A splendid live album! Actually this is the first in a series of four volumes of Coil live recordings. And if this cd is any indication of the other three, I can't wait! The series begins with the last two concerts (in Prague and Vienna) of their 2002 tour. As opposed to most of their recent studio recordings, each of which has had a considerably singular - primarily drone-based - focus, this presents a much wider scope of Coil's sound. Incredibly vivid soundscapes, meticulous collages, grand dramatic melodic orchestrations, seething minimal spoken word. Coil expertly traverse through all of these. If you're at all acquainted with their work, you'll hear a number of familiar segments, but they're all wonderfully incorporated into the album as a whole. I'd even venture to say that this live album makes for quite a nice introduction to Coil. That said, the one track that absolutely floored me was "Amethyst Deceivers". Although the audio sample only offers a mere glimpse, please do check it out! Of course it's all beautifully recorded, and the roar of the crowd is kept contained to in between songs - allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the performance that's in turns visceral, whimsical, and totally captivating. Recommended.
MPEG Download: "Amethyst Deceivers" [/audio/coilamethyst.mp3]
Attention Coil fans... The fourth and final volume in this series of live documents has finally arrived, and it's a double cd set. A characteristically ever-evolving, dramatic montage with heaving drones, wheezing strings and sputtering electronics punctuated by John Balance's guttural shouts and moans and other ghostly effected voices. Visceral, beautiful and deeply moving. Yet another version of "Amethyst Deceivers" (one of Cup's favorites) is included on the second disc - a slower, quieter and much more minimal rendering. Furthermore, with the recent dissolution of John Balance and Peter Christopherson's personal and artistic relationships, perhaps this will mark one of the very final releases from this astoundingly groundbreaking and deeply influential British duo. Well... then again, they've probably got a secret vault filled with as yet unreleased Coil recordings.
CD A, titled "The Industrial Use Of Semen Will Revolutionise The Human Race" features three tracks from their April 2000 performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London (please note: this UK live recording was originally released as the Time Machines limited edition cd).
CD B contains six tracks from their Barcelona concert two months later. Coil's perfoming line-up for these dates was Balance, Christopherson, Ossian Brown, and Thighpaulsandra, plus viola player William Breeze joined on in Spain.
Here is the second release in this series capturing the magic of Coil in the live setting. This one presents their April 2002 performance at the Teatro Delle Celebrazioni in Bologna, Italy. For this performance Coil were Jhon Balance and Peter Christopherson; Ossian Brown, Mike York and Cliff Stapleton as well as Pierce and Massimo of the Black Sun Productions collective. Nine tracks: "Anarcadia/All Horned Animals", "Amethyst Deceivers", "Slur ", "A Cold Cell", "Broccoli", "Paranoid Inlay", "Sick Mirrors", "AYOR", and "Backwards".
Yes, we know... although the title of this cd is Live Two, this volume is actually the third to be released in this series of live Coil recordings. To get you oriented, Live Four - the one I (Cup) have listened to most so far - was an excellent document of their most recent performances Prague and Vienna in 2002. It very effectively captured the many facets of Coil. Live Three features their Bologna, Italy concert. This is Coil's presentation in DK Gorbunova, Moscow, Russia in September of 2001. It was a much more scaled down affair in terms of personnel (as opposed to their 2002 lineup) with just four men: Jhon Balance and Peter Christopherson; Thighpaulsandra, and Tom Edwards. However in a sense it's the most raw and testosterone pumped of this series so far, and the crowd responded in kind. Six tracks in all: "Something/Higher Beings Command", "Amethyst Deceivers", "What Kind of Animal Are You", "Blood from the Air", "The Green Child", "Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil".
MPEG Stream: "What Kind Of Animal Are You" [/audio/coilwhatkind.m3u]
The re-issue of "Love's Secret Domain" from 1991 is not unlike unearthing a long lost exquisite treasure. Obsessively coveted and revered over the last decade, it re-emerges still sounding fresh and current. Sadly and strangely, this album was often
During the construction of this album, Coil's core duo -- Peter Christopherson and John Balance -- had immersed themselves in the acid house culture of the UK that flourished around The KLF (I don't care what you think of "What Time is Love," The KLF were geniuses in the art of pop subversion), 808 State, and even the early bleep techno from Warp Records. To Coil, the UK rave culture reflected many of their own ideas of transgression through almost pagan rituals of communities uniting around liberating music, sexual exploration, chemical enlightenment, and the release of hidden dark energies from the body and spirit.
"Love's Secret Domain" embodied a near-perfect harmony between the dark, occultish overtones from their previous albums "Scatology" and "Horse Rotovator" and the technological futurism at the heart of rave culture. Within this synthesis, Coil has not just created a handful of singles (although "The Snow" and "Windowpane" off of this album still make great dancefloor fodder), but has articulated the entire album as a sonic narrative. Swelling through the sampledelic abstraction on "Disco Hospital" (recently covered by admitted Coil fans Matmos) and the surreal tension of "Things Happen" (with Annie Anxiety Bandez' obtuse guest vocal appearance), Coil offers "The Snow" as a magnificient techno track, with creepy cut-ups of choral elements, constantly shifting and reforming melody patterns, and an 808 techno pulse. "Windowpane" in turn is far more seductive in its low slung bassline and downtempo pace. The rest of the album continues through a darkened path of hallucinatory electronics, intricate instrumentations, and occasional bursts of subverted pop sentiment. Unlike a lot of electronica records, nothing on "Love's Secret Domain" ever feels like filler.
This is a marvelous record that even after a decade has very few rivals.
During the past decade, Coil has undergone a drastic metamorphosis that began with the extravagantly dark electronica of "Love's Secret Domain" and continued up to the kosmische ambience of "Musick To Listen To In Dark Vol 2." With all of the albums since
Coil intended to thematically correspond these songs' droning poetry to the solstices and equinoxes corresponding to when they were made. Mostly they center around a miasmic abstraction of spartan, dirge arrangements for a few instruments (cellos, church organs, spanish guitar), maintaining their solemn pursuit into sonic alchemy. For the most part, Coil's John Balance hushes his voice into mere whispers of his pagan recitations, which barely stand out of the lulling instrumentation, although "The White Rainbow" track from the Winter single stands out as a eulogaic song dominated by Balance's rich singing. The album works much better than as a collection of singles whose original release format seemed far too abrupt for the extended atmospheres that are common throughout the whole series.
And to piss off everybody who bought the original series, Coil included a bonus live track.
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While Coil has released a plethora of side-projects (Black Light District, Elph, Time Machines, etc.), soundtracks, and limited singles (including the solstice/ equinox series from 1998) since 'Love's Secret Domain' of 1992, they have finally released the fourth 'proper' Coil album. Dark brooding beatless synth chords and field recordings are slowly unveiled as John Balance delivers a menacing voice-over. Thighpaulsandra (Julian Cope's psychedelic sidekick) joins the band for this album, to effective means, with his Conrad Schnitzler-esque arpeggiated synth attack on 'Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East and Destroy Paris in a Night'. There's been much discussion as to whether 'Musick' holds up, as one of Coil's finer moments. But remove the pressure of the 'Coil legacy', taking it on musical merits alone, and you'll find it to be quite beautiful; a dark, brooding record of 'night music'.
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"Musick To Play In The Dark, Volume Two" is ... not as good as volume one. Obviously these are all of the newagey dregs that didn't make the cut the first time around. Sure, Coil is said to have put on one hell of show at Spain's Sonar festival with ultraviolet strippers and techno-pagan rituals, but that doesn't give them any excuse to release an album as unnecessary as this. I'm turning in my fanclub badge. More dedicated/diehard fans than I will of course want this, badly.
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The timeless electronic swoop of Coil's "Time Machines" repeats itself in the swelling warm drones of mostly analogue synthesis on "Queens of The Circulating Library." John Balance (without Peter Christopherson) had written a poem to be recited by Dorothy Lewis - the mother of Thighpaulsandra who aids in the breathy swells of sound.
Much of the discussion elsewhere on this list about Coil's Black Antlers applies to Remote Viewer as well. This, too, was an album originally released as a limited cd-r, now reissued with considerable remastering, additional production, and even a bunch of new material, more of their signature spectral electronica. Just like Black Antlers, Remote Viewer's funereal tunes warped through the funhouse of chemicals, alcohol, and occultish leanings nowadays take on an eerily prescient quality, as founding member Jhonn Balance died nearly two years ago leaving romantic and musical partner Peter Christopherson with the task of completing the rough mixes found on the earlier cd-rs of Black Antlers and Remote Viewer.
While not really the "moon musick" of Astral Disaster or Musick To Play In The Dark, the slippery tunes of Remote Viewer are mostly devoid of Balance's voice. Instead, hurdy gurdy drones, electrically tinged violin, and sampled bagpipes spiral into an atonal ragas elegantly shifting into deranged and slightly maudlin melodies. As a whole Remote Viewer is much closer to the devilishly sampledelic breakbeat numbers on Love's Secret Domain. Delirious to say the least.
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The Ape Of Naples marks the end of an era for Coil, as the grand finale to a tumultuous career of psychotropic electronica, siddereal ambience, and post-industrial occultations. In November 2004, Jhonn Balance died as the result of an alcohol related accident. In the intervening months, his partner -- both creatively and romantically -- Peter Christopherson resurrected many of the tracks from the ill-fated Backwards sessions as well as unreleased recordings that date back to the beginning of Coil in 1982. It should be noted that Christopherson did not intend The Ape Of Naples to be lumped in with the Stolen and Contaminated series of rare and unreleased material; rather, he shaped the album to reflect his grief and melancholy.
The Backwards sessions were originally commissioned as a follow up to their seminal oblique dance album Love's Secret Domain, which emerged out of Coil's obsession with British acid house and rave culture. In fact, Trent Reznor had brought Coil to his New Orleans studio to record much of those sessions in hopes of releasing the album on his Nothing imprint. Unfortunately, more than a decade went by with only false starts and creative dead ends; and Backwards never emerged. While it's not all that clear if The Ape Of Naples is the album that Coil envisioned when they were making Backwards, The Ape Of Naples stands as a mighty triumph in the Coil pantheon of releases, ranking up there with Horse Rotovator and the aforementioned Love's Secret Domain.
What's so striking about The Ape Of Naples, especially in light of their recent albums of temporal minimalism, is their return to the song structure, and how Jhonn Balance could deliver his beautiful howlings with all of the poetry of Jean Genet. Throughout the album, Christopherson scores elegaic arrangements with an urgent interlocking for marimba and vibraphone, whose gasping repetition serves as a thematic link between all of the material both old and new. The album also features devilish marches of electronic arpeggiation laced with distant throbbing rhythms and Balance's omnipresent vocals, typified by such tracks as "Heaven's Blade" and the reprise of "Teenage Lightning" -- one of the highlight tracks from LSD. A tragically beautiful album through and through.
Issued at the end of 2005, The Ape Of Naples marked the end of an era for Coil. It was the grand finale to a tumultuous career of psychotropic electronica, sidereal ambience, and post-industrial occultations. A year earlier, Jhonn Balance died as the result of an alcohol related accident. In the intervening months, his partner -- both creatively and romantically -- Peter Christopherson resurrected many of the tracks from the ill-fated Backwards sessions as well as unreleased recordings that date back to the beginning of Coil in 1982. It should be noted that Christopherson did not intend The Ape Of Naples to be lumped in with the Stolen and Contaminated series of rare and unreleased material; rather, he shaped the album to reflect his grief and melancholy.
The Backwards sessions were originally commissioned as a follow up to their seminal oblique dance album Love's Secret Domain, which emerged out of Coil's obsession with British acid house and rave culture. In fact, Trent Reznor had brought Coil to his New Orleans studio to record much of those sessions in hopes of releasing the album on his Nothing imprint. Unfortunately, more than a decade went by with only false starts and creative dead ends; and Backwards never emerged. While it's not all that clear if The Ape Of Naples is the album that Coil envisioned when they were making Backwards, The Ape Of Naples stands as a mighty triumph in the Coil pantheon of releases, ranking up there with Horse Rotovator and the aforementioned Love's Secret Domain.
In releasing The Ape Of Naples on vinyl some three years after the original cd, Important Records has bundled the 3LPs of The Ape Of Naples with a fourth LP comprised of Christopherson's further revisitations of the Backwards sessions onto an LP called The New Backwards. These tracks found here may be even better than what's found on The Ape Of Naples. The only drawback is that this 4LP set is a bit pricey, and painfully limited to 500 copies, most of which have already been snatched up.
"The Golden Hare With A Voice Of Silver" collects all of the tracks that been previously released on two Russian compilations, essentially documenting the history of the transgressive British group Coil. Throughout their 20 year career, Coil has defined the pinnacles of both Industrial Culture as well as contemporary electronica through an evolving use of electronics as the vehicle for pagan rituals, apocalyptic languages, plunges into the abject, and celebrations of their homosexuality. While "The Golden Hare" would make for an excellent introduction into the work of Coil as it samples from all of the major periods ("Scatology," "Horse Rotovator," "Love's Secret Domain," "Moon's Milk," "Musick To Listen To In The Dark," etc.), die-hard Coil fans should be intrigued to know that 2 of the tracks ('A Cold Cell' and 'A.Y.O.R.') are rumored to be cuts from their ill-fated 'Backwards' album, which has been long slated for release on Nothing Records since the mid-'90s.
Music for fans of Coil, made by fans of Coil, and released with the blessing of Coil. "The Plastic Spider Thing" is a remix of Coil's past works by Drazen from Black Sun Productions, a Swiss outfit that follows the Coil's aesthetic with incredible precision (often to the point of losing their own personalities to Coil's spell, when Coil themselves emphasize the necessity for individual expression). Originally, this piece was a soundtrack to a sexually explicit performance between the members of Black Sun Productions. Drawing mostly from the lunar ambience of modern Coil (i.e. post "Love's Secret Domain"), Drazen ran Coil's occultish ambience through multiple delay machines and re-sampling techniques to attain a fractured collage of pulsated loops that point back to the original Coil numbers. The lack of John Balance's whispered vocals (which were once Coil's biggest strength on early albums like "Horse Rotovator," but now are the band's weakest link) is welcome for "The Plastic Spider Thing;" but, this album never strives to escape its orbit around Coil's little black sun. If you love Coil, here's another fine album for you. If you're only curious, try the aforementioned "Love's Secret Domain" first.
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In the early '90s, I (Jim) remember seeing a peculiar cassette listed in the RRR catalogue for several years. It was some sort of collaboration between Coil (who I was enthralled with), The New Blockaders (who I was curious about through their work with Organum), and Vortex Campaign (who I thought had a cool name, but knew nothing about). Foolishly, I never picked up that cassette, especially since the damn thing was limited to 50 copies. Oh well. Thankfully, Important Records is doing their best Vinyl-On-Demand impersonation with a hefty reissue of an terminally obscure piece of early noise culture. There's still no background information as to the identity of Vortex Campaign, other than that they are Belgian and that they invited both Coil and The New Blockaders to collaborate on that one off cassette back in 1984. Since then, Vortex Campaign did make an appearance on the Broken Flag 5lp anthology released by Vinyl-On-Demand; but beyond that, they're still a mystery. Coil had gone on to great things in all realms of occult electronics mired in psychedelic darkness; and The New Blockaders had manifested explosive recordings of hellish noise in their pursuit of anti-art.
This lp collects the two sprawling collaborative tracks from that cassette, leaving off the solo Vortex Campaign tracks - just to make me kick myself even more for not buying that cassette back in the day. These are two complex collages of snarling loops, dragged through shit, vomit, and blood leaving a bruised and stained mess of obsessively repetitive growls, blisters, and blurts of industrial noise. The energy on these two tracks is profoundly negative, and could be easily confused with anything that Prurient or Wolf Eyes might muster in this day and age. Supposedly there was a cd version of the cassette, but that too is out of print, leaving this vinyl-only production from Important as a rare glimpse back at these recordings. Limited to 500 copies. We only got a paltry few and that's IT.
There's a bright orange sticker on this new Coil release says: "WARNING. Contents may make you spazz out." Definitely not the sort of sticker you would expect to see on a Coil record. And most certainly not this one. Coilans find the extended Coil family, Johnn Balance, Ossian Brown, Peter Christopherson, Thighpaulsandra and Ivan Pavlov, composing for a 1930's mechanical device called the ANS, a machine designed to convert graphic designs into sound. The text describing the machine is quite dense and technical, and some folks here are convinced it's all a big hoax. The liner notes do however reference two works actually composed for the machine, "Flow" by Alfred Schnitke, and Edward Artemiev's music for Tarkovsky's Solaris, which perhaps does lend some credence to the existence of the machine. Whether Coil actually have a version of the ANS machine as they claim, or are merely making sounds that they imagine might be produced by an ANS is still maybe debatable. But it hardly matters, as the results are sublime. Long, slowly evolving pieces spread across three cds. Gorgeous and minimal, hissing distant drones, insect-like shimmers that pulse and throb into warbling sinewaves, and chiming smears of upper register skree spread into keeing sonic ripples of warbling decay. A series of lush minimal mesmers worthy of Coleclough, Mirror, Arcane Device, Sachiko M, Rafael Toral and other practitioners of fragile high end exploration. The DVD is equally as compelling, a series of beautiful and strangely hypnotic animations by Peter Christopherson, that pulse and squirm and slowly shift along with the music. The whole thing is beautifully packaged in a full color box, inner sleeves depicting details of the ANS machine on one side and the images fed into the machine to produce the sounds on the other.
Anybody making field recordings in Chernobyl is gonna get our attention. Couple that with an allegorical framework about the end of time rendered through allusions from the book of Revelation, and we're even more intrigued. Come Kingdom Come is an impressive modern classical record with all of these traits, those flourishes gracing orchestrations of strings, voice, and electronics, not too dissimilar to the likes of a Johann Johannsson or (dare we say?) Arvo Part. Colbert is an American composer currently living in Portugal with a hand in running the Binaural Residency Program, and has slowly been composing this body of work for years now. In fact, she performed a variation of this piece as a multimedia presentation collecting live VLF signals that she located within her glassine electronics and a video triptych (courtesy of Olivia Block) at The Lab in San Francisco back in 2012. For all of these terminal thoughts and ominous overtones, Colbert conjures a spacious, if somber atmosphere that hangs upon the languid swells from Colbert's sparse arrangements for plaintive piano and strings, sporadically accompanied by vocals from Gabrielle Crowe, who in turn alternates between chorale dreaminess and operatic libretto. The electronics and field recordings too are sparsely situated throughout the album, often presented as ghosts and echoes to the clusters of piano or strings or voice. Come Kingdom Come is a lovely album for sure and was released on Celer's imprint Two Acorns.
We were sad to learn of Grass Widow's break-up after releasing their amazing Internal Logic album back in 2012. Though they are calling it a "hiatus", we're pretty much convinced it's over. Time will tell. Anyway, bass player and vocalist Hannah Lew has spent the past year forming a new band that shares Grass Widow's penchant for enchanting harmonies and song-craft but wrapped in a tighter, sharper and much darker package. Cold Beat reshapes the dark post-punk drive of Joy Division and The Sound with haunting but infectious vocal harmonies and melancholic imagery in a more metallic polished gloss. Like The Mallard's last record, Finding Meaning In Deference, Cold Beat inject a dose of off-kilter energy and damaged beauty into their debut that sets it apart and gives it a fresh feel, like a brand new scar.
While Grass Widow are on a hopefully temporary hiatus, bass player and singer Hannah Lew is staying busy with her brand new outfit Cold Beat. Worms/Year 5772 is their punchy debut single and it's augmented by a remix of each track by Pow! and Mikey Young respectively. Cold Beat has a harder driving beat and garagier gloss than Grass Widow, but the dreamy vocal harmonies of that band have translated over well to this new project.
We're assuming they borrowed their name from a song by the post-punk band The Sound who had similar affinities with guitar driven urgency and high energy rhythms. The remixes mechanize the music by switching out the guitars with synths and providing a dreamier and poppier sheen to the songs. Looking forward to hearing more from this group for sure!
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A sorta freejazz freakout from members of Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Heathen Shame, and No Neck Blues Band, featuring alto and tenor action from saxophonist Paul Flaherty.
The 2010 full length from these Dutch avant shoegaze black metallers was one of our favorite records that year, but for whatever reason we were never able to get enough copies to review on the list. So when we discovered there was in fact a new record, we got in touch with the label directly and got a whole bunch. That first record took super blown out black buzz, and transformed it into something washed out and blissy, dreamlike and majestic, lots of bands do the whole shoegaze black metal thing, but CBR were the first band who did it so perfectly, conjuring up a sound, both heavy and beautiful, in way that was equal measures of both, taking the dreamy dronedirge of groups like Nadja and Jesu and infusing it with some seriously blackened buzz, which instead of darkening the sound, somehow just made it more brilliant and prismatic.
If anything, this new record dials back all the black and buzz, revealing what is essentially a blissed out shoegaze dream pop record, one that sans BM pedigree would have indie rockers and pop kids losing their shit big time. That said, there is still some heaviness, and a blast beat or two, but really for the most part, Deer Twilight is some sort of blissy psychedelic heavy pop, with soaring super saturated guitars, big bombastic drumming, swirling synths, warm clean crooned vox, a super lush layered sound, slow builds and explosive crescendos, super catchy hooks, and dark, dreamy meditative interludes. Think some killer mix of Mogwai, Sigur Ros, Godspeed and Nadja, released on 4AD, or Constellation, or Creation, or somehow all three, the sounds minor key and melodic, moody and melancholy, the bass thick and driving, low slung and rhythmic, the drums subtle but powerful, the guitars and the keyboards woven into lush undulating swells and prismatic bursts of melody, the songs epic and intricate, slipping from darkly doleful, to hauntingly hushed, to explosive and psychedelic and back again, super cinematic and emotionally intense, some of the big loud parts, so dramatic and soundtracky, it's easy to imagine them as the score for some super intense heartbreaking epic, and when the band does lock into something more rock and slightly more blackened, it sounds more like the doom pop of Katatonia, gloomy and melodic, and the sound soon shifts into something more laid back and stripped down, sun dappled and hazily dreamy, the tracks laced with swoonsome strings, that add even further to the cinematic vibe. To be honest, we weren't expecting this new record to be so NOT metal, but we're loving it, A LOT. And while there may not be a whole lot here for metalheads, for folks into epic dramatic shoegazey dreampop and metalgaze and post rock and gloom pop, this is most definitely your new favorite record.
The first new release in a while from these Dutch black metal shoegazers, who even at their heaviest, were barely black metal at all, existing on a plane only tangentially related to the typical BM buzz and blast, with a sound more akin to post black metal experimentalists like Alcest, Les Discrets and Amesoeurs, and even in that company, CBR were way on the poppy side of the spectrum, their sound lush and lovely, more 4AD and MBV than anything, and very little has changed on this new single, if anything their sound has grown even more lush and lovely. There's still some buzz, but it's washed out and drowsy, dreamy and ethereal. Crystalline guitars, warm woozy basslines, thick swaths of billowy shoegaze guitar, achingly melancholic melodies, clean, crooned vocals, there's definitely a Nadja feel to the sound, although it's much more blissed out and dreamy.
The B side here is a bit more propulsive and rocking, with some subtle electronic filigree, but even with a bit more crunch and buzz in the guitars, it's still the same gloriously dreamy, washed out sun dappled shoegaze poppiness. Black metal fans who dig the above mentioned bands, and have no aversion to shoegaze pop, might take a chance, but for folks who love My Bloody Valentine, The Swirlies, Teenage Filmstars, and all the rest, these guys definitely belong in your collection too, don't let the black metal classification dissuade you, this is pure fuzzed out shoegaze heavy pop bliss.
Packaged in a nice full color jacket. Sorry, no download.
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This new one from cold wave gloom poppers Cold Cave definitely threw us for a loop at first. Although really, we shouldn't have been all that surprised, as the sound of Cold Cave has definitely seemed to be moving away from the underground for a while now. And it seems this is the record where they're finally going for it. Big time. The sounds are essentially the same, classic eighties synth pop, but here, that sound is delivered with such vitriol and bombast. And given such a massive shiny production, and hell even the songs are poppier and catchier and more commercial sounding. Folks were shocked when Cold Cave's "Life Magazine" wound up on a Radioshack commercial, and Cherish The Light Years takes that whole thing a step further, positioning themselves as a sort of stadium rock version of their former selves. It's still gloomy synth pop, but now the synths are epic and majestic, the arrangements too, and the vocals, even more dramatic and strident and ready to lead sing alongs at Madison Square Garden. If you didn't know this was Cold Cave, you might confusionally cycle through the various possibilities: Interpol, Maximo Park, The National, The Editors, yeah, seems weird, and it is, but this is the new Cold Cave, stadium rock era Depeche Mode merged with the new wave of, well new wave. We've seen folks mention New Order, and even Scott Walker, and those definitely could apply, but the Depeche Mode vibe is huge, imagine classic DM with a super modern production, and that's pretty much Cherish The Light Years. Lots of folks around here hated this at first, but once you get over the disappointment that there won't be any more Cold Cave records like Love Comes Close, and just embrace this new sound, this is actually pretty rad.
Cremations is a collection of previously released tracks from the darling noisenik / minimal wave project Cold Cave, the bulk of which had been so painfully limited that they might as well have not been at all. The first three cuts should be familiar to most Aquarius readers, being from Cold Cave's awesome 7" single Painted Nails. The other tracks came from a cassette and an LP, both of which Cold Cave's Wes Eisold released through his Heartworm Press as editions of 100 in 2009 and 2007 respectively. The description we gave to the Painted Nails single is still apt: a morose and melodic blast of blown out noise-wave, a corrosive chunk of Cure-meets-Whitehouse or New Order-meets-Wolf Eyes. The tracks that follow the Painted Nails single on this collection certainly live up to the hype of that single, standing as lo-fi, scribbled new wave tunes for simple bass-synth lines, eerie-as-hell melodies, tinny drum machines, and alienated vocals with plenty of megaphone noise and 4-track scratchiness embedded into the mix. Cold Cave also tosses in some incidental music tracks which sort of sound like the interludes from Christian Death's Elektra Descending redone for Brian Eno's Music for Airports. It should be noted that none of the tracks here have been fleshed out like the incredible The Trees Grew Emotions And Died 12" which came and went a couple months back, and we don't mean that as a negative. Seriously, how many times have we championed the shittiest recordings on the crappiest media: flexi-disc, microcassette, wire recordings, shortwave, etc. And much of Cold Cave's grit and grime on Cremations appeals to that very aesthetic of ours. In fact a lot of these tracks remind us of some of our favorite electronic punk acts of the new dark age: The Screamers, Primitive Calculators, early Severed Heads, Dark Day, etc. You won't just be hearing it from us: this is incredible!
(This IS coming out on vinyl too, eventually, but we have no date for that yet...)
Synthesized Philly gloom pop merchants Cold Cave continue their winning streak here, offering a nice companion piece to the recent (as in, like, "this list" recent) Matador reissue of the unanimously agreed upon Love Comes Close. Curiously, Death Comes Close actually kicks off with the song "Love Comes Close", a cool New Order-esque track, which as we mentioned in our review of the album, is "a DEAD RINGER for the melody in the infamous mirror dance scene in Silence Of The Lambs." Next up is "Double Lives In Single Beds", where CC mainman Wes Eisold waxes gothically over a catchy little synth groove with spacey sustained chords and a simple programmed drum beat. The B-side begins with the upbeat "Theme From Tomorrowland", probably our favorite song here. The title is apt, with its futuristic synth pulses and throbs, with Eisold backed up by catchy girl vocals for a nice ethereal effect. "Now That I'm In The Future" rides with a cool fuzzy synth groove. We were gonna say it's "dramatic", but, uh, that's sort of Cold Cave's thing. Either way, it's awesome, and even without soundclips, we probably don't need to do too much convincing as everyone is going crazy for these guys, with good reason.
On one end of the Cold Cave spectrum, there is the blistering terror of low-fi electronics with sparse hints of new wave flecked through a sound better suited to Wolf Eyes; and on the other, Cold Cave can effortlessly toss out a darkly pop-eyed, minimal wave gem that wouldn't out of place next to Depeche Mode or Gary Numan. So far, Cold Cave (aka Wes Eisold) has not done us wrong no matter what he ends up producing. The hyper limited Etsel And Ruby 12" is of the latter, poppier sensibility, in the footsteps of the terminally catchy single The Trees Grew Emotions And Died from 2008. The production values here are a little higher than the gutter-punk scratchiness found on the Cremations collection; and while punchier drum machines and upfront vocals give Cold Cave a gloss with a broader appeal, we seriously hope that he doesn't leave the nastier sound behind.
The A side "Love Comes Close" is a jangly, jaunty number that could very well be a lost track from The Cure's The Head On The Door, with Eisold's croon almost sounding like Stephin Merritt. The first of two B sides finds Eisold handing over the vocal duties to an unknown female singer, whose detached, cold vocals fit perfectly with the Cure / Joy Division basslines laced around the darkened electronics. The cut is like the best Fad Gadget song you've never heard before, with an insistent electroid melody that builds and builds throughout the track. Great stuff. Limited to 300 copies!!! Available only from the label and right here at aQ!
We mentioned that Cold Cave threw us for a loop with all of the roccoco flourishes that adorned the gloomy synth-pop of their 2011 album Cherish The Light Years. Since then, Cold Cave has steadily released a handful of singles through their own Heartworm imprint, many of which have disappeared almost as soon as they were released. We might have had one or two of those singles at one time or another, but we were never able to get enough stock to list any one of those. Thankfully, Wes Eisold, the man behind Cold Cave, has compiled all of those singles, recorded from 2011 to 2014, on to this single disc right here. These singles represent the simpler, skeletal sound of Cold Cave that struck our fancy way back when. A drum machine, a step sequenced melody, an icy yet harmonic counterpoint, and Eisold's deep monotone croon. That's pretty much the successful formula for a great Cold Cave song, and Eisold pretty much sticks to this strategy. The one notable exception is the Jesus & Mary Chain distorto-crush electronics of the Oceans With No End single. The other singles that round out the compilation include A Little Death To Laugh, Black Boots, God Made The World, and a handful of digital only cuts.
You wonder about a vinyl version? The answer now is a resounding maybe...
"Life Magazine" stood as one of the big hits from Cold Cave's incredible darkened synth-pop album Love Comes Close from 2009. With its squelchy synth lines and monomaniacal drum machines, this was also the song that curiously enough, appeared on a Radio Shack commercial shortly after the release of the record. Here, Cold Cave gets remixed by Arthur Baker, Optimo, Pantha Du Prince, and Prurient. The Arthur Baker connection is quite a nice coup for the band, as Baker was the producer who amped up many a New Order track throughout the '80s certainly influencing Cold Cave's retrogarde sound. Baker's remix stays true to the original, maintaining that amazing synth melody and the vocals from Jennifer Clavin. Optimo strips everything except for the vocals on this prickly techno workout. It's hard to pick much out from the Pantha Du Prince remix with his signature bells sliding over the post-Kompakt shuffling drum programs. Prurient has been moonlighting in Cold Cave's live ensemble and collaborated with Cold Cave on the awesomely bleak Stars Explode LP. This is not the sheer hellish noise facade of Prurient, but rather the one who must still be obsessed with Cold Cave's gnarled electronics on Painted Nails and Cremations. A dour two-note melody and mid-tempo galloping drum machine settle above a seabed of distorted gristle and Ms. Clavin's vocals. Gotta say that the Prurient and Arthur Baker mixes, as opposing as they can be, are the reasons to pick this up! Comes with a download card.
Cold Cave have really been making the rounds as of late, but unless you were one of the lucky few to obtain some of their super limited vinyl only platters or their recent Cremations collection (which is still available), you may have been left out in the... cold. HAHA! But anyway, Love Comes Close is the first official Cold Cave record, though it does include the three songs (re-recorded?) off the band's disgustingly limited Etsel and Ruby 12" which we had for about 5 minutes, as well as the song "The Trees Grew Emotions And Died" from the ep of the same name, all of them winners. We are happy to report that this baby more than ably lives up to all the hype. It's not that the sound of Cold Cave is revolutionary or progressive... nay, in far less skilled hands, this could easily be filed under the "derivative shit" category, but Cold Cave's remarkable melodic sense and keen understanding of songcraft are so expertly handled that their tunes come off more like lost synth pop classics. It's actually a bit unbelievable just how darkly catchy these songs are, and how they will just pop into your head at random moments like they've been there for ages. Cold Cave's music is the perfect combination of everything that is great about '80s synth based music with none of the dated cheesiness, or maybe more appropriately, just the right amount of dated cheesiness. OMD styled melodies and uber dramatic vocals from the school of Ian Curtis meld with throbbing rhythms, awesome life denying lyrics, and a pronounced gothic element, but goth as interpreted by hardcore kids. All of these combined are enough to make Cold Cave stand out from the rest of the pack. Plus, you know it's gotta be good when various folks may *want* to dislike something but can't muster the hate in their hearts simply because it's so great.
The album kicks off with "Cebe And Me", with super minimal percussion and murky, distorted female vocals that weave around a repetitive synth buzz. This sets things up perfectly for the next track, "Love Comes Close," with CC mainman Wes Eisold's deadpan vocals and music that manages to be both upbeat and melancholy as hell. The real kicker with this one, however, is the fact that it is a DEAD RINGER for the melody in the infamous mirror dance scene in Silence Of The Lambs. So now all you dudes can fashion a mangina and prance naked in front of your mirror within the comfort of your own home, just like Buffalo Bill. "Life Magazine" utilizes a blown out buzzy keyboard to hold the foundation while more down to earth programming and amazing female vocals courtesy of one time Xiu Xiu collaborator Caralee McElroy help to make this maybe our favorite track on the album. A reedy little synth melody sits atop everything else, and the dreaminess of it all sends things way off into the clouds... Goddamn, it's so good.
Naming a song "Heaven Was Full" definitely sets the bar pretty high, you're pretty much obligated to make it awesome, and that's just what Cold Cave did with this one. Subsonic oscillations swirl below what sounds like wispy winds made by a synthesizer, accompanied by Eisold's low croon and some of the catchiest and most beautiful melodies on the album. The slow movement of this piece really strikes an emotional chord, it's a real downer, but it's so irresistible it hurts. "The Tree Grew Emotions And Died" features some cool clanky drum machines with staccato boy/girl vocals and an ever present layer of super blown out guitars (we think), with a nice, slightly bouncy keyboard melody carrying the song forward. Album closer "I.C.D.K." is a quirky yet slightly ominous dance number that will certainly keep many an ass shaking all night long, and when it's all over, you first instinct will be to put Love Comes Close on for another round.
Undoubtedly Cold Cave will have trouble escaping comparisons to bands like the Cure, Joy Division, and even the Magnetic Fields at times, and not without good reason. But the band's greatest strength is its ability to go beyond their influences and deliver music that is too amazing and well written to be ignored. If you don't dig it, it doesn't mean people will respect your supposed impeccable taste and appreciation for groundbreaking music... it means you're missing out.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Seven inches of awesomely depressive distortion drenched new wave downer pop. Imagine a couple of old school synth pop classics, dipped in a vat of white noise, then rolled around in shards of fractured synth buzz and crumbling distortion, a morose and melodic blast of blown out noise-wave, a corrosive chunk of Cure-meets-Whitehouse or New Order-meets-Wolf Eyes. The surface is a prickly wall of in-the-red lo-fi fuzz, a curtain of soft focus blacknoise, but just below that surface lurks a secret heart of classic eighties new wave, the programmed rhythms, the swirling synths, the deep dramatic vocals, but taken together, this is everything we always wanted new wave to be, harsh and heavy and dark and deliriously catchy, buzzy and brutal and abrasive but still fuzzy and hooky and weirdly melodic. The B side takes CC's noisy new wave even further out, the sound generously doused with heaps of that blissy Tim Hecker-ish blur of which we can never get enough.
In listening to the few releases from Cold Cave (to date, just this 12" and the "Painted Nails" 7" on Hospital), we can easily see Cold Cave becoming huge. Maybe not as megalomaniacally huge as Coldplay or U2; but maybe there's a Wire or XLR8R cover for Cold Cave to grace sometime in the future. The Trees Grew Emotions And Died predated the heavily acclaimed Painted Nails single; and like that single, this gem of crunched noise mingling with retro-garde synth pop has gone in and out of print several times. It's still a limited pressing of 500 copies, so be forewarned!
Cold Cave is the work of one Wes Eisold, who fronted a couple of East Coast hardcore bands before starting a collection of thrift store samplers and synthesizers. In wiring all of these half-functioning devices through various effects and distortion pedals, he's arrived at an abrasive minimal wave sound that has two feet firmly planted in the worlds of New Order and Wolf Eyes. Had Eisold added a guitar into the mix, Cold Cave might have ended up not all that far from those brilliant bliss pop mutations from Woodsist (i.e. Crystal Stilts, Blank Dogs, Wavves, etc.), but he's admitted that part of his frustration with hardcore was over his two-decade losing battle in learning the guitar. So, the synthesizer is the instrument of choice for Cold Cave. This three track EP showcases his pop genius with minor key melodies bobbing along insistent drum machines and sinister atmospheres. "Heaven's Gate" and "Our Tears Help The Flowers Grow" start with the minor-key synth melodies which buttress Depeche Mode's Violator and The Cure's Faith, with megaphone distortion crackling the detached male / female vocals. The title track is considerably up-tempo and up-beat with a bouncy melody that WILL get stuck in your head in all the right ways, like those incredible singles which made their way onto the first Adult. album. Very highly recommended!
Originally released as an insanely limited cassette tape to coincide with a tour, this collaborative recording is now available as a spiffy, and still limited, lp, and includes a bonus track NOT on the original tape.
What might one expect from this match up, some cool cold wave grooves with howling noise drenched vocals, or better yet some heavy harsh noise shot through with dark moody melodies, and cold synths? Well, the weird thing is, this doesn't sound like either band, together or separate. Instead, this is swirling psychedelic synth space drone ambience, a little blissed out, a little brooding and ominous, all starry shimmer and blackly abstract, but plenty dark and definitely a little malevolent. Huge expanses of muted feedback, processed rumbles and whirs, buried melodies, all softly heaving in deep black swells, shot through with ever shifting textures. The B-side though gets downright poppy, still space-y and abstract, but infused with some seriously shoegazey shimmer, melodies much closer to the surface, glimmery and gauzey, with a distant rhythms, skittery and hushed, that over the course of the side, builds to a fairly aggressive industrial pound, while the sounds around it grow more and more bleak and caustic.
And then there's the extra track, which is easily the poppiest of the bunch, a soft focus M83 / Nadja / Jesu bit of blissy pop ambient drift, swirly and abstract, with wordless vocals adding to soft space-y psychedelia until some super strange vocals come in, a little harsh, heavily processed, distorted and menacing, wrapped around distant grinding guitars, and for a few moments it suddenly does sound very much like we imagined it would.
And of course, EXTREMELY LIMITED.
The majority of folks out there are probably mostly excited about this soundtrack for the 5 new tracks from JACK WHITE OF THE WHITE STRIPES! Which is fine, but even if that's not your reason for being interested, you'll be pleased to discover that this is actually a really gorgeous compilation of new and old Appalachian folk and gospel. And while we could care less, the surprise here is indeed Jack White, and his creepy crawly blues folk. If he wasn't so intent on ruling garage-land, he'd most certainly be hot on the heels of Sixteen Horsepower, Woven Hand and Mark Lanegan in the raspy, lonely, swampish, Biblical damnation-and-salvation folk-blues stakes. He's got a sonorous but scratchy whiskey-soaked drawl, that wraps itself seductively around whatever he's singing, and the arrangements, spare and melancholy, are the perfect tattered backdrop. The rest of this soundtrack is no slouch either, with beautiful tracks from Alison Krauss, Cassie Franklin, Sacred Harp Singers, Reeltime Travellers and more.
The Buried By Time And Dust label, as their name implies, specialize (mainly) in digging up dusty old treasures from the vaults... of DOOOOM! In the past, they've brought us vinyl reissues by such doom metal legends as Witchfinder General, Pagan Altar, and Solstice.
This latest release digs even deeper into the underground. Cold Mourning were (are?) a bona fide cult doom metal band, from the '90s, based in the "misty and miserable" locale of Monterey, California. They released one full-length cd back in the day, Lower Than Low on Game Two Records, and also did a lot of splits, with the likes of While Heaven Wept, Officium Triste, and Twisted Tower Dire.
If you haven't heard of Cold Mourning before, you might still be familiar with their guitarist Angelo Tringali 'cause he's member of AQ faves Slough Feg (he replaced Hammers Of Misfortune's John Cobbett on second lead guitar some years back). While Slough Feg have their occasionally doomy moments, Cold Mourning are a much sludgier proposition, inspired especially by Saint Vitus, but more grim and freezing.
Their songs from the abovementioned splits are all found here, along with demos, previously unreleased rehearsal recordings, and more, circa 1995-'98, including their track "Boggy Creek" from the Miskatonic Records cd comp At The Mountains Of Madness.
True doom fiends will definitely want to get their doom on with Colder Than Thou. 'Tis for fans of Vitus as well as The Gates Of Slumber, for instance.
Deluxe gatefold double vinyl, packaged with an eight page booklet full of b&w live photos, demo tape covers, lyrics, etc. Suitably thick and heavy, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Indeed. The self-proclaimed California underground doom metal kings Cold Mourning present their first full-length cd release. Simple, slow, crushing stuff, almost more punk than metal (they even do a Discharge cover). Definitely one for Saint Vitus fans, although the vocals are a bit...rough. So if you're a stickler for good vocals, take a pass. But if sub-Sabbath heaviness is more your priority, go ahead and check 'em out.
Although, from their not particularly atypical name and logo, you might expect just another business-as-usual Nordic black metal horde, corpsepainted and kvlt-y, this is NOT just another BM (or, USBM in their case as they hail from New Hampshire) band. Nosirree. We figured that out right away, when the vocals started up on "A Dangerous Wayfaring" and weren't a grim rasp, but rather a faux-British accented chorus. The more usual sort of guttural gruffness also soon appears, but CNV had piqued our interest, and we kept listening with curious anticipation that was quickly rewarded by this album's unexpected and unusual blend of underground black metal, goth rock, and industrial. Actually CNV also had our attention 'cause this comes from the same label, Bindrune, who last brought us Blood Of The Black Owl's A Feral Spirit, another unique and experimental metal offering.
This isn't quite as weird as that record, but this eclectic effort certainly captivates chaotically with majestically catchy riffage, Gobliny soundtrack synths, clean vocal singalongs, and even all-acoustic mellow moodiness ("The Shores Of New England"). Our favorite element though is what might be termed their Satanic industrial sound, with sampling and sequencing, the best example of which is "The By-Paths To Chaos", a rhythmic exercise in sinister, cut-and-paste percussive clockwork. Very cool. Hail Cold Northern Vengeance!!
An absolutely killer blast of gloomy post punk from these new comers on Mexican Summer, with an A side that might just be our new favorite jam! Buzzy, noisy, jangly, a little murky, dour low slung noise pop with deep vox, reminding us a LOT of Crystal Stilts, and sounding a bit like a more jangly Interpol. Warm jangly guitars wrapped around jagged riffage, thick Joy Division basslines, and then part way through some surprise female vocals, which changes the vibe completely, as the two vocalists do a little call and response before joining in some seriously divine boy/girl harmonies, and let's not forget the super hooky effects drenched guitar refrain, that seems to function as the chorus. So catchy, and so goddamn good. We listened to the A side about 20 times before we could bring ourselves to flip the record. But guess what? The B side kills too, like a more dirgey version of the flipside, even more gloomy, reminding us of the Wipers, Crystal Stilts again, Naked On The Vague, and all those old Aussie post punk bands we love so much (Scientists, Celibate Rifles, etc.) So good, can't wait for the full length!
Debut full length from this LA outfit who fuse shimmering shoegaze blissouts to churning, taut, cold/new wave rhythms, everything murky and synthy, taut and sinewy, tribal drums and crooned heavily effected vox, a little bit gloomy, a lot gothy, all driven by some punkish pound, and crazy catchy, a rad retro sound that's equal parts classic Factory Records, 4AD gloom pop and urgent low slung post-punk crunch. We can't help but be reminded of some other bands mining similar territory recently, most notably the Holograms and Iceage, and of course we hear plenty of Interpol here as well, but Cold Showers traffic in something much more murky and dramatic, brooding and intense, less wiry and punky, more hypnotic and tranced out, with the songs locking into super mesmerizing cyclical grooves, which stretch way out, before blossoming into some impossibly hook melody, or swirling psychedelic squall. The vocals especially add a different dimension, way more croony and moody, which along with the soaring spidery melodies, and the driving Joy Division-y basslines give Love And Regret a serious classic new wave vibe, and when the female vocals swoop in sparring with the male, we can't help but think of a cold wave X, which is most definitely a good thing. Cold Showers could easily have ended up on Captured Tracks or Sacred Bones, and fans of either/both will very likely dig, as will anyone into dour gloomy new wave pop, and obviously fans of all the above mentioned outfits. Definitely a new favorite around here...
Latest blast of brooding shoegazey new wave gloom pop from this LA combo, and like their Love And Regret full length, the sound is all chiming guitars, swirling synths, driving rhythms and Joy Division bass lines, but the A side here blossoms into something noisier and buzzier, the sounds blurred and distorted, the vocals swooping in trailing a cloud of crumbling distortion, heavily effected, buried in the mix, a dramatic croon that's transformed into something a bit more fierce, but without taking away any of the tracks melancholic Cure-ness. The flipside is a smoldering gothic torch song, a piano driven dirge, moody and haunting, darkly psychedelic and softly swirling, an atmospheric Nick Cave like creep that's laced with some well placed saxophone which buzzes and bleats, adding some angular tension to the otherwise downcast proceedings.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Dark shadows is right, dark shadows from a cold, old sun. Long dark shadows stretching across decades... This legendary 1970 demo recording from Austin, Texas psychedelic rock group Cold Sun has never before been on cd, and only just barely been on vinyl. There's record collectors sitting on desert islands somewhere out there, wishing they had a copy of this to keep them company. It's one of the most cult and obscure and oh so welcome psych reissues in recent memory, that's for sure. Well worthy of its whispered rep, Cold Sun is dark, spectral, tripped out garage-psych in the '60s Texas vein of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators. Indeed, the guys from Cold Sun went on to back up Roky in his band the Aliens, not much longer later.
Band leader Bill Miller sings, in an fragile yet urgent drawl, sounding rather like Roky himself, and also plays acid-rock leads on an electric, amplified autoharp (that's right, autoharp, a zither that's usually more of a country/folk/bluegrass instrument) which really gives Cold Sun an outsider edge... and while there's also the requisite dose of fuzz guitar here, Cold Sun can't be reduced to the "fuzz monster" category. It's all together weirder and more affecting than that. Aside from Miller's autoharp, part of what makes it so strange and so special are his lyrics. Take for instance the opening few lines of track one, "South Texas" (if we've transcribed 'em properly): "You have seen the eyes of the geko staring out watching from the crack in the wall you were thinking of going right through but it's outside it's not you you have heard the voice of the gekos telling each other here comes another robot it's a swarm of night climbing dragons crawling out searching just walking cross the ceiling..." Except when he says "robot" it sounds like someone else is saying "human" at the same time. And it just goes on and on getting weirder and weirder, its emotional essence aided by the outsiderishness of the delivery, acid-serious and plaintive. Goes so perfectly with Cold Sun's lysergic layers of sinuous sound. Yep, you can see that this is an example, perhaps thee ultimate example, of that unique Texas, desert psych style... they've got their own, otherworldly, feverish tradition of that down there.
The Cold Sun demo (and not even all of it) was pressed to acetate in 1973 in an edition of just ONE copy. And then it was lost to the sands of time, until reissue label Rockadelic did an LP version in 1990 that caused a bit of a stir amongst psych-hounds... and was limited to only 300 copies itself. But THIS cd edition is the definitive one, including all the music from the demo tape -and- two live bonus tracks! (The live tracks, recorded in 1972, are of songs not on the demo, and are quite worthy, being just a bit hissier and lower-fi than the demo itself, and maybe slightly harder rocking.) It's also got enthusiastic liner notes from noted psych nerd Jello Biafra (!), and also from Cold Sun's Bill Miller himself. World In Sound has done a nice job with this holy grail reissue, we're sure they took the responsibility pretty seriously. Now everyone, at last, can hear these truly psychedelic, (cold) sun-baked sounds...
Cold War Kids are like the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Before you or I have even heard a single note of music, we've already read about them in every magazine, every blog, we know we're supposed to be prepared to love them more than any band we've ever heard. It's weird, good bands do deserve to be hyped, but at some point that sort of hype does as much damage as it does good. We were pretty much prepared to hate these guys. But you know what, fuck it. We don't care what we're supposed to do, or like, or think. We threw this on and tried to forget everything we'd heard and read, and you know what, this is pretty darn good. A groovy slinky bluesy indie rock heavy on the piano, guitar jangle, simple shuffling percussion that sometimes builds into a serious thump, but it's the vocals that pretty much define their sound. A gorgeous high wailing croon, a mix of Jack White, Robert Plant, the guys from Wolfmother and Rufus Wainwright. Going from slithery to super dramatic, whispery to campy, but always super emotional, wrapped languidly around any melody that comes its way. You can definitely see these guys getting huge. They're simultaneously a jangly indie rock band and a very theatrical chamber rock performance troop. They probably kill in tiny clubs, they sound huge and flamboyant and wild, but they'll probably end up in theaters and galleries, performing for the upper crust and art elite. But maybe you'll get lucky and see them before that happens. Might already be too late.
Be sure and stick around for the hidden secret track, a killer lo-fi gospel blues jam that sounds like Wainwright via Dylan! Nice.
In 1996, Coldcut, the UK duo of Jonathon More and Matt Black, ex-radio djs turned freestyle mixers / producers / remixers, released an album called Journeys By DJ, and it has finally been reissued: a 70-minute disc that has many times been called the best mix album of all time. Well... it's pretty inspired and great, that's for sure. Throwing in everything from Mantronix to Photek to Jhelisa, Red Snapper, Harold Budd, Jello Biafra, Junior Reid, and a lot more, Coldcut seamlessly connects everything using a variety or breakbeat tricks, jungle beats, vocal snippets, atomospheric bits. Lesser DJs (I guess that would be everyone else) oughta listen and learn. Pretty great.
