On first listen, we weren't entirely sure what to think. After all, Deutrom once handled bass for the Melvins, did a solo album a while back that sounded more like Queens Of The Stone Age, and he also recently released a cd-r made entirely out of the sounds of a squeaking gate, a record even Deutrom admitted he couldn't listen to. Thus we have Iraq, that on first listen, does indeed have us thinking about that infamous squeaking gate record. But on closer listening, and knowing the sound source, it becomes much more interesting (and maybe even a slight bit more listenable). Iraq is a single hour long piece, consisting of a crackling skittering slightly percussive squelch, chopped and repeated, looped and stretched, sometimes it sounds like Autechre, albeit WAY stripped down, sometimes it sounds like a bug zapper, sometimes it sounds like someone shaking pop corn in one of those readymade popcorn pans you cook on the stove, sometimes it sounds like super high pitched crickets, sometimes... well, you get the idea. Sonically it could easily have been a piece by Ikeda or Hauswolff or one of those folks. But once you realize where the sounds came from, it's a whole different story. Every sound on this disc was generated from a single loop of 7 different recordings of George W. Bush saying the word Iraq. All taken from important speeches, two from this year's State Of The Union Address, two from a speech during which Bush announced the beginning of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in 2003 and three from Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech also in 2003. Hard to understand how 7 "Iraq"s became this crazy stuttery staticky piece, until you realize that there are 14,112,000 repetitions of the word "Iraq" per minute in the piece. Woah!
Hard to explain Deutrom's concept, repetition equals obsolescence, intrinsic veracity through absolute negation, etc.... yeah yeah yeah, okay, but basically, this is just one fucked up piece of sound art. And who can argue with some subtle sonic Bush bashing? Not us!!
SUPER LIMITED! ONLY 500 COPIES MADE!! Each one hand numbered and signed! Packaged in cool hand screened cardstock sleeves with two printed inserts and liner notes.
Mark Deutrom might be best know for (previously) playing bass in the Melvins, but as longtime readers of the aQ list can attest to, his solo records are pretty goddamn great, and weird, and heavy, and freaking cool. And this new one is no different. A brief three song 12", the title track of which is the soundtrack to a totally eye popping video, check it out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r22d9BxVV_8
And it's not just the visuals that are amazing, the music more than lives up to the crazy video, a wild, mathed out, prog-metal, noise rock jam, that's bombastic and crazy catchy, freaked out and super psychedelic, an instrumental blowout, that we played like 5 times in a row, and would have probably played more had we not wanted to check out the other two jams here, both of which, equally awesomely mathy and metallic, progged out, intricate, super dynamic, catchy like crazy, wild and weird, and really really good. It's a wonder more folks aren't hip to this guy and his solo records. It's short, but totally worth it. Killer cover art too, with artwork from the Ruckus Juice video. LIMITED TO 207 COPIES, each cover hand silkscreened!
We can probably count the major female figures of Krautrock on one hand. Most of them like Rosi Mueller of Ash Ra Tempel, Renate Knaup from Amon Duul II, Djong Yun from Popol Vuh, or Sabine Merbach from Gila were either singers or muses for their male-led bands. And don't even mention Clara Mondshine, which was a pseudonym for Walter Bachauer, a very real actual man. But even among those women, you don't find too many female krautrock composers. Actually, we really couldn't think of any, offhand. Can you? If so, please enlighten!
Thankfully, the brand new reissue label, Medical Records, who has bolted out the gate running with not only one but two amazing (and amazingly limited!) vinyl-only reissues, sets the record straight! The other reissue, Alexander Robotnick, reviewed elsewhere on this list, is a weirdo Italo-disco / French electro classic we've known about for awhile and we're super psyched to see finally reissued. But this one, Deutsche Wertarbeit , the solo project of Dorothea Raukes, is altogether completely new to us and what a fantastic discovery it is!
Released on Sky Records in 1981, Deutsche Wertarbeit was Raukes' first solo effort after years of being the singer for a German Progressive band we're not familiar with called Streetmark, who started in 1968, and released 4 lps between 1976 and 1981. Two of those were also released on Sky Records and one of them was even recorded in collaboration with Wolfgang Riechmann, the same year he was murdered. What? Really? Why didn't we know of this already? Just goes to show, there are still many treasures to be unearthed.
And if you dug Wolfgang Riechmann's Wunderbar reissue, that we raved about awhile back, or Klaus Schultze, Tangerine Dream, Cluster, Peter Baumann, or even some of the later Manuel Gottsching recordings such as New Age of Earth, then add Deutsche Wertarbeit to the essential kosmiche synthscape canon. But while she definitely fits in with those artists, she carves out her own defining sound of warm minimal hypnotic rhythms and vocoder voicings that display a joyous exhuberance you don't see as much in artists like Schultze or Baumann. In fact this would fit in well with the stuff on that Dirty Space Disco comp, as it sounds like a mystical combination of Vangelis and Popol Vuh, expansive and cosmic, upliftingly propulsive while keeping it all beautifully reigned in.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each 180 gram colored vinyl and hand-numbered. We're not sure how long we'll have these, so don't wait too long. Highest Recommendation!!!!!!
Special one sided, vinyl-only single featuring the 10 minute long "White Reggae Troll". This half-reggae / half punk disco jam, often performed live as an encore, shows Banhart stretching the freak-folk genre down a few different rollicking avenues. We believe this is a one time only pressing, so once they're gone we're not sure we can get them in again! Plus it's called WHITE REGGAE TROLL!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Italian vinyl-only reissue of Mick Farren's 1968 pre-Pink Fairies psych-proto-punk band's best-loved album.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another disc of horrifying progressive creepiness from Italian underground masters of the bizarre and the frightening, Devil Doll. Never was a band more suited to scoring horror films (since Goblin), but Devil Doll don't, they just weave epic and haunting
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Still even more haunting and lush frightscapes from this Italian troupe of musical miscreants. Orchestral and progressive and heavy and occasionally carnivalesque. Super distorted creep-out piano abruptly shifts to a melancholy soundscape underpinning mad
Another Devil Doll record that we finally managed to get our hands on. This is apparently a fan club only re-release and the sleeve warns that "this music can alter your mental health". It sure is strange enough that it might make you wonder what the hell
More Devil Doll insanity. It seems unfair to always compare Devil Doll to Goblin, but it's sort of unavoidable as they both traffic in the same creepy proggy nightmarescapes and they are both so good. To be fair though, Devil Doll have more room to play
Although this is not a new release, we finally found a way to get these and keep them in stock. It's really tough to explain what this band sounds like, and apparently it's really hard for most people to even like them, seeing as they have a ton of records
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Bay area "dub" band (which may actually be called Ben Wa, it's hard to tell) that features the likes of Buckethead, DJ Disk, Brain, and M.I.R.V.
We LOVE this album, and have for a long time. We first reviewed a reissue of this "exotic" 1967 garage-fuzz gem back in 2001, in fact making it a Record Of The Week. That reissue was a somewhat odd 2-fer-1 deal that included an album by another, pretty much utterly unrelated '60s psych band, The Freak Scene, kinda cool but not Middle Eastern styled like The Devil's Anvil. And it was The Devil's Anvil that was the real treasure on that disc, as far as we were concerned. If you haven't heard it yet, you're in luck, 'cause it's just been reissued again, getting a disc all to itself this time, courtesy of vintage rock specialists Rev-Ola, who do their usual nice job with the packaging and all.
The cover art shows the band hangin' in the desert in front of the pyramids of Egypt - but don't be fooled, they were actually mostly Arab-AMERICANS, based in New York City. Still, their rock n' roll was as authentically "Middle Eastern" as their Turkish contemporaries. They could have held their own with the likes of Erkin Koray and Mogollar.
The Devil's Anvil got together in the happenin' mid sixties Greenwich Village scene, playing their Middle Eastern influenced music at folk cafes and rock clubs. Eventually they hooked up with classical musician-turned-rocker Felix Pappalardi (producer of Cream's Disraeli Gears, later to play alongside Leslie West in Mountain). He began playing bass with the band and eventually scored the group a record deal. The resulting album was truly one-of-a-kind and would certainly made greater impact had it not been released on the very eve of the Arab-Israeli war in 1967. Thus, we're told no New York radio stations would play it and unfortunately the album has remained an expensive collector's find until its cd reissue.
The rock contained herein is absolutely kick ass, with bluesy and impassioned Arabic vocals, electric (or at least amplified) oud, bouzouki, tamboura, durbeki as well as the usual rock suspects of (fuzz!) guitar, bass and drums. The majority of the tracks here are either rock arrangements of traditional Middle Eastern and Greek numbers or original compositions, but a couple are actually straight traditional numbers with no western instruments at all. Plus there's an excellent Middle Eastern-esque rock arangement of surf classic "Misirlou" (of course, a song with its roots originally in Greek rembetika) that's perhaps the best version ever recorded, in our humble opinion. And the record ends with a Devil's Anvil original that kinda reminds us of one of the Beatles' more Eastern-influenced tunes. This is about as good as it gets. Very, very highly recommended! Nay, ESSENTIAL.
The cd booklet of this new reish includes original album graphics along with brand new liner notes from one of the writers at Shindig magazine, and a blurb on the back that just might have been parapharased from -our- Record Of The Week review of this album.
Profound Lore brings us this cd ep (five songs, nigh on 28 minutes) from The Devil's Blood, a female-fronted Dutch psychedelic hard rock act from Holland, who possess (or are possessed by?) a Satanic/occultic lyrical bent. Claiming inspiration from vintage sixties and seventies proto-metal and psych, The Devil's Blood have quite a lot in common with another "Blood" band with a witchy female vocalist reviewed here just last list, Blood Ceremony. We bet the two would get on famously. They sound different enough though, TDB not being so overtly retro-doom-metal, and more of a rockin' deal, no flutes or nothin'. Some '70s progginess comes in from the keyboards, infusing these tracks with cinematic bombast, but while this doesn't quite sound modern, it's not like they're trying to recreate the music of an earlier era, exactly, either. Although, like Witchcraft, they're big Roky Erickson fans, and cover the Rok's "White Faces" here.
Vocally, Jex Thoth haters might again have issues, but perhaps not. We're reminded a bit of Heart (who kicked ass upon occasion, don't you forget it, or let Sarah Palin ruin "Barracuda" for you). How else to describe this? Maybe imagine if Shocking Blue sang about Satan, and of course were quite a bit heavier too...
Sorta a surprise from Profound Lore, and a pleasant one. I guess not so strange since it kinda fits in with their recent Hammers Of Misfortune opus, the female vocals and keyboards and melodic content and all. Oh, and if you care, which we think you should, they get the thumbs up from Fenriz of Darkthrone, who included 'em on his list of record recommendations in the liner notes to Dark Thrones and Black Flags, reviewed here last list.
Ah, scenes, waves, movements, trends, genres, we all know rock critics love 'em. We gotta admit we do too, if only 'cause it makes writing our reviews a bit easier sometimes, when you can stick something in a category. To wit, take this thing happening now with all these "female fronted, occult-oriented, rock/metal" bands, one of the most popular examples of such, being Dutch outfit The Devil's Blood. While some of these bands are super sludgey and doomed-out (Wooden Stake, The Wounded Kings) and others hark back to the '70s proto-metal psych scene (Blood Ceremony, Jex Thoth), and still others are straight up NWOBHM steel (Christian Mistress), this one, The Devil's Blood, while displaying elements of all the styles just mentioned, is by far the most "classic rock", with almost a '60s vibe, reminding us especially of Heart! Huh, well that's cool 'cause we heart Heart.
One of our friends theorizes that as modern metal has gotten more and more extreme, it's reached a point where, with bands like The Devil's Blood and Ghost, it's gotta go full circle back to completely classic, melodic roots. That's the new extreme! That's his theory, anyway.
And scenes and theories aside, we are digging this new Devil's Blood for sure. Eleven new tracks of their swirling, retro rockin', sweetly Satanic sounds, laced with great guitarwork and graced by THAT VOICE, which will be the deciding factor for most listeners, the soaring singing of "F. The Mouth Of Satan" (yep that's what she calls herself!) being an un-ignorable element, the crucial crux of this band, and either you'll fall under her spell or you won't. If you do, the rest of their witchy wall o' sound will fall in line, the dramatic organ, the urgent rhythms, the powerful production, the catchy choruses...
Heck, but chances are you already have found yourself smitten, as we sold plenty of this album's predecessor The Time Of No Time Evermore, and before that, their debut ep Come, Reap. If you liked those, you'll like this, as The Thousandfold Epicentre builds on their strengths, maybe generating more of a mystic mood than the last one. Their talents are especially on display during this album's tour-de-force finale, the 15 minute ritual of "Feverdance". There the band's balance of melody and menace tips to way outside of pop territory by virtue of sheer eerie epicness alone.
Another friend of ours, who runs a local label that puts out a lot of vinyl reissues (mostly '80s era new wave / electronic / coldwave stuff), was in the store the other day when we were playing this new album by The Devil's Blood. He thought it sounded like a band from the sixties, the vocals anyway, reminding him of acts like The United States Of America, Ultimate Spinach, and probably Jefferson Airplane, stuff like that. And he was quite taken with it, funny 'cause he's a guy who would normally not have been checking out a band with the evil/metal look and name The Devil's Blood has! They're not only for metalheads, that's all we're saying. Even though The Devil's Blood is happily (la-la-la!) serving Satan all the while.
All right! Time to rock, AND worship Satan (what else is new?), 'cause the debut full-length from Holland's The Devil's Blood is finally here, released a few months back as an import but now also available through domestic distribution channels, although it's really still the import digipack on Germany's excellent Van label (who also just unleashed in the US the latest Ruins Of Beverast, as well as the massive/morose debut from Swedish doomsters Griftegard, both of which we'll be reviewing next time). Lots of folks (including us, and Darkthrone's Fenriz) were really into the 5-song Come, Reap ep by this female-fronted "occult rock" act, which made a big splash via the Profound Lore label back in 2008, and the alluring promise of that ep is borne out by the eleven tracks of this album. As before, they've got a '70s, doom metal-ly vibe, playing psychedelic heavy rock that draws from the same well of inspiration share by bands like Witchcraft (e.g. Roky Erickson, Black Sabbath, Pentagram, early Scorpions, to cite some they'd mention, or that we think we hear), with ripping guitars and wailing vocals that push all our buttons for this sort of thing. But, we don't know if we'd really call 'em doom metal, they're almost more in full on classic rock mode, these songs uptempo and rockin', bombastic and downright anthemic, buxom singer "The Mouth" in possession of a powerful voice, one that's loud and proud (of Satan!). Delivering the goods across this album, The Devil's Blood come on like an unholy mix of funky Led Zeppelin, Heart, Thin Lizzy, and a bit of Mercyful Fate (for their love of Lucifer, and also the dual guitar action, like some of those others).
THE killer jam here is "Queen Of My Burning Heart", a super groovy number with an incredibly infectious twin guitar riff, it's like Jex Thoth jamming with Birds Of Avalon! Another band we could mention is, believe it or not, the Dead Weather, this kicks ass on them though by being more metal and '70s and devil worshipful. And by the way, we're pretty sure The Devil's Blood are fairly serious about the Satan stuff, heck one of the songs here was co-written by one of the dudes from bloody black metal masters Watain (though this isn't at all black metal like them, maybe black classic hard rock would fit).
Plenty of folks hated the movie House Of 1000 Corpses. We weren't among 'em. Sure it was a bit of a mess, a little confused, and borrowed HEAVILY from the classics (Last House On The Left, The Hills Have Eyes, and especially The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). But so what?!?! It was a GREAT looking movie. It was fun and gory and gross and pretty wild. One of the problems was putting it up against all the blockbusters, marketing it like a big movie, instead of letting it build momentum and exist as an art house flick, where it belonged. And part of that had to do with the celebrity status of first time director Rob Zombie, of the band White Zombie. The famous rock band, MTV, and all that, the studio probably smelled big bucks. But let's be honest, part of it had to do with the fact that it was not the greatest movie. But that said, imagine you were a total horror movie obsessive, seventies freak, wrestling fan and metal musician, and you were given $7 million dollars to make a horror movie. Doubt I could come up with anything nearly as cool and creepy and evocative as House Of 1000 Corpses. So yeah, we were predisposed to dig the sort-of-sequel The Devil's Rejects. But we had no idea just how much we'd love it. Fuck! This movie totally kicked our ass. Not only was it way more grim and violent and brutal than HO1000C, but the soundtrack was absolutely killer!! First a bit about the movie. Way darker and SO VIOLENT. So violent in fact it's a bit hard to believe they got away with just an R rating. A bit less over the top and outrageous than HO1000C, but definitely more confident, none of those debut feature mis-steps, and a much tighter story arc, and lots of cool cult movie legends (Pee Wee Herman's girlfriend Dottie as a hooker! The Hills Have Eyes' Michael Berryman as the pimp's sidekick / janitor! Sid Haig again as the creepy Captain Spaulding) as well as an amazing bit when the sheriff calls in a very fey Gene Shalit like movie expert to discuss the Marx Brothers films! So funny! The crazy part is how blurry the line is between good and evil. The titular Devil's Rejects are definitely evil and reprehensible, but they're also sort of cool. And bad ass. Albeit in a morally repugnant way. And when the tables are turned, you actually feel sort of bad for them, and hope they'll be able to turn the tables again. And the Sheriff who hunts them down, well he's maybe just as bad. Only difference is he has a badge. Anyway, the movie is bleak and brutal, dusty and sun baked, unlike most 'horror' movies, most of the action takes place under a hot summer sun, and the film stock, the look and feel is all very seventies. So evocative of our youth, which is part of why the soundtrack is so great. Unlike the first movie, where due to budgetary restraints, Zombie was forced to write and record much of the music himself, these tracks were obviously lovingly and carefully chosen, and in the context of the film they are so so perfect. You don't really expect to hear these songs as the musical accompaniment to such utter brutality. The opening credits, a series of stills set to the Allman Brothers' "Midnight Rider", hits so hard, the lyrical refrain of "Not gonna let 'em catch me, no" and the weird moody vibe of the song, as well as the almost jaunty guitar solo, is so weirdly perfect as we watch the Rejects make their getaway. The rest of the soundtrack is packed full of seventies classics, that while being perfect in the film, also play so well as some fucked up seventies eight-track mix tape. Three Dog Night, Elvin Bishop (whose track gets discussed in the movie!), The James Gang, Joe Walsh, David Essex as well as some classic oldies from Otis Rush, Kitty Wells, Buck Owens and the mysterious (and totally kick ass) Banjo And Sullivan, a lower tier 'fictional' honky Tonk band who meet their untimely demise in the movie. The biggest surprise had to be the tracks from Terry Reid. So haunting and achingly beautiful. We knew that he was once the first choice to sing for Led Zeppelin, but the more country tracks here are fucking fantastic. So gut wrenchingly beautiful. The Reid track "Seed Of Memory" plays over the final credits and had us totally choked up. Wow. And you might wince at the inclusion of "Freebird", and you might skip it when you're listening to this disc, but in the context of the movie, and the time the stuff in the movie suppossedly took place, it's perfect! Anyway, it must mean something that with the hundreds of records we have to listen to every day, we keep throwing this one back on. And we're pretty sure we're gonna to go see The Devil's Rejects AGAIN this weekend!! Various soundbites from the film are interspersed between the tracks as well as a couple Banjo And Sullivan radio spots, and this is one of those dual discs, with a cd on one side and a DVD on the other. The DVD features a 30 minute making of The Devil's Rejects short, a bunch of trailers, and you can listen to a Dolby DVD-audio version of the soundtrack accompanied by a slide show of stills from the movies as well as behind the scenes photos.
This review only really needs to be about one sentence long. Maybe two. Let's see... BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR!!! Ahem, okay, how about, best horror / gore / exploitation movie in the last TWENTY YEARS! Needless to say, we LOVED this movie. We loved the soundtrack too, and the score! It was pretty much a gore-splatter-horror bullseye any way you sliced it. We were preparing to review this when we realized we sort of already did when we reviewed the soundtrack a while back. So here's what we had to say about the movie:
Plenty of folks hated the move House Of 1000 Corpses. We weren't among 'em. Sure it was a bit of a mess, a little confused, and borrowed HEAVILY from the classics (Last House On The Left, The Hills Have Eyes, and especially The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). But so what?!?! It was a GREAT looking movie. It was fun and gory and gross and pretty wild. One of the problems was putting it up against all the blockbusters, marketing it like a big movie, instead of letting it build momentum and exist as an art house flick, where it belonged. And part of that had to do with the celebrity status of first time director Rob Zombie, of the band White Zombie. The famous rock band, MTV, and all that, the studio probably smelled big bucks. But let's be honest, part of it had to do with the fact that it was not the greatest movie. But that said, imagine you were a total horror movie obsessive, seventies freak, wrestling fan and metal musician, and you were given $7 million dollars to make a horror movie. Doubt I could come up with anything nearly as cool and creepy and evocative as House Of 1000 Corpses. So yeah, we were predisposed to dig the sort-of-sequel The Devil's Rejects. But we had no idea just how much we'd love it. Fuck! This movie totally kicked our ass. Not only was it way more grim and violent and brutal than HO1000C, but the soundtrack was absolutely killer!! The whole movie is way darker and SO VIOLENT. So violent in fact it's a bit hard to believe they got away with just an R rating. A bit less over the top and outrageous than HO1000C, but definitely more confident, none of those debut feature mis-steps, and a much tighter story arc, and lots of cool cult movie legends (Pee Wee Herman's girlfriend Dottie as a hooker! The Hills Have Eyes' Michael Berryman as the pimp's sidekick / janitor! Sid Haig again as the creepy Captain Spaulding) as well as an amazing bit when the sheriff calls in a very fey Gene Shalit like movie expert to discuss the Marx Brothers films! So funny! The crazy part is how blurry the line is between good and evil. The titular Devil's Rejects are definitely evil and reprehensible, but they're also sort of cool. And bad ass. Albeit in a morally repugnant way. And when the tables are turned, you actually feel sort of bad for them, and hope they'll be able to turn the tables again. And the Sheriff who hunts them down, well he's maybe just as bad. Only difference is he has a badge. Anyway, the movie is bleak and brutal, dusty and sun baked, unlike most 'horror' movies, most of the action takes place under a hot summer sun, and the film stock, the look and feel is all very seventies. So evocative of our youth, which is part of what makes it so scary and creepy and fucking great.
And like we said, the soundtrack is so AMAZING. Check the review elsewhere on the AQ website. And the score too!
This double dvd set is the unrated director's cut so it's even more violent and disturbing, which is obviously a good thing. Includes commentaries from director Rob Zombie, and stars Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Sheri Moon Zombie, blooper reel, full versions of all the commercials and television shows seen in the film (The Morris Green Show, Mary The Monkey Girl commercial, Spaulding Christmas Special commerical, etc.), Otis FIrefly's "Cheerleader Missing" home video, a Buck Owens video (the one you see in the hotel room), deleted scenes, make-up tests, Matthew McGrory tribute (McGrory played Tiny in both House Of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects and passed away this year), trailers, TV spots, a 6.1 DTS ES digital audio mix and a 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround mix. Phew. Disc two contains a two hour making of, featuring footage from the set, pre-production, behind the scenes, interviews, and all sorts of other goodies.
When we first got this in, based on the name of this UK band, and the mysterious cover, we were expecting something more like Witchcraft, or Ghost, or In Solitude, that sort of retro classic metal, equal parts churning heaviness, and hook heavy poppiness, and the opening track gave us no reason to assume we were mistaken, starting off with some ominous rumbling drones, swirling faux strings, darkly majestic and hauntingly baroque, laced with monklike chants, then when the band comes in, it's spare chugging metallic riffage, simple drumming, minor key and dramatically epic, making us think a little bit of early Katatonia. But that opener is really just an intro, which did little to prepare us for what The Devil are really all about. Which is a strange strain of minimal metal, all instrumental, and heavy on the samples. Reminding us a lot of old '90s industrial music, each song based on a theme, whether it's space exploration, Roswell or 9/11 (!!), the band chugs away, weaving lush minimal landscapes of riffy metallic crunch, Goblin like cinematic synths, the sound soaring and dramatic and moody, the music really only a backdrop for the samples. "Universe" musically is a gorgeous sprawl of metallic melancholia, which in a different form, with say, Ghost (the band) style old school NWOBHM vocals, would have been something else entirely, instead, the band pepper the track with various snippets from news broadcasts, NASA mission control, etc., pretty sure we heard some Reagan in there too. And while the record is primarily sample heavy melancholic metal crunch, there's tracks like "Astral Dreamscape", which sounds just like the title would suggest, all swirling synths, dreamlike kosmische shimmer, laced with indistinct samples of radio static, garbled transmissions, buried voices, very surreal and VERY cinematic. Or "Transcendence", which does indeed sound transcendent, whirling winds whip below ethereal streaks of keening synth shimmer and deep rumbling drones.
And we'd be remiss if we didn't mention some of the stranger tracks, like "World Of Sorrow", The Devil's 9/11 track, which is another sweetly sorrowful slab of minor key synth swirled metal, intense and dramatic, made only moreso by the samples, news reporters broadcasting live as the towers fell, even what appears to be actual sounds of the towers falling, it's definitely moving, and the music is suitably somber, and then the track shifts, and the samples suddenly become a litany of conspiracy theories, discussing the various 'explosions' and planted explosive devices (argh sez Allan). Then there's "Intervention", where the band essentially set Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have A Dream' speech to moody melancholic metal, and the record finishes off with a nearly 29 minute synthscape, the first few minutes of which sound a bit like Emeralds by way of the Caretaker, before slipping into a strange ultra minimal pulsing tone, that sounds like it would have been right at home on some mysterious Raster Noton release, and while we imagined at some point the metal would kick back in, it never does, instead, that softly pulsating tone plays the record all the way out.
We've been trying to track down some Devillock for ages, and while we've yet managed to get any cds, we have finally gotten a batch of this super limited lp. The solo ambient drone project of Tone Filth label head honcho Justin Chris Meyers (who also performs as Panther Skull), Devillock is a lot more dreamy and blissful than the name might lead you to believe.
Deep, dark distant sonic clouds rolling in at a snail's pace, tones are stretched out into long sinewy smears, bits of glitch and electronic skitter, bob along like detritus floating in some black stream. Everything enveloped in warm billowy buzz, eventually all tangled up with stuttering streaks of upper register skree, while in the background, the constant ebb and flow of cavernous churning industrial rumbles.
The flip side is similar, but if anything, even more abstract and minimal, sounding almost like a black ambient Niblock, all looooooooong tones, subtly shifting overtones, some super creepy slowed down monkey like growls and guttural vocalizations, and little chunks of gritty electronic static and muted buzzing interference. Haunting and serene, yet subtly fierce and intense.
Packaged in super subtle, hand painted chipboard sleeves, every one different, the front adorned with a super abstract bit of Pollock-y paint, LIMITED TO 333 COPIES, each copy hand numbered.
Eight-song effort from this Misfits-inspired Marduk sideproject. In fact, half the tracks are Misfits covers!
Florida based electronica artist Richard Devine makes an attempt to draw water at the Autechre well, but comes up a bit dry. More of a "masculine" sounding rhythm programming, lacking in the subtlety of Autechre -- no tempo changes, and very little difference in the rhythmic pattern or palette of sounds in any given piece. It's as though he has discovered the "formula" to start an Autechresque piece, but once he gets it fired up he doesn't know where to go with it.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Gonna try to keep this relatively short. 'Cause it would be easy to go on and on and on about what an amazing band Devo were back in the day and how absolutely ESSENTIAL these newly reissued collections of the earliest recorded Devo music are. Never before released on vinyl in the States, the original two volumes of Hardcore Devo came out on cd and cassette on Rykodisc in 1990 and 1991 respectively, and have been out of print (and sought after by fans) for many years. Now at last they've been reissued, as separate volumes on vinyl (one a single lp, the other double) and together as a double cd set.
Those of you already into Devo, who don't already have this, NEED this - and even if you do have it, you might want it again, either to get the vinyl versions, and/or for the 4 previously unreleased bonus tracks now included (on disc two / Volume Two). For others, well this is our opportunity to proselytize for the cult of Devo. Some folks out there who aren't that familiar with Devo might think of 'em as just some novelty new wave nerd-rock band doing goofy songs and wearing silly hats, one-hit wonders with 1980's "Whip It!". And while they did wear silly hats and were plenty goofy, they were also super subversive and bizarre, both sonically and ideologically, true pioneers in the realm of synth-punk and new wave, coming up with a sound that somehow grafted Kraftwerk to punk rock before either were popular, promoting their own anticapitalist, antiestablishment agenda couched in irony and Dadaism. These early recordings, demos and rarities recorded on a 4-track in Akron, Ohio circa 1974-1977, reveal Devo at their most underground, raw and stripped down, but already possessed of both catchy songwriting brilliance and conceptual originality. Definitely not the hippie boogie rock popular at the time!
It's worth noting that both future Devo members Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh had been students at Kent State, SDS activists in fact, and Casale personally witnessed the shocking National Guard shooting of anti-war demonstrators there in 1970. In some ways, Devo was the direct result. It's just that their idea of "protest music" was a bit different that the norm up to that point.
These DIY recordings sound pretty darn good - Devo knew what they were doing, even before they hooked up with producer Brian Eno for their 1977 debut Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! recorded at Conny Plank's studio in Germany. In fact, these are the recordings that got Eno interested in working with them in the first place.
On Volume One there's early versions of such Devo classics as "Jocko Homo", "Mongoloid", and their brilliant cover of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", but otherwise it's a plenitude of (sub)genius tracks never re-recorded for any of their studio albums, though some were released as singles on their own Booji Boy label, or later as B sides. It's a treasure trove of prime Devo at their purest and most urgently devolved!!! It contains one of our all time favorite Devo toons: "Auto Modown", a simple slice of proto-no-wave funk with a stinging guitar riff and Mark Mothersbaugh crooning ghoulish lyrics about how "an acid head goon in a '55 Dodge didn't mean to do it / but a sidewalk run in the noonday sun ten to one he had to lose it". Similar traits are shared by most of the tracks on here - the distorted synth-ed out soundz, the trebly bug zapper guitar, the absurd lyrical content, the robotically rhythmic catchiness. If you're a spud who hasn't heard "Social Fools", "Buttered Beauties", "Mechanical Man", "I'm A Potato", or "Ono" (and the list goes on), you haven't lived. EVERYTHING on here is great, all 15 cuts. Like we said, we could go on and on, about such treats as the blissed out, moody "Golden Energy" or the perversely humorous "Midget", who has the body of a 2 and half year old baby but the brain of a man, and takes advantage of the situation - deviant, juvenile, and sometimes frustrated sexual humor being one foundation of Devo's aesthetic for sure, with an ironic misogyny certainly being a component of the band's radical and often misunderstood critique of American culture.
Meanwhile disc two / Volume Two is even more packed with tracks, 25 of 'em, including the rather un-PC "Bamboo Bimbo", the anthemic "Be Stiff", the raunchy "I Need A Chick", and the electronically spazzed "U Got Me Bugged" (sung by Booji Boy himself), among many other weirdass classics. Overall Volume Two tends towards the slightly hit-and-miss in comparison to the totally solid start-to-finish Volume One, the Volume Two material not always as tightly on target, but after all there's more here, and even the lesser tracks are still worth absorbing repeatedly. Again, there's only a few songs that surfaced again later on their studio albums, like "Clockout" and their cover of "Working In A Coal Mine", otherwise it's mostly stuff only dedicated Devo-tees have heard before. And maybe hardly anyone has ever heard the four bonus tracks now tacked on to the end of Volume Two, but they're a worthy, weird bunch, including a couple of that sound like twisted, tweaked blues, in particular the the electronics-invaded and lyrically crude "Hubert House".
If you couldn't tell, we're so thrilled this is back in print, what can we say: BUY IT!! It might not change your life, but it could. It should. Kudos to the Superior Viaduct label, they've been putting out all kinds of cool reissues lately, but for us, this is the biggest deal yet, even if these albums aren't the rarest that they've reissued. They're nicely done, of course, including amusingly enthused liner notes by Henry Rollins, someone who has quite obviously drunk deeply of Devo's Kool-Aid. Heed his words: "Spud, prepare to be amazed!"
Gonna try to keep this relatively short. 'Cause it would be easy to go on and on and on about what an amazing band Devo were back in the day and how absolutely ESSENTIAL these newly reissued collections of the earliest recorded Devo music are. Never before released on vinyl in the States, the original two volumes of Hardcore Devo came out on cd and cassette on Rykodisc in 1990 and 1991 respectively, and have been out of print (and sought after by fans) for many years. Now at last they've been reissued, as separate volumes on vinyl (one a single lp, the other double) and together as a double cd set.
Those of you already into Devo, who don't already have this, NEED this - and even if you do have it, you might want it again, either to get the vinyl versions, and/or for the 4 previously unreleased bonus tracks now included (on disc two / Volume Two). For others, well this is our opportunity to proselytize for the cult of Devo. Some folks out there who aren't that familiar with Devo might think of 'em as just some novelty new wave nerd-rock band doing goofy songs and wearing silly hats, one-hit wonders with 1980's "Whip It!". And while they did wear silly hats and were plenty goofy, they were also super subversive and bizarre, both sonically and ideologically, true pioneers in the realm of synth-punk and new wave, coming up with a sound that somehow grafted Kraftwerk to punk rock before either were popular, promoting their own anticapitalist, antiestablishment agenda couched in irony and Dadaism. These early recordings, demos and rarities recorded on a 4-track in Akron, Ohio circa 1974-1977, reveal Devo at their most underground, raw and stripped down, but already possessed of both catchy songwriting brilliance and conceptual originality. Definitely not the hippie boogie rock popular at the time!
It's worth noting that both future Devo members Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh had been students at Kent State, SDS activists in fact, and Casale personally witnessed the shocking National Guard shooting of anti-war demonstrators there in 1970. In some ways, Devo was the direct result. It's just that their idea of "protest music" was a bit different that the norm up to that point.
These DIY recordings sound pretty darn good - Devo knew what they were doing, even before they hooked up with producer Brian Eno for their 1977 debut Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! recorded at Conny Plank's studio in Germany. In fact, these are the recordings that got Eno interested in working with them in the first place.
On Volume One there's early versions of such Devo classics as "Jocko Homo", "Mongoloid", and their brilliant cover of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", but otherwise it's a plenitude of (sub)genius tracks never re-recorded for any of their studio albums, though some were released as singles on their own Booji Boy label, or later as B sides. It's a treasure trove of prime Devo at their purest and most urgently devolved!!! It contains one of our all time favorite Devo toons: "Auto Modown", a simple slice of proto-no-wave funk with a stinging guitar riff and Mark Mothersbaugh crooning ghoulish lyrics about how "an acid head goon in a '55 Dodge didn't mean to do it / but a sidewalk run in the noonday sun ten to one he had to lose it". Similar traits are shared by most of the tracks on here - the distorted synth-ed out soundz, the trebly bug zapper guitar, the absurd lyrical content, the robotically rhythmic catchiness. If you're a spud who hasn't heard "Social Fools", "Buttered Beauties", "Mechanical Man", "I'm A Potato", or "Ono" (and the list goes on), you haven't lived. EVERYTHING on here is great, all 15 cuts. Like we said, we could go on and on, about such treats as the blissed out, moody "Golden Energy" or the perversely humorous "Midget", who has the body of a 2 and half year old baby but the brain of a man, and takes advantage of the situation - deviant, juvenile, and sometimes frustrated sexual humor being one foundation of Devo's aesthetic for sure, with an ironic misogyny certainly being a component of the band's radical and often misunderstood critique of American culture.
Meanwhile disc two / Volume Two is even more packed with tracks, 25 of 'em, including the rather un-PC "Bamboo Bimbo", the anthemic "Be Stiff", the raunchy "I Need A Chick", and the electronically spazzed "U Got Me Bugged" (sung by Booji Boy himself), among many other weirdass classics. Overall Volume Two tends towards the slightly hit-and-miss in comparison to the totally solid start-to-finish Volume One, the Volume Two material not always as tightly on target, but after all there's more here, and even the lesser tracks are still worth absorbing repeatedly. Again, there's only a few songs that surfaced again later on their studio albums, like "Clockout" and their cover of "Working In A Coal Mine", otherwise it's mostly stuff only dedicated Devo-tees have heard before. And maybe hardly anyone has ever heard the four bonus tracks now tacked on to the end of Volume Two, but they're a worthy, weird bunch, including a couple of that sound like twisted, tweaked blues, in particular the the electronics-invaded and lyrically crude "Hubert House".
If you couldn't tell, we're so thrilled this is back in print, what can we say: BUY IT!! It might not change your life, but it could. It should. Kudos to the Superior Viaduct label, they've been putting out all kinds of cool reissues lately, but for us, this is the biggest deal yet, even if these albums aren't the rarest that they've reissued. They're nicely done, of course, including amusingly enthused liner notes by Henry Rollins, someone who has quite obviously drunk deeply of Devo's Kool-Aid. Heed his words: "Spud, prepare to be amazed!"
Gonna try to keep this relatively short. 'Cause it would be easy to go on and on and on about what an amazing band Devo were back in the day and how absolutely ESSENTIAL these newly reissued collections of the earliest recorded Devo music are. Never before released on vinyl in the States, the original two volumes of Hardcore Devo came out on cd and cassette on Rykodisc in 1990 and 1991 respectively, and have been out of print (and sought after by fans) for many years. Now at last they've been reissued, as separate volumes on vinyl (one a single lp, the other double) and together as a double cd set.
Those of you already into Devo, who don't already have this, NEED this - and even if you do have it, you might want it again, either to get the vinyl versions, and/or for the 4 previously unreleased bonus tracks now included (on disc two / Volume Two). For others, well this is our opportunity to proselytize for the cult of Devo. Some folks out there who aren't that familiar with Devo might think of 'em as just some novelty new wave nerd-rock band doing goofy songs and wearing silly hats, one-hit wonders with 1980's "Whip It!". And while they did wear silly hats and were plenty goofy, they were also super subversive and bizarre, both sonically and ideologically, true pioneers in the realm of synth-punk and new wave, coming up with a sound that somehow grafted Kraftwerk to punk rock before either were popular, promoting their own anticapitalist, antiestablishment agenda couched in irony and Dadaism. These early recordings, demos and rarities recorded on a 4-track in Akron, Ohio circa 1974-1977, reveal Devo at their most underground, raw and stripped down, but already possessed of both catchy songwriting brilliance and conceptual originality. Definitely not the hippie boogie rock popular at the time!
It's worth noting that both future Devo members Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh had been students at Kent State, SDS activists in fact, and Casale personally witnessed the shocking National Guard shooting of anti-war demonstrators there in 1970. In some ways, Devo was the direct result. It's just that their idea of "protest music" was a bit different that the norm up to that point.
These DIY recordings sound pretty darn good - Devo knew what they were doing, even before they hooked up with producer Brian Eno for their 1977 debut Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! recorded at Conny Plank's studio in Germany. In fact, these are the recordings that got Eno interested in working with them in the first place.
On Volume One there's early versions of such Devo classics as "Jocko Homo", "Mongoloid", and their brilliant cover of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", but otherwise it's a plenitude of (sub)genius tracks never re-recorded for any of their studio albums, though some were released as singles on their own Booji Boy label, or later as B sides. It's a treasure trove of prime Devo at their purest and most urgently devolved!!! It contains one of our all time favorite Devo toons: "Auto Modown", a simple slice of proto-no-wave funk with a stinging guitar riff and Mark Mothersbaugh crooning ghoulish lyrics about how "an acid head goon in a '55 Dodge didn't mean to do it / but a sidewalk run in the noonday sun ten to one he had to lose it". Similar traits are shared by most of the tracks on here - the distorted synth-ed out soundz, the trebly bug zapper guitar, the absurd lyrical content, the robotically rhythmic catchiness. If you're a spud who hasn't heard "Social Fools", "Buttered Beauties", "Mechanical Man", "I'm A Potato", or "Ono" (and the list goes on), you haven't lived. EVERYTHING on here is great, all 15 cuts. Like we said, we could go on and on, about such treats as the blissed out, moody "Golden Energy" or the perversely humorous "Midget", who has the body of a 2 and half year old baby but the brain of a man, and takes advantage of the situation - deviant, juvenile, and sometimes frustrated sexual humor being one foundation of Devo's aesthetic for sure, with an ironic misogyny certainly being a component of the band's radical and often misunderstood critique of American culture.
Meanwhile disc two / Volume Two is even more packed with tracks, 25 of 'em, including the rather un-PC "Bamboo Bimbo", the anthemic "Be Stiff", the raunchy "I Need A Chick", and the electronically spazzed "U Got Me Bugged" (sung by Booji Boy himself), among many other weirdass classics. Overall Volume Two tends towards the slightly hit-and-miss in comparison to the totally solid start-to-finish Volume One, the Volume Two material not always as tightly on target, but after all there's more here, and even the lesser tracks are still worth absorbing repeatedly. Again, there's only a few songs that surfaced again later on their studio albums, like "Clockout" and their cover of "Working In A Coal Mine", otherwise it's mostly stuff only dedicated Devo-tees have heard before. And maybe hardly anyone has ever heard the four bonus tracks now tacked on to the end of Volume Two, but they're a worthy, weird bunch, including a couple of that sound like twisted, tweaked blues, in particular the the electronics-invaded and lyrically crude "Hubert House".
If you couldn't tell, we're so thrilled this is back in print, what can we say: BUY IT!! It might not change your life, but it could. It should. Kudos to the Superior Viaduct label, they've been putting out all kinds of cool reissues lately, but for us, this is the biggest deal yet, even if these albums aren't the rarest that they've reissued. They're nicely done, of course, including amusingly enthused liner notes by Henry Rollins, someone who has quite obviously drunk deeply of Devo's Kool-Aid. Heed his words: "Spud, prepare to be amazed!"
Whoo-hoo. Live Devo. Wait...live in 1996? Can these aged spuds still whip it like they used to back in the '70s and '80s? Well you gotta get this dvd to find out, though we can tell you we didn't not enjoy screening it, all the songs here are classics after all ("Girl U Want", "Mongoloid", "Uncontrollable Urge", "Jocko Homo" and a bunch more). Though it was a bit strange seeing 'em doing their thing in the daytime (in bright California sunshine even!) at an outdoor festival in front of a huge crowd. Most other Devo documents we've seen are more, shall we say, mediated by the band's unique, fucked aesthetic. Here they have less control over the presentation. Which reminds us, this dvd has the multiple camera angles feature. Also supposedly there's a band interview on here, but we couldn't locate it in the menu.
Spuds rejoice: it's live Devo, 1980! One of the best bands ever at the height of their powers, playing their "hit" songs to a stand-offish audience at the Phoenix theatre in Petaluma, California. However, spuds also bewarned: with an insanely abrasive edit of scrappy video footage, it's hard to watch this baby all the way through in one sitting -- even for us die-hard fans! Despite this, and the fact that you can tell the band takes awhile to warm up on stage, when they do, holy spudboy, watch them go! A high note is their cover of "[I Can't Get No] Satisfaction". This particular performance reaffirms that it may possibly be the most amazing cover of all time. Also great performances of "Pink Pussycat", "Girl U Want" and "Freedom of Choice"... Instrument note-worthy are Bob Mothersbaugh's cloud-shaped guitar and Gerald Casale's custom bass.
This is in the dualdisc format, meaning you get the video on the dvd side of the disc, as well as an audio-only version on the cd flipside. And, as a bonus, there's footage of Dove, The Band of Love (Devo's easy listening alter-ego that a lot of Devo fans didn't seem to "get", somehow) performing three songs live, also from 1980!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Calling all spuds!! If you consider yourself a Devo-tee, you're gonna want this. Heck everyone should want this, a live recording by one of the best bands EVER (really!) at the height of their powers. Originally released on limited vinyl for Record Store Day 2012, at long last Devo's own Booji Boy label has put this out on compact disc too, nice also since that coveted RSD vinyl version went instantly out of print. Recorded live November 28th, 1981 at Seattle Center Arena, during the tour for New Traditionalists, these unique new wave art punk weirdos, always a great live band, rip it up here with a good, synth-laden selection of some of the best songs from their first four albums, like "Girl U Want", "Uncontrollable Urge", "Mongoloid", "Jocko Homo", "Through Being Cool" and of course "Whip It". Includes 2 bonus tracks from another show in '81 at The Orpheum in Boston, not found on the vinyl version, for twenty tracks in all - including, since it's a live show, an "Opening Theme" and also a "Set Change Countdown" interlude. Packaged in a nice digipack, which includes liner notes by Devo's Gerald V. Casale. Not really much more to say - if you're into Devo it's no-brainer, and it's nice to hear these songs again sounding so fresh, delivered with loads of energy. Or, if somehow you've yet to become a fan, this might do the trick, check it out.
Impressive and all-encompassing anthology of Devo (only the best band of the late 20th century!!) spanning their inception in Akron, Ohio in the mid '70s all the way through "Smoothnoodlemaps" and then some (sigh... yeah, I know, they probably could have stopped after "Oh No! It's Devo"). All in all this is a nice set though, and includes plenty of "unreleased" tracks and rare songs recorded for soundtracks throughout the years (including a song that Mark Mothersbaugh recorded for the game Interstate '82). Comes with a 50 page color booklet with a history of Devo and lots of wonderful pictures. Cool 3-D cover effect as well.
We've reviewed a bunch of fine DVD releases over these last few lists, but out of 'em all, my pick for the raddest has gotta be this Devo DVD. Of course, they're probably in my (Allan's) top five bands of all time list, so I'm somewhat biased already.
Lots of Devo fans may have seen much of this already on video tape or even laserdisc (there's several clips included here of the Devo boys explaining the virtues of the futuristic laserdisc format) but now you can see that stuff again, and more besides, on this DVD. You get the original Kent State post-graduate student film In The Beginning Was The End: The Truth About De-Evolution, that started it all and introduced the world to such characters as Booji Boy and General Boy and some mighty odd and awesome pop tuneage. Then there's pretty much all of Devo's pioneering, wigged-out music videos, from Come Back Jonee and Satisfaction through Whip It and Girl U Want to Through Being Cool, Love Without Anger, and Peek-A-Boo. And more. All amazing, fairly low-budget (rubber masks galore), and completely cracked. A couple of the songs from the tail end of their recording career aren't so hot but that's a small fraction of the mostly-genius-stuff on here. Then there's the special features, which include an historic b&w video clip from the first ever Devo gig (1972!), a bonus video (Bruce Connor's Mongoloid), an interview with Devo video collaborator/instigator Chuck Statler, still photo galleries of Devo memorabilia that are so extensive you have to watch 'em in slow motion, and -- perhaps best of all -- a bonus audio commentary track for the majority of the disc done by chief Devo spuds Gerald V. Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh! That alone makes this pretty much essential to all true Devo fans, even if you already have the original stuff on video cassette. Hours of de-evolved fascination and fun await, an incredible dose of Devo philosophy, history, music and visuals.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A long time ago, we became pretty obsessed with a record called Your Children Left With The Stranger, from weirdo outsider metal murk merchants Devoid Of All Mercy, one of a handful of releases on the now defunct Battlecruiser label, a sort-of-metal sublabel of the also now defunct legendary New Zealand boutique label Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. The weird thing was, the sound of Devoid Of All Mercy was barely metal at all, instead, it was some strange Bohren / Low style slowcore, a super minimal, skeletal post rock, that slithered and oozed and creeped, gorgeously and oh so lugubriously.
We hadn't heard a peep since, but then out of the blue, a clutch of these showed up, an ultra limited (and we mean ULTRA, as in, limited to THIRTY COPIES, of which we got half), hand cut lathe all the way from New Zealand, in a cool, transparent cover, the whole thing hazy and see through.
The record finds DOAM refining their sound even further, at low volume, we weren't sure at first if there was any sound at all, but in headphones, the record unfolded, a whispery, hushed, barely there creep, the guitars spidery and ethereal, the melodies detuned and warbly, the vocals, a demonic gurgle, but it too is almost a whisper, in the background, are footsteps and voices, and all manner of room sound, as if Mr. Devoid was just hunched over in the corner, pouring this blackened mystery onto tape, while the world just went on around him, oblivious to the delicate and haunting grimness taking place right under their noses.
Imagine a WAY less lush, WAY more abstract, WAY more metal (in spirit if not actual sound) Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore, a dark shuffling abstract anti-rock, more ambient than rock, but plenty harrowing and haunting.
Again, LIMITED TO 30 COPIES, we have LESS THAN 15!!!
Latest slab of outsider underground heaviness from Campbell Kneale's "experi-metal" label Battlecruiser, a sublabel of the always mindblowing Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, which in the past has offered up such hellish atrocities as Black Boned Angel, Mirag, Mrtyu, Wardagger, Wings Of Vengeance, Wolfskull, You Should Have Slain Me, Ghoul, Ming, Cicadashrine and The Cops, so a disc from some mysterious outfit called Devoid Of All Mercy is just what we might have expected. And a record called Your Children Left With The Stranger, scary, evil, creepy, and song titles that sound like they came straight from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, "Last Ride In A Rusting Truck", "Cannibals In The Hills", "There Are No Lights In This Cabin". But what we weren't expecting was for Devoid Of All Mercy to sound like, well, like this. No blasting black buzz, no wall of acid-fried guitars, no glacial pounding sludge, no shrieking or insectoid riffing, no blast beats, no drums at all as far as we can tell. Instead, a lone guitar, picks out a haunting near-acoustic dirge, a slowed down minor key melody, wrapped in billowing clouds of black shimmer, and over the top, a super distorted, guttural vocalist, his voice a wet snarl, gurgling, growling, a strange low end demonic whisper draped over the hypnotic guitar melodies, like some black shroud wet with blood. The thing is though, it's really sort of pretty, like a super abstract minimal post rock, lilting and hypnotic, dreamy and dark, big buzzing wide open chords, arpeggiated guitars weaving expansive melodic crawls, all seemingly suspended and drifting weightless amidst a shimmering soundscape of distant buzz and whir. Minus the vocals, this would be some strange Bohren / Low hybrid, gorgeously mournful slowcore minimalism, but with those rabid snarling vocals, pretty turns into creepy, and suddenly everything sounds just that much more bleak and foreboding. And excellent! Some seriously fucked up, and ultra subdued evil! So recommended.
Colorado quartet Devotchka do a lively jig down the path between the tweaked baroque pop of The Arcade Fire and the nouveau Balkan gypsy stylings of Beirut and Gogol Bordello. A Mad & Faithful Telling is a beauty capturing the band at its best, brisky tempo'd and impassioned with very Adrian Belew-esque swooping vocals and sweeping horns and strings following suit. This is music that'll leave your ears fevered and your cheeks flushed!
Porter Records strikes again. And again and again and again and again... We've been overwhelmed with releases from this one-man-run label juggernaut, we might even have to hire another person just to keep up. But until that happens, we'll just have to pick our favorites, and do our best to get them reviewed and on the list. And with all the stuff Porter keeps digging up it really is difficult to pick favorites, but this one definitely hit the spot.
Two long form pieces, both composed by a youngish composer Andrew Raffo Dewar, the first, "Six Lines Of Transformation" is a sprawling drift of deep swells, soft trills, fluttering woodwinds, dizzying melodies, haunting percussion, and plenty of space. This is a swirling soft cloud of free jazz flutter, peppered with some strange music concrete, and some almost folky melodies. Nearly a half hour, beginning tranquil and a bit droney, with the various instruments, sliding down descending scales like musical rainfall, the piece gets more and more spare until the last movement when things get really strange, and players start huffing through the mouthpieces, bits of bizarre percussion surface, buzzing drones, really cool, and pretty strange for sure.
But it's the second piece that is worth the price of admission. The title says it all, "Music For Eight Bamboo Flutes", 40 minutes of layered woodwind drone, subtly shifting tones, a slowly unfurling melody spread out over the whole 40 minutes, what sounds like crickets in the background, as if it was performed and recorded outside (maybe it was?), the piece goes from soft and breathy to dense and densely layered, tons of overtones, soft fluttery high end, swirling clouds of drones and tones shifting and shimmering, swelling to intense crescendos, then drifting back down to a hushed whir, so very simple, yet richly textured, so primitive and primeval and mesmerizing and beautiful. Absolutely essential listening for the drone inclined, and jazzbos with a thing for far out, space-y and static sounds...
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Otherwise known as The Cackle Sisters, this Depression-era barn-dance duo charmed the hearts of rural America with their sweet vintage country songs and incredible vocal acrobatics. Raised on a farm in Royalton, Minnesota, the sisters, Carolyn and Mary Jane DeZurik became excellent mimics of barnyard animals (as well as trains, harmonicas, slide guitar and other instruments and noises) and began incorporating these sound effects and yodeling into their performing repertoire. Starting off first at local talent contests and state fairs, the sisters gained wide enough attention to tour the country. They recorded many sides for the Vocalion label in the '30s and even made it to Hollywood to star in Barnyard Follies, eventually picking up sponsership from Purina Mills for a sponsered weekly radio show called Checkerboard Time, to advertise Purina chicken feed and other products, which they did off and on for nearly 30 years. There is an otherworldly almost Lynchian quality to the DeZurik Sisters sound, an effervescent wholesomeness and zany quirkiness that allowed them to elevate themselves from their poor rural roots and allowed others to forget the sadness and desperation of the era. Not your typical vintage country act, these sisters' incredible vocalizations need to be heard to be believed. So Sweet!
Comes with a detailed booklet about the DeZurik Sisters career and history which includes a recent interview with Carolyn DeZurik, who is still alive and well.
