A glorious, massive, free noise love-in / freak out / jam session, the 5th in a series. This volume, an ultra deluxe super limited double lp, features three of the scene's biggest movers and shakers, The Double Leopards, Sunroof! and Mouthus. Each band gets a side of vinyl and delivers just what you might expect and exactly what you want. Sunroof! offer up two tracks, each a towering wall of guitar drones, dense and blossoming with blinding light, guest guitarists include Marcia Bassett (which makes that track pretty much a Hototogisu track) and Mick Flower of the Vibracathedral Orchestra on a track called "Cortez The Killer" and no we can't tell if it's actually a Neil Young cover or not. Mouthus spend their side making lots and lots of noise, grinding industrial soundscapes of electronics and tortured guitars, the hardest of the bunch for sure. And the Double Leopards invoke mysterious gods and ancient civilizations with their murky abstract drone derived ambience, channelling Taj Mahal Travellers, Angus Maclise and Henry Flynt through their transcendental blown out otherworldly glow. But wait, that's only 3 sides, what the heck is up with side 4? Glad you asked. Side 4 features all three outfits, seven musicians, jamming together, a gloriously confusional cacophony, equal parts soft droning flutter and furious free form freakout. Awesome! The only way out of this record... is through it...
Packaged in a super deluxe full color gatefold sleeve!
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Super fucked-up, bass-heavy "post-rock" from France--if such creepy electric thud can be considered "rock" at all. At times, the vocals sound like PJ Harvey with a traechotomy. Dark, sinister, and highly unique. They really don't sound like any other band I can think of, from France or elsewhere.
Until (if?) the Thinking Fellers record another album, there's the fellow San Franciscan quartet Double U filling in for them. Purposefully wacked indie-melodies with plenty of nods to the ethnomusicological damage of the Sun City Girls and recalling the golden age of San Franisco art rock (Residents, Snakefinger, and the rest of Ralph Records).
I like this record so much but I can't for the life of me think of how to describe them. Of course they sound A LOT like The Thinking Fellers, as every review will tell you, but I doubt they would deny that. It's when I go to describe the music I'm at a loss. It's rich and creepy, sounds like demented nursery rhymes. The vocals are unique to say the least. Ranging from little girl eeriness, whispering in your ear to booming and indecipherable. Most of the songs are groovy meandering numbers, with odd scraping, sliding, creeping sounds. and there are some carnivalesqe songs that give you the chills like a good horror movie. Odd instrumentation recorded with expertise by Tim Green at Louder Studios. Art rock that will scare you.
Originally conceived as a hyper intricate math rock duo a few years back, the Double decided to simplify and focus on songs and sounds, then a drummer injury forced the band to yet again rethink their sound and approach, which resulted in the modern sound of the Double, a weird glitched out, quirky pop, thick with super distorted keyboards, winsome melodies, bursts of manic rocking demarcating long stretches of dreampop and new wave warble. Now they've incorporated some of that NY hipster swagger, a la Interpol or the Strokes, but filtered it through the Double's warped musical lens, a bouncy, brooding pop, with angular spaced out guitars and deadpan vocals that sound uncannily like Stephen Malkmus from Pavement, although here they swoop wildly into a falsetto as often as they drawl laconically. Each song is a dizzying blast of kaleidoscopic post-pop, crashing and chaotic, lilting and lovely, stumbling and ramshackle assemblages of bizarre song structures and strange melodies that don't sound catchy until at least the third or fourth time you hear them, but the first two or three times they definitely sound interesting, and intriguing, and make you want to keep listening, to find that unlikely hook, buried in there somewhere. And those are always the kind of songs that stick the most in the long run.
Ms Dougher is one busy lady, playing previously in the Lookers, and currently in the Crabs and Cadallaca as well as writing for a number of publications, and co-writing a book with Nikki McClure. This is her debut solo full length. "But wait!" you say, "didn't
Sarah Dougher possess a voice which bears an eerily striking resemblance to that of a young Carly Simon. Almost creepily so. This is her second solo album of folk inflected melodies. Quite nice and low-key.
Hard-to-find Italian import of this trumpeter recently heard with John Zorn's Masada. Mark Feldman on violin, plus Erik Friedlander on cello, Drew Gress and Michael Sarin. Excellent.
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"Music by and for Wayne Shorter" featuring John Zorn's Masada members trumpeter Douglas and drummer Joey Baron, along with Chris Speed, Joshua Roseman, Uri Caine, and James Genus.
Masada's trumpeter teams up with some of Downtown NY's hardest working sidemen for six new original pieces and covers of Rufus Wainwright, Mary J. Blige and Bjork! Yeah! Feelin' it! The sssmooove sssoundsss of jazzzzzz!
We raved about Floor's Dove album last list, so it only makes sense that we would move on to the new album from Dove, the band that followed Floor and just happens to also feature a fellow from another AQ favorite, Cavity! Equal parts the Melvins, High On Fire and Sleep, which means huge, thundering riffs, planet splitting percussion, and black hole bass, but with the unlikely addition of sweet acoustic parts, weird almost-folky clean guitar and occasional minor key post rock breakdowns. This is much more 'punk' than the Floor record. Where Floor was channelling the Beatles via Nirvana via Eyehategod, Dove takes that end result, roughs it up a bit, rolls it in broken glass and barbed wire and sends it careening down a punk rock mountain with no brakes. Occasionally Dove slow down into Floor / Cavity dirge territory, but more often than not, things quickly pick up or take some weird unpredictable turn before resuming their thrashingly hooky onsalught. Awesome.
Alright, we were caught snoozin' on this one (it came out late last year!)! You can't totally blame us though 'cause it's such a solemn, mellow, warm blanket of an album. It doesn't wallop you over the head, but sinks in and envelopes you slowly. Glacially paced and beautifully crafted, With My Left Hand I Raised The Dead is the ultra hushed yet powerful debut of New York's Doveman (aka 25 year old keyboardist Thomas Bartlett who has played with the likes of Antony & The Johnsons, Laurie Anderson, Yoko Ono and David Byrne), and what an entrancing entrance it is! His instrumentals possess a frosty flair and atmospheres along the lines of Mum and Sigur Ros, but his wistful folksy singing recalls Cat Power or Nick Drake. The vocals songs alternate with the untitled instrumental numbers. The third song "Tender Mercies" is absolutely breathtakingly delicate. The understated intimacy and elegance of that song and in fact the album as a whole are deceptively potent! Yes, better late than never, sooooo recommended!
Hurrah! This is Doves' follow-up to their splendid 2002 sophomore album, The Last Broadcast. While there aren't any single songs here that pack as much of the heartstring-pullin, toe-tappin' wallop as that album's ninth tune "Pounding" (which I, Cup, was... oh who am I kidding?... *am* still totally addicted to!), Some Cities does not disappoint. In fact, come to think of it, has the trio of Jimi Goodwin, Jez and Andy Williams ever disappointed? I think not. Once again, this album will do little to stop them from being lumped together with their more famous Brit brethren Coldplay, but that's not a bad thing -- they're both pretty fabulous bands. And once again, their finely detailed, lush, earthy instrument arrangements provide the soaring grandeur while Goodwin's vocals provide the intimate closeness. That said, moody groovy songs such as the fifth "The Storm" are perfect for late night wind-downs which may also appeal to fans of such groups as Air or Massive Attack. Great!
Only the second album from Manchester trio Doves (not to be confused with The Doves), but what a beauty it is! An ultra lush production of mellow, earthy British pop. Often quite akin to fellow Brits Coldplay especially on their slower songs with their lilting, emotive male vocals, warm piano and combined acoustic and electric guitars. The trio's compositions swell to gorgeously grand proportions with some very tastefully applied strings (as arranged by Sean O'Hagan of High Llamas), horns and woodwinds (check out "Friday's Dust", oooh!). And glistening glockenspiel too! Truly soaring and dramatic, but never excessively so. However, these fellows show they're more than capable of also kicking things up a notch or two on tracks like the solid pop of "Pounding", a super catchy number propelled by drums that certainly get their share of thumpin'. Sorta made me think "I'd like the Strokes' if they sounded more like this and less detached and indifferent." Near the close of the album, the songs - particularly the title track and "The Sulphur Man" - shift in tone subtly into something that strongly reminded us of American Music Club, in part due to the striking vocal resemblance between Mark Eitzel and Jimi Goodwin on these tracks. Also includes a bonus limited edition EP of four more gentle songs. Very very nice!
The first in a new series of eps from stoner/sludge super group Down, which for the uninitiated, includes members of Pantera, Crowbar, Corrosion Of Conformity and Eyehategod. No doubt fans of all those bands are already hip to these guys, their sound heavy and stonery more than sludgey, but recent converts to Electric Wizard would do well to dabble in some Down as well. Down are a strange bunch, not sure if it's the music, or their musical pedigree or both, but seems like EVERYone we know, metalhead, nonmetalhead, stoner rockers, death metallers, they all seem to love Down. But then it's easy to see why, the sound is pure psychedelic stoner sludge Sabbath worship, massive riffs, Phil Anselmo's killer vox, some wicked leads and classic guitar harmonies, hooks galore, bombastic drumming. Doesn't get more headbangable than these guys. All the tracks here slay. Groovy, riffy, slithery, Sabathy heaviness to be sure, but the best jam here is most definitely "Witchtripper", immediately catchy, heavy as fuck, with an insane main riff, a crazy catchy chorus, and and a hilarious (and hilariously literal) video, with Anselmo dressed up as Aleister Crowley:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fCoz5P3foY
The first song on the last Down record is easily one of the best (if not THE BEST) stoner-metal/New Orleans sludge rock song ever. EVER. The rest of the record didn't stand up to the opening track, but it was still a pretty solid record of ultra heavy stoner
The local label Out of Round has been laboring quietly in the background, not calling a lot of attention to itself yet turning out record after record that are consistently of similar mood -- due to the fact that they all play on each others recordings. The homegrown label's "sound", then, is one of a grimy circus atmosphere, like Fellini's La Strada if it was set in some dusty corner of an urban American metropolis. There are lots of slowed down polkas and depressed waltz time-signatures, dour vocals, sad accoridans, and dolefully plucked guitars. Great mood music for the Tom Waits fan in all of us who feels like Waits is just too hip for his own good these days.
Check out www.outofroundrecords.com -- we carry all of their releases. For a limited time only, get an out of Round Records label sampler free with purchase of this disc.
Ah, the Verlaines. One of my favorite New Zealand bands of all time. In the early nineties they made music filled with intense Wedding Present-style strumming, and wailing minor key melodies that sounded so urgent and vital. This is the solo debut of the
Two "outside" jazz legends in a duo together: Arthur Doyle on tenor saxophone, flute & vocals; Sunny Murray on drums. Studio recording made March, 8, 2000. Vibrate.
Arthur Doyle has had a fascinating career, winding through bebop, the New York ESP free jazz scene of the sixties, and No Wave when he played with the Blue Humans around 1980. He released an acclaimed album of Ayler influenced free jazz in 1978 when such music was far out of fashion in US jazz cirlces, then spent years in prison in Paris on false charges where he composed hundreds of songs anyway, and ended up making lo-fi bedroom recordings in Endicott, NY (hey, just like the much-maligned by everyone at AQ but me experimental pop weirdo Gary Wilson!). In his multi-decade career, characterizd by under-recognition, he has played with everyone from Sun Ra and Pharaoh Sanders to Keiji Haino and Thurston Moore. Throughout, he has honed his uniquely raw tenor sax, flute and vocal stylings. This recording is from his 2000 European tour with drum legend Sunny Murray. Consisting of primarily just Murray and Doyle, with a bit of help from Swede Bengt Frippe Nordstrom on alto, the amount of racket conjured is pretty amazing. Just as the textures available from only sax and drums start to become repetitive and uninteresting, Doyle livens things up with simultaneous flute and vocals, at points interjecting emotive guttural vocalisations on their own. Murray starts fast and furious, but becomes more spare and textural as Doyle's intricate flute and vocal manipulations take center stage. This sounds like it would have been awesome to witness live, and it ain't half bad on record either. Another step toward deserved wider recognition for the highly interesting Arthur Doyle, although not one that challenges 1978's "Alabama Feeling" in the consensus of his best recordings.
By the standards set by 2008 trends in experimental and avant-garde music, Roger Doyle's The Ninth Set is profoundly uncool. There's nothing to connect this electro-acoustic body of work to the drone-metal hybrids or to the forest dwelling psychedelic splatter of Finnish weirdness or even to the long-form trance induction from the high minimalists. Nope, this is a composition of dramatic plasticity, sculpted with the isolationist bunker mentality embraced by Pierre Schaeffer or Michel Chion. Perhaps that's the reason Doyle's work strikes a chord with us right now, precisely because it's so antithetical to the current streams of the avant garde (or at least the streams that pass through Aquarius).
Doyle is a composer who has enjoyed a considerable amount of notoriety from both the establishment as well as from the underground elite. He's been granted a number of high profile awards from academic types, but at the same time, he also released an album under the moniker Operating Theatre that United Dairies released back in 1981. So it doesn't come as a surprise that high praise has been granted to Doyle from all over the map; but even so, this is actually our first encounter with the man's work. At the moment, we can't say how it compares to that United Dairies record or to Oizzo No (which many have claimed to be a masterpiece, despite it's terrible title). Through the five lengthy pieces of The Ninth Set, Roger Doyle cycles through rumbling episodes of recontextualized tumult and industrial heft, with every sound recorded and presented with impeccable digital clarity. At times, his work mangles Ligetti-esque vocal chorale through timestretching DSP tricks and thick digitally swabbed crescendos of grey noise; at others plucked cords, wires, and strings congregate into an unsettled mass with opaque rumblings and seasick swells. Throughout each movement, there's plenty of pregnant interludes of relative quiet with punctations of rapidly approaching noise that halt at its peak with a razor cut to silence. Uncool, it may be; but The Ninth Set is a brilliant record.
Stoner rock really gets a bum rap, not sure what it is, but there's really nothing not to like, it's heavy, groovy, the guitars are thick and distorted and blown out, the drums pounding, the vocals wailing, the riffs are epic, it's one of those sounds that even still we can't seem to stop digging. C'mon, Kyuss, Orange Goblin, Roachpowder, Acrimony, Solarized, Los Natas, Spiritual Beggars, Freedom Hawk... Plus there are plenty of bands that aren't technically stoner rock, but essentially are, Sleep, Monster Magnet, Soundgarden. Maybe tastes changed, or the scene got saturated, or there were just too many shitty stoner rock bands, but as far as we can tell, groups like Sleep really aren't that far removed from groups like Kyuss, the Sabbath worship, the drugs, the groove. But fuck it, we're not here to mount a defense of stoner rock (or are we?), we're here to extol the virtues of one of our favorite stoner rock outfits ever, Sweden's Dozer, whose kick ass first two records have just been reissued as a double disc, with a bunch of bonus demo tracks to boot.
So what's the big deal about Dozer? Well after Kyuss, they're probably the band that most embodies that classic stoner rock sound, in fact, in some ways they're a dead ringer for Kyuss, the sun baked guitars, the wailing vox, the killer riffs, needless to say if you LOVE Kyuss, and have never heard Dozer, man are you in for a treat, and
Every single person who bought either or both of the Freedom Hawk records a while back or either of the Acrimony records (and we know that's a LOT of you!), you're almost definitely gonna want this too. Mesmerizing, hypnotic, the grooves locked in tight, killer psychedelic leads, hooks galore, and riffs, we mean RIFFS, massive super rocking RIFFS. For all the blasting black metal and creepy crawling ultra doom, neither evoke the same sort of visceral headbanging response as this stuff, how could it, like all classic stoner rock, this is Sabbath, sped up and supercharged, totally heavy, and totally rocking, and few do it or have done it better than Dozer. This collects their first two long out of print Man's Ruin records, In The Tail Of A Comet from 2000 and Madre De Dios from 2001, both now augmented by extra demo tracks, that sound just as good as the records proper.
We were actually a little surprised how goddamn good this stuff sounds still 10 years later, but man, it sure does. Any one into groovy heaviness, or Sabbathy headbanging riffage, this shit will definitely hit the spot!
Comes packaged in a super swank full color six panel digipak.
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Swedes who sound EXACTLY like the late and undoubtedly much-missed Kyuss. Somebody should hold a festival of all the Kyuss-clone bands, with Natas, Fireball Ministry, Unida, etc. They could compete to crown the new Kyuss II. Anyway, you know what this sounds like (that is, if you're a Kyuss fan--and otherwise, you won't care): lots of heavy bass, rockin' vox, psychedelic sunburn guitar. Pretty darn good, but this trend has to come to an end. I mean, originality isn't the number one virtue in rock n' roll (and certainly not in the "metal" and "stoner rock" realms and not at all in the Kyuss-o-centric "desert rock" subgenre) but this is getting ridiculous. Still, better to copy Kyuss than Korn, I suppose.
More unabashed Kyuss worship. And no one does it better than Sweden's Dozer. And I do mean no one. Dozer sound exactly like Kyuss; groovy low end, wailing vocals, warm, desert-baked guitar. So don't look here for anything original, but if you're still missing
Stoner rock, that's this.
Dr. D is a New York DJ best known to us for mashing up obscure '60 psych with current, crunken hiphop hitz. This limited edition cd-r mix, however, is pretty much all '60s and '70s grooves as far as we know -- no hiphop anyway. And it's got our number, 'cause so much of what he's spinning is that Turkish psych stuff we love, mixed in with some old and new Afrofunk a la Ethiopiques and Tinariwen, along with some further exotic flavors that fit. Some names we know/tracks we recognize: Selda, Bunalim, Edip Akbayram, Les Mogol, Erkin Koray, Baris Manco... and of course there's a bunch more we don't, all of it pretty cool though. It's a bit like that Trap Door mix, in a romantic mood. Plus this is a true turntablist mix, featuring 31 short selections (mostly 1-2 minute edits), flowing quite nicely, occasionally enhanced with some scratchy-scratch whip-whip-whap. The discs we have are from the first numbered 250 copy edition, in screenprinted cardboard sleeves.
Dr. Octagon is DEAD...murdered on the first track of Kool Keith's new record. However, his killer/replacement, Dr. Dooom, is (not surprisingly) just as sick and silly a rapper as the other Dr. All of the millions and zillions of folks who liked Doc Oc, and especially Keith's Sex Styles album (same producer), won't be disappointed. We also have the INSTRUMENTAL version of this record, $14.98 for double vinyl.
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Debut cassette from local parody-rapper (& member of a popular local punk band) Dr. Dre Del, featuring "over 45 sexy, surly jams & hundreds of bad words". Samples used and abused range from the expected P-Funk to Emperor, Oxbow, Herb Alpert, and Harvey Sid Fisher! Funny stuff indeed.
Another bafflingly brilliant batch of tapes from UK tape label The Tapeworm, and while we often find ourselves at a bit of a loss to describe whatever sonic oddity they've unearthed or discovered or dug up or conjured from the ether, not sure we've ever encountered one like this before. With very little info to go on, what we can surmise from the description we read, is that this might be some sort of home-recorded ritual, perpetrated by a teenager (Andrew Lagowski?), with his parents in the other room, taking leave from whatever rock band he was playing in at the time, to create, well, THIS, a strange bit of sinister collaged ambience, wild squiggles of feedback, what sounds like running water, manipulated tapes, stumbling percussion, what almost sounds like field recordings, owl calls or something like owl calls, detuned guitar melodies, shards and fragments of sound, all blurred and smeared and tangled into a sci-fi lo-fi soundscape, jumbled, textural and weirdly rhythmic, a definite kitchen sink approach, or maybe toolshed approach would be more accurate, a strange selection of noise making devices including various effects and fuzzboxes, a reel to reel tape player not to mention a drill and a space (perhaps wielded by the artist's brother), and while there is a sense of randomness and chaos, much of this is quite listenable, and for sure is beholden to (whether intentional or not) Nurse With Wound, Hafler Trio, and other unconventional sonic experimentalists. Two distinctly different mixes/versions, edited and reworked earlier this year. Pretty excellent stuff.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES! With cover art by Savage Pencil.
This is a pretty self-explanatory record from Manchester's village idiots better known as V/VM. It's totally beside the point if Dr. Fred is V/VM's doctor as this sounds just like the last bunch of V/VM records, with a warbled ring modulator affecting the
Awesome noisy drum-machine, shredding-guitar, gurgling/howling-vocal spazz rock. Or something like that. Having done time on Finland's mighty Bad Vugum label along with AQ faves Circle, Dr. Gunni is a far more demented affair. Lo-fi Stooge-y ditties
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Sounds like Ozzy Osbourne screeching over tinny, lo-fi jungle, and it totally works.
The best of '80s Oxnard metalli-punks Dr. Know collected on one handy disc. Maybe you've heard Slayer's version of "Mr. Freeze"?
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We thought we'd mention this again cos our pal the Automator says once he runs out then it is out of print forever. This 12" is the only way to get Prince Paul's remix of "Blue Flowers, and the "Halfsharkalligator" piece. Of all the Doc Oc releases, this is also the Automator's personal favorite!
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The best hip hop record of 1996. On-the-edge weirdo outer space hip hop from West Coast luminaries, including Kool Keith, D Nakamura, DJ Shadow, Qbert, etc. Already licensed in England by Mo'Wax. Highly Recommended.
The best hip hop record of 1996. On-the-edge weirdo outer space hip hop from West Coast luminaries, including Kool Keith, D Nakamura, DJ Shadow, Qbert, etc. Already licensed in England by Mo'Wax. Highly Recommended.
Nowhere near as brilliant as the original Dr. Octagon but it's got some moments of its own.
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Whoa...what a great find this is! Being a big fan of early seventies/heavy folk rock and of course the Incredible String band (who Dr. Strangely Strange most resembles upon first listen), we just can't get enough of this strangely strange record! There's the surrealistic multi-instrumentalism similar to that of ISB (and whimsy not unlike Bonzo Dog Band) but Dr. SS offers something moodier, too. With layered acoustic and electric guitar and lots of harmonized vocals, some songs sound almost like the Velvet Underground's Loaded record (which, incidentally, came out the same year). And with a young Gary Moore (who went onto Thin Lizzy fame) there's lots of solid guitar soloing going on. A nice bonus is the elaborate die-cut packaging made to look like the original LP artwork. Very recommended!
Whether or not you find this album palatable will depend on your feelings towards the three principals in the group: terminally-mopey introvert Bill Callahan of Smog, Keith-Richards-in-an-alternate-universe Neil Michael Hagerty of Royal Trux, and
Oh yeah, other bandmembers include Tara Key of Antietam, Rian and Brendan Murphy, Mark Greenberg of the Coctails, Azita Youssefi of Scissor Girls, and of course the ubiquitous Jim O'Rourke.
We had never heard of these UK metalheads, but the gruesome Justin Bartlett art of course caught our eye, and if anything, the sounds inside live up to the grim warning of the strange ritual depicted on the cover, hooded figures surround a woman, whose baby is dragged from her by a strange goat creature, her mouth open, emitting instead of a scream a strange column of either feathers or crystals. The soundtrack to this demonic ceremony is some sort of super intense, ultra aggro, sludgey blackened downtuned death metal dirge doom pummel, the sound shifting from frenzied blasting Swedish style melodic death metal to lurching, lumbering noise drenched doom, the recording so hot and in-the-red, that the drums buzz and sizzle, the guitars so distorted they crumble from the speakers, the vocals a harsh hateful shriek, plenty of Eyehategod style feedback, long stretches of layered skree, tense and intense, the sound so impossibly heavy, not sure we've ever heard guitar SO buzz drenched and blown out, the sound brutal and intense and harrowing, but probably the coolest/weirdest aspect of this band's sound are the samples, all over the place, snippets of conversations, bits from films, sometimes draped over minimal bits of droney ambience, other times set amidst roiling churning heaviness and thus barely audible, but it definitely gives the record a strange vibe, reminding us of nineties industrial rock, but only in that one aspect, in every other way, this is some of the fiercest, most fucked up and intensely heavy death/sludge we've ever heard, the vocals sometimes slipping into an inhuman ear shredding shriek, the buzzing so intense and furious that it sometimes almost blurs into total blackdronenoise, usually slipping right back into something more riffy or dirgey, but always suffocatingly black hole heavy, and then there are those samples, which change everything. And stick around for the final track a supremely creepy outro of crumbling distorted buzz, keening feedback, layered industrial noise, and one final creepy sample. Awesome stuff. Definitely one of the most brutal records we've heard, and while too many samples definitely plague many an otherwise awesome record, somehow, this wouldn't be the same without 'em.
