If this cd-r is any indication (which we assume it is, duh!) these Coolies are not those Simon & Garfunkel-covering punk rock-opera (!) guys from back in the '80s -- much to Andee's chagrin, mention of this band really got his hopes up. No although these Coolies are also punk rock, they're more of the lo-lo-fi and lo-lo-skilled sort. But they don't let that take away from their good times... nor will it take away from yours if you like your rawk super messy and super trashy. Actually if that's the case, your party might even rev up a notch if you pop this baby on your stereo. Just imagine if the Coachwhips were three teenage girls... lotsa yellin' and bangin' on drums and sloppy guitar chords and probably lotsa PBR (or the New Zealand equivalent to that brew). This release comes with a Coolies button for your backpack.
Easily one of the most freaked out and fantastical outsider free jazz records EVER. And yeah, that sounds like hyperbole, but wait until you get a load of this. Start with the cover, an image of Coomans, a Belgian jazzman of some sort, with some crazy goggles on and some sort of mask strapped to his face, attached to a machine on his belt, an aerosol device he used to treat his asthma, which he SINGS THROUGH. He also sings through a harmonica, attaches vacuum cleaners to saxophones, or just mics em up to create clouds of strange hum and buzz, or submerges horns and plays underwater, in a half filled bathtub in his basement. Sound weird? It is. But it's also amazing.
The opening track is the one where he sings through his weird aerosol asthma device, the result is otherworldly, like processed Tuvan throat singing, hypnotic and alien, warm and whirry and a little monk-like, we sort of wish he made a whole aerosol/asthma record!
But then we wouldn't have heard the next track, an extended anti-jam, more space than sound, with strange bleats and burbling, the aforementioned submerged saxophones, underwater moaning, bursts of watery sploosh as the sounds break the surface, but plenty of strange vocalizing, also underwater we would assume, metallic and reverby, distant conversations, foot steps, like some freaky field recordings of some basement free jazz ritual, which it essentially is.
The flipside begins as a melancholy, long toned almost funereal dirge, warm and washed out and melodic, before slipping into something WAY more frantic, a wild bit of rapid fire phrasing, chaotic, notes tumbling over other notes, relentless and intense, but somehow still weirdly pretty, until finally the sax is joined by a hissing whirring drone, which we can only assume is the vacuum cleaner. After that there's a short voice / harmonica jam that goes from warm swirls of chordal wheeze, to mysterious harmonically enhanced vocalizing, until finally, the record finishes with a totally damaged, and mostly unrecognizable sax / piano / vacuum cleaner / tape recorder cover of "Louie Louie". A stumbling, gloriously WTF mess until the piano and female vocals finally start to sound like the original, other than the fact that the vocals and piano are matched beat for beat by bursts of glitched out, and we assume either tape recorder or vacuum cleaner derived, static crunch. Holy shit. Weirdest free jazz record ever? Most definitely a contender.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES.
First things first, allow us (well, Cup at least!) to proclaim that one song on this 1980 Alice Cooper album shines brighter than all the rest! That'd be "Clones (We're All)", the album's absolutely infectious, unexpectedly New Wave second track. It's another dose of AC social commentary, but this time it comes cloaked in the guise of remarkably clean synthesizer pop, a la Gary Numan. Makes for a very surprising contrast to Alice's trashy glam rock past which still lingers a bit in the album opener "Talk Talk", a cover of the garagey sixties Music Machine nugget. As for the rest of Flush The Fashion? Sorry, it simply pales in comparison, and hasn't aged quite as well, though it has its moments, and it's interesting to see ol' AC grapple with the onset of the eighties, dealing with such issues of the day as "Leather Boots", being "Nuclear Infected", and "Aspirin Damage". Plus, THAT one "Clones" song is sooooo good!
FYI, this is another one of those Rhino Encore reissues supposedly available only for a six-month window.
Alice went solo in '75 with this slice of pop music horror theatre. Yup, no more Alice Cooper Band, just frontman Cooper, Alice himself (with producer Bob Ezrin and some pro studio hands like Dick Wagner and Tony Levin, even Kim Fowley). By the way, he
Earlier in 2011, we were introduced to the heavy-drift shoegaze of The Slaves through their impeccable Ocean On Ocean album. While we eagerly await the follow-up to that album, we were stoked to discover that The Slaves' Birch Cooper has been up to quite a lot on his own beyond the tapestries of drug-drone synth and blisswave noise of The Slaves. He's collaborated with Heavy Winged / Operative drummer Jed Binderman in The Greys, worked within the metaphysical collective known as the Oregon Painting Society, and tinkered with homebuilt electronics that are just as much sculptural as they are functional. Weird Lesson bears the first fruits of Cooper's explorations with those aforementioned synths, and it's pretty damn amazing although quite a detour from The Slaves. Here, Cooper embraces his inner Conrad Schnitzler (RIP) through these semi-improvised constructions of highly stratified electric squiggle, zonked noise, and disjointed sawtooth tones with plenty of patch-bay cuts and scattershot trajectories for all of Cooper's sounds. "Physical Dream" entertains a lovely Tim Hecker like cascade of spectral, semi-melodic wash behind all of those polyphonic electronics; and here, Cooper comes closest to what he had been presenting in The Slaves. Limited to 100 copies, with just a handful of those here in our shop.
All of these 33 1/3 books are emminently readable, revealing looks into a band, and their creative processes, always centered around the making of a particular album, and we have a feeling this is the one everyone has been waiting for, judging from how many of these we STILL sell every week, and the fact that In The Aeroplane Over The Sea may be the most revered of all indie rock artifacts. We know folks who would kill to find out what transpired during the making of this album, and to more deeply understand a record whose tracks have found there way onto millions of mixtapes.
Also back in stock...
Yet another release from our pal Jason's amazing and weird as fuck Ormolycka tape label (along with two others on this week's list), this one weird for an entirely different reason. Sort of.
Where most of the Ormolycka tapes hover WAY out on the periphery of popular culture, as in seriously underground, bizarre, challenging, confusional, noisy, chaotic, each with a hefty helping of WTF going on, well, for fans of the label, this might end up being the most WTF of all.
Cooper was maybe best known as the singer for the Passionistas, but since that band hung it up, he has struck out on his own, we reviewed his debut 7" a while back, and the jams here are not that far removed, sunshiney, sugary electro /techno pop, cheesy house music grooves, drum machine driven new wave, synthy, swirly, fey sung / spoken slightly auto-tuned vocals over thumping beats and dreamy melodies, gay club jam meets '80s new wave, fun and funky and a little bit fluffy, like the dance/love scene or montage from an old VHS eighties romantic comedy. Ormolycka definitely has a soft spot for summer grooves, radio/MTV pop, Hot/Wild FM style megajams and the like, and this definitely pushes some of those same buttons.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.
Since his old band The Passionistas called it quits, it seems like Myles Cooper has really come into his own, finding his voice and expressing himself in a wide range of mediums from his confessional/performative YouTube page, to his DJing and presence at the super fun High Fantasy night at Aunt Charlies (one of our favorite bars in the Tenderloin), and his live solo performances. "Gonna Find Boyfriends Today" is a super sugary beyond catchy, fairy tale of a song, kind of like Sesame Street merging into a campy night at a gay bar filled with smiles, rainbows, cotton candy, and an endless stream of sweet and cute boys. The B-side "Lord Love Music" is way more stripped down and raw sound reminding us a lot of a young Calvin Johnson or Ian Svenonius, stylized and super sassy. In some ways Cooper is like the version of Hunx & His Punx that you could take home to your mom, with a beguilingly preppy and wholesome demeanor, but what makes him intriguing is that you know under that surface something warped and more nuanced is going on.
And here is the link to Skye Thorstenson's crazy video of the track to check out, ought to give you a better idea if this is for you or not:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaObXRFg5y8
This 7" has only been released overseas and is limited to 300 copies so best grab it super fast if you want one.
Julian Cope. Druidic dunt-rocker, Head Heritage head, krautrock aficionado, megalith expert, and ex-pop sike rock star (with The Teardrop Explodes in the '80s). Here's his latest, a double disc rock fest, and it's very much the product of Julian Cope's various musical obsessions, the classic heavy psych rock he loves (visit www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung to read some of what he's written about so enthusiastically, educationally and entertainingly on the subject!).
The latest (July 2005) issue of The Wire magazine features a piece on Julian Cope. It's not about Cope's own music, really, but about how Cope's great taste in other people's music turned the writer on to lots of stuff that he'd have never heard about otherwise (this was in the pre-Internet dark ages of the '80s). In fact, the Wire scribe's crucial Cope record was an *interview disc* wherein Julian discussed such then-obscure faves as Can, The Stooges, Neu!, and Nick Drake.
Here at AQ, we've heard from Cope on a few releases in recent years -- there was his guest spot on SUNNO)))'s White 1 album, delivering some pagan poetry to go with their heavy duty drone, and also his band Brain Donor, that featured Cope and some members of Spiritualized wanting to be your dog Stooges-style. The Detroit influence comes through too on Citizen Cain'd, an album of clever, heavy psych and pop rock n' roll. Indeed, this could be a pretty darn great Iggy album!
Two sprawling discs with some epic length songs (and radio-worthy alternate universe hits, like the jangly n' distorted "Living In The Room They Found Saddam In" -- that also should get an award for its title/lyric, eh?). We're also really into the slow burn psych rock that disc one closer "I Will Be Absorbed" stretches out into, as well as the more almost indie-rock (but still sorta Iggish) styled stuff that occupies much of disc two.
Since we pretty much know Julian Cope for what he's a fan of, not what's done himself (as per that Wire article), we're happy to discover that all that good taste hasn't gone to waste regarding his own stuff... probably folks who've followed Cope's career over the years already know that. Recommended.
A best of from the druid dude.
One of the best album covers ever, for the Flower Travellin' Band's 1970 debut LP Anywhere, a photo of that band as naked Japanese hippy freak outlaw bikers ridin' free, adorns the cover of this book. Good choice! If that doesn't look cool to you, you don't need this volume. If it does, then queue up! The subtitle: "How The Post-War Japanese Blew Their Minds On Rock 'N' Roll" is perfectly illustrated by that cover picture.
Let's back up, though. British author Julian Cope, originally best-known as something of a rock star (with The Teardrop Explodes in the '80s and his subsequent solo career) has also long been entertaining and informing us all as a writer, an expert on the heavy and the ancient: both the stone circles of Megalithic Europe, and the stoned rock n' roll of the psychedelic/progressive variety, yesterday and today. His happenin' website, Head Heritage (www.headheritage.co.uk) should be bookmarked by everyone who looks at OUR site. Way back when, over a decade ago, Julian Cope published a slim little paperback volume called the Krautrocksampler, one fan's obsessive, opinionated look back at the wondrous krautrock scene of the '70s. If you've got one, you're lucky, they're out of print and hard to come by these days, going for $$$ on eBay (er, anyone with a spare copy, please contact Allan at the store, he foolishly never bought it when we used to sell 'em and has regretted it ever since, maybe we can work out a deal...). Another reason to pick up this new Japrocksampler while you can!
It's about the same approximate dimensions as the Krautrocksampler, but thicker (over 300 pages!) and hardcover, with color plates depicting various rare album covers in the center of the book, and black and white graphics throughout. Nicely done, the paper stock and binding bringing back memories of a particular type of book we used to have in school.
And, as you have probably figured out, it's the Japanese '70s rock companion to Cope's krautrock treatise. But because the Japanese underground music scene of the same era is comparatively a lot more obscure over here in the West, Cope had to do a lot more in-depth research to give us all a real history lesson, starting off all the way back in the aftermath of WWII. Moving forward, he devotes much attention to the experimental composers of the sixties, like Toshi Ichiyanagi, and (for a time) his wife, Yoko Ono. All sorts of radical "actions" and conceptual sound art get their due. Other early chapters include include investigations of the homegrown "Eleki" scene (Japanese surf music, sort of) and the "Group Sounds" phenomenon (Japan's reaction to the British Invasion). Then Heavy Rock hits, with freaks and festivals, and Cope digs with utmost detail into the behind-the-music stories of such artists as cover stars Flower Travellin Band, Speed, Glue & Shinki, and, perhaps most crucially ('cause they're so mysterious and influential), Les Rallizes Denudes. In all cases, he reveals lots of stuff we didn't know. Regarding Les Rallizes, ferinstance, apparently their original bass player was involved in a JAL jetliner highjacking back in 1970, which lead to innocent Rallizes leader Takeshi Mizutani being trailed by CIA agents, which may help explain his legendary reclusiveness!
The Japrocksampler also provides plenty of info about important intersection between the avant-garde theater scene and rock n' roll in the early '70s, with a chapter on the brilliant J.A. Caesar. There's also pages and pages on the Taj Mahal Travellers, Far East Family Band, the Tokyo Kid Brothers, and much much more. It's exhaustive, impressively connecting all kinds of dots. Probably equally obsessed fanboys will have facts to check and nits to pick (we're thinking of our pal JW in particular) but really, where else are you gonna find all this info in English?? And so entertainingly written? Nowhere. Anyone who's read the Krautrocksampler, or visited Head Heritage, knows that Cope's got a knack for writing that's both enthused and erudite, a bit like Lester Bangs with footnotes. You don't even really have to know (or have heard) what he's talking about to fall under his spell, which is helpful 'cause the one big drawback to reading the Japrocksampler is the frustration most folks are gonna have trying to track down and listen to a lot of the music being discussed. We do our best to stock a good selection of '70s Japanese psych/prog/experimental reissues, whatever we can get by bands like the Taj Mahal Travellers and Flower Travellin' Band, but even we had to cry when looking over the section of the book devoted to lengthy reviews of Cope's top 50 favorite Japrock albums. Some we've got, others... someday we hope! Maybe this book will spur some more reissue action.
Can't come up with too many criticisms, other than that he slams some records we like (Foodbrain!), seemingly omits Flied Egg, and we guess we're not sure exactly how politically correct the term "Japrock" is, though it's not any worse than saying "krautrock" when you think about it...
Basically, this is a fascinating read for anyone curious about the effects of rock n' roll on the artsy underbelly of an "alien" culture. A must have if you're already into this stuff, of course, but also totally recommended if you're just a little bit curious about this "secret history" 'cause of being exposed to all the wild, freaky sounds currently being made in Japan by bands like the Boredoms, Boris, and Acid Mothers Temple.
No doubt about it, Eric Copeland is a bona fide weirdo! In the best of ways, as his manic and often hyper musical stylings have reached near brilliance with his band Black Dice and on his great mind-melting solo outing from a couple years back. In fact we think we kind of prefer what Copeland does on his own these days more than the recent Black Dice outings, there's just something a bit more inventive, immediate and deliciously confusing and mind bending about his solo stuff. Alien In A Garbage Dump is a pretty appropriate title considering the warped way Copeland's musical mind seems to work. Utilizing busted, broken and discarded equipment, the sort of stuff most people would throw out, Copeland sees the opportunity to explore other dimensions, reachable only by using damaged electronics, old tapes, and warped loops that feel like they've been melted, messed with and burned beyond recognition.
Using repetition often to the point of exhaustion, some songs definitely a test of endurance, yet the rewards that come from sticking it out are totally worth it! We can hear the influence of monumental 20th Century experimental compositions like Terry Riley's "You're No Good" and Steve Reich's "Come Out" and "It's Going To Rain". Yet you can also tell that underneath the extreme left field sonic fuckery in which Copeland roams he also loves dizzying rhythms and pulsating waves of sound. It's kind of like Daft Punk records playing underneath an Astral Social Club freakout. There is also a really cool Seefeel influence that he of course takes and tweaks to create a totally different atmosphere. One of those records that you can't really just hear a bit or piece of to appreciate but instead it does really work best when you can blast it loudly and let it unfold with all its twists and turns from beginning to end. With plenty of turbulence, chaos, and moments of pure ecstatic joy, this is one fucked up musical journey worth jumping on board for!
Similar to the way Copeland's friend Panda Bear released his own little masterpiece earlier this year while taking a break from his main act the Animal Collective, Eric Copeland has made an equally amazing solo record of his own, which just so happens to come to us on the eve of his main act, Black Dice, releasing a new album.
Hermaphrodite finds Copeland displaying major cinematic flair. There is an intensity and density to the sounds on Hermaphrodite that make the listener feel like they've been whisked away, similar to the way the masters of the silver screen are able to transport audiences. Not many people can sculpt sound the way Copeland does, always in control of the way the sounds shifts and change shape, never feeling stiff or too smart for its own good. What makes Hermaphrodite such a special record is how physical the music seems. Like the strange songcraft he's developed in Black Dice, Copeland has become so adept at taking sounds to mysterious places and transforming them into rich visceral experiences, as intriguing to the mind as they are to the body. Hermaphrodite sounds like creatures from another planet were given some run down analog equipment, a broken old video game arcade machine, a glimpse into Gamelan music and assigned to score a lost film made by Michelangelo Antonioni and Alejandro Jodorowsky. One of those records that truly takes you on a wild ride you never want to get off. We're more than intrigued with this Hermaphrodite, we think we might be falling in love!
Black Dice started out as one of those groups that you HAD to see live, in part because their performances were spectacles, total club destroying free-for-alls, but also because in the early days, the music was not so much a focus as seemingly an excuse for those drug destroying antics. So while those early records did in face have some good moments, they were for the most part brutal noise drenched freakouts, better appreciated in the flesh, preferably with a brain addled by plenty of booze.
A weird thing happened though, and over the years the band morphed into something much more musical, and much more electronic, and psychedelic, as is evidenced by the recently reissued BD record where the band's sound had blossomed into something more akin to later era Boredoms, or current day Fuck Buttons, with hints of classic krautrock, and seventies hippy psych, all woven into something kind of trippy and transcendent. So what might one expect from Eric Copeland? Well the apple doesn't fall far from the psychedelic tribal rhythm-ed tree. It is on DFA after all, so there is definitely a groovy danceable component to the proceedings, more than the aforementioned Black Dice record, but that is more than balanced by a seriously ramshackle kitchen sink aesthetic, each track is a cascade of jumbled loops, of vocal snippets, little bits of horn bleat, or guitar squiggle, all draped over stumbling breakbeats and fractured rhythms, the result is dense and dizzying, less epic and sprawlingly psychedelic than later Black Dice, and more like some home brewed mad scientist alien dancefloor experimentation, with some tracks piling on the sounds, bowing under the weight of a million samples and a wild tangle of clashing beats, while others are laid back and woozy, sometimes sounding like Ween covering "Lowrider", and other times like a 'dance' remix of some Ariel Pink B side, and at others like Art Of Noise jamming with the Boredoms. All in all, it's gloriously noisy, loose and on the verge of collapse, fractured and fucked up, seriously psychedelic, and kinda summery and fun, but with plenty of shadowy sinister sonic weirdness lurking just below the surface of even the sunshiniest popsounds here, positioning Joke In The Hole somewhere between weirdo noise rock, damaged dance music, and avant collaged art rock...
Along with having Parliment's Osmium back in stock, we also just got this related disc by back-in-the-day Parliament collaborator Ruth Copeland. Actually, this is the second time we've listed this, but it's a different edition than what we had before. And boy, we never realized until now how hot Ms. Copeland was! (Or that she was British, and white!) The photos on this new package clued us in.
Anyway, wow! Two great rare early 70's funk-soul-folk-gospel records on one disc. Ms. Copeland wrote 3 or four songs from and sang on the first Parliament album, Osmium, and George Clinton, Eddie Hazel and the gang backed her up for these two solo albums [Self Portrait & I Am What I Am], resulting in some revelatory acid-funk-rock jams new to these ears. Her voice is often soft and folky, so don't expect anything nearing Clinton's yowlin' growl. Eclectic stuff, there's a few sappy ballads, but even those are kinda fun and balanced by the hard rockin' Funkadelic-style gems. Even the Rolling Stones covers are pretty killer.
Every batch of tapes we get from our pal Jason's Ormolycka label, is like weirdo music nerd Christmas. But instead of getting socks or a sweater we get some obscure Japanse grind, or some damaged electro, some goofy white boy hip hop, or some lost psychedelic rarity. There's some seriously demented curatorial music genius going on, and this latest bunch of tapes is no exception. Instead of overwhelming you with all of them at once though, we'll pick a couple of our favorites, and review them all over the course of the next few lists. But if you do want them all, and why wouldn't you, just ask, and they can be yours!
Copout were a hardcore band from Tennessee, who were around for a few years in the early to mid nineties, whose various members would go on to play in bands like His Hero Is Gone, Talk Is Poison, Deathreat and others, and whose sound was very much aligned with the Slap-A-Ham stable back in the day, playing the annual Fiesta Grande fest with bands like Capitalist Casualties, No Comment, Discordance Axis, Man Is The Bastard, Agents Of Satan, Spazz, No Less, Noothgrush, so you get the idea, Copout fit pretty perfectly amongst all those bands, the sound raw and furious, a little metallic, lo-fi and fucking super pissed, shredded vocals over slashing guitars and wild drumming, punk as fuck for sure. This tape collects their entire recorded history which is not much, just a couple 7"s, a tape, and a couple comp tracks. Awesome.
Had this been issued on Vinyl On Demand as something from some terminally obscure tape label from East Germany circa 1983, we wouldn't have batted an eye. All of the trappings of quintessentially bleak industrial music alluding to the best of SPK (i.e. Information Overload Unit), The New Blockaders, and everything on Broken Flag way back when (i.e. Ramleh, Mauthausen Orchestra, Toll); and with very little discernible digital effects (including a 'direct to cassette' citation in the liner notes!), this doesn't sound like a contemporary noise project at all. Everything is overblown but with the attack of the high end blunted into static distortion and the low end snarled into a morass of tape rumbling. These caustic noises are not the end result, but the toxic patina which is applied to some fine synthpunk / industrial culture dirges. Baltimore's Copper Glove fortunately has been listening to all of those aforementioned projects quite a bit, and has done a great job of synthesizing noise, drum machine rhythm, urban malaise, and detached resentment into this exemplary tape only release from the ever consistent Monorail Trespassing. Twenty-six minutes and limited to 125 copies.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Read about Karate, Silkworm, DJ Spooky, Mary Timony, Lozenge, Mighty Flashlight, Xiu Xiu, Oxes, Howard Hello, and more. Listen to The Feud, Casket Lottery, Lamplighter, Waxwing, Bottles & Skulls, Eyes Of Autumn, Small Brown Bike, Tekulvi and more.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Very well put together magazine now in its third issue. The graphic design is just lovely, and the contents are devoted to music with some snowboarding tidbits scattered throughout. In a good way, don't worry. Ganger, Rob Crow (Thingy, Heavy Vegetable), Panoply Acadmy Glee Club, Tara Jane O'Neil, The Purkinje Shift, filmmaker Michael Galinsky, etc. Bonus: the record reviews are not token gestures, they're well written and thoughtful.
We also have a few copies of the first two issues of Copper Press. #1 features: Jason Molina of Songs:Ohia, the filmmakers of Dutch Harbor, Arlie Carstens of Juno, and girl snowboarder Sarah Mayhew. #2 has: US Maple, Burning Airlines, Rye Coalition, Mats Gustaffson, Matthew Shipp, Orso, etc.
Nicely designed magazine with full folor cover and a full on love for music and snowboarding. Death Cab for Cutie, Analogue II, avant violinist Mat Maneri, Juno, girl snowboarder Line Oestvold, Swell, Brian McMahan of The For Carnation, Dismemberment Plan, Kind of Like Spitting, drummers Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang.
Music, art and skateboarding -- yeah! John Darnielle (The Mountain Goats), Pleasure Forever, Get Hustle, The New Year (ex-Bedhead folks), pro skateboarder Ed Templeton and his art, Q and Not U. All in a well designed square journal sized format. Nice.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
AQ faves Mates of State and how in love they are, The Shins, Hey Mercedes, Victory at Sea, Doug Martsch of Built to Spill, the American Analog Set, a Burton snowboard roundtable, SF's own Jim Yoshii Pile-Up, artist Jason Krause, Jimmy Eat World, lots of photos and snowboarding info.
Yet another release from Campbell Kneale's (of Birchville Cat Motel) Battlecruiser label, a sub division of his free drone Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, specializing in METAL, or at least sort-of-metal, or maybe more accurately very heavy music that is the sort of 'metal' music ambient dronesters make when they're trying to get heads banging. So far in the series we've had loads of slow motion sludge metal, some Steve Reich style repeated NWOBHM riffs and even some almost ambient metal. Now we have the Cops. Who don't really sound all that metal at all on first listen. But then again, one man's metal is another man's circus organ flecked industrial sludge spazz grind. Or something like that. The Cops sound a little like the Locust, if the lead guitarist played one of the Fisher Price guitars with the buttons on the neck that unleash noodly squiggly guitar solos, and if the whole thing was recorded on a boom box. Massively overblown recording, super ultra-distorted angular riffs (some very metal indeed), loads of squealing feedback, suffocating washes of distortion over howled banshee vocals, programmed blast beats, and occasional Godflesh like industrial rhythms. Weird but pretty effing cool! Maybe a bit aggro for your typical metalhead. But anyone who wants a quick (11 minutes) furious electronicly grinding drum-machined metallic knee to the nards can definitely count on these Cops!
SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!
Andee and Allan just saw these guys play at CMJ in New York, on an amazing bill with Khanate, Psychic Paramount, Mouthus and Circle! It was an intense show and Coptic Light were an appropriate opener.
If you're into tricksy, mad-as-a-hatter yet quite arty instrumental post rock along the lines of Battles, Storm And Stress, Don Cab, and maybe Hella, you ought to hear this band. It's really no surprise that the Coptic Light trio in fact features the drummer formerly of Storm & Stress (admittedly not one of our favorite bands, we like Coptic Light a lot more), alongside ex- Bitch Magnet guitarist Jon Fine and bassist Jeff Winterberg (whose Rat A Tat Tat Birds indie rock photo book you might have seen). They specialize in complex, caffinated guitar/bass/drum entanglement, a very controlled chaos, all very precise and mathematical, with lots of tension being built up and rarely released. There's got to be a lot of internal counting going on in these musicians' heads, but the technical progness of it all is balanced by the textural zones the band makes room in their music to explore.
This debut cd consists of three songs, each respectively running to 14, 10 and 19 minutes or thereabouts. These songs (songs? should we call 'em that? maybe "tracks" or "pieces" would be better) are long enough that you kinda lose yourself in 'em, forgetting how they started and unconcerned about when or how they'll end, letting your ears be blissfully battered by the frenzies and Fripperies on offer, as the tracks veer from hectic bombast to quiet ambience, drifting off while threatening further percussive fury. It's a whole lotta clatter AND atmosphere. Definitely a good fit on No Quarter with the likes of Circle and Psychic Paramount.
Also we're pretty sure that "Eat It High School" is a great song title.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Late great downtown NYC cellist, recorded before his recent passing (obviously) with colleagues like Dave Douglas, Samm Bennett, Don Byron, Mark Dresser, Fred Frith, Catherine Jauniaux, and many more of the usual suspects.
These former Atlantans now New Yorkers infuse a little flamenco into their impassioned music... no, not quite to the degree that local band Fla-metal do (yup, that band does flamenco metal!), but the fiery flair and graceful stomp makes itself felt throughout their fourth album En Este Momento. Many other styles are definitely entwined in the band's potent rock mix too -- Southwestern twang, pop, mariachi horns, murder balladry and a little bit of punk too. An easy reference point would be to imagine a rocked up Lhasa. Actually while we're musing, let's also imagine a duet between lead vocalist Ani Cordero and Ms De Sela... whoa! Not too far-fetched an idea really -- both ladies have musical friends in common (Calexico, Giant Sand). Sultry, lively and captivating. Psst, a extra little trivia tidbit: Ani was in Clone Project Gamma, the all-girl combo in Man Or Astro-Man's genius touring clone band project a number of years ago.
Making music is all about transporting the listener to another place. Creating sounds or songs that transform the listener's whole world, so with eyes closed, a person could be anywhere, drifting through space, wandering in caves miles below the surface of the earth, laying in tall grass in the countryside, holed up in a concrete bunker during a war, wandering through the smoking ruins of some ancient city, all through the magic of music.
Most of our favorite sound makers use their considerable talents to sonically alter the course of time, taking us back with them to some unrealized past, some mysterious otherworld where it's still the middle ages, or the 1900's, or the fifties or even just the seventies. Their sounds are faded postcards, old snapshots browned with age, glimpses of places and people long forgotten, it's all very evocative and hauntingly emotional. Philip Jeck, Tim Hecker, William Basinski, Jasper TX, Machinefabriek, they all meticulously craft windows to other worlds, using various instruments and techniques, they allow us to step through our speakers and into some rainy day, an overcast afternoon, in a barely populated city, an intimate get together with family and friends, a lonely walk through dark alleys and rain slicked streets, but unlike a film or a photo, these are less distinct, more like memories than actual visual images, and like memories, they are nothing but personal recollections of events long past, and like memories, some parts are fuzzy, indistinct, everything seems faded and ghostlike, on the verge of being lost forever. Capturing that ineffable sound, manufacturing a world of mysterious musical memories, with music, never fails to captivate us completely, and we could listen to those sounds, rich with nostalgia and warmth, rife with magic and mystery, pretty much forever...
French experimental sound artist Eric Cordier has taken a bit of a detour from his usual electro-improv and installation work and has joined the ranks of our favorite sound makers, with his latest, Breizhiselad, an epic and gorgeously inventive exploration of tape, the turntable and a single 78rpm 10" record found in the attic of a friend's grandmother. The original recording, one of the first to proudly feature the Breton language after years and years of persecution, was to Cordier's ears, "horrible because of the catechism-like vocal arrangements" but the conviction of the vocalists, as well as the condition of the record itself, convinced him that these were important sounds. SO he transferred the sounds to tape, and attempted to capture the essence of the music, the power and the passion, while discarding the rest.
The result is a haunting epic, an expansive drift through some lost era, the voices are disembodied and wreathed in murk and static, an EVP broadcast from the beyond, rhythms and melodies develop suddenly amidst a cacophony of distortion and processed voices.
The opening track sets the tone, with a looped low end rumble, fuzzy and mysterious, the rich warm sound of deep harmonies, amidst a bed of tangled crackle, looped and chopped into lurching rhythms, like some disembodied short wave doom, a creepy low end moaning melody that gradually fades into a soundscape of layered angelic voices, creating a stuttering blurry chorale. The record is peppered with field recordings and bits of found sound, whipping wind, footsteps, snippets of conversations, the crunch of boots in snow, all woven into the strangely liturgical sound of Cordier's mysterious world of sound.
Imagine the murky undersea drift of Oval's skipping cd-scapes, but wrapped in a thick cloak of analog imperfections, skips and pops and crackle and hiss, imbued with an ominous undercurrent, minor key melodies assembled from rumble and hum, thick swells of static and clipped stuttering snatches of organ or voice, all transformed into creepy complex squalls of sound, scraping and hiccuping, but just as often, smoothed into hushed, dreamlike drifts, warm and muted, almost like some analog Pop Ambient, letting us float serenely and ghostlike through a sonic world of dark forests and crumbling castles, small villages and rolling hillsides, battlefields and ruined cities, of war, famine and death, but also of hope and salvation.
Beginning back in 1989, French experimentalist Eric Cordier (who you may know from the stunning electro-improv ensemble Afflux) began building immersive audio installations that broadcast sound through hundreds of speaker cones mounted to the wall at the average height of the audience's collective ear. "Houlque" dates back to 1996 and is but one of many of the soundtracks that Cordier designed for such installations. While originally an 8 channel piece, Cordier has compressed the music down into a stereo recording for this release, making it a bit more compatible with most folks' home systems! Layering multiple tracks with sustained drones from hurdy-gurdy, dulcimer-vina, harpsichord, and church organ, Cordier has successfully crafted a dense piece of maximalism that harbors similarities to Hermann Nitsch's "Harmoniumwerks," Jim O'Rourke's "Happy Days," and even some of Organum's textural density. Coincidentally enough, Cordier is responsible for introducing both O'Rourke and Keiji Haino to the hurdy-gurdy, which has played a considerable role in both artists' work. Beautifully packaged with lots of photographs of Cordier's installations.
With the stated instrumentation of church organ and hurdy gurdy, this album would seem to allude to a hallowed piece of shimmering minimalism on par with the likes of Charlemagne Palestine or Phill Niblock; but these two stalwarts of the French avant-garde offer a wide swath of sound-making strategies that pivot between a hushed electro-acoustic dispersion and an unhinged, staccatic blossom of freeform serialism. The initial 20 minutes finds these two generating acoustic debris through performative gestures, very similar to some of those unfathomable Leif Elggren / Sons Of God performances involving amplified ovens that oozed with foul gruel or numerous beds covered with tiny copper crowns. By the end of the second chapter of this work, the reedy drones of the hurdy gurdy begin to huff and buzz in small expansions of activity alongside similarly constructed lurches on the church organ which seem to be struggling to push sound through all of the muffling sackcloth that Cordier and Guionnet have shoved into the pipes. Actual notes begin to blossom, albeit in constellations of irregularly tuned modernist anti-musical phrases. As the album comes to a conclusion, rasping drones swell with baleen majesty and deep-sea eeriness, rising to the surface and tumbling back down into the depths. If you were thinking of Keiji Haino's hurdy gurdy arrangements, you would be pretty damn close... Nice?
- MPEG stream: I
- MPEG stream: III
- MPEG stream: V
French improvisers Eric Cordier and Jean-Luc Guionnet have a long history of collaborating together: several exceptional "live electro-acoustic" albums as Afflux with Eric La Casa, continued work in the free noise collective Schams, and several duets involving baffling sound installations. Now comes Tore, an album pieced together from several recording sessions in two different churches, where Cordier and Guionnet performed on hurdy gurdy, church organ, flute, and saxophone. For the majority of the album, Cordier and Guionnet give precedence to the drone, whose twisting tonalities and abrasions share Tony Conrad's physical play between dissonance and harmony. Yet as the album progresses, the balance begins to sway toward their free jazz aesthetic, as clusters of random notes begin to push outward, tearing the fabric of the drone from within. At these moments, Cordier and Guionnet wander into Keiji Haino territory, where sound is just as physically dominant as in Conrad's anti-Pythagorian minimalism but focuses specifically on the immediate chanelling of an emotional urgency. Coincidentally, it was Cordier who introduced Keiji Haino to the hurdy gurdy back in the early '90s! By the end of the record, the two have erupted into an inflamed free jazz dynamism driven by Guionnet's sax. This may be too much for most droneheads, but may be perfect for those who crave the taste of saxophone with their eternal minimalism will like it.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've loved everything we've had heard from Core Of The Coalman, a one man noise drone outfit from right here in the Bay Area (but now based in the Czech Republic), making dark crusty corrosive dronemusic that we described as sounding like Phill Niblock on steroids at one point, intense and blown out and hypnotic, the sounds corrosive and crumbling and in the red, impossibly soothing while being seriously dark and dense. But something must have changed since then, cuz this new COTC, while still droney and hypnotic, seems to have shed all the filth and buzz and crust, instead, what we have here is a gorgeously hypnotic assemblage of looped mesmer, sounding more like Phill Niblock than ever, but also a bit like Philip Glass, long stretches of repeated motifs, layered strings, chopped and stuttery, the repetition creating constant shifts in perception, the tones and notes beating against one another, creating rhythms, and strange overtones, subtle harmonies, woozy and psychedelic, some seriously divine minimalism.
The first half of the record, "Inertia II" and "Inertia I", sounds like a string quartet chopped and screwed, in the beginning, a constant flutter and flurry of clipped notes, but as the song progresses the strings become more distinct, the melodies emerge, becoming more and more calm, before right near the end, blossoming into an even more dizzying bit of looped repetition.
The second half of the record, "Last Help", takes a simple subtle bit of folky steel string guitar, left mostly alone during the intro, but then during the 20 minute piece proper, again delicately recontextualized into a warm tangled swirl of interwoven melodies, of constantly shifting textures, never getting super washed out or blurry, instead, retaining the guitar's sound, and the main melody, mostly adding a haze of echoes and shadows, doubling some of the notes, harmonizing others, the result, not nearly as dense and dizzying as the first half of the record, but equally as blissed out and beautiful.
We've all been digging the recent cassette revival. It was inevitable really, as the cd-r became more commonplace, the tape became the underground format of choice. And in some ways we're all for it. Nowadays you can knock out a cd and a printed cover in minutes flat, the amount of effort it takes to release a cd-r borders on NONE (apologies to the labels who do it right, with gorgeous music, and great attention to packaging, you know who you are, and we love you). But with a tape, even the copying requires more time and effort. And it seems that folks making tapes understand this and have been going way out of their way to customize their releases, and make the look as special as the sound.
But none quite as impressively as Custodian Color Zoo Containers, a new tape label, whose packaging is so intricate and over the top, each one is a work of art, stunning and intricate and incredibly time consuming. So much so that these tapes have been in the works for more than a year, and when you see them you'll understand why. Our new favorite tape label in one fell swoop.
The second release on CCZC is by Core Of The Coalman, an Oakland based noisemaker who traffics in thick corrosive drones, long tracks of thick coruscating low end, like Niblock on steroids, a lo-fi industrial drone symphony, noise music, but rendered warm and thick and prickly, but somehow still soothing and intense, the various tones intertwining into soaring sheets of sound, eventually transforming into high end shimmer, some serious Sunroof! style effulgence, heart of the sun ur-drones, glimmering and glistening, a brilliant sky full of sonic supernovas.
And then there's the packaging. Holy shit. Several different designs. The covers black ink on transparencies, with various insect shapes knocked out, as well as the text, flowers cut out on the other side through which the tape spools show, the cassettes themselves hand painted, and numbered, the number showing through a little transparent window in the sleeve. LIMITED TO 83 COPIES!!!
Totally eye popping. As gorgeous and intense as the music inside. WAY recommended.
For any fan of the now sadly defunct Sleater-Kinney, this record is a big deal, especially because it's so damn good. Don't expect some bastardized revisitation of Sleater-Kinney, though, 1,000 Years is something different: ever so slightly twangy, a little soulful, the beats minimal but masterful. Even Corin's iconic voice, the reason so many people either intensely loved or intensely hated Sleater-Kinney, has taken a different path. On every SK record, Corin's vocals were always right up in your face with an intensity that no other vocalist of her era could match. On 1,000 years, the vocals are layered in reverb and buried in the mix instead of riding on top of it, letting guitars and washes of organs or strings fill up the space. Corin's voice is so versatile and so good, however, that its strength is evident even though it rides low in the mix. You find yourself wanting it, needing it, so that when her voice does rise up, its impact is that much more emotional. Some highlights include "Dragon" which starts out as an acoustic ballad and then blossoms into swelling symphonic choruses, using Sara Lund's excellent percussion as a bridge between the two moods. The final song on the record, "Miles Away," is so beautiful, so perfect, so sad. Just piano, vocals and a bit of acoustic guitar. Those somewhat softer songs are tempered by garagey jams like "Riley" that do actually sound somewhat like Sleater-Kinney, if SK had added strings or piano and a bit of noisy experimentation to something off Dig Me Out or All Hands On the Bad One. Corin Tucker has surrounded herself with excellent musicians for her first solo outing, and the fact that she keeps her own voice out of the spotlight only serves to highlight just how powerful it is.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It took me a while to even realise that the band name was a pun. That's always a bad sign. However, I instantly knew that Corn On Macabre is a BAD, BAD band name (this coming from the guy who reviewed the very amazing, terribly named Kareem Abdul Babar a few
RealAudio clip: "Trojan Clown" [/audio/corntrojan.rm]
When Neko Case isn't out breakin' hearts with her country combo The Boyfriends or popping up with the New Pornographers, she gets together with her pal Carolyn Mark to become the Corn Sisters. Two beautiful, gutsy gals fueled by a love of country and yes, corn. Together they're a wild hayride of hilarity breaking out into song or story at the drop of a hat. They can wind a beautiful tale of love lost and in the next breath hoot out a gutbusting tale of the rawest humour. These songs were recorded live at a cool little cafe known as Hattie's Hat in Seattle, WA. Highlights include a string of songs mid-cd namely "She's Leaving Town", Loretta Lynn's "Fist City", the Carolyn-penned "Matineed", and Leiber & Stoller's "Love Me" as well as a Nick Lowe cover and a reworking of Neko's "High On Cruel".
A decent single spun off from the last Cornelius album Point. This has three tracks: "Drop" from the aformentioned album, and two remixes of the same. The Kings of Convenience sweeten the already-Stereolabbish nature of the Cornelius original. It's kind of a surprise to see them doing a remix at all, since they're Sweden's answer to Belle & Sebastian. Herbert (a.k.a. Doctor Rockit)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Both of SF's alternative weeklies have been praising this album high and low, so you can believe the hype, or not. The Aquarius staff thinks this recognizable-sample-heavy party record is merely okay, sounding kinda like a mediocre mixtape as opposed to a seamless whole. We recommend you take Cornelius' lead and get an Omoide Hatoba record instead (Cornelius' own label has released Hatoba stuff, and we feel that they fuck with a million different musical genres AND come out with a sound all their own, something Cornelius is trying not-so-successfully to do...)
A dvd and a cd packaged in super jewel case, this is the latest from our favorite Japanese genre-defying pop genius, Cornelius. The dvd features a video clip for every song off of Cornelius' last album, Point. This is cool for two reasons: 1) Point was an awesome album, and 2) if you've ever seen Cornelius live, you know that video art plays a big part in his show and it's great stuff. And when you're done with the visuals (including the bonus TV commercials), there's the whole 'nother extra audio cd featuring a dozen remixes of Point tracks done by fans!
Ah, Cornelius. Japanese soundmeister. Label impresario. Citizen of the world. Promoter of the bowlcut.
A cynic might predict that this album would be full of cutesy lounge music and tired samples... indeed that's what I (non-Cornelius fan) thought. But actually, I'm happy to report this record is kinda really good. Point begins quietly, admirably not screaming for attention, utilizing static to create anticipation. Then it slips effortlessly into a Stereolab-like groove, where the chiming sampled voices of the Stereolab women (that is them, right?) hover over organic, stumbling drums and precise guitar strumming. The entire album runs at this loping, kooky pace. Like the dearly departed Esquivel, Cornelius uses the voices only as sonic elements; the lyrics are relatively nonsensical. And once in a while you'll even hear an honest to gosh distorted guitar solo, or insane speedmetal riffing superimposed over the mellowness, or a sweet cover of "Brazil". (These changes in tone are not gimmicky -- they're worked in seamlessly well.)
This is a consistent, fine album, just don't expect the cut and paste theatrics of his previous record Fantasma. Buy it if you don't like the recent Stereolab albums, this will satisfy that craving quite handily.
If only Beck's last outing was as creative and colorful as this! Cornelius tends to take his time between albums but when they finally drop and sound this good and this meticulously crafted, we realize it's well worth the wait. With an uncanny ability to be both challenging and so damn catchy, Cornelius continues his streak with great pop record after great pop records, never afraid to explore new sounds while still making the whole sonic experience so fun to listen to. Picking up nicely where Point left off, this new record is perfectly titled as there is a breezy and brainy sensuality at play, and as always Cornelius effortlessly travels in all sorts of directions throughout the record, without ever losing cohesiveness. When other folks try the same sort of thing you usually just feel lost and bewildered by the haphazard musical confusion, but when Cornelius takes you from dreamy to rambunctious, blissed out to bumpin' and fractured to smoothed out, you just close your eyes and let yourself go, being carried away by colorful waves of sound headed for another engaging adventure in sound. So nice!
Matador UK is acting like the English majors by releasing two singles of the same song when the six tracks on these two releases could easily fit on one piece of vinyl or one cd. Cheesy label tactics. But these tunes are so darn charming, capitalist manipulations soon fly away like air blown popcorn. On blue: a Damon Albarn remix and "Surf Rider Blue" (tres jungley!) and on green: "Ball In -Kick Off" (tres funky!) and "Star Fruits Green" (accoustic guitar with string orchestration).
File under: man rock.
Lookin' like he just stepped off the cover of GQ magazine, Chris Cornell leaves Audioslave behind and goes it alone once again for his second solo album. Over seven years after his last loner mission Euphoria Morning, the voice of Soundgarden, Temple Of The Dog and Audioslave remains as burly and gut-bustin' as ever, but the music surrounding it plays things ultra safe. It's super slick modern rock radio fodder and major motion picture soundtrack ready. Speaking of which, his theme song for the James Bond movie reappears here along with a cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" of all things. Is it a joke? Was it a dare? Who knows. It's just plain weird.
"Whenever 'Fluxus' comes up, the three New York-born artists whose radio plays are collected on this CD seem to always be mentioned. They have appeared together in performances and they are also connected by their relationship to John Cage's aesthetic,
The local label Out of Round has been laboring quietly in the background, not calling a lot of attention to itself yet turning out record after record that are consistently of similar mood -- due to the fact that they all play on each others recordings. The homegrown label's "sound", then, is one of a grimy circus atmosphere, like Fellini's La Strada if it was set in some dusty corner of an urban American metropolis. There are lots of slowed down polkas and depressed waltz time-signatures, dour vocals, sad accoridans, and dolefully plucked guitars. Great mood music for the Tom Waits fan in all of us who feels like Waits is just too hip for his own good these days.
Check out www.outofroundrecords.com -- we carry all of their releases. For a limited time only, get an out of Round Records label sampler free with purchase of this disc.
