Another awesome French pop chanteuse gets resurrected from obscurity, thanks to the Born Bad label. Clothilde (whom we first heard through those awesome Sixties Girls and Swinging Mademoiselle comps of femme French pop) was the stage name of Elizabeth Beauvais, the daughter of an actress and writer who, despite wanting to follow her mother into the acting world, was pushed instead into the music business by producer Germinal Tenas.
Tenas, a producer known for arrangements involving unusual instrumentation, signed her to Vogue Records in the mid-sixties and rechristened her after the beloved medieval Queen and Saint instrumental in bringing Catholicism to France. Clothilde only recorded two eps for the Vogue label in 1967 (both captured here) before becoming fed up by the business and leaving it for good. Which really is tragic, because these are some of the most infectious French pop tracks we have heard in a while with swinging arrangements peppered with marimbas, flutes, violins, bells and Farfisas. Clothilde co-wrote a couple of tracks herself and they were noted for their shocking (at the time) use of sexual double entendres, perhaps adding to the sex-kitten image she really didn't want to have. Thus an untimely end of what could have been a promising singing career. Like so many French pop obscurities, we're thankful for the labor of love that goes into making sure these great tracks see the light of day once again!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This underground Japanese band surprised and delighted us with this crazy fuzzed-out stoner-rock meets grind metal release. Clotted Symmetric Sexual Organ (let's just call 'em CSSO) really kick 'em out, wallowing in total wahwah-happy heavy psych guitar overdrive. It's wild and distorted and super-energetic, a blend of '60s garage, '70s hard rock, and '90s noise-thrash. Forget Acid Mothers Temple, this is the real Japanese freak-beat! Indeed, CSSO could learn Kawabata Makoto a thing or two about over-the-top motorpsycho guitar. Imagine AMT or High Rise with a garagey Guitar Wolf edge, going nuts with that style of psychedelic freakout, then breaking into a speedy grind part with blast beats and cookie monster vocals! It's like a weird, wonderful mix of The Groundhogs and Napalm Death or something. When CSSO's stoner/grind rock attack isn't going full-tilt they throw in spacey sections of shoegazing drone tones, trippy electronics, and other cosmic krautrock inspired soundz -- sometimes sheer, blissful noise. Then it's back to the catchy rockin' stuff, like Hendrix gone grind. Like AMT or the Boredoms, they can be quite playful and confounding -- for instance, one song features what might be the world's longest fade-in, it's two minutes before you can really hear anything at all!
Partially 'cause this was so unexpected (we thought they might be a good but generic grindcore band) but also because it's so great, this just totally blew us away. A new favorite in the long line of genre-bending, rule-defying bands from Japan (Boredoms, Melt Banana, Boris, et. al.), and thus highly recommended!
This Japanese psychedelic grind band's Are You Excrements? album was a surprise hit here at Aquarius when we reviewed it two years ago. And we're still eagerly waiting for a new album from 'em. But we did just get a few copies of this retrospective disc, the aptly titled Collection. It's a 45 track anthology of material predating Are You Excrements?, mostly from presumably rare split 7"s and comps circa 1993-2000. As such, this stuff is definitely more on the traditional grind metal than stoner/psych side of things, but is certainly still quite freaky and weird. Aficianados of the grind genre will be reminded of early Carcass, and indeed this disc includes a Carcass cover (the classic "Genital Grinder") along with equally appropriate covers of songs by General Surgery, Regurgitate, and Napalm Death. But imagine Carcass infected with a dose of silliness a la Boredoms -- or does anybody remember Exit-13? The disc closes with an alternate version of the song "Living Dead A Go Go" that appeared on Are You Excrements?, thereby bringing us amost up to date in CSSO-world. We wonder what the future holds.
Okay, so we have to admit that the first time we listened to this album, a customer was playing the Rastan game at the front of the store. The music from both sources somehow got enmeshed and became one crazy adventure soundtrack!
On its own, Cloud Archive's first album Left The Bright Opening... has its own fair share of epic dynamics. The band draws from some very familiar instrumental post rock traditions -- the loud/quiet bursts, the hypnotic cyclical guitar and basslines -- but they avoid the obstacles of triteness and redundancy. Sometimes it seems like the guitars are escaping in a getaway car separate from the rest of the band, but hang on tight, they weave and roam and find each other again. A terrific debut.
We loved the last record from these Cleveland fuzz poppers, likening their sound to groups like Yuck, Telekinesis, the Disciplines, all bands they shared space with on the aQ list, sharing also a combination of perfect pop jangle, fuzzy shoegaze, and woozy new wave, with a tendency toward bouncy frenetic almost punky pop
But something seems to have happened to these guys since that last record, cuz Attack On Memory is a much darker affair, in fact opener "No Future/No Past" is a dense minor key brooder, all pounding tribal drums, and spidery guitars, the singing raspy and a bit anguished, underpinned with strange deep almost chantlike background vocals, as well as droned out rumbles and layered buzz, and as the song progresses, the vocals get more and more blown out, becoming a near shriek, and pushing the sound into an almost emo/screamo direction, which totally suits them. It's definitely the darkest creepiest jam here, but that darkness and creepiness does seem to settle over all the proceedings, even the second track, which is much more intense and rocking, still oozes menace, sounding like a meaner more intense Strokes, there's plenty of jangle and hooks, but it's all wreathed in droned out guitars, and it is a nearly nine minute song, so the band are constantly stretching out into full on freaked out heavy psych blowouts, that we just don't remember from past record. In fact, we'd go so far as to say these guys sound pretty fucking fierce, and downright heavy, a sort of psychedelic post punk jangle pop, that while bears some things in common with other groups we dig, definitely puts it all together in a way that we've rarely heard, and it's a potent combination for sure. As the record unfurls, the group definitely slip into the sounds that defined their old record, and it still sounds as good as ever, but it's those tinges of darkness, and the more guitar heavy sound, that really make this into something else entirely. WAY recommended for sure!
Cleveland's Cloud Nothings began life as fuzzy jangle poppers, but even in those early days, the group displayed a knack for not just crafting killer hooks, but also for being pretty adept and serious psychedelic noisiness and blown out bombast, which all came to a head with their most recent full length, Attack On Memory, which was way darker and noisier than anything that came before. If anything, this new one splits the difference, still heavily indebted to that classic nineties indie/college rock sound, Cloud Nothings make it their own, crafting noisy, poppy gems that slip easily from hooky, fuzzy crunch, to wild, blown out shoegaze noise rock pound. Opener "Now Hear In" sounds like something you could have heard on the radio back in the day, roughed up a bit and doused in distortion. Which when we think about it pretty much describes the whole record. If you love that sound, and as we've established by now, most of us do, then Here And Nowhere Else is about as good as it gets, a perfect approximation of that sound, but cranked to high heaven, rife with impossible hooks, raspy vocal howl, wild tangled of buzzy guitars, sheets of noisy distortion, wild chaotic drumming, some tracks slowing it down a bit, but even those seem to always eventually explode into full on frantic and frenetic noise rock blowouts, that like on Attack On Memory, often verge on total emo/screamo, and all with a bit of gothy, gloominess running throughout, which means fans of Interpol, Ceremony, Holograms, Iceage and the like will dig this too.
Closing track "I'm Not Part Of Me" might be the catchiest jam here - which is weird, cuz what band tucks their catchiest potential hit way at the end of a record? A band like Cloud Nothings with hooks and potential hits to spare!
We loved this the very first time we played it, but with every listen we dig this record more and more, and for the noise pop nerds around aQ, this is fast becoming a contender for our favorite record of the year! Definitely a Record Of The Week.
So much awesome pop on this week's list, The Disciplines, Yuck, Telekinesis!, and this, the latest from Cleveland fuzz poppers Cloud Nothings. Just check out the first song "Understand At All", and odds are you'll be sold. Jangly fuzzy guitars, bubbly basslines, slightly snotty sounding vox, all sunshiney and crunchy, and but then the song slips into the chorus and it becomes transcendent, the vocals shifting to a sweet falsetto, the guitars muted, the drums holding it all together, which leads right into a cool stop start sort of proggy bit of mathiness, and then it's back to the verse, and right into that sweet sweet chorus again. The second song, "Not Important" is another winner, all super fuzzed out power pop, the vocals this time all raspy and Jawbreakery, changing the vibe of the song completely, but it's still so jangly and hooky, a little bit of mathiness, but still mostly crunch and fuzz and jangle. "Should Have" is all eighties style DIY pop, mixed with a little bit of new waviness, "Forget You All The Time" is washed out and shoegazey, reverby and hazy and dreamy, and "Nothing's Wrong" is all hyperactive nerd rock Ramones, frantic and bouncy and caffeinated, and so it goes, every song somehow totally different, the sound, the arrangement, the voice, but they all hang together pretty (im?)perfectly as a 'proper' album, a wild, slightly schizophrenic, super kinetic, ultra jangly crazy catchy, super melodic fuzz pop record we can't seem to stop listening to!
Nashville is best known as a magnet for songwriters, musicians, and performers looking to break into the country music business; at the same time, it continues to house a small yet viable collection of exceptional artists and outlandish freaks within its genteel Southern city limits. Nashville should be proud of its eccentrics, especially the atypical songwriter Dave Cloud, who can be regularly found parked at the Springwater (a dive bar which happens to be next to Hog Heaven which slow-cooks some the best BBQ in Middle Tennessee ... make sure to try the white sauce). Cloud's alcoholic croon caught the ear of the members of Lambchop who as the Gospel of Power helped Cloud realize his second album All My Best. Cloud affects a number of vocal styles; on occasion, it's a baritone that ripples with excessive vibratto like Isaac Hayes on a motley selection of prescription drugs; on others, he's stuck in a locked groove like Philip Jeck record picking unusual phrases to repeat a few too many times. It becomes quite clear that Cloud's head is not quite screwed on right; but fortunately, the Gospel of Power keep true to Cloud's outsider aesthetics, as opposed to the Wesley Willis albums which found him working with a bad metal-funk fusion band or later Daniel Johnston records which that suffer from too much production. All My Best includes a wide selection of idiosyncratic covers such as the Rolling Stones' "Let's Spend The Night Together" and KC and the Sunshine Band's "Get Down Tonight," plus a smattering of originals.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
During a humid trip to Nashville in the summer of 1998, Jim had the fortune to catch a 30 minute garage-rock-dirge made earlier that day in a basement by the The Legendary Dave Cloud. With just a simple request for information / recordings posted here on the AQL and some patience, we gleefully present the debut album from Mr. Cloud. Calling him a drunken poet may situate Dave Cloud on too high of a pedestal, but drunk would certainly suffice. Nearly delusional songs of true love found during drinking binges and of the profound abjection from the hangovers & lonliness the morning after are crooned by Cloud with his hoarse cigarette damaged voice. Musically, Cloud pens grimy garage songs that wouldn't have been out of the repetoire of the V-3, the Velvet Underground, early Dead C, and most certainly The Shaggs. While the purposefully lo-fi qualities from Siltbreeze bands may be interpretted as an avant-garde disregard for acceptible production techniques, Cloud's aesthetic couldn't really be regarded as such due to the drunken naivete that seeps through the songs like spilt beer seeping through polyester. Cloud's backing band features members of Lambchop though you won't find any of the sugary dixie pop here. Sadly the 30 minute drone-dirge mentioned earlier is not one of the songs he will always sing, but the album is a worthy meditation on alcohol.
Definitely my favorite cLOUDEAD recording yet. The latest installment of limited 10"s finds them stretching out, mellowing out and getting all stoned/psychedelic/dreamy. Dark and loping with simple hiccupping beats and sinister samples and a gauzy ambience over the whole thing. Super melodic and minor key with lots of scratchy surface noise, background incidental noise and all sorts of mumbling and muttering. Much more song-y than other cLOUDEAD records, sounding almost moody indie rock-ish with the lyrics practically sung instead of rapped. Perfect four in the morning chill out weirdness. So good.
It's been quite a while, but the forefathers of this new fangled whiny white boy avant hip hop movement, Why? Oddnosdam and Doseone all finally reconvene and resurrect their slumbering supergroup cLOUDDEAD. Hot on the heels of a cover story in British magazine The Wire, comes Ten, a record the band claims may just be their last. A bold statement from a band/collective that seem to release a record every week or so...
The strange thing about cLOUDDEAD, and Anticon in general, is that they showed up all fresh faced, white boys into hip hop struggling to be taken seriously in the hip hop world, but as they progress, and with each successive record, the hip hop element becomes less and less an integral part of their sound. Which is a little disappointing, since instead of taking hip hop and reinventing it as folks claim they are doing, they basically become more and more like a weird experimental electronic pop band that digs and borrows a little bit from hip hop. Which on second thought is perfectly fine. In fact, it makes it easier to just enjoy cLOUDDEAD as a great band without all the "are they hip hop? are they not hip hop?" bullshit debates. So what does this record sound like, you ask? Well, the first track is definitely classic cLOUDDEAD, throbbing calliopes pulse over a shuffling hip hop beat with loopy stream of conciousness lyrics delivered in whiny falsettos. But after that the hip hop element is subsumed by grand Sgt. Peppery pop, glitchy ambient electronica, and skittery, electro pop with dreamy harmonies and warm ambient hum. The sound overall is closer to stuff like the Notwist or the Postal Service and all that poppy electronica, albeit with some of Doseone's bizarre nasal rapping tossed in here and there. This is just a really amazing and amazingly produced multi-layered pop record! So don't dive into this expecting to jam this in your boomin' system, but definitely dive in.
Hip hop's great white hope is not Eminem, no matter what MTV tells you, it's cLOUDDEAD and the East Bay's Anticon collective which he proudly represents, and that has already produced avant-hip-hop masterpieces from Boom Bip and Dose One and Them. This cd collects the 6 super limited cLOUDDEAD 10"s, (some of which we still have in stock) and much like the Them record, this is
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It seems like maybe it was inevitable, but SF's Cloudland Canyon have finally ditched the last remaining trappings of whatever sort of band they may have been before, and now emerged a fully fledged modern day psychedelic krautrocking combo who are masters of their craft. This new super limited, import 12" finds CC exploring that sound, opening with a serious kosmische kraut / new age trip out, a slow building pulsing shimmering synthscape, before driving synths take over and transform the track into a dizzying swirl of looped and arpeggiated synth cascades, cyclical and repetitive, tranced out and mesmerizing, a churning synth swirl beneath a sky full of tangled melodies.
The B side is much more laid back, a woozy cosmic groove with a pulsing house music throb, all swirly and cinematic, until a seriously crunchy beat kicks in, super dubbed out and almost industrial sounding, like some lost DHR jam or maybe early Techno Animal - whatever it reminds you of, it kicks ass, and turns the record into something else entirely. The record begins to wind down in another dizzying sprawl of throbbing synth swirl, this time over a stuttering New Order like beat, and driven by stuttery ethereal vocal loops. Sweet.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. In fact, we have less than ten, and it's very likely these will be the last ones we can get. Pressed on foggy clear vinyl!
Latest from these long time aQ faves, a heady blast of kosmische kraut-synth bliss, released on the always ruling Trensmat label, and like the last few records, this new 12" finds them continuing on in their deep space-ward trajectory, the sound minimal, but simultaneously dense and driving, a relentless cascade of pulsating synths, swirling sequenced melodies, like the best bit of the Logan's Run soundtrack, looped and layered, and distorted and sent swirling into the ether. It's like the soundtrack to some tripped out sci-fi art film, totally hypnotic and WAY psychedelic, new age cranked to 11, at least until about 6 minutes into the first track, where programmed drums come crashing in, bringing with them, a thick pulsing bassline, and dreamy ethereal female vox, the resulting hybrid a rad mix of dubbed out electro pop and swirling kraut-drone synth-wave.
The flipside is more rhythmic and industrial, a sort of looped and lumbering robo-kraut, crunchy beats, jagged melodies, super distorted buzz drenched bass rhythms, swirling sci-fi shimmer over the top, dense and driving, and relentless, less dancefloor groove, and more fever dream freakout. These guys just keep getting better.
The lp includes a download of the two tracks on the record proper, as well as two extra bonus tracks, nearly fourteen minutes, the first some seriously dreamy celestial new age, all swirling synths, and woozy rhythmic pulsations, the second a dense tangle soft chaos, a roiling cloud of intertwined melodies, swooping effects and processed synth squelch, dreamily hypnotic and cosmically psychedelic.
Already out of print and sold out at the label, we got a bunch, but once we sell out, we may not be able to get more, so best grab one before they're gone. Packaged in super striking, hand screened pink on white jackets.
Cloudland Canyon always seemed like some impossible classic krautrock / noise rock hybrid, their records equal parts German Oak, Faust, Amon Duul, My Bloody Valentine and the Dead C, a washed out sonic world of gritty hypnotic haze, of lumbering psychedelic grooves, of twisted FX drenched drift and looped druggy ambience, as likely to explode into a super rocking fuzzed out dronejam as they were to emit thick billowing clouds of swirling blurred psychdrone shimmer, but always, at the core of their sound was pop. Little hooks buried in the murk and the mire, catchiness subtly woven into the fabric of every bit of spaced out crush or raga-like skree, the thread that held their sound together was spun from melody and harmony, no matter how much those elemental forces were obscured.
Recently CC shared a split with Citay, both bands paying homage to fuzzy dream poppers Galaxie 500, CC's version was especially fantastic, drugged out and hypnotic, somehow transforming the original into what could have been a proper Cloudland Canyon jam, and in the process, revealing, more explicitly than ever, the warm glowing pop heart, that beat inside the buzzing, lysergic krautrock chest of Cloudland Canyon. Which it seems, lead to this, Fin Eaves, a fully realized exploration of pop music, filtered through CC's gloriously cracked kraut/drone/noise filter, the result, one of the fuzziest, most washed out, dreamiest noise pop / dream pop records in recent memory.
Every track a swirling morass of druggy effects, of muted melodies, of buried reverbed vox, of subverted jangle, muddy grooves, subtle hooks, a soft focus collision between My Bloody Valentine, Teenage Filmstars and Galaxie 500, a three way pileup where the various elements simply sink into one another, blurring and smearing into fantastically new shapes, a little bit of looped hypnotic Spacemen 3 style drug rock here, a little super distorted minimal Jesus and Mary Chain stomp there, slipping seamlessly from gauzy soft pop shuffle, to dense crumbling popnoise damage, to hushed loping slowcore haze, to soaring prismatic space psych bliss, each and every track is dense and spacious and layered, the various sounds constantly shifting, transforming, pealing melodies sloughing off only to reveal even more subtle melodies beneath, streaks of electronic glitch and clouds of warm whirling hiss drift amidst deep thrummed bass, and simple motorik rhythms, gorgeously out of focus vocal harmonies, and all manner of texture and timbre, a rare record as much about song as sound, strip away the sound, and you'd have a surprisingly perfect pop record, take away the songs, and you'd still have some fantastically abstract sonic earcandy, but combine the two, and you have this, an utterly gorgeous disc of otherworldly noise drenched lysergic dream pop. Fans of Teenage Filmstars, Beach House, Jesus & Mary Chain, Flaming Lips, Galaxie 500, Spacemen 3, Candy Claws, Mercury Rev, School Of The Seven Bells, and other psychedelic dream poppers, this is your new favorite record.
Lie in Light shows Cloudland Canyon wearing their Krautrock worshiping influences fully on sleeve.
We have previously mentioned their cosmic-kraut influence on their debut and follow-up ep. But on those, the lysergic free music of Ash Ra Tempel, Faust, Hawkwind, and Amon Duul II, mixed with more contemporary experimental shimmers of Dead C and This Heat were the key influential touchstones. On Lie In Light, with song titles like "Krautwerk" (how obvious can you get??), "You & I" and "Scheiss Schatzi, Auf Wiedersehn!", Cloudland Canyon this time around channel the Kosmiche and Motorik pulse of Neu!, Can, Cluster, La Dusseldorf and Popol Vuh. More song-structured than their debut, but no less cosmically atmospheric, Cloudland Canyon have upped the ante on their sound and production. While their Krautrock inspirations and tongue-in-cheek song titles may sound derivative on the surface, they bring enough of their own unique perspective on things to make for a highly engaging listen. Recommended!!
Folks who picked up the most recent record by Cloudland Canyon, Fin Eaves, will recognize the A side of this here single, as it's taken from that full length, and is a perfect sonic summary of the band's sound, drugged out and hypnotic dream pop, heavily effected, lots of groove and jangle, the sound both blurred and druggy, warm and epic and expansive, a little M83, a little Spacemen 3, laced with soft noise and electronics, all woven into something heavy and heady and hypnotic, and as an intro for someone new to CC, this A side could and most likely would make a believer out of anyone.
But the B side is the real reason to grab this, finding the band shrugging off all that lush production, and druggy dream pop bombast, in favor of something much more muddy and woozy and warped, an ultra lo-fi excursion into a sun dappled drugged out murkiness, drifty and ethereal, vocal harmonies seeming to melt into the roiling backdrop, the song a blurred sonic shadow of the A side, a shifting soft focus impression of the band's lush dreamy pop, transforming that sound into something more raw and mysterious...
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Pressed on cool swirled black/grey/white/pink swirled vinyl. Includes a nice full color texture paper insert.
A short two song 45 rpm, 12" blast of kraut-synth blissout from these aQ faves, a variation on the distinctive CC sound we know and love, the A side, glimmering, glistening, pulsating synthscapery, prismatic cascades of dreamlike melodies, woven into a frantic krautscape, that sounds like classic krautrock revved WAY up, the sound still minimal and mesmerizing, but dense and driving, dizzying and swirly, vocals finding their way into CC's sound, like never before, chopped up and recontextualized, adding extra melody, but ultimately blurred into another layer in the already dense soundscape.
The flipside is more of the same, this time with even more vocals, and some serious beat action, more of a pulse, at least in the beginning, giving the song a serious almost house/techno vibe, the vocals way more prominent still blurred and indistinct, but almost like a proper vocal line, albeit sung like a robot speaking in tongues, the whole thing heady and psychedelic, the sound growing ever more chugging and churning, building to a wild percussive, psychedelic freakout finale.
This record totally knocked us for a loop. And the thing is, I'm not entirely sure we can explain why. This is one of those rare records that is darn near indescribable. The label suggest Cloudland Canyon would appeal to fans of Boards of Canada, Animal Collective, The Dead C., Ash Ra Tempel, This Heat, Gong, most of which we can definitely see (maybe not the Boards Of Canada), there is a definitely a far out krautrock vibe, some classic long lost, extra damaged super freaked out sixties or seventies psychedelia, but filtered through modern technology. It's almost like some super computer a million years in the future began picking up these strange transmissions from the old Earth, German Oak, Faust, Amon Duul, but after traveling billions of miles and being interpreted by some alien machinery, those songs and sounds came out sounding, well, completely fucking nuts!!!
It's like some sort of laptopped Dead C / Ash Ra mash up. Rich clouds of metallic shimmer surround looped guitars, creepy chanted vocals are submerged in demented spacey FX, dense deconstructed pop songs emerge from the chaos, rife with swirling vocals, and layer after layer of drone and processed harmonies, fuzzy shopping mall synth warbles beneath straining lo-fi vocals, the whole thing run through some intense stereo panning. Suddenly the band burst into some stomping propulsive psych rock jangle before the whole thing splinters into a gorgeous expanse of tranquil ambience, beneath delicately finger picked guitars, everything always within a cloud of mysterious sonic events. Dense cinematic soundscapes of keening high end and minor key pizzicato strings melt into super fuzzed out classic rock jams, with horns and pulsing basslines, but buried in a dense swirl of My Bloody Valentine haze, with relentlessly squiggly riffing, buried vocals, a dizzying array of chaotic sound, tinkling chimes and little bits of percussion. Strange collages of warped warbly sound drift into weird seventies circusy prog with calliope like organ, moody riffing, and awesome male / female vocals, like some totally drug drenched unhinged Fleetwood Mac. Nearing the end of the sonic journey, the record devolves into huge stretches of squiggly analog synth, tangled and intertwined into fuzzy warped low end drones, squirming and buzzing with the different layers constantly shifting and slipping in and out and around each other. Woah. Gorgeously and incredibly fucked. And thus completely recommended!!
Now on Vinyl! Here's what we said about the cd version when it came out in '07:
One of our most unexpected surprises last year came from Cloudland Canyon who totally blew us away with Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004, a shimmering sonic concoction, that sounded a bit like Ash Ra Tempel being channeled through the more melodic side of The Dead C.
They've followed that remarkable outing with a record that contains only two songs, but what it lacks in length it more then makes up for in cosmic-kraut brilliance. Listening to the two long tracks on this record is like being transported away on some otherworldly helicopter co-piloted by LaMonte Young and a very spaced out Hawkwind. We keep listening to these two epic tracks over and over and every time we do a customer is inevitably convinced that we're playing some obscure vintage kraut gem that they somehow have never heard before. Folks are always stunned to find out that this is brand new, but what makes Cloudland Canyon so great is that they manage to tap into that magical moment of cosmic kraut bliss, but do so without merely sounding like a tribute band, as there is something very immediate and timeless to the sounds they create. With another brand new full length coming soon on Kranky [Lie In Light] we predict that everyone blasting their Wooden Shjips records right now will be blissing out and taking off with Cloudland Canyon very soon. We sure are! You can start now.
One of our most unexpected surprises last year came from Cloudland Canyon who totally blew us away with Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004, a shimmering sonic concoction, that sounded a bit like Ash Ra Tempel being channeled through the more melodic side of The Dead C.
They've followed that remarkable outing with a record that contains only two songs, but what it lacks in length it more then makes up for in cosmic-kraut brilliance. Listening to the two long tracks on this record is like being transported away on some otherworldly helicopter co-piloted by LaMonte Young and a very spaced out Hawkwind. We keep listening to these two epic tracks over and over and every time we do a customer is inevitably convinced that we're playing some obscure vintage kraut gem that they somehow have never heard before. Folks are always stunned to find out that this is brand new, but what makes Cloudland Canyon so great is that they manage to tap into that magical moment of cosmic kraut bliss, but do so without merely sounding like a tribute band, as there is something very immediate and timeless to the sounds they create. With a brand new full length coming soon on the oh so hot Holy Mountain label we predict that everyone blasting their Wooden Shjips records right now will be blissing out and taking off with Cloudland Canyon very soon. We sure are! You can start now.
This is a match that makes perfect sense. As Lichens and Cloudland Canyon have both been making some of the most compelling and rewarding crystalline soundscapes of the last few years. One long track clocking in at around a half hour "Exterminating Angel" does sound like the sum of both of these artists' parts. With the first half sounding much more like Lichens, gorgeous deep in space hazy explorations while the krautier leanings of Cloudland Canyon come into focus in the second half of the track propelling the sounds into their kosmiche orbit. Fans of mid-late '70s Tangerine Dream and early Heldon will for sure want to jump aboard this cosmic adventure.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
One of the Cave In dudes (guitarist Adam McGrath) goes nuts with hard rock/punk/psych/dub side project. Yes, that's what we just said. And name-checks Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa in the thanks list. It's all over the place but actually pretty cool. In fact, it's one of those side projects that make you wonder why dude didn't save some of these ideas to spice up his main band's next album, y'know? Blowing off some creative steam on a "legendary demo" put together with some hometown friends is just psychologically easier we guess. So we're glad Hydra Head pressed this to cd, and even if you don't care about the proggy metalcore of Cave In you still might totally dig Clouds.
This starts off with a couple shitkicking tracks of behind-the-chicken-wire hard rock/metal with badass boogie '70s riffage and guitar wailing, a bit like Bay Area heroes Drunk Horse. As this goes on, a few short, sharp punk rock turns are taken, things quickly steaming back into the stoner rawk realm tho ("Party Grunge" being a minute-long, aptly titled blast from both angles). Penultimate track "Magic Hater" manages to segue from a hardcore intro into a freaked out, blues'd n' boozed Beefheart homage. That barely preps you for this album's psychedelic 20 minute finale, "Quartulli Dub", featuring Funhouse saxophone skronk, backwards guitars, and yeah, dubby rhythms and FX. By the time all's said and done, you'll realize your Comets On Fire albums have a new best friend.
The first Clouds record, the project of Cave In guitarist Adam McGrath, was a freaked out hodgepodge of stoner rock, hardcore, prog rock and seventies boogie rock with definite nods to Beefheart, Zappa, Comets On Fire, the Cave In mothership, it all worked, the result a heavy slab of FX laden riff heavy RAWK with lots of twisted detours.
If anything, this newest Clouds disc takes all that same stuff a little further, with a bigger focus on the riffrock aspect, and a huge infusion of POP. Not always obviously so, but some of these hooks slay. Think the beefy lumbering almost grunge of Scissorfight, melded to the pounding retro metallic pound of Karp or Big Business, some of that Cave-In magic and voila!
The second track, "Feed The Horse" sounds like it was yanked off a late era Cave-in disc and given a serious metal makeover, while the opener "Empires In Basements" gives Torche a run for their sludge pop money.
And then the band go all strange and angular and off kilter with "The Bad Seat", sounding almost like Randy Newman if he was 20 years old and signed to Hydra Head, and we know that sounds weird, but it's actually quite cool.
The record is all over the map for sure, exploding into frenzied punk rock as often as sprawling out into huge lumbering sludgey doom, offering up soaring metallic pop gems, or stripping it down to chugging classic rock grooves, but no matter what these guys do, or what sound they're tackling and making their own, the songs rule, and the band kick out the jams big time. And like we've said before, in a perfect world, instead of Green Day and the Foo Fighters, you'd be hearing Torche and Clouds all over the radio. Ahhh, maybe some day...
Two fantastic new releases from the Khrysanthoney label, elsewhere on this week's list, you'll find the latest from UK dreamo / screamo blackened bliss-pop combo Sleeping Peonies, and then there's this, the first full length from Pennsylvania one man shoegaze / blackgaze / blackbuzz bliss metal outfit Clouds Collide, and holy cow, the opener is maybe the blissiest black metal we've maybe ever heard, wintry winds over spidery minor key guitars, haunting and melancholic, warm shimmery chordal strum, and then suddenly, the song explodes in a gloriously prismatic blast of blown out beats, and blurred snowstorm riffs, all wreathed in a fuzzy cloud of crumbling shimmer, thick swaths of swirling sonic glimmer, and hazy smears of fragmented melodies, all tangled up into a softly having blackened dream pop psychedelia, before switching gears and slowing down to a darkly moody post rock lope, still wrapped in sheets of soft focus shimmer, harsh vokills surface at this point, but do nothing to distract from the pure buzzing blissiness of the sound. Fans of outfits like Alcest, Fen, and other post BM shoegazers will be in heaven.
Elsewhere it does get more metal, and more black, but even on tracks like "Endless Silence", with its shrieked vokills and brittle insectoid guitar buzz, the sound is still doused in FX, pushed WAY into the red, and blurred into indistinct black-gaze smears, and when things slow down, it gets all echo drenched and drifty, the guitars weightless and ethereal, the drums, booming and reverby way off in the distance. The record flits easily between pure dream pop shoegaze shimmer and wintry black buzz bliss outs, with most tracks settling somewhere perfectly right in between!
LIMITED TO 125 COPIES, housed in a blue parchment envelope, with a printed cardstock Japanese style obi, an 11" x 17" poster, an 8 page 5.5" x 8.5" booklet, the envelope hand decorated with metallic ink!
File this one right next to your Alan Lamb discs of singing telegraph wires and the Broken Hearted Dragonflies album on Sublime Frequencies, as the British sound art duo of Isobel Clouter and Rob Mullender have presented us with some seemingly implausible recordings of 'booming sand.' These are monotone frequencies generated by an avalanche of a sand dune under just the right environmental conditions. Such sounds have been reported in numerous times and places with Marco Polo recounting them on his excursions to China, and with Charles Darwin finding similar sounds in the deserts of Chile! At the onset of one of their recordings, we hear Isobel huffing and puffing up to the top of a massive sand dune, before she puts her ears to the ground (quite literally) in order to locate the origin of the rumbling drone. Such a bracketing episode of human presence is very useful to frame the stillness of the desert even as the booming sound resonates through the landscape. It also helps to distance these natural sounds from their manmade doomscape kin of a lowslung bass slumped in subharmonic stupor against a rumbling amplifier. Aside from these impressively heavy recordings, Clouter and Mullender offer some additional recordings from elsewhere in Asia: hissing textures from windswept sand comingling with cicadas buzzing in the summer sun, and a Tibetan prayer wheel revolving through its wooden cycles of creaks and moans. These are good extracts of pure phonography, but pale next to the thoroughly impressive booming sand phenomenon.
Clouwbeck is yet another pseudonym for the British ambient folk experimentalist Richard Skelton, following A Broken Consort, Carousell, and a couple others which haven't yet found their way through these doors. Each of his monikers has its own slight yet particular bent on his signature sound of rough hewn melancholia, with Clouwbeck being the most somber and abstract that we've heard from him so far. He strips down the instrumentation to just the violin, although he does allow for a considerable amount of processing and thick applications of layered drone from that instrument, building up a ponderous atmosphere of wintry sadness. The album's opening track "Gossan" scratches out the melody as if the bow were dragged across a piece of barbed wire instead of violin, yet the buzzing, luminous beds of sound that Skelton broadcasts around these scraped recursive melodies prevents the whole thing from tumbling into dissonance. "Leached" softens the rustic buzz with a majestic billowing of overlapping violin melodies, distended and blurred into a rich mass of sound. The rest of the album continues to dive deeper with each track becoming incrementally more submerged in the dense loopings and hazy drones. Throughout, Skelton's album sounds like those beautiful orchestrations from Johann Johannsson as played by Alastair Galbraith and produced by the Caretaker. Really, fantastic stuff.
Pre-Melvins punk reissued! Featuring Lori Black and Mark Deutrom, both future Melvins bassists.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Along with the awesome photographs of Vittori Gelmetti (as new wave buff) and Walter Marchetti (as polyester clad drunk) found on their recent reissued discs, this collection of two bodies of work from Christian Clozier also features another prime fashion statement from the 20th Century's composers. Sure he's donning the traditional suit & tie, along with the moppish hair and bugged-out Lennon glasses of the stereotypical mod. Beyond fashion statements, Clozier's music is quite spectaular, best described as the evil cousin of Subotnik's "Silver Apples on the Moon". The two pieces "Quasars" and "Markanian 205" are bleak pieces which teeter on the edge of the eye of some mythical cyclone, falling into violent swells of synthetic noise and back into calm (if nervous) ambient passages.
CLP is probably a new name to most everybody, but the group's pedigree might ring some bells, as one half of the duo used to do time in Funkstorung. The sound of CLP has very little on common with the IDM funk of Funkstorung, instead, the sound of CLP is a wild and kick ass mix of old school hip hop, Miami bass, crunk, electro, ghetto-tech and the sounds of the Dirty South. The result musically, is kinda nuts, the ultimate dance party, and quite possibly one of the coolest, and maybe best hip hop records we've heard in forever, equal parts Missy Elliott, Timbaland, 2 Live Crew, Hyphy, and fuck knows who else. The duo used Myspace to track down obscure and unknown rappers from all over the world, primarily in the US and South Africa, which just pushes it over the top.
Every track is different, but they all share some sonic similarities, beats that slip from skittery to block rockin, fuzzy basslines, blown out distorted synths, soaring strings, stuttery grooves, off kilter loops, and some hooks that kill, if this wasn't some obscure hip hop record on Shitkatapult, this would and SHOULD be all over the radio. And the rapping is all over the place too, from sultry and sinister to goofy and over the top, from robotic bark to woozy laidback druggy drawl, but it all works, perfectly. Instead of skits, there are some musical interludes, that end up sounding just as off kilter as the songs themselves.
Not sure what else to say, other than hip hop record of the year. Last year? This year? Probably both...
The first Clubroot disc was our dubstep record of last year, and remains one of our favorites, a lush, expansive electronic record, that traded the skeletal skitter and ominous minimalism of most dubstep for something totally different, something otherworldly, bursting with warmth, synths and voices, everything gauzy and hazy and hauntingly beautiful, organic and dreamy. So hopes were high for this new one.
Number two more than lives up to our expectations, continuing to push the sound away from traditional dubstep. The only remaining vestiges being THAT beat, some low bass warble, but very little else. In every other way, the sounds on II are ethereal and ephemeral, washed out and spectral, melancholy and wistful, vocals play a much bigger part too, which we can tell you is what usually turns us off when it comes to jungle or dubstep, but this is no diva shit, instead, the female vocals are ghostly and soulful, drifting amidst the various other layers, adding a distinctly human dimension to Clubroot's sound.
Imagine some mysterious blend of the Orb and Portishead, a sort of dark, brooding, chill out sound, and you'll get a rough idea of what to expect here. Long stretches of gauzy synthy shimmer hovering over rumbling bass, but instead of just explosive squelches, the bass is sculpted into something way more melodic and textural, giving the songs heft and weight unconnected to the dancefloor. The vocals, while sometimes left to drift and float, othertimes are chopped and processed and become another rhythmic element, and the beats, well, while the 'beats' themselves hew pretty close to the dubstep standard, they deviate enough to keep things interesting, sometimes getting all shuffly and spare, but other times more tangly and dense like some sort of slowed down jungle, but always perfectly suited to the sounds swirling around it, and the beats remain unobtrusive, more a part of the overall sonic scenery, which helps to make the sounds here so soothing and mesmerizing.
For true dubsteppers, this might be so far removed as to not necessarily qualify as dubstep at all, but for the rest of us, that's not a bad thing at all, which is why Clubroot occupies a special space in our heart (and record collections) somewhere right between Kode9 and Burial...
WAY RECOMMENDED!
While they last, the cd version comes with a bonus disc, featuring 3 tracks, that might be even better than the tracks on the record proper, but only the first 500 copies have the extra disc, and once the 20 or so copies we have are gone, they are GONE. And fear not vinyl folks, the sleeve for the lp version is oversized, just a bit, to leave space for the forthcoming 12" version of the bonus disc, which we'll have as soon as they're ready!
Record number three from this dubstep revolutionary, and another shift even further away from proper dubstep. Like the two preceeding records, Clubroot unfurls a lush landscape of ethereal drift and deep beat driven ambience, and while fans of the first two will find much to love here as well, there have been some subtle sonic shifts that are worth noting.
Not that the opener would give any indication, a lush expansive stretch of washed out dreamy cinematic synth shimmer, that remains beatless throughout, the sound grows gradually darker, until sampled voices surface, and this 'intro' leads directly into a track that sounds almost like Phoenix or Miike Snow, at least at first, a repetitive piano figure that in other hands would lead into some dream pop, but here, provides the melodic backbone for some seriously mesmerizing dubstep skitter, the beat thick and heavy, but still skeletal, while all around, fragmented melodies swirl, bits of vocal surface and fade away, "Summons" though is where the record comes into it's own, and displays a shift away from the lush ethereal atmospheres and toward something a bit more stripped down, the change is subtle, but it definitely works, sounding more like Burial here, a creeping tarpit drag, with some thick corrosive bass wobble, that's wreathed in effects which gives it a whole different effect, and the vocals here, hazy and and angelic, balanced by some sped up soul vocals that are transformed into woozy abstract melodies, it's the sort of jam that transcends 'dubstep' or any genre classifications, a gorgeous bit of electronica that we could listen to forever. But then "Lurking In The Shadows" lays down another killer groove, with more super distorted bass wobble, the whole track driven by a sped up looped vocal, and suddenly what we perceived as a less lush sound, or a more stripped down sound, is revealed as something more akin to economy of sound, it's not that things have been removed, but that everything is perfectly place, and there are no superfluous sonics, which becomes more evident as the record progresses, whether it's a loping dubbed out stutter, or a whirling sprawl of psychedelic ambience, a skittery almost hip hop groove, or Muslimgauze like Eastern tinged trip out. Ethereal and blissed out and dreamy one second, haunting and ominous and sonically sinister the next, check out the closer "Restraint", a gorgeous chunk of dubbed out rumbling bass heavy slo-mo soul, an be sure to stick around for the hidden track, which might be the darkest and heaviest of the bunch.
Yet again, another album of untouchable beat bliss innovation from maybe our favorite dubstep outfit out there...
After two stunning full lengths of abstract ethereal dubstep, a sound utterly distinctive in a genre that seemed to be gradually growing more and more homogenous, comes this killer, super limited, 3 track remix 12" (which comes with a cd-r version as well), offering up 3 pretty dramatic reimaginings of two of our favorite Clubroot jams.
The first comes from a drum and bass producer called SPL, who takes the original and supercharges it, jacks it way up, and transforms it into a fucked up and fierce slab of buzzing dubstep, the beats jagged and booming, the bass thick and sinewy, and that low end wobble sooo thick it'll rattle your ribcage. Big blasts of buzz and wobble separated by stretches of washed out softly pulsing swirl, but EVERY time that bass drops, it just KILLS.
Up next is Bryan Zentz, a techno/dub producer, who keeps the mood of the original, just dubs it out a bit more, and adds a bunch of bass, but not that buzzing dubstep wobble, instead, just a warm whirring layer of thrum and throb, while the various beats get wreathed in echo and reverb, the whole track a bit more washed out and abstract, and the drops here too, manage to be just as dramatic, just more moody and minimal, and the bass, still manages to get the woofers woofing.
Finally, Vancouver dubstepper Kuma takes the original, and somehow manages to make it even more ghostly and haunting, all shadows and slow shifting textures, the dubbed out bass dialed way back, the ambience pushed to the fore, the whole vibe laid back, woozy and warbly, a bit foreboding and soundtracky, perfectly complimenting the original. Rare is the remix record where they all get it right, changing it enough to make it worthwhile, but without losing the spirit of the original...
Not sure how limited this is, but we do know it's already gone, we got about 15 copies, and we can NOT get more, so grab one while you can. Housed in a plain black sleeve, with a little built in pocket for the cd-r.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've been going pretty crazy around here for the epic atmospheric dubstep of Clubroot, heaping crazy effusive praise on both full lengths, the second of which, we managed to get a very few copies of a super deluxe edition, that featured a second bonus disc, that we thought was maybe even better than the album itself. Those tracks were not included on the vinyl version, or on the single cd version, but now, that bonus cd has been pressed up as a super limited 12", so folks who bought the vinyl, can grab one of these, to make their version of II-MMX complete, and folks who bought the cd but didn't get the bonus disc, now's your chance to nab those extra 3 songs, and trust us, it's well worth it.
And for those new to the magical musical mystery of Clubroot, the sound is lush and expansive, trading the skeletal skitter and ominous minimalism of most dubstep for something totally different, something otherworldly, bursting with warmth, synths and voices, everything gauzy and hazy and hauntingly beautiful, organic and dreamy.
These sounds are an ever evolving mutant strain of dubstep, ethereal and ephemeral, washed out and spectral, melancholy and wistful, vocals play a much bigger part on the second record, which we can tell you is what usually turns us off when it comes to jungle or dubstep, but this is no diva shit, instead, the female vocals are ghostly and soulful, drifting amidst the various other layers, adding a distinctly human dimension to Clubroot's sound.
Imagine some mysterious blend of the Orb and Portishead, a sort of dark, brooding, chill out sound, and you'll get a rough idea of what to expect here. Long stretches of gauzy synthy shimmer hovering over rumbling bass, but instead of just explosive squelches, the bass is sculpted into something way more melodic and textural, giving the songs heft and weight unconnected to the dancefloor. The vocals, while sometimes left to drift and float, othertimes are chopped and processed and become another rhythmic element, and the beats, well, while the 'beats' themselves hew pretty close to the dubstep standard, they deviate enough to keep things interesting, sometimes getting all shuffly and spare, but other times more tangly and dense like some sort of slowed down jungle, but always perfectly suited to the sounds swirling around it, and the beats remain unobtrusive, more a part of the overall sonic scenery, which helps to make the sounds here so soothing and mesmerizing.
For true dubsteppers, Clubroot might be so far removed as to not necessarily qualify as dubstep at all, but for the rest of us, that's not a bad thing at all, which is why Clubroot occupies a special space in our heart (and record collections) somewhere right between Kode9 and Burial...
The three bonus tracks from the original double cd bonus disc, take all of the above and weave them into something even more magical, incredibly captivating and catchy, but still haunting and otherwordly, groovy and funky for sure, but that's not really what it's about, as much as painting pictures in sound, or opening a portal to another dimension, these tracks are like the soundtrack to some space station chillout after hours session, or some early morning fog cloaked empty earth stroll, or an eyes closed, mind open astral projection inner space exploration. This stuff is both epic and cosmic, intimate and personal, and still ranks as some of the most incredible electronic music being made today.
And a note for vinyl folks who bought II-MMX on wax, the sleeve for the lp version is oversized, just a bit, to leave space for this here 12"!!
Longtime aQ fave, cinematic dubstepper Clubroot released the amazing III - MMXII record not too long ago, and folks who bought the vinyl version, missed out on two of our favorite tracks from that record, due to space limitations, which have now been released as a super limited 12" single, with a bonus track, only available previously on mixes, and not included on the cd version either. Folks who own the cd, skip down to read about the bonus track, as you've already got the other two.
Vinyl nerds, luxuriate in the A side, the lush, brooding "Summons", with its thick rumbling bass, skeletal beat, woozy swirling ambience, spaced out and darkly psychedelic, subtly sinister, with gorgeous hazy vocals drifting above the slow churning groove below, listening to this now, it's hard to imagine this was a track they left OFF the lp. Same with "My Kingdom", not nearly as dark, but more skittery and textured, with fluttery flute like melodies, Burial like slo-soul vocals, all wrapped around a killer stuttery groove, backed up by ominous strings, and swoonsome synth swells, super spacious and spare, haunting and very cinematic.
The bonus track is much house-ier, soft swirls of synth chords drift beneath a pulsing shuffling beat, more of those slo-mo soul vocals, and with a MEAN drop, the bass thick an corrosive, a rib cage rattling wobble that underpins the rest of the song, chopped up into a weird rumbling rhythmic counterpoint, and laced with bits of staticky glitch. The song darkening considerably from the beginning, and blossoming into something more drifty and ambient as the fluttery flutes return and the sounds gradually blisses out into an ethereal soft focus electro-dub shimmer.
One of two discs vying for our personal dubstep disc of the year. The other is the recent Mordant Music disc, which we'll try to review next time, an unlikely collaboration between Mordant and the Skull Disco crew, and this, the first full length from mysterious atmospheric dubstep soundscaper Clubroot.
We know nothing about this guy (or these guys?), other than he takes that dubbed out skitter we love so much and sets it in expansive fields of swirling ambience, creeped out dronescapes and all manner of super evocative and gorgeously textural soundworlds. Where as most dubstep is super spare and stripped down, skeletal even, the sound here is lush and sprawling. Thick layers of synths whir and shimmer and buzz, deep swells throbbing and pulsing, everything hazy and gauzy and washed out, every song some sort of otherworldy dreamscape, shot through with some super bad ass bit of pounding churning dubstep stutter. The massive basslines and fluctuating synth buzz that usually adds texture to typical dubstep, here just becomes another element in Clubroot's mysterious mist shrouded sonic landscape.
The cover features a lonely tree, set atop a rocky outcropping, the sky dense with clouds, the picture all misty and hauntingly lonely seeming, which perfectly reflects the mood of the music here. Strip away the beats, and you'd still be left with an incredible bit of blackened new age swirl, of abstract kosmiche krautdrone, but add the beats, and these sounds become something entirely other. This is definitely not dancemusic, this is mind expansion music. Late night, lights off, starting at the stars drifting off, other dimension, spaced out, dream dub music.
Clubroot taps into the same darkside as Burial, and Kode9, and the more atmospheric beatmakers, but where those guys pull back before the fog grows to thick, Clubroot pushes forward, traveling through the dark forest, into some forbidden zone, some land lost in time, lost from time, a massive emptiness, as beautiful as it is lonely and ominous, and this is the soundtrack to that lost world. So intense and haunting and unlike any other dubstep, or electronic music even, that we've heard before. The rare sort of record that lets even the most jaded and heard-it-all listener get totally, and fantastically lost.
And if you need more than our effusive gushing praise, look no further than Fenriz, 1/2 of legendary black metal duo Darkthrone, a long time lover of techno and electronic music, who has this to say about Clubroot:
"This is the sort of soaring dubstep I'd never expect to come out of the US! I just transferred the adorable "Embryo" track to my MP3 player FAVES 09 list, as I am going tenting and swimming in a forest lake tomorrow with some connoiceur-friends [sic]. It's sleek and not nasty, the melodic kind and not the grimy. But wait a minute, it seems like the newest tracks are on first, as the last songs drift into some de-tranced balearic style, even with vocals stabs and 90s synths! Blimey."
And if you can't trust Fenriz on matters of dubstep, then who can you trust? WAY recommended. And quite possibly dubstep record of the year!
ULTRA limited repress of this long out of print aQ favorite, remastered, and with a slightly different sequence, pressed on heavy white vinyl, and hand numbered (only 200 copies!!!). Here's our review from when we first listed this way back in 2009...
One of two favorite dubstep discs of the year (2009) so far, the first full length from mysterious atmospheric dubstep soundscaper Clubroot.
We know nothing about this guy, other than he takes that dubbed out skitter we love so much and sets it in expansive fields of swirling ambience, creeped out dronescapes and all manner of super evocative and gorgeously textural soundworlds. Where as most dubstep is super spare and stripped down, skeletal even, the sound here is lush and sprawling. Thick layers of synths whir and shimmer and buzz, deep swells throbbing and pulsing, everything hazy and gauzy and washed out, every song some sort of otherworldy dreamscape, shot through with some super bad ass bit of pounding churning dubstep stutter. The massive basslines and fluctuating synth buzz that usually adds texture to typical dubstep, here just becomes another element in Clubroot's mysterious mist shrouded sonic landscape.
The cover features a lonely tree, set atop a rocky outcropping, the sky dense with clouds, the picture all misty and hauntingly lonely seeming, which perfectly reflects the mood of the music here. Strip away the beats, and you'd still be left with an incredible bit of blackened new age swirl, of abstract kosmiche krautdrone, but add the beats, and these sounds become something entirely other. This is definitely not dancemusic, this is mind expansion music. Late night, lights off, starting at the stars drifting off, other dimension, spaced out, dream dub music.
Clubroot taps into the same darkside as Burial, and Kode9, and the more atmospheric beatmakers, but where those guys pull back before the fog grows to thick, Clubroot pushes forward, traveling through the dark forest, into some forbidden zone, some land lost in time, lost from time, a massive emptiness, as beautiful as it is lonely and ominous, and this is the soundtrack to that lost world. So intense and haunting and unlike any other dubstep, or electronic music even, that we've heard before. The rare sort of record that lets even the most jaded and heard-it-all listener get totally, and fantastically lost.
And if you need more than our effusive gushing praise, look no further than Fenriz, 1/2 of legendary black metal duo Darkthrone, a long time lover of techno and electronic music, who has this to say about Clubroot:
"This is the sort of soaring dubstep I'd never expect to come out of the US! I just transferred the adorable "Embryo" track to my MP3 player FAVES 09 list, as I am going tenting and swimming in a forest lake tomorrow with some connoiceur-friends [sic]. It's sleek and not nasty, the melodic kind and not the grimy. But wait a minute, it seems like the newest tracks are on first, as the last songs drift into some de-tranced balearic style, even with vocals stabs and 90s synths! Blimey."
And if you can't trust Fenriz on matters of dubstep, then who can you trust? WAY recommended. And quite possibly dubstep record of 2009, and we're guessing many years to follow!
The debut from Clues, cousins to Montreal's The Arcade Fire and Unicorns, might best be described as an amalgamation of those two bands, with a definite leaning towards the strange pop sensibilities of Unicorns. The record opens with an eclectic track that starts slow and noisy, with jangly guitars and Alden Penner's breathy and nasal (yet never annoying) Wayne Coyne-esque voice, building into an unexpected freak-out ending that lasts less than a minute. There's a lot of great stops and starts on this record. For example on the second track "Remember Severed Head", there's a few times when the drums all of a sudden disappear, replaced by a bit of noisy screeching and a deft guitar line, only to come back a few seconds later backed by a lot of distortion and Penner's vocals. On "Cave Mouth", a xylophone line in the left channel compliments the guitar and synth leads, flushing out the more traditional rock instrumentation of the rest of the record. There's a few anthem-like Arcade Fire elements - a bit of a sing-along chorus on the penultimate track "Ledmonton" and some horns here and there spice up the songwriting nicely. The slower/softer moments on the record, "In the Dream" and "Let's Get Strong" aren't quite as powerful as the more rocking tracks, though the shoegazey second half of "You Have My Eyes Now" blows us away every time the guitars punch in. A must have for fans of strange pop music.
Goin' a little Cluster crazy over here. This list we've got two archival Kluster releases, and this brand new Cluster disc. We've also got our memories of the Cluster duo Moebius and Roedelius playing here at Aquarius last month, which was amazing! If you don't know who or what we're talking about, please look to some of our other Cluster reviews elsewhere on our website for more information about this fantastic band of German electronic music innovators, who still kick ass (in their relatively calm, quiet, and well-crafted manner).
Cluster fans who missed their recent shows (in NYC, Chicago, LA, Big Sur, Santa Cruz, and SF) can get some kind of idea of what it was like from this live recording, documenting their historic "reunion" show in Berlin last year. Not only was it the concert that brought Cluster together again after about a decade-long hiatus, it was also the first time they'd performed live in Berlin since 1969! While this isn't exactly the set they were playing on tour in the States (it can't be, since they do different stuff every night, always creatively improvising), it'll give you an idea...
This disc is broken into two long tracks, textural soundscapes full of ambient shimmer, gently oscillating melody, mysterious noises, soothing drones, and occasional beats that sound sampled from a mad scientist's laboratory... or, it sounds like you're on some sort of twilight safari in an electronic jungle... definitely demonstrating the debt that the likes of Aphex Twin owe to electronica originals Cluster! And while this won't supplant their '70s classics like Zuckerzeit and Soweisoso in your collection, nor does it tarnish their legacy in any way.
Someone had told us that they now used laptop computers, which bummed us out just a bit... well turns out that's absolutely not true! Cluster had all kinds of gear, both digital and analog, but NO laptops, and Moebius jokingly told us that he'd probably be too dumb to figure out how to use one (doubtful). On this recording, both M & R are simply credited with playing synthesizers and "objects" though we bet there's techie nerds out there that would like to know more... And finally, in case you're worried we're just a bit too Cluster crazy, this disc also passed the "didn't have any idea what was playing in the front of the store and came out of the office just to find out 'cause it sounded so weird and interesting" test!
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Back in print, now in a nicer edition on Bureau-B!
Nobody did spaced out krauty ambiance better than Berlin's Cluster. Maybe best known for their collaboration with Brian Eno, it was their work leading up to those monumental records that helped usher in a new wave of sound that's been latched onto and updated by many over the years. It's hard not to hear their influence on folks like Mouse On Mars, Aphex Twin and the atmospheric moments of Kid-A era Radiohead. It's always so great to remember and be reminded that they did it all without synthesizers (really, they say so in the liner notes!). Instead Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conrad Plank were each armed with an organ, effect pedals, analog echo machines, alarm clocks, violin, etc. 3 songs and 40+ minutes long '71 is such a nice record to put the headphones on and begin to wander and fade away into their hypnotizing sounds.
