THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
As can be inferred from the title, Philip Corner presents three meditative works using the Indonesian instrumentation. However, Corner's organization priniciples follows more of a Western minimalist aesthetic with regular numeric structures. The first piece simply entitled "Gamelan" slowly adds new sounds at intervals that are half the amount of time for the previous sound to emerge. Starting with a huge silent gap of 64 seconds, the long resonant gongs increases in intensity as the rhythms multiply to 1/8 of a second. "The Barcelona Cathedral" is composed of slow beats by the gamelan enemble that clamour hypnotically every few seconds for 20 minutes. "Belum" appears to be a composition that originated in an 108 measure 'improvisation' that is repeated with variations throughout the composition. Though perhaps not as beautiful as Loren Nerell's "Lilin Dewa" as a Western synthesis of gamelan sounds, Corner's experiments are interesting fusions of gamelan within the context of '60s academically minded minimalism.
Solo piano works performed by avant-garde/Fluxus composer Philip Corner, recorded 1998. "Non-compulsive indeterminacy" never sounded so good.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Words cannot express how terrible this record is. What happened? The band whose music was a charming mix of indie rock, casio electronics and Indian melodies, all filtered thru the lens of politically aware British Asian youngsters, has made a record
1st song -- straight up soul, and who is singing? so totally unlike Cornershop that we took the cd out of the player just to make sure we hadn't accidentally put in a disc by Wilson Pickett.
track 2 - really bad wimpy halfhearted indie rock.
track 3 - bad house with muffled attempts at vocals.
track 4 - whose chorus goes "overgrown super shit".
track 5 - more soul music with embarassingly simple organ, bits of scratching.
track 6 - reggae! what are they thinking? who is singing "rastafari!"
track 7 - disco.
And there are five more tracks!
Arghhhh!
Tho it's doubtful that Cornershop will ever match the magic that was Jullander Shere, this is a fine strong album, boasting production by Dr. Octagon's The Automator (on "Candyman") and a cool version of "Norwegian Wood" sung in Punjabi.
Their best album. Get this one first.
We first heard Dale Cornish in the context of a different tape on The Tapeworm label, that one from his mysterious ensemble Baraclough, which sounded like some warped and stumbling mix of No Neck style free form clatter and drift, and droned out modern minimalism. Much of that sound surfaces here as well, the main difference being that Fleshpile Thematic seems to be a showcase for Cornish's spoken word, which gives this whole tape a definite Shadow Ring vibe, Cornish's voice an accented deadpan, that only occasionally slips into something resembling a croon (at which times he sounds a bit like a wasted - or more wasted - Scott Walker), but more often than not, delivers his strange prose is a quite reserved manner, occasionally stretching out the syllables, and once in a while slipping into something that sounds almost cockney, but the background music is what makes this so good. Shifting constantly, from shimmery static, distant voices, chiming tones that sound like struck glasses or tiny bells, soft focus clouds of hazy static drift over smoldering chordal swells, lots of deeeeeep drones, woozy, turntable manipulations unleash truncated samples slowly shifting into warbled melodies, the rumble and swirl of music speeding up and slowing down, the white noise of television static, sculpted into strange shadowy, granular shapes, eventually splintering into a weird collage that sounds like Jeck, if most of his turntables were spinning Merzbow records, or were simply TVs turned on to some dead channel at 3am, noisy, but the hiss and wow of the static is muted and blurred into something downright soothing, the whole end of the A side is like a blissed out soft noise record.
The flipside begins with looped metallic shimmer over field recordings of rainfall, and more reverberant tones, the spoken word, now a sort of croon, over haunting swirls of sound, dark and looped and hypnotically droney. The sound shifts eventually into a sort of clanging metal junkyard cabaret, the spoken word dramatic and croony, deep and sonorous and a little over the top, laid over what sounds like someone playing the inside of a piano with a hammer, before dissolving into deep rumbling tones, that blur into a washed out thrum in the background, finally disappearing into a field of electronic hum, droned out and crackling.
Super cool. But definitely depends on your love/tolerance of spoken word, definitely seems like Shadow Ring fans might dig a lot!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Krautrock / prog monster!!
Corridors is the moniker of one Byron Westbrook. This New York based composed has been charged as Phill Niblock's technical assistant at the renowned Experimental Intermedia loftspace where Niblock has been hosting literally thousands of shows since the late '60s, and he also spent time in one of Rhys Chatham's ensembles a few years back. Westbrook's own work doesn't stray too far from the minimalist stasis of either Chatham or Niblock, although Westbrook is far more interested in the slippages of his frequencies and more of an impressionistic, ephemeral sound instead of Niblock's signature heavy overtones or Chatham's swarming density. Sourced from guitar feedback, Farfisa, autoharp, trumpet, and viola, Westbrook's sounds have been smeared into elongated passages of wavering tonefloat, which he layers, loops, and morphs into some beautiful tapestries of shimmered and glassy-eyed drone. There's a rich, crystalline quality to his sounds, which seem to levitate and lift-off into the otherworldly, atmospheric, and even astral from time to time. Fans of Coleclough, Stars Of The Lid, Basinski, and Celer would be well served in picking up this exceptional recording.
One of the best punk and/or metal albums ever, reissued on vinyl. Pricey, like vinyl is today... but worth it if you're really punk and/or metal.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
In a way, it'd be way easier to review this if it was the debut album from some new, unknown band. Then we could just talk about how it's a dark, heavy album of often speedy stoner metal with cavernous, killer riffs and a seemingly old school hardcore punk edge to it, that SLAYS. There, we said it, and really, 'nuff said.
But, 'cause it's in fact the new album from the reunited three-piece lineup of seminal '80s punk/metal act Corrosion Of Conformity, the same lineup responsible for the CoC's all time crossover classic Animosity from 1985 (Mike Dean, Woody Weatherman, and Reed Mullin), it comes with a lot of baggage. Some folks, punk rock CoC purists, probably won't even listen to it, having given up on the band years ago after they "went commercial" in the '90s. And even fans of '80s CoC willing to give this a go, won't find an Animosity part II here anyway. Which could understandably have been the expectation, one subject to unavoidable disappointment. Others, into the band's latter day Southern stoner rawk thing, might not understand why they're doing an album without longtime frontman Pepper Keenan (he of Down fame, as well). So yeah, lots of baggage, that really we don't want to delve into much more here, 'cause what we're saying is, give this a chance on its own terms, it's actually damn good. This boldly self-titled album is its own beast, a blend of the old and the new really. And the trio for sure seem energized by this return (somewhat) to their roots. They sound like they MEAN it.
While Animosity it ain't, they did prove on tour not long ago that they still could rip it up on the old Animosity-era material live (causing many 40-year old fans to risk injury in the moshpit, boy that was a bit scary). And for sure some of the tracks here are written that way, like the feedback laden "Leeches" and the speedy chugger "Rat City", both barely over 2 minutes in length. But there's a lot more to this album than putting the punk back into CoC... they also bring the metal. So, it's more like if some of their (better) later stuff was done with Animosity-era attitude, by those same dudes. Certainly CoC's "Southern Sabbath" tendencies are on display on tracks like "The Doom" (natch). We know they were/are fans of Trouble, you can hear that here... Also (though it almost seems weird to say), some Melvins too.
And what about the vocals? At first, we too thought, hmm, if they're gonna have longtime bassist and former frontman Mike Dean sing again, wouldn't the idea be for him to growl and yowl like he did back in the day? Instead, he's much more melodic here than we remember (but still, sounds a heckuva lot more punk than Pepper). Dean snarls and spits, but also SINGS. And sounds pretty cool doing so, we think! Love his slightly gargled, high pitched, fists-clenched croon on the rippin' "Your Tomorrow" for instance. (Reed also takes the mic on a few tracks, too.)
So, for what it's worth to fellow CoC fans/followers, in our opinion this is definitely their best album since Deliverance, at least. And the most metal they've been since Blind. And the most punk since Technocracy.
But, we don't want only those folks who already knew what the initials CoC stand for to buy this! Anyone who hates bourgeois society but likes skateboards and Sabbath ought to check this out. Likewise if you're just into badass metallic doomed out rockin'. Like we said, it slays.
Oh, the Seldon Hunt version of the CoC skull that adorns the cover is pretty cool, by the way!
(We've got the digipack cd edition with 2 bonus tracks while they last, or the import vinyl version w/ bonus 7"...)
Boris may be the drone dirge darlings right now, but we've always had a soft spot for their more obscure countrymen Corrupted. Where Boris revel in cartoonish imagery, seventies kitsch, eighties heavy metal, bell bottoms, double neck guitars, and balls out rock and roll, Corrupted lurk in the shadows, sullen and distanced, weary and wary, crusty and curmudgeonly, wrapped in mystery, each record printed in stark black and white, a Japanese band singing exclusively in Spanish strangely enough, who are obliquely political, and much more grim and gloomy than Boris at their droniest. Every record a massive plodding slab of depressive doom, epic and monstrously heavy, but with stretches of delicate beauty. Rumors have been floating around of a triple cd, single three hour song, Corrupted release, but until that truly materializes, El Mundo Frio will probably remain the heaviest, creepiest, most beautiful, epic, expansive slab of slowcore doom drone you will ever hear. Ever. One hour and twelve minutes. A cloud of shimmering drone underpins hazy, haunting piano and warm chordal swells, plucked harps and simple finger picked guitars. For almost ten minutes, Corrupted creep along dreamily, stepping lightly, drifting lazily through a stark ambient soundfield, before the heavens collapse and the sky begins to fall in huge crushing chunks, and massive stabs of super distorted guitars swell and crumble into an abstract pounding rhythm. Completely heavy, but strangely lovely at the same time. A lilting melody is hidden somewhere beneath all that buzz and rumble. Eventually the stabs slowly mutate into a creeping, loping post rock rhythm, with minor key strums, simple shuffling drumming and growled semi-spoken vocals, before the whole thing fades to almost nothingness, revisiting the delicate shimmer of the beginning of the record. The last twenty five minutes are mostly ambient with snatches of that hypnotic post rock, and a brief but furious explosion of soul crushing heaviness with the same vocals delivered now in a glass gargling gurgle, and then the track drifts off into ten plus minutes of barely there dreaminess, mostly single notes on the harp drifting like snow flakes against a black night sky. So lovely. Easily the most fully realized 'doom' or 'dirge' track ever wethinks. So emotionally charged, so effortlessly complex and yet so utterly and beautifully simple. Somehow it's the perfect blend of Boris's Flood (our favorite Boris!), the doleful slowcore of Low, the abstract dirge of Harvey Milk, the epic expansiveness of Godspeed You Black Emperor, the metallic post rock of Pelican, the downtuned ultradoom of Skepticism, and the majestic dreaminess of Growing.
Mighty expensive but well worth it. Comes packaged in an extravagant hardcover book style digipak, with a gorgeous booklet, lots of abstract black and white landscapes, printed on vellum and overlaid other images. So nice!
It's sad but true. After 17 years, the final record from Japanese doom/sludge legends Corrupted. Or at least the last record by the original Corrupted. It seems that this is the very last recording to feature the core Corrupted members: Chew on drums, Hevi on vocals, and Talbot on guitars. Chew will go on with a whole new band, to forge a new chapter in the ongoing sonic saga of Corrupted, but Garten Der Unbewusstheit is a pretty incredible swansong for sure, and a sonically surprising one at that. Recorded back in 2009, the first thing you might notice is the title. One of the strange things about Corrupted on past records, was that all of their lyrics were in Spanish. So of course we were wondering if this time around, they would be in German. But it's hard to tell. The lyrics in the booklet are in Japanese and English, and listening to the record itself is not much help in discerning the language either, not surprisingly.
Released on Chew's newly launched label Nostalgia Blackrain, Garten Der Unbewusstheit is, at least according to the band themselves, is their most melodic, and far removed from their punk/doom/sludge roots, and "totally transcends our usual sense of time. Like feeling a minute & a second like infinity, and feeling 60 minutes & 360 seconds like moment...... this transcending sense can be described as the sense of liberation from material and life through music." Which is interesting, as we thought all Corrupted records transcended time, these sprawling epics that were so easy to get lost in, but this one in particular, is a brooding slow builder, almost more post rock that doom/sludge, the opening track, "Garten" just shy of a half hour long, drifts along spacily for nearly 8 minutes, all spidery melodies, and barely there super spare drumming, the vocals finally come in, a deep growled croon, the drums an occasional pound, but the song itself, still a shimmery drift, and then when the track does finally explode into something more heavy, it's not the lumbering dirge or downtuned doom we're used to, it's way more melodic, soaring and epic and majestic, like a doom Godspeed, the thick metallic riffs underpinned by clean guitar melodies, and slow smoldering leads, the vibe woozy and dreamlike, almost spacey and psychedelic more than dirgey and heavy, although it most definitely is heavy, just a washed out dreamier heaviness than we're used to. The band slip back into that opening chime and shimmer, and while they do offer up another couple stretches of grinding post-doom lumber, they eventually return to that dreamy drift.
The buzz of the opening track spills over into "Against The Darkest Days" before fading out and leaving just acoustic guitar, the piece revealing itself as an interlude of sorts, a lush gorgeous bit of steel string shimmer, haunting and hushed, which leads directly into the 30+ minute final track, "Gekkou No Daichi", a slow smoldering acoustic intro, a continuation of the interlude, unfurls leaving lots of space, the notes drifting in the ether, before being joined by a second more distorted guitar, the guitars tangled into a spidery woozy harmony, and then song blossoms into a massive soaring squall of blissed out heaviness, again the doomy dirge of the past seemingly replaced by something much more melodic, a slow motion creep that seems to hover and drift and soar more than pummel and pound, the track settles into a gorgeously blown out low end dirge, rife with warm melodies, the vocals a demonic bellow over the top, the drums pounding rhythmically one second, offering up abstract percussion the next, as the track progresses and nears its end, the guitars get more frenzied, the sounds more chaotic, a definite sloe build to something spacey and psychedelic and epically heavy, finally finishing off in a dense squall of black noise, but still shot through with the minor key melodies that seem to run through all of Garten Der Unbewusstheit. The noise eventually fades, and the track finishes with a stretch of hushed acoustic guitar, drifting on a sea of cymbal shimmer and fading hum. Wow.
What a way to go. A perfect finish to a nearly perfect run. The prettiest thing we've heard from Corrupted, and a heartbreakingly emotional sonic finale. We're sad to see the end of a group we've been obsessed with for nearly 20 years, but we're excited to hear the new Corrupted, and are most definitely curious about what comes next.
Sadly, the legendary Japanese label HG Fact, longtime home to sludgelords Corrupted, closed up shop recently, rendering loads of amazing records gone for good, but Corrupted managed to acquire a handful of remaining copies of this otherwise out of print doom/sludge classic, and we got as many as we could from them - not many. So this is indeed available again, for what we're guessing will be a very, very limited time...
Here's our review from way back in 2000 when we first listed the all-time classic Llenandose de Gusanos, and in fact made it a Record Of The Week:
Japanese sludge-core doom merchants Corrupted return with this monumental effort. Their previous album consisted of one long, crushing song. Llenandose improves upon that by taking TWO full discs for two tracks. WARNING: if you already intend to purchase this incredible album, read no further. Your enjoyment will be enhanced by not knowing the precise musical details that we are about to reveal...Disc one begins not with the expected wall of brutalizing guitar, but with quiet, hypnotic piano playing. An eerie voice begins to croak softly in Spanish (did we mention that for some reason Corrupted's lyrics are always in that language?) but the music is almost pretty, lulling the listener into a stupor that sets them up for the eventual entry (after 25 minutes or so!) of a slow-moving but awesomely heavy guitar/drums dirge. Eventually the piano re-enters and the disc comes full circle. Beauty and depression co-exist on this disc like none other, it's like George Winston at 16 rpm with Burning Witch playing in the background (and diabolical whispers in your head).. Disc two is the "ambient" disc, and is also really well done, a creepy quiet grey wash of sound, the sound left in the world AFTER its destruction... One of the best releases of 1999. Fans of Esoteric, recent Neurosis, Sleep, Earth, Skullflower, etc. should bow down to Corrupted. Additional information for Japanese-music-o-philes: Corrupted's drummer Chew used to play in Omoide Hatoba.
And here's a 'customer review' (which just happens to back up our claims above), emailed to us by recent purchaser-of-Corrupted and classical music fan John Botz: "The Corrupted album (Llen...Lleandos...uh...something about 'Gusanos,' i.e. 'worms') absolutely kicks ass. It's hard to accurately describe just how far beyond my expectations this album is. I was totally willing to go with Andee's recommendation on this one, but I was half expecting the three main parts of the album to be: banal, new agey, minimalist piano followed by some fairly generic bongtar sludge riffs, followed by fifty minutes of gray-washed amp noise. Not Even, dudes! These guys have obviously had some classical training, and this album is further proof of how much more depth
ANY music acquires when there is some solid classical training behind it. The opening piano section, far from sounding like ambient/new age drivel, sounds like Rachmaninoff on codeine and muscle relaxers. The entry of the 'metal section,' with portentous feedback, makes a real impact, and the choral ambience of the keyboards at the end, added to the piano sound, sinister vocals, and distorted guitar makes for an even more ominous feeling at the apocalyptic conclusion of the first disc. Wow! But maybe disc two was the most pleasant surprise of all! This is genuinely atmospheric (and good) ambient drone, with enough variety and layering of sounds to keep one interested for the full 74 minutes. I kept thinking of the spacey, eth-eerie-al, sections of 2001: A Space Odyssey (one of my two favorite movies, by the way; and my favorite soundtrack: Kubrick's choice of Ligeti's otherworldly choral/orchestral music juxtaposed with the majesty of R. Strauss, the grace of J. Strauss, and the austerity of Khachaturian's adagio was truly an inspired stroke of genius). Perhaps the Corrupted is the REAL 'Soundtrack of the Apocalypse.' Anyway, your description was apt/excellent, and this album become one of my instant favorites, not just a curiosity. And, by the way, whoda thunk that the Spanish vocals would be so effective, adding an esoteric arcaneness to the album?"
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
One of the very first releases from thee rulers of downtuned heaviness, of doomy sludge, Japan's Corrupted. Most of the folks reading this list are pretty well familiar with Corrupted, whose records rank among all our all time favorites, sludge or otherwise. We recently listed the rerecording of the group's debut album Paso Inferior, now we have a vinyl reissue of one of their very first recordings, the Nadie ep, originally releases way back in 1995! It's been remastered, has all new artwork legendary Japanese photographer Kyotaka Tsurisaki, it comes in a super deluxe gatefold sleeves, and comes with a big poster on nice thick paper, and beyond all that, it is three tracks of the heaviest, most crushingly beautiful music you'll ever hear.
Years before doom and sludge and drone was a viable musical direction, Corrupted were one of the few bands in the underground carving their own doomy slow motion path. Back in the day, they played with and toured with and shared splits with punk and grind bands, as while they may have not shared a sound, they shared an aesthetic and a DIY ethic. And even 12 years ago, Corrupted were already turning pounding drums, massive downtuned riffage and howled vocals (in Spanish of course) into something almost symphonic, majestic, epic, beautiful, while remaining punishing and brutal and heavy.
Nadie is three tracks, 45pm, two shorter tracks that pound and pummel, a third sidelong track that hints at the droniness that would infuse their later recordings, with sheets of Eyehategod-like feedback, long drawn out chords, gorgeous and trancelike, as amazing now as it was more than a decade ago, and this record definitely casts lots of the wannabe doomdronedirge outfits as unworthy to even lug Corrupted's gear around.
This is not just drone and sludge for drone and sludge's sake, these are SONGS, perfectly arranged, parts woven into other parts, melodies, and harmonies, it's incredible complex, which is why the music of Corrupted resonates, and continues to move well beyond the boundaries of the genre they find themselves defining.
The is, needless to say, totally essential. The bad news is that it is LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES! And is already out of print. We got a BUNCH, but judging from how quickly the last limited Corrupted record disappeared, these are bound to be gone in a flash.
A lot has changed since we first listed Paso Inferior nearly a decade ago. Here's our very short review from way back then:
"Japanese crust-sludge band, super slow, super heavy. Their new disc. Some facts: 1) they just toured the States. 2) their lyrics are all sung in Spanish. 3) the drummer used to be in Omoide Hatoba, Boredoms guitarist Yamamoto's weird jazz/pop project, but he quit when Omoide signed to a major. 4) this album features only one song, it's 40+ minutes long... Great vegging-out music for fans of Earth, Sleep, Eyehategod, Swans, etc."
Well, all of that stuff still applies for sure, but this is not, as we thought, a vinyl reissue of the original cd. Instead this is a rerecorded version of Paso Inferior, recorded in 2002, utilizing the same themes and melodies, but a whole new song, the A side sonically similar to the original, the B side, a droney blissed out drift, which is in fact an 'ambient version' of the original Paso Inferior!!
Since the original release, the group has released several more records, each slower and more epic than the last, even incorporating piano and acoustic guitar. And you can hear that in the reimagined Paso. Their appeal spread way beyond the punk rockers and hardcore kids who held them so beloved. Metalheads are Corrupted obsessed nowadays, as are the new breed of dronedirgedoom fanatics. But back in the Paso Inferior days, they were the underground kings of sludge, sharing splits with pretty much every power violence band that was up for it. A band that was spoken of in hushed reverent tones, but whose actual recorded output, included only a single full length, Paso Inferior.
The spirit and power of the original are definitely present, but the sound is better, heavier, and weirdly pretty in that way only Corrupted seem to be able to pull off.
One sidelong doomsludge crawl, the guitars black and viscous, the track laced with squealing washed out feedback, the vocals a growled gurgle, the drums a loping lumbering pound, recent talk of a single 3 hour song don't seem at all far fetched when listening to the reimgined Paso Inferior, there's something magical and mysterious about the music of Corrupted, no matter how slow or sludgey or stripped down, it never gets boring, it sucks you in and soothes your spirit, while it crashes and pummels, mesmerizing, hypnotic, so heavy, but weirdly transcendental.
The other half of the new Paso Inferior is another sidelong epic, this one dark and ambient, all shimmery drones, haunting melodies, mysterious voices, a dreamy drift rife with long tones, layered chords, but all muted and blurred and stretched into something more dark and lovely than grim and ominous, perfectly balancing the sludgey sprawl on the flipside.
All new artwork to go with the music, black on black, shiny on matte, the band logo and flames or drips or streaks of some kind, inside a printed insert, pressed on nice thick vinyl, and of course CRAZY limited. In fact pretty sure this is out of print now and we might be one of the only places with copies. Which means, as always, these will go FAST.
Sadly, the legendary Japanese label HG Fact, longtime home to sludgelords Corrupted, closed up shop recently, rendering loads of amazing records gone for good, but Corrupted managed to acquire a handful of remaining copies of this otherwise out of print doom/sludge classic, and we got as many as we could from them - not many. So this is indeed available again, for what we're guessing will be a very, very limited time...
Here's our review from way back in 2004 when we first listed Se Hace Por Los Suenos Asesinos (and back when Boris were still a doom/sludge band as well):
It's time.
Be afraid.
Very afraid.
Or if you're a typical AQ customer and love your rock music glacier slow, tarpit thick and skull crushingly heavy, well then, in that case there's nothing to be afraid of!
Everyone may quake and tremble when the mighty Boris unleash a new slab of black hole mega dense heaviosity. And rightfully so. Few can keep up when it comes to slow motion riffage, tectonic pummel and massive planet destroying rock. But there is another....one who came before....one who resurfaces occasionally....to remind the world that this sleeping behemoth can rise at anytime and raze all that dare proclaim themselves HEAVY. That beast...is known as... the Corrupted. One of the few bands in Japan, nay the WORLD, that can go toe to toe with Boris and hope to survive, perhaps even triumph. Some of you may remember Corrupted's massive two disc set Llenandose de Gusanos, from 3 or 4 years back, one disc of minimal drones, one disc of crushing sonic sludge (and piano). Maybe the finest document of death/doom/drone/sludge ever recorded - except perhaps for the rumoured-to-exist triple disc (!) SINGLE SONG (!!) Corrupted epic that has yet to surface. But for now, we'll have to be happy with this new 35 minute monster. The disc opens with a 17 minute ambient folk dirge, just acoustic guitar and harshly whispered/grunted vocals. In Spanish (as always) and rumblingly hypnotic. Like a ultra grim, creepily acoustic Neurosis, all stripped down and stretched out. Never imagined just a voice and an acoustic guitar could be so fucking scary, but for almost twenty minutes, the low end folk sludge stretches on seemingly forever, narcoticizing and mesmerizing, before the second track drops like a ton of lead Marshall stacks. Massively loud and perplexingly heavy, HUGE slabs of downtuned guitars pour molten riffs down your willing throat, filling you with black tar melodies, jagged limb smashing drumming, and bass so low it seems to loosen the earth's crust around you. The final track picks up the pace, to barely midtempo, but certainly a breakneck speed for a lumbering behemoth like the Corrupted. Drummer Chew (formerly of Omoide Hatoba) gets to go all Animal on this track, smashing everything within reach, the only thing keeping him behind the kit is the impenetratable wall of mile-thick ocean-deep sonic sludge, like pouring a bucket of hot molasses on a porcupine. Or dropping a sea anenome in a vat of hot glue, or like listening to Black Sabbath with your ears full of mud. Where Boris is channelling all sort of seventies rock, and stoner riffage, albeit through their own slow motion filter, Corrupted are just really fucking scary. A huge uncontainable, slithering, squirming, unstoppable, slow-motion, crusty metallic black hole.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
3 songs in 20 minutes of festering brutal heavy sludgecore 'sung' in Spanish by this band from Osaka. Features Chew, ex-Omoide Hatoba on tambor/drums.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Three-way split cd featuring a new seventeen minute long song from Japan's Spanish-speaking kings of doom, Corrupted! But that's not all. American "grindcore ninja commando team" Discordance Axis, who also rate highly in the international metalcore aristocracy, open things up with some of their drumgod Dave Witte fueled blasting, before (surprisingly) drifting into an almost-silent ambient piece! That sets things up nicely for the massive entry of Corrupted's track "Bloodscape", some HEAVY sludge as expected, but one with some also surprising "post-rock" style twists we won't reveal... A tough act to follow, but less-well-known Japanese quartet 324 acquits themselves well with three noisy, thrashy, pummelling songs, including a Crumbsuckers cover! (Hail to the old school!) Happily, we were able to get a bunch of this hard-to-find Japanese import, but judging by the way Corrupted fans are (in a word: rabid), we don't think these will last long...
SORRY -- we have only 5 copies of this left in stock, and that's probably gonna be it... so act fast, five of you.
Awesome split lp of free jazz / drone folk / modern musical mystery from two different but similar in sonic spirit angles. Side one features underground free jazz wunderkind Chris Corsano (drummer for Sunburned Hand Of The Man, as well as sometime music partner of Paul Flaherty, Joe McPhee and more) teaming up with Six Organs Of Admittance's Ben Chasny again (Corsano has drummed for Six Organs in the past) for a skittery, scattery guitar versus drums duel. Guitars slither and skitter, shimmer and scrape, matching Corsano's bursts of jazzy percussive scribble almost note for note, occasionally Chasny unleashes thick swoops of chordal hum, or spray his opponent with little squalls of psychedelic freakout. It's all very mumbly and murky and very very free, Six Organs fans might be a little taken aback, but it's an awesome sixteen minutes if you can handle it.
The other side is taken up by "jazz" guitarist Paul Metzger, who plays a modified axe, cobbled together from bits of music boxes and an electric tanpura (like a fretless sitar, sort of) and the result is divine. A long slow burning raga woven from buzzing steel string drones, dense and deftly interwoven, over the top, simple Eastern melodies, that also buzz and rumble, and above it all soft crystalline chimes from the modified music boxes, adding a bit of subtle sparkle and dreamy melody to the dark and moody minor key raga-scape beneath. Really cool. Definitely for fans of Jack Rose, Pelt, James Blackshaw, Greg Malcolm, Matt Valentine and the like.
Limited to 766 copies, with silkscreened wood covers. Beautiful!
Another blast of modern free jazz from this dynamic duo. A drums and sax duel to the death, but what a way to go! Corsano's jazzy splatter, shuffling skitter and pummeling pound up against Flaherty's wild and wooly world of skronk and skree. They've been playing together so long, it's almost like listening to one four armed, four legged, two mouthed man single handedly (um... you know what we mean) deconstructing the history of jazz over the course of 12"s of vinyl. Highlight has to be another Corsano drum detour, a long stretch of dream like ambience that turns into a drums only jam, not so much a drum solo as an eminently listenable exploration of every part of the drum kit. Awesome.
Limited to 400 copies and we only got FIVE COPIES, and it's already out of print. DRAT! So act fast.
Corsican Paintbrush is Brad Rose (North Sea and Digitalis label head honcho) and Eden Hemming Rose, who as Coriscan Paintbrush weave a delicate world of folky clatter and deconstructed Appalachia, simply strummed guitars, lilting finger picked melodies, hushed voices, little bursts of alien percussion, bits of droney rumble, all woven into the bands haunting free folk drift. If you didn't know better, you'd think this was yet another branch on the Finnish free folk tree, most likely featuring members of the usual suspects, Avarus, Anaksimandros, Uton, etc. Coriscan Paintbrush, while sharing many sonic similarities, CP manage to take that sort of tribal clatter and rhythmic experimentation and reel it in, allowing swaths of abstract noise to drift within a slightly more organized framework of strum and croon, a hushed folky drift, with a tangled bit of rhythmic abstraction within. Nice!
Packaged with a textured piece of wallpaper, with a fragile printed paper insert. Hand numbered in gold ink and sealed with a twig.
LIMITED TO 85 COPIES!! We got a handful. Once those are gone, we won't be able to get more...
Lula Cortes will always be a big time AQ favorite for two reasons: the beautifully blissed out album he was involved with in the group Satwa, and the amazing record he made in 1975 with Ze Ramalho, Paebiru. That was an album that foreshadowed much of what would be heard in the underground music scene for decades to come and still sounds so mystical, mysterious and engaging all these years later. Rose De Sange is a 1980 album by Cortes that finds him in much more of a song based mood, but still displaying a healthy dose of weirdness and armed with a distinctly unique musical vision. There is a more prog-like feel to the sound of this record which also showcases his vocals way more then we heard on Paebiru. It's definitely an album that takes a few listens to really get into, but once you're in, it for sure holds up on its own, as opposed to constantly being compared Paebiru, because it's a much different beast, yet still filled with enough of its own magic to make it a worthy addition to any eclectic music lovers collection.
Oh boy. Now here's a real "holy grail" psych album, at last reissued on cd and widely available!!! You've heard a taste of this if you've got the Brazilian edition of the Love, Peace & Poetry compilation series. Lula Cortes E Ze Ramalho's amazing acid-psych-folk-prog album Paebiru came out in Brazil in 1975, and at some point afterwards, many of the original copies were apparently destroyed in a fire (y'know, kinda as if they knew that collectors were gonna cry over that later). So, it possesses such desirable status in part 'cause the record is so rare and obscure. But in fact it's truly deserving of its holy grail rep 'cause the music on it is so terrific -- so lovely and so freaky. The Shadoks label has done us all a favor here.
The talented multinstrumentalist Lula Cortes was one half of the wonderful acoustic hippy folk duo Satwa, whose eponymous 1973 album was reissued and reviewed here earlier this year. If you picked that up, you've got an idea of how nice the folky parts on here are, inspired by both Portuguese/Spanish and South Amerindian musical tradition. But that's only a part of the sound here. On the elaborately produced Paebiru, Cortes and equally gifted collaborator Ze Ramalho, along with several supporting musicians, have expanded the scope of their music to include pulsating krautrock-ish throb, wild jazz improvisation, and distorted electric fuzz attack, utilizing both rock and ethnic instruments, piano, horns, and more -- all with a high degree of inspiration, emotion, and technical skill. The result is a sprawling but consistent masterpiece, originally a double LP. Four sides, four elements: Terra, Ar, Fogo, Agua. This elemental concept allows for many moods and revelations. As Shadoks says, it's "uninhibited tribal psychedelic rock" that they compare, rightly, to the brillance of Amon Duul II and Algarnas Tradgard. Recommended.
We've all fallen in love with this one! It's a minimal-wave fantasy come true, imagine your sultry French girlfriend whispering in your ear over mesmeric machine beats... Obscure origins, limited edition, and (most importantly) utterly captivating atmosphere = Record Of The Week!!
In 1981, Belgian minimal-synth experimentalist Alain Neffe began his Insane Music cassette imprint, with the first of many Insane Music For Insane People compilations. We're pretty sure that all of the material on that first compilation was penned by Neffe with the help of a few other people, including Pseudo Code, Human Flesh, and Bene Gesserit. Some of those projects (especially Bene Gesserit) moved towards a disjointed, minimal-wave agenda, while others moved towards a cacophonous industrial sound with Pseudo Code in particular paralleling the information overload of SPK or Nocturnal Emissions.
Cortex might have been the most elegant of Neffe's projects, with baroque / sci-fi ambience setting the stage for monotone recitations of French lyrics from a rotating cast of female vocalists. Neffe's surrealistically charged drones, suspenseful passages of pregnant silence, and baroque synth fragments figure somewhere between Edward Artemiev's frigid soundtrack for Tarkovsky's film Solaris, the bleaker moments of Richard Pinhas (especially on Iceland), and with those breathy female vocals, the radiophonic works of Luc Ferrari.
Everything on the first disc of The Whole Story came from various cassette and lp compilations from the early '80s, but Neffe managed to keep the Cortex sound very consistent almost as if he were anticipating some archival collection some 30 years later. The second disc is almost all unreleased material, except for the 24 minute "Cortex O" which was the b-side of a cassette released back in 1984. The longer tracks of the second disc favor the spaciousness of Cortex's aesthetic, augmented by skittering drum machines and prog-tastic meanderings on the intertwining synths influenced by Schniztler and Pinhas for sure. Very nice to have this reissued, although probably not for long as it's unfortunately SUPER LIMITED, Korm Plastics only printed up a mere 300 copies of this 2cd set.
ATTENTION: LOVESLIESCRUSHING FANS!! We managed to get a handful of these split 12"s direct from the man himself, one side a gorgeous slab of hazy LLC style shimmer, the other an equally lovely bit of abstract guitarscaping from a new to us outfit, it's already out of print, we have a handful of copies, but they will probably not be around for long.
The Cortez side is of course Scott Cortez, the man behind Lovesliescrushing, and the sound is quite similar to much of the LLC stuff, in particular the fantastic Voirshin record, hushed and hazy, ultra minimal, a blurred lovely stretch of softly layered drones, glimmering and glistening and aquatic sounding, very much reminiscent of William Basinski, like if you locked up the tapes that were the source for this record, in 20 years, it'd be all crumbling and decayed and disintegrating.
The flipside is from a group called Language Of Light, who we've never heard until now, a good match for Cortez, similarly washed out and ethereal, but more structured, chiming guitars streaks over processed metallic shimmer, with muted hazy melodies, before the sound shifts to something much darker and ominous, a jagged processed loopscape, weirdly warped and noisy, but that quickly gives way to the final movement, more lovely guitar ambience, blurred and gauzy and otherworldly.
We've long championed the beautiful bliss of Lovesliescrushing, which was born in the early '90s as a deconstructed shoegaze project producing billowing masses of blown-out drift-drone on oversaturated 4-track recordings with bits of song smeared amidst the ethereal guitar and voice. It seems as though Lovesliescrushing's guitarist / principle sound sculptor Scott Cortez has been digging through the archives. First there was the Girl Echo Suns Veils boxset which issued some of the demos and alternate mixes from way back in the early '90s, and now he's gathered this collection of unreleased guitar drones recorded outside the context of LLC from 1997-1999. Robin Guthrie and Kevin Shields certainly loom large as the icons for Lovesliescrushing's guitarist Scott Cortez; but this work also looks forward to the guitar driven driftscaping produced by Fennesz and Tim Hecker (on Black Sea and Radio Amor especially).
Cortez opens the album with lovely ambient passages of smooth surfaces that whisper hints of an impressionist romantic underbelly. For those familiar with the most recent work from Cortez on Lovesliescrushing's restrained Crwth (Chorus Redux) or the split lp he did with Language Of Light, these amorphic tones will be instantly recognizable. But as the album progresses (and this becomes apparent by the 5th movement of Twin Radiant Flux), the smooth surfaces at first become disturbed in a series of darkened shimmers, slightly distorted passages, oceanic swells, and harmonic rumblings. Slipstreams of blurred noise which extend into the aforementioned Hecker / Fennesz territory act as a suitable crescendo, however subtle that might be, to this exceptional album!
Perhaps best known for being the 'electronics guy' in the live version of Nine Inch Nails, Alessandro Cortini is also a formidable solo artist, as well as one of the few masters of the Buchla synthesizer. Having heard none of his solo work to date, we were actually expecting some sort of analog synth, goth industrial hybrid, would make sense since it ended up on the Hospital label, but instead, Sonno is a gorgeously hushed and evocative collection of minimal synthscapes, recorded in various hotel rooms on tour, all with just a single synth and a delay pedal, occasionally some portable speakers, the sounds defined not simply by Cortini's compositions and the settings on the instruments, but also the rooms, open windows, resonant tiled bathrooms, faucets on, the whir of air conditioners, sounds from the outside leaking in, all of this subtle and deftly woven into delicate, crystalline sprawls of soft focus synthsound, some tracks here cinematic an sinister, but most are ethereal and airy, fans of Emeralds will find much to love here, although Cortini's vision is much more low fidelity, but it's easy to forget about the fidelity completely, as the sounds are lush, and lovely, even the darker, shadowier movements, are gauzy and dreamlike, sometimes building to ominous billows of resonant thrum, but just as often settling into something tranquil and tranced out.
Imagine Stars Of The Lid, and Emeralds, and William Basinski, and the Caretaker, all blurred into a hauntingly mesmeric ambient kraut-psych, a pulsing, atmospheric dream-drone drift... gorgeous stuff...
First off: fab colorful "spacey" cover painting on this one, an Italian cd reissue (in mini-lp style sleeve) of this 1970 early fusion session. Larry Coryell on guitar, plus the likes of John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Billy Cobham and Miroslav Vitous! An
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
When we think of Bill Cosby we usually think of amazing bold pattern sweaters, undeniably funny PG-rated humor and the dad we kind of all wish was ours. Maybe Fat Albert too. What doesn't usually come to our mind is deep hitting, groove heavy, spiritual jazz akin to early '70s Miles Davis. But damn we sure will be thinking about those things now after hearing this previously super impossible to find recording of Cosby on the keys along with a very strong yet mysteriously uncredited band by his side. Some of us had heard Cosby's vocal jazz albums which were likable in their own right, but this is an entirely different and much more potent beast. Believe us when we say this record goes way beyond the novelty of who created it. No matter who was behind this recording, these two long tracks sizzle with fiery passion and flawless execution. Inspired heavily by Bitches Brew era-Miles as well as the likes of Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus and Herbie Hancock, Cosby was tapping into some serious mind expanding and soulful funk infused jazz.
The cd comes with Cosby's thoughtful original liner notes where he talks about the origins of these tracks, originally released in 1971. The first track "Martin's Funeral" came from his and so many other's experience with coping with the sadness and depression that followed in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination and his personal experience attending King's funeral. The record is all instrumental, and who knew that listening to Bill Cosby and being stoned could be a perfect combination?? While he might still be known best for his TV persona and funny skits about going to the dentist office, there is no doubt after listening to this album that Cosby also has some major depth and musical talent under those amazing large sweaters. Highly recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The second we lay the needle on the clear vinyl of this 45, it's like the most sensual, seductive steam just comes pouring out of the speakers and takes us to a dark lit, after hours nightclub made for coming down softly, a sonic soundtrack for chilling out in the most striking and sexy way imaginable. We fell so hard for the first Cosmetics 7" and it's been impossible to get it back in stock so we're happy to have two brand new songs to get hooked on all over again. As hot and seductive as the Chromatics are, somehow Cosmetics roam in a very similar territory but turn up the heat, with a dark dripping potency that washes through our bodies with a sound so pleasing and yet still slightly sinister. Taking cues from synth wave seducers like Ruth, Dark Day, and Liaisons Dangereuses. Not sure how fast we will be able to get more of these so best act fast on this one!
This new duo from New York have us totally hooked, with just these two killer tracks, their debut on Captured Tracks. Rare is the band that can pull that off.
These two songs are dripping with a chic and sensual haze that we can't get enough of. Lo-fi synths, woozy lysergic vocals, and a stripped down DIY aesthetic that makes the Cosmetics' sonic silver clouds sound that much better. It's like they took the most rudimentary elements of early Gina X, Grace Jones, Eurythmics and Ruth, stripped away the gloss and shiny big production and brought it all into a seedy basement in the wee hours of the morning after a drug fueled wild night. In lots of ways its like a less glossy and more smoldery version of the Italians Do It Better groups (Chromatics, Glass Candy, etc.). Fans of all things minimal wave will definitely want to check this out!
Everything about this 7" works perfectly. Their name, the silver chromatic cover, all the visuals complement the two hypnotizing slow burners inside. We've been playing this over and over in the shop nonstop. We have a hunch that probably won't change any time soon. A sizzling debut for sure!
After months and months of trying to track down releases on UK label Cardinal Fuzz, a few weeks ago, we managed to get copies of lps by two Swedish outfits, the Hills and the Janitors, both of which we could barely keep in stock (although we lucked into a few more copies of the Janitors, revisited elsewhere on this week's list, most likely the last ever!), so this week, we have two more Cardinal Fuzz jams, which by the title might give you an idea of what sort of sounds to expect. Heavy psychedelic space rock seems to be Cardinal Fuzz's mission statement, and this reissue (originally released on cd by another UK label, Paradigms) from Glasgow psychedelic space-kraut kosmonauts Cosmic Dead is very much in keeping with that, unfurling four epic tracks (one that clocks in at nearly 40 minutes and takes up both sides of the second lp!), of slow burn kosmische drift, that explodes into heavy heart-of-the-sun Hawkwind style space rock mega-jam blowout. The 19 minute opener "The Black Rabbit" is pretty much all you need, a long stretch of glimmering FX and smoldering kraut-age drift, explodes into pounding motorik heaviness, a Circle like groove wreathed in clouds of swirling effects and keening guitar melodies, like a revved up Spacemen 3, the band somehow keep building the sound getting more and more dense, driving and hypnotic, squalls of psych guitar freakout are smeared into chordal washes, while the bass and drums continue to get wilder and more chaotic, shades of early Monster Magnet for sure, the sort of endless drug fueled hypnorock jamming that even at 19 minutes is not nearly long enough.
And that's pretty much it, all four tracks here are built for maximum trance out. whether it's the relatively brief "Spice Melange Spectrum" (clocking in at 6:47), that is heavy on the drums, a driving chunk of druggy dirgery that manages to transform the sound into something transcendent, or the 13+ minute "Infinite Death Of The Godhead", which locks into a more krautrocky groove, all low slung and motorik, murky and mesmeric, but then explodes partway through into some serious dense heaviness, again traversing a landscape of soaring swirls and cosmic shimmer. There are even some vocals here too, a sort of OM-like chant, that suits the sound perfectly, a sort of trancey, ritualistic mantra that only adds to the the track's murky mesmer.
And of course, there's the aforementioned "Father Sky, Mother Earth", that starts at the beginning of side 3, and doesn't let up 'til the very end of side 4, vinyl limitations be damned, an epic sprawl of freeform drug-drone space-psych drone-drift hypnorock majesty, each part given plenty of time to develop, slow sloooooow builds, and when the band is locked in, it's the sort of endless ur-psych jammery that we never tire of. But it is 40 minutes after all, so there's lots going on, the sound drifting into some almost doomy dirgery, some slowed down druggy dream-psych, some thick riffy crunch, some bass heavy almost noise rock, and yeah, of course, a total blown out super psychedelic megajam. Needless to say WAY recommended, especially if you dig stuff like The Heads, White Hills, Carlton Melton, Gnod, Hookworms, Moonrises, the Hills, Bardo Pond, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Telescopes and the like.
We got a bunch of these, but if the Janitors and Hills records were any indication, this is EXTREMELY LIMITED and won't be around for long!!! Packaged in a swank orange and silver gatefold jacket.
