Alllllllrrriiigggghtt! What you've all been waiting for, a new issue of everybody's favorite hesher-oriented journal of cult stuff, Chips & Beer. 128 newsprint pages packed with all kinds of obscure writing about obscure things that dudes & dudettes with extensive metal vinyl and horror VHS collections will want to read about. Crude drawings too. Main themes as the cover states: Metal, horror, and humor. Well, about 18 of those 128 pages are inexplicably filled with information about the movie Bad News Bears, or reviews of various hot dog brands. Humor we suppose. But elsewhere, more than enough metal and horror - and more humor.
A good portion of this ish is devoted to an appreciation of German metal godfathers the Scorpions, from their early '70s krautrock-y origins to world wide heavy metal fame. Going album by album, It's part primer (with facts & figures) and part perplexing prose poetry, as you might expect from Chips & Beer (a magazine wherein at least one writer likes to spell the word "folks" as "foax" for some reason). This section includes lengthy, lively interviews with both former Scorps guitarist, the great Uli Jon Roth (who as always manages to be both hippie mystical AND surprisingly down to earth) and also former Scorps drummer and lyricist Herman "Ze German" Rarebell, who provides frank talk about groupies, among other subjects.
Also in #6: Finnish retro-thrashers and Ektro recording artists Ranger, Texan crossover upstarts Power Trip, underground '80s American metal masters Omen, and plenty more, including a chat with the director of an upcoming documentary about the early years of Twisted Sister (can't wait to see it!). Also worthy of note, highly entertaining interviews with two Chris's: Chris Reifert of death metal legends Autopsy (a funny guy!) and Chris Bruni of the Profound Lore label (who is asked to respond to the following wtf? question: "You ever watched Raiders Of The Lost Ark in black and white? How fuckin' hot is Karen Allen in that? She's like Amelie for dudes that listen to early Mudhoney and work in sanitation"). On the horror front, Chips & Beer #6 provides a big feature about the classic monster movies of Lon Chaney (aka "The Man of a Thousand Faces"), as well as latter films & performances in the Chaney tradition, by Karloff, Lorre, et.al. Oh and of course there's the music reviews section, rating records on a six-point scale with associated cartoon icons that range G.G. Allin (worst) to flying tits (best). The new Watain rates a G.G., but they give flying tits to the not-so-new Black In Black by AC/DC!
Sometimes we wish it was easier to make sense of some of the more stream-of-consciouness-ish material in Chips & Beer, but possibly we just need to get drunker when we read it. But even sober, there's plenty that's funny and/or interesting if you share their sensibilities regarding cult metal, horror, hot dogs, etc.
Oh boy, oh boy it's another issue of Chips & Beer, The Magazine. 128 newsprint pages packed with esoteric wisdom pertaining to cult metal, movies, and more� Humorous and irreverent, cryptic and confusional, enthusiastic and informative, pretty much a must read for anyone into heavy shit that's not bullshit.
#7 continues Chips & Beer's run as one of our favorite 'zines. This issue contains a massive special section about everybody's favorite '70s Irish rockers, including a primer on their discography, a Thin Lizzy comic strip, and in-depth interviews with former Lizzy guitarists Scott Gorham and Eric Bell. Fascinating for any fans for sure! That should be reason enough to get this, but of course there's more: stuff about other cool bands old and new like Riot, At War, Cemetary Piss, Helstar, Holocross, Ritual Chamber, and more. Even a chat with Nocturnus drummer/mainman Mike Browning.
Meanwhile, on the cinematic side of things, you get a big section all about Chips & Beer's favorite Westerns, yippie ki-yay! Oh, and then interspersed throughout there's funny bits like the page filled with "100 words & phrases to be retired from music journalism" (no chance there, we couldn't do the list without most of 'em!) and the page heralding "the most important sub genres to watch for in 2014" (among our favorites: "Non-Violent Death Metal" and "True Detective Machine Gun Arsenal Cache With Jameson Stash Metal"). Plus, no issue of Chips & Beer would be complete without the completely hard-to-grok reviews section; we don't always agree with 'em, or understand what they're even trying to say, but still they're fun to read.
Heck yeah, another issue (these guys have a work ethic, though hesher burnouts they might be) of this magazine of metal and movies and comix and other underground culture. Chips & Beer can be counted to to be a) funny b) metal as fuck c) confusing and d) informative. Elements c) and d) often conflict, but a) and b) never failing. Headbanging and headscratching go hand in hand here in other words, but you hopefully know that since we're up to issue #8 and they always sell real well. So, what's in the 128 pages of this one? Special-issue-theme-wise, these guys nerd out on Chinese horror movies, and also Vietnam war movies too. If you're read other issues, you know they go deep. In fact, the Chinese horror movie section includes an illustrated bestiary of monsters commonly appearing in such movies, like the Devil Baby and the Pissing Woman, complete with D&D style stats (though, where's their Hit Dice? Apparently "Advanced Chips & Beer" doesn't use Hit Dice).
As for musical content this ish, it ranges from, you know, punk to death metal and beyond (or before), there's chats with the MC5's Wayne Kramer, Danzig guitarist John Christ and AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd (the Chips & Beer guys were STOKED!), also bands like Impetigo and Dead Congregation are featured, and lots more, including an interview with John Carpenter soundtrack collaborator Alan Howarth! Wow. Oh, yeah, there's also a big feature on various types of scary knives favored by the Chips & Beer staff, for all you Rambos out there. Do 'zines get more badass? Finally, there's the reviews section, as always opinionated and amusing and fairly cryptic. It gets really meta by including a review of itself - issue #8 of Chips & Beer magazine. Really. Go read it and see what they think!
(From recent Forced Exposure update penned by the solemn J. Johnson): PSF debut by Chisato Yamada, the godfather of Tsugaru Jamisen (the traditional three-stringed folk instrument from the north of Japan -- also played by Zorn hero Michihiro Sato). Here Yamada's amazingly vibrant, percussive attack and spirit power are featured in two avant settings. Two tracks recorded late last year feature Keiji Haino on guitar and percussion, amply fulfilling Kan Mikami's prediction that these two masters would create create a fuckin' immense music if they ever met. The other three tracks are a suite for contemporary flute/percussion trio and tsugaru-jamisen, composed by Ken'ei Sasamori, recorded in 1978 and promptly lost for the next 17 years. Yamada is a true out-on-the-edge innovator, and these classic recordings prove that his experimental leanings have a long history. Yamada's age (he's now in his sixties) has only served to increase his unique power and authority. An essential, and too little known voice!
B-Music/Finders Keepers strikes again, with another crazy, kitschy, catchy collection of South Indian movie music! This is the follow-up to their delightful Solla Solla anthology of the 1977-1983 output of "The Maestro" Ilaiyaraaja, a top composer for the Tamil-language film industry based in "Kollywood". On this album, popular singer K.S. Chithra (aka Chinna Kuyil, or "Little Nightingale") is teamed up with The Maestro, her sweet vocals accompanied by an entertaining, unrestrained array of sounds - lush orchestration, groovy rhythms, and digital sampling. That's right, on these recordings, dating from between 1986 and 1991, Ilaiyaraaja made full use of the latest available technology (sounding awesomely '80s vintage-retro to us now), so there's drum machine beats and electronic synth bleeps alongside more traditional Indian instrumentation of flutes and tablas...
Wonderful stuff, as any fan of Bollywood/Kollywood/Lollywood music should expect. Utterly charming. Chithra and Ilaiyaraaja's "plugged-in pop" is impossible not to like. Add this to your shelf alongside Solla Solla and long time fave, Vijaya Anand's Dance Raja Dance. And this being a Finders Keepers release, there's copious liner notes and compelling colorful graphics included, these folks know their stuff.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ahhhh, here's one you can take home to mom. Heck, you could even play it at grandma's house too! The Choir Practice are ten Vancouverite voices raised in song. Their debut album on Mint Records sounds like equal parts highschool vocal class, The Free Design and maybe a bit of Langley Schools Music Project too. While there are indeed some luminaries of the city's indie music scene gussying up the roster -- namely choir leader Coco Culbertson (The Gay, A.C. Newman Band), Kurt Dahle (New Pornographers) and Larissa Loyva (P:ano) -- there are also some dulcet-piped members whose resumes do not boast anything of the tuneful sort. There's a fashion designer, a radio producer, a photographer, a filmmaker, and a florist even! We all know that Canadian songstresses and songsmiths have a history of abundant earnestness that can inadvertently dribble into syrup territory (maple-flavored?), and The Choir Practice are unabashedly miquetoast. But for the most part, their soft pop sleigh ride glides gracefully through the Rockies... as if the peaks were frosted with vanilla buttercream instead of snow. The group's sweet sense of naivete strikes notes of endearment rather than saccharine ickiness. Their debut album's highs soar up into the fluffy cloud laced baby blue sky ("Failsafe"). The few falterings however almost seem comical. Seriously, when you hear the lyrics to songs such as "Loose Lips" (yes, they "sink ships"), you can't believe they're singing with straight faces. Leaves you wondering if the lyricist has a serious irony addiction or what? Nonetheless if you like Lavender Diamond or perhaps are seeking a less energetic Polyphonic Spree, this is soooo for you!
Most of the record nerds and music obsessives we know (ourselves included of course), have shelves loaded with books full of album covers, total record porn. And we can't get enough, from old classic jazz lps to lost punk rock 7"s, crazy heavy metal jackets to arty experimental sleeve design, album artwork is as much a part of our musical love as the music itself, and thus pretty much everyone here wanted one of these, a collection of 7" single sleeves from the eighties, all presented in a gorgeous hardcover book, featuring lots of your favorites: Duran Duran, Adam Ant, the Romantics, Bow Wow Wow, the B-52's, ABC, Grace Jones, Gary Numan, Pat Benatar, The Cure, XTC and those are just the ones shown on the cover. There are loads of obscure singles, and even more obscure bands, beautifully laid out, a single sleeve per page, with the original designers/artists listed, and a paragraph about each, often telling some cool story behind the creation of the cover or the genesis of the artwork. Folks our age, who grew up in the eighties, will flip for this total nostalgia trip, but even folks around here to young to remember that decade have been pretty into this book as well. These are sealed, but we did get a glimpse inside one on Record Store Day, when one of our customers opened his copy, and it looked amazing. And while they last, we have the special Record Store Day version, which was LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, each one signed, numbered and dated by the author!!
This is a recording of the speech Noam Chomsky gave at MIT one month after September 11th, dealing with the way that US foreign policy has contributed to terrorism in places like Turkey, the Middle East and Latin America. Chomsky clearly points out the absurdities of the American military action against Afghanistan as part of the "War on Terror," which has now morphed into an impending war on Iraq. While the situation in Afghanistan has dropped from the headlines (and even back pages for that matter), and this speech assumes some basic knowledge of US-led atrocities abroad and therefore takes on a bit of a preaching-to-the-choir tone, Chomsky provides some very interesting information on foreign policy matters (including many examples of the USA's total disregard for international law, even more examples of which, unfortunately, just may be cropping up in the near future). What's funny is that many of his examples are quoted from sources like the Wall Street Journal and Christian Science Monitor -- far from being an extreme voice, Chomsky simply reaches incredibly common-sense conclusions from readily available information, albeit information the power elite in our country happily ignore, comfortable in the knowledge that the American people will do the same. Scary stuff.
Akita. Menche. Blankenship. Dilloway. These are the men of noise with discographies the size of small town phone books, proving their might in the international noise community by the sheer audaciousness of their output. But then again, you might really only need a single testament to stake your claim as one of the greatest noise musicians. Chop Shop has chosen the latter tactic, with Oxide being that sole document, after a relatively tiny back catalogue of cassette only releases, a couple of cdrs, and two infamous 10"s. Both released through RRR, the first was the Steel Plate 2x10" that was literally bound to a steel plate; and the second was a split 10" with Small Cruel Party that was literally cut in half, making playback a dangerous proposition for the needle on your record player. Both of those releases have long been out of print; and despite the hushed respect that those 10"s demand, Chop Shop has kept a low profile. A very low profile. Hence, after a career that has spanned nearly two decades, Oxide is his first proper CD. And it's stunning.
The sole proprietor of Chop Shop is New York based noise technician Scott Konzelmann, whose audio demolition revolves around speaker constructions forged out of hammered plate metal and disfigured commercial grade pipes, which focus particular frequencies and resonant overtones into swarming orchestras of rust, noise, drone, and static. Tape has long been Konzelmann's medium of choice for recording; and like William Basinski before him, Konzelmann endures the self-disintegration of the medium whilst transcribing the sounds of Oxide digitally. Where Basinski's vocabulary of decay is all romance and melancholy, Konzelmann's is muscular and urgently present. Oxide offers a metallurgist's din where compressed air strikes hard steel and machine vibrations generate noxious resonant frequencies in neighboring vents. Konzelmann composes the old school way, with a razor blade and pieces of tape, generating jump cut edits alongside the self-generated debris from the magnetic literally falling apart. These grey, dead-tech drones thus rupture and explode along the faultlines of those edits, and Oxide emerges as a forceful, dynamic album without resorting to purile shock tactics. This is a seriously great noise album for anybody with a passing interest in Broken Flag, Hansen Records, or early Hafler Trio.
Collection of this premier French soundpoem artist's work from 1956 to 1980, including stereo voice/breathing pieces and very cool stuttering electronics. Definitely for fans of the San Francisco Tape Music Center all-stars (Oliveros, Subotnick, Reich). Recommended.
UK horror soundtrack vinyl reissue label Death Waltz might crank out the releases, but US label Waxwork has steadily been giving DW a run for their horror vinyl money, most recently with the vinyl release of the soundtrack to the 1986 techno-horror-schlock thriller Chopping Mall, and while we can safely say, before this reissue, we didn't remember AT ALL what the soundtrack was like, we can wholeheartedly say we LOVE the movie. For those who somehow missed out on this classic, the plot revolves around a handful of kids who work in a hi-tech shopping mall, who one night stay after hours for a party, only to be trapped when the mall goes into lockdown, and then all hell breaks loose when the futuristic security robots malfunction and become murderous killbots and try to eliminate the kids! Besides being hilarious and ridiculous and over the top, it also features some notable stars, including Barbara Crampton, probably best know to horror nerds from her roles in Re-Animator and From Beyond, as well as Mary Woronov who starred in Eating Raoul (as well as plenty of other horror movies including Silent Night, Bloody Night and Death Race 2000) and was a member of Andy Warhol's Factory and a one time go-go dance for the Velvet Underground, along with frequent Woronov collaborator Paul Bartel, a Roger Corman protege who directed Eating Raoul (and Death Race 2000) and starred in Eating Raoul along side Woronov.
Hearing the score again after all these years though brought us right back, cheesy and super eighties sounding, but futuristic and robotic, a sound that had us immediately thinking this could be some lost synth wave obscurity that could get reissued on Medical or Dark Entries, but it's still plenty soundtracky, with some John Carpenter like chase music, some shreddy guitar licks, stuttery drum machines, the vibe tense and claustrophobic, easily conjuring up the image of wild robots hot on your trail, with some tracks getting seriously avant, pulsing and pounding ominously, minimal and tripped out, brooding and psychedelic, with some tracks using primitive sampling to chop up vocals, and create crazy hiccuping melodies, and still other moments, sounding almost like it could be video game music transcribed for analog synth and drum machine. With a lot of these soundtracks, a lot of the appeal is pure nostalgia, and for the film mostly, not the music, but Chuck Cirino's score is pretty amazing, dense and dizzying, and noisy, and wildly chaotic, and is some seriously fantastic listening even removed from the visual. Although this has us really, really wanting to watch Chopping Mall again, which is likely what we're gonna do!
Pressed on 180 gram transparent pink vinyl, housed in super heavy, glossy stock, full color jackets, with killer, cool new retro-modern artwork by art collective We Buy Your Kids, and a 12" x 12" full color printed insert, with more artwork, and new liner notes from Cirino and Chopping Mall cowriter Steve Mitchell.
A beautifully extensive live piece of long form minimalism from one of its most beguiling practitioners, Catherine Christer Hennix (remember The Electric Harpsichord?). Recorded at The Grimm Museum in Berlin in 2011, "Blues Dhikr Al-Salam (Blues Al Maqam)" is a 49 minute piece for voice, brass, computer and live electronics performed by Hennix and the newly formed electronic ensemble, Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage, which includes aQ favorite dronologist Michael Northam on "time-mirage delay" and as the sound engineer. Originally commissioned for La Monte Young's 70th Birthday in 2005 as an 'infinitary' computer sound/animation environment, this is the first live recording of this piece. Modulating raga drones shift in an array of harmonic frequencies aided by layers of deep plaintive horns and processed vocals. There is a deep Tibetan Buddhist philosophy that flows throughout all of Hennix's work and in which she details in rather high-minded language inside this package, which would be difficult to paraphrase here, but the writing's closing line may sum up this piece nicely: "One of the Thousand sounds of Om."
Avid readers of our blog probably already got a taste of Chord, a high concept super group, who craft longform compositions, each one the sonic realization of a single chord. Some folks might remember the group Physics from San Diego, a group who did something similar, with a revolving lineup, at one time or another featuring most famous or semi famous San Diego rockers among their ranks, and who typically featured multiple guitarists, all playing a single chord, quite often a C chord.
The group Chord, featuring one member of Pelican along with several other Chicago area musicians, are bit more highbrow with their 'Chords'. This record displaying four of them: Am, Am7, E9 and Gmaj(flat 13). As we mentioned in our blog post too, for an April Fool's Day a while back we imagined the ultimate doomdrone record where Earth, Boris and SUNNO))) would each play one not of a chord, and that chord would be the release. Well, how prescient were we?
Here the players are each assigned a note but are allowed to do whatever they like with that note, octave, timbre, playing style, effects, the various players letting their notes drift and intertwine with the other notes, the resulting chord a lush, cloud of sound, constantly shifting and transforming, changing shape, slipping from hushed shimmer to corrosive buzz and back again, sometimes building to a Sunroof!-like wall of sound, other times, so minimal it seems to be just particles and fragments floating in an expanse of soft focus whirs and whispers. Some parts are simple and strummed and sound like a proper song, but those parts soon blossom into something much more layered and abstract. A Minor is our favorite chord, and the Am track here just completely fries the chord, a cacophonous chaotic wall of crumbling churning super distorted buzz and skree, blurred into an almost hypnotic slab of corrosive pulsing noise. It's all quite dramatic and epic, quite beautiful, stately at certain moments, almost chaotic and crumbling at others, anyone into Conrad, Cale, Maclise, Flynt and especially Branca and Chatham will definitely dig this. As well as guitardrone freaks who count Fear Falls Burning, RST, Seconds In Formaldehyde, Elm, Continuum and the like among their favorites.
These high concept instrumentalists are most definitely not the first group to explore the subtleties of single chords; twentieth century classical music is rife with extended chord performances, and more recently San Diego rock minimalists Physics based their entire career on performing a C chord - it's just that Chord the group are the first to present their single chord process so overtly. They're called Chord to begin with, and each track is titled the specific chord that is being played/explored. And sure, there's some seriously academic stuff going on, the liner notes of their records reveal a deep understanding of music theory, but it's all in the application of the theory, after all we didn't pick this record up to LEARN anything!! Regardless, for whatever academic underpinnings are present, the music of Chord is in fact quite lovely, dark billowing swirls of deep drones and lush chordal whir, this particular chord was already explored on the group's Flora record, but here the group revisit it, and offer two sidelong explorations/reinterpretations/improvisations. The first, subtitled "Stasis", is not in fact as static as the title might lead one to believe. It's a slowly unfurling sprawl of layered low end drones, of subtly shifting overtones, lush textures, rumbling buzz, deep swirling shimmer, super hypnotic for sure, with the sound slowly building to a heavy buzzing SUNNO))) like dirge, but with headphones this wall of crumbling super distorted sound is revealed to be rife with ever shifting sonic colorations, the titular chord being pulled apart, making the inner workings audible, a blackened buzz transformed into a dense swirl of prismatic tonal thrum writ epic and majestic and surprisingly heavy.
The flipside, subtitled "Kinesis", doesn't seem to offer up as much movement as the subtitle suggests, although we're now beginning to understand the subtleties of Chord's process, the kinesis here due mostly to the introduction of drums (courtesy of US Maple's Pat Sampson!), the guitars offering up a looped Reich like backdrop to some heavy drum pound, blustery and bombastic, with moments that shift toward more abstract and jazzy, the drums and guitars seemingly at odds, occasionally coming together in stretches of Necks like minimal groove, but more often than not, sparring wildly, before finally blossoming into a heavy blown out blissy psychedelic raga like outro, all soaring sunburnt guitar buzz and loping tripped out rhythmic pummel. Nice.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Comes packaged in a silkscreened fold over sleeve, and includes TWO download coupons, one for the record proper, and another for a 2010 live set at the Empty Bottle in Chicago.
The return of high concept ambient dronescapers Chord, a sort-of side project of post metal heavies Pelican. Chord, as their name implies, only ever play a single chord, each track a different one, this time around it's EbMaj9, Gm11 and D6. Sounds boring, but it really isn't, in fact probably most drone outfits play one chord their whole career, but this, this is something more, with each member contributing a note, the notes forming a chord, and all of them playing different instruments, different tempos and timbres, the guitars shimmer warmly, the piano (?), swirls and drifts in a sea of hazy reverb, there seems to be some burbling bass too, it's all woven into something lush and dreamy, hypnotic and mesmerizing.
When we reviewed the first Chord album, we pointed out that we had come up with the idea of a 'chord' band on our April Fool's list way back when, with SUNNO))), Earth and Boris each tackling one of the notes, to make a mighty E chord. We still like to think that's where they got the idea. We also mentioned the late great Physics, a San Diego supergroup who always played a C, long spaced out jams, with multiple guitar players, always C. But as we mentioned before, Chord is a much more thoughtful project, definitely on the nerdy side of the spectrum, I mean, they made a song called "EbMaj9", and the group is as much about concept for the players as it is about the sound, but whatever the inspiration, the resulting soundscapes play out like our favorite guitardrone records. Smoldering slow burning expanses of deep layered thrum, hazy, washed out drifts of abstract choral blur. Whereas the other record occasionally built into Sunroof!-worthy squalls, Progression seems to be much more minimal, hushed and restrained, the only deviation is near the end of the epic 40 minute "Gm11", where things get full on heavy, a crushing avalanche of crumbling, superdistorted, blur and buzz, before slipping into the final track, a surprising bit of twang flecked folkiness, wreathed in a hazy buzz, and underpinned by some FX shimmer, but otherwise, sun dappled and dreamy, and for the record, all in the chord of D6.
And speaking of single chords, the most recent Austerity Program, besides being an awesome record, did something similar, in that they only ever used one chord, for the whole record, the band was appalled that no one noticed, but it just goes to show you what someone can do with a single chord, making more with less, a concept that Chord also embody, especially considering their sound has most definitely blossomed into something much more than just a quirky concept. Really great. And WAY recommended for fans of Fear Falls Burning, Final, R.Y.N., Elm, RST, Vulture Club and other practitioners of guitardronedrift.
And just to make things totally confusing, the cd and the lp are TOTALLY different. Progressions is a single collection of songs spread out over both formats, so the record starts on the cd, and continues on the lp, the music on each exclusive to that format. So if you do want ALL of Progression, you have to buy both, although most folks would probably be fine with one or the other.
You can just imagine a bunch of rambunctious childlike outsider artists and freak folk musicians deciding to get all their old sofa cushions and broken instruments and stuffed animals to build a big old Chord Fort in the corner of their practice space / crash pad. And this is sort of the musical equivalent. Jason Honea (who you might remember from Jewelled Antler outfits The Child Readers, the Franciscan Hobbies, as well as the Knit Separates and Teenage Panzercorps) teams up with a couple of other musical miscreants to build their very own Chord Fort, a super lo-fi Steve Reich-ish meditation, a slowly shifting keyboard figure, swathed in tape hiss and fuzzy sonic detritus. Totally mesmerizing, the melody only barely wavering, the fuzz and hiss becoming more and more agitated in the background. The track is titled "Smile Louder" and you can almost imagine hear a face trying to sustain a huge smile for the whole 8 minutes, his muscles twitching, the strain showing on his face, beads of sweat dripping into his eyes, the genuine toothy smile slowly becoming more of a sneer as the corners of his mouth begin to droop. It's a gorgeously tense minimalist exploration. "Smile Louder" is followed up by an ultra brief, one minute long, dreamy ambient coda, a warm whir beneath simple chimes, children's voices and a creepy music box melody.
Another gorgeously packaged cd-r -- full color cover, an amazing painting, printed inside as well, a folded over, textured paper insert, and the disc is professionally printed and quite striking.
Only 9 minutes long, but also only six bucks!
While Exotika is the fourth and final volume of Chris & Cosey's reissue campaign, this is not the fourth record in their discography. That designation goes to the 1985 album Techno Primitiv, and while there might be some reason for this chronological anomaly, here we have the 1987 album Exotica. At this point in the history of Chris & Cosey, the two had been collecting a considerable amount of gear, expanding upon the voltage control Gristlising machines Chris built for Throbbing Gristle and working with a much more complex MIDI set-up alongside a bunch of Roland drum machines, bass sequencers, and the like (There's a long interview with Chris Carter geeking out over all the gear, for those who may want to know what he was using out of the box). All of this was certainly at the cutting edge of technology in 1987, but you get the sense that Chris & Cosey might have had too many ideas for the technology to handle. The punchy rhythms which drove a good number of their earlier records (and some of the TG tracks as well) move on Exotica at a downtempo electro pace, as if the speed of each tune needed to be slow enough for all of the MIDI gear to catch up to without crapping out. Regardless, Chris & Cosey work well with this slinky, disjointed electro pacing that's always punctuated with a whipcrack of the snare for a seductive, dominatrix vibe. "Dancing On Your Grave" is a particularly choice track, noted more for Cosey's uncharacteristic operatic style of singing which meant bellowing the lyrics instead of whispering them as a sultry spell. "BeatBeatBeat" finds Cosey purposefully clipping her words to match the stream of movie dialogue snippets, moans, screams, and howls that decorate all of the percolating electronics and minimal wave surface tension. The production on Exotica is particularly clean, even as they've polished up all of these early recordings for this vinyl remastering. Here, the duo are more in line with the British avant-pop constructions of He Said, Art Of Noise, and some of the more disjointed moments of New Order.
Throbbing Gristle ceased to exist (for the first time) in 1981, shortly after the transgressive industrialists performed in San Francisco in May of that year. TG were deft in their manipulation of media, ominously stating that "The Mission is terminated," with the 'mission' referring to their numerous stark proclamations against society at large conjoined with their adventurous manglings of noise, rhythm, and atonality. But there's another rather self-evident historical fact: that TG's Genesis P-Orridge broke up with fellow bandmate & long-term partner Cosey Fanny Tutti. Shortly thereafter, Cosey and fellow TG member Chris Carter struck out on their own (with a romantic partnership not far behind), and later on in 1981, Chris & Cosey released their first solo project, the minimal wave / synthpunk masterpiece Heartbeat. In TG, Carter's propensity for beguiling electronic melodies and disco rhythms could be heard on such classic tracks as "United" and "Hot On The Heels Of Love." Both of these were signature tracks for Carter's aesthetic, which espoused an economic proto-techno approach to drum machine rhythms and heavily sequenced electro pulse melodies. Such has been the template for Chris & Cosey's sound since.
"Put Yourself In Los Angeles" opens the album with a dizzying percolation of flanged electronics which snaps into a militant march of Cosey's gnashed guitars locked against barked samples of a lunatic radio host and insistent rhythms. At least on this track, it's easy to hear the influence that Chris & Cosey would have on the likes of Front 242, Ministry, and Nine Inch Nails. Other tracks such as the metronomic spiralling of "Voodoo" and the downright pastoral birdsounds of "Moorby" looked back to the Krautrock electronic meanderings of Cluster. "Just Like You" is one of Chris & Cosey's finest tracks, oozing with paranoia and dread throughout the slashed noises and found dialogue haunting the minimalist techno-horror sequencing and sustained minor-key melodies. The title track completes the album brilliantly by looking forward to any number of Detroit-inspired techno trax with double timed rhythms emerging out of maudlin, if cybernetic melodies and electronic-pop propulsive sequencing that really does act as a bridge between the realm of Kraftwerk and the British new wave that was bubbling up around Chris & Cosey back in the day. An absolute classic!
Album number three from the electronic pioneers Chris & Cosey is Songs Of Love & Lust, which originally came out on Rough Trade back in 1984. It was on this album that the signature sounds of Chris & Cosey really developed as something other than what they managed to produce in Throbbing Gristle. It may not be a surprise that this was also around the same time that the other former TG members began to really flourish in their own projects with Psychic TV's masterful Dreams Less Sweet and the epic Scatology record by Coil. Here, on Songs Of Love & Lust, Chris & Cosey were polishing their electro / minimal wave surfaces with hypnotic cascades of arpeggiating synths, plucky drum machinations, and outright majestic swells of electronic wash. A handful of these tracks clearly became anthemic floorfillers that inspired acid house in Chicago, EBM in Belgium, and the Detroit / Berlin axis of techno. "Walking Through Heaven" is one such track with its soaring sustained electronics counterpointing all of the scintillatingly brilliant sequencing. Chris Carter had long been a non-ironic fan of Abba, and yes, he was responsible for the cold-sex disco TG classic "Hot On The Heels Of Love" which essentially eviscerated the Abba structures of baroque disco down to a skeletal rhythm with an uncomfortably breathy sensuality thanks to Cosey's vocals. And the ghosts of "Hot On The Heels Of Love" and "United" (another stellar Carter engineered TG song) emerge within this album (e.g. "Love Cuts," "Chiron" and "Driving Blind"), although they are wholly detacted from the grand guignol commentaries of TG. Rather, Chris & Cosey spoke more of a cybernetic sensuality, embracing the technologies around them as a means of expressing, well songs of love and lust. This album has held up remarkably well, and is required listening for anybody who's been gobbling up anything on Dark Entries, Minimal Wave, Anna Logue, or Vinyl-on-Demand.
The second record released in 1982 from former Throbbing Gristle alumni Chris Carter and Cosey Fanny Tutti still mines the coldwave and industrial electro aesthetics of their debut, Heartbeat (reviewed elsewhere on this list). But it may be their least regarded record due to its more removed soundtrack feel, exploring supposed realms of medieval chants and non-Western religious music, buried as they are under stuffy rhythms, slithery washes and ambient death-disco permutations. Apparently the band and label, Rough Trade had a dispute over the retail price of the record (our original copy says in printed type along the bottom edge "Please Note: Mid-Priced Record") and moved to various other labels shortly after, so it's hard to say if Trance got any real promotion at all. That's not to say Trance is not a worthy album, but its murky combination of earthy propulsive synthesis and detached ritualism make it less instantly accessible than their debut. Trance works best as a connected suite of songs, than individual tracks, a lot like Demdike Stare's twisted soundscapes, which share Chris & Cosey's fascination with an arcane British-ness. Especially the final two tracks, "Until" and "The Gates of Ancient Cities", which are two of our favorite C&C tracks ever, partially because they offer a shimmer of light from what preceded them and make a beautiful pastoral move towards grace.
The Die Schachtel label's "Zeit" series devoted to current acts from the Italian avant-garde/indie-rock underground has a couple new releases out now -- discs by Christa Pfangen (reviewed here) and Angelo Petronella (which we'll try to get to next time). The Zeit series started off with the fabulous self-titled album by a band simply named A, hopefully you've checked that one out already (we highlighted it on list 248). This cd is almost just as good. Their fragmented, abstract electro-acoustics, and use of silence as well as sound, definitely puts Christa Pfangen in the same experimental ballpark as A, 3/4hadbeeneliminated, Giuseppe Ielasi, Stefano Pilia, Renato Rinaldi, Larsen, Sinistri/Starfuckers, and other artists from this happenin' scene. Playing "guitars, drums, voices, objects, electroacoustic devices", Christa Pfangen is in fact a duo, comprised of Andrea Belfi (who also has a new solo album out on Hapna by the way) and Mattia Coletti. These ladies have named their band Christa PFANGEN in some sort of odd tribute to Nico, whose real name was Christa PAFFGEN...but beyond that we don't think this has much to do with Nico or her music, though maybe there's some harmonium on here somewhere!
A tangle of nervous drumming and ambient drones, all staticky and stuttery, Watch Me Getting Back The End is both challenging and pretty... they've got a moody melodiousness to 'em not unlike 3/4hadbeeneliminated, or Jewelled Antler projects such as Thuja and the Blithe Sons. Certainly there's a lot here for even the not-so-experimental indie pop fan to mellow out to. String-born notes fall like leaves from a tree, melodies blow away in a gentle wind of drone, whispering voices caress the ear... so nice!
As with all Die Schachtel stuff, the packaging is super spiffy -- a digipack with embossed cover art.
Originally released as a super limited quadruple cassette, this fantastic slab of rhythmic gothic industrial weirdness gets reissued on vinyl. Christian Cosmos is Hospital Records / Prurient head honcho and part time Cold Cave-er Dominick Fernow, teamed up with Kris Lapke from Furisubi and something called Alberch, and while we don't know much else about Lapke, we do know these two make a glorious din together here, combining churning industrial rhythms with blown out power electronics, wrapping everything in dense drones and ethereal synth shimmer, a murky washed out miasma driven by looped chunks of machinelike crunch, the sound veering into serious old school eighties industrial, but slowed down and made more caustic and abject, but that bleak rhythmic sprawl perpetually underpinned by haunting melodies, courtesy of Fernow we presume.
The sound slips from rhythmic and industrial to murky lopped mesmer, sounding at times like a Philip Jeck conducted symphony of rusted out old turntables spinning early Ministry 12"s at 16rpm, gauzy and hazy and atmospheric, laced with ornamental skitter, that blossoms into full of crunch and churn. The sound throughout epic and majestic, borderline orchestral at time, the final track a gorgeous bit of vocal driven choral industrial, with looped female vox woven into the black buzz and blurred swirl, tangled up in the roiling rhythms, making for something gorgeously cinematic.
Record number two from Christian Cosmos, just one of the latest projects from Dominick Fernow (Cold Cave, Prurient, Vatican Shadow, Vegas Martyrs, Ash Pool, etc.), who in CC is teamed up with Furisubi's Kris Lapke, and like on their first 12", which we flipped for, CC continue to mine a mutant industrial electro / techno, the sound gritty and grimey, and a little bit blackened, murky, woozy, the vibe subterranean and sinister, swaths of power electronics and swells of kosmische synthscapery underpin churning skeletal rhythms, and mutant house music, laced with haunting cinematic melodies. The sound on this latest 12" is even more dramatic than the first, sounding like the soundtrack to some obscure art film, moody and murky, brooding and ominous, but slipping as easily into something much more eighties sounding, like some stripped down minimal electro pop, as it does into dense, grinding industrial techno-noise, but it's all woven together by a haunting atmosphere, and blurred into a constantly shifting sonic whole, the tracks unfolding like some sonic travelogue of faded melancholy. We mentioned Philip Jeck in our review of the first record, and while this one doesn't feel so overtly looped and Jeck-like, it does ooze the same sort of atmosphere as many of Jeck's pieces, abject expanses of washed out melancholia, the mood dark and dolorous, the rhythms not so much driving, as trance inducing and mesmerizingly motorik. A gorgeous bit of gristly grey electronic mesmerism for sure.
Calling all goths! Found two last copies of this 2014 RSD title - a 7" packaged with poster, featuring the tracks "Cavity - First Communion" (alt. version) on the A-side and "The Lord's Prayer" on the B-side. It's the Edward Colver edition because "photographer Edward Colver's photographs of the original Christian Death line-up are so integral to the band's oeuvre we decided to create a special 7" package to showcase them". Includes poster. White vinyl.
First, a couple things, we doubt that these rockers are Christian, and the only lady in the band seems more like a "Ms." than a Mistress. But, yeah, that's a very metal sounding name ain't it?? Now, we know that '70s and '80s influenced heavy metal isn't everyone's cup of tea, but then neither is doomdronedirge or lo-fi garage pop or groovy porno soundtracks or lots of other things... and we wouldn't be being true to ourselves if we didn't make this a Record Of The Week! After all, some of us here have done nothing but listen to this non-stop since it showed up. Plus, maybe this IS your cup of tea and you wouldn't have known that if we didn't really push it.
For those of you who are into traditional metal sounds, like those of the NWOBHM (and thus know what NWOBHM stands for), Christian Mistress should be an immediate hit. Everyone else, well, if you're gonna get just ONE heavy metal record this year, it'd be pretty cool (for you) if it was this one.
The debut from Olympia's Christian Mistress, actually looks more crusty punk than heavy metal, and comes out on a label better known for doom and sludge than "True" heavy metal. Yet this is true all right. Not only boasting shredding twin guitars, but melodies and SONGS, and a singer, Christine Davis, who not only can sing but has a "VOICE". Sorry for the all caps, and quotes, but we're excited. What we mean is, she's got a voice that is unique and memorable, as well as being able to carry a tune. Pretty special in this day and age. We'd probably have to compare her, among female metal vocalists, to Kate De Lombaert from '80s Belgian band Acid, not that we expect everybody to know who that is... Davis could also appeal to fans of Hammers Of Misfortune, and Jex Thoth, though she doesn't sound like those female singers, her voice much more raw, deeper, with a slight rasp in fact. But sweet enough for us! It's powerful yet melancholic character goes well with her lyrics, serious ones about such subjects as love and (we think) addiction, she stays away from trite metal cliches. Meanwhile, musically, the band shows itself to be steeped in the "old ways", dedicated students of Judas Priest and early Iron Maiden, the NWOBHM, Metallica, Megadeth, etc... plugging into the timelessness of the best traditional metal, while still sounding fresh and vital. Exciting, and emotional.
Christian Mistress go for quality not quantity here, offering up six killer songs in just over 27 minutes. From opening track "Riding On The Edges" onwards, the listener is treated to sheer headbanging joy, adrenalized gallop, heavy riffs, spiralling spires of intertwined lead guitar, and both melody and energy in large doses. All six songs are excellent, with maybe "Desert Rose" especially standing out come chorus-time... and we'll mention how the last cut, "Omega Stone", starts off in gentle, acoustic mode, Davis singing quietly, wearily, for several minutes, building into some psychedelic soloing, before the band bursts into frenetic, triumphant, rapid riffing for the track's final moments. It's probably the song on this album that an audience would be most likely to raise their lighters for, and we mean that in a good way! And then as soon as it's over, we're already hitting play to hear the disc again once more, to get another Christian Mistress fix. Here, and elsewhere, they achieve a sense of drama without being at all corny. Instead, this disc comes off as classy, majestic, and inspired. And about as hooky as can be. We're always talking about how this or that black metal or ambient drone or whatever band is "actually" writing pop songs underneath all the buzz, distortion and/or screaming. Well, here's a band that's heavy and metal... and DEFINITELY writing pop songs, of the stick-in-your-head variety. Your head that's banging at the same time. Basically, the current crop of retro metallers (not to mention all indie rock bands, if we look at this from a metal-centric perspective) just got their asses handed to them by Christian Mistress. Old school, but original.
We're not the only ones freaking out over Christian Mistress. 20 Buck Spin, obviously. And, Fenriz loves 'em! In fact, we might have first heard of Christian Mistress 'cause the Darkthrone drummer mentioned them in an interview or something. And while we don't agree with Fenriz about all his many cult band crushes, he was right about these guys (and girl). Also, the other day we happened to be playing this in the presence of Mike Scalzi from Slough Feg, who volunteered that "this band is awesome"... and he usually doesn't like ANYTHING. So consider that quite an endorsement, for what it's worth... along with us making it Record Of The Week.
Four new songs - well actually four OLD songs, but new to us and probably new to you too - from the mighty Christian Mistress, whose debut on the 20 Buck Spin label was a very popular, very metal Record Of The Week here last year. Now illustrator/metalhead Dennis Dread's new label Unseen Forces has, for their very first release, reissued CM's original 2009 4-song demo tape on 12", 45rpm vinyl, in a limited edition of 350 copies, already sold out at the label. And we got just a tiny handful. The songs: "Poison Path", "Never Let Go", "Anoxic Living", "Black Out". All good examples of what makes these female-fronted, NWOBHM-infuenced retro-metal rippers so damn great.
Remixed, remastered for vinyl, with new cover art by vocalist Christine Davis, handscreened, with lyrics sheet.
Always so many reviews to write, and we've pretty much saved the best for last, it's the night before the list, and we've got a date with the Christian Mistress!! So stoked on this, the second strike of instantly memorable, uniquely atmospheric, old school galloping trad metal greatness from these Olympia, WA gods - and, ahem, goddess!
We at Aquarius - and many of you, we know - can be considered Christian Mistress early adopters. We boldly made their debut album Agony & Opium a Record Of The Week back when it came out in August, 2010, after all. Joining the chorus of such fans as Fenriz of Darkthrone, and the guys in Slough Feg, we sang their praises to the skies. Needless to say, this new full-length, a year and a half later, is eagerly anticipated. And being released on Relapse, is bound to get a wider audience, which is quite deserved. Having seen 'em slaying live, every time they've come to town, we've heard a few of these songs already and that further whetted our appetite for this album...we didn't know if they could top their debut, but we think they maybe just did!
Analog-recorded at Louder Studios by Tim Green of The Fucking Champs, Possession offers up nine new tracks of Christian Mistress' classic sounding riffing and rippage, inspired by '70s Priest, the toughest NWOBHM (Diamond Head, Angel Witch), and early '80s speedmetal. Songs full of exquisite shred, catchy choruses, doomed-out power, acoustic adornment, and most significantly, such compelling melodic singing. While the dual guitarists are whizzes for sure, throwing out licks in passing that lesser bands might base whole songs around, the band's main attraction remains singer Christine Davis, who as we have said before, possesses a serious VOICE. Charismatic, commanding, husky, raw, melancholic. It's the X-factor that makes CM's music sound so special, so timeless, even transcendent. A crucial component to these carefully crafted songs, which range from rapidfire off-the-rails rockin' to utterly emotive & epic. CM are so totally metal - rooted in the genre's finest traditions - yet their songwriting is pop enough underneath it all for anyone to enjoy, who likes good, real rock music.
So the deal obviously is, those of you already into CM are getting this for sure; but folks who haven't checked 'em out, please do, even if you're not a metal "regular", particularly of the old school variety. When we made their first album Record Of The Week we said something like, if you were gonna buy just one metal album this year, make it this one, and while of course we think you should be buying MORE than one metal album a year (that's ridiculous!!!), put this new CM at the top of your list. It's definitely a contender for best heavy metal album of 2012; at least, there's so many songs here, like "Hunted Haunted" and "Black To Gold" and their cover of obscure '80s Swedish doomsters Faith's "Possession", for instance, that we just can't stop spinning over and over and over. Good thing this is the last review we've got to finish before the list...
Full length number two from this French Satanic crew, featuring members of aQ faves Peste Noire, but don't be expecting the warped WTF? weirdness of that group, instead, Christicide deliver some seriously epic and brutal blackness, with a production that dispenses with the tinny/lo-fi/practice space sound that plagues most black metal records, and delivers its malevolent message in gouts of crushing heaviness, with thick swirls of insectoid buzz, blasting pounding drums, and croaked demonic vokills. Just the sound alone had us from the first track, thick and heavy and massive, but the songs too - wildly complex tangles of woozy riffage, furious intricate rhythms, all locked into a tranced out blackmath crush, but rife with melodies too, just give that opening track a listen, the sound lurching from droned out riffiness, to furious blasting blackness, to weirdly psychedelic and surprisingly melodic epic-ness and back again, definitely shades of Katharsis, Deathspell, and other modern masters of avant blackness, but Christicide fuse those avant influences to more traditional old school black buzz, resulting in something that manages to sound both classic, and modern, the sort of furious blackened heaviness that we definitely don't hear enough anymore...
The latest jewel unearthed by the B-Music Collective for Finders Keepers is so obscure it was actually never released. Only a small number of privately pressed vanity copies were made of this 1970 Philly-based folk-beat head trip. Using Philly studio session musicians, Axelrod-style breaks, spaghetti-western guitar, A&M strings and the "legendary" production of John Hill, who is dubiously credited in the liner notes as the inventor of both Trip Hop and Heavy Metal for his production work with Margo Guryan and The Riders of the Mark (a heavy psych predecessor to Black Sabbath, supposedly?!). Don't know about that, but the trip hop mystique of Susan Christie is definitely apparent by the opening riff of the title track begging to be sampled a million times over if it hasn't already. But it isn't just the sample potential that makes this a worthy listen. Just about every song is full of hooks and unique arrangements and darkly-tinged songwriting. Check out the nine-minute centerpiece "Yesterday, Where's My Mind?" with its spoken recitations of a bad trip culminating in a damning freak-out, before slipping into a fuzzy downbeat rocker. Freak-folk indeed!
One of aQ's all-time steady-sellers is definitely the debut cd on Alchemy from Japanese super-psychedelic-space-synth instrumental groove outfit Christine 23 Onna, entitled Shiny Crystal Planet. It's been a big fave around here ever since we reviewed it on list #103 back in 2000. A duo featuring Maso Yamazaki (Masonna, Space Machine, Acid Eater) and Fusao Toda (Angel 'In Heavy Syrup), the wild analog electronics of Christine 23 Onna are a retro-delic delight. In 2002, as part of a special Maso Yamazaki "15th Anniversary Freakout Triplex" series (which also included a disc each from Masonna and Space Machine), Christine 23 Onna released their second album, Acid Eater (not to be confused with Maso's freakbeat garage band of the same name). It had ten new, energetic tracks with titles like "Acid Now!" and "Space Mondo Topless". We totally wanted to get some for the store, but had no luck at all finding import copies at any sort of reasonable wholesale price...
Well at long last we've finally got some -- and yeah, it's still pretty expensive. But that's Japanese imports for you. We trust that any fan of Shiny Crystal Planet cd would want this though, it's another monstrous onslaught of swirling '60s styled go-go disco and krautrocky kitsch, awash in FX, drenched in distortion, to the point that some of this is spaced-out enough to sound like Hawkwind and Klaus Schulze together playing funk at a LSD-party hosted by the Vampyros Lesbos and Austin Powers!! Or imagine taking tracks from one of the best old "library music" comps and running 'em all through a mad-scientist's laboratory full of synths! From fun and freaky dancefloor numbers to totally out there sci-fi soundtrackiness, we're lovin' this. Play it LOUD.
NB. We've also got the other two cds in the Freakout Triplex, and will be reviewing those soon too!
Christine 23 Onna is a collaborative effort between Fusao Toda and Maso Yamazaki, better known as Masonna. While the presence of one of Japan's most frightening noisicians should be enough the scare away all of the too-hip-and-too-stoned kids who only care about 'rare grooves,' Christine 23 Onna's "Shiny Chrystal Planet" is actually a pretty damn funky record. Yeah, it's noisy, but in a swirling, synth-overload, super psychedelic way, not like Masonna's usual electronic scream-skree. And really uptempo breakbeats set the rhythmic backbone for some awesome trance-rock much like the latest grooves from their countrymen the Boredoms (a la "Super Are" and "Vision Creation Newsun)". The phase shifting fuzz guitar and cosmic space dusted synthesizers get jammy, but fortunately never too wanky. Those of you familiar with the '60s spy thrillers of Jerry Van Rooyen may recognize one of his tempestous songs covered by Christine 23 Onna (we think we do, anyways, although it's not credited as such...). Wild, spacey groov-adelia. All around great stuff! Amazing cover art recreating Ash Ra Temple's "New Age Of Earth"!
Fans of Japanese noise master Masonna might not be aware that he's fully into 70's cosmic rock music. This 12" is the proof, as "Maso" Yamazaki and friend pay homage to their krautrock faves of yore. There's even a track called "Space Hippie." Really great ambient/psych weirdness, and handsomely presented, from the colorful cover to the transparent blood-shot-cotton-candy colored vinyl, resplendent in a clear plastic sleeve.
Ok, so this has been passed around the store for a little while with a rotation of different people assigned to review it. Why the hesitation? It seems the folks around here who had no idea who Christmas Decorations are, took a look at the cover and thought it was perhaps another Christian psych-folk reissue from the seventies or some twee homey Americana and kept putting it below their priority list. And the folks around here who DID know who Christmas Decorations are, from their Kranky debut a few years ago, didn't like that album very much at all, mainly due to its atonal vocalizing over quirky electronica. Well, when we finally put this on, we were pleasantly surprised, if not out and out AMAZED at what we heard. First of all, there are thankfully no vocals, and while this is not the Christian folk or Americana record some of us thought it to be, there is a strain of, er rustic folkiness through the presence of slide guitar as it barely permeates through the murky minimal ambience of shifting electronics. It seems that Christmas Decorations have cleaned house since their debut, removing all the unnecessary elements of song-forms from their compositions, and reducing their sound to layers of decayed and drifting abstractions barely hinting at the melodies beneath them. Think the winter equivalent to Fennesz's Endless Summer. Like the sounds of oxidation on old and rotting wood, subtle and melancholy with the textures of wet dirt and leaves burbling under slowly melting ice. So beautiful! We think fans of Jasper TX and Machinefabriek and similar outfits of dreamy drift would dig this a lot. What a surprise!!
Christmas Decorations are a tough band to pin down. Which just might be why we like them so much. In fact more and more with every record. Their latest, the vinyl only Far Flung Hum, might be the most confusing, the most difficult to describe, and consequently, very likely their best yet.
On their last record, they began to introduce a sort of folky twang into their soundscapes, nothing dramatic, but enough to give the proceedings a rustic vibe, to temper their electronics, helping to create a sound both modern and timeless, alien yet warm and familiar. FFH begins with a sort of disembodied alien folk, strings creak, instruments buzz and rumble, melodies are seemingly digitized and released to drift like pixilated clouds, in some places it sounds like a field recording of a hoedown on some ranch, frozen, then played back incredibly slow, allowing the listener to wander science fiction style amidst all these peoples and happenings that seem to be moving a hundred times slower than us. Drones buzz softly, bits of abstract percussion tinkle and chime, organs (or accordions?) wheeze and warble, there's a Finnish folk vibe for sure but with more twang, and somehow filtered through a much more modern, if slightly cracked approach. Some tracks have a distinct No Neck Blues Band or Sunburned Hand Of The Man feel, very tribal and jammy, but with the sounds of machines, and what sounds like folks laboring in the field, digging, water being bailed, it could all be manufactured, but it does sound like processed field recordings rendered musically. Deep resonant drones, insect like chitter, tons of ambient sound, almost as if all the recording had taken place on farms and in people's homes or on street corners, allowing all the various sounds of every day life to subtly blend into the music being made. And where the electronic aspect in the past sounded more, well, electronic, now the Decorations have mastered it so the bits of electronics and glitchery, sound less like some electronic band making weird sounds, and more like electronics are in fact some living thing, that just happens to occasionally flit by, its natural sounds and calls a part of the every day soundscape, which again helps make FFH sound so organic and alive.
Elsewhere the sounds dip back into tribal rumble, sounds are processed and released back into the wild to interact with natural sounds, there are long stretches of Morricone-ish cinematic ambience, deep growling swells, little flurries of electronics and fractured melodies, but all arranged into one constantly evolving soundworld, an ever shifting space the listener is forced to navigate, and is left to wander in freely, enjoying the sounds, returning to familiar areas, or better yet, getting completely and utterly lost.
Incredible packaging, and oversized gatefold matchbook style fold over sleeve, letter pressed on thick textured cardstock, with the inner sleeve sealed to the inside of the outer sleeve. Can't remember exactly HOW, but as you might well imagine, probably pretty dang limited.
Sometimes droll, atonal singing can work really well (think Beat Happening, Reynols or Magnetic Fields), but unfortunately not on the Christmas Decorations' debut album. Seriously, this is some painfully out of tune singing. It distracts from the rest of the music which taken without the vocals is quite pleasant, if somewhat underwhelming - moody chiming soundscapes comprised of some highly effected guitars, bass, melodica and sequencers. This comes as an enormous disappointment following Revolve the one and only album from the fantastic but crushingly short-lived band that was Beautiful Skin whose nucleus was Nick Forte and Ross Totino. There was an unquestionable musical chemistry between them that propelled their music beyond simplistic new wave references and the Wire / Gang Of Four / New Order worship of Forte's previous bands. This new group however does not draw such glowing praise, instead it truly bummed out a few of us.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Rumours have it that Christophe was clocked at over 500 splices per second for this record. Regardless of the truth to this, his brilliant cut-up collage done entirely on an old reel-to-reel sounds very similar to recent digital collages of Stock, Hausen, and Walkman!
The following is taken from the Chroma Key website, but was in fact written by our own Andee Connors! ...
Graveyard Mountain Home is a filmic, expansive musical exploration from Kevin Moore AKA Chroma Key, founding member of progressive metal legends Dream Theater. Recorded in Istanbul, Turkey, where he now lives, this third release from Chroma Key is an entirely different musical beast than Moore's previous musical work, and -- created as an alternate audio track to a surreal educational film from the '50s -- the result of quite a unique approach to album making.
All three Chroma Key releases to date have been self-produced recorded in Moore's home studios, the location of which changes album to album. After leaving Dream Theater in 1996, Moore relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where much of the first album, 1998's Dead Air for Radios was written. 2000's You Go Now was written and recorded in Los Angeles, right before another move to Costa Rica, where Moore lived for 3 years. In Costa Rica he began writing and recording ideas for a new Chroma Key album, during the day producing a bi-weekly, activist, musical radio program for Radio for Peace International, a shortwave station based in San Jose. Last year Moore released a compilation of the program -- a mix of original music and politically volatile spoken word recordings -- as a downloadable album on chromakey.com as The Memory Hole 1.
Long distance Memory Hole collaborator (and fellow CalArts graduate) Theron Patterson was teaching film and doing his own radio show in Istanbul when he invited Moore to visit and collaborate on a show last year. Soon after, Moore relocated to Istanbul and the pair began collaborating on new material for the weekly radio show Music Lab. Moore was also commissioned to score Turkey's first horror film, and the resulting soundtrack Ghost Book was released by InsideOut earlier this year.
The experience of scoring a film inspired Moore to take a new approach to composing the next Chroma Key album. "Instead of just developing song ideas out of nowhere and trying to make them all relate somehow," he explains, "I thought I could find an old film that already had a particular mood and texture to it, and then let that film dictate the songs' themes and structures, and even the song lengths. I eventually found this gem called 'Age 13' in an online archive of public domain films."
One of the many "social guidance" films produced in the 50's and early 60's for schools and police departments, Age 13 proves the perfect subject for Moore's musical ministrations. It is a strangely surreal moral tale of a boy who loses his mother and is convinced that if he can repair the radio she always listened to, he will somehow be able to bring her back. The film is beautifully distressed, on fuzzy film stock, with all sorts of chemical degradation and staticky imperfections caused by aging and exposure. Like a grade school filmstrip or an unearthed home movie, Age 13 is a mysterious glimpse into another life and another time.
"The subject matter and the look of the film was really suited to the kind of music I usually find myself writing," recalls Moore, "and I knew as soon as I watched the opening scene -- which is a burial scene -- that I wanted to get under the surface of those images and play against them."
Moore slowed the film down to half speed, stripped away the sound and crafted an alternative audio track, which is Graveyard Mountain Home. The film's original dialogue and score occasionally bubble up through the songs, playing off and against them, and hinting at the unseen film's space and conflicts.
The Chroma Key accompanied version of the film is included as a DVD in the Special Edition of the CD release, and as a Quicktime file on the standard edition CD. Watching the hybrid version of the film, the songs alternately support, upset, and recast the accompanying scenes. Occasionally, character's dialogues are replaced with unlikely sources -- for example deep south AM radio samples (in Give Up) and a darkly comical Krishnamurti parody (in Human Love).
By design though, Graveyard Mountain Home is just as sonically compelling when removed from its visual element, a slowly seeping, darkly dramatic, series of epic musical vignettes: Sweet, sun-dappled vibraphone melodies over fuzzy, glitchy throbs; a dreamy, Tortoise-y post rock filtered through the Eastern rhythms of Muslimgauze and layered over a rumbling drone; ambient street sounds and muted minor key melodies obscure distant vocals, ethereal and indistinct; Sparklehorse-like melancholia, with tinny shortwave vocals and arid desert twang; displaced, lost and lonely voices, snatched from the ether, a warm jazzy shuffle, revisiting earlier sonic themes -- all a framework for Moore's world weary vocals.
In addition to writing with the film in mind, the album was also written to be played in front of an audience, and Chroma Key expect to stage an European and American tour for the first time this winter.
REPRESSED, BACK IN STOCK!!! Now including the "lost side" of unreleased tracks featured on the recent deluxe vinyl version.
Ooooh Ahhhhh! This one has been sizzling in our ears pretty much on endless repeat since it showed up at the store. Chromatics have undergone a pretty radical change from their early herky-jerky no-wave inspired beginnings, as showcased on the amazing and scene defining After Dark comp that we recently listed, and are still so in love with. Chromatics now have a sound that is much more sensual, subdued and spaced out. And we have to say we are loving this new direction. I definitely suits them so much more naturally than their noisier punky past.
With a sound much more rooted in early drugged out disco and '80s Euro-pop, Night Drive is sparse and melancholic enough to reel in folks whose taste usually falls on the darker end of the spectrum yet with songs so damn sexy and enticing that those of us with dance and pop leanings are seduced by their sound as well. With Ruth Radalet's vocals sounding like they are being delivered in a dark room filled with fog and smoke, there is such an intoxicating late night vibe that Chromatics tap into which feels so vacant and so sexy in the best possible way. They take on the daunting task of covering Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" and manage to make it their own, no small feat as that is a song with such deep meaning for so many of us. So damn good!
With a new perfectly delivered sound, Chromatics have become a huge favorite here in aQ land over the last couple months as we've been playing their new album IV: Night Drive over and over and still not even getting close to burning out on its seductive and steamy sounds. This 12" contains one of their great selections from the scene defining After Dark compilation which will for sure find its way on to many 2007 best of lists. Along with that comes an extended mix, an instrumental version, the haunting vocal only mix and a hot take on Springsteen's "I'm On Fire." We're not sure if the Boss would approve, but we sure do!
So stoked that this awesome album by the Chromatics is available on vinyl now and with a whole side filled with unreleased tracks.
Ooooh Ahhhhh! This one has been sizzling in our ears pretty much on endless repeat since it showed up at the store. Chromatics have undergone a pretty radical change from their early herky-jerky no-wave inspired beginnings, as showcased on the amazing and scene defining After Dark comp that we recently listed, and are still so in love with. Chromatics now have a sound that is much more sensual, subdued and spaced out. And we have to say we are loving this new direction. I definitely suits them so much more naturally than their noisier punky past.
With a sound much more rooted in early drugged out disco and '80s Euro-pop, Night Drive is sparse and melancholic enough to reel in folks whose taste usually falls on the darker end of the spectrum yet with songs so damn sexy and enticing that those of us with dance and pop leanings are seduced by their sound as well. With Ruth Radalet's vocals sounding like they are being delivered in a dark room filled with fog and smoke, there is such an intoxicating late night vibe that Chromatics tap into which feels so vacant and so sexy in the best possible way. They take on the daunting task of covering Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" and manage to make it their own, no small feat as that is a song with such deep meaning for so many of us. So damn good!
So short! Four raw spurts of noise-alicious herky-jerk. We barely caught a glimpse of these two new members of the Gold Standard Laboratories clan . Certainly not the black sheeps in this family, they seat themselves quite comfortably in the recently vacated, overturned chairs of spaz-punks LeShok and XBXRX. So who are these mysterious newcomers? Well, arty postpunkers the Chromatics rose from the ashes of Seattle, WA's underappreciated The Vogue (and you might have also heard of another of their incarnations, The Soiled Doves). Like-minded Monitor Bats just happen to be the jazz-punk side project of blues-rockin' kids The Gossip. Word has it that a Chromatics full length is in the works, so keep those ears to the ground. Until then, you might just have to make do with this brief encounter.
Get out the tinfoil, draw the blinds, turn the television to static and brace yourself for the amphetamine-fueled paranoid mind-fuck of San Francisco's industrial wastoids, Chrome!
Their three seminal albums from the late seventies/early eighties, Alien Soundtracks, Half Machine Lip Moves, and 3rd From The Sun have thankfully been re-issued by the Noiseville label who have brought us stellar releases from Skullflower and Wicked King Wicker among others. Led by Damon Edge and Helios Creed, Chrome channeled The Stooges raw garage energy with Hawkwind's mindmelting space rock acid-psych and the electronic proto-art-punk of bands like Debris' and The Styrenes into a spazzy amalgam of sci-fi distortion, glam-punk chaos, and all manner of machine fuckery including television samples, bizarre tape manipulations and random fuzz-filled noise. Inspired by the future-shock visionary writings of J.G Ballard and Philip K. Dick, Chrome were cyber-punk before the term had even been popularized! In fact, they were one of those bands who became much more popular after their demise, when bands like The Butthole Surfers, Big Black and other Touch and Go bands started gaining notoriety in the mid-eighties college rock scene.
Alien Soundtracks from 1978 was Chrome's second album after the relatively straight forward rock of their debut The Visitation. But by then Helios Creed joined the band and Chrome's signature sound, centering on Creed's grinding pitch-shifting guitar attack and Edge's aggro drumming and damaged tape manipulations, were firmly in place. Supposedly recorded as a soundtrack for a live sex show, songs like, "Magnetic Dwarf Reptile" and "Slip It To The Android", display a sleazy suggestiveness with scuzzy rhythms and odd wailed crooning. While their fascination with science fiction's darker side (especially involving man-machine biologies and mind-controlling robots in a techno-industrial wasteland) manifested itself in vicious electronics and disturbing drones over the layers of buried vocals and speed-driven guitar riffage.
Get out the tinfoil, draw the blinds, turn the television to static and brace yourself for the amphetamine-fueled paranoid mind-fuck of San Francisco's industrial wastoids, Chrome!
Their three seminal albums from the late seventies/early eighties, Alien Soundtracks, Half Machine Lip Moves, and 3rd From The Sun have thankfully been re-issued by the Noiseville label who have brought us stellar releases from Skullflower and Wicked King Wicker among others. Led by Damon Edge and Helios Creed, Chrome channeled The Stooges raw garage energy with Hawkwind's mindmelting space rock acid-psych and the electronic proto-art-punk of bands like Debris' and The Styrenes into a spazzy amalgam of sci-fi distortion, glam-punk chaos, and all manner of machine fuckery including television samples, bizarre tape manipulations and random fuzz-filled noise. Inspired by the future-shock visionary writings of J.G Ballard and Philip K. Dick, Chrome were cyber-punk before the term had even been popularized! In fact, they were one of those bands who became much more popular after their demise, when bands like The Butthole Surfers, Big Black and other Touch and Go bands started gaining notoriety in the mid-eighties college rock scene.
Half Machine Lips Move was the 1979 follow-up to Alien Soundtracks and it's definitely our favorite! The songwriting is completely fucked, with aggressively manic jump-cuts in and between songs. Sounding like the music analog machines would make if they just became sentient drug-taking monsters, the paranoid mind-control trip is full throttle, with nightmarish conspiratorial songs about the government and the media in cahoots with aliens to enslave the public ("TV As Eyes" "Zombie Warfare" and "You've Been Duplicated"). Rife with layers of sinister lo-fi electronic noises and television samples, over fast riff-heavy rhythm hooks and lysergic face-eating vocal effects. So awesomely damaged!! If you were to get only one Chrome album, this would be the one!
Helios Creed is back under the Chrome name with a new studio album. Is Chrome's sci-fi punk retro yet?
