Creeper Lagoon's first post-Dreamworks release finds its home on the Arena Rock Recording Company. An aching melancholia continues to flow throughout the music of this SF quartet (which also made them a perfect presence on the recent Nothing Left To Lose: Tribute To Kris Kristofferson compilation, they did a beautiful rendition of "Why Me"). Each of these five sleekly produced songs is steeped in the lushest of aches and yearnings even despite the uptempo-ness of a couple of them. Spacy, glistening and drifting, it stirred thoughts of an imaginary encounter between the Alan Parsons Project and producer David Fridmann (Sparklehorse, Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev). A lovely, subdued downer affair.
Before Creeper Lagoon were originally signed, 'they' were just a 'he,' and Creeper Lagoon was a completely different beast. It was back when San Francisco had more of a 'scene' and had at least a few more (than 2!) clubs to play, and Creeper Lagoon was a sort
Creeper Lagoon are the lauded local band whom the readers of, erm, Spin voted "Best New Artist of 1998" and who play pleasantly warm power-pop/alt-rock. Though this mini-album (6 songs) is certainly impeccably executed, one hopes that with the next album they will manage to blend their influences into a truly original sound, as on this album their influences are all too clear. Two songs sound like mellow Flaming Lips outtakes, and a couple are practically Tom Petty-ish in their doleful melodicism. It's pretty.
Super ass kicking angular new wave. Heavy like you would expect from ex-members of Dead and Gone, but with generous helpings of The Fall, Pere Ubu, Television, Voidoids. Fans of the following should check out Creeps on Candy: VSS, Calculators, Slaves, Jesus Lizard, Neurosis, and East Bay crust-core as well as Chicago no-wave.
Long overdue release of Canadian death metal murk from legendary horde Cremation, the brainchild of J. Reed, who would later go on to play in Axis Of Advance, Conqueror, Arkhon Infaustus and of course the mighty Revenge!
Black Death Cult is a collection of various tracks from early nineties demos, and is a glorious, raw, lo-fi, muddy and murky blackened death metal blow out. The guitars are tuned way down, the vocals are gurgles and grunts, the drums are chaotic and splattery, the arrangements seriously off kilter, no long stretches of droning blasts, or doomy plods, instead, the band lurch and lumber, from brief flurries of high speed thrash, to woozy warped chugging stumble, to freaked out grinding blast, to meandering metallic drift, these songs are bizarre and twisted and convoluted and brilliant. Reminds us a lot of the recent Impetuous Ritual, the same sort of Morbid-Angel-slow-parts-all-strung-together vibe, and the same sort of dipped in tar sound, but with a slightly more trad death metal feel, but only very VERY slightly. This stuff is so fractured and fucked up, that it will more likely appeal to folks into weirder, outsider metal, Wold, Portal, that sort of thing, at some points it almost sounds like Gorguts' Obscura playing at 16rpm, super technical, but grinding and pounding through a druggy syrupy haze. Awesome. One of the coolest, weirdest metal reissues in recent memory.
Crescent's fourth album By The Roads And The Fields veers towards jazz territory, though their origins began in the Bristol, UK version of post-rock which also spawned Flying Saucer Attack, Amp, and Movietone, whose members circulated through each project. Hints of the Crescent jazz persona were noticeable on their preceding albums Electronic Sound Meditations and the sublime, if overlooked masterpiece Collected Songs; however, those two albums were so encrusted with a thick patina of antique tape echo that the songs themselves decomposed into mere fragments of disembodied organ stabs, slow motion groovy stutters, and monotone vocals. By The Roads And The Fields leaves that tape echo machine in the corner, occasionally kicking it on, but mostly as a flourish to the new direction of Crescent -- a lazy meandering through Spanish guitar chords, sultry Latin jazz rhythms played at an incredibly slow pace, maudlin clarinet skronk, and the vibrato charm of an old electric organ. This isn't full-on Blue Note jazz, but is like a gypsy band of art rockers forgetting and remembering jazz standards while attempting to perform on a sunbleached, empty plaza overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. While holding little actual resemblance, Crescent's push into jazz parallels the loungecore jazz of Bohren and Der Club of Gore and the turgid atmospheres of Labradford. If you don't like jazz at all you might not care for it, but there is something special in this record that a lot of people are going to like.
Due to Bristol's rather incestuous pool of avant rock bands, Crescent's name often appears in conjunction with Flying Saucer Attack, Movietone, Third Eye Foundation, and Amp. As it should, since members of Crescent have performed with all three of those groups. It is a tad disheartening to see customers buy Crescent records with the hope of hearing a cosmic drone of blissful feedback, only to find an antithetical abject muck, and then selling them back.
And you know what, there's absolutely nothing wrong with an abject muck, actually we really like abject muck. If you listen closely to the tracks that Matt Jones (Crescent's mastermind) has appeared on in Amp and Movietone, you'll realise that everything he touches ends up with a gritty lo-fi quality. And for Crescent's third album, he has taken up residence in a Bristol church to capture a rather humid, almost rusting sound on top of his very loose songs. A gothic (NOT in the Trench Coat Mafia definition) sensibility of decaying atmospheres, permeates the slow moving waves of sonorous basslines, loose hammond organ semi-improvisations, and skittering rhythms, somewhere between jazz and krautrock.
Digging ever deeper into the EM back-catalog (just like this wonderful Japanese label digs ever deeper and deeper into the realm of obscure and out-of-print LPs, looking for weird gems like this to reissue), we are so psyched to finally review this disc, devoted to the music of Noah Creshevsky. Like the recently reviewed EM releases by Barton Smith and David Rosenberg, this Creshevsky guy is another eccentric electronic music pioneer -- just look at him on the cover, with his bald head, mustache, and little sweater vest! But appearances aside, the eight tracks of audio found on this cd definitely live up to the EM standard of wonderful weirdness as well. What you've got to know about Creshevsky is that he was totally into the gospel of ol' JC -- no, not Jesus Christ, we're talking about 20th century avant-garde composer John Cage. Chance and randomness! The thick cd booklet (pretty much all in Japanese, but heavily illustrated with pictures and graphics) includes a color photo of Creshevsky hanging out with his hero in 1986, and there's also a track here, 1976's "In Other Words (Portrait Of John Cage)", that consists of nine minutes of quietly ominous electronic drone backing some words from JC. That's probably the "calmest" cut on this disc, though, as the rest are much more in the mode of tape-spliced mayhem. You get a display of musique concrete as chop socky boom-bap on the cut-up, percussive first track, "Strategic Defense Initiative" (which with a title like that you won't be surprised to learn dates from 1986). Puts us in mind of early Boredoms, almost! The next track, "Highway" from 1979, brings in more snippets of speech, a collage of non-sequiturs sampled from TV and records. But track three, 1971's "Circuit", sources its sounds, layered and looped, from the chiming strings of the harpsichord only. It's a mesmerizing, maddening bit of music that verges on suspense movie spookiness (with sudden jarring jumps in volume). Other cuts here include "Drummer" (1985), a choppy battery of drumming, of course, plus ambient street sounds and screwy tape garble; the amusing "Great Performances" (1978), a cartoonish concert of sampled symphonic sounds and more spoken non-sequiturs; "Sonata" (1980) which continues the classical theme but adds drum machine blasts and a dose of Nyquil to the verbal component. And then things wind up with the last and latest piece found here, 1992's "Cantiga", another jagged "classical" piece that sounds like the work of an ADD-afflicted Carl Stalling, that manages to establish a nicely moody effect in the end. Overall, The Tape Music Of Noah Creshevsky is damaged, deranged, and full of a lot of detail to delve into. Today's breed of digital Plunderphonicans perhaps could claim Creshevsky as an ancestor, and certainly the pop-culture element here posits Noah Creshevsky as a precursor to the (pioneering themselves) Tape Beatles, for instance. Neat.
This is probably one of my (Andee's) favorite new metal records. Imagine some sort of weird mix between Cradle of Filth and Voivod. Technical and blazing fast, but instead of that sing-songy black metal melody that seems to make it into every black metal
Sure, there's lots of great grind bands, but how many can grind like it's 1989? A whole bunch you say. Well, yeah, maybe, but NONE of them can pull it off as well as Cretin, a crushing, grinding ultra-brutal blast from the past. Been hankering for some Scum-era Napalm Death, howabout some early Carcass? Do the names Terrorizer, Extreme Noise Terror and Repulsion send all sort of blastbeats and downtuned riffage careening around your caveman skull? Well then, Cretin is just what you've been waiting for. Fast and filthy buzzing grind metal brutality that does nothing but pound and blast, like a giant metal fist grabbing a handful of your hair and repeatedly smashing your face into the pavement. You know you love it. We sure as hell do. Features ex-members of death thrashers Exhumed and there's even some guest guitar action from one of the Repulsion guys just so you know this shit is for real!
The eagerly-anticipated second full-length (but the first since 2006) by the gutter-crawlers in Cretin sees an essentially brand new line-up since their last album, Freakery.
The brainchild of Marissa Martinez, former guitarist of Repulsion, Cretin crawls out of the same sewer as those grind/death pioneers. The overall atmosphere and structure is remarkably similar to Repulsion's opus Horrified and other early death/grind outfits like Carcass, Terrorizer, and maybe even fellow Bay Area masters Autopsy, but the riffs on Stranger are tighter, more technical, and perhaps even gnarlier. The lyrics, too, go above and beyond, telling intricate, albeit dark and twisted, stories.
On "Mr. Frye, the Janitor Guy," for example, Martinez really packs in the putridity, taking on the perspective of a lazy-eyed janitor who hangs himself in front of school children to get back at them for laughing at him. If you're looking for optimism, you'll not find it here.
Even given how composed and thought out this album feels, the songs never overstay their welcome. The focus is always on quick assaults and punishing riffs, never giving the listener a chance to breath. Believe us, Cretin wants you to suffocate. Recommended!
How could we resist a band called The Crevices Below, whose album is titled Below The Crevices? Hell, just check out album opener "Below The Crevices" (yes!!!), a creeping atmospheric synth heavy subterranean exploration, that does sound precisely like a field recording of what lurks just below the crevices, all blackened swirls, strange machine like rhythms, ominous melodies, anguished wails off in the distance, eventually spidery doomy guitars drift into the picture, and then suddenly, the song explodes in a frenzy of furious synth soaked black blasting, everything cavernous and echoey, the vocals a rasped bellow, the drums pounding, the guitars buzzing, but those thick droning synths transforming the sound into something weirdly alien and majestic. And then out of nowhere, in comes an impossibly melodic clean guitar part, again transforming the sound into something almost poppy, the sound slipping back and forth between that grim synthy buzz, and that soaring melodic poppiness, dense and heavy and droney and totally epic.
Not really sure how we discovered this Australian one man band, pretty sure it was based entirely on the band name, but our obsession spread, first Andee, then Allan, then fellow black metal weirdo Botanist, then aQ pal Monte. Soon after Andee played it on his radio show, and everyone wanted to know what the heck it was. And where they could get it.
So yeah, The Crevices Below, who besides being masters of synth heavy black metal majesty, also create a dark gloomy downer pop the likes of which we haven't heard since the amazing debut from Nuit Noire offshoot Soror Dolorosa, which is how most of Below The Crevices plays out: gothy, gloomy, Joy Divisiony dirges, long expanses of melancholic synthswirl doom pop, washed out and dreamily woozy,�over which a deep ominous croon, that sits right on the verge of hysteria,�wails and howls, occasionally blossoming into something much more black and buzzy, in fact most of the tracks here are a perfectly twisted fusion of goth pop and black buzz, heavy and darkly psychedelic, the synths really the driving force, swooping in to transform what ever buzzing blackness or dour broodery is taking place and turning it into something heavy and epic and mighty, and mighty twisted.
When you break it down, very little of Below The Crevices is truly black metal, several of the tracks strip away the buzz completely, leaving instead a sort of creeping poppy gloom, or some sort of softly hazy, almost shoegazey ambience. "Whispers Of Sorrow" is all spidery guitar melodies wreathed in thick swaths of synthdrone, all underpinned by skeletal drum skitter, while "Trapped In Suicidal Depths" is all gloomy and gothy, heavily effected downtuned guitars, low slung bass, croaked sinister vox, more Christian Death or Specimen than black metal, super spare, the guitars less buzzy and more warm and twangy, the vocals growing more and more anguished, and while there's a brief bit of buzzing guitars and pounding drums midway through, those quickly fade, leaving the rest of the track to unfold like some smeared eyeliner, gothic cabaret.
But bookending this goth-gloom two-fer, is one one side, "A Grand Cavernous Awakening", which might be the most black metal of the bunch, at least initially, the synths adding plenty of pomp to on otherwise grim sprawl of black buzz, while the second half of the song, slips back into moody melodic gothic doom pop, and on the other side, the record closer, the nearly eleven minute "Carrying The Cries Of The Lost", which starts off all hushed and folky, deep vox over acoustic guitar, and simple spare drumming, but then this track too explodes into some soaring buzzing blackness, those synths epic and triumphant, peeling away at one point, offering up the record's grimmest moments, pure metallic crush, only to then shift gears again, and slip into a more melodic half tempo groove, seconds later launching back into a blasting gallop, but instead of grim buzz, super dramatic crooned vox once again transform the sound into something much more gloomy and poppy, before a twisted squall of an ending, flitting from mathy angular crunch, to distorted buzz / synth swirl psychedelia.
So incredible, incredibly weird, and utterly recommended. Another black metal record of the year contender and it's only January (and yeah, we know this came out last year, but it only made it on the aQ list in 2012...)!!
Low-end ambient bassist Devin Sarno is Crib, helped on his new (third, we think) disc "Remnant" by AQ-fave guitarist Nels Cline (who did a pretty great duo album with Sarno a few years back) and other LA avant scenesters. There's three tracks, the first
Devin Sarno, who recently did a collaborative lp with Nels Cline (see elsewhere in this list, hopefully), here sculpts an aural sprawl of austere drones using only a bass guitar...
Originally released for this year's Record Store Day, this seminal slab of SF punk is now available to the world at large, the first in what will hopefully be an ongoing reissue campaign of all the singles from these legendary punks. This 7" was originally released in 1976, and while some younger folks might not remember Crime, they probably remember the A side, "Hot Wire My Heart", as it was covered by Sonic Youth, and listening to the original, it's easy to hear why SY were drawn to it, with its droned out melodies, killer hook, and noisy guitars (especially for the time), in fact, it actually kind of sounds a little Sonic Youthy in its original form, which is pretty remarkable. The flipside "Baby You're So Repulsive" is all swaggery knuckle dragging snarl, and like the A side is surprisingly noisy and is definitely prescient, knowingly or not, of what would follow. There's some strange stuttery lurches too, which make this just slightly damaged, and a fucking killer jam that sounds as good now as it did 35 years ago!!
Digitally remastered from the original master tapes, housed in an exact reproduction of the original sleeve, pressed on crazy tri-colored red, white and blue vinyl, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Now finally, also reissued on vinyl! Thanks to local label Superior Viaduct. When we got the cd version of this on Kitten Charmer late last year, we didn't happen to make it a Record Of The Week, but probably should have. We certainly sold enough of 'em for it to have been the Record Of The Week by default. So, now that it's on vinyl, let's make it official! (Oh, and the cd version is now gone it seems.)
The first proper, non-bootleg reissue of classic material from this seminal SF punk group came in the form of a demos collection released on John Reis from Rocket From The Crypt's Swami label, and in that review, we offered this concise description of Crime: "Crime proclaimed themselves to be San Francisco's 'First and Only Rock and Roll Band'. That hyperbole of course ain't quite true but indicates the level of punk attitude you're in for. Hard rocking, fast, and snotty, Crime were violent and stylish - they kicked out the jams in SFPD uniforms and shades! This definitely belongs on the same shelf with your Iggy & the Stooges and Dead Boys discs�"
And now finally this long in the works, OFFICIAL singles collection sees the light of day, now on vinyl too, gathering up the groups iconic first three (and only) singles, along with what is essentially a whole record of previously unreleased studio tracks! Up first is there debut single, "Hot Wire My Heart", which was famously covered by Sonic Youth, and listening to the original, it's easy to hear why SY were drawn to it, with its droned out melodies, killer hook, and noisy guitars (especially for the time), in fact, it actually kind of sounds a little Sonic Youthy in its original form, which is pretty remarkable. The flipside "Baby You're So Repulsive" is all swaggery knuckle dragging snarl, and like the A side is surprisingly noisy and is definitely prescient, knowingly or not, of what would follow. There's some strange stuttery lurches too, which make this just slightly damaged, and a fucking killer jam that sounds as good now as it did 35 years ago!! "Terminal Boredom" is a furious blast of nihilistic punk rock, laced with plenty of poppiness, a killer main guitar melody, and some mush mouth vocals, that perfectly capture the titular mood. The flipside of that single starts out loose and sloppy, and practically falls apart, before they launch into "Dillinger's Brain", which manages to sound nearly as loose and sloppy, somehow without actually falling apart!
"Frustration" is up next, and the group inject some power poppiness into the aggro punk stomp, with a super catchy main riff, as well as more kick ass guitar melodies (sort-of leads?), before they finish off the singles proper with the B side that gives this collection its name, a Black Flag sounding doomy dirge (SF's doomed for sure), all churning creep, before things crumble into chaos halfway through, only to explode into some serious almost surf punk sounding crunch, that quickly devolves into some snarly, sonic swagger.
And if that weren't enough, there's NINE extra tracks, most of which sound like classic Crime, except maybe for the weird electronics flecked "Gangster Funk", but stick around for the crushing alternate version of Crime's classic "San Francisco's Doomed"!
The first proper, non-bootleg reissue of classic material from this seminal SF punk group came in the form of a demos collection released on John Reis from Rocket From The Crypt's Swami label, and in that review, we offered this concise description of Crime: "Crime proclaimed themselves to be San Francisco's 'First and Only Rock and Roll Band'. That hyperbole of course ain't quite true but indicates the level of punk attitude you're in for. Hard rocking, fast, and snotty, Crime were violent and stylish - they kicked out the jams in SFPD uniforms and shades! This definitely belongs on the same shelf with your Iggy & the Stooges and Dead Boys discs�"
And now finally this long in the works, OFFICIAL singles collection sees the light of day, gathering up the groups iconic first three (and only) singles, along with what is essentially a whole record of previously unreleased studio tracks! Up first is there debut single, "Hot Wire My Heart", which was famously covered by Sonic Youth, and listening to the original, it's easy to hear why SY were drawn to it, with its droned out melodies, killer hook, and noisy guitars (especially for the time), in fact, it actually kind of sounds a little Sonic Youthy in its original form, which is pretty remarkable. The flipside "Baby You're So Repulsive" is all swaggery knuckle dragging snarl, and like the A side is surprisingly noisy and is definitely prescient, knowingly or not, of what would follow. There's some strange stuttery lurches too, which make this just slightly damaged, and a fucking killer jam that sounds as good now as it did 35 years ago!! "Terminal Boredom" is a furious blast of nihilistic punk rock, laced with plenty of poppiness, a killer main guitar melody, and some mush mouth vocals, that perfectly capture the titular mood. The flipside of that single starts out loose and sloppy, and practically falls apart, before they launch into "Dillinger's Brain", which manages to sound nearly as loose and sloppy, somehow without actually falling apart!
"Frustration" is up next, and the group inject some power poppiness into the aggro punk stomp, with a super catchy main riff, as well as more kick ass guitar melodies (sort-of leads?), before they finish off the singles proper with the B side that gives this collection its name, a Black Flag sounding doomy dirge (SF's doomed for sure), all churning creep, before things crumble into chaos halfway through, only to explode into some serious almost surf punk sounding crunch, that quickly devolves into some snarly, sonic swagger.
And if that weren't enough, the cd tacks on NINE extra tracks, most of which sound like classic Crime, except maybe for the weird electronics flecked "Gangster Funk", but stick around for the crushing alternate version of Crime's classic "San Francisco's Doomed"!
New liner notes, including some from Thurston Moore, as well as a few rare photos and reproductions of the original 7" sleeves!
Kudos to John Reis' Swami label for finally making this long-awaited reissue a reality! San Francisco's Doomed was originally a bootleg of Crime demos from '78 and '79 that first saw the light of day a decade or so ago, and now is remastered and reissued with two bonus tracks and liner notes and photos and all that. So thanks to Swami, SF's *still* doomed. (It's been a good year for "holy grail" punk cd reissues: first Metal Urbain, now Crime!)
I guess there's three sorts of people reading this review: there's the folks who already know this band and have been waiting and waiting for something on cd and will be down here in, like, two seconds to buy a copy. Then there's those of you who have heard *of* Crime but never really heard them, who are curious if they really were as important, essential, kick ass of a punk band as you've been told... well, they are! So get down here now too. Finally, there's those of you for whom Crime is just another name, maybe you've heard of maybe not, but it's got no special significance. For you, the history lesson (in brief): Crime released their first single in '76, proclaiming themselves to be San Francisco's "First and Only Rock and Roll Band". That hyperbole of course ain't quite true but indicates the level of punk attitude you're in for here. Hard rocking, fast, and snotty, Crime were violent and stylish -- they kicked out the jams in SFPD uniforms and shades! This definitely belongs on the same shelf with your Iggy & the Stooges and Dead Boys discs...
This reissue includes 2 alternate-take bonus tracks from the same '76 session as their debut single (btw, a Crime singles comp is forthcoming someday on Revenant, we're told). Very recommended, punk fans! And, like Jim Jocoy's photo book We're Desperate, a reminder of when living in SF was actually probably pretty cool... not that it's not cool to be here now...but there ain't no freakin' bands like Crime prowling the city anymore these days, no sir!!
We've had a bunch of different reissues of stuff by Crime, the legendary San Francisco punk band. This is the fanciest one, though, a box set containing seven 7"s and a cd, plus a 20 page booklet. The first three 7"s are facsimile reproductions of Crime's original singles, the other four feature other studio tracks circa '77-'79. And the cd collects 'em all together for convenience. It's basically the same thing as the Murder By Guitar anthology that Kitten Charmer put out on cd, and then Superior Viaduct did on lp, so take a look at our review of that for more information. This box is for the folks who want their Crime on 7", like it was originally!
Ah, sadly this new disc from San Francisco's Crime In Choir is also their swansong. Please say it ain't so, guys. 'Cause what other band around here is going to provide our fix of dazzling, groovy instrumental prog inspired by cult foreign film soundtracks?? But at least we've got this final recording. It's with the same lineup (right?) that produced their previous album Trumpery Metier highlighted here two years ago, meaning this features Tim Soete, formerly of the Fucking Champs, doing percussive math on the drumkit, joined by plenty of vintage synth sizzle, glorious guitar wail, and jazzy sax. Crime In Choir's usual '70s prog derived bombast is in full effect here, with some nods and winks to the discotheques of the high-gloss, coke-dusted '80s. The 7 tracks here range from the cop show / suspense movie chase music funk of the disc's opener and title track to more melancholic, moody stuff like the mellow yet majestic "Pedal Nervous Sensation" and the cosmic synth pulsations of the album's lovely finale, "Fool's Guild" (which builds to something of a maniacal conclusion).
Both Goblin (definitely) and Italo-disco (probably) seem like possible reference points, and if you liked Zombi's "Sapphire" you might be on the same wavelength as Crime In Choir is here, not that this gets quite so electronic-dancey. Same goes if you like the likes of Maserati, Tangerine Dream, and the dancefloor filling live shows by CiC keyboardist Jesse's new unit Jonas Reinhardt.
Gift Givers comes packaged in a brightly colored "eco-wallet" recycled cardboard sleeve thing, and was released by the same label, Kill Shaman, who brought us Animism by Expo '70, and that recent Night Control disc, fyi.
Leaps and bounds from their already impressive self-titled debut from a couple of years ago, Crime In Choir's second full length reveals sharper chops both in composition and musicianship. They've adapted a much more prog aspect into their post rock instrumental sound with definite shades of Goblin. A sophomore success from this mathy, Moogy San Fran quartet, who now have replaced drummer Zach Hill of Hella with drummer Jay Pellici of Dilute and 31 Knots. Recommended!
You could call San Francisco's Crime In Choir a mathy, instrumental post-rock band, sure. But you could also call 'em a kick ass '70s progressive rock act (except that they're not actually from the '70s...). This is certainly prog rock, a la Van Der Graaf Generator, Yes, Goblin, PFM, Le Orme, Soft Machine, Magma, and other greats from the prog past. Definitely a delight for all the prog-fanciers among us here at AQ. We're pretty thrilled with this album, which we couldn't wait to hear after having just seen these guys live, performing in front of a projection of the 1973 Italian art film La Grande Bouffe, providing their own soundtrack to the gustatory grotesquery on screen. So perfect for Crime In Choir's cultivated brand of ripping, groovy bombast. They deliver on record too, this one (their third) being perhaps their best yet! The energetic pulsations of the crack rhythm section -- CiC's latest drummer extraordinaire* is now Tim Soete of The Fucking Champs, and on this album the bass is played by Seth Lorinczi, formerly of The Quails and long before that, the late great DC prog punkers Circus Lupus -- are matched by the mass of keyboards employed by Kenny Hopper and Jesse Reiner, along with the guitar of Jarrett Wrenn and Matt Waters' sax. Those synths are sometimes sinuous and sizzling, sometimes spacey and soaring, and ever present. And while we know the use of saxophone is a deal-breaker for some folks, Crime In Choir's tastefully restrained saxophonist eschews any smooth jazz cheesiness, either riffing brassily along with the keys and guitar, or supplying spiraling, screeching solos with gusto (when necessary, which is not that often). Definite points for non-sucky use of saxophone in other words! Furthermore, while their '70s prog lovin' sound is right on, so is the songwriting. They've managed to hit that sweet spot for instrumental bands, where these songs -could- have singing (they're melodious enough) but don't -need- a vocalist at all. They'll grab you regardless. File somewhere in between your Champs and Zombi albums, nearby to your collection of '70s progsters, and not far from your Citay cd (another excellent San Francisco band of prog revivalists with whom CiC have shared a member or two). Recommended!
*after having Hella's Zach Hill behind the kit on their first album, and 31 Knots' Jay Pellici on their second.
A sticker on the shrinkwrap proclaims "founding members of At The Drive-In and Hella", but don't go buying it just because of that fact. Really now, this sounds very little like either band (well, maybe they lean towards a more subdued Hella... which sounds like quite a nice thing to me). This is a half dozen very well-executed post-rock instrumentals that are both pretty and driving. My ears perked up even more from the third track "Come Here, Raider" and on when the instrumentation and arrangements get a little more fleshed out. Check it out!
Interested in a "UK Public Enemy"?! Read on...
Gotta admit, until this new collection on Rephlex label came out, we'd never heard of late '80s / early '90s "Britcore" hip hop crew The Criminal Minds (formed 1985) before, nor for that matter any of the other UK rappers mentioned as The Criminal Minds' contemporaries in Rephlex's blurb for this release, like Hijack, Silver Bullet, and the Demon Boyz. When we think of hip hop from England we think of groups like Bomb The Bass, although we're more familiar with the grime stuff, more recent artists like Dizzy Rascal, Lethal Bizzle, and Lady Sovereign. But this is old school rap, a reissue of some super rare tracks by this legendary, if obscure group whom we're guessing might have been named after the B.D.P. album.
Initially, we were curious about The Criminal Minds 'cause we were told they sounded like a UK version of Public Enemy, and that's a pretty accurate description! Their dramatic, hectic mix of rhythms and rhyming is definitely a lot like a Bomb Squad production, dense with (doubtlessly uncleared) samples, sirens wailing, funky drum breaks, plenty of turntable scratching whip whip wap, and even the use of a newscaster-like voiceover, delivering "This just in..." updates about the doings of the MC Iceski, DJ Halo, Chase 1, DJ Spatts, and associates. So for sure this will remind you of PE, although none of The Criminal Minds has the powerful stentorian voice of Chuck D, or the colorful personality of Flavor Flav, of course. But T.C.M.'s MCs are verbally adept, with a rapidfire old school flow, though.
We're getting nostalgic listening to this, even though we'd never heard it before. Just kinda neat to have some "new" old school hip hop with that apocalyptic Bomb Squad vibe, that at the same time is fresh and different (to us) being British and all. It's all very rough and raw and DIY, and being from England they incorporate some dancehall stylings here and there. Also they have a penchant for what sound like samples from classical music - or soundtracks - an obvious one being their use of John Williams' "Imperial March" Darth Vader theme from Star Wars! Gotta love that.
After a little internet research, we've determined that the tracks on the main disc here are mostly taken from The Criminal Minds' first two 12"s, their 1990 debut Guilty As Charged and its 1991 follow up Tales From The Wasteland (from whence the cover art for this Rephlex anthology comes). Both eps were self-released, bedroom productions, with very few copies pressed - originals sell for hundreds and hundreds of dollars these days. The bonus disc appears to contain more demos, remixes, and unreleased tracks, but it's also got a couple cuts from the Tales From The Wasteland 12", not sure why it's organized like this, or why this is a "bonus" disc, with a tracklisting only given for the main one. All very mysterious, which leads us to our only real complaint, no liner notes. C'mon, Rephlex! If you're gonna reissue this stuff, why not let us know a little something about it? Basically, though, what you're getting here are all the group's crucial back catalog tracks, remastered to boot.
Right on. Now we've gotta find some Hijack and Silver Bullet records too...
FYI, the above review is of the 2cd version, we're also listing the limited edition double vinyl, which contains just 9 of the 25 tracks found on the cds, but it's the only way to get 'em on wax without spending a fortune.
The misanthropic Italian grindcore legends, the one and only Cripple Bastards, return with a brand-new full-length (no, not another singles collection!) on former Brutal Truth drummer Rich Hoak's Deaf American imprint. Giulio the Bastard, Alberto the
What might you expect from a band featuring one part Mogwai, one part Electric Wizard, one part Pantheist, one part 3D House Of Beef (as well as maybe a few other random parts)? Most certainly not this. What we expected was some sort of super heavy, ultra dynamic loud-quiet-loud metal thing, but instead what we got was way more interesting. A moody, melancholic, moody, gothy, Victorian doom folk. Tragic Victorian ballads mixed with moody jangle rock dirges. More Decemberists, Black Heart Procession and Nick Cave than anything remotely metal.
From the opening track, a mysterious sort of sea shanty, we knew this was something completely unexpected. Whipping wind, creaking ship's rigging, chant like vocals, almost like Pirate style "yo ho ho"s, the music in the background wheezing and groaning. The perfect intro to a record of dark desolation and old time misery and sadness.
Recorded on a mix of modern gear and actual Victorian era equipment, these songs play out like miniature epics, the vocals world weary, the guitars shuffle and twang, the drums, mostly brushed, skitter along, the melodies minor key and mournful, while all around, strings moan and occasionally soar, and strange voices drift, harmonic shimmers reverberate in the dark, reverb, delay and echo give everything a washed out feel, occasionally the band does actually rock, but even then, it's some strange old fashioned cabaret, still wreathed in dark whir and murky mystery. On close listening, the songs are rife with all manner of strange microscopic sonic details, voices, creaks and groans, short wave radios, monk-like chants, swirling FX... all very haunting and mysterious, epic and dramatic.
Fans of the Decemberists, Black Heart Procession, Woven Hand, Godspeed and other likeminded cinematic miserablists will definitely dig, as will perhaps some of the more adventurous fans of CBP's members' more metallic pedigrees...
Another awesome eighties metal obscurity rescued and reissued by the fine folks at Shadow Kingdom. Some of the metalheads around here (okay, just Andee), had this record when they were teenagers, so were especially excited by this reissue, and it's even better than we had hoped, as it tacks on the unheard-by-nearly-everybody second album, as well as a whole disc of demos.
Crisis were definitely not cool or hip, even back in the eighties. When the world wanted Motley Crue and Quiet Riot, these guys were channeling classic NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Meavy Metal), specifically early Iron Maiden, as well as Motorhead and Raven, with hints of Thin Lizzy and Rory Gallagher, their sound raw and rough, but super rocking and crazy catchy, the vocals sometimes a dead ringer for Maiden's Paul Di'Anno, their sound heavy, but hooky, and the songs, totally catchy, and super rocking. If only they had been about ten years earlier, things might well have turned out differently.
As it is, NWOBHM obsessives would do well to check this out, and fans of classic eighties metal, you probably remember these guys already and most likely want this, and if you never heard these guys, you're in for an eighties metal treat!
Includes a massive booklet, featuring the original 'sexy' gun toting babe album cover, liner notes, photos and lyrics.
One of many bands to call themselves Crisis, the British punk Crisis formed in 1977, forging alliances with Rock Against Racism and the Socialist Workers Party. Thus, Crisis established themselves as one of the earliest punk bands to use a musical platform as a vehicle to promote a leftist agenda. Musically, Crisis focused on the tight aggressive punk blueprint already established by The Buzzcocks and Warsaw; and the band broadcast their political messages through rudimentary / easily-decipherable lyrics in the form of anthemic proclamations delivered with an urgent cockney sneer. Over their brief four year career, Crisis' principal songwriters Douglas Pearce and Tony Wakeford (both of whom went on to form Death In June in 1981 with Wakeford later founding Sol Invictus) became disillusioned with the Trotskyist agenda they first espoused and acquired positions that would be more aligned with the aesthetics of anarchism. Holocaust Hymns compiles all of the tracks from their Hymns Of Faith mini LP as well as the tracks from their Peel Sessions and their three singles. Holocaust Hymns is a very important punk document that acts as a curious counterpoint to the bands that came after Crisis, most notably Death In June who has nurtured much controversy around their neo-Nazi imagery.
This long time aQ fave now reissued on vinyl!!
Thanks to a fateful Joy Division gig, where Crispy Ambulance singer Alan Hempsal successfully and secretly subbed for a missing Ian Curtis, The Ambulance seemed to be cursed with a reputation as pale imitatiors of Joy Division. But while at moments, Crispy Ambulance *are* dead ringers for Joy Division's post-punk pop, they were even more adept at crafting truly creepy gloom and haunting sound sculptures. At their best, they could create unsettling almost sci-fi soundscapes, and at their worst they could hold their own with their early '80s cronies Joy Division, In Camera, Wolfgang Press, etc. Totally excellent. Still sounds as fantastic as ever!
Homegoing is the most recent full length from these avant dronescapers, whose Re-Ups lp on Flingco was a big hit around here. The group counts members of the late great Labradford amongst their membership, and as we mentioned in our review of Re-Ups, there does seem to be a sonic thread connecting both groups.
Cristal explore much of the same ground as other dronelords like SUNNO))) and Locrian, but Cristal focus less on the heavy, and more on the atmosphere, and the texture, the sounds here unfurling, and unfolding, revealing fragmented melodies, and mysterious song-like shapes drifting amidst the fields of low end thrum and keening shimmer.
The opener sounds almost classical, like Wolf Eyes performing with the symphony, a symphony forced to play old rusted metal and weird found implements, the result is a black, foggy creep, with moaning cellos and creaking streaks of high end, all wreathed in lush swirls of blackened sound, ethereal and ephemeral, a lushly ominous broodscape the sounds poised to exploded into something epic, but instead, seems to drift ever inward, collapsing into a brief bit of almost new age sounding drift, all hazy hushed thrum, before splintering into an epic sprawl of softly churning rumble, laced with layered pulsations, all blurred and smeared into a slow heaving swell of softly crumbling low end, wreathed in a halo of hushed high end shimmer. Gorgeous and harrowing.
The second half of the record begins with a field of cavernous subterranean low end reverberations, the sound almost ritualistic, the tones sounding almost like human voices processed by the natural deformations in whatever cave these sounds were excavated from, the sound shifts to something even more minimal, a field of softly undulating swells, brooding, moody and mysteriously cinematic, all bleeding into a hazy prismatic drift, all muted high end skree, sculpted into dreamlike shapes and set adrift on soft focus billows of weightless sound, the airiness giving way to something more warm and washed out, dreamlike and melancholic, before shifting into the epic near 11 minute closer, which starts off barely there, but quickly builds to something epic and majestic, a swirling serene squall of dense psychedelic shimmer, and slow shifting layers of glimmering, chordal whir, all hazy and heady and heavenly...
Not sure about you, but Cristal for us conjures up images of MTV Cribs and Jay-Z and 50 Cent partying at some exclusive club, or hot babes in bikinis sipping drinks on a yacht moored right off Miami Beach, but most definitely evoke the dark blackened sonic abyss that is this, the first release from the oddly monickered Cristal, a trio that just so happens to feature one member of long time aQ faves Labradford.
And Labradford is a good jumping off point for Cristal, there's a definitely sonic connection, but where Labradford built on the most minimal of sounds, this trio seems to break the sound down into the smallest possible parts, creating, hyper detailed microscopic droneworlds that virtually REQUIRE headphones.
Lots of blurbs have referenced SUNNO))) but the sound of Cristal is less about power and force, more about texture and timbre, whereas SUNNO))) explode outward, Cristal collapse inward, like that ride at Disneyland, where you travel into the microscope. This is minimal microscopic, but incredibly rich and detailed sound.
Ultra deep ambience, a sound both subterranean and subaquatic, metallic shimmering high end washes over everything like some sort of alien sheen, fields of glistening cricket like chitter adds texture to otherwise slow shifting smooth expanses of warm soft swirl, dreamy and ethereal, fields of high tones surface here and there like a symphony of gently rubbed wine glasses, the only real jarring moment is at the beginning of side 2, the opening track an ear splitting burst of super hot white noise hiss, almost Merzbowian in its intensity, all chaotic and crumbling and buzzy, but the disc quickly returns to it's more tranquil drift for the remainder of side 2, a wash of low end whispers, of textured blurred melodies, sounding quite a bit like some Ligeti choral piece sloooooowed way down. Really quite lovely. Just be prepared for that brief blast, otherwise, a gorgeously deep dark minimal dronescape that will for sure hit the spot for the slow and low obsessed.
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 500 COPIES. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a super swank gatefold sleeve, printed black on black!
You think you've got some weird cds in your collection? Make room for this one if you dare. Heck, as soon as we peeped the crude fantasy cover art, we were like, new favorite album!
'80s Mexican heavy metallers Cristal Y Acero (Crystal And Steel) were responsible for this strange record, originally released in 1984, billed as the "Primera Opera Rock Mexicana". Kuman was indeed a wild Spanish-language rock opera, apparently about a muscular Tarzan-type character (...in SPAAAAACE!!!). We're not sure, but from the photos included here we think this Kuman musical may have been an actual stage production, or maybe even something filmed for Mexican TV. It comes off like a weird, metallic mash-up of, like, Meatloaf and Os Mutantes, combining Cristal Y Acero's hard n' heavy old-school metal riffing with a variety of other pop musical genres - proggy pomp-rock, sappy soft rock, piano balladry, and more. It of course gets cheesy but in an amazing insane kitschy way, and always Cristal Y Acero's fuzzy hard rock riffage, harmonized leads, and gruff vocals come back in to kick ass, after whatever else happens. There's slinky lounge grooves, guest female vocals, '50s rock & roll pastiche, and METAL.
But that's not all, this cd also includes all the tracks from Cristal Y Acero's more traditional self-titled debut album from 1983, with some songs sung in English. It's pretty charming and cool too, with chugging guitars, widdly solos, and lots of raw old school metal might, in the style of such bands as Saxon and Accept - but Mexican, and on a budget. Presented together with Kuman, this disc is something for both cult metal aficionados and those into straight up WTF? strangeness.
Packaged in a mini-lp style sleeve, with inserts. Perhaps not remastered from the original master tapes.
Yup, things tend to come around full circle, don't they? Cristina and her then husband Michael Zilka conspired to cash in on the whole disco craze of the late '70s but with a biting sense of sarcasm and a smarty-pants arrogance. With Zilka founding the now legendary Ze Records and Cristina releasing the 'artfully dumb' single "Disco Clone" in 1978, the two certainly started out on the right foot. Jump forward some twenty-five years later with a post-punk / avant-disco revival exploding thanks to the likes of the LCD Soundsystem, the Rapture, and the rest of the DFA line-up, and Cristina and her now ex-husband Michael Zilka have conspired to cash in once again with the reissue of her first two albums. Doll In The Box was originally an eponymous LP on Ze, released back in 1980 and was produced by August Darnell (better known as the ringleader of Kid Creole and the Coconuts). Perhaps we're too familiar with the more-clever-than-thou sensibility of LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" that ripples throughout the entire post-disco retread, but Cristina's Doll In The Box sounds like a pretty straight forward disco album. Mind you, it's a mighty fine disco album with the rhythmic mono-pulse augmented by minimalist barrio swings, goof-ball covers (e.g. "Drive My Car" by The Beatles with Cristina affecting the air-headed breathiness of Marilyn Monroe), and lots of big, brash, baroque string section frilliness.
When we first heard about a new band featuring Sam Coomes of Quasi and Spencer Seim of Hella, we were definitely curious, but to be honest we weren't expecting anything this amazing and weird. We figured on some fuzzy jangle, some poppy hooks, which are definitely present here, but this is WAY removed from your typical indie rock record. In fact the record opener, "No More Dumb Fun", starts things off with a blown out impossibly distorted buzzy main riff that sounds more like synth than guitar, the drums downright groove, which had us imagining an indie rock version of Justice or some Ed Banger outfit making a record for Matador, but then Coomes' vocals come in, and the sound is transformed into some sort of weird twisted super psychedelic, druggy and delirious take on indie rock. That opener adds all manner of swirling effects, some strange industrial banging off in the distance, Coomes' vox wrapped in echo and distortion, the result hews closer to something like Black Moth Super Rainbow or The Flaming Lips, but even more twisted and noisy and fantastically fuzzed out. In fact if you've heard about the soon to be released collaboration between The Flaming Lips and Lightning Bolt, it seems Crock have beaten those guys the punch, cuz this has the same sort of fuzz drenched psychedelia, spastic sputtery stuttery rhythms and studio-as-mad-scientist's-laboratory production, but Coomes injects the proceedings with plenty of pop hookery, Beatles-esque at times, but also recalling old school Northwestern outfit Pond, albeit utterly deconstructed.
"Corpsecrystal Mountain" dials back some of the fuzz and dips a big toe into some serious indie rock, but again it's all tweaked and twisted, the drums weirdly recorded, again super groovy, the music a tangle of synthy squiggles, with some wild progged out lo-fi weirdness that sounds more like some warped bedroom experiment that an indie rock super group, which is precisely why this is so good. "Nutritional Beast" might be our favorite, sounding like a weirdo electronic indie rock fuzzpop combo doing their best Carpenter / Goblin, but failing brilliantly, and coming up with one of THEE fuzziest, hookiest jams EVER. "Where We Get Off" is classic pop ballad, done Crock style, Queen by way of Torche, epic and soaring and dramatic, but also pretty much perfect pop. While "Bad Moves" opens like "Tom Sawyer" before stumbling into a lurching fuzz drenched dirge, and "Eat Your Hat Out" is total modern day indie pop fuzz prog, with tangled melodies, soaring vox, everything warm and washed out, gauzy and dreamily druggy. And so it goes, the whole record, a bombastic and blissed out, lo-fi psychedelic pop experiment that has yielded one of the most fantastically fun records in recent memory.
The rhythms drive everything, sometimes sounding electronic, always groovy, and hypnotic, but often exploding into bombastic Bonham style rib cage rattling pound, which is where the Hella really starts to show (and where the Lightning Bolt comparison stems from). And unlike most 'indie rock', where it's the jangly guitar that drives the proceedings, almost nothing here sounds like a proper guitar, whatever riffs there are, end up twisted and FX drenched, blown out and gloriously fried, those guitars (if they're even guitars?) blur and distort until they sound like fuzzed out analog synths, and if they're in fact synths, they're about as in-the-red and fucked up as they can get and still remain melodic, then the vocals, which while occasionally surfacing as a proper croon, spend most of their time dripping with weird effects, buried in the mix, drifting amidst the sound, hazy and druggy, it's a pretty irresistible combo, one that definitely straddles the line between indie rock and full on noise rock, in fact we'd probably qualify this as noise rock if it weren't so warm and melodic and dreamily fuzzy. But it IS noisy, and loud, and kaleidoscopic, and weird as fuck, but somehow still crazy catchy. The perfect mad scientist fuzz pop concoction, and quickly becoming one of our new favorite records.
We usually love the Crocs and their garagey dreampop ways... but this time out, perhaps not so much. Some of this just sounds too much like bad Spiritualized, with, like, horns and soulful female backup singers. Disappointing, but you never know, maybe we're running afoul of our own expectations and there's folks out there that will like this a lot. Check out the samples and decide for yourself.
Taking off our curmudgeon hats for a sec, we'll admit that there's definitely some toe-tappers on here - like what we thought was the title track (based on the refrain) but is actually called "Marquis De Sade". And the guitars jangle with a nice amount of crunch and distortion too. Wait a minute, maybe we're starting to like this...
Death rock and surf rock don't really seem like the best mix, but somehow, that seems to be what Crocodiles's M.O. is, and in the past it seemed to be mostly visual, the band constantly clad in black leather and shades, like some sort of modern day surf pop Lords Of The New Church, and while the music may have had hints of that death rock sound, it was subtle enough that they ended up falling with groups like Wavves, Best Coast, Dum Dum Girls and all the rest, and sounded right at home. We thought maybe that death rock thing would play a bigger part on this new record, based on the very gothy album title, and the even gothier songs: "Electric Death Song", "Hung Up On A Flower", "Sunday (Psychic Conversation #9)". Of course those titles are tempered by ones like "My Surfing Lucifer", which seems to be the perfect mix of surf and death rock. But as much as we wanted all this death rock stuff to come to pass, Endless Flowers takes up pretty much right where Sleep Forever left off, and once we pushed play, we couldn't have cared less, cuz these guys sound as good as ever, and this new batch of songs are killer. Big crunchy fuzzed out guitars, crooned vox, hooks galore, if anything the sound is even more polished than before, the songs more well crafted, which is a little surprising since this new one is on French Kiss. This is the sort of record that usually heralds the move to a major, the one where all the punks yell sell out. But really, no matter hoe much more polished this new one is, Sleep Forever wasn't exactly lo-fi. Some of the druggier Spacemen 3 and Jesus And Mary Chain elements that were a big part of Sleep Forever have definitely been dialed back a bit, in favor of a more jangly pop sound. That said, there are some moments, like on "Hung Up On A Flower" that's plenty dirgey and druggy, and even features a cool super weird trip out in the second half, all detuned guitars and weird foreign female voices, and all sorts of warped production, and the stripped down closer, which also has a sort of woozy softly psychedelic vibe, but elsewhere it's all fuzzy jangly pop and really we couldn't be happier. Definitely a new pop fave for sure.
It's the middle of summer (although it doesn't feel like it here) and it seems like everyone is still trying to come up with THEE Summer Jam of the year. Wavves, with their recent King Of The Beach record, had been battling it out with Best Coast, and their hazy girl group fuzz drenched Crazy For You, for the top spot, but now here come Crocodiles, with two songs that could definitely give both a run for their money.
Unlike the rest of the current crop of garage poppers, Crocodiles haven't been churning out a 7" a month, instead, laying pretty low since their awesome Summer Of Hate record a while back (minus a recent 4 way split), but "Sleep Forever" immediately reminds us why we dug them so much in the first place, with a big fuzzy slab of sunshiney pop, that owes as much to their current fuzz pop brethren as it does to classic Britpop, a perfect fusion of earnest buzzing jangle, and soaring psychedelic classic pop. "Sleep Forever" could easily be some long lost gem from the golden era of Britpop, maybe some rare unsung B-side, if it weren't for the fact that had this been from back in the day, it would have been anything but a B-side. And as if one blast of perfect psychpop bliss wasn't enough, the flipside finds the band tackling a VERY unlikely cover, Dee-lite's "Groove Is In The Heart", starting with that immediately recognizable bassline, but before you know it, the song is transformed into a total drugged out Spacemen 3 style blowout, complete with squalls of wild tangled psych guitar crunch and fuzzgarage organs, and then before you know it, the song transforms into the Beach Boys' "California Girls", THAT classic melody wrapped around that buzzing Dee-lite bassline, and the swirling blown out organ. AWESOME.
We weren't quite sure what to make of this record when it came in. It had all the visual components of numerous experimental and noise records (we initially assumed from the looks of the lp that it was another delightfully punishing No Fun release), but upon further inspection, we noticed the Fat Possum logo on the back, as well as some rather intriguing song titles: "I Wanna Kill", "Sleeping with the Lord", "Summer of Hate", and "Young Drugs". Yep, definitely some potential for cool, and when we finally put the Crocodiles on for a spin, we were quite pleased to be confronted with a dirty, stripped down Jesus and Mary Chain style wallop combined with bits of experimental noise, bluesy swagger, and dense shoegazey goodness. After some detective work, we discovered that this duo is from San Diego, like labelmates and recent aQ favorites Wavves, and while they don't really sound too much like Wavves, the Crocodiles seem to approach their music from a similar standpoint, reevaluating tried and true styles of rock from the past and injecting some fresh new blood into the proceedings. All the while they thankfully avoid falling into the trap of presenting themselves as some retro revival act, though they do have some mighty impressive hair.
A pleasant surprise from the folks at Fat Possum that is sure to appeal to those of you digging the lo-fi pop bliss of the aforementioned Wavves, Kurt Vile, No Age, and Crystal Stilts. Here's looking forward to the upcoming Summer of Hate.
Yeah, we know, Christmas is over, but you can keep that Christmas spirit alive with this super limited collaborative one sided, single song 7" from the Crocodiles and Dum Dum Girls, a gorgeous, darkly dreamy, fuzzed out, echo drenched Christmas classic if there ever was one. The guitars are blown out, the drums massive, LOTS of feedback, the production total sixties wall of sound, noisy and fuzzy but warm and woozy, with dueling boy / girl vocals, some wild squalls of psychedelic guitars, and a dreamy crazy catchy chorus. Maybe a stocking stuffer for NEXT Christmas?
Either way, you better act fast, we have just SIX copies left. It was LIMITED TO 300 COPIES (each one hand numbered of course), and is already sold out and out of print. Which means you better grab one of these before they're gone, or at least try...
Bad ass 4 way split featuring some of the current crop of lo-fi garage poppers, all contributing some of the best songs we've heard from any of them.
Up first is the Crocodiles, who start things off with some lo-fi garagey dream pop filtered through some Jesus And Mary Chain fuzz and some classic eighties MTV pop, and the result is so awesome. Like the Fuzztones meets ABC meets Blank Dogs? All druggy and hazy and washed out, with rad buzzy new wave bass synths, swirly keyboards, with an amazing chorus, cleaned up this could have easily been a huge eighties hit, with one of those totally bizarre videos, with random characters playing out insanely convoluted dramas, but as it is, it's more raw and gritty, and blown out, and thus, might be one of our favorite new jams.
The Dum Dum Girls offer up more of what we love and expect from these gals, stripped down and raw, but still super poppy, a little bit K Records, a little new wave, shimmery, shuffle-y, with a looped main riff, a sort of grimey Stooges-y feel but all wrapped up with angelic vocals and some serious pop hooks. Great stuff.
The Pens track is definitely the best thing we've heard from them, a super fuzzy and distorted main riff, pretty vocals, but buried in the murk and mire, some sort of riff heavy girl pop that destroys, the swirling hooks buried under the churning chug, tangled sing songy guitar melodies draped over the top, underpinned by a muted pounding rhythm, super hypnotic and heavy and so goddamn good, the SOUND, is just so irresistible, reminds us of some rad nineties 7" of bedroom brewed lo-fi indie rock, we've literally been listening to this track over and over and over.
We had never heard of Graffiti Island, but they sound right at home with these other three bands, a more kinetic, rough and raw Beat Happening maybe? Mostly cuz of the deep sung / spoken vox, but all over some reverby guitar, one of those sixties tambourine beats and plenty of crunch and buzz and lo-fi haze. So good.
Crom are funny guys. Their first record, The Cocaine Wars, featured one of the best album covers EVER, a Heavy Metal Magazine style painting of a hot babe in armor, riding a huge polar bear, across a vast tundra, covered in a thick layer of snow, that once the booklet was opened, was revealed to actually be mounds of cocaine being sniffed by a mighty Viking! The new record, features the band painted in the same style as the first record, all Vikings, wearing armor, swords at their side, one flipping the bird, trudging across another snowy expanse, that this time, once the booklet opens, becomes the fluffy bedspread of a sleeping Viking, warm and cozy beneath a polar bear skin, his arm around his sleeping wench. Needless to say we were sold before we even heard a note.
And musically, these guys are pretty goofy too, tons of short short tracks, as many skits and interludes and weird sonic experiments as there are proper songs. But the key to Crom is that A. They really are funny, and the skits, while often dumb or puerile or pointless, are in fact pretty hilarious, and B. The riffs KILL. To the point of being incredibly frustrating, as each song cuts off after only a minute or two, leaving the listener wanting more. Way more. But somehow, all of those metallic fragments, and all of the fucked up silly non-musical moments, are woven into one awesomely over the top, confusional genius mess.
The sound is part black metal, part classic metal, part grind, a little Fucking Champs, some death metal, a little doom, it's obviously the work of some seriously obsessive metalheads, with seriously short attention spans, but the songs when they kick in totally destroy, from furious thrashing blackness, to grinding churning chug, to what-the-fuck metallic free for all, to total classic old school majestic metal, often all in the same song, and then there's all the snippets from movies, the bits of dialogue, the weird whispered vocals chanting 'join us', the entire track made of the sniffle of cocaine sniffing (we assume), weird epic fade-in's that fade in to nothing, some seriously Melvins-y sludge, confusional collages of samples and downtuned riffage, but none of that shit would fly if the band weren't capable of rocking like mother fuckers, which they most certainly are.
And be sure and stick around for the hidden last track, crickets, burbling brook, some distant humming, some Orc-ish growling, monks chanting, incantations, a bunch of crazy Jesus samples, and then a furious blown out lo-fi blast of chaotic metallic grind, the whole thing finishing off with one of those little chunk of music from an after school special or one of those "one to grown on" TV spots.
Hot Sumerian Nights will probably frustrate the shit out of a lot of folks, but they could be quickly won over with a polar bear, a warrior babe, a wall of amps and lots and lots of blow...
L.A.'s kings of grindcore first full length (after a shitload of comps and 7"s). Heavy and noisy and totally hilarious. From the airbrushed cocaine/Conan the Barbarian 70's-van art cover, to the ridiculous between song banter (lifted from Venom and others) to the sort-of-appropriation of metal classics and 70's am radio hits that occasionally surface between bursts of all out grind, this record fucking rules. Think Crossed Out but not as slower and sloppier, or think Man Is The Bastard with a sense of humor.
Awesome.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Super weird alien spazz-core, like a no-wave Drop Dead, with "skronk" level set to kill.
