Hmm, it's 2005 and we've got the 2006 edition of a record that originally came out in 1973! And it's an album that we first encountered five years ago via a previous (and now out of print and obsolete) compact disc edition released in 2000. But much more important than all these dates and whatnot, is that this is such a great record that we at AQ have loved for a long time, and are super duper happy to have back in again in this improved, special edition!! As you may know, we're also long time fans of the band Olivia Tremor Control, and when we first heard the Dreamies we were struck by the similarities. Indeed, our original review of this made much of the seeming OTC/Dreamies connection. And we still promise that you could totally mistake this for an OTC record...a *great* OTC record! (And come to think of it, it also reminds us a bit of another AQ fave band, When). But it was recorded over three decades ago by a fellow from Delaware named Bill Holt, who, nearing 30 years of age in the early '70s, dropped out of his corporate job working for a Fortune 500 company to reinvent himself as a singer-songwriter, despite having little in the way of prior musical experience! Holt invested in an early Moog Sonic Six synthesizer and set up a recording studio in his basement, where he created this lost classic, an outstanding if bizarre psychedelic album with spartanly bleak arrangements for acoustic guitar and hauntingly Donovanesque vocal melodies, injected with trippy sonic squiggles and snippets from newscasts to paint a disillusioned picture of the failure of '60s ideologies. Mesmerisingly beautiful... and definitely dreamy. Never was a name so well-chosen!
Like the Olivias, Bill Holt is obviously a huge fan of the Beatles. That's pretty clear. Sgt. Peppers definitely. And, he must really have liked the White Album's notorious "Revolution Number 9"!! With two side-long songs called (hmm) "Program Ten" and "Program Eleven", the Dreamies album is a similar venture into psych-pop meets musique concrete territory, an elaborate tapestry of samples -- and this is from long before anyone called them samples, and before there was such a thing as samplers and sequencers, which means Holt used the old fashioned, labor intensive tape n' razor blade splicing method, working at home on his beloved TEAC Model 3340 reel-to-reel four-track recorder. Densely woven into his otherwise highly laid back and melodic mix, you'll hear clocks ticking, chattering machine guns in Vietnam combat, JFK speeches, crickets, frogs, NASA transmissions, and ominous but unidentifiable minimalist pulses of electronic/industrial white noise. Or even samples of the Beatles themselves! (Bits of "All You Need Is Love" and others are buried in Holt's sonic collage.) It's both unsettling and soothing at the same time, like surfing through shortwave transmissions from the late '60s psyche. And along with all the sound bites/effects, he also weaves together what must have originally been several different, distinct, enchanting songs he'd written for his voice and acoustic guitar. It's one man and his melodies alone amidst the chaos of the times. Unfortunately, the Dreamies album didn't end up leading to a career in music for Bill Holt, so sadly he was forced to return to the straight moneymaking world of 9-to-5 work. But his venture into the realm of hippy psychedelic rock music concrete lives on. And happily he's proud of his creation, leading to this "special edition", remastered by Holt himself from the original LP, claiming "better stereo sound" and "enhanced audio detail". It certainly sounds good to us. It also boasts liner notes, lyrics and photos in the cd booklet, while the cd itself for the first time divides the two original 26-minute LP tracks into thirteen more convenient parts, although really you should still listen to 'em all the way through in one sitting.
By the way, we for some reason we always used to think that this record was titled Auralgraphic Entertainment: An Incredible Mental Experience, but it seems that that was just descriptive front-cover copy, not the actual title. It is, however, a fairly accurate statement! We're so happy that this has come out again, giving us the chance to get reacquainted with an old fave. And recommended it to anyone who missed it before (or who wants to upgrade their old edition).
Now reissued on vinyl! An old, old fave here at aQ, this album originally from 1973, that wowed us when we first heard it 'cause, as you may know, we're also long time fans of the band Olivia Tremor Control, and we were struck by the similarities. You could totally mistake this for an OTC record... a *great* OTC record! But it was recorded over three decades ago by a fellow from Delaware named Bill Holt, who, nearing 30 years of age in the early '70s, dropped out of his corporate job working for a Fortune 500 company to reinvent himself as a singer-songwriter, despite having little in the way of prior musical experience! Holt invested in an early Moog Sonic Six synthesizer and set up a recording studio in his basement, where he created this lost classic, an outstanding if bizarre psychedelic album with Spartanly bleak arrangements for acoustic guitar and hauntingly Donovanesque vocal melodies, injected with trippy sonic squiggles and snippets from newscasts to paint a disillusioned picture of the failure of '60s ideologies. Mesmerisingly beautiful... and definitely dreamy. Never was a name so well-chosen!
Like the Olivias, Bill Holt is obviously a huge fan of the Beatles. That's pretty clear. Sgt. Peppers definitely. And, he must really have liked the White Album's notorious "Revolution Number 9"!! With two side-long songs called (hmm) "Program Ten" and "Program Eleven", the Dreamies album is a similar venture into psych-pop meets musique concrete territory, an elaborate tapestry of samples - and this is from long before anyone called them samples, and before there was such a thing as samplers and sequencers, which means Holt used the old fashioned, labor intensive tape n' razor blade splicing method, working at home on his beloved TEAC Model 3340 reel-to-reel four-track recorder. Densely woven into his otherwise highly laid back and melodic mix, you'll hear clocks ticking, chattering machine guns in Vietnam combat, JFK speeches, crickets, frogs, NASA transmissions, and ominous but unidentifiable minimalist pulses of electronic/industrial white noise. Or even samples of the Beatles themselves! (Bits of "All You Need Is Love" and others are buried in Holt's sonic collage.) It's both unsettling and soothing at the same time, like surfing through shortwave transmissions from the late '60s psyche. And along with all the sound bites/effects, he also weaves together what must have originally been several different, distinct, enchanting songs he'd written for his voice and acoustic guitar. It's one man and his melodies alone amidst the chaos of the times. Unfortunately, the Dreamies album didn't end up leading to a career in music for Bill Holt, so sadly he was forced to return to the straight moneymaking world of 9-to-5 work. But his venture into the realm of hippy psychedelic rock music concrete lives on - now, again, on (remastered) vinyl!
Another super limited cd-r release of underground noisiness, this time from Dreams, a Skaters side project. We only managed to get a handful of these, so act fast, they'll be gone in no time.
Those of you familiar with the Skaters, already know they are masters of the free floating murk, a clattery chaos harnessed into dense smears of sound. A while back we reviewed a 7" by the Pan Dolphinic Dawn which definitely hints at what you can expect from Dreams, mostly because it's the same person, James Ferraro, one half of the Skaters, and Dreams is another example of the leaf not falling very far from the tree (and again begs the question, why make a solo record that sounds exactly like your band), but that's definitely okay, since we love basking in the murky muted shade of the Skaters' sound. If anything, Dreams is a bit murkier, less active, more of a drifting murmur. There's definitely lots going on sonically, but Ferraro renders all that action in subtle shades of grey and greyer, melodies, and voices, and riffs and whatever might be part of the overall sound, enter a whole new world once they're captured by Ferraro's four track. It's a bit like sitting at the foot of an empty well, watching storm clouds drift back and forth way above, constantly altering the ambient light, dusky, to dark, to darker, to pitch black and back again. Creepy and haunting and ominous but also strangely beautiful.
SUPER LIMITED. WE ONLY GOT A HANDFUL OF THESE, AND AS ALWAYS WE'RE NOT SURE IF WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE.
Fantastic archival release from the always kick ass Kranky label, this one digging way back to the early nineties, collecting everything ever released (and then some) by this relatively unknown UK shoegaze outfit, whose sound most definitely predicted much of the music on Kranky's roster, a bleary, blurry sprawl of ethereal, washed out rainy day dreampop shimmer, songs slipping easily from hushed 4AD style drift to more driving jangle drenched bliss out.
At its most laid back, this is wistful soft focus indie pop, the sort of twee jangle and crunch that would have sounded right at home on Slumberland back in the day (heck even today), but Dreamscape add some seriously driving programmed drums, to give these tracks some density and texture, some sonic heft and some krautrock style motorik momentum. The more upbeat songs peppered with cool weirdly industrial percussion and cool tribal rhythms, some surprisingly deft drum programming, wreathing everything in a gauzy atmospheric haze, the vocals swaddled in soft billows of reverb, all draped over gloompop basslines and tangly spidery minor key melodies. Darkly dreamy shoegaze dreampop perfection that sounds like what most of the current crop or retro poppers wish they could pull off.
Massive slow motion funereal doom metal matchup between two relative unknowns, Drear and Great American Desert. Both traffic in that sort of slow motion doom drenched sludge we can never seem to get enough of. Huge downtuned riffs, simple spaced out drum pound and thick swaths of black fuzz. Doomlords into the usual suspects, Moss, Esoteric, Corrupted, Noothgrush, Catacombs, Eyehategod, Monarch, Stumm, Dot [.], Winter, Disembowelment, Skepticism, Thergothon, will pretty much HAVE to own this.
Drear are up first, and just happen to feature one member from AQ faves Contra Ignem Fatuum (aka Circumscriber), their brand of UK black doom definitely falls somewhere right between Esoteric and Moss, three massive lengthy epics, dense and fuzzed out, but sort of dreamy and melancholic at the same time. The vocals are harsh and hellish, but they are draped over fuzzy soft focus buzzscapes, dreary, dreamlike and shimmery, the whole thing anchored by a simple Godflesh at 16rpm drum machine plod.
Drear are teamed up with Oklahoma based Great American Desert, who have a whole different take on funeral doom. The sound is less massive and more minimal. Distorted guitars spin a murky muddy web in the background, the drums a simple spare framework, but the vocals, holy shit the vocals, some sort of super processed, demonic alien mechanical growl, metallic and distorted, like dragging huge pieces of metal across sharp rocks, recording them onto a metal cylinder and playing them back through a wall of tweeters run through a pitchshifter and a battery of distortion pedals. Occasionally the background is a weird lo-fi clean guitar tangled up with some low end rumble for some minimal doom metal Low action. But always with those vocals!
Both bands are amazing and fucked in their own unique way, so needless to say this is some essential low end for the doom obsessed among you...
According to the liner notes, written in (intentionally?) broken English, Petros Drecojecai was a would be anthropologist visiting California from Hungary in the mid 1990's. Drecojecai spent much of his spare time in between conferences listening to and
You know it's not just us recommending stuff to our customers here at aQ, it works the other way too, with our customers recommending stuff to us all the time. An example being one of our very favorite customers, David Katznelson, whom you may know as the mastermind behind several different, quality labels including country/blues/folk vinyl reissue specialists Sutro Park (and also WTF? specialists Birdman). David asked us to order this for him and then after he picked it up, immediately emailed excitedly about how fantastic it is, so we checked it out ourselves and then asked him to write it up for us to share with everybody else! Here's the great guest review Dave came up with:
I will not tell you how much money I have wasted on reissues of private press records from the '70s, bullied into buying them by well written descriptions namedropping other need-to-know ultra obscure artists, saluting their eBay sales price and touting their snot-nosed record collector desirability. It has gotten to a point that when I read, "ONLY 100 made back in 1972" - I figure I know why. To be honest, thank GOD for aQ's curation of the best, as well as big props to YouTube which lets me preview the other potential expensive crap-takes before I make a wrong decision and sacrifice money that could just as well be used at the local pot dispensary.
Thus, the discovery of a killer record from the outsider world is so sweet. Hell, the name of the label behind John Drendall & B.A. Thrower's lp is called OUT-SIDER RECORDS. The name of the game, plain and simple. Their record, "Papa Never Let's Me Sing The Blues" has all the markings of a brilliant mirage: a questionable title, a bizarre cover layout, and a slide guitar player named "Stiff-finger Eddie", but throw the needle down and BINGO, you realize that there is something more here. It starts with the early-'70s Stonesy-vibed "Cold Night In August", and flows into the very pushin' groover "Old Man Gibbs". The whole record is a groove...and to name drop sundry band names to stir the pot: there is definitely some late-late-period Byrds going on here...maybe a taste of Lucifer's blues abandon, the swagger of The Faces, or a smattering of the acoustic-side of Zeppelin. And there are meandering guitars that are the basis from many a great 60s downer (check out "I Feel" for example). The resultant sound for John Drendall & B.A. Thrower is bluesy brownish muffley warm outsider magic...the kind that you hope for!
Limited to 500 copies, 180 gram vinyl, thick sleeves. Includes liner notes by Patrick "Acid Archives" Lundborg.
This is one of two new releases on the Colloquial Sound label, a Michigan tape label we had somehow totally overlooked, but are making it our mission to get caught up with, cuz everything we've heard so far has been sorta mind blowing. Including this, the latest from this US black metal band who play "atmospheric Indian black metal", which when we first read about it, we actually thought it was in fact a band from India, but instead, this American outfit mixes murky soaring majestic buzzing blackness with actual Indian music, the A side here starts off with a sample of some traditional Indian music, all buzzing sitars, skittery tablas, intense emotional vocals, then all of a sudden, furious riffing swoops in, the sound exploding into some echo drenched buzzing blackness, the vocals a deep raspy demonic bellow, the drums not blasting so much as pounding, while the guitars are sharp and jagged, and doused in effects, the whole thing noisy, and reverby and sorta psychedelic. The sound gets even more psychedelic as the track progresses, slipping into long stretches of tranced out drone metal and even erupting into something near symphonic at one point, the sound laced with synths (?), giving the track a seriously tripped out vibe, and then near the end, it gets super melodic, and crazy catchy, before finally fading out in a cloud of blackened swirl and atmospheric synth shimmer.
The second track/side is more of the same, a dense dizzying swirl of sound, frantic and frenzied, tons of echo and reverb, the sound bordering on utter chaos, but constantly slipping into something more structured, with some cool chugging almost math metal parts, not to mention more epic synth swells, and as if to bookend the two tracks, the blackness fades out leaving just tablas, that mesmerizing Indian rhythm this time wreathed in strange demonic hiss and softly shimmery synths. Super cool. These are the VERY LAST copies we'll be able to get. And apparently Handmade Birds will be doing a Dressed In Streams compilation cd eventually, but get an earful of this now, and grab one before they're gone, you won't be sorry!!
A few lists back we reviewed a tape from an American Black metal band called Dressed In Streams, who specialized in "atmospheric Indian black metal", and while the black metal wasn't so much Indian as the sound was a mix of Indian music samples and buzzing black metal, we still dug it like crazy, and could barely keep it in stock. That tape is sold out now, but managed to get a hold of a handful of another tape release, the LAST handful in fact. There's meant to be some sort of cd compendium happening at some point, but not sure when that's happening, or if these tapes will be included, but for folks who dug that first tape, or who are intrigued by the idea of "atmospheric Indian black metal", you might want to grab one of these before they're gone.
Two sidelong tracks, the usual buzz and blast augmented here by swirls of synths, and weird echo drenched vocals, stretched out sprawls of psychedelia, chiming melodies, in fact part way through the first track/side, barring the vocals, this could be some weird mathy avant psych space jam, total heart of the sun trance out heaviness, tribal drumming, soaring guitars, squiggly synths, spacey FX, all before building back to more serious black buzz, before splintering into some fierce mathiness, all dense drumming, and super distorted chug, definitely the coolest thing we've heard from this guy (these guys?).
The flipside begins with more synth swirl, some tense minor key guitar shimmer, before launching into a woozy doomic plod, again, sounding almost more spaced out psych than black metal, it's not really until a few minutes in that the black metal kicks in, and even then, super melodic, and textured, the post rock vibe is huge, minus the harsh vokills and the blast beats, the vibe is way more moody and atmospheric, but the combo of the two is pretty potent, the song seesawing back and forth between melodic black buzz and loping minimal post rock meander, all wreathed in swirls of synth and shot through with surprising melody.
Killer stuff for sure. Can't wait for the comp, but in the meantime playing these tapes to death. We have less than 10 copies of this one, and after that it's gone for good, so grab one while you can!
A while back we reviewed two tapes from this mysterious black metal band, who play "atmospheric Indian black metal", and as we mentioned in those previous reviews, we actually assumed Dressed In Streams was from India, although we later discovered they are in fact from right here in the US. Sadly, both those tapes went out of print, super quick, and there was even a third, that we were never able to get at all. So kudos to Handmade Birds, for reissuing on cd, two of the three tapes (wish it was all three!), Azad, and the most recent self titled cassette (and the one we were unable to stock!), along with a bonus track, from an also now out of print compilation...
For those who missed out on those tapes, Dressed In Streams mixes murky soaring majestic buzzing blackness with actual Indian music, the first track from Asad starts off with a sample of some traditional Indian music, all buzzing sitars, skittery tablas, intense emotional vocals, then all of a sudden, furious riffing swoops in, the sound exploding into some echo drenched buzzing blackness, the vocals a deep raspy demonic bellow, the drums not blasting so much as pounding, while the guitars are sharp and jagged, and doused in effects, the whole thing noisy, and reverby and sorta psychedelic. The sound gets even more psychedelic as the track progresses, slipping into long stretches of tranced out drone metal and even erupting into something near symphonic at one point, the sound laced with synths (?), giving the track a seriously tripped out vibe, and then near the end, it gets super melodic, and crazy catchy, before finally fading out in a cloud of blackened swirl and atmospheric synth shimmer. The second track (side two on the original cassette) is more of the same, a dense dizzying swirl of sound, frantic and frenzied, tons of echo and reverb, the sound bordering on utter chaos, but constantly slipping into something more structured, with some cool chugging almost math metal parts, not to mention more epic synth swells, and as if to bookend the two tracks, the blackness fades out leaving just tablas, that mesmerizing Indian rhythm this time wreathed in strange demonic hiss and softly shimmery synths. Super cool.
The cd is rounded out by DiS's most recent cassette which offers up three more tracks of psychedelic blackness, the first a plodding, doomy dirge, wreathed in strange swirling melodies, majestic synths, the drums lo-fi and LOUD, the vokills more of a background rasp, everything sort of blurred and washed out, the guitars too, less buzzy and black, and more sort of background sonic coloration, and then near the end, when the track settles down into a darkly strummy drift, it's really super haunting and strangely lovely. The second track is much more traditionally black, a lo-fi buzz, blasting and black, but given a sort of Caretaker makeover, the sound cavernous and smeary, the various sounds loose and almost weightless sounding, with bits of melodies, or crashing drums occasionally surfacing from the murky miasma, and there's some amazing synths too, that are super loud, and leap out of the mix, the vibe like some ancient martial ceremony. Finally, the last track launches right into a frantic furious black buzz, the sound gradually getting blurrier and murkier, furious and blown out, before getting all strummy and melodic for the second half, a sort of smoldering post rock epic-ness, that gradually builds to one final black buzz squall, before a brooding synth coda.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!!
Recorded at the Great American Music Hall in 1994, this monster improv trio amble, tweak and scrape through nine pieces of downtown avant jazz.
Seems these Elephant 6 Collective members have shed their candy-coating for good. You'd almost believe that this is an altogether different band from the one who made the charmingly perky pop of 1999's Pink Hearts Yellow Moons or 2002's Sounds Go Round. While their last self-titled album did show some signs of change, Electrified is leaps and bounds away from the Dressy Bessy of 'old'. Now, to say that the skip in their step has been replaced by a stomp might be an overstatement, but the thought did cross our minds. Much darker, edgier, slightly dizzying, the tunes are propelled by an aggressive charge of big crunchy guitars and solid snappy drumming. The formerly pep squad-y vocals now come across a bit snarky and world weary with a maturity and composure that recalls Blondie, Throwing Muses or more recently the Canadian band Metric. Electrified, indeed!
Dressy Bessy have always been known for perky lo-fi indie pop that rides the fence between sweet and twee. As with pretty much all of their Elephant 6 Collective cohorts (Of Montreal, Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, etc), Tammy Ealom (formerly of The Minders), John Hill (also of Apples In Stereo) are seldom at a loss in the candy-coated pop hook department. That said, many of the tunes on their fourth album, the suitably titled Holler And Stomp, jump out with far more crunch and punch than the band has ever mustered before. Maybe we should've taken the hint from their chosen cover art - an illustration of a trash and graffiti strewn alleyway with a street sign that says "Dressy Bessy Way", a butterfly smoking a cigarette flitters by. Hmmm, a Dressy Bessy makeover (or make-under)? The pumped up sassy, edgy attitude led to immediate comparisons with contemporary gal-fronted bands such as Metric and Teegan & Sara!
The Elephant 6 collective keeps on truckin', and here's one particular E6 troop's compilation of sugar pop singles - just in case you missed them the first time around! Lots and lots of harmonious sweetie-pie gal vocals over fuzzy-crunch guitars. Immediately hum-along-able, sunshiny indie pop blossoms just in time for spring.
Straight from the candy counter of the Elephant 6 soda shoppe comes the gumdrop pop of Dressy Bessy.
Dressy Bessy have unfurled their full length follow-up to their '99 debut "Pink Hearts Yellow Moons"! Still flying their honey-pie Elephant 6 kite high in the bright blue sky and not being stingy with their bountiful battalion of pastel-hued lucky charms, these
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
John Hill of Apples in Stereo and that's what it sounds like! Limited release from U.K., only 500 copies in embossed fabric packaging. Buy now or cry later.
"Holy smokes," you might exclaim (as we did), "a double disc of Dressy Bessy?! We always knew those Elephant 6 Collective folks were prolific, but... geez!" Okay, okay, hold your horses, folks! The second disc is actually a dvd - a bonus treat including live performances at this year's South By Southwest festival and CBGB, in-studio footage, and slideshow style videos! The music disc contains eleven incredibly sunshine-y sugar pop songs that harken back to a time of wide-eyed innocence and trippy mod pop styles. Tammy Ealom sings her earnest heart out while John Hill and Ealom's guitars jangle and crunch, Darren Albert's drums snap and crack, and Rob Greene's bass keeps a steady perky thump. It's so infectious that this week almost without exception after just a few bars of a song, customers have asked what it is and bought it. Poof! Just like that... really! Dressy Bessy just might have you bouncing around like a marshmallow fight!
Sure to please fans of Broken Social Scene!! How are we so certain of this? Well, this is the solo album from one of the band's co-founders Mr. Kevin Drew, and it also features a lot of his BSS bandmates (Feist, Emily Haines of Metric and Stars' Amy Millan) as well as Pavement's Scott Kannberg (on "Lucky Ones") and J. Mascis of all people (on the very Dinosaur Jr. college rocking "Back Out On The..."). It doesn't sound a whole lot different from the less electronic side of BSS! The album opens with a Flaming Lips-y grand scale orchestral pop swell, then the first few tunes settle down and get all ultra mellow and breezy -- a gentle guitar strum, a soft steady tap on a snare drum and hushed male vocals. Drew keeps things calmingly pleasant, but does kick it up a notch for the abovementioned song featuring Mascis.
As you well know, we're really into that special Scandinavian subgenre of electronica known as skweee. In part, 'cause we were already into a lot of the sounds that inspired skweee, such as '80s electro, video game music, and funky old school hiphop. So, we were excited to see this disc recently repressed/reissued, Detroit electro act Drexciya's first full-length compact disc, originally released by German label Tresor in 1999. Also excited, 'cause we completely missed out on listing it back then, somehow! The rather idiosyncratic Drexciya can definitely be considered as precursors to the skweee phenomenon (skweee-cursors?). And indeed also as important, if eccentric, artists in the Detroit techno pantheon.
There's 21 tracks on this basically instrumental disc, most of 'em bearing some bizarre title that relates somehow to Drexciya's strange, sub-aquatic sci-fi concepts (the comic bookish artwork features squid shaped spaceships, and spacemen (spacefish?) that look a lot like Lovecraft's Deep Ones, or the Creature From The Black Lagoon, but in spacesuits. Sonically, these tracks range from the droning chant and mysterious voices heard in the introductory incantation "Temple Of Dos De Agua" to moody 4/4 techno atmospheres to synthesized future funk ("Funk Release Valve") to textural rhythmscapes to body-jerking fusion grooves ("Jazzy Fluids")... there's melodic keyboard soloing over jittery beats... squelching bass and lush synths... And dig the Kraftwerkian echoes on "Polymono Plexusgel" (and elsewhere). Pre-skweee or whatever, it's all awesome. This Drexciya disc is a bit of a classic, as far as catchy cosmic electro with fishy sci-fi fantasy elements, Detroit style, goes. And the connection with fellow Detroit space-travellers Dopplereffekt should be obvious. Check it!
Arthur Dreyblatt may not be as familiar a name as Tony Conrad, Steve Reich, Terry Riley or Phillip Glass, but lets hope this latest Table of the Elements release changes that. This release marks the 25th anniversary of an historic 1981 live performance at the Federal Hall in New York (where Washington was inaugurated). Dreyblatt accompanied by The Orchestra of Excited Strings put the natural resonances of the architectural dome to good use as his modified instruments such as the pipe organ, hurdy gurdy, just-intoned double bass and piano work through seven pieces of textured rhythmic precision that create gorgeous and dynamic harmonic overtones. Stunning!
Two tracks from New York Minimalist composer Arnold Dreyblatt, both sonically owe quite a debt to fellow New Yorkers Rhys Chatham and Glen Branca. The first track, Point Source, features Dreyblatt on "excited bass", Jim O'Rourke on drums (!), David Grubbs and Kevin Drumm on guitars and Maureen Loughnare on violin. A gorgeously hypnotic and metronomic post rock / downtown improv workout. Shades of Faust, Can and even Stereolab. Nice. Recorded live at Chicago's legendary Lounge Ax. The second track, Lapse, is performed by the Berlin version of Dreyblatt's Orchestra Of Excited Strings, performing on custom made instruments in unique tunings. The result is a playful, gypsy-ish romp, atonal and angular, with Eastern sounding melodies and shuffling active percussion. On clear vinyl, with antique cloud/weather charts printed in glow-in-the-dark ink.
Musicians are an odd bunch. We used to joke that whenever you'd get a bunch of musicians together, if they ever went into some cool house, or a store, or a basement, or a bus, or a water tower, or an attic, or a yard, or a barn or really any sort of space, someone would always point out that said space "would be a great place to have shows". Similarly, as musicians discovered the musicality in everyday objects and everyday sounds, it seemed that everything and anything could be recorded and made into 'music'. Field recordings were no longer just the jurisdiction of naturalists and scientists. And it wasn't just the sound of frogs, or insects, suddenly it was melting ice, the beep of a respirator, the sound of drag racing, a zamboni, literally anything. It got to the point where we would hear something, and our first thought would immediately be "wow, if this was a record, we could totally sell a bunch of these".
Back to the odd musicians... composer Arnold Dreyblatt was faced with a serious illness, and went through a series of MRI scans, which stands for magnetic resonance imaging. You know, one of those big machines that a person is loaded into as a huge magnet swings around the body taking pictures, you've definitely seen people getting MRI's on House or Scrubs or St Elsewhere or about a million other hospital shows, and if you've ever had one, you realize it's pretty loud, a thick machinelike buzz. But if you're a musician, odd by nature, then you also think to yourself, as we most likely would, "wow, this machine makes an amazing sound, I need to record it". Which is precisely what Dreyblatt did, but this is not a straight recording, nope. Instead, he made multiple recordings of the machine, at different settings, thus creating different sounds, different tones, and then organized the recordings by pitch and rhythm and various other elements, and created a composition from these MRI recordings, and then used said composition as the sound component for an installation, which took place in a huge, resonant space, which is where this recording was captured.
And it's definitely a gorgeous set of sounds, warm metallic whirrings, pulsing rhythmically, the multiple recordings deftly layered creating fantastic overtones and subtle sonic shifts, from whirring minimal thrum, to dense swirling high end harmonies, the sound is actually remarkably psychedelic, and a little bit spacey, it's not hard to imagine something similar being created by some dude and his suitcase full of ring modulators and effects, but this, this is way more unique, the mechanical source occasionally revealing itself, but quickly disappearing into another layered pulsing cloud of machinedrone dreaminess, or throbbing metallic shimmer, the whole thing so lush and dense and fantastically mesmerizing.
A new somber rock trio has emerged from the Bay Area's shadowy fog featuring three SF metal vets! Though their other musical endeavors are decidedly metal leaning, Old Grandad's Max Barnett and Erik Moggridge along with Chewy Marzolo of Hammers Of Misfortune take Drift Of A Curse in a post rock direction on their debut album. Throughout the album's eight songs, the band smoothly weaves in and out of ominous overcast atmospheres and more fervent tempos. The Wrong Witness commences with "Blink" a number that creeps along at a brooding funereal pace, and things proceed along as such. Very heavy in tone and mood, but by the fourth song "Straits And Narrows" they get far more propulsive - almost poppy even! - with cool multi-part vocals and high sinewy guitars. This comparatively 'up' mood doesn't linger too long though. The very next song is the album's title track and with its subtle spacey effects and gentle gruff vocals it draws everything back down into a forbodingly solemn contemplation. If you dug the dark weathered beauty of Erik's other side project Aerial Ruin, definitely check this out!
Local San Francisco favorites, The Drift, return three years after their stunning Memory Drawings album with a beautiful memorial to their fallen bandmate, trumpeter Jeff Jacobs who succumbed to cancer early this year. Jacobs had given a plaintive exploratory charge to that last album that greatly attributed to its majesty, and Blue Hour shows the band taking a moment to regroup and reflect on the band's core strengths than to venture into strange new territory. Alternating between large rhythm heavy instrumental post-rock explorations and quieter blissed out but melancholic interludes, Blue Hour features all that we love about this group, intricate intertwining melodic passages, a delicate weaving of soft textures and forceful rhythms and that wonderful dynamic sense of floating and being propelled forward by hidden but benign forces. Quite Beautiful!
This 6 track collection from Tarentel co-founder Danny Grodinski's side band, The Drift, culls together four tracks and two remixes (by Four Tet and Sybarite) from various vinyl only releases recorded between 2004-2007. While similar Chicago-style post-rock influences have been present in both bands, The Drift trades on tightness and jazz-inflected precision (due mainly to Rich Douthit's frenetic drumming) that is reminiscent of The Necks, Can, and This Heat. Like their previous full length, Noumena, six tracks cover a lot of time, nearly an hour in length, that never drags but soars swiftly through atmospheres of propulsive kineticism. Wonderful!
On their second full length outing, Memory Drawings, The Drift engage in an even larger oceanic expanse of sound than before. Incorporating blurry hints of dub, Afrobeat, and free-jazz without straying too far from their post-rock dynamic roots, the songs slowly pulsate and bleed, building subtle layers of guitar and piano patterns, kinetic drumming and majestic horn-playing that soars high like a bird over choppy waters. Like The Necks or Circle's more organic recordings (Miljard or Tower), Memory Drawings is best experienced as a whole rather than a collection of individual pieces. In this sense the title is appropriate. Artist Colter Jacobsen who did the cover art, draws pictures from photographs then re-draws the same drawing from memory, letting subtle deviations through mental assumptions to occur and perpetually alter the drawing process. The Drift approach their process similarly, starting with a base musical template that subtly shifts and alters in dynamics as the pieces progress, sounding similar on the surface but never quite the same. Lovely.
This SF quartet gets things rolling on their first album Noumena, introducing themselves with some moody, brassy horn abstractions that settle into a more straight-forward Chicago-style post-rock affair. While as we mentioned this is the band's debut full length release, the bandmembers are certainly not newcomers and their experience definitely shows in these dynamic compositions. Drummer Rich Douthit plays in Halifax Pier and guitar and keyboard player Danny Grody is also a member of Tarentel. In fact this band started out as a side project for him and his Tarentel bandmate Trevor Montgomery who then pursued his solo endeavors as Lazarus. Rounding out the line-up are bassist Safa Shoukrai and trumpeteer Jeff Jacobs. Speaking of which, bask leisurely in the warming glow of his trumpet and flugelhorn which take centerstage on the first track "Gardening, Not Architecture". Next up, Shoukrai's cyclical stand-up bass sets the pace for the more groovin' "Invisible Cities". Guitars soon join in, while the horn blasts and some hazy electronic elements add texture and atmosphere. The Drift keep their jazz-inflected sounds varied and movin' right through to the final track. Oh and keep in mind that although there's 'only' six tracks, they sprawl out over the course of 55 minutes.
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Like the rest of the FMN roster, noise and punk have their place in the music of Drill Man, but it's really much more of a pop thing at heart with this band.
This came out a while ago, and for some reason we never reviewed it, but we were listening to it recently, and realized how fucking kick ass these guys were, and figured there were probably some other folks out there who would dig this as well.
SF heavies kicking out some serious skull crushing jams, falling somewhere between the punkish metal bombast of Northwestern groups like Karp and the Melvins, godheadSilo, and any of the heavier hitters from the classic Amphetamine Reptile stable, so you know what that means, relentlessly rocking churning chugging noise rock / punk metal blowouts, huge downtuned riffage, bad ass drumming, howled vox, the band locking into full on burly grooves, about as fierce and furious as it gets, not sure why these guys didn't blow up, never saw them live, but it sounds like they must have slayed, this stuff is dense and dark, loud and intense, frenzied but also right as fuck, with plenty of melodies, and lots of hooks hidden amidst the pound and pummel, fans of any of the above mentioned bands should grab these while they last, got a handful left, and as the band is dead and gone, we might not be able to get more.
Yet another amazing archival release from Medical Records, this one from short lived electro pop / new wave combo Drinking Electricity, who existed for just a couple years at the beginning of the eighties, only releasing a single album and a handful of singles, all of which are collected here. And while the sound is fantastically of its time, it's also so prescient in its foreshadowing of a sound that would resurface in recent years, so much so, that it would be easy to believe this stuff was some new band, mining music's rich minimal wave past. Taut rhythms, angular guitars, sci-fi synths, the sexy but cold and clinical vocals of Anne-Marie Heighway, chugging guitars, spidery melodies, alien effects... Check out "Breakout", which any current retro-wave band would kill for, sinewy and robotic, but laced with strange spacey swirls and some seriously kick ass post punk guitar crunch. Or the group's 'hit' "Discord Dance" with its propulsive rhythm, strange dueling boy/girl vocals, squelchy synths, strangely catchy, but again cold and robotic, minus the strange sing songy vocal refrain. Crazy catchy for sure, think a more stripped down cybernetic / post punk take on Berlin, or Haysi Fantaysee, definitely shades of Gang Of Four, Fad Gadget too, not to mention all the bands trying for something similar now. Hell, Crystal Castles even covered a Drinking Electricity song! But the songs and sound here are pretty unique, even the most spare skittery sprawl of minimal wave is infused with some serious post punk crunch and vice versa.
The record is brimming with spiraling guitars, percolating electronics, lazer gun squiggles, faux horn blurts, playful melodies, quirky vox, hooks galore, some tracks super poppy, others totally tripped out and druggily out there, both of those sides meshing in most cases to create the strange post punk electro pop that DE specialize in, and few since have been able to pull off.
Fantastically packaged, in a super heavy full color gatefold sleeve, with a full color printed insert, loads of rare photos and liner notes, pressed on super thick colored 180 gram vinyl (one record red, the other yellow), and LIMITED TO 650 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
Another list, another batch of mysterious cassette sounds from Root Strata, check out the Father tape elsewhere on this week's list, which arrived alongside this, a clinically titled new release from a group/person called Driphouse, who like Father, we know next to nothing about, other than Root 91 is created from piano, harpsichord and synths, all woven into strangely cosmic sonic experiments, that range from swirling, electronic synthdrones that sounds almost like some crazy soundtrack to an alternate universe's planetarium show, to bizarre robotic electro, cobbled together from short bursts of static, bits of glitch and squelch, all wrapped around plink plonk piano melodies. There's also bleepy Radiophonic Workshop style analog electronic bloopscapes, minimal cinematic synthwave rife with shades of John Carpenter, but deconstructed into something much more abstract, super intense blasts of fuzzy shoegaze new age shimmer, this too peppered with starburst effects and sci-fi squiggles, haunting almost soundtracky sprawls of glitchy synth drones and processed minor key melodies, and some seriously creepy sing songy electro wrapped harpsichord, draped over softly swirling string like shimmer, and sounding a bit like the soundtrack to the unsung Halloween III. Cool, strange stuff for sure.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Housed in a super striking, embossed/debossed J-card, the cassette also strikingly printed white on white.
Up until now, young Olympia, WA pop pup Dennis Driscoll has released only a couple of 7"s, drawing a bunch of indie Oly acclaim, but finally a full length has emerged of his boyish Daniel Johnston / Jad Fair super-lo-fi, fragile, quirky pop. Shy boy odes to
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Start 'em early in pop camp! Forget about all those indie Oly kids feigning prepubescence. Dennis Driscoll is the real thing. Writing and performing these four songs and drawing the record artwork. Charming and super sweet. On clear blue vinyl.
Sometimes it's hard to believe that certain records just go out of print. I mean who would let the Conet Project go out of print, or Souled American, or the Incredible String Band. It's even weirder when the record is not old or obscure. Then it's usually some bureaucratic red tape or major label bullshit that keeps people from hearing some great record. Such is the case with the second, ultimate release from San Diego's Drive Like Jehu, originally released on Interscope in 1994. A record Allan and Andee and Jim and Sadie and Windy and quite possibly the rest of the AQ staff would rank as one of the best rock records ever! Easily as good/important as Slint's Spiderland. For those who don't know, Drive Like Jehu was fronted by John Reis of Rocket From The Crypt (who has now reissued Yank Crime on his own Swami label) and featured vocalist Rick Farr (his rock name, he's also known as Eric Froberg) who later went on with Reis to play in the Hot Snakes. Drive Like Jehu also just happened to have one of the tightest rhythm sections EVER. E V E R! Yank Crime is a tightly wound record of 'post rock' (before post rock meant watered down instrumental indie rock bullshit) with head nodding, repetitive grooves, propulsive, ultra concise drumming, and some of the most inventive guitar playing we've ever heard. All topped off with Farr's distinctive high pitched vocals (familiar to all you folks who dig the Hot Snakes) The songs are looooong and hypnotic but never boring. The band locks into totally intense, static grooves, that can go on for minutes before exploding into mayhemic bursts of controlled fury. So goddamn good. Anyone who likes the Hot Snakes MUST own this record. Drive Like Jehu is like a hyper charged, heavier, more intense and complex, MUCH BETTER Hot Snakes. Anyone who likes Feuhler or Don Cab or Slint or Engine Kid or almost any post rock will discover what all those other comers had been shooting for. This is IT. Trust us. An automatic AQ "record of the week" selection as soon as we heard it was finally being re-released -- with three bonus tracks to boot! ("Bullet Train To Vegas" and "Hand Over Fist" from their Merge label 7", and the original version of "Sinews" from a Cargo/Headhunter compilation.) So even if you have the original you might want to get this reissue for those.
As the new Drive-By Truckers album kicks off, we were struck by what a transformation we thought the band has gone through since their 2004's The Dirty South. Today's DBT bear an uncanny resemblance to Buffalo Tom and old Wilco... or at least on the opening song which is loaded with poppiness. From there the now ten year old band get back into their more familiar lanky Southern bluesy rock a la Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Woman" or Skynyrd's "Gimme Three Steps". Still, the vocals continue to sound a whole lot like those of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy back in his Uncle Tupelo days... many of whose fans have surely found a new fave in DBT... or soon will! So, don't let their jokey name dissuade or mislead you, these guys are serious about their country rock, and they do it up rreeeaaall good on this their seventh full length!
Working in a record store I've learned that records released with merely someone's given name attached -- unless they're very famous -- often tend not to receive as much attention as something released under a more fanciful, made up "group" moniker. Maybe it's that a plain ol' person's name just doesn't fire the imagination. It seems wise that Jeff Mangum was Neutral Milk Hotel, that Chan Marshall calls herself Cat Power, that Campbell Kneale makes music as Birchville Cat Motel (and Black Boned Angel, etc.), and that Tara Burke is Fursaxa, amongst many other examples -- though we're not sure how Malefic recording as Xasthur, where you've got two made up names, fits into this. So, to anyone contemplating a solo project, we'd suggest making up a "band" name for it...
Which is our way of saying, don't ignore this cd, just 'cause it's being presented under the name of Toby Driver. He's actually the main guy from the avant-metal outfit Kayo Dot, whose debut album on John Zorn's Tzadik label has been quite a favorite 'round these parts since it was released in 2003. Heavy and weird and droney and strangely poppy too, all sorts of things we like.
In the L..L..Library Loft is a solo project from Toby, with some help from his friends -- there's eight other musicians credited, a remarkable number of 'em playing the lowly tuning fork, along with other things! Another unusual instrument credit is "remote snare drum". Plus there's a more conventional array of instruments like guitar, bass, piano, violin, cello, drums, trumpet, trombone, etc. That should give you the idea that this shares with Kayo Dot an interesting style of proggy chamber rock experimentation -- indeed, the four, fairly lengthy tracks here are kinda like Kayo Dot with most of the metal removed. Though, the rumbling waves of percussion, guitar distortion, and buried screams on the track "Kandu Vs. Corky (Horrorca)" still hint at Neurosis. But there's also many non-metallic elements here as well -- fragile singing and dark, quietly moody ambience. Definitely a disc worth exploring, especially if you're already a fan of Kayo Dot (or Kayo Dot's earlier formation as Maudlin Of The Well).
And look out for Kayo Dot's new album, just released on Crucial Blast, to be reviewed here next time, hopefully!
The Driving Stupid were naive, silly teenagers from New Jersey who, in the summer of 1966, decided to form a band, drive cross-country to Hollywood and become famous rock stars. Two out of three ain't bad. And apparently they did become minor celebrities on the Sunset Strip -- not from playing shows, but for cruising around always in barefeet and funny hats. They did manage to release one single, a deranged-sounding piece of nonsense called "Horror Asparagus Stories" (original title and sample lyric: "My Mother Was A Big Fat Pig") that quickly sank from sight but probably has been heard on Dr. Demento's show more than once since. The full album they recorded at the time was, not surprisingly, never released -- until now, courtesy of the weirdos over at Sundazed who apparently have nothing better to do. At long last, you can check out The Driving Stupid's complete ouevre of self-admittedly "incredibly stupid" songs (hence their name, actually, which also alluded to their "driving" beat). Such beyond-novelty numbers as "Hide The Lobsters", "The Reality of (Air) Fried Borsk" and "Green Things Have Entered My Skin, Gladys" were goofy garagey proto-punk numbers with some of the absurd humor of The Monks' 1966 "Black Monk Time" but none of their politics or malevolence. Ok, songs like "I'm Gonna Bash Your Brains In" sound scary but it's joke malevolence. All in all, this is assuredly silly stuff, that lives up to at least half of their motto "so stupid, it's fantastic!"
MPEG Download: "Hide The Lobsters" [/audio/drivingstupidhidethe.mp3]
Drizzoletto is a quirky quartet of wonderful Bay Area veteran musicians, namely Ralph Carney, Ted Savarese, Danny Frankel and Ashley Adams. After the joyfully off-kilter first song "Shakin'", things settle into a more conventional (albeit still quite unconventional) country-rootsy tone. Just under a half hour of highly engaging music. Recorded live at KXLU.
MPEG Download: "Shakin'" [/audio/drizzolettoshakin.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Shakin'" [/audio/drizzolettoshakin.m3u]
