charles Sharp 6 make their vinyl debut on local San Francisco label Empty Cellar which also released the avant-jazz Sword and Sandals lp Good and Plenty a year or two back. An uncommon combination of reeds (sax and clarinet), cello, accordion, double bass and drums, this group of improvisers seem to be channeling a late fifties /early sixties era jazz, but one that neither sounds classic or retro. In fact, as good as these musicians are, they almost sound like they came to jazz, through some other means, like punk, judging by the near-ramshackle bombast of the opening track. Yet, there is a laid-back angularity to their work that feels like it should be in a beat-era or eighties indie movie, evoking the same sort of vibe as Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, or even the Lounge Lizards with out so much of the eighties art attitude. Sometimes ferocious in their compositional approach, the C#6 are hardly as twee as their instrumentation might suggest, but they can also really intensify a mood with quiet focus, allowing the diversity of instruments to congeal and worry around subtle modal variations, expanding but not releasing the tension. One of the most interesting new jazz albums we've heard in a long while!
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Christophe Charles previously collaborated with Markus Popp on the Oval album "Dok," probably the most abstract piece of glitchery in the Oval catalogue. Judging from the liner notes of his new "Undirected Dok" album, Charles was probably responsible for the indeterminant nature of that Oval disc. Charles proposes his idea of 'undirected music' as a means of attaining tonal harmony through the absence of structure, a concept that references both the music of John Cage and the the fog sculptures of Nakaya Fujiko, among other things. For the most part Charles' electronic collages on "Undirected Dok" succeed in their lofty goals.
As can be expected from all releases on the Ritornelle label (experimental subsidiary of Mille Plateaux / Force Inc), Charles embraces the closed-circuit feedback logic of fellow lowercase technicians like Taylor Deupree and Coh; however, Charles escapes over-exposure to computer screen irradiation by venturing out to capture some fabulous field recordings of subterranean waterworks, bustling train stations, and children at playgrounds, which he then adds to the alienated sounds of digitial glitch processing.
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Local boy Matty Charles' first 7" won't, or shouldn't, be his last. Beautiful, heart rending songs sung with a voice at times silky and others gravelly. Some of the best country to come out in a while.
Finally got enough of these to list. It's something you're gonna DEFINITELY want to have if you're into the whole '60s/'70s Swedish psychedelic scene, Sweden's "krautrock" bands if you will. Y'know, if you like Parson Sound, Trad Gras Och Stenar, International Harvester, Arbete Och Fritid, Algarnas Tradgard, Kebnekajse, and all the other often interrelated outfits that we've been lucky enough to find reissued on cd in recent years. You can add this to that list, a brilliant collection of loping, rollicking, freaky hippie jams from the drums/sitar and guitar duo of Edmund "Charlie" Franzen and Esdor Jensen, and friends. They got their start together in 1969, and performed at the first of the free festivals in the summer of 1970 that are now an part of Swedish counterculture hippie history. They definitely must have fit right in that time and place, judging by this cd's awesome mixture of Eastern-inspired raga rock, Swedish folk troubadour music, Dylanesque ballads, and HEAVY guitar power trio acid rock.
These tracks, recorded in 1970 and '71, have languished in obscurity, mostly unreleased for the past 30-some-odd years, several of them originally meant for an abandoned album release back in the day. A few, like "Wolfs Mouth Song" (here given its original title of "Fuck The Cops"!) were released on vinyl as singles and so forth. But you were probably never gonna run across one of those rarities... so it's great to have this all on cd! And Mellotronen has presented this in a nice digipack. Isn't that a great cover shot, of Charlie's back as he beats his drum kit at one of those hippie festivals?? It would good for a Levi's ad (you can see the tag on his jeans) if they were that hip. The 32 page booklet provides plenty of photos, a history of the band, and detailed track-by-track commentary on these recordings. There's also a discography complete with full-color reproductions of album covers and single sleeves. Very very nicely done.
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Soundtrack to the long awaited feature film by Sadie Shaw (infamous SF/Olympia underground filmmaker extraordinaire, responsible for numerous music videos and photography, mostly for the Kill Rock Stars label, guitarist in SF outfit The Lies) and Sarah Reed (also of The Lies). Features (mostly) exclusive tracks by Aisler's Set, Deerhoof, Thrones, The Need, The Lies, Concentrick, Replikants, Sarah Lund (Unwound) and Aaron Beam plus wonderful scoring by Tim Green and many more! What's most interesting about this soundtrack is most of the better-known bands' contributions are quite unindicative of their "normal" output (specifically Thrones, Replikants, Deerhoof and the exclusive Aislers Set track), but they fit the overall tone of the film and are quite beautiful on their own. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that these artists had the film in mind when composing their contributions to Charm. Quite nice!
Charm is a gore-tastic low-budget psychological horror film made in the year 2000 by San Francisco underground moviemakers, former AQ-er Sadie Shaw and Sarah Reed (both of The Husbands). Five years later, it's finally available on dvd and cd!
The soundtrack covers a wide range of song styles. All are appropriately haunting, though they travel from classic soundtrack stuff to pulsing techno beats to spaced-out melancholia.
Some highlights are Tim Green's very classic sounding title theme; Aislers Set's Joy Division-ish rhythm on "Attraction Action Reaction"; Deerhoof's rowdy noise-fest on "Appetite"; Replikants' spacey melancholia of "Memory" sounding a lot like that Ulrich Schnauss we listed a little while back; a weird one from The Need with lots of dog barking and Carol Channingesque vocal magic; Sara Lund and Aaron Beam's appropriately titled "A Lucid Moment" which is a melodically peaceful moment before the Thrones' "The Walk" creeps up at you; Concentrick's technocratic "Dansk Floor"; The Lies' angry rock song, "Wrong Kind Of Flirt"; and again with Tim Green and his classic-film-score "Epilogue".
This movie is for fans of lo-budge emotionally-charged gore flims, its soundtrack for fans of, well, awesome soundtracks!
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Amazing triple female harmonies laid over rapid fire fake ethnic music. For fans of Uz Jsme Doma, Sun City Girls...and Idiot Flesh, which this band basically is entirely members of (but better).
For those familiar with the SF group Charming Hostess, this follow-up to 2001's Trilectic album is an eagerly anticipated, more than welcome sight (or should we say sound?). For those unfamiliar, this is a wonderful way to acquaint yourself with Charming Hostess' vibrant trio of fiery female vocalists Jewlia Eisenberg, Marika Hughes and Cynthia Taylor. Richly infused with Balkan, Jewish and Sufi elements, their music is at once captivatingly complex, electrifyingly bold and nothing short of acrobatic. You might also know these ladies for their membership in the equally avant SF bands Idiot Flesh and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum -- some of whose members also contributed to this album.
We've long been fans of this mysterious outfit from Indiana, whose witchy blackened atmospheric black doom doesn't sound so much Midwestern as it does like it was conjured up from some other realm, via some mysterious ritual that involves much bloodletting, torches, robes, goats, a full moon, and probably some virgins, but as we mentioned in our review of record number two, Charnel House's sound seems to gradually be growing more atmospheric and witchy, and less overtly metallic. The debut was a murky muddy sprawl of doomy riffage, noise drenched creep, and furious blasting blackness, but even back then the haunting ethereal vocals gave the music a seriously witchy, ritualistic vibe, and if anything, that sounds has moved completely to the fore on Black Blood, just check out the opening track, which pairs buzzing sinewy bass and loping minimal drumming, to very minimal guitars, no riffing or buzzing really, more sort of swirling and atmospheric, with everything dropping out occasionally, leaving just those hazy vocal incantations, and a skeletal rhythmic backdrop, and when the sound does shift into blasting blackness, the production is so strange, that it doesn't even really sound heavy, or necessarily black metal, instead, it's a strangely frenzied rapid fire skittery blast, none of the music changes, just the drums, blasting lo-fi beneath the wraithlike vocals, and gauzy atmospheric drifts, freaky and far out and super cool.
Here's where we might say, and so goes the rest of the record, and while much of the rest of the record does involve the same elements, the structures and arrangements are all over the place. "Atavism" launches immediately into a pounding, blasting, noise rock churn, but there seem to be no guitars, just buzzing bass, and those ever present witchy vocals, it's a super strange combo, and again, the production is bizarre, brittle, space-y, we're reminded at times of Aluk Todolo for sure, the same sort of occult rock vibe, but Charnel House are much more chaotic, a little ramshackle, lurching from chaotic noise rock crush ("Of The Sea") that minus those vocals, could be some weird band on Load, to wild chaotic drum heavy blowouts like "When You Become", that sound a bit like a dialed down Lightning Bolt performing some sort of arcane sonic ritual, to the almost post rock meander of "Sewn Shut", the haunting spectral vocals tying them all together into some sort of otherworldly blackened avant psychedelic occult rock ritual, that is deeply and darkly mesmerizing.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! Beautifully silkscreened fold over sleeves, the back half revealing the lp inside, each one hand numbered, includes a download code as well!
Record number two from this mysterious blackened witchy doomdirge combo, an offshoot of similarly droney and doomy aQ faves OS. But we're beginning to think we might dig Charnel House more than OS. And it has a lot to do with the vocals, which we described in another review as "demonic priestess vocals", which definitely sums it up pretty perfectly. If that whole new wave of female fronted heavy rock bands (Blood Ceremony, Jex Thoth, Christian Mistress) is just to polished for you, then maybe Charnel House is what you're after, way more raw and lo-fi, bleak and blackened, primitive and noisy, the sound slipping easily from doomy abstract dirge, to churning blackened blast, the sound minimal, and cyclical, repetitive and trancelike, and then when the vocals come in, the sound is utterly transformed, into some sort of black forest ritual, some wild witchy incantation, hovering ethereal and angelic over the churn and chug and blast and buzz below. "Erosive" is the perfect example of CH's strange sound, the band locked into a tranced out repetitive blast, over which a second guitar chugs out a droney looped chord, lurching and lumbering, totally at odds with the manic blast below, the sound all on its own totally mesmerizing, but then every once in a while the vox drift in, and the sound becomes more blissed out, more abstract, the heaviness tempered by the spectral quality of the vocals. The music sounds like Ride For Revenge or some other strangely minimal black metal outfit, the vocals just take it somewhere else, this raw abstract black metal becomes some sort of otherworldly heaviness.
Elsewhere the record grows even more dramatic, with the band spitting out explosive gouts of wild chaotic heaviness, only to stop on a dime, leaving just the vocals and a simple rhythmic pulse (and a little hazy shimmer), to drift dreamily, before the band explodes back in. While elsewhere the band go slooooooow, transforming into a way more melodic Monarch, a dour slo-mo creep, again offset by those creepy, dreamy, haunting vocals. The production is a huge part of it too, sometimes murky and muddy, all the sounds muted and blurred into a near drone, while other times the sound is sharp and corrosive, changing the entire vibe of the song and the record. The more we listen to this, the more it reveals subtle details, headphones even more so, a dense, dark layered landscape of looped black buzz and haunted witchy mystery...
Housed in a cool, hand stamped, cardstock sleeve, with a huge printed full color poster / lyric sheet inside, each one hand numbered, LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!
