The Relapse Contamination fest just plowed through town, so for a couple days, our store was jam packed with bell bottoms, greasy long hair, bizarre facial hair, tattoos, piercings, beards beards beards and of course lots of bands hawking all kinds of crazy tour shit. On tour with the bans was the guy responsible for the legendary Doomed Nation video magazine. We managed to get about 20 copies of the almost out of print volume 2 (limited to 999 copies, and 999 upside down IS 666 after all...) and it is fucking awesome! Doom freaks will already be diving for the buy button. And you should too if you hope to get your grimey mitts on one of these. Here's the lineup: SUNNO))), Ufomammut, Buried At Sea, Indian, Ramesses, Church Of Misery, Weedeater, Lair Of The Minotaur, Venomous Concept, and more.
And these aren't just live clips. Well, some are, but most are real videos, filmed with weird effects, interspersed with all manner of fucked up imagery, and all the videos are sort of strung together with tons of super gory horror movie clips, the whole thing is pretty lo-fi and ghetto, but really well done. Definitely essential for all you doomlords and doomladies, just look at the band list fer chrissakes!!
LIMITED TO 999 COPIES, not sure we can get more, so act fast. Comes in a clear dvd case, with killer blood splattered artwork, and all sorts of flyers and stickers inside!
Like we mentioned in the review of volume two, it's easy to tell when it's time for another Doomed Nation dvd. Suddenly the store is filled to overflowing with band dudes, and everywhere you look there's nothing but denim and leather, spikes and studs, tattoos and piercings, and acres and acres of facial hair....
Which is precisely what happened today, and thus when the pot smoke cleared, we had a heaping handful of dvds, volume three of the always amazing Doomed Nation series, featuring tons of amazing videos and live clips from the best of the doom underground. Loads of AQ faves, and a handful of bands we had never heard, or at least heard very little from, as well as a short attention span barrage of movie clips and snippets of TV shows filling up the spaces between the doom, and in keeping with the theme of the artwork, an old woodcut of a mass hanging, most of the clips are indeed of hangings, some funny, some gruesome, from horror movies and period dramas, all sliced and diced and shot rapid fire and scattershot all around massive slabs of bulldozing doom.
Up first, an amazing live clip of AQ faves Baroness (lots of beards, mostly shirtless) in full on blown out post rock mode, these guys are so amazing. We can never get enough. And from there on out it's a relentless river of doom, and other assorted heaviness, some archival footage of a shirtless (and pantsless) GG Allin, Black Tusk, who we've never heard before but who are appropriately sludgy and heavy, Facedowninshit, live totally tearing shit up, a super pro Goatwhore video, very dangerous for the epileptic and light sensitive, Raise The Red Lantern who are super awesome, with killer lights and the most active and chaotic stage presence of the bunch, Saint Vitus live, reunited in 2003 with Wino (we also have a dvd of the whole show for sale! See elsewhere on the list), Swarm Of The Lotus with a super intense and gorgeously gorey and creepy video (at least the parts without the band) and a singer who keeps his glasses on, which we always love, some awesome live footage of Grief, killer lo-fi live footage of the mighty Buzz-Oven practice space jams from Black Cobra intercut with, you guessed it, tons of snake footage, as well as clips from Indian (a strangely brief, bordering on non-existent blip of a performance), Rwake, Hawg Jaw, Asschapel, Hope And Suicide, Stereochrist and Mala Suerte!
LIMITED TO 2007 COPIES, each one hand numbered, packaged with super striking blood splattered cover art...
Holy shit, were these guys seemingly made just for aQ. They're called Doomhawk for one, but more importantly, they play self described "Fantasy Calliope Metal with a heavy love for late night techno radio", and what it really sounds like is epic lo-fi power metal, meshed with a sort of Morricone-ish twang, like a more cinematic Slough Feg, mixed with some Finntroll, but way more DIY and punk, recorded on a 4-track, with wild prog keyboards all over the place. Oh and did we mention flute? How about tuba? Yep, these ladies and gents are like psychedelic space metal troubadours, their songs have a distinctly gypsy / folk vibe, but all tangled up with "Final Countdown" synthesizers and ridiculous fantasy lyrics. Wild chaotic drumming, soaring majestic arrangements, growled, howled, shrieked vocals, acoustic guitars, long stretched out ambient drones, super convoluted rock opera like arrangements...
Not to mention, the members are named Castropho, Sleet, Aumbleplex and Space-Time, and the drummer plays flute!!! Not sure it Doomhawk are still a band, if so, it seems like they'd probably be fucking awesome live, but for the time being, let these lengthy epic prog metal folk drone gypsy jams transport you to whatever bizarre otherworld these weirdos call home.
Even cooler is that every record is hand painted, the clawed Doomhawk logo, spray painted on thrift store records, with not only the Doomhawk record inside, but also the original lp that goes with the old sleeve (the one we grabbed is Chubby Plays Polkas!), includes a printed insert with liner notes, and most importantly lyrics!!! Totally recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
First in a super limited series of lp-only releases from everyone's favorite Japanese doom-drone-psych-rock overachievers Boris! For this limited double lp, they've teamed up with Boston's Doomriders, which just so happens to feature members of Converge, Old Man Gloom, There Were Wires and more...
These records capture live shows recorded back in 2006 when the two bands toured together.�
The Doomriders for those who don't know, are a straight up Motorheady rock and roll band, they even start their set with a bellowing roar: "We are the Doomriders from Boston, and WE PLAY ROCK AND ROLL!!!" And they do, pounding and simple, not thrashing or blasting just riff heavy big drum blasts of kick ass RAWK. The perfect sonic match up for the more rock side of Boris.�
The first track, though, on one of Boris' two lp sides had us fooled, a massive churning droned out low end sludge, the heaviest thing we've heard from them since Flood (not counting the Altar collab with SUNN) but after that it's back to the full blown, in the red, ultra distorted pedal to the metal blasting Pink-style wild psychedelic garage rock stomp that have become their modern sound. And it sounds great. Super saturated production, amazing sound, loud Loud LOUD!!! Obviously essential for all you Boris freeks...
And of course super elaborate packaging as always. Deluxe metallic gold gatefold, super thick stock, killer Screaming For Vengeance Judas Priest homage artwork, clear yellow vinyl...
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, half red, half yellow, the copies we have are yellow, and this is ALREADY SOLD OUT and selling for crazy $$$ on eBay. We tried to get 100 copies, and got less than half that. Needless to say these will be gone before you know it. ONE PER CUSTOMER.�
Did you know there were Vikings in Italy? Yep, these guys, who are back with an excellent new disc. They're just as obsessed with swords and glory, axes and honor as Manowar, but with a bit more of a serious historical slant (though that doesn't stop them from taking cool noms de guerre like Deathmaster and The Forger).
Let Battle Commence takes up where their last record, Resound The Horn, left off. It's a concept album of sorts, concerning itself with Danish King Ivar The Boneless's conquest of York on November 1st, 866 AD, apparently one of the few pagan triumphs over Christians, according to the band. With lyrics like "We shall fill the air with spears to turn black this Christian sun" and "Odin guide my sword!" you might think you know what side Doomsword is on. But, even then, other songs acknowledge the horror and loss of warfare, showing ambivalence by the victors in lines like "Of this land / Of glory, battle and death / All I recall is the look in the eyes of the dead" and "Woman I never saw / I am sorry if you can believe me / I killed your man in my last fight" (from "Deathbringer - Blood On My Hands").
Still, these are stirring heavy metal anthems that could certainly be used to lead men into battle. I can imagine the helicopter gunships in Apocalpyse Now blaring Doomsword instead of Wagner, just as effectively.
Cult Cult Cult. Doom Doom Doom. It's thee fourth album of HEAVY and EPIC war metal anthems from this (metaphorical) sword and axe wielding bunch, and maybe their best yet. Italy's pagan doomsters Doomsword (that's doom-sword not dooms-word, just to be clear) are a true metal outfit, with clean, manly vocals. The Viking tales of Bathory are the closest they come in comparison to the black metal realm...but they're NOT a bit like the fruity and fantastical power metal of countrymen Rhapsody either. No, this is for fans of underground olden metal acts like Solstice, Wotan, Candlemass, and former labelmates Slough Feg. Doom done heavy metal style, not sludgy-droney or stoner-Sabbathy, but epic.
Sure, with songs like "Days Of High Adventure", "Steel Of My Axe", and "Thundercult" you might expect some kind of D&D metal here. Well sorta, but as we've said before there's a serious slant to Doomsword's stuff, even if you'd be prone to thinking 'em silly. And their hymns to myth and might will stick with you, thanks to their morose melodies and sheer metallic chug. Mostly midtempo, sluggishly so, but with some storming numbers too. There's acoustic intros, catchy choruses, and (most importantly) many massive RIFFS. Stuff to awaken ancestral memories! Listeners will be unconsciously be girding their loins and preparing for battle. The unironic metal of Doomsword is "keeping it real" about stuff that went down over 1000 years ago, and doing so with much passion, intensity and skill. Classy and damn good. Cult Cult Cult. Doom Doom Doom.
Dark, epic, doom (duh) metal from Italy. "Our fate is written: Sword and shield, born to die on the battlefield" is their motto, and their songs thus focus on tales of ancient Viking and Celtic warfare. Heavy and atmospheric, with decent clean vocals and grand, morose melodies. For fans of the likes of Candlemass, Cirith Ungol, Manowar, Manilla Road, and Solstice. Despite the inherent silliness you might attribute to heavy metal songs of swords and battle, there's something about this just seems very SERIOUS. They've created a vibe quite far from the happy fantasy power metal of countrymen Rhapsody, that's for sure!
Joining the meth-damaged contingent on Mike Paradinas' Planet Mu label alongside Venetian Snares and Hellfish & Producer, Doormouse offers a non-stop assault of digital hardcore mutations of Amen breaks smashed into those enormous 909 blastbeats common in Alec Empire's more punishing recordings. Top off the rhythmic shrapnel with an obliteration of George Michael's "Faith," dialogue from porn audition tapes, slashed-up NuMetal guitar riffs, horror film samples, and crude misogynist joke, and you've got the makings for an album of easy listening for kids with serious cases of attention deficit disorder.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Massive mashup meeting of two of electronica's noisiest motherfuckers. Doormouse gives it to us good and hard, with a sidelong blast of sliced and diced amen breaks, spastic drill and bass, showers of rhthmic shards and goofy samples. On the flip, Venetian Snares offers up a thick noisy blast of 4-on-the-floor gabber, and then gives the Doormouse side a similarly gabber makeover. Good noisy stuff!
These Baltimore noise rock weirdos have always been super difficult to describe, and this new record doesn't make it any easier. The opening 1-2-3 punch though might be some of the best stuff we've heard from them. The intro explodes with a wild barrage of drum damage, like some drum corps gone haywire, an opening that sounds like a Buddy Rich solo by way of the Boredoms, before the guitars swoop in, all grungy and noisy, a little bit sludgy, but laced with plenty of melody, sounding not unlike a less bass heavy Lightning Bolt, the same sort of frantic, spastic sonic energy, a wild squall of distorto rhythmic churn. That bleeds right into "Repo Man", which sounds like Dope Body doing their best Nirvana / Wipers, all hushed minimal verses, and heavy, chugging bridge, the vocals world weary and laid back, with a killer, crushing, drum heavy, chorus, that reminds us of Karp or Unwound, the classic indie rock soft/loud soft/loud and repeat, but somehow, through Dope Body's twisted sonic lens it's ultra catchy, noise rock bliss. And then "Hired Gun" harkens back to past records with the band unleashing dizzying fields of distorted harmonics that end up sounding like a metallized Konono No.1, mixed with the hypercharged Weezer worshipping metallic pop crunch of Jeff The Brotherhood, all wound up in some spiky AmRep noise rockiness. Sounds good so far. And it IS.
And from there on out, it stays good, and continues to hopscotch from genre to genre with very little regard for the listener, but it's sort of what makes this stuff so appealing, the stripped down blooze swagger of "Echo", the frenetic, fizzed out pop flecked grinding punkiness of "AOL", the almost groovy, Primus channeling (???) noise-funk of "Rare Air", the furious, wiry, metallic post punk crunch of "Day By Day", the downtuned noise rock dirgery of "Toy", and so it goes. Furious freaked out heaviness rife with seemingly out of place poppiness, the sort of band math that rarely works, but that in the case of Dope Body makes pretty much perfect (non)sense.
Another party hardy block rocking big beat Baltimore underground warehouse sweaty noise dude good time to be had here from Dope Body, now signed to Drag City, which we heartily approve of 'cause their previous label, Hoss, never even managed to get it together to supply us with cds of last year's Nupping album to list. We did however give a big thumbs up the the lp version of Nupping, and this new album is equally enjoyable!
Once again, Dope Body bash out a wild melange of quasi funk-punk, noise-damaged weirdness. But this time, Dope Body has cleaned up their act a little bit, gotten more nuanced, and added a bigger dose of pure POPPINESS to the proceedings. Don't worry, Natural History is still chock full of crunching distorted grooves, rubbery bass, vocal bro bellow, and all of Dope Body's other catchy/confusional hallmarks. But, ferinstance, track two, "Road Dog", which begins with a chicka-chicka-chicka rhythmic guitar part that reminds us of aQ faves Cave, eventually blossoms into full-on crooned, new wave garage pop hit single from some alternate universe. Hot damn. And there's plenty more such hits on offer as the rest of the album spins. Chunky, catchy, heavy, mathy, dumb, fun, dancey, brutish, melodic, Dope Body deliver in ways that not too many other indie acts these days dare, channelling fave '90s influences (and sometimes guilty pleasures) like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rocket From The Crypt, Cop Shoot Cop, and a host of AmRep noisemongers.
Great music to play at your next house party, but (as we alluded to in our review of Nupping), don't be surprised if some of your furniture gets broken...
With a name like Dope Body, at first we kinda expected this Baltimore band to be some kind of sludge metal thing. But as we learned a while back from their split lp with NYC's Orphan, they're something else entirely. A very hard to define, WTF?, but totally enjoyable, something else indeed, that reminds us of everything from the mathy spazzcore of Lightning Bolt and USAisamonster to the DIY electronic ethno grooves of freakin' Konono No.1, wow. While some of this, their debut studio full-length, is stoner rock heavy (and one song is called "The Shape Of Grunge To Come"), it's more of a crazy melange of all sorts of wild, loud, uber-distorted, rhythmic good times! Quite catchy too.
One thing that we can't help but notice is that part of the Dope Body equation, beneath the noise-rock chaos, is a good dose of punk-funk. We get a whiff, in a good way, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, somehow (the rubbery bassline of "Bangers & Yos", c'mon). And heck, the band in fact claim Rage Against The Machine as an influence... but we think that Dope Body themselves would appeal more to fans of Cave, Melt Banana, Health, old Boredoms, Geronimo, Shit & Shine, and Rusted Shut. Not that any of those bands sound like Dope Body either exactly, but they might if they all jammed together. Though, that would be a mess, while Nupping isn't actually as messy as it might initially sound, 'cause what Dope Body manage to do is turn all their crunching looping riffs, damaged breakbeats, skronky guitar noise, R-rollin' vocal holler, and weird dude energy, into songs - songs you could dance to! Songs you WILL dance to, furniture and small breakable objects be damned.
Bringing a sweaty warehouse party to your stereo, Dope Body deliver. We loved 'em on that split, and this full-length does not disappoint. Crank it!!
FYI, we were shorted on our order of cds, so we're listing just the vinyl now, the cd hopefully next time, though we might have a couple cds in stock now.
Yeah, they're named after an Electric Wizard record, and while they definitely share some Wizardisms with their namesake, groovy Sabbathy riffage, and low slung stoner doom swing, their brand of drug fueled slo-mo sludge seems to owe more to bands like Eyehategod or Bongzilla, although the tempos get cranked well beyond either of those groups' preferred BPM's. The riffs are total stoner rock nirvana, big and thick and groovy and catchy, occasionally getting crunchy and chuggy, the drums muscley and pounding, the most interesting thing are the super processed almost black metal sounding vox, which definitely transform the sound into something else entirely. Which is one of the things that makes these guys tough to pin down. Opener "Demonsmoke" is total downtuned Sabbathy sludge, while "Abraxis" sounds almost like classic rock, and then "Wizard's Sleeve" gets all woozy and wah wah guitared, a wasted druggy lope, and "Power Violence Forever" is just super rocking and hooky, and "Legalize Murder" has some bad ass wailing leads, and gorgeous harmonized guitars, and minus those harsh vox sounds like Nebula or something.
Dopethrone lace their songs with plenty of samples, most about drugs of course, and those vocals definitely tie everything together, and help make these guys sound different than the rest of their stoner/sludge brethren, and make this one of our new favorite chunks of slow and low heaviness.
If you dig Electric Wizard, Eyehategod, Bongzilla, Grief, Sleep, Green Machine, Buzzov*en, Kyuss, Acrimony, Sourvein and all that downtuned druggy Sabbathy stuff, odds are you're gonna love this...
We sorta flipped for these Canadian stoner sludge doomlords, their self-released Demonsmoke record was a huge hit around here, but when we ran out, we were suddenly unable to get more. Then, the group released two more records, and both seemed somehow impossible to track down. We couldn't even get 'em from the band, so we just assumed they were living up to their Electric Wizard beholden moniker, all seated in massive, spiked dopethrones, high as fuck, and unable to do anything more that stumble into the practice space and lay down some of the heaviest, grooviest, stoner sludge EVER.
Well, record number three FINALLY showed up at one of our distributors, so we grabbed as many as we could, while we could, before they disappeared back into a cloud of bongsmoke. And like Demonsmoke, this most recent record is about as sick as stuff like this gets. Laced with samples, the guitars are MASSIVE, thick, and super distorted, the drums crushing, the vocals a demonic, almost black metal rasp, swaggery and stonery and very very Sabbathy, it's easy to hear Eyehategod and Bongzilla and Church Of Misery and all the rest in their sound, and yeah, fans of any and all of those bands will lose their shit for these guys, cuz somehow they take that sound and crank it WAY up, it's fiercer and more fiery, blown out and seriously crushingly HEAVY. Total wasted stoner metal doom sludge bliss out of the highest order. Surprised these guys aren't way more popular, but then, considering how hard it is to track down their records, maybe it makes sense. Regardless, if this is your cup of bongwater tea, grab one of these before they're gone!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, pressed on blue/brown wax, in heavy full color psychedelic covers, with a 4 page booklet.
This past week was the 30th anniversary of the launch of NASA's unmanned explorer Voyager 1, and if you've ever wondered what the soundtrack would be like to floating ever further inexorably into the vastness of uncharted space, well, Dopplereffekt's Calabi Yau Space might be an imaginative approximation of the music of the spheres heard by such a void-travelling spacecraft. With this album of cosmic synth drones and muted electro beats, the mysterious entity known as Dopplereffekt (an artist related to Drexciya and numerous other equally spaced-out and deliberately anonymous projekts) now makes its debut on the Aphex Twin's Rephlex label. Featuring quasi-scientific, almost Vovoid-ian track titles like "Hyperelliptic Surfaces" and "Holomorpic n-0 Form", this atmospheric album presents an array of hypnotic, pulsing transmissions, seemingly pinging off the satellite dish looking thing on the cover, filtering down through the vector-graphics Tron-world innards of Dopplereffekt's komputorbrain. Rooted in classic Detroit techno/electro, Dopplereffekt continue to push into another dimension of ambient deep space drift, hoping perhaps for alien contact. Fans of Kraftwerk, Aphex, and John Carpenter soundtracks should make contact as well.
Doralice is a local chamber music duo specializing in instrumental acoustic music, their sound touching on Americana, gypsy folk, Flamenco and tangos, inspired by film and world music, the interesting thing being that the two members of Doralice, hail from another band recently featured on the aQ list, Ventid, whom we described as sounding like classic nineties math/post rock a la Rodan, Shellac, June Of 44, A Minor Forest, Rumah Sakit. One half of Doralice also plays in the Pickpocket Ensemble, which makes Doralice not seem like such an unlikely musical vehicle, treading some of the same sonic ground, but definitely doing their own thing, utilizing guitar, violin, banjo and toy piano, and joined by a handful of guests, creating the sort of sounds that fans of Tin Hat Trio, Calexico, Ennio Morricone, Nino Tora, Astor Piazolla, Rachel's and similar outfits will no doubt dig. Quite lovely!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Female trio from New Zealand.
Recently Romanian black metal horde Negura Bunget, big time aQ faves for years now, found two of their three members leaving to form a new group, which left just the drummer to continue on as NB, with the other two forming the oddly named Dordeduh, a name that in English might be a tad bit goofy, but in Romanian, actually means 'longing for spirit', and as you might imagine, with 2/3 of Negura Bunget making up the core of Dordeduh, the sound is not that far removed from Negura Bunget, a sort of black metal / folk hybrid, as was Negura Bunget, but there seems to be even more folk here, and certainly more clean vocals than there ever were in NB. The first thing we noticed was the fact that there were THREE people playing hammered dulcimer on this record! There's also flute, panpipe, and a handful of other distinctly non metal instruments, al put to great use here, the opening few minutes sets the scene, all rumbling drones, mysterious percussion, chanted monklike vocals, ethereal swirls of female background vox, bells and chimes, haunting spoken word, we briefly considered the possibility that perhaps Dordeduh would be all ambient/folk, and not metal at all. But at about 2:40, we were shown otherwise, the band launching into a serious blast of dense, gnarled black buzz, the sound blurry, and echo drenched, noisy and washed out, a gorgeous heaving avalanche of sound, underpinned by thick sonic swells, the folk element seeming to run through the heaviness as well, super tranced out and hypnotic, so much so that we wish it had locked into this woozy buzz and never let up. The sound shifts again, and displays more of the groups folk/BM hybrid, with the churning blackened riffage, peppered with some sort of woodblock percussion, which changes the vibe completely, even more so as the song shifts into a weird folky prog, all swirling synths, classic metal chug, before slipping back into more black buzz, before transforming again, lacing some serious black riffage with soaring flute melodies, only to blossom into some clean vocal driven metal epicry, sounding almost liturgical, that is if a black metal band blasted away beneath the hymns. The rest of the song breaks down as a dreamy, softly psychedelic folk dirge, tribal and ritualistic, but lush and lovely, finally leaving some sort of campfire folk hoedown, all strummed acoustic guitar, simple hand drums, panpipe and call and response vox. Woah. A seriously epic and ultra varied 16+ minute opener, and over the next hour, the rest of the record unfolds in a similarly idiosyncratic fashion, soaring synths over folky percussion, chugging guitars over impossibly catchy melodies, soaring clean vocals that give much of this a sort of Alcest vibe, haunting expanses of folky psychedelic drift, loping stripped down low end almost post rock, furious black metal blowouts, rife with impossibly fast blast beats, but then clean vocals and spiraling melodies and even some piano, the record gets into some serious progginess, getting almost fusion-y at points, but for every twisted chunk of folky prog, there's an epic blast of majestic buzz drenched blackness, more often than not, those two sides of Dordeduh's sonic personality bleeding gloriously into each other. There's a definite Enslaved vibe as well, after all Negura Bunget and Enslaved were always sort of sonically linked, there's even an Enslaved cover on the bonus disc here, alongside two earlier, much rawer sounding demos.
Fans of Negura Bunget, Enslaved and other folk flecked, nature obsessed black metal outfits, will find much to love here, the balance pretty evenly split between black buzz and folky flutter, so metalheads looking for something relentlessly black might be disappointed, but the rest of us can happily revel in Dordeduh's gloriously blackened foresty folky soundworld. Packaged in a swank full color six panel digipak, with a big booklet. While they last we have the double disc version, not sure how long those will last.
From the man who runs the amazing God Is Myth label, responsible for recent AQ faves like Godheadscope, Caina and Procer Veneficus, and who used to record as Uvall, comes the new 'group' Dormant, which takes the more traditional black metal sound of Uvall and abandons it almost entirely, focusing more on mood and melancholia, texture and timbre, songs as much as sonics, a sort of orchestral dark doom pop sound, run through with streaks of buzzing blackness, and plenty of dark dark ambience.
With some help from folks like Caina and Celestiial, Dormant weaves an unlikely blackened sonic brew, gloomy and dark, but strangely pretty and poppy, epic and almost orchestral at points, there are brief moments of grim buzz and blasting black fury, but they are relatively few and far between, instead most of the record drifts delicately, mournful strummed steel string guitars, moaning drones off in the distance, deep baritone, near spoken vocals. Sounding very much like Swans or Angels of Light. Even the heavier songs spend much of their time moping mournfully, shimmery clean guitar twang, reverbed soft focus riffage, sometimes eventually transforming into midtempo black metal, but still suffused with that distinctly pop element, occasionally even turning pitchblack and offering up some buzzing riffs and harsh vocals, but only briefly, usually slipping back into a lilting dreamy dark folk, or a strange loping industrial dirge, or a haunting expanse of barely there drone.
Definitely for the super adventurous blackmetalheads out there, or for darkfolk freaks who don't mind bits of buzz and blast peppering their spacey jangle, moody gothic miserablism and abstract late night drift.
The first 200 copies of this cd come housed in a hand screened digipak with an insert and a sticker. We have about a dozen of those. Once we run out, we'll have copies from the rest of the pressing, a version that comes in a DVD case instead.
Chicago experimentalist Kevin Drumm and German trumpet player Axel Dorner team up for a series of slow, skittery electronic interludes ala Gunter Muller (with Jim O'Rourke at the controls for one session).
Part Les Rallizes Denudes, part Maher Shalal Hash Baz, this Japanese super group do a sort of droney, jangley garage psych pop, that over the course of Old Punks slips from woozy indie rock to brooding looped psych rock, playful power pop, to reverby almost ballads to Velvets-y minimal lope. The band is super laid back, the songs are weary and ragged and drawly and shambling, the guitars loose and detuned sounding, the drums spare and simple, the vocals, which might make or break DG for most folks, are sort of flat and tuneless, mumbled and moaned, sometimes crooned, but usually buried in the mix, just another layer of whirling sonic warmth.
Occasionally, things do get weird, some crunchy surf guitars, some strange jumbled group vocals, all tangled and chaotic, and of course bursts of psychedelic solo guitar squall, but for the most part Old Punks traffics in simple stripped down psychedelic rock, laced with bits of folk and pop, and of course shadows of both Maher and Les Rallizes.
Comes with a download card so you can grab yourself a digital copy of the record too!
Cult jazz pianist turned vocalist whose style jazz critic Leonard Feather deemed, "curious, nervous and attractive." This collection features a mix of Tin Pan Alley tunes, jazz standards, and originals. Reissue of the 1956 classic.
Dose One, of underground hip hop phenomenon the Anticon collective, here reissues his 1997 debut and it's a doozy. Filled with hiccupping beats and incredibly deft rhyming. Not doom-laden, like some other hip hop we've been enjoying (ClouDdead, Zion I), this is more fresh and not as heavy but still bass-thumping. Mr Dibbs, Mr Len (Company Flow), J Rawls, etc on the decks and behind
We were so psyched when we first saw this new release from Dose One, one of our favorite Anticons. A big book of poetry, stream on conciousness prose, lyrics, notebook doodling and slapdash collage with a cd of all new material. And while we have loved almost everything Anticon have done in the past, this one is definitely for completists only. The book is definitely pretty nice, but the cd is a collection of ultra personal spoken word that veers WAY too close to poetry slam territory, recorded on a what sounds like a crappy boom box, complete with the 'klunk' of the record and stop buttons. Dose One's impossible lyrical acuity and agile flow falls apart and sounds way too forced when stripped of it's usual dense sonic backdrops. But like we said, the book is pretty nice.
Do these bands mean anything to you: Boris, Corrupted, Harvey Milk, The Melvins, Sunn 0))), Earth? Well, if they do, you are definitely gonna need this. One of two new releases from the amazing Kult Of Nihilow label from Finalnd. Dot [.] are most certainly the best Japanese doom band you've probably never heard. We even listend to one whole side of this 10" at 45 thinking that it sounded too slow at 33! Yes, they are that slow and sludgy and downtuned and fucking amazing. Impossibly heavy and relentlessly glacial.
Unfortunately, this is limited to 332 copies and we managed to get our hands on a mere 12 of those, never to get more. So you'll have to move a lot faster than these fellas if you want one of these to end up stuck to your turntable. Super thick colored vinyl, gorgeously packaged in transparent, screened sleeve!
We managed to get the last 40 or so copies of the third and (supposedly) final pressing of only 175 copies of this massive slab of Japanese heaviness. So act fast.
BORIS! CORRUPTED! EYEHATEGOD! JAPANESE DOOM SLUDGE! If those words mean anything to you, drop everything you're doing RIGHT NOW and order yourself up one of these massive slabs of earth flattening, face melting downtuned dirge. Slow slow slow like their sludgy countrymen Boris and Corrupted, Dot [.] focus less on the drone, and more on the riff, sounding much more raw and aggressive, aligning themselves a bit more with Eyehategod, Bongzilla, Grief and the rest of the US slow motion doom contingent. Huge riffs, pounding relentless drumming, hellish shrieking vocals, amps until forever, everything (even the drums?) tuned as low as they will go, a soul sucking metallic black hole of sound. Four lengthy tracks, only one of which even comes close to almost breaking the midtempo mark.
AGAIN, SUPER LIMITED!!!!! To only 175 copies, and we got about 40, most likely never to get more again. You have been warned.
Released back in 1994 around the same time as Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol 2, Dots is an album that Uwe Schmidt (aka Atom Heart, Senor Coconut) composed as a sort of futuristic elevator music. Its rounded, digitally pure tones playfully sparkle along a datastream of placid post-techno structures. In a lot of ways, Dots foreshadowed the much-ballyhooed Pop Ambient series from Kompakt, sharing a pixel-point synthesis pleasant daydreaming music. This marks the second in a reissue series of the earliest recordings from his Rather Interesting back catalogue. In addition to Dots, Schmidt also included a nearly forgotten set of recordings called BGD (shortened from Background Design), which shares more with the ambient works of his contemporaries on the Fax label at that time. Limited to 900 copies and actually signed by Atom Heart himself.
Another odd Ormolycka tape here, one of the more mysterious in their current crazy batch of releases. This band we know is from Japan, and that's about it. Could be new, or from the '80s or '90s, we don't know. Ok, wait, we think we found a Japanese-language Tumblr page for them. Hmm, looks like they're a currently active band, from the photos we saw consisting of young dudes with colorful hair, wearing baseball caps, who like to jump up and down and drop their pants. Maybe sorta Boredoms-y.
And listening to the tape, what do we hear? Chaotic, trash-can-clattering industrial-noise-punk jams and lo-fi confusional sound collage. With gobs of distortion, violently shouted chanting, random voices, and an overall very agitated vibe, like the perpetrators were into breaking things and trying to arouse their audience to do the same. Some fairly WTF? shit, noisy and nifty and all over the place. One song will sound sorta like skanking ska, the next a parody (?) of cheesy synth-pop. At one point, they do a completely over-the-top, distortodelic destruction of "Tequila"!
Weird that Ormolycka provides NO info about them (or any other release, really) on their website, how do they expect to sell their tapes? Oh, maybe 'cause every Ormolyka tape so far has been great, maybe that's it. This one too!
Catsup Plate has been the label to watch these days unleashing all sorts of amazing sonic weirdness, from the Destroyer, to Campfire Songs, to Daniel Padden and more. Now comes this crazy record from the Double. Ostensibly it's a pop record, but it is so bizarre sounding and sonically all over the place that it's hard to know just what it is. The first track is like a more glitched out, fucked up Magnetic Fields, but with Stephen Merrit's vocals all roughed up and raspier. Very deadpan delivery, in a throaty baritone, over a shimmery electronic soundscape with blooping basslines, the whole while things getting glitchier and more damaged. Weird and really cool. Things sort of just get more abstract from there on out. Rumbling superdistorted washes of rumble guitar and stuttery drums, with spastic octopoidal drumming, free jazz splatter, reverbed guitar, space echo, keening melodies, and lightning storm guitars with very mournful sad boy vocals, warbly and heartfelt. Occasional squalls of all-out noise drift by, obscuring the pop sunshine and leaving chaotic ramshackle deconstructed pop in its wake. A very bizarre and unlikely blend of Morrissey, Jandek, Throbbing Gristle, Oval, Wolf Eyes, Pere Ubu and Magnetic Fields!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Record number two from these post noise rockers, hot on the heels of their More disc which we loved. No guitars, just bass and drums, these guys lay down a killer din that's equal parts indie jangle, math rock tangle and pounding noise rock, the basses thick and distorted and buzzy and crunchy, unleashing grinding riffage, loping grooves, and everything in between, while the drums pound maniacally, actually as we're writing this, we realize we described these guys pretty much perfectly in the review for More, so maybe we should revisit that description for a second:
A chaotic, heady mix of all the things we love about math rock, post rock, noise rock, emo and screamo, equal parts Fugazi, Pavement and Fucked Up, a churning juggernaut of thick super distorted bass, pounding mathy rhythms and yowled vocals that definitely sound like the perfect mix of Ian Mackaye and Stephen Malkumus.
Which still holds true, but if anything, this go around is even more poppy, with some of the songs stretching out into chugging, slow building Fugazi style burners, with some rad bass harmonics, and squealing feedback, plenty of Jesus Lizard going on too, a little Shellac too, but the double bass attack definitely makes the sound all their own. Definitely reminiscent of some of our nineties favorites, but revved up and reinvigorated, and the songs are catchy as fuck, which pretty much trumps everything else. The fact that this is mathy and heavy and hypnotic is just icing on the post rock cake.
Cool diecut packaging, hand drawn monster masks with the eyes cut out, which change color depending on whether the disc or the insert is showing through.
We've definitely said it before, but it bears repeating. As much as we love endless squalls of black buzz, long drawn out low end drones, noise of every stripe, and music that is less music and more SOUND, we do love SONGS. And bands who write songs. Kick ass super rocking songs. When we step back and observe objectively, it's strange how few 'rock bands' there are. Guitars, bass, drums, verses, choruses, and yeah, we know that's not nearly enough, but when a band like that has the chops and more importantly THE SONGS to back it up, then holy shit, look out.
We heard Double Dagger for the first time on Thrill Jockey's Record Store Day release Records Toreism (of which we have a very few copies left!), we described their song as "kick ass, super distorted, howly, drum heavy, bass heavy, arty, angular, crunchy, almost a bit metal post punk", which we're happy to report is still the case on this, their debut full length.
A chaotic, heady mix of all the things we love about math rock, post rock, noise rock, emo and screamo, equal parts Fugazi, Pavement and Fucked Up, a churning juggernaut of thick super distorted bass, pounding mathy rhythms and yowled vocals that definitely sound like the perfect mix of Ian Mackaye and Stephen Malkumus, and yeah, NO guitars, not that you'd ever notice, the bass is massive, thick and undulating, sometimes dripping with crumbling distortion, other times as clear as a bell, definitely reminiscent of Lightning Bolt's Brian Gibson, but way more indie rock. And the songs, awesome, super mathy and complex, weirdly dense and convoluted, but with hooks galore, totally takes us back to the nineties glory days of this sort of sound, and reminds us how awesome music can be when it IS more than just cool sounds. And these songs have been lodged in our heads like crazy since we first got this in, and it's obvious from listening to these guys rock, how amazing they must be live, wild and sweaty and blown out and fun as fuck. Which pretty much perfectly describes More.
The Double Leopards have become more and more prolific of late, amazingly so considering there was a time where all we could track down by these cats was a cd-r and maybe an lp. An alluring mystery for sure. The mystery is not gone though, not nearly, in fact if anything it's just being deepened by the recent spate of new recordings, each a blurry buzzy smear of abstract sound, all lovingly swaddled in that Double Leopards haze and grit. A Hole Is True, is three lengthy tracks, totaling about 40 minutes, rough, raw, fuzzy, almost industrial soundscapes, buzzing guitars, grinding distortion, throbbing feedback, all stretched into pulsing, squirming, slow shifting drones. A seemingly endless haze, dense and swirly, tangly and prickly, thick and viscous. Definitely falls square within the sonic world of Skullflower, Total, and of course the Hototogisu (Leopards' member Marcia Bassett's other band, a duo with Skullflower's Matthew Bower)!
Massive double lp opus from this mysterious drone rock ensemble. Maybe drone rock is a bit misleading as there is very little rock to be found. So let's just say drone, shall we? After numerous cd-r's and limited lps the Double Leopards return with this gorgeous and expansive low end exploration. Rumbles and hums, shimmers and thrums, this is as perfect a piece of meditative, mesmeric drone as you're ever going to find. Like all great drone records, Halve Maen is a dense, thick nebula made up of layers and layers of sound slowly shifting and unravelling, revealing new sonic details on each listen. Murky wisps of rhythm, shimmering piano, distant chimes, warm reeds, and fuzzy static all surface occasionally. As the record progresses, the minimal spaciness intensifies, gets darker and gets louder, as the misty spectral instrumentation gathers steam and takes form, with propulsive rhythms and ghostly vocals emerging from the haze. So nice. Limited to 1000 copies. On nice thick vinyl in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve.
Over the past couple of years, the Double Leopards have emerged as one of the premier psychedelic drone ensembles alongside such pre-cognitive / cosmic communicators as the Vibracathedral Orchestra and Skullflower (whose Matthew Bower records with Double Leopards' Marcia Bassett as the Hototogisu); yet they've only released a couple of records that never seem to stay around long enough for us to write all that much about them. Out Of One, Through One, And To One is their latest opus of murky atmospheres channelled through the aftermath of a potent drug coctail prescribed for a blood chilling, delusional numbness. The Double Leopards excel in their eternal-music mantras spiralling out of densely layered buzzsaw dronings, continuously bowed strings, corroded amplifier distortion, the perpetual odor of spilt bongs, and an ocean of fluttering delay patterns. These medicated abstractions in deep heavy monotone equal those found on their universally acclaimed debut album Halve Maen. Considering this is limited to a 1000 copies, Out Of One is not expected to be around for terribly wrong. As former AQ owner Windy was wont to say, buy now or cry later.
Yet another blast of thick and furry drones from the awfully prolific of late Double Leopards. Two half hour tracks, recorded live. The first, in L.A. is a massive and dense buzz, like a flurry of tiny lawn mowers and leaf blowers, all tuned to the same chord, emitting a reverberating thrum, like a million bombinating insects or the sound of crashing planes, slowed down and stretched out into a dreamy blur. Or imagine your head covered in bees, then dunk your head in a tar pit and let it dry and crack in the sun. Nice. The second track, recorded live on KDVS in Davis, is a bit more spacious, at least in the beginning, but it soon erupts into another huge multi layered drone, an insectoid hum, magnified a thousandfold and broadcast through a thicket of dense trees, leaves rustling as the sound waves shake everything in their path, until the sound fades and drifts and smooths into a tranquil hum, and eventually what sounds like rain, and then what sounds like bees, and then finally a slowly fading buzz like a distant airplane. Powerful and lovely.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Won't go into too much detail since by the time you read this these will be pretty much gone, sadly. SUPER LIMITED to 350 copies, picture disc artwork by Graham Lambkin from the Shadow Ring. Two massive sides of groaning, creeping ambience and muted industrial soundscapes of rumble and drone. Quite beautiful actually. Sounds a bit like you might imagine Wolf Eyes would sound if when they first woke up in the morning (or middle of the night), a little groggy and hung over, and just rolled over, plugged in, turned on, and let loose a thick washed out, lazy, fuzzy, gritty dronescape.
