What a very strange strange sonic stew DFI have made! This self-titled album on Lance J Church' s label offers up stretches of hardcore and metal heaviness (lots of guitar riffage a la Fucking Champs), cyclical post-rock patterns and some prog-ish moments too. Tempos and styles change at the whims of this one man band, as does the sound quality -- a bit murky at times -- which may be attributed more to the fact that these fifteen songs were recorded at six different locations. Punkish shred-metal silliness that totally keeps the listener on his/her toes to the very last track -- a cover of Norwegian black metal act Ulver's "Wolf And Passion"! The track before that: a drum-machine & guitar version of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight Of The Bumblebee"! Bonus points, also, for the cool Devo "New Traditionalists" inspired artwork on the inside of the cd insert.
For those unfamiliar with Dhamaal SF (now abbreviated from Dhamaal Soundsystem), they're a Bay Area consortium of musicians and djs devoted to creating and promoting club music with a strong focus on Southeast Asian influences. Their lushly textured tracks are filled with sputtery frenetic breakbeats and are anchored by some deeeep dark dubby bass that's sure to stir much movin' and groovin'. This cd-r is their latest release which includes the album version of their track "Twilight Creeper" from their self-titled debut released last year ('twas definitely one of the highlights), as well as two new tracks and a remix of another album track "Z Motion". With guests Asian Dub Foundation's Dr. Das and Shiva Soundsystem!
The Bay Area music collective known as Dhamaal Soundsystem encorporate the vibrant sounds and influences of Southeast Asian music into their own with impressive results. At once gracefully fluid and aggressively edgy, they skillfully blend the electronic (spine-rattlin' breakbeats, thick dubbed out synth basslines) with the acoustic (tabla, sitar, flute and occasionally vocals). If you dig the potent sounds of groups such as Asian Dub Foundation or Tabla Beat Science, definitely check out the very like-minded Dhamaal. It's a fiery, elaborate and entirely dancefloor ready debut. Great!
Not sure how we had gone this long without hearing this weirdo Rhode Island black metal / metalgaze / depressive ambient horde, especially considering that a quick check on the Metal Archives site reveals that these guys (this guy?) have released SIX full lengths, and about 20 or 30 demos and splits and eps. But this latest, Withdrawals & Candy Heavens, didn't take long to convince us that we have been seriously missing out. Based on the title alone, you might envision this as something that easily could have ended up on Khrysanthoney or Starlight Temple Society, and you'd be right. Dhampyr's sounds as much blissed out shoegaze jangle, and trancey blackened buzz pop as black metal, the anguished, tortured vokill mewlings, the main tether tying the sound to actual black metal. Otherwise, the sound soars and shimmers, dreamily stumbling through sundappled post rock, and spidery minor key clean guitar buzzscapes, the opener, a sprawling near 18 minute epic, is all you really need, heady and hypnotic, droning and dirgey, trance-y and hypnotic, darkly poppy, and moodily melancholy, the first ten minutes, pure post-black metal bliss out, and then the song collapses into a sonic black hole of gnarled, tangled buzz, all blurred and smeared into a hazy psychedelic ambience, buried samples add a strange garbled alien vibe to the proceedings, all the while, the guitars unfurl achingly melodic peals, buried beneath the strange sampled softnoise dronescape, emerging on the other side, a lumbering dirge, replete with deep dramatic vox, and more wails, and a black buzz fade out finale. The rest of the tracks are much shorter, but no less dramatic or twisted, the second track, delivers a raga-like blast of fast picked soaring guitar riffs, the sans drums or vocals, almost sound like some strange avant garde experimental guitarnoise, and when the rest of the instruments swoop in, it only gets weirder, with some strange fractured rhythms, distorted drumming, and more of those wild whooping vocals, the sound blown out and on the verge of crumbling. The last two tracks split their time between, murky lo-fi drones, noisy post rock mathiness, tranced out black-psych mesmer, the final track impossibly melodic, sounding like it could be some lost demo from some obscure math/post rock outfit from North Carolina in the nineties, albeit a bit more blackened, and with some wild double bass drum blasting.
EXTREMELY LIMITED!!! Only FIFTY COPIES!!! We have a bunch, but they won't last long, and once they're gone, that's probably IT!
Modern classical composer's cut-up collage utilizing his students' pieces.
Another gorgeous release from the Ex's Terp label, that brought us the amazing Konono No.1 live record and the Beraki double cd reviewed elsewhere on this list. Djibril Diabate is from Mali and is a master on the kora (a 21 string harp-lute) and the music he makes is unbelievably dreamy and otherworldy. Dense tangles of melodies, compex but smooth and soothing, minor key and super melodic. These are modern re-interpretations of traditional pieces, all instrumental, but based thematically on tales and stories that are centuries old. And sonically this could have been recorded 100 years ago (except for the crystal clear rcording of course). Hard to describe exactly what this sounds like, but it has a similar vibe to the recently reviewed Richard Crandell thumb piano cd. Swoonsome and twilighty, delicate but rich with harmonic overtones. It remided some of us of a little of Christmas carols, but only if you can imagine a Christmas carol stripped to its essence, a crystalline framework of melody amd delicate filligree. So so lovely. Another cd vying for the coveted position of perfect late night / going-to-sleep record!
Simply stunning sparse and majestic sounds from one of the most talented kora players of all time! Known for his collaborations with everyone from Ali Farka Toure, to Taj Mahal and Bjork. This is Toumani by himself and his kora which he employs to make such magical and enchanting music. Toumani has that same kind of elegance and sheer transcendence that folks like John Fahey and Ravi Shankar had/have with the instruments they mastered. The Mande Variations demonstrates how Diabate has been influenced by Indian classical music, flamenco and blues as well as the Griot music of his native home of Mali. This is the kind of record that allows you to just let go of everything as the hypnotic trance of Diabate's playing takes you away to a higher dimension. The Mande Variations is reminding us of some of our favorite beautiful sound of the last few years from the likes of James Blackshaw, Debashish Bhattacharya and Lanaya. Undeniably stunning and filled with trance inducing soul!
Electronic beats and synths collide with majestic black metal for this dark, bombastic album from Finnish band Diablerie. Grandiose stuff, kinda like Samael, or Covenant, but weirder.
You know how much we love Finnish music, forest folk, drifty drones, motorik hypnorock, but there's something in particular about Finnish black metal... something so utterly distinct, something so, well Finnish. It's hard to describe, but Finnish metal bands seem to have a certain vibe that permeates their sound, whether they be super buzzing and black, or primitive and stumbling, or somewhere in between.
Beherit, Ajattara, Sargeist, Satanic Warmaster, Finntroll, Horna, Behexen, Barathrum, Clandestine Blaze, Baptism, if you're familiar at all with most of those bands you probably see what we mean. It's something sonic but not obvious. A nod to the old school, but without sounding totally dated or retro. Finnish BM is grim and buzzing and brutal and black and totally Finnish.
One of the longest running Finnish BM hordes would probably have to be Diaboli, and The Antichrist, their 6th album since 1996, has everything we've come to love about them, and Finnish black metal in general. Lots of buzz, and simple riffing, the tempo is not midtempo, but also not a furious blast, it's fast for sure, but the tempo is tempered by the melodies, the arpeggiated chords spread out over each track like some melancholy shroud. The vocals are appropriately growled, the whole sound drenched in blackness and buzz, but it's that 'Finnish thing', whatever it is, that makes them stand out.
The first track is a classic blast of old school black metal, relentless blast beats, cyclical hypnotic riffing, epic majestic melody, the whole thing wrapped in delay and reverb, a dense black cloud, the track a galloping monster, but with some hidden bits of emotion and melody lurking underneath. Mysteriously pretty but disturbingly black. And maybe that's the thing we can't put our finger on. The strange melancholy melodiousness of track 5 "Emptiness" also hints at some strange heart of gold. albeit wrapped in a tattered black musical cloak. The guitars are muted and sound almost post rock, while the drums blast along solidly beneath. Each new guitar line introduces another unlikely and surprisingly melodic element. But let's not overstate the melodic aspect, and the 'prettiness' here, even though it is present, and is a vital part of the sound, ultimately, you gotta love the buzz, the brutal blasting blackness of old school black metal. Fans of Finns like Horna, Beherit, Clandestine Blaze will definitely dig this...
So this is the new Diabolical Masquerade album and it actually IS an "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" (not one of those 'soundtrack to an imaginary film' things) for a film about a man who somehow cheats death, and his mind is seperated from his body and he is forced to try and free his mind from the 'not alive' netherworld and rejoin it to his body. Sounds pretty cool. Doubt
We love weirdo black ambience almost as much as we love weirdo metal. So when a member of one of our favorite damaged fucked up black metal bands, strikes out on his own and spits out a completely cracked ambient drone record, that veers wildy from fierce and freaked drug drenched delirium to gorgeous blown out bliss, we hardly need to tell you that we are ALL OVER IT.�
This particular slab of cracked sonic chaos comes courtesy of Nattramn, vocalist for Swedish doomic suicidal black metallers Silencer, most notable perhaps for Nattramn's outrageously over the top falsetto shrieks. Here, the vocals aren't so much the focal point, although there are plenty, and while they may not be as hysterical and harsh, they are just as bizarre. In fact this whole record is pretty strange, and if you're a fan of labelmates Stalaggh, this could easily function as Stalaggh's dreamier dronier, equally demented cousin.�
The disc begins with a big smear of SUNN-y downtuned guitar crawl and�some dizzying warped carnivalesque warble before morphing into a simple plodding throb. Gradually, that throb transforms into an Autechre meets Amon Tobin skitter, albeit much filthier and more industrial sounding. Scuzzy and crusty and grinding, all beneath a cloud of buzzed out crumbling synths, and hoarse raspy vocalizing. The next track is almost the polar opposite, a�dreamy, wispy ambient drift, minor key melodies and strange�blown out whirls of frosty whir and strange, spacious, almost majestic sounding drones. Later�moaning mysterious chantlike vocals are woven into a warm murmury backdrop, with muted percussion, while over the top a distorted voice intones all manner of strange prophecy. Not soon after the record shifts gear again and becomes a eerie�neo classical slab of militaristic folk industrial, all epic and grandiose, almost like the sound from some old newsreel footage, but much more haunting and damaged sounding, a looped march, beneath thick swells of sound and that voice again, howling out invective, the various notes and chordal shimmer becoming more and more dissonant, eventually fading into a�grinding low end drone buzz, that hovers beneath the terrified sounds of a weeping child, and a dungeon's worth of mournful wails and creepy clatter, all wrapped in thick reverb, making it feel like wandering through some ancient keep, wreathed in fog.
As we reach the halfway point, the sound shifts again, this time an inadvertent homage to the glistening glimmer of Tim�Hecker and Philip Jeck, those beautiful sounds quickly sucked into a black void, a swirling morass of dark sound and low tones, and that voice again, reverbed and distorted, the whole thing sounding like a low end Whitehouse spun lazily at 8rpm, when all of a sudden, proceedings are shockingly disrupted by a super distorted techno pulse, some sort of ultra aggro industrial pound, with shouted sloganeering and more buzzing synths,�before reverting to a super distorted, glitchy, crumbly low end glacial rumble, a synth drenched SUNNO))) style crawl with bits of vocal fragments and buzzing streaks of groan and grind, until the whole thing becomes a dense roiling cloud of black ambience.
And it's still not over. Gorgeous washed out clouds of�gorgeous gauzy atmospheric shimmer drift in, all sepia toned and dreamlike, a long expanse of lazy blurred soft focus bliss, left to sort of float weightless before being overtaken by a�confusional collage of overlapping vocal snippets and out of tune, distorted piano, eventually building into a dense squall of swirling spinning sounds.
The finally, the�epic final track, more black ambience, rife with mysterious sound samples, more disembodied vocals, distant rumbles, weird electronic FX, the whole thing building to a massive damaged doom drone, with epic sheets of keening feedback and thick washes of distorted guitar and churning industrial whir, while over the top, the most demented, damaged, drug addled vocalizing yet, like an inmate in an insane asylum ranting and raving incoherently, the sort of vocals that most certainly wouldn't be at all out of place on one of the Stalaggh records.
A seriously damaged and ultra fucked up sonic trip, as beautiful as it is baffling. In other words, AWESOME.�
Three years or so on from their debut, here at last is more bombastic mostly instrumental prog from this hotshot young British outfit, in the grand tradition of great ye olde bands from their land of the seventies like Yes, King Crimson, Van Der Graaf, Genesis and even Comus (who weren't all instrumental of course, but sure excelled in that dep't as do Diagonal). A complex blend of powerful grooves and lovely moody bits, Diagonal deliver the prog rock goods for any fan of this style.
Diagonal, come to think of it, is a good name for a prog band - going off in their own direction, not aligned with either the X or the Y axis y'know, but still operating with straight-line precision. Well zig zagging a bit actually, when you think about it. But with precision, that's for sure. Lotsa moving parts (organ, heavy bass lines, horn-laced freakouts, etc.) but everything locking together TIGHT. Heck they should go play in Japan with one of Tatsuya Yoshida's bands like Koenjihyakkei, they'd for sure go down a storm (as they say in England when something goes over well).
Aside from some wordless ahh-ahh-ahh vocals on track 2, "These Yellow Sands", it's not until track 4 of 5, "Hulks", that we really notice Diagonal busting out any singing here, and it's melodic and gentle, again quite in the tradition of Yes and the like, with female backing vox. "Hulks" features some stirring sax as well, as it builds over the course of ten-plus-minutes into quite the majestic opus, and could have remained instrumental without really any lessening of impact, though the vocals are nice.
While, like so many fellow Rise Abovers, such as Astra, Diagonal are rather deliberately retro-minded and thus more circumscribed in approach than, say, Circle (who have a much more WTF? attitude to prog and everything else), nonetheless Diagonal's The Second Mechanism is an impressive exercise in prog-music-making that's quite exciting and vital.
The other day we happened to have a used copy of a 1972 Nektar album called A Tab In the Ocean playing on the store stereo. (Nektar being a prog rocking band of Brits who had transplanted themselves into the krautrock scene of Germany in the '70s.) There was a customer in the shop who was digging it, who then said something to the effect of, "too bad they don't make music like this anymore". Of course, we were happy to inform him otherwise, that he needn't lament, and as proof we immediately directed him to this record by Diagonal that we had just installed on our New Arrivals shelf.
These guys are from Brighton, and might as well also be from the '70s, though in fact this album is their brand new, debut album, and the members of this seven-piece band are all 20-something years old. But if we played this for you and told you it was some "hairy funk" released on the Vertigo label circa '73 you just might be fooled. Diagonal display plenty of virtuosity on their various instruments, in the service of complex, programmatic song structures. There's some nice, melodic singing heard here and there, but much more in the way of long, instrumental passages, at turns moody and dramatic. Spaced out synths and jazzy organ jamming and fluttering flute (yes!) all figure into the mix, though with two guitarists and a crack rhythm section, Diagonal don't neglect to rock out upon occasion, sometimes in a fairly heavy (and precise) fashion. And as complicated as their material gets, these are indeed *songs*, not merely technical exercises for showing off their considerable chops.
They're obviously influenced by the likes of King Crimson, Gentle Giant, Genesis, Yes, Van Der Graaf Generator, and many much more obscure acts of the era (Gracious, anyone? Gnidrolog?)... but just as surely they're not unaware of today's mathrock scene (cf. Battles) though these guys do seem consciously retro, looking the part in long hair, beards, and vintage shop clothing (actually, that's not such an unusual style for kids these days, is it?).
Right on, there's been more cool modern-day prog showing up at Aquarius these past couple weeks than you can shake a Chapman Stick at! Crime In Choir, last list, and now Diagonal, well that's two anyway. (And neither use the Stick, don't get the wrong idea, as sometimes that's taking the prog thing just a little too far.)
Available on cd or as an import gatefold LP.
I (Jim) once had a mighty long list of records that I had been looking for. Or rather, it was a loosely organized jumble of folded papers where I noted what I should be digging for whenever I ventured into good record stores (i.e. Aquarius, before I started working here). One of the many things that I just could never find was the first Dial record, which I think I read about in Nick Cain's seminal Opprobrium magazine. I can't even remember what the review said, but in it Cain hit upon just the right key words to keep me looking for the record. Many moons later, an brand new album by Dial turned up here at Aquarius (although not the one I was looking for), and I can certainly see why I would have wanted to hear what this band sounded like. Dial is a collaborative effort between Jacqui Ham (formerly of Ut) and Rob Smith, with a few other NYC noise-rock types joining in. Ut came out of New York's No Wave scene, proposing an angular, post-punk jitter with guitars, squawked vocals, and drums all laboring into relatively cohesive rhythmic tunes. While Ut were never a really gritty or brutal band by No Wave standards, Dial are. Their claustrophobic drone-rock is a dense aggregate of snarling guitar scrape, electric pulsations, and a plethora of lo-fi distortion. In the No Wave spectrum, Dial come much closer to narcotic murk of Mars or a much grittier sounding Suicide. At their most cohesive, Dial make all of the Dead C references too as the drums hit propulsive slop-punk grooves only to trip down the stairs in free-noise fashion. All of these are very good things, and make 168K a very recommended album. If only I could track down the earlier ones... In due time.
Jacqui Ham may still be best known for her work in the band UT, who operated throughout the '80s in NYC and spilled out of the Glenn Branca / Sonic Youth / Live Skull morass of angular yet droning, art-rock damage. That project dissolved sometime around 1990, with Ham re-emerging with a self-released first album of radically deconstructed songs under the moniker Dial. That first album was a primitive churn of bleak-as-fuck electronics, codeine laced vocal slur, and lots of destroyed amp distortion; it was equal parts industrial abjection, classic NYC grime, and the No Wave pursuit of the transgressive. Since 1996, Dial have only released 4 albums, but all stand as minor masterpieces of visions from the depths of the underground. The Western Front is the first on beloved label Ektro, which is not all that strange a home for Dial, especially with Ektro reissuing the Rat At Rat R record not that long ago. Rat At Rat R being an obscure '80s gloomy, pig-fuck band from bowels of the Lower East Side with connections to Live Skull and Missing Foundation.
Production wise, Dial have got the nicotine stain cloud that hangs over every single Michael Morley production (Gate, Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos, and of course The Dead C). And just like in those projects, this is not lo-fi for the sake of being lo-fi. The grit, the noise, and the grime are all very intentionally applied to these hypnotically reductivist tracks of wheezing drum machine or motorik churn from a live drummer with abused guitar noises, deformed guitar riffs, and violently ripped basslines added into the mix. Ham's vocal snarl is much as it was in Ut, but it makes much more sense here as punctuations amidst her narcotized stream of consciousness that spills through the dirge and grind. "Helium" is certainly a standout track and is straight out of the Pussy Galore playbook with a groovy-hate riff of serrated blues repeating ad nauseam through the hypno-rock damage. In contrast, there's "Silent Way" with its slinky drum machine and quietly tense piano notes and agitated guitar bursts. The album's finale "Let's Forget" is a terse ditty of percolating programmed drums, atonally child-like electronics, and some heroin blooziness bleeding through the guitars. This is the sound of NYC way back when, with the aura of stagnant sewage, spent condoms, rusty needles, and lots of bum trash strewn about. Pretty, this ain't. Compelling? Fuck yeah!
Not to be confused with the Dial from NYC, this is crazy chaotic female fronted math grind metal craziness that RULES.
Here's a question that gets tossed around here more and more in recent months: Is this new or old? Given how many bands who make druggy, atmospheric ritualism could have produced those sounds in 1972 or 2009 with equal aplomb. The Amen Dunes record Dia (2009) and Warlus' Songs album (1975) make for an interesting case study. Over the past twelve months, there's been another resurgence of black clad, post-punk thanks to some of the dour Goth reissues from Sacred Bones, which fit neatly next to the spunky Joy Divisionisms of Blank Dogs and the moping, black eyeliner tunes of this weeks ROTW Soror Dolorosa. Those could also be addressed with that same question: is this old or new? In the case of the dark, moody sounds of Dial M For Murder, the answer is, as hard as it might be to believe, "new."
Citing Joy Division and the Chameleons as their references, Dial M For Murder end up in a place remarkably close to Interpol. The vocalist David Ortenlof really does come across like Interpol's Paul Banks on a good chunk of the tracks, and almost like Mark Edwards from My Dad Is Dead on the others. Musically, the dark jangliness of the guitar and the punchy basslines situates around tight drum machine programming coming across like Ratatat reworking Joy Division singles. Gothic and haunting, but propulsive and poppy, really really cool stuff for sure.
We're still perplexed how Dialing In, AKA Rieta Piecuch manages to make such a gorgeously thick guitar drenched concoction WITHOUT any guitars. Ever since her first record on Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, we've found ourselves returning to her music again and again. There's just so much to hear, and so many sounds to discover. It's definitely noise music, but a sort of noise music that we rarely encounter. Beautiful noise. Listenable noise. Mysterious noise. Thick and gritty, harsh but gently harsh. Cows In Lye continues on from where Ketalysergicmetha Mother left off. Each track a dense sonic journey rife with looped found sounds, voices and inadvertent rhythms, instruments and snippets of songs, all beautifully tangled up into absolutely breathtaking miniature worlds of sound. It's like Jeck and Basinski, Hecker and Marclay all playing at the same time. It can be that confusional, but can also be that compellingly complex.
Thick corrosive washes of crumbling sound that so distinctly resemble blown out downtuned guitars cover everything, beautiful looped melodies, strange disembodied vocals, rumbling bass lines, everything an abstract beautiful fragment doused in a crackling gritty patina. Like a supercharged, sludgier Oval, or some beautiful ambient record played on a broken old tape player, and broadcast through a set of busted up high school loudspeakers. echoing off the concrete walls until the natural reverb piles up into a whole 'nother layer of murk and hum.
We really can't think of anyone making music this weird and mysterious and so strangely beautiful.
There may be a future Dialing In release on Andee's tUMULt label, but for now luxuriate in the gorgeous soft cacophony that is Dialing In.
First outing from Seattle based sound sculptor, Reita Piecuch, who weaves together thick, overblown, super saturated guitarscapes, all fuzzy and dense, with deconstructed melodies that seem to melt into each other. An ultra dreamy, smeary, looped gorgeousness, like a lo-fi version of Basinski's Disintegration Loops, if the loops were made of white hot slabs of My Bloody Valentine guitar. Or Philip Jeck with a room full of guitars instead of turntables. Lots of crackle and degradation and crumbling distortion and melodies buried in murky fuzz, pop songs smeared into loping loops of stuttering feedback soaked riffing, and guitars so distorted and white hot it feels like listening to the sun. ONLY THERE ARE NO GUITARS!! Huh? So fucking good. Hands down the best cd-r we've heard all year.
SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!
It's been a while since we've heard from Reita Piecuch, aka Dialing In. Everything we've heard, we have loved, as in LOVED, as in became totally obsessed with, so when we heard about this lp months ago, we couldn't wait, and had been chomping at the bit, but now it's finally here, and is as good, if not better than anything we've heard from her before.
Piecuch's travels through the Middle East resulted in some absolutely incredible field recordings, local musicians, prayers, street sounds, ambient sounds, voices, traffic, which she then transforms into even more incredible soundscapes. Warped and collaged and murky and smeared and blurry, a whole new sonic experience, which somehow never obfuscates the original sounds completely. Street sounds in Piecuch's hands becomes skittery turntablist drift, all crackly and fuzzy and looped sounding, a call to prayer is slathered in distortion and becomes a woozy blown out buzz, while in the background, a sea of murky grooves and effected street sounds sway and swirl and bleed into each other creating a strangely organic sonic backdrop.
The sound is raw and rough and in-the-red, it's a symphony of sound assembled from incredible and mysterious source material, voices, music, and all the various sonic artifacts and detritus that comes with recording on a handheld device. These manipulated and recontextualized sounds become almost pop songs, twisted into new melodies, given new life as some abstract pop flecked collage, somehow lush, for all it's low fidelity, incredibly emotional, due in part to the original sounds, but also, Piecuch's delicate and deft handling of those sounds.
The second track is the perfect example, a woman singing, praying, passionately, and emotionally, her singing draped over what sounds like super distorted guitars, the whole thing transformed into a strange glacial dirge, equal part fuzzy fractured slow motion pop and Middle Eastern folk song, white white hot, but moody and minor key and so beautiful you never want it to end.
Imagine Philip Jeck, armed with nothing but his turntables, his effects, and dubplates of all the Sublime Frequencies releases, the results broadcast through a busted old high school PA, and recorded onto a microcassette recorder, before being dubbed onto an old tape from the floor of your car, and then finally, in all it's UN-pristine glory, pressed on to thick green wax. Fucking awesome!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
We've been going pretty nuts for French occult rock rhythmatists Aluk Todolo, their most recent record, appropriately titled Occult Rock, we made Record Of The Week, and could barely keep in stock. Hell, we made all THREE Aluk Todolo albums our Record Of The Week. But before there was AT, there was Diamatregon, a furious black metal beast featuring essentially the very same lineup, their second and third records released on Andee's tUMULt label, their sound, at least early on, a blown out raw satanic blackness, the drenched the usual buzz and blast it crumbling distortion and speaker shredding noise, but seeming to mature into something much more experimental and polished, which makes the eventual formation of Aluk Todolo less surprising. We're not entirely sure if Diamatregon is still a going concern, what with the members doing time in lots of other bands including Aluk Todolo and psych rock outfit Gunslingers, which is further suggested by this 'new' single, which is not in fact new at all, but recorded back in 2006, but it definitely reminds us of why we loved Diamatregon so much in the first place.
The A side starts of with a creepy soundtracky piano intro, but it's not a sample, it's part of the song proper, the piano continuing on into the first part of the song proper, even after the super distorted guitar comes in, the combination is truly haunting, we would have been happy for a whole side of this weird piano driven blackness, but soon, the sound explodes into some classic black buzz, with some seriously super sick vox, over frenzied insectoid guitars, the vibe raw and old school for sure.
The B side explodes out of the gate with a barrage of blasting beats and tangled anguished vokills, which gives way to some classic midtempo metal chug, before peeling away and leaving a long stretch of sinister black ambience, all detuned guitars, random drum hits, woozy FX, swirling sinister shimmer, darkly psychedelic and seriously creepy, eventually the band come back in proper and finish off with a blast of fierce metallic blackness. So killer! Has us hoping these guys are still a band, and hankering for a new full length!!
Diamatregon are a French black metal band who specialise in violently thrashing, ultra chaotic, on-the-verge-of-losing-control, over-saturated, super distorted and noisy, TRUE black metal. Fast and furious with the occasional midtempo breakdown and a once-in-a-while doomy dirge. But they also happen to have an amazing way with melodies, as 1000 mile an hour blasts can get pretty tedious, pretty quickly. So even though the songs sometimes sound like a black metal band being hurled down a stairway (a good thing, mind you) the songs stick in your head more than you would think possible. And the occasional midtempos, full of fuzzed out guitars and simple relentless drumming, definitely bring to mind the mighty Burzum. A thick, hyperspeed and hellish brew of harsh, inhuman howls, amp melting, overdriven guitars, thrashing drums with a lo-fi, but remarkably heavy production. They even cover the Misfits' Death Comes Ripping, turning it into a 90 second blast of sinister, speaker shredding, head banging, church burning high end brutality.
Blasphemy For Satan is eight metal thrashing mad tracks clocking in at 45 minutes.
Twenty of those minutes just happen to make up the crushing final track, an extended doom epic, equal parts, moody post rock, Sabbathy dirge, and all out noise assault, complete with bizarre samples, found sounds, and super complex arrangements, and as reminiscent of old AMREP bands as it is Norwegian black metal.
Diamatregon actually sent their cd to Andee/tUMULt because they were huge fans of the label as well as Circle and Acid Mothers Temple and lots of decidedly non metal music, and were really wanting to release their record on a not-specifically-metal label, which seems to work well with tUMUlt's good-music-is-good-music mantra and their mission to expose non-metalheads to metal, and metalheads to non-metal!
But whether you're a metalhead or not, Diamatregon spew forth some amazingly heavy, undeniably catchy, and totally intense blackened sounds.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Super limited 7" from France's Diamatregon who you may remember from their devastatingly brilliant Blasphemy For Satan record released on tUMULt last year. So while we're waiting for the next full length to drop, we have this 5 track 7" ep. The first track is a howling blasting black metal epic titled "I Drank The Blood Of The Black Snake", a totally different version of the song they recorded for Andee and Heather's wedding! Awwwww. Two more originals and two awesome covers (Carnivore and Darkthrone) fill out this slab of utter blackness. Limited to 500 copies of which we were only able to get a handful.
It's hard to believe it's been almost SEVEN years since we've heard from French black metal horde Diamatregon. Their last record, Blasphemy For Satan, was an absolute beast, fucked up and frenzied, furious and insanely noisy and chaotic. Released on Andee's tUMULt label (as is this one, although the vinyl is on Paragon), Blasphemy still puts to shame most other black metal, past or present. And somehow, Crossroad, as impossible as it may seem, is poised to one up Blasphemy in almost every way.
In the preceding years, a few things in the Diamatregon camp have changed. Thankfully, the band are still the furious frenzied blackened juggernaut they always were, a band whose sound we once described as "violently thrashing, ultra chaotic, on-the-verge-of-losing-control, over-saturated, super distorted and noisy, TRUE black metal", and that definitely still applies. But Diamatregon's rhythm section has been moonlighting in both the alchemical post rock outfit Aluk Todolo, as well as in wild psychedelic combo the Gunslingers, and that has definitely influenced their sound. Not to mention that Crossroad is in fact a sort of black metal homage to the blues, the title referring to the legendary crossroads where many a musician struck a deal with the devil. And we can only assume these guys have bought into some similar sort of bargain, as Crossroad is mind blowing, still black metal at its core, full of buzzing insectoid riffing, pounding blasting beats, and raspy demonic vokills, but the arrangements are epic and convoluted and so complex, the various riffs and beats often seeming to melt into each other creating long droned out buzzscapes, the textures too are weirdly murky and washed out, tons of reverb and delay, seemingly lo-fi on the surface, but that low fidelity is just another tool in the band's extensive sonic arsenal. And then there's the blues aspect, this is after all a tribute to the blues, and close examination does in fact reveal some surprising bits of bluesiness, deftly woven into the corrosive black fabric of Diamatregon's freaked out grim buzz. A casual listen will reveal no blues at all, but strap on some headphones and let that swirling blackness swallow you whole, and suddenly the songs open up, revealing layer after layer, and within all of that buzz and rrroooar there lurks subtle blues structures.
But that's not all, the songs constantly shift gears sometimes, the guitars drop out completely, leaving just a garagey bass heavy groove, other times the guitars soar and sing, chiming and ringing out, eventually collapsing into yet another black hole of sound. Here and there the band slow things down, and get a bit depressive and Burzumy, loping and melancholic, woozy and warbly, but even within a fairly well defined sound, Diamatregon fuck it up and make it all their own, infusing warm whirring major key melodies, adding all sorts of drones and layers, the vocals a deep ominous rumble, before slipping into some post rocky clean guitar, beneath some twisted Orc-ish vox, and a jam that is total loping post rock, mathy, and minimal, a bit blackened, but it's not difficult to hear and feel the link between Diamatregon and Aluk Todolo.
The title track is the record's centerpiece, beginning with some crumbing lo-fi guitar, soon lurching into a lumbering bit of chaotic blackness, the drums WAY up in the mix, the vocals strange and strangled sounding, the guitars thick and corrosive, the sound of the whole song seeming to warp and warble, until everything drops out minus the guitars which are left to drone and rumble and reverberate, creating thick sheets of chordal buzz, so gorgeously minimal and hypnotic, eventually joined by soaring slow motion leads draped over the top, before exploding into another stretch of chaotic pounding blackness.
The final track, "He Was Not A Believer", is probably the heaviest and harshest of the bunch, a pounding relentless blackened onslaught, but even here the band infuse all sorts of melody and texture, and again, let the song break down into an abject doomic crawl, all grunted anguished voices, monstrous drum plod, warped guitar, droney moodiness, eventually getting almost Sabbathy, before slipping back into an even more frenetic black blast, and finally finishing off with a long stretch of blackened distorted crumble and ooze, that seems to slip slowly away.
Blasphemy For Satan was so extreme, so overdriven, so insanely distorted blown out, that there was really nowhere to go, but deeper, darker, weirder, and yeah, maybe bluesier. Crossroad has so much going on, it definitely plays out like grim blasting black metal, but it's so much more, a sprawling expansive experimental landscape of abstract blackness and deconstructed rock tropes, a constantly shifting soundworld of convoluted heaviness, of layered drones and crumbling abstract otherworldy ambience, at once heavy and brutal and grim, but also rhythmic and melodic, a twisted, outsider, idiosyncratic slab of fucked up and brilliant black metal, that manage to stay true and kvlt while seeming to disregard any and all sonic restrictions placed on the genre. So fucking amazing.
Oooh. A real sharp reissue (deluxe, all-white slipcase packaging!) of this seminal NWOBHM classic. If you recognize that acronym, then you should know this album. That's New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, and this album by Diamond Head is in our NWOBHM top ten with the best of Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Venom, Angel Witch, etc. Just TRY not to bang your head to this heavy, rockin' tunage!! The seven songs on this, their ultra catchy and energetic 1981 debut, proved that the vocals of Sean Harris and the guitar riffs of Brian Tatler were a dynamite combo. "Am I Evil", "It's Electric", "Sucking My Love", "Helpless", "The Prince"...all their best stuff is right here. (Plus this disc also includes seven more tracks from early singles, etc.)
Yup, they shoulda-coulda-woulda been "the next Zeppelin", but they never fulfilled their early promise... still this album is an all-time metal essential, and also Diamond Head should get a LOT of the credit for a band plenty more folks have heard of, by the name of Metallica. Big big Diamond Head influence there. As Metallica acknowledged by covering quite a few DH songs over the years, the originals all found here. What about Diamond Head's influences? Well, Zeppelin, and definitely Thin Lizzy -- but they sound quite different to those other Thin Lizzy influenced NWOBHM giants, Iron Maiden.
Basically, if you like metal(lica) and you don't have this album... get it! This is also the best cd edition we've seen to date. Nice packaging simulating the original autographed white sleeve, remastered sound, bonus tracks, with liner notes explaining the whole DH saga...
Hmm. What hath The Darkness wrought? Bands that think it's ok to bust out the falsetto -- bands like Diamond Nights. To be fair, these guys are not nearly as over the top as The Darkness (whom we love by the way). And their singer's use of the higher pitch isn't any more pronounced than that of a bunch of current emo scene bands either. But, like the Darkness, the Diamond Nights guys seem to wear their retro influences proudly on their sleeves. And with a name like that, you might wonder how serious they are. Well we don't know, but we do like these five songs. You might too if you like good ol' classic rock. Track one, "Destination Diamonds", comes off like The Fucking Champs (or to be more accurate, Thin Lizzy) fronted by the guy from The Darkness. The subsequent tracks are less metal, more keyboardy and '80s new wavey really, reminding us of The Cars, Billy Idol and even Power Station! 18 minutes and 26 seconds of good times here, people.
Damn, this has been in stock for a little while now -- some months now, in fact! -- but for some reason we didn't get around to checking it out 'til just the other day (even though we liked this band's previous ep, Once We Were Diamonds, reviewed here last year). Like we've said before, it's hard to keep up with everything... But better late than never. Everything that was cool about that ep is even cooler here on the full-length, which actually includes the two best songs from the ep, would-be/should-be hits "That Girl's Attractive" and "Destination Diamonds". If the latter track were the only thing you ever heard by Diamond Nghts you'd think they were fully trying to emulate both The Fucking Champs (and/or Thin Lizzy) and The Darkness. But DN have more tricks up their sleeves than just that -- the rest of Popsicle isn't all (ironic?) metal like that... though the adrenalized "It's A Shokka" definitely demonstrates a maybe tongue-in-cheek Judas Priest influence, and also sounds a heckuva lot like Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy". But other tracks here show that besides the Thin Lizzy and Queen albums that these guys undoubtedly love (there's no denying it), they have other influences too that aren't classic rock/metal. On tracks like "Drip Drip" (not the Comus song!) they've got a dancey '80s new wavey thing (hmm, also like Queen got into) going on. And at other moments the hooks and the vocals remind us of the White Stripes, and the chops underlying the pop make us think of 31 Knots... So while Diamond Nights can't lay claim to being the most original band ever, they're definitely talented and have managed to meld their collective influences together in some unexpected ways. Basically, this is everything that we wished the second, disappointing Darkness album would have been.
Scott Herren has shown over the years he's a man of many musical hats. Creating a wide range of sounds with his projects Prefuse 73, Savath & Savalas, Piano Overlord, etc. Diamond Watch Wrist finds him exploring warmly textured songs with moody and ghostly undertones. In fact this record would fit so nicely near Warp label-mates Grizzly Bear. Joined by Zach Hill of Hella on drums who plays in the most restrained and atmospheric fashion we've heard from him, Herren shows he's much more then an electronics wizard as he plays guitar, bass, pedal steel, clarinet and sings so nicely throughout the record, too. We hear the influence of late '90s lush indie bands like Bedhead and Red Stars Theory. Nice to find yet another side to Herren's multitalented musical leanings, same goes for Hill as well.
This is the first we'd heard from these guys, but holy shit were we thrown for a loop. The fact that the record is on Top Shelf, home to former Record Of The Week-ers Piano Become The Teeth, had us expecting some sort of frenzied post-metal screamo heaviosity, but when we threw it on, it was anything but. Total catchy as fuck, super produced heavy pop that RULES. In fact the first track here, "Cannonball" is one of those rare jams, that immediately become the only thing we wanted to listen to (full disclosure, we being mostly Andee, but you probably figured that out). And thus, we've listened to that song, and this ep, 5 or 6 times a day, every day, for the last two weeks, basically since we first discovered it. And while this is not the group's newest (a new ep JUST came out), it is the first we heard, and it's still just about all we can listen to. Somewhere between the bombastic prog pop of Muse, the fuzzy post-stoner arena rock of Queens Of The Stone Age, and the poppiest parts of later Cave-In records (or maybe more accurately, any of CI frontman Stephen Brodsky's solo records), but maybe more than anything, we're reminded of a long ago aQ fave and previous Record Of The Week from a band called Open Hand, and like that band, Diamond Youth manage the impossible task of balancing impeccable, super polished pop-smithery, with some serious metallic heft, and hard rocking punk rock bombast. But metalheads and punks will most likely find Orange WAY too poppy, the rest of us though, just might have ANOTHER new favorite band. Every song here practically perfect, from the aforementioned opener, to the woozy, softly psychedelic, insanely catchy "Come Down", to the fuzzed out crunch of the title track, that almost sounds like Rocket From The Crypt, given a power pop makeover, to the broody, lilting minor key closer, that sounds like it could have been a Posies B-side. So good.
And we're psyched there's another new Diamond Youth record to obsess over once we've finally played this one to death... which doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon!
Neil Diamond at AQ??!! What is the world coming to? But before you start nodding your head and thinking the end has come, guess what? This is actually a really good record unlike anything else he's done in forever (Diamond fans just back off! No need to send us hate mail, we love Neil Diamond as much as you do, but you gotta admit it's been years since he did anything worthwhile). Thanks to the vision of Rick Rubin the world actually gets to hear Neil Diamond stripped down and raw for the first time. No multitrack schmaltzy vocal overdubs, no glossy production. Instead Rubin has actually stripped away all the bloat and corniness and gotten to the core of Neil Diamond, a performer you maybe never knew existed. At times it's almost like you're listening to Neil Diamond's take of a Giant Sand record! With a super solid cast of musicians playing on the record including the distinct organ sounds of Billy Preston, 12 Songs is not only by far the best thing Neil Diamond has maybe ever done, it's also a testament to the vision of Rick Rubin. Who else can say they've made great records with Johnny Cash, Run-DMC, Slayer and now Neil Diamond??
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Sountrack to the 1976 film Diamonds, composed by Roy Budd.
If you adore the sounds of Be Good Tanyas and Jolie Holland, this gal is sweetly calling your name. You might already be familiar with Ms Alela Diane's captivating, earthy presence via her performances with pal Joanna Newsom.
While Joana Newsom is the best known export from the Nevada City/Grass Valley, California music scene, it's looking like her good pal Alela Diane has been getting a nice share of attention lately with her Rough Trade debut, To Be Still. You'd be hard pressed to find an album recorded with more warmth or richness then this one, Diane's sophomore outing. Recalling the magic of early Emmylou Harris and for sure echoing the lush arrangements and immaculate delivery of her old neighbor Joanna Newsom. With a fine cast of players including Matt Bauer and Espers percussionist Otto Hauser, these songs come pouring out with such ease and such an assured and natural warmth.
Chicago's Dianogah return with their second full length (their first for Southern) of warm post-rock melodies and sporadic polyrhythms. A little more structurally complex than their previous endeavors and much more melodic (read: Not as painfully boring as their last record). The recording -- a Steve Albini original -- is absolutely amazing. Overall this is by far Dianogah's best record yet. Falls right between the first Tortoise album and Don Caballero's "What Burns Never Returns."
Although they often fall into step with their mellow instrumental post-rock contemporaries such as San Diego's Tristeza, Dianogah seem restless sticking to that gentle pace as they shuffle their deck of time signatures and tempos. Solid, dynamic drumming
It seems a bit weird to review this double disc demo compilation from French black metal freaks Diapsiquir before we've reviewed their record proper. All the cvlty metalheads we know loved that record, Virus STN, and it came out way back in 2005, but somehow it just never made it onto the aQ list. So we'll try to make up for that oversight by raving about this here comp, which collects the band's first two demos from 1999 and 2001, both even freakier and more raw and more fucked up than the full lengths that followed.
And this stuff is indeed bizarre, it's hard to know even where to start. They definitely sound French, a sort of frenzied buzz, mixed with hints of industrial, soaring Nordic style melodies, but all tangled up in a totally chaotic lo-fi churning chugging doom laced black blast. Sabbathy riffs are pulled apart, while the vocals grunt and howl, the drums stumble and pound, blast once in a while, the vibe is definitely punky and d-beat here and there, but the whole thing is infused with a haunted doominess, and when the band launches into hyperspeed it sounds more bizarre and fractured than fast and furious. Riffs loop, rhythms stutter, totally ridiculous keyboards surface every now and again, adding a bit of a circusy vibe, but everything is always drenched in buzz and harsh satanic atmosphere. Never goofy, just confusing and brilliantly twisted. Diapsiquir almost sounds like a less technically adept, WAY more drug addled Blut Aus Nord, blending creeped out ambience, industrial crunch, with buzzing blackness, but as with most stuff like this, it's as much about the mood and the vibe and the feel and the atmosphere as it is about the music, and the feel here is simultaneously grim and harsh and hateful, but also woozy and warped and unhinged. The band employ an insane arsenal of sound effects which thy liberally sprinkle amongst the churning riffage, the soaring buzzscapes and the crushing doomic pound, plenty of fractured keyboards, fucked up samples, the 2001 demo strangely enough is the more brittle and lo-fi and fucked sounding.
The older demo from a couple years earlier is much more traditional sounding, definitely heavier, the sound super thick and corrosive, the drums pounding, and some awesomely demented vokills. There are some weird keyboards, and the song structures are definitely complex and convoluted, a definitely Deathspell vibe for sure, but overall, the sound is heavier and blastier and blacker, and ends up being a good foil for the utterly depraved sonic sickness on the first disc...
We were never able to get enough of these to list, the 2005 full length from French avant industrial black metal weirdoes Diapsiquir, which is a bummer, cuz this is some of the most twisted, fucked up heaviness you'll ever hear. We did go on at great length about the Hospital double disc comp, which collected the band's first few demos, but this, holy shit, a head spinning, gut wrenching, skull cracking chunk of whacked and wrecked whatthefuck black metal damage. Be warned, we only have 3 or 4 of these, and we're not sure we can get more, but this way, at least a few loyal aQ-ers, who dig this sort of sonic sickness, can get their grubby mitts on one of these.
After a brief intro, of almost cheesy synth and skittery drum machine, which gradually grows more and more manic and frantic, the band explode into lurching, blasting, gnarled almost circusy blackness, the sound constantly changing direction, female vocals howling, pounding beats and frenzied dizzying riffage, with what sounds like kazoo solos, or someone singing through a kazoo, some seriously doomic chug, howled tortured vox, loads of effects, the song swinging wildly from sound to sound, mood to mood, a wickedly schizophrenic grinding black freakout. And that's just the first song. The record continues to get weirder and weirder, introducing bits of opera, wheezing organs, RAPPING(?), found sounds and sound effects, folk music, and whatever other weirdness these guys can think up, tangling all that stuff into their already WAY fucked up alien nightmare sound. A drug addled soundtrack for the listener as he gradually descends into madness.
WAY recommended. Had we been able to get more, we'd probably have highlighted this, or heck, some of us might have even pushed for Record Of The Week status, but as it is, weirdo music freaks have 3 or 4 chances to nab one of these, be quick, or be listening to something WAY less bizarre...
The psych/prog reissues label Akarma from Italy has begun a campaign of mid price repressings, with stuff they had previously put out in their usual mini gatefold LP sleeve style packaging now being issued in jewel cases with the price knocked down a few bucks (a good thing, considering that the falling US dollar is making so many imports much more pricey). So we'll be getting a few old faves back in... Here's one for the old school stoner rockers among you: Dias de Blues. Heavy psychedelic blues rock from Uruguay circa 1972, kind of a slightly more wasted Latin American take on something along the lines of Cream. This album ventures from uptempo fuzz rockers to wailing blues harp jams to backwards-effected dirges, all with killer guitar leads and Spanish vocals. Cool. And there's a severed head being brandished by an equally disembodied arm on the cover!
Imagine the soundtrack to some strange, and apocalyptic planetarium show, all celestial and cosmic, but exploding in a supernova of looped mesmer and cyclical psychedelia, or picture Steve Reich or Terry Riley composing for minimal electronic trance music, or even the music of doomdronelords SUNNO))), transcribed for processed guitars and synths, and reduced to their rhythmic essence. Record number three from composer / guitarist Mario Diaz De Leon, is a little bit all of those, a dizzying collection of processed synths, and looped abstract guitars, all woven into sheets of blurred crystalline power electronics, smoldering slow build looped minimal majesty, and abstract epic heaviness.
Not metal precisely, but still quite metallic in places, and most definitely HEAVY. Too dense and noisy and chaotic to be strictly minimal, but in composition and arrangement, it has more in common with modern minimalism than anything else really. It's as much about texture and tone, as it is about melody and rhythm, the sound is at once atmospheric and cinematic, cosmic and abstract, pieces drifting through space only to explode into churning thrum, and alternately grinding away like some blurred tarpit spacedoom only to blossom into a kaleidoscopic series of dizzying synth swells.
Opener "Oneirogen" starts off with a flurry of layered synths, a dizzying big of melodic swirl, that immediately begins to gain momentum, blossoming in slow motion like some sort of sonic supernova, before exploding in a soft cacophony of prismatic melody, the synth sounds more distorted and frenetic, managing to strike a fine balance between hypnotic and intense, the sound pulsing and throbbing and buzzing before blurring into a soft focus cloud of gloriously blissed out dreamdrone shimmer, only to build right back up again to something much more caustic and corrosive, yet still somehow ethereal and spacey. "Consumed" displays Diaz De Leon's other more metal side. unfurling thick grinding downtuned gouts of guitar rumble and keening high end melody, all over streaks of pulsating synth, the result sounding a bit like Jesu as performed by Steve Reich, that sort of thick, blissed out, warm whirling guitar heaviness, but arranged in layers and loops, a heaving heaviness that blossoms into some sort of blackened minimal shoegaze drone-psych doom, that will have Nadja fans losing their minds.
The rest of the record finds Diaz De Leon flitting from churning downtuned crush to flurries of celestial synth, in most cases combining them to great affect, "Hypnocaust" fills the sky with wild tangles of sci-fi synth melodies and stuttering chips and chitters, while beneath, a strangely processed guitar rumbles and thrums, unfurling a crunchy bit of oozing disembodied riff-borne dronedoom, while "Cinerum" is something else all together, a hushed bit of hiss and hum wreathed drift, the shards of synth left to float weightless, over a warm woozy swath of lush chordal thrum. "Kukulkan" begins life as a noisier take on the current crop of psychedelic space synth retro futurism, but quickly (d)evolves into almost like an abstract black metal, with fast picked riffage blurred into clouds of droned out drift, before exploding into a kaleidoscopic squall of thick low end swells and pulsing synth swirls, and "Dissolution" revisits the sound of the opening track, again sounding like that planetarium show gone haywire, perhaps signaling the end of Diaz De Leon's dizzying sonic journey. But our favorite track might just be the 8 minute "Faithless", with its hazy, washed out intro, all lush blurred shimmer, and more stuttering synth throb, but here it's much more dreamlike and serene, laced with ghostly voices, definitely reminding us of Zombi, Majeure and the like, super cinematic, but then gradually, those sounds begin to transform, the sound intensifying, and then at about three minutes in, in a squall of high end skree, a thick ribcage rattling slab of low end surfaces, heaving and softly roiling, while the synths continue to churn over the top, it's the abstract minimalism equivalent to THE DROP in electronic music, it raises the hairs on the back of our neck, a sudden burst of energy and emotion and sonic power, which dissipates as quickly as it began, disappearing in a swirl of hushed shimmer, before splintering into a blast of caustic chaotic noise, processed vokills, low end synth buzz, all tangled up into a blackened squall, before finally fading out in a static wreathed drift of soft focus synth and almost Caretaker like melancholia.
Utterly fantastic.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The title of the album is a bit of a misnomer, being that there are six people in this group, or maybe it's that leader Felipe Diaz forgot to count himself in. Who knows. though there's no recording date, by the sound of it, I'd guess it was recorded in the sixties. Diaz leads his group on vibes and, whether he was first or not, sounds just like Cal Tjader. But the weirdest thing about this album is that it features jazz head Eric Dolphy filling out the wind section with flute, clarinet, and alto sax.
Two country music grande dames, each absolutely wonderful on their own, join forces to make the kind of beautiful music that makes you ask yourself "am I worthy?"
Bruce comes pretty close to Chemical Wedding pt. 2 here -- not a bad thing! And it's waay better than Maiden's disappointing Dance Of Death.
James Luther Dickinson (yes, the same Jim Dickinson who produced Big Star -- that's where I recognized his name from) has enjoyed a long and fruitful career as a highly-respected Memphis session player with everyone from Bob Dylan to Dr. John, Little Richard, the Stones (he played piano on "Wild Horses"), Aretha Franklin, Sam & Dave, Taj Mahal, Brook Benton, and the list goes on and on, more recently including Mudhoney and Jon Spencer(!). The liner notes for this reissue go into great detail about his career; so I'll just say that this, his debut 1972 solo album, is a majorly sought-after collectors item (on vinyl that is), and is now finally available on disc from the fine archivists at Sepia Tone. The sound is a mix of swamp boogie a la Dr John, Jagger's swagger, and the twang rock of Gram Parsons on his upbeat numbers. This is a really good, tight, and fun unearthed find. Recommended.
A beautiful selection of solo folk blues instrumentals from longtime member of the North Mississippi All Stars and the latest lead guitarist for the Black Crowes. Luther Dickinson is also the son of legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickinson, and deep in the grit and twang of the Southern blues, we find a momentously stripped down affair that is both raw and transcendent. Hambone's Meditations is a conjuring of ghosts that preceded the Fahey school searching instead for the origins buried in the oral traditions of rural folk blues.
The Grammy-nominated recording is close and intimate, you can hear the squeaks of guitar and the rub of the slide as it trips and sways through exploratory and contemplative instrumental excursions. On the Sutro Park label, home of beautiful vinyl reissues by Jesse Mae Hemphill, Sandy Bull, Fred McDowell and Peter Walker, among others. A new classic!
