One of the great things about doing our list, is reviewing reissues of stuff we LOVE that we never got to list before. Old faves from the pre-list days. Of course, it's always tough too, when you want to explain just WHY something is so amazing and essential. When it's a record you've loved for years and years, there's a lot of pressure to do it justice. This list, for instance, you'll find our review of Oxbow's King Of The Jews, These Trails, and surely a few other old faves, this Nels Cline album most definitely among them, and its hard not to just say, in all caps, BUY THIS DAMMIT, YOU WON'T BE SORRY, IT'S THE BEST!!!
That's our feeling about this for sure. The very first Nels Cline album we came across, and the first by his Trio, originally released on Enja in 1992, out of print for ages, now finally reissued in a spiffy new digipack. Nels Cline then was an underground jazz guitarist, who has since become an alt-rock guitar guy too, playing in Wilco, and with Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Carla Bozulich, and others, amassing a diverse and impressive discography.
Silencer is "jazz" all right, and jazz too, without the quotes. Ten tracks, epic and exquisite instrumentals, full of out-there skree and sublime beauty, performed by Nels on guitars, with Michael Prusser on drums and Mark London Sims on bass.
This album eases the listener in, beginning with a take on Gil Evans' "Las Vegas Tango" (all the other tracks are Cline compositions), that's just lovely, Cline's guitar with soft edges on it... then as the album progresses, the "dangerous" side of his playing is revealed. The soft edges remain, but there's jagged ones too. But even when things get tangled and noisy, it's gorgeous, and still swings. The trio has great chemistry, it's not just all about Cline's guitar (though he's definitely the star). Some highlights: the bumptious "Broasted" (which gets heavy/distorted enough to almost pass for a Stinking Lizaveta track!), the spacious 14+ minute "Lapsing (Part 1&2)", the subtle skronk of "Silencer", and the moody hum/hush of "Exiled" (one we think Bohren fans would appreciate)...
This came out not long after the late, great guitarist Sonny Sharrock's final, brilliant album Ask The Ages (which really needs to be reissued too!!), we'd probably just discovered him about the same time we got clued into Cline. If you like Sharrock, Cline is certainly one of his spiritual descendants, in the realm of "free" "jazz" "fusion".
Maybe 'cause it was our first Nels disc, but also 'cause it's so good, this has always been our favorite, though you can't go wrong with anything the man has ever done as far as we're concerned. So very recommended, as if you couldn't tell already.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Nels is Mike Watt's new guitarist. Amazing rock-jazz, jazzrock.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Nels (known to some as Geraldine Fibbers guitarist and Thurston Moore collaborator/pal, known to us as being just one of our favorite dang guitarists in the world, whether he's doing some smooth jazz number, spiky free improv noise, or beautiful dronescapes--all of which can be found on this new NCT recording, which is cause for much rejoicing round these parts) Cline rules!
Here's the real deal! Vintage recordings of Ms Patsy Cline! This generous serving of 23 songs from the '50s showcases her awesome voice and stylistic range beautifully. Walking And Dreaming is part of an impressive reissue series of classic old country artists from the mysterious Oakland, CA label The Masked Weasel. Also featured in the series thus far are great collections of early recordings by Willie Nelson, Buck Owens and Waylon Jennings. AQ friend and country music expert Kurt Wolff (author of the Rough Guide To Country Music, among other things) contributed the fine liner notes for each volume of the series.
Clinic are a band who hit the scene with such a refreshing splash of perfected art-rock a decade ago and while they haven't really released anything bad, it can be argued that they did make the same record several times and the freshness that we once felt had turned a bit stale. But with Bubblegum the band seems to have injected a bit of new life and explored a broader sound palette to add to their distinctive sound. And while we can't deny that these songs sound cool there's still something that seems to be missing, that keeps us from getting too excited.
While our #1 Clinic fan (Sadie) is out on the road, we're gonna try our best to give you the word on the new Clinic release in her absence. This 3-song EP's title track comes from their most recent full length Walking With Thee and is accompanied by two non-album tracks. "Circle I" is really speedy garage-punk number that's just over a minute and a half long (note: this song is not included on the vinyl version). Frantic buzzsaw guitar and Ade Blackburn's sly guy vocals. Think the Cramps meet the Violent Femmes meet Plastic Bertrand. The third song is called "Christmas" and shows the Clinic's gentler side - slowing things down considerably with its strolling pace kept in time by clip-clop woodblock. Happy holidays in May? Heck, why not?
Having never really concerned myself with reading NME or Melody Maker, I'd have no idea if the hipster cliques at those two UK rags are raving about Clinic. But I'd be willing to put money (like a dollar or two) down that they are. Clinic emulates the avant-pop of The Fall but with a wavering vocalist much closer to the guy from Long Fin Killie. Potentially the second coming of the Beta Band. Import (hot hot hot).
Man, I am so into this band right now! This CD is a compilation featuring the tracks from the group's first three 7"s ("The Voot", "Monkey On Your Back" and "Cement Mixer" originally issued in 1997 on the Aladdins' Cave of Golf label). Clinic are four groovy
Clinic will never be accused of drastically changing their sound. In fact their last few records kind of turn into a blur as it's hard to distinguish one from the other. That said they have their sound down to a science and do it very well. Visitations is another album of short concise songs that blast their way into that driving, foot stomping territory that they've become known for. Kind of like if Can were still around and had to make records for the A.D.D. generation, requiring all the songs to be around 3 minutes, catchy and to the point. We still think Clinic are a really good band, and this is by no means a bad record, it's actually pretty great, we just wish they would push themselves a bit and explore some new territory.
Ah... at last the second full length record from this fucking amazing band from Liverpool. Driving, hectic drums, sinister vocals, Moogs, and either clarinet or melodica weave a sonic landscape of dance-y smartness, or smarty dance-ness. Obviously heavily
Their third full-length album, Winchester Cathedral offers a cohesion of the Clinic formula encouraging fan fidelity with their terrifically taut rhythm section (in the vein of This Heat) with North England-style folk arrangement and instrumentation and of course, Ade Blackburn's Liverpudlian-ly sexy vocals. Clinic seems to have honed their sound to a level of maturity and self-confidence that turns down a little of the art-angst heard in previous releases. Can't wait to see where they go from here!
Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres from Cornershop doing blippy offhanded material nobody here was impressed with. Sorry. Buyer beware.
If we didn't know better, we might have thought this was a new release on Load. At least at first. It's got moments of jumbled atonality and sonic chaos, super distorted vocals, spastic drums, furious crunch and grind. BUT, it also has a really intense moody pop element. Sort of gothy and dark, with throbbing low slung bass, tribal drumming, and crooned super emotive vocals, often heavily effected and sent careening though thick clouds of reverb or dubbed out delay. It also sounds a bit new wave, propulsive and herky jerky, almost danceable at times. Imagine Joy Division or the Birthday Party as young noise rockers circa 2007, if they had grown up on the East Coast, were raised on noise rock and toured with Lightning Bolt and Usaisamonster. Super dramatic and dense, epic and tribal�
As the record progresses the pop element seeps into even the noisiest moments, sounding more and more like Duran Duran or Icicle Works yanked out of the safe confines of their new-romantic/new-wave world and thrust into some strange modern world of noise rock and post-post-dance-punk. Pretty cool.
A bird of a different feather has joined the formerly very electrono-art-brat-centric label Tigerbeat6. Now based in Oakland, CA these former Minnesotans' sound is one of molasses-thick, raw, churning goth-industrial and post-punk. On this their second release (their first on Tigerbeat6), Clipd Beaks are heavy on the dank gloom and murk, leaving little room for breath. A full length is promised soon. Cool stuff.
While the rest of the world is freaking out over Death Grips' drum driven aggro noise drenched hip hop, especially with the recent release of a downloadable new collaboration with Bjork called Niggas On The Moon, it might be a good time to also dig into the brand new Sub Pop debut from LA noise-hop trio Clipping. (and yeah, the period is part of the name). Their sound, like Death Grips, finds its roots in classic hip hop, but both diverge in interesting ways. In the case of Death Grips, it's a live drummer (Zach Hill from Hella), and some seriously bombastic noise, not to mention the confrontational flow of rapper Stefan Burnett. It's a sound we love for sure, but the sound of Clipping. we love even more. Imagine that instead of that drum driven noisiness, you replaced the music with super minimal abstract noise, the sort of stuff you might hear on an RRR comp, think Bastard Noise or Sissy Spacek making a hip hop record and you'd be close. Even more interesting though, is that the two guys responsible for the music in Clipping. are Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson, whom avid readers of the aQ list, and film nerds too, might know more from their stunning score to the Stanley Kubrick conspiracy documentary Room 237, the soundtrack which was released on Death Waltz.
But this is no retro soundtrackery, this is twisted noisy weirdness, wild feedback drenched analog skree, squelch drenched gristle, hiss and hum and screech and howl and thrum and buzz, blasts of digital noise wound around low slung beats. Check out the intro, which features rapper Daveed Diggs, spitting rapid fire flow a cappella over an ear piercing sine wave tone, eventually delivering the closer "It's Clipping bitch", before launching into the record proper, which gets no less weird, and no less noisy. "body & Blood" rides a grinding industrial beat, with a creepy processed voice 'chorus', but then "Work Work" surprises (as does much of the record), with its almost dreamy looped glitchy gamelan, that transforms into some low slung low rider booming bass throb. And while at first blush, some of the lyrics sound typically hip hop sexist, dig deeper, and there's way more going on, which is again balanced when Cocc Pistol Cree delivers her bad ass verse. And there are other guests too, King T, Gangsta Boo, Guce and more, but it's the core three who have their sound down. King T's guest verse on "Summertime" is a crusher, especially when the background sound swells into a cloud of alien laser blasts, deep bass thrum, and woozy sonic squiggles. Then there's tracks like "Taking Off", which sounds like it was made from damaged cd's, all skipping rhythms, looped and layered into a weirdly lurching beat, the perfectly wasted stuttery backdrop for Diggs' rapid fire flow. Gangsta Boo delivers a killer verse as well, over a weird bed of creaks and gristly moans, again a weirdly perfect match for her toasting flow, not to mention the strangely Kanye-ish chorus croon, with a rumbling thick low end swell underneath, the sort of track that would be all over the radio, if there was any justice. And let's not forget the insanely infuriatingly brilliant "Get Up", where the music is essentially JUST the sound of an alarm clock, maddening for sure, but then so satisfying when they modulate the sound into a weirdly radio pop chorus. And so it goes, Digg's flow world class, the background sounds a continually shifting landscape of fractured loops, woozy synths, clanging pipe fight rhythms, digital glitchery, weird damaged turntable rewinds, and dizzying noise collages, so unlikely, but so impossibly catchy, the magic of Clipping. in that it can be so obtuse and difficult, but still so groovy, so hooky, so funky, and so goddamn, catchy, this is exactly the sort of shit we'd be blasting through our booming system, no doubt shattering glass and bursting eardrums as we passed.
On both cd, and vinyl, both of which are slightly different (the aforementioned "Intro" is not included on the lp, but the version of "Body & Blood" is longer for example) but vinyl nerds are still in luck, cuz the lp comes in a super swank spot varnish printed triple gatefold, with an extra lp side, loaded with ONE HUNDRED locked grooves, noisy, distorted, blown out, abstract, dubby, clicky, funky, bloopy, bleepy and pretty much every variation in between. Both versions feature a bad ass blinded out Sub Pop logo too...
Not sure why we never listed the previous two Clipse records as they were definitely some of the best, most addictive and hard hitting hip-hop records to come out in the last decade. Combining the instantly gratifying production of modern day mainstream hip-hop while retaining an urgency and strength in vocal delivery that reminded us a lot of Rakim had his records been produced by The Neptunes. So we were way excited for 'Til The Casket Drops and while it's not terrible it just doesn't pack the same knockout punch that the previous records did. Somehow it feels a little more typical and mainstream, although there are for sure some totally fun and standout moments.
Lassitude is the very first release from the just launched UK label Lone Vigil, and is the debut of black industrial post metal doomlords Cloaca. Both the label and the band are fronted by Chris Naughton, he of doomsludge masters Atavist and neo pagan black metallers Winterfylleth, but Cloaca is a whole different beast than either of those two outfits, and while most descriptions peg Cloaca as 'experimental industrial doom', that might be a bit misleading. It might have you picturing a churning avant Godflesh or some sort of machinelike downtuned Swans, when in fact, the sound of Cloaca is much more organic, and much closer to the slow build post metal of groups like Pelican, Neurosis, Cult Of Luna, Snowblood, and Isis, the guitars lush and warm, the songs sprawling epics, with spiralling melodies, and dense tribal drumming, brooding and majestic, like a blackened Godspeed, building to explosive howled churning ultra metal blow outs, that transform into roiling chugging grooves, heavy and motorik and mesmerizing.
The songs spend much of their time drifting dreamily, spidery guitar melodies draped over loping post rock rhythms, and when they do get heavy, it's not always explosive crescendos, the band can lock into a riff and ride it out like some sort of black doom post metal Hawkwind, extended psychedelic cosmic metal jams that destroy, heaving hypnotically, thick sonic swells that churn and roil and eventually do explode into some serious heaviness, but it's not just big chords there either, the band get super dense and complex, start stop rhythms, mathy arrangements, thick and convoluted and so so heavy.
Throughout the record, Cloaca deftly flit from moody drift to soaring majesty, to metallic crush, wrapping impossibly hooky melodies and strange disembodied sampled voices around thick slabs of metallic hypnorock, a sound that's definitely hard to make your own, but these guys have definitely staked their claim on this chunk of epic brooding heaviness, that we would imagine few would be able to challenge.
Definitely essential listening for fans of Rosetta, Baroness, the Body, Grails, The Ocean, Angel Eyes, Tides, Souvenir's Young America, Mouth Of The Architect, Irepress, Indian, Conifer and other post metal alchemists...
Slithering slimily forth from our very own San Franciscan tombs comes this arcane analogue artifact of bestial bewitchment, the debut burnt offering from decrepit black/death/punkers Cloak! Indeed their label Transylvanian Tapes (run by none other than Jimmy from East Bay doomlords/aQ faves Swamp Witch) describes Cloak as "pummeling black/death metal executed by punks", but we would go so far as to describe them as "pummeling black/death metal executed by punks WHO ALSO WORK AT AQUARIUS!!!", since Cloak features our very own Kirk wrenching out malignant bass guitar asphyxiations and general low-end terror! Cloak's debut demo is a writhing, twitching leviathan mass of primitive draconian horror, squirming back and forth between glacial doom-vertigo, shadowy crypt-dwelling death metal buzz, and gutter-crawling crusty grooves. The sound is immediately musty, dusty and cemetarial (Is that word?? It is now!), but remarkably catchy and well recorded. The riffs absolutely infectious, the drums a merciless militaristic pummel, the vocals grotesquely dripping with thick droplets of venom - a mid range throaty rasp as opposed to DM's typical low-end gurgle. But for as simple and primal as Cloak's songs can be, there's also a deadly focus and tightness, a sense of sadistic regal purpose. It's a perfect blend of hazy nightmarish atmosphere, hectic energy and genuine fist-pumping metal intoxication free of gimmicks or tricks - organic, pulsing and suffocating! And having had the privilege of catching them live we can say with confidence that it ain't no studio fluke, Cloak is the real dirty deal. Definitely highly recommended for fans of death and black metal's filthiest crevices. Prepare to succumb!
Latest disc ov blasting lo-fi fucked up blackness from this Northwestern one man horde, another super limited self released jam (the last one was limited to 24 copies, which all came to us and all disappeared pretty much immediately). So fair warning, if you want to get your hands on this sick shit, be quick, or be very very disappointed.
No idea what F.D.K.L.S.O.M.F. stands for, but this is some super intense, super pummeling, buzz drenched, grim, kvlt, frosty, lo-fi, raw and primitive black metal skree.
Stumbling, mostly midtempo, the guitars buzz frantically, the vocals shriek wildly, the drums are chaotic and confusional, the songs don't really blast or plod, instead they seem to veer wildly, and druggily from tempo to tempo, slowing down, speeding up, this is about as raw as it gets, mostly brittle high end, guessing it's just drums and guitar, if there is a bass, it follows in the long tradition of inaudible black metal bass, but it hardly matters, this is all about the riff, and the atmosphere, and both are stellar, the riffs destroy, dense and angular and atonal, the atmosphere is definitely primitive and basement / practice space / dungeon / cave, lots of echo and reverb, and at its most frenzied it's a white noise squall, the vocals especially, but when it's not so in-the-red, it's like listening to some weird lost classic outsider black metal demo, which is pretty much what this is.
ULTRA LIMITED AGAIN, home brewed packaging, a weird little devil deer insert, all the cds in very generic, and entirely UNmetal primary colored paper sleeves. GRIM!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We originally discovered Cloak Of Displacement, via baffling black metallers Gargotheron, whose cd-r we went a little nuts for when we had it way back when. But it didn't take long for CoD to win us over, transforming the "Bone Awl meets Lightning Bolt" sound of Gargotheron into something filthier and blacker and doomier, a downtuned crusty blackened sprawl that seemed to ooze evil. Totally not typically black metal, or even metal really, more a chaotic stumbling super distorted electronic flecked blacknoize. Needless to say, we were down with the Cloak.
So we waited patiently, for going on two years now, and finally it's here, actually, THEY're here, two new discs from the mysterious Cloak Of Displacement, both of these are ultra limited, and we mean ULTRA, as in there are ONLY 24 COPIES!!!! That's it, and of those 24, we got TWENTY of them. So you know what that means, first 20 evil bastards to jab a gnarled claw into that add to cart button, will be feasting on CoD's grim black sonic banquet(s). And yeah, you're probably gonna want both, cuz they're both way different...
Frusen Bjork Lund is 4 tracks, nearly 50 minutes, of raw, pounding, lo-fi, filthy, fucked up and BIZARRE primitive black metal, the buzz is muted and way down in the mix, the drums are a chaotic stumble, the vocals are sick and inhuman and go from guttural growl to mix destroying caterwaul, not that the already damaged mix needs and more destroying, it's a confusional, head spinning, brittle bit of crunch and blast and howl, weird as fuck, definitely essential listening for folks (like us), who like their blackness as baffling and as unhinged as (in)humanly possible. There's warped feedback, bizarre kitchen sink percussion, sprawling non-arrangements, some killer riffing, but also some what the fuck guitar strangulation, the closing track is a stretched out Burzumic buzzscape, wreathed in hiss and amp buzz, the drums plodding, the vocals hysterical, reminiscent of Striborg, but this makes Striborg sound downright polished and stable, which is definitely saying something.
Once again, these are crazy limited, and handmade, each one comes with a hand-glued sleeve (made from the very evilest of construction papers, and in various grim shades) each with a pasted on front and back cover image, burned around the edges by the flames of hell...
It's been a while since we've heard from one man, lo-fi, outsider, doomdrone, blacknoise weirdo Cloak Of Displacement, and fans of any of the other CoD cd-r's we've raved about in the past know just what to expect, which is to NOT know what the fuck to expect. This time around, it's three tracks, all dramatically different, the first hint being the instruments listed on the sleeve: guitar, knife, drums, vocals, and POWER SAW. Hell yeah.
And the first track, the epic 21 minute "Torture Beckons Me" definitely follows through on the implied promise of sonic whatthefuck. A spaced out abstract ultra doom crawl. But instead of heaving avalanches of blown out downtuned riffage, and massive pummeling beats, the reality is way more bizarre and baffling, tons of space, occasional swells of muted guitar buzz, some SUPER abstract drum thump and plonk, and some seriously SICK vokills, super skeletal and minimal and in its own way sort of hypnotic. Like a way less harsh, way more spaced out blackened Khanate maybe? The riffs pulled so far apart they're more like occasional squalls of thrum, the track nearly free of momentum or propulsion, more an ooze or drift, the vibe ritualistic and primitive and totally fucking strange.
The second song picks up the pace, but if anything gets even WEIRDER, with some muted rhythmic riffing, lots of seriously stumbling drumming, and twisted freaked out hysterical vox that make the dude from Lifelover sound like Neil Diamond. The song weaves and wobbles drunkenly, reminding us a bit of Varghkoghargasmal or a more brain damaged Hypothermia. And finally, the saw make an appearance, the brief closing track / outro, that plays like the bloop bleep of ambient Burzum, but the whole thing is wrapped in the harsh buzz of the power saw, which is presumably being used, at least judging from the song title, in the "Disposing Of The Body".
Some of you might remember Gargotheron, whose cd-r we reviewed a while back, a blurred baffling black metal horde from Arizona, whose sound was grim and raw, primitive and pummeling, spastic and hyper kinetic, octopoidal drumming, insectoid riffing, we described it as "Bone Awl meets Lightning Bolt", so what might we expect from Cloak Of Displacement, a strange ritualistic avant doom offshoot of the mighty Gargotheron? How about long expanses of processed downtuned guitar drone, gurgled distorted vocals, abstract riffage and clouds of glitch and buzz and electronic interference, brief bursts of in-the-red ultra distorted noise drenched black metal. And more fucked up weirdness. We're tempted to describe it as a black metal Faxed Head, but it's not quite so purposefully damaged, although it's plenty demented. There are stretches of almost prettiness, in the guise of sprawling low end buzz, a little Earth (circa 2), a little Khanate, a pinch of SUNNO))), but filtered though some sort of sick Abruptum like sonic ritual, in fact ritual is an apt description, as the performance was literally part of a REAL ritual, with a real live witch performing incantations and spells, at one point snipping locks of hair from the various band members while they recorded, even the packaging, sealed with wax, have been cursed, so open at your own peril!
Grim and fucked up, mysterious and abstract, definitely essential listening for ambient noise metal freeks into stuff like Abruptum, Emit and the like, but also might hit the spot for the slow and low obsessed, Khanate, SUNNO))), Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Vulture Club and other purveyors of minimal blackened filth.
Packaged in a hand stamped black envelope, sealed with wax, hand numbered, LIMITED TO ONLY 45 COPIES! We took most of those, inside a hand written missive from Cloak Of Displacement, to YOU.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We originally discovered Cloak Of Displacement, via baffling black metallers Gargotheron, whose cd-r we went a little nuts for when we had it way back when. But it didn't take long for CoD to win us over, transforming the "Bone Awl meets Lightning Bolt" sound of Gargotheron into something filthier and blacker and doomier, a downtuned crusty blackened sprawl that seemed to ooze evil. Totally not typically black metal, or even metal really, more a chaotic stumbling super distorted electronic flecked blacknoize. Needless to say, we were down with the Cloak.
So we waited patiently, for going on two years now, and finally it's here, actually, THEY're here, two new discs from the mysterious Cloak Of Displacement, both of these are ultra limited, and we mean ULTRA, as in there are ONLY 24 COPIES!!!! That's it, and of those 24, we got TWENTY of them. So you know what that means, first 20 evil bastards to jab a gnarled claw into that add to cart button, will be feasting on CoD's grim black sonic banquet(s). And yeah, you're probably gonna want both, cuz they're both way different...
Vernal is all ambient, a 43 minute black ritual, that finds the man behind CoD, teamed up with two other players, one who simply wields "magick", while the other two handle guitar, keyboard and percussion. Guitars throb and drone, low end rumbles reverberate ominously, sheets of feedback undulate, layers and tones lock into a sort of Niblockian drift, super hypnotic and intense, eventually, the drone begins to fragment, pelted by FX and various shards of buzz and hum, seemingly crumbling to pieces but always coalescing back into something heavy and hypnotic, thick throbbing pulses, over shards of high end skree, bits of abstract minimal almost doom, barely there rhythms, strange processed crunch collides with lush doomdrone riffage, bursts of distorted rrrooar, strange clunks and creeps, definitely less metal and more abstract free drone weirdness.
Way recommended for sure, and not just for weirdo metalheads, dronelords and ambient explorers will find a lot to dig here too...
Once again, these are crazy limited, and handmade, each one comes with a hand-glued sleeve (made from the very evilest of construction papers, and in various grim shades) each with a pasted on front and back cover image, burned around the edges by the flames of hell...
Another release from the newly launched KV&GR/Recs label, run by weirdo black metal one man band Cloak Of Displacement. All of the releases so far (Mavra, Edasi) criminally limited, and this one is no different. LIMITED TO JUST 20 COPIES, of which, we got ALL twenty. But judging from the last batch, these will likely be gone in a flash, so don't dawdle.
Cloak Of Displacement, a long time aQ outsider black metal fave, offers up another set of twisted low fidelity blackened what the fuck, murky warbly riffs, primitive recording, stumbling damaged drumming, and some of THEE weirdest vocals ever, slipping from goofy grunt to croaking quack, the sound itself stumbling from abstract drift, to pounding dirge and back again. Occasionally within these three tracks, the sound does explode into a sort of blast, but it's a lurching lumbering blast, on the verge of total collapse, a chaotic careening black weirdness that sort of rule. Elsewhere the sound shifts to something more abstract, a sort of spaced out doom, a demented detuned creep, all warbly chords and rehearsal space drum splatter, and those creepy alien vox. Folks who loved past CoD releases will NOT be disappointed.
The flipside is taken up by another one man band, the mysterious and oddly monikered Blood Escutcheon, whose sound is more of an ambient blacknoize, riffs stretched out into layered drones, warm and whirling one second, caustic and buzzy the next. The side opens up with some dreamlike ambient drift, that slowly builds to a blowout of Merzbowian noise, infused with fragmented riffage an strange disembodied heavily effected vocals, which leads directly into a super creepy stretch of processed vocal dronemusic, a sea of hiss and static, underneath which a super processed voice drift creepily, before the sound blossoms into some blurred blown out almost Skullflowery noise, which with headphones strapped on, reveals all manner of sonic weirdness lurking below the surface, the side ending with some cool, softly distorted industrial crunch, blurred out and smeared into something much more soft focus and ambient.
And again, we only have 20 COPIES of these, and there are in fact ONLY 20 copies, so act fast.
Includes killer cover art from Blood Escutcheon mastermind Thaniel Lee. Each copy hand numbered.
Crank this album all the way up at the beginning and slowly begin to back down the volume on this, lest you want to set off car alarms outside your building or trigger seismic sensors or just have this recording be way too fucking loud. On the first side of Creek, an ominous hum rises out of icy silence, following the path set forth on Kevin Drumm's unsettled ambient opus Imperial Distortion or even some of the Eliane Radigue constructs. These are sounds that could hail from field recordings of massive tanker ship engines or a bank of oscillators tuned to be as low as possible or the thrum of feedback from a bass guitar slumped over an amplifier. Very little happens in this arcing, darkly meditative offering; but that's exactly the point. The second side picks up exactly where the first left off, with a similarly oppressive tone exhibiting some minute ripples and variations on the theme. No idea who or what Cloaked Light happens to be, but he/she/they managed a cassette on Monorail Trespassing. And that always causes us to perk our ears up a bit. Limited to 125 copies.
Those guys in the Starving Weirdos have been kicking our asses with one amazing release after another. And as if that weren't enough, now they've started signing other like minded noisemakers to their Atheists Are Gods label.
The first release comes from Cloaks, aka Spencer Doran, who for his first readily available domestic full length release, offers up two gorgeous lengthy pieces, one for piano, tapes, zither and bells, the other for electric guitar and piano with harmonium and electronics. The result is lush and spellbinding. The closest comparison that even begins to come close is Lubomyr Melnyk, with his dense flurries of notes, creating dizzyingly intricate swirls of melodic fragments that while ultra complex are so intricate they seem to melt into long dreamlike drifts.
Such is the case with Cloaks. And then some. The opening track begins with a strange jumble of chaotic percussion, weird boings, effects drenched squiggles, sounding like something that could be a bit goofy for our liking, but after a burst of record crackle and needle on vinyl static, the track settles into a gorgeously sun baked, glistening shimmer, a fine mist of notes enveloping the listener like a warm fog, multiple abstract melodies drifting into one another becoming gloriously intertwined, hovering ghostlike over soft drifts of smeared piano in the background. It almost sounds like Oval's Diskont, but with soft shimmery piano instead of skipping cds. Fluid and organic, softly swelling, so many notes... you know how you can sort of blur your eyes and make everything look all fuzzy, well imagine you could blur your EARS, it's like listening to Reich or Riley or Palestine with blurred ears. Soft focus and indistinct, every once in a while bits of melody coming into view but quickly fading into the sounds around it. So pretty. One of those rare tracks that we wish went on forever and ever...
The second track is a subtly different beast but with a similar vibe. Beginning with spare spidery electric guitar, suspended in a wide open expanse of near silence, a sort of skeletal post rock, which quickly slips under a gradually building wave of dense Wave-Lox like piano. Thick roiling low end squalls of reverberating rumble and rich overtones, very lush and intense. Near the final few minutes little bits of electronic glitch and grrr begin to surface, slowly wrapping themselves around the piano flurries, eventually surrounding it completely, becoming a dense buzzing electronic drone with almost no trace of the piano remaining...
Packaged in super striking silkscreened digipaks with pasted on textured paper, full color art, and with a hand screened insert.
It's been a while since we've heard from the Cloaks, aka Spencer Doran. But the first Cloaks cd, A Crystal Skull In Peru, is still a steady seller, and for good reason. Two tracks of piano, electronics, guitar, zither and bells, all woven into lush dreamlike soundscapes. The Starving Weirdos released that first one on their label, which made a lot of sense, as they two seems to share a distinct aesthetic, but with the SWs taking the darker path, while Cloaks path was dappled with sunlight, and would around grassy knolls and windswept vistas.
We're pleased to report, that on this latest release, another two tracker, Doran and his Cloaks haven't altered the formula too much. Another couple of fuzzy, gauzy, washed out dronescapes, the first rich with flurries of muted piano, and processed guitars, the emphasis on the piano, which, much like the first disc, reminds us of continuous music guru and master pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, albeit less frenzied. Instead, the clouds of notes emerge from the piano and drift like motes of dust, swirling in the slightest breeze, surrounded by bits of glitch, and crumbling effects, backwards melodies, soft swaths of buzz and whirring shimmer, delicate and crystalline, but so warm and rich and soporific, 35 minutes of dense, swirling soft focus bliss, utterly mesmerizing and hypnotic, yet another one of those tracks that should go on forever and ever.
The second track is much more brief, and acts more as a sort of addendum. A dark, languorous avant Appalachia, dark notes tumbling from the guitar, soft swirls of steel string shimmer, the subtle buzz of deftly fingerpicked melodies, minor key and melancholy, hovering over a backdrop of watercolored whirs, a near static drone beneath the gorgeous little tangles of guitar, laced with spare, spacious piano melodies, a gorgeous late afternoon drift, that near the end, builds to a swirling, densely layered, subtly kinetic coda. So nice.
Packaged in a beautiful full color sleeve, hand stamped and numbered cd-r's, photocopied inserts, LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES...
We raved about Cloaks' 2009 release Versus Grain, a caustic collection of crushing beats and sculpted noise, with sounds sourced from recordings of breaking glass and clanging metal, and live shows reported to rival the craziest rock bands in terms of blood, sweat and destruction of gear. It was in fact a record that we ended up listening to so much and for so long, we realized in retrospect that we really should have made it a Record Of The Week. So here we are 2 years later, and Cloaks return, but VERSIONS Grain is not a new record, instead, it's their own twisted idea of a remix record, with Cloaks contributing a couple new tracks, but with the bulk of the record made up of reinterpretations of jams from Versus Grain, by an eclectic crew of "remixers", including Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu, Pale Sketcher, etc.) and former Record Of The Week-ers Legion Of Two, as well as Dead Fader, Ancient Methods, Devilman, Volt Music and Oyaarss, who all manage to retain the originals' beat heavy brutality and almost avant dancefloor destroying noise, while adding whole new dimensions, that make this easily as worthwhile as the original.
The record opens with Cloaks own reworking of Versus Grain's closer, and like the original, it's a lurching sprawl of super distorted crunch, weird industrial robotic whirs and buzz, lots of gristly static and blurred muted white noise, like the sound of some alien factory set to some dubbed out crumbling slowed down DHR beat. Which leads directly into Legion Of Two's version of "Against" which ends up sounding like it could have been plucked right off LO2's own Record Of The Week, with live drumming, wild dubbed out snares careening all over the place, thick undulating almost dubsteppy basslines, lots of super blown out synths, cascading decaying electronics, way groovier than the original, but totally spaced out and psychedelic at the same time, another heady chunk of industrial machine funk that kills. Broadrick takes on "Rust On Metal", and actually cleans it up a little, the original was claustrophobic, the sounds bleak and blackened, and while there is still a bit of a grim vibe, the beats are more skeletal, the melodies more synthy and swirly, and then about 2 minutes in, it explodes into something way more metal, churning industrial beats and chugging distorted riffing, not to mention howled dub drenched vox, total Godflesh territory for sure, peppered with bouts of skitter and droned out mesmer and finally finishing off in a blaze of white hot buzz.
Ancient Methods also dial back the crunch and robotic churn on their version of "R.F.I.D.", wreathing everything in a cloud of gristly static, strange processed vox, woozy low end rumbles, and then some pulsing dubby minimal techno beats, lots of clipped samples, truncated melodies, stuttery and staggery, weirdly hypnotic and off kilter, that over the course of its 9+ minutes is barraged by twisted sci-fi electronics, warm warped distorted guitar melodies, lush swirls of fuzzed out synth, more strange voices, that beat slipping from muted and minimal to speaker destroying block rocking crunch. "Sixmenace One" finds Cloaks imagining a first part to accompany the second that showed up on Versus Grain, and it gets a serious working over, even more damaged and noisy, super filthy and crusty and distorted, weirdly creepy and soundtracky, while ultimately just a gnarled ever shifting tangle of crumbling pulsing synths and swirling swaths of electronic hiss and some seriously brutal almost-beat heavy buzz. Oyaarss follows up with their version of "Sixmenace Two", which is drastically different, adding a weird ethereal almost shoegazey sheen to the proceedings, a super thick, slithery big beat fat bass dubstep, with some of the filthiest most distorted bass wobble ever, but melded to some dreamlike melodic shimmer not to mention some drifty harplike melody, for dubstep headz, this might be THEE jam here, we can't help but imagine this as a 12", and the sort of rib cage rattling dancefloor destroying damaged that would result. "Dead Fader" keep the spirit of the original "#00148", which opened Versus Grain, if anything, they just stretch it out, brighten it up a bit, strip away some of the murk, but add their own extra ingredients, which includes some twisted beats, some strange wailing synth melodies, not to mention all manner of synth squiggles, and grinding glitch. Devilman's "Against" again reinvents the original as something much more abstract, at least in the beginning, and buzzing, hissing, fuzzed out industrial creep, until the beat proper lurches into motion, and the track becomes a weirdly mesmerizing noise-dub groove, that lumbers and swaggers menacingly, until the last minute or so, where it seems to transform into some strange sort of post Bollywood whatthefuck, with all sorts of weird 'rewinds', chaotic drum programming, and cloying melodies, which go surprisingly well with the extremely dense and brutal buzz.
Finally, Volt Music finish things off with another version of "R.F.I.D.", which starts out all murky and staccato, before the song stumbles into motion, and unwinds like some super slow-motion gabber track, sped up this would be a pounding acid anthem, but here it's a maniacally mesmerizing rhythmic churn, laced with little bits of jungle-y filigree, not to mention all sorts of distorted and decaying FX.
Awesome stuff. And the sort of electronic music that should appeal to heavy music folks as well, dark, distorted, loud as fuck and so good.
Don't confuse THIS Cloaks with the other Cloaks we've reviewed in the past, or you're in for a rude awakening. Whereas that Cloaks was a Starving Weirdos related bit of tripped out dronemusic, THIS Cloaks is a crushing, super distorted beat heavy juggernaut. They're described as Burial meets Einsturzende Neubauten, which is not that far off the mark. It IS sort of dubstep, the rhythms, the beats, but the fact that many of the beats are constructed from experiments in damage and destruction, treated recordings of pieces of metal being pounded, glass shattering, well that's where the Neubaten comes in.
Apparently these guys rarely play live, as their performances typically leave tons of equipment damaged and / or destroyed, and crowds (be they metal or dancefloor) confused and a little bit freaked out.
We, however, are psyched, this is so right up our alley, and presumably some of yours, easily the heaviest, crunchiest, ultra distorted-est dance music EVER. Heck, even calling it dance music makes this stuff sound not nearly as caustic and abrasive as it is. Not sure how many folks remember the Fever record on DHR from years back, a crazy noisy distorted hiphop record, well this sounds a bit like an instrumental version of that record, but even noisier and more chaotic. The beats grind and throb, pulse and pound, set amidst a churning sea of malfunctioning electronics, thick feedback, buzzing synths, and all sorts of other processed noises, the beats stutter and skitter, it's definitely groovy, but at the same time just SO mean sounding. This is the direction we wish industrial music had taken. From murky muddy throbbing minimal shuffles to full on pipe fight pound, to blown out buzz drenched dirge, these jams are ear candy for folks like us into decay and destruction. It almost sounds like some dubstep record remixed by Tim Hecker or Fennesz or Merzbow, or heck more like all three! The beats seeming to rust and crumble before our very ears, the surrounding sounds gritty and grimey and filthy, the vocals sung into a broken transistor radio broadcast through a short circuiting bullhorn, all that stuff, dipped in distortion, wreathed in damaged FX, wrapped up into some lurching, lumbering post industrial dubstep pound, capable of destroying any dancefloor that crosses its path!
So totally recommended.
It's been almost 5 years since we last heard from Dead Reptile Shrine black ambient offshoot Cloama, the two records featuring Cloama alongside another mysterious entity called Blutleuchte (or perhaps that was just some sort of affectation, and not actually another person/group?) being big favorites with the drone obsessed aQ-ers, the sound on those records weirdly ritualistic and industrial, expansive blackened soundscapes, minimal yet strangely and hauntingly lush. So what has changed since 2008?
A lot actually. In fact, right out of the gate, Cloama unfurl not some dark lugubrious rumble, but instead, a soaring sort of almost shoegazey swirl, a coruscating crumbling distorted droned out shimmer, over which a vocalist howls abjectly, buried in the mix, while all around, sounds chime and buzz, the whole thing laced with subtle melodic flourishes, and lush textural shifts, it's a heady bit of psychedelic ur-drone soft noise, that leads directly into a sound much more Cloama-like, a grinding crumbling bit of low end, wreathed in thick streaks of feedback, sprawling and oozing in another near static buzz drenched blur, underpinning more bellowed vox, the sound of Cloama seeming to have shifted closer to the power electronics / blackened industrial axis that the black ambience that used to define their sound. Drums surface sporadically, or perhaps it's just bits of percussion, crunch and clatter, a weirdly hypnotic, droned out stretch of crumbling rumbling mesmer, which is how the rest of the record plays out, a series of industrial dronescapes, that sound like Wolf Eyes crossed with Whitehouse, the song shifting occasionally into something much more restrained, the sounds muted and washed out, the various bits of percussion locked into a stumbling abstract rhythm, while elsewhere, the sound blossoms into a sort of late period Skullflower psychedelic noise freakout, Merzbowic in intensity, but more textural and densely layered, rendering even the most caustic sounds weirdly mesmerizing and hypnotic. Another deep listening record that reveals a whole other microscopic sonic world lurking just below the roiling blown out surface.
Fans of the old Cloama discs might find this too abrasive, but anyone into dense psychedelic noise and experimental blackened soundscapery will definitely dig, although it definitely requires an appreciation of noise. And the last song is a creepy surprise, a choir of female voices harmonizing over streaks of low end buzz and pipe fight clang and clatter, peppered with little bursts of grinding distorted guitar crumble, and booming distant percussion, epic and haunting and strangely cinematic.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
By now, most readers of the AQ list should be quite familiar with our unfettered love for Finnish outsider black metal horde Dead Reptile Shrine (who have a new double cd coming out soon on Andee's tUMULt label!), a band whose sound, while ostensibly black metal, seems to be more damaged folk, black ambient, and demented metallic psychedelia. Which is precisely why we're so obsessed with them.�
So when we discovered that there was a related band, featuring member(s) of DRS, we were definitely intrigued, and we did manage to get a couple releases, but never more than one or two copies. So here we have the very first proper release from Cloama +�Blutleuchte, not sure if that's the name of the band, or if this is indeed a collaboration between Cloama and�Blutleuchte, but what we do know is it's very dark and very strange, and really goddamn amazing.�
The music of Cloama +�Blutleuchte is some haunting mysterious primal drone ritual, equal parts shimmering dark ambience, the low end rhythmic explorations of fellow countrymen Tiermes, jumbled Dada-ist soundscaping and damaged and disembodied free folk drift, it's scary and mysterious, but weirdly subdued and lovely as well.�
The cover is black and white, adorned with spiders, and a gorgeous crest, the title and credits in a handwritten scrawl, the song titles are strange hinting at the mysteries within: "Archean Quartzite Hammer", "Arcjaic Waters Enshrine The Seer", "Lord Of The Equinoctical Fountain", the book is peppered with mysterious diagrams and illustrations, photos and drawings, lyrics and this haunting passage: "That glimpse of left eye is distorting my right eye. Sparce [sic] exhaustive dimension, misguided enrichment. Usually sharp model at the lower right. The line of sight operates the automatic systems positions. Those shattered lights, occupational dysfunction. Characterized by sight cycling and shifting. Curvatory illusion is dependent on a adjacent edge. Eyeless. A contempt of legislative compulsion." Woah. But strangely enough, that's sort of what the music sounds like. Perplexing and confusional, with some damaged internal logic, that almost has you convinced that this is what sound is -meant- to sound like. That these are not songs, but messages, missives from the past, or the future, or the beyond, in musical code, hiding secrets as old as the earth, as the universe.�
Long drawn out stretches of cavernous rumble, the distant whir of machinery, voices wrapped in reverb, drifting amidst black swells, creepy melodies muted and stretched into mysterious pulses, glitched out electronics like pesky insects, funeral horns over abstract far off clatter, thick corrosive bursts of crumbling distortion, slowed down vocals, huge arcs of buzzing hiss over strangely mournful layers of keening feedback, throbbing bassline strung across undersea caverns, glistening and lit with some strange un-natural light, lurching industrial percussion like some damaged alien procession, creepy angular guitar leads suspended in a cloud of swirling hiss and whir, epic swaths of blackened guitar buzz, like some black metal track stripped down to its very essence and blurred into a strange funereal lament, all of these various sounds and occurrences, woven into some haunting black ritual, ancient and timeless,�as fucked up and freaked out as it is hypnotic and beautiful.
Another mysterious musical missive from Finland, record number two of alchemical magickal dronemusic and deep otherworldly black ambience from a group that features members of one of our favorite Finnish combos, the mighty Dead Reptile Shrine (who have a new double cd coming out on tUMULt this year). We raved about the last C+B disc, a collection of raw and primal sound rituals, not all that far removed from the music of countrymen Tiermes.
Separated into 4 suites, Cloak Of Fire, Cloak Of Doom, Cloak of Darkness, and Cloak Of... um.. well Cloak Of Cloak oddly enough, this disc is in fact a reissue of a long out of print cd-r, originally released in an edition of 100 copies. As with the other Cloama & Blutleuchte disc, the sounds here are dark and ominous, rumbling and whirring and shimmering, but this is not mere ambient music, or drone music, there is much more going on, texture and noise, and all manner of difficult to describe sonic happenings.
The drone is for sure the root of the sound, but that drone is twisted and stretched out, wreathed in strange effects and peppered with bursts of hiss and buzz. Some tracks are simple sprawling black blurs, while others, incorporate haunting sung spoken vocals, simple tribal percussion, a bit like a more raw and freaked out Muslimgauze, while others are thick grinding walls of distortion, dense crumbling heaviness, shot through with haunting melodies, and creaking groaning crunch, as well as strange voices and snippets of conversation, and still others are rich swirls of blurred soft focus colors and slowed down riffs, mysterious crawls through vast expanses of deep stellar buzz. String sections wrap around military speeches, industrial percussion is buried beneath seas of grinding metallic shimmer, long long stretches of deep hushed thrum, and haunting chantlike vocals, all culminating in what sounds like a hissy, washed out, black metal blur, a swirling digitized buzz laced drone, that slows and thickens until it becomes an ominous flickering downtuned dirge-y drift.
Gorgeous packaging, the booklet filled with all manner of symbols and landscape photos as well as some seriously strange liner notes.
Latest blast of swampy, bluesy, clock-cleaning noise rock crush from these Philly noiseniks, who originally sounded way more noisy, channeling the Dead C and Harry Pussy through their twisted stumbling sonic chaos, but have gradually been shifting toward a sound that's more gothic and grim, and like we mentioned above, swampy and bluesy, situating them somewhere amidst nineties AmRep-ers like Lubricated Goat and King Snake Roost, not to mention some Swans, a little Damned, even some Misfits, but their sound is definitely all their own, mixing in some Western twang, some spidery angular psychedelic guitars, and a weirdly dour new wave vibe. They're barely recognizable as the same band, but we dig the new Clockcleaner as much as the old Clockcleaner, just for different reasons. This new CC sound like they could tour with the reformed Swans or Nick Cave's Grinderman, or Woven Hand, they have that same sort of slithery filthy blues vibe, the vocals especially, now, totally deep and dramatic, the first three tracks on this 4 song ep are total gothic swam blues, and should have folks who dig Nick Cave, the Holy Kiss, HTRK and the like all in a tizzy, but it's the record closer "Midnight Beach" that really has us thrown for a loop, Clockcleaner impossibly sounding like a dead ringer for Interpol. Yep, sure crustier and a bit more lo-fi, but the new wave croon sound remarkably like Interpol's Paul Banks, and the arrangement, the melodies, even the tripped out heavily effected guitars sound almost electronic. At first it was a little unnerving, but now we're loving it. And hell, as much as we dig Interpol, who can argue with a dirtier, more low fidelity noise rock version. We sure as heck can't...
Maybe the most aptly named band ever? Weird that when we first stumbled on Clockcleaner, it was in our search for more music from damaged drug addled caveman noisemakers the Violent Students, but it seems Clockcleaner is now the more viable band, with the VS sort of fading away, with only one proper record we know of. And where the sound of the Violent Students was more of a massive frontal lobe melting cacophony, Clockcleaner seemed to take that same aesthetic, and apply it to actual songs, the poppier Dr. Jeckyl to the Violent Students' Mr. Hyde...
And right off the bat, Clockcleaner up the ante with maybe their best song ever. A dense propulsive, grungy, filthy, swampy stomp, a malevolent, lascivious and lurching Swans slither, an ominous stumble and plod over Morricone Western twang, reverbed surf guitar, growled baritone vocals, sounding straight out of late eighties NY noise underground Copshootcop, the Swans, everything bathed in reverb, and swirling alien FX, bizarre little bits of melody... And the record sort of goes from there, adding damaged Jerry Lee Lewis piano pound, crumbling chest rattling bass, slippery drunken slide guitar, more super dramatic crooned vocals, still more reverb and effects, the whole thing a sort of hellish end of the world swing, plenty of groove, but gnarled and convoluted, dangerous and drunken, reminding us quite a bit of Lubricated Goat, King Snake Roost even Nick Cave, a blackened noise flecked confusional cabaret. Awesome.
Killer tape-faced cover art too...
Latest blast of post punk noise rock mayhem from this Violent Students offshoot. For those of you who may not remember, the Violent Students are a crazy, druggy damaged noise rock behemoth, a stumbling Butthole Surfers-esque freerock what the fuck glorious mess that we went totally nuts for.
We later discovered a few of those Students also did time in a band called Clockcleaner, who ended up totally cleaning our clocks (ahem) but for a whole different reason, their strange nineties indie noise rock, shoulda-been-on-AmRep stun and pummel completely hit the pot, and pushed all those dusty buttons bands like the Cows and the God Bullies and Lubricated Goat used to push.
So here we have a brand new 7" ep from these musical miscreants, and it's a bit of surprise. The A side is total post punk new wave pop, or something, propulsive jangly guitars, simple drumming, yelped vocals, we're hearing tons of the Misfits and the Damned... sort of new wave art pop, but filthier and a little more lo-fi, and it's awesome! Noisy and hooky and super duper catchy.
But before you start screaming sell out, flip the disc over and we're back into nineties aggro post punk snarl and swagger, echoey clangy guitars, thick chunks of angular noise rock, keening guitars, reverbed vocals, lots of scrape and wail, and we love it. These guys kick serious ass, wrapping you in a nineties style Halo Of Flies while simultaneously dipping you head in a good old fashioned bucket of new wave jangle!!
Plus "Frogrammer"? How rad a title is that for a song?!?!
Clockcleaner are the slightly less unhinged offshoot of the truly demented and damaged garage-noise-sludge combo the Violent Students. The recently released Clockcleaner cd was a killer flashback to the good ol' Amphetamine Reptile days, when we were all rocking to the Cows, the God Bullies, King Snake Roost, Lubricated Goat, Halo Of Flies. These guys sound like they were somehow transported from Minneapolis in 1995 to right here right now. And we fucking love it. I think when we reviewed the cd we said they sounded like the Cars meets Flipper which sounds fucked but pretty great too. This 7" feature an alternate version of our favorite song on the cd and an unreleased B-side. The cool thing is on this 7" the band are way slower and sludgier and filthier sounding, so instead of sounding like Scratch Acid or the Jesus Lizard, they sort of sound like Green River mixed with the Birthday Party. This alternate version of "Missing Dick" is a creeped-out blues crawl, with weird keening guitars, a way more lo-fi production and vocal totally doused in echo. Not as rocking as the other version, but so much more fucked up sounding.
The B side is super scary and dark, angular guitar lines over a simple plodding drum, with an INSANE growled/yowled vocal rant. Eventually the band kicks in HARD with a wild burst of fuzzy downtuned guitar growl, and launches into a sort of menacing post punk swagger that totally hits the spot.
A few lists back we went apeshit over some mysterious band of musical miscreants called the Violent Students, who made an unholy din like we hadn't heard since the glory days of the Butthole Surfers. Damaged and filthy and freaked out, a druggy chaotic punk sludge mess that just totally blew our minds. We recently discovered that some of those very same Students were doing time in the band Clockcleaner so we figured we oughta check them out as well, and so glad we did! For CC, the all out chaos has been reeled in a bit and while the result is less fractured and less completely unhinged, it's still pretty demented and manic, but way more song oriented with some KILLER riffs. When we first threw this one, the first thing we thought was the Cars meet Flipper. Which pretty much describes our dream band. But the more we listened the more we felt like we were slipping back in time, to that special moment, that only lasted a few years, where the Amphetamine Reptile label could do no wrong. Clockcleaner could easily have existed right there between the God Bullies, Halo Of Flies, Lubricated Goat, King Snake Roost and all the rest. The record starts off with some weirdly eighties metal riffing, like the intro to some Ratt song, before the whiney Jello like vocals kick in, and the whole thing lurches into action with plenty of Buttholes tribal pound, Jesus Lizard groove and a decade's (the nineties) worth of Amphetamine fueled fury. Plus some amazing song titles ("Missing Dick", "Gentle Swastika", "Interview With A Black Man", "Blood Driver") and some problematic poop smeared cover art, but they had us at the Cars meet Flipper!
Once there was the Dwarves. Now there's Clockcleaner. Similarly abrasive and snotty and puerile and oft banned, but where the Dwarves spat out short bursts of pop punk doused in liquid acid and then dusted with coke, Clockcleaner are a much weirder and much more unpredictable entity. Less punk sonically maybe, but no less punk spiritually.
Here, CC offer up twangy guitars, crooned dramatic vocals, frantic drumming, and all sorts of cool space-y FX, not to mention some demented lyrics. Within the song proper, there's a long stretch of super tripped out weirdness, with effects swirling everywhere and even some horns. There's a definite Lubricated Goat / King Snake Roost vibe going on, which is never a bad thing.
The flipside is a cover, by Australian punks X (not to be confused with the more well known L.A. X (get it?), a track called "Hate City" which according to the sleeve, the band couldn't understand the lyrics so they just made their own. But the song suits them, with crunchy guitars, growled howled vocals that slip into a strangled whine and then back again, and another killer bunch of unexpected horns.
And it is Clockcleaner, so even though the record is called Skinheaded Lady, the cover features a grainy old photograph of a nun. These were also apparently tour only 7"s, we got the last copies direct from the band, so odds are these will be the last ones we ever see.
Portuguese trance-rockers Clockwork have done a remarkable job in mirroring the motorik pulse of the earliest Stereolab recordings. In hiring Rafael Toral (who may be Lisbon's answer to Lee Ranaldo) for production and additional instrumentation, the band packs a lot more of a sonic punch than the majority of Stereolab-wannabes (and even the recent rigor mortis heard on the last few Stereolab albums).
Such pretty somber sounds! Instrumentals (sans one track with vocals) that so nicely travel through classical landscapes, while dipping feet in chamber arrangements and post rock bliss. Strings, piano, percussion, melodica, ukulele, bassoon are just some of the instruments Clogs employ in churning out their beautiful sounds. While two of the members of Clogs also do time in the rock outfit The National we have to see we prefer this side of their music output so much more. Every time we've played this in the store it gets such a strong immediate reaction from customers. They always remark on how beautiful it is and we must say that we totally agree.
This is another one of those records, that's almost too good, and too weird, to be true. Especially coming as it does from the Dead-Cert label, run by weirdo music obsessive Andy Votel. In fact, based on the description, AND the sound, we were pretty much convinced that this had to be Votel himself conjuring up some imaginary lost sonic artifact. How could it not be? Son Of Octabred is/was apparently a 'birthing' record, as in an album to assist/instruct with giving birth (?), recorded on primitive analog synths and 'originally broadcast' on a radio show in Anchorage, Alaska - its sound a strange hybrid of kosmische synthscapery, spaced out kraut-psych, minimal dronemusic, and percolating early electronica. But once again, whether it's all true or not, almost doesn't matter: if it IS true, what a ridiculous and impossibly WTF find, and if it's NOT, well, goddamn, total brilliant art prank / fictional sound conjuration.
The record begins with a female voice instructing the listener to breath and push, with some strangely poetic descriptions of having a baby, then a man's voice talks weirdly about 'his pregnancy', before in swoop some space synths, and we're off, on a cosmic journey, some alien planetarium show, swirling percolations, swooping FX, shifting textures, playful melodies, there's definitely a sort of John Carpenter / Klaus Schulze vibe, pulsing kraut-psych gives way to weird vocodered vocals, not singing so much as just humming/crooning more textures, and again if this is real, it's hard to imagine just flipping on the radio in the middle of the night and hearing THIS. Or, being born, and hearing it! Crazy.
The sound soon erupts into something much more sinister, thick swells of swirling shadowy rumbles, and staticky clouds of hiss, all over buried voices and keening melodies, some serious black ambience for sure, that sounds like birthing music for Rosemary's Baby. The flipside returns to the playful percolation of the opening, sounding a bit like Perrey & Kingsley, before devolving into a weird sprawl of dubby gamelan like percussion, and strangely processed abstract rhythms, all floating in the ether, before a Close Encounter synth melody surfaces, swopping wildly from speaker to speaker, the whole thing dizzying and seriously trippy, before once again drifting into darker sonic territory, some ominous shadowy drift, that eventually returns to the light, for a final bout of bouncy bloopy synthiness and one final burst of wild tangled psych-synth freakout. So cool, and so weird. Real or not, we love it! ----* ----* Highlights : ----*
Debut long player from the Cologne duo of Matias Aguayo (formerly of Zimt, alongside glitter-tech-house rocker Michael Mayer) and Dirk Levers. Certainly one of the most pop oriented Kompakt outfits, Closer Musik synthesizes glamourous electro and erotic lyricism with that mesmerizing minimal thump of Cologne. Includes the killer singles "Closer Dancer" and "You Don't Know Me" plus the beautiful "Departures" that was featured way back on the Kompakt Total 3 compilation.
It makes perfect sense that Closer To Carbon would qualify their experimental-chamber-pop opus II as 'scores for unmade films.' All of these instrumental numbers enjoy a theatrical sentiment, as expressed through a variety of strings plus a cavalcade of junkstore objects whose offkiltered quirkiness add many a Tom Waits / Sleepytime Gorilla Museum reference. When not exploring the eccentrically cinematic, Closer To Carbon finds themselves in much darker waters, more comparable to the maudlin Victorian waltzes of Rasputina.
The local label Out of Round has been laboring quietly in the background, not calling a lot of attention to itself yet turning out record after record that are consistently of similar mood -- due to the fact that they all play on each others recordings. The homegrown label's "sound", then, is one of a grimy circus atmosphere, like Fellini's La Strada if it was set in some dusty corner of an urban American metropolis. There are lots of slowed down polkas and depressed waltz time-signatures, dour vocals, sad accoridans, and dolefully plucked guitars. Great mood music for the Tom Waits fan in all of us who feels like Waits is just too hip for his own good these days.
Check out www.outofroundrecords.com -- we carry all of their releases. For a limited time only, get an out of Round Records label sampler free with purchase of this disc.
We love Drone records. And their series of ultra limited, hand assembled 7"s. There's even a forthcoming 2cd on Andee's tUMULt label collecting a handful of the early long out of print 7"s. We can only ever manage to get a tiny handful of these singles since they're so limited, but when we do we try to list them, and it's definitely lucky for the tiny handful of you who are quick on the buy-it-now trigger. Some of the best drone and dark ambient music around.
Closing The Eternity sound like some lost dusty old tape, slightly warped from laying unused in an old box a the bottom of some forgotten crawlspace. Warped and warbling whirs, a bit like some old William Basinksi 78 played on a rickety old turntable, with a damaged speed mechanism, causing the tempo to fluctuate and subtly shift. Eventually, this antique warble is overtaken by dense melodic washes of more and more drone, layer after layer, a huge dense drift of sound. The B side is a bit more abstract, a sound much more cavernous and haunting, a delicate slow burning whir.
First Edition. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Clear swirled blue vinyl. Plain black sleeve with a little silver metallic plastic emblem affixed to the front. Includes liner notes and insert.
