Latest from this local one man band, the project of the man behind black metal cassette label Acephale Winter, and one of two new tapes from AW offshoot imprint Psalm 88. This 3 song demo is much more raw and primitive than the last Dunnock - the opening track is a furious blast of old school drum machine driven blackness, swirling and chaotic, the vocals a hellish howl above a backdrop of relentless riffing and machinelike drum churn, still plenty atmospheric for sure, but definitely reminiscent of the old days. As is the second track, which cranks up the distortion to dangerous levels, the sound reaching Japanoise like levels of crumbled distorto-garble, but just the sort of tweaked, twisted shit we love. there must be some riffs, and maybe even drums in there, but it's buried beneath layer upon layer of blurred guitar buzz, and howling, FX drenched vokills, everything bleeding and oozing, into one thick, corrosive, churning morass of bliss black noise, and blissful it is, for all its caustic crunch, it's also warm and woozy, and sort of psychedelic. Even though demos are generally raw versions of finished tracks, we're hoping this is the direction Dunnock is heading, cuz we're digging this like crazy. Then finally, the all too brief demo ends with a brief bit of atmospheric blackness, cinematic, creepy and hauntingly melancholy, a soft swirl of synths beneath more harrowing demonic vokills.
But probably the coolest part of this tape is the B side, which features a spaced out ambient synthscape, INDIVIDUAL TO EACH TAPE, as in Dunnock recorded EIGHTY EIGHT tracks, one for each tape made, with every tape containing its own individual and unique B side!!!!!
LIMITED TO 88 COPIES!!!
Darkness hath descended upon aQ HQ for here we have found ourselves ensnared by a truly abyssal double helping of murky space-themed black metal hurled shrieking from the The Lightless Void. One who has (dis)graced our ears already several times before in the form of one man local BM despair merchant / overlord of Acephale Winter Productions, Dunnock (although joined here by a co-conspirator on electric viola!), and one an entirely new prospect to us: the bleak cosmic terrornaught that is Australia's Intergalactic Holocaust. Dunnock contributes two tracks of in-the-red plodding black metal (along with two dark ambient tracks - one of which even reminds us of some nightmarish reinterpretation of the intro to the Star Trek: The Next Generation theme!), the sort of sound that lurches onto the listener's back, dragging them closer to the dirt with every measure. Lamenting synth pads and barely audible muttered samples drift over the dirge, hazy and surreal. Thematically the tracks both deal with the USA/Soviet Cold War space race - "Jan 28th" regarding the Challenger disaster, and "Kudryavka" the death of Russia's space dog Laika. Intergalactic Holocaust's contributions are comparatively a bit easier on the ear, but no easier on the psyche! Less blown out than Dunnock, and instead murky and expansive - the effect of IH's sound is more ominous, engulfing and maybe a touch Lovecraftian: The drums a forgotten thud in the distance, the guitars seeming to writhe in slow motion like an oily leviathan, the synths and vocals oozing over everything like Burzum gone interstellar. A nightmarish gauntlet through pitch black oxygenless infinity from both artists, and proof perhaps that in space at least some screaming can be heard!
Like a wonderful melding of Spoon (Girls Can Tell) and The Jam (but not Jam & Spoon!), this is the third full-length from this super-sharp Canadian pop duo (their first two were "Smash the Ships and Raise the Beams" and "The Cons and the Pros") with a
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Side one: "Po' Po' Pee Poo" (17:34). Side two: "Po' Po' Pee Poo (version)" (17:43).
We managed to get a small handful of these from a distributor, they're priced super cheap, as the label has since folded, so these are the very last copies we'll ever be able to get, and we have just EIGHT of these...
We tried to find out more about this record, but all we could find online was a bunch of crazy super academic babble that talked about the roots of the Esperanto language, the texts of Borges and Calvino, the art of Dubuffet, heavy metalinguistics, and other stuff that really shed no light at all. But yeah, while this is definitely coming to us from the world of academic sound, the actual SOUND is quite pleasing, the opener is a dark droney, softly rhythmic psychedelic landscape of layered tones, and soft sonic pulsations, swirling effects, and muted glitches, over which a voice in French recites the lyrics, the result a sort of abstract minimal Chain Reaction sort of Portishead, that same rainswept moonlit city downtempo moodiness, the second track sounds a bit more like recent outings by Byetone or Alva Noto, that sort of machinelike electro, but a bit more organic, lots of cinematic tension, cold dark grooves that are surprisingly hypnotic. And so it goes, a series of strangely abstract, and slightly academic groovescapes, a few super abstract, a couple sort of noisy, but for the most part, darkly hypnotic, lushly textured, sonically dense and lushly layered, strangely sultry and weirdly mysterious, a fantastic surprise, that just might be the perfect late night avant academic chill out disc we've ever heard.
We've always had customers askin' for kids music, but there's also always been a dearth of suitably AQ-ilk releases... until now! The recent flood of children's music compilations arrivin' here (so many in fact that we've made a children's section in the store!) has spurred us to ask, "just what does it take to categorize something as 'child worthy'?" Okay, besides the obvious 'no swear words' rule, what other criteria is there? Lots of the recent stuff we've received that's been hailed as kinder-oriented has just been light, bubbly, electronic musicbox-y melodies. Pleasing enough to listen to, but not particularly attention-grabbing nor attention-keeping. What?! Don't the artists think the kids wanna rock too? Really, with the exception of They Might be Giants' Here Are The ABCs album which is both thoroughly educational and engaging, most of the releases seem to be offering sedation rather than stimulation. Hmm, maybe it's the musician-parents' sly way of seeking some respite from their kids' hyperactive behaviour? Well, unlike most of the current pre-school poseurs (wink!), this cd features honest to goodness kids! Duplex is a band whose members' ages range from 3 years old up to 37! Much like TMBG there's some pretty fine pop songwriters in the Duplex camp -- the elder members also play in a number of Vancouver bands (including A.C. Newman's). Ablum is filled with eighteen delightful story songs and singalongs (topics include salad, multiplication, camels, a character called Mr. Slim, and uhh, pooing and peeing). Apparently it's even been accepted for distribution to all of the elementary schools up in Vancouver. How's that for a stamp of approval?
Mutantes producer's album... lotsa strings.
***Mississippi Alert! Mississippi Alert! Mississippi Alert! Mississippi Alert!***
Originally released on Smithsonian Folkways in 1969, Ghetto Reality features songwriter and educator Nancy Dupree as she works with a group of inner-city elementary school kids from Rochester, New York. When she was initially met with resistance to participate by the kids, she dropped the state standardized music curriculum and began to write songs that were more relatable to the keenly aware and grown-up lives the young students were living as well as the various contemporary social issues they were facing. Using piano and tambourine in groovy and soulful numbers, the songs take the form of spirituals and rhyming games, but the content is more modernized as they sing songs about James Brown, civil rights, and building their own self-esteem. This method proved highly successful as the more relatable the song, the better the participation by the kids, and the more they participated, the more the kids realized their natural talents for performing, offering a critical lesson in empowerment. This is an amazing record full of charm (especially cute are the kids imitating James Brown's grunts!) and with really great songs. Fans of Langley Schools Music Project, or that proto-hiphop lp on Smithsonian Folkways, Street And Gangland Rhythms, we listed awhile back, will find lots to love here.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
I'm not sure why I like this so much, but I DO!!... Duran Duran Duran exist in the same plane as Kid606 or Shitmat in some capacity. Taking instantly recognizable songs and ripping them to shreds. Then re-assembling them using super distorted gabber beats and glitched out electronic buzz. This is super crazed digital beat freak break-core constructed from fragments of Yaz and Slayer and various other chunks of popular music detritus. This is the aural version of mainlining coke, or like sticking pop rocks in your ear. Dense and relentless and not at all very dancable, although we all found ourselves at least tapping or bouncing to the imposible beats. Fans of the Kid, Pluxus, Lybithith, Shitmat, and the like will eat this up! Features some truly provocative cover art featuring two nude oil painted men, um...er... frolicking.
Good things most definitely come to those who wait! Those with good memories may recall that I (Jim) had trumpeted about a Sophie Durand & Manu Holterbach album as being one of finest sound art pieces of 2005 alongside the ephemerally beautiful Keith Berry disc The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish. Unfortunately, the label that had released the Durand / Holterbach collaboration had disappeared before any copies could make their way from the label's base of operations in Switzerland. Fortunately, the virtues of vigilance and patience held true, and Aquarius Records can now offer this magnificent recording to our discerning listeners.
The instrument behind what is hopefully the first installment to the Verres Enharmoniques series is a device that modifies the parlor trick of rubbing a wet finger across the rim of a wineglass to produce a continuous harmonic frequency. While the glass harmonica applied this same principle to a series of tuned glass bowls to produce several octaves of those harmonics, Manu Holterbach's invention hooks up four modified wine glasses to four foot pedals which control the water level within the glasses. Thus as water is pumped into the glass or drains out, the harmonic notes ascend and descent correspondingly. Holterbach and his partner Sophie Durand have performed with this instrument for several years now, with renowned sound artist mnortham making the bold claim that their performance was the loudest that he's ever experienced. Considering that their performances are unamplified, mnortham's claim is all the more astounding, but not impossible given that the purity of the frequencies from vibrating glass can rattle inside the human head. In rattling around the human head, these frequencies give the impression of high volumes without the sound pressure of a mountain of Marshall stacks. Durand and Holterbach apply these sounds as deep drones in subtle minimalist compositions with undulating movements and periodic phase patterns that have all of the majesty of LaMonte Young or Phill Niblock.
Sure the record is brilliant, but here's the other selling point: it's out of print and we only got a handful.
On her debut album, Liz Durrett (aka Vic Chesnutt's niece) takes a few steps into the sedated folk pop terrain of her uncle, and a few steps back in time. These songs were written and recorded back in the mid-'90s when she was a teen (she's now well into her 20s), but they ache with a haunting despondence well beyond those years. She enlisted ample help and guidance from family members including ol' Uncle Vic (in the producer's chair) and her grandmother. In a sense, this album serves as a family gathering style clearing away of the old, but not simply to make way for the new. More so, Husk serves to unveil and contrast Durrett's 'then' with her 'now' (a new freshly written and recorded album is on the horizon). Her more folksy numbers are very soft, very wispy, and very Cat Power-ish while the other non-acoustic songs sound not unlike a baby Portishead! Check out the fourth and fifth songs ("Captive" and "BC") for a back to back example of this.
Dare we say that on her newest album, Liz Durrett out 'Cat Power's Chan Marshall? Now, we're by no means taking anything away from Ms Durrett nor are we suggesting that she's a copycat. No, it's just that this album inhabits a very similar territory as, say, the beloved Cat Power album Moon Pix. The reference is a total compliment. she's a great songwriter and a captivating performer in her own right. Oh yeah, and she doesn't sounds anything like her Uncle Vic (Chesnutt) neither! Whew, hope that clears things up and gets us out of any pickles. This is her second full length and it is so absolutely lovely -- a fantastic follow-up to her debut, Husk. Durrett shares her dreamy secrets in hushed pastel tones and delicately lilting folksy phrases. You'll have no choice but to linger a while (or at least for the 37 minute playing time) on this Mezzanine!
There are different sorts of buzz. Especially in black metal, where the buzz is God. Or Satan. High brittle ear shredding buzz. Thick, layered My Bloody Valentine blissed out buzz. Super downtuned SUNNO))) style buzz. In fact, if a band can discover a super unique, totally distinctive sounding buzz, they're halfway there. Everything else will hopefully fall right into place.
The second we threw this tape on, we were floored. What a completely overwhelmingly heavy and strange sounding buzz. Durthang are Swedish and play a plodding slow motion black doom. But the buzz!! Such a gloriously thick and dense sounding guitar tone, sort of blown out and tinny, but with the bass pumped way up so there's this ghostly low end. It's one of those sounds that is so pleasing to our ears, there almost doesn't even need to be any song, just single chord or a single riff churning out that perfect buzz forever and ever.
Thankfully the band back up their divine buzz with some killer songwriting, some super memorable riffs, and some amazing dark depressive atmosphere. An utterly bleak and depressive slab of brilliant slow motion black metal doom. So recommended.
Amigos Em Portugal was originally released in 1983 as an attempt to further extend the Factory Records empire (which spawned the likes of Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio, and later The Happy Mondays). It's curious that the Durutti Column was the band of choice for the Portuguese expansion, as the Durutti Column has always been a beautiful if less than conventional project. For the most part, Amigos Em Portugal is an instrumental album of spindly duets for wintery piano coupled with solo guitar; and the CD reissue also features Dedications for Jacqueline (which may or may not have been a part of the original Amigos album) that does find Durutti Column's Vini Reilly singing his sleepy lullabies sounding an awful lot like Genesis P-Orridge on the PTV album Dreams Less Sweet. Just as the original album has been a difficult to find item for years, the reissue on Kooky is only limited to 1000 copies, surely to be gobbled up quite quickly.
There are those certain records for all of us that just change things when they enter your world. For a few of us here, this 1981 album by Durutti Column is one of those records. An album that showed that music could be sparse and majestic at the same time. D.I.Y., yet and grandiose in how it evokes emotion, memory, longing and desire. The work of Vini Reilly, Durutti Column emerged out of Factory Records yet their sound was something completely of its own world. Merging impeccable guitar playing with subtle drum machines, soft vocals and a golden warmth that makes this one of those albums that makes you melt everytime you put it on.
Pastoral and blissful, LC is filled with both perfect restraint and full on flowing beauty. You can hear how traces of the more blissed out side of Krautrock influenced him, merging that with the stripped down emotional quality of British folk and placing it into a very modern moment. While not an obscure band by any measure, we are still blown away though by how many people who would love Durutti Column have never heard them. And with the reissue of their first two lp's we hope that so many of those folks finally do. We could go on and on listing folks whose music we love and who have undoubtedly been influenced by Durutti Column, and this record in particular: Felt, Fuqugi, Danny Paul Grody, Colleen, James Blackshaw, Ducktails, Fennesz, Manuel, A.R. Kane, My Bloody Valentine, and on and on. One of our favorite records of all time, so if you didn't have this before, now's the time!
Of all of the bands that hailed from Factory Records back in the early '80s, The Durutti Column is the only one that is still active alongside New Order. The Durutti Column is principally the work of guitarist / vocalist Vini Riley with his drum machine and whomever happens to be near the studio when he's recording. After all of those years of releasing his music on Tony Wilson's various permutations of Factory, Riley released Tempus Fugit as the first Durutti Column album on his own label Kookydisc.
A skeletal man with a frail voice, Riley produces an accurate reflection of his own body through his music; however, his albums have always been a bit of a mixed bag. Each album has ill advised excursions into tepid jazz and occasional ambient-lite guitar noodlings. Sure, Durutti Column records might be better off without the obvious (to us) dud tracks, but the same spirit that sends Riley down aesthetic deadends also guides the Durutti Column to some of most personal and beautiful expressions of melancholia in the past 25 years. Tempus Fugit suffers from these same pitfalls, as there's a curious attempt at a grime rhythm track on his oh-so wee drum machine and a strange spacious track with hand-claps and slap-bass lines that goes nowhere, but much of the same gossamer guitar escapades, spectral ambience, and ghostly vocals found on his classic albums LC and The Return of the Durutti Column are still present. That said, if you're new to the Durutti Column, this might not be the best place to start. Those aforementioned albums are far better, but if you've ever fallen under the spell of the Durutti Column in the past, Tempus Fugit has plenty of gems to be discovered.
We've got two great vinyl reissues of the first two lps from Manchester's Durutti Column this week. Despite the title, The Return of The Durutti Column was their debut release from 1980, originally on Factory Records. While the title is tongue in cheek (as was the original album cover, covered in sandpaper so that it would scrape and scuff any record filed next to it), it was truly a return, as by the time they were set to record, the original five piece group enlisted by Factory label boss Tony Wilson had dissolved into sole member, guitarist Vini Reilly. In less capable hands, this might of been devastating, but Vini Reilly, a true alchemist of the electric guitar, could more than hold his own. Working with Martin Hannet, who provided the atmospheric production and synth washes, and a couple of session players, The Return of... is a tour-de-force of warm pastoral instrumentals, soft textures and intricate jazz-like compositional dynamics.
Durutti Column didn't have the typical Factory Records sound associated with bands like A Certain Ratio or Joy Division. In fact, Reilly's interweaving filigree guitar lines and bright chiming tones sounded more like a group that would be on Crepuscule or even 4AD. "Sketch for Summer" is one of the most beautiful openers ever and completely sets the tone for the rest of the album. Sweeping and expansive, yet also introspective and labyrinthian, Reilly conjures beautifully spiraling melodies that glide and wander, sometimes letting themselves get lost in the exploration but never get aimless or muddled. Highly Recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Despite the fact that the Durutti Column has primarily been a solo project for Vini Reilly, the avant-guitarist from Manchester did not start the Durutti Column; in fact he was invited to join the band by Factory Records head honcho Tony Wilson. Yet during the band's first year in existance, all of the members departed except for Reily who shrugged his shoulders and kept on going. One has to wonder if Reilly under different circumstances would have named his project The Durutti Column, which was inspired by the Spanish Civil War anarchist Buenaventura Durutti and a Situationists Internationale comic strip from the '60s. The themes found in the Durutti Column's music are far more painterly, poetic, and delicate than the semantic disruptions and political chaos that the name suggests.
The Return of the Durutti Column was actually the debut album for Reilly and producer extraordinaire Martin Hannett who was instrumental in shaping Durutti Column's minimalist rock atmospheres and wintery moods. Durutti Column was perhaps the only band on Factory which has never been accused of being a Joy Division clone, which makes sense upon listening to the delicate guitar playing cast in a snowstorm of reverb. Originally conceived as an instrumental album, the cd reissue of The Return of the Durutti Column adds a couple of tracks including Reilly's touching tribute to Ian Curtis entitled "Lips That Would Kiss" and a guest appearance from Clock DVA's Jeremy Kerr. Without Durutti Column's beautiful music, there would be no Bark Psychosis, no Labradford, and no Sigur Ros. Seriously.
Introducing Ian Dury's son! Now, if you're expecting him to follow down a similar path of fiery, wry Cockney punk as that of his father, think again! Right from the get go, his debut full length instead reveals some strong psych and pretty pop leanings bringing to mind a gentle gathering of Mercury Rev and Belle & Sebastian. Very soft, poetic and wistful, but also very detailed and lushly produced. There's some truly gorgeous misty moments and great pop songs on Len Parrot's Memorial Lift. Positively dreamy.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Rather surprisingly, vinyl of this was one of this year's Record Store Day releases. Wish we still had 'em but we sold all the copies we could get already. However, they also reissued it, as a two-for-one disc, on cd, and not being a RSD release we were able to get some of those to list. We've had reissues of both Dust albums before, most recently as rather expensive Repertoire imports, so here's the reviews of both of these proto-metal essentials.
For those who need to know: the American hard rock trio known as Dust are another of those legendary early '70s bands that get mentioned in the same breath with heavies like Captain Beyond, Sir Lord Baltimore, The James Gang, Bang, Stray, Leafhound, Highway Robbery, and the like. They cut two excellent lps of late-psychedelic-era proto-metal back in '71 and '72. Of their two albums, the first, self-titled one is swampier, with a lot of slide and country/southern rock moves on tracks like "Stone Woman" and "Chasin' Ladies". But then there's the lugubrious and weighty 10-minute epic "From A Dry Camel", and conversely, the gentle acoustic dreaminess of "Often Shadows Felt". Mostly, though, the album kicks ass with uptempo hard rockers, including the ripping, rollicking instrumental "Loose Goose" that closes the album quite frenetically.
Following that is 1972's Hard Attack, generally considered the harder of Dust's two albums, the more metal. Though that may be in part 'cause of the awesome Frank Frazetta cover painting, and album title! But perhaps it is somewhat more Sabbathian. "Downer rock" they called it back then (we're told). Their song "Suicide" (the penultimate track on side 2 of the original vinyl) - whooah, that could be Pentagram! That song alone makes this an essential purchase for any true doom/psych fan. It's an all time classic.
But it's not all doom n' gloom n' barbarians - Hard Attack has its lighter side, but unlike a lot of their peers, the poppier and/or less rockin' stuff Dust do here is actually really great. Sure, a song like "Thusly Spoken" features strings and a Beatlesy melody, but the lyrics still name-check Satan and speak of dancing demons. Lush, gorgeous downer-pop that sets you up to be crushed by the following, urgently hard-rockin' track "Learning To Die". They do that throughout the album, alternating gentle - even acoustic - numbers with the proggy proto-metal workouts that the headbangers of 1972 must have loved.
It's hard to understand why Dust didn't "make" it, as this stuff is certainly the equal of big sellers from their era by Deep Purple or Uriah Heep. Great singing, riffs, melodies, and that "feel" - it's all here.
We mentioned Pentagram above - if you've got that Relapse anthology of Pentagram's original seventies recordings, First Daze Here, you should definitely check out the work of Dust, who were both contemporaries of, and an influence on, the Ram's Head boys. Yes, Dust are an important name on the list of forgotten but godlike '70s hard rock bands that make today's so-called stoner rockers sound like punk/grunge wanna-bes. In a word (again): classic. Too bad you'll never hear 'em on your local "classic rock" radio station...
Oh, and Dust featured the future Marky Ramone on drums, by the way, before he decided punk was the way to go (or even had that option).
This remastered reissue sports its own new cover design, but inside the thick cd booklet there's smaller versions of the original album art, plus lots of vintage photos, and plenty of liner notes (including some from Marky), etc.
Of Dust's two albums, this 1972 LP is considered the harder of the two, the more metal, the somewhat more Sabbathian. "Downer rock" they called it back then (we're told). Their song "Suicide" (track 9) -- whooah, that could be Pentagram! This track alone makes this an essential purchase for any true doom/psych fan. It's an all time classic. Between that and the awesome Frank Frazetta cover painting, what more could you want?
But it's not all doom n' gloom n' barbarians -- "Hard Attack" has its lighter side, but unlike a lot of their peers, the poppier and/or less rockin' stuff Dust do is actually really great. Sure, a song like "Thusly Spoken" features strings and a Beatlesy melody, but the lyrics still name-check Satan and speak of dancing demons. Lush, gorgeous downer-pop that sets you up to be crushed by the following, urgently hard-rockin' track "Learning To Die". They do that throughout the album, alternating gentle -- even acoustic -- numbers with the proto-metal workouts that the headbangers of 1972 must have loved.
It's hard to understand why Dust didn't "make" it, as this stuff is certainly the equal of big sellers from their era by Deep Purple or Uriah Heep. Great singing, riffs, melodies, and that "feel" -- it's all here.
We mentioned Pentagram above -- if you bought that awesome Relapse label anthology of Pentagram's original seventies recordings that we recommended a few lists back, you should definitely check out the work of Dust, who were both contemporaries of and an influence on the Ram's Head boys. Dust are an important name on the list of forgotten but godlike '70s hard rock bands that make today's so-called stoner rockers sound like punk wanna-bes (bands like Lucifer's Friend, Highway Robbery, Orang-utan, Toad, Budgie, Sir Lord Baltimore, Captain Beyond, Leafhound, etc.). In a word (again): classic. Too bad you'll never hear 'em on your local "classic rock" radio station...
Not a new release, but listed for the first time 'cause we love it: The American hard rock trio known as Dust are another of those legendary early '70s bands that get mentioned in the same breath with heavies like Captain Beyond, Sir Lord Baltimore, The James Gang, Bang, and the like. They cut two excellent LPs of late-psychedelic-era proto-metal back in '71 and '72. This the first, self-titled one, and of their two albums, this one's swampier, with a lot of slide and country/southern rock moves on tracks like "Stone Woman" and "Chasin' Ladies". But then there's the lugubrious and weighty 10-minute epic "From A Dry Camel" and the gentle acoustic dreaminess of "Often Shadows Felt". Mostly, though, the album kicks ass with uptempo hard rockers. Maybe they could be considered the American version of Nazareth (with vocals somewhat less soaked in whiskey). What we're saying is: pretty great!
Dust features the future Marky Ramone on drums, by the way, before he decided punk was the way to go.
Is Duster from the San Joaquin Valley? I'm not too sure, but they really could be the mope-rock, dressed-in-black distant cousins of Grandaddy. The lackadaisical indie strum of Grandaddy does certainly play a part in Duster's "Contemporary Movement," but Duster also incorporates the high tension atmospheres from driving percussive rhythms and minor chord chugs not unlike the classic Factory sounds of Joy Division, Crispy Ambulance, and the Abecedarians. But balanced with a warm and fuzzy, low-fi home recorded, strummy, breathy, whispery sort of Pavement-on-codeine. This may be the perfect lonely, late night slowcore sad-rock(read 'goth'?) that the emo kids and the Slinty people have been waiting for.
Another one of them 'supergroups', this one featuring members and ex-members of Witch, Earthless, Golden Void, Annihilation Time, Lecherous Gaze, 27, and The Ruffians! With a cover by Alan Forbes (so you'd almost think it was on his label Valley King). Definitely in the ballpark of Valley King stuff like the recent Feral Ohms. Rock!!
Isaiah Mitchell of Earthless, etc. puts down his guitar to just do vocals, but there's two other guitarists on here to provide plenty of axe umph, don't worry. Consequently, like Mitchell's Golden Void, the two songs on this 45 are very "classic" sounding with long haired '70s influences, these punks doing their best to make music like their dads would have done if they were in bands back then, as perhaps indeed some of their dads were.
New duo comprised of Vivian Trimble (formerly of Luscious Jackson) and Josephine Wiggs (formerly of the Breeders). "A synthesis of elegance and groove"... their words not ours. Quite simply this sounds like music from some 70's tv movie love scene starring Suzanne Somers, as performed by a very stoned Luscious Jackson. Easy listening, dinner music with a faux tropicalia feel. They do get points for including a song sung by Emmylou Harris though. Andee says this is a seventies female version of New Wet Kojak's 'I'm so sexy and dangerous' bullshit rock. See NWK review in AQ list #91.
We got some olde style banjo storytelling here! It's sparse and earnest. Sort of dark and damaged, maybe even drunken. It's rythmically spastic, melodically sour. The vocals are atonal and a little out of rhythm, but absolutely endearing. A musical saw sweetens things up on "Nymph Du Prairie". This album's totally awesome! Features Al's brother, Andy Duvall (formerly of Zen Guerilla) on percussion.
This is the very first we've heard from the oddly monikered DVVLLXNS (pronounced "Vallens", we think), which in fact is the new project from Jon Porras, one half of doomdrone duo Barn Owl. Originally releases as a download, LXTVNY is only now getting a proper release. As we mentioned in our recent review of Porras' latest solo album Orilla Oscura, as much as the various Barn Owl related projects and records push past Barn Owl's twang flecked ambient drone sound, they all still share a similar sound and vibe, something that Porras was aware of when he conceived off DVVLLXNS, which still shares the same vibe, it's dark and psychedelic, it's most definitely a whole different beast. When we first got these in, we joked about the very witch house-y logo that adorns the cover, but once we threw it on, we realized that maybe that cover is sort of appropriate, cuz the sound on LXTVNY is actually kind of witch housey to these ears, murky and swirling and psychedelic, lots of processed voices, programed beats, the opener is all skittery drum machines, and ethereal vocals molded into psychedelic swirls, stuttering loops, the result is sort of dance-y, but more sort of hazy and rhythmic, certainly super shoegazey, the whole thing ethereal and ghostly and fantastically washed out and shimmery. The second track adds some dubbiness to the equation, the beats fading in and then out, over which soft swirling shimmering swells drift dreamily, before the rhythm resurfaces and the song is transformed into a weird sort of witch-kraut groove, again crafted from more distorted voices and a pulsing beat, before splintering into an abstract drift of echo drenched sonic fragments.
The flipside starts out all haunting and dramatic, a blurred slo-mo chamber music almost, super minimal and Caretaker-y, a buried heatbeat like pulse beneath the soft psychedelic swirls, before an oscillating synth melody swoops in, the sound blurring into some super minimal Kompakt style Pop Ambience, and then finally, the record finishes off with a woozy cascade of arpeggiated synths, wreathed in tinkling music box melodies and a thick ominous low end drone, the sound super cinematic and sinister, when the beat comes in, it's less a beat, and more a sort of rhythmic filigree, swooping hard from speaker to speaker, wreathed in gauzy hiss, leaving a crackling contrail draped over the percolating synths beneath, fans of all that Carpenter / Goblin worship, will dig this track especially.
As much as we love the sound of Barn Owl, and Porras' various side projects, we're digging this new direction a LOT, and we probably say this every time, but this might be our favorite Porras recording yet!
Eccentric outsider doom metal from the '80s, from waaaaaay down underground. Now hold up, if the words "doom" or "metal" make you think, not for me, think again (maybe). This isn't like any metal you've ever heard, really. More like spaced out '60s heavy psychedelic guitar rock (one song's called "Heavy Vibrations", man), overloaded also with shrill synth symphonics and trippy effects... That's where the "outsider" tag comes in, Dwarr being a one-man band, all the work of South Carolina multi-instrumentalist (but especially guitar!) Duane Warr (hence the name Dwarr), whom we get the impression is quite a character. It's so DIY that the cds have his phone number on 'em, in case you want to get in touch. His privately pressed music comes off like a cough-syrup dosed mixture of Black Sabbath and Todd Tamanend Clark (whom you should know from the double cd anthology we raved about a few years ago). Or, The Happy Dragon Band playing Pink Floyd, from beyond the grave. Maybe a lo-fi Captain Beyond, on even more drugs than Captain Beyond were ever on. Or imagine if Bobb Trimble was an '80s metaller, perhaps (and worked out in the gym a lot more?). Sorry to use so many almost equally obscure references, but it's hard to compare this confusional beast to anything else.
Look at that insane cover painting, a surreal post-apocalyptic landscape (that's a malevolent-looking Statue of Liberty sunken in polluted looking water next to a cave populated by long-haired, skull-faced cannibalistic mutants, with an avatar of Dwarr himself, we're guessing, striking a heroic he-man pose in the upper right hand corner). The music itself is as surreal and apocalyptic and ridiculous as that image, matching up to it much more than most other "metal" albums ever match up to their cover art, both in subject matter and, ah, execution.
Just from the cover painting, let alone the music, this Dwarr album is SO perfectly Aquarius, you'd almost think we made it up. But no, Dwarr's for real, something we'd vaguely heard tell of and been curious about for years, and finally went to the trouble of tracking down (not so hard, thanks to the Internet, now that everybody and their grandmother's bands are on MySpace). And lo and behold, it turned out Dwarr had issued ALL four of his albums (two from the '80s, two from the '00s, believe it or not!) on compact disc. So we had to get a bunch of this one, his second, from 1986, probably his best and "heaviest". A Record Of The Week, easy.
There's 13 tracks, each one incredible (or incredibly strange). There's nothing that's NOT freaked out about this. Even the poppiest songs (like the title track "Animals") are full of sluggish grooves, druggy lyrics, buzzing electronics, melodic stoned vocals, acid rock guitar (and acid WTF synth). Elsewhere it gets away from rock/metal song structure entirely, with interludes of eerie atmospherics, spacey soundscapes overlaid with ominous whispered declamations, and weirdass instrumentals, like the squirrelly, proggy bombast of "Chocolate Mescalyne", a track that if you sped it up a lot would almost fit in on a Orthrelm album.
And then there's the DOOM. Oh yeah, while it's not "normal" doom it IS doom. Sludgy, Sabbath-riffed doom indeed, despite the trebly production. "Ghost Lover", for instance, gives us the feel of both the Sabs' "Iron Man" and "Electric Funeral", and Duane's vocals are particularly Ozzy-ish on the uber-heavy "Evil Lures" too... Great stuff if you really really appreciate the stranger, more psychedelic aspects of true doom artistry, the spirit is HERE.
Three cheers for avant garde new wave downer rock hippie heavy metal weirdness! That gives special thanks "to the Columbia High School Band for the use of their percussion instruments". We are so pleased to play a role in sharing this culter than cult classic with you, which by the way comes in fairly no-frills packaging, the cd in a thin cardboard sleeve with full-color album art front and back but no lyrics, liner notes, nothin' like that. It's pretty cheap though. Not that you should need any further incentive to pick this up, after reading our ravings above...
Gotta give it up to the folks at Drag City, they're (weird) music lovers after our own hearts, all right. Not only did they reissue the eccentric 1986 outsider "doom" "metal" "masterpiece", Animals, by one-man-band Duane Warr aka Dwarr (an album that we at aQuarius had previously made a Record Of The Week, back when we were ordering an earlier, self-released cd version directly from Dwarr himself, we might add), they have now reissued that album's predecessor, 1984's privately pressed Starting Over - which, despite its title, was in fact Dwarr's debut. Thereby proving that they didn't just put out Animals for a lark! They're serious about their love for Dwarr, and really think people should hear his stuff - and people should, we agree. Maybe not all people, but certainly people who appreciate the finer things in, well, wacked out, downer DIY psychedelia, occasionally dosed with Eddie Van Halen style guitar shred. It's the '60s in the '80s, the dark sides of both decades distilled down to a unique, entertainingly demented essence. And not just entertaining, but truly affecting.
Now, we hope you already have Animals (go read our rave review of that right now, if you haven't!). If you do have it, we probably only need say you want this too. If you don't, well, while we would have to say Animals is the #1 best Dwarr, this one comes close, certainly possessing a similar vibe, and since it was the man's first album, there's no reason not to start with it if you wish to delve into the weird world of Dwarr. In fact, depending on your inclinations, this one might just be a bit more accessible, as it's not so overtly metallic, but perhaps even more sparse and psychedelic (if possible). Super slow but for the soloing. Black Sabbath is perhaps less of an influence on this one, than Pink Floyd... Or at least, rather than riff monsters like "Iron Man" and "Electric Funeral", this one takes its cues from the mellower, pot-wreathed Sabbath numbers like "Solitude" and "Planet Caravan". This is a gentler, folkier Dwarr, sort of. But definitely druggy and proggy (like Captain Beyond, circa Sufficiently Breathless), very odd and home-brewed, and certainly sometimes heavy too. Well, always "heavy", maaaann.
The songs are moody and melancholic, with hushed, woeful vocals. The production is lo-fi, of course, with tinny, trebly guitars indulging in widdly, effect-drenched soloing. Heck, there's a gnarly two-minute instrumental called "Christmas Shopping" that sounds like something Mick Barr might do, overdosed on cough syrup! Or anyone remember the '90s Mexican prog/psych band Humus? Probably not, but it totally could be them. And is that a genius song title or what? We also like "Lonely Ecstasy" as a title, that's another one here. Well, he's got a lot of interesting ideas, that Dwarr. And, as with Animals, this has an amazing piece of album cover artwork, to match the music in outsidery strangeness.
Along with Sabbath and Floyd, another "ordinary" comparison we could make would be to, maybe, solo Steve Hillage in the '70s. And Hendrix is a likely influence (Dwarr's vocals on "I've Been Thinking" kinda remind us of Jimi). Uli Jon Roth's solo stuff, too?? But given an even more eccentric, living-in-his-mother's-basement makeover. Then there's the pantheon of other outsiders we love, with whom Dwarr totally belongs... Michael Yonkers, Bobb Trimble, Todd Tamanend Clark, and more recently, and possibly more precisely too due to the doom metal element, Tony Tears.
Ok, enough said really. Either we've piqued your interest, or your life will stay sadly Dwarr-free. And again, if you're already a fan, you'll want this for sure!
Hmmm. Maybe 25 years from now Drag City will be reissuing Fastest albums too...
From looking at the cover you'd be forgiven for thinking the Dwarves were back, and back to their dirty old tricks. Three naked and greased up women on their knees in front of a crucified dwarf. Old times. But once you throw the record on, you may be thrown for a loop. Side one is a straight up, bouncy pop punk number, like the Dwarves with an MTV makeover. But the big surprise is on side 2, where the Dwarves indulge in something like a techno-grunge My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult meets the Warlock Pinchers electro clash. Weird.
Blag, He Who, and the gang are back and on Epitaph. And, it's no joke, these bad boys are now fully year-2000 compliant, incorporating electronica & big beat sounds into their pop-punk blast. (Poppier punk than before, too. They're working all the angles it seems.) And it works. Surprisingly good for a band who we thought peaked years ago. However, this record may disappoint diehard Dwarves fans, no tooling for warm teabags on this one, although plenty of cocaine and sex with 14 year old girls.
Let's be honest. The Dwarves ARE dead. At least in terms of musical ferocity and downright punk rock snarl. Sure, their record covers still rule, with photgrapher Michael Levine continuing his Dwarves winning streak with even more sweaty dirty naked ladies. No dead rabbit this time, but a crucified dwarf and of course said dwarf in the shower with those same dirty sweaty naked ladies probably makes up for that. And yeah the band photos are still unflattering and feature at least one member baring it all. But in a million years you would never know this was the Dwarves. This is so far removed from classic Dwarves records like Blood, Guts and Pussy or Tooling For A Warm Teabag. Could this possibly be the same band that wrote the absolute punk rock anthems "Fuck You Up And Get High" and "Drug Store"? Well it could and it is. Obviously those of you who are punk rock Dwarves diehards will most likely be disappointed, but adventurous folks looking for a goofy punky occasionally electronic (!) POP record might actually dig this. You heard us. This is a pop record. Through and through. Think the Ramones at their absolute poppiest. Sure there are snotty growled vocals, but more often than not, there is actual singing, poppy hooks, programmed drum beats, harmony background vocals, weird surf guitar, unlikely hip hop/nu-metal (!), and occasional almost Ministry-ish blasts of industrial swagger. It may seem that we're slagging it, and we sort of want to since Blood, Guts and Pussy was so PERFECT and still occupies such a special place in our punk rock hearts, but honestly, this record is pretty goofy and fun and really kinda good. And the more we listen to The Dwarves Must Die, the less we want them to.
We don't always get everything that stoner rock specialists Small Stone put out, but the stuff that we do, is always really good. Case in point, this new disc from a trio we'd never heard of before, Dwellers. We're guessing there's some sort of Lovecraftian connotation to their name, though the ropy intestines / psychedelic tentacles in the portrait painting of the band on the cover are presumably referencing the album title too, but not in a gross way. Anyway, Dwellers are a heavy duty stoner metal band from Salt Lake City, with some grunge going on, the vocals in particular definitely giving it a bit of that old school Seattle vibe.
Actually, after getting this Dwellers in, and digging it, we realized that while we hadn't known who they were, we HAD reviewed, and really liked, an album by the singer/guitarist's previous band, Iota, also on Small Stone. These lines from our review of Iota's Tales pretty much also apply to Dwellers' debut: "A mixture of trippy Hawkwindiness and more aggressive blues based hard rockin', sorta like (early) Soundgarden or Skin Yard meets the heavier, more spaced out sounds of Sons Of Otis or UFOmammut. One reason we mention Soundgarden and Skin Yard is 'cause of the grungy melodic vocals, which bear a certain resemblance to that of those bands, but otherwise this is HEAVIER and SPACIER than any Seattle grunge for sure."
So, sweet. Dwellers definitely continue to a large degree in that Iota tradition, these six tracks being damn heavy, fuzzed-out, and graced with the gruff, drawling, grunge-worthy vox of Iota's Joey Toscano (the rhythm section here having their own pedigree, being from the band Subrosa). Maybe in comparison to Iota there's something a little bit earthier, and even bluesier, to these jams, which while they can get lengthy (up to ten minutes), don't orbit quite as far out in space as some of Iota's more extended, alien assaults. Instead, there's a greater focus on, say, Southern-fried slide guitar in service of Dwellers' gritty rockin'. There's slowburn builds ("Old Honey") and catchy groovers ("Lightening Ritual"), Good Morning Harakiri sometimes stompin', and sometimes spaced out, with lots of loping riffage and raspy holler. Maybe imagine a much more succinct Earthless, gone grunge? Dead Meadow channelling some Alice In Chains? CoC circa Blind, playing the blues?? Ah, we're not quite getting it right. But anyway, if you're into the stoner rock stuff and want a good dose (of something a bit different, but still familiar), give this a listen! Recommended.
By the way, we like how this album, despite being on cd, is obviously sequenced with a Side One / Side Two concept in mind, the tracklist on the back cover making this obvious with a gap between tracks 3 and 4.
Stellar 2nd album from Salt Lake City psychedelic stoners Dwellers - whom our Andee just got to see play live when they opened for A Minor Forest's tour stop in their town. He says they were GREAT, which we'd have expected since we liked their first album, and this one too. Compared to the debut, this new one seems a bit more mellowed out, at first anyway, but really it runs the gamut, from dusky balladry to heavy jams (often delivering both at the same time), getting especially epic on numbers like "Rare Eagle" and album-closer "Call Of The Hallowed Horn". Loping and bluesy, with a bit of a down home, Southern feel, this pure good heavy, hazy music from a trio that knows what they're doin', employing (besides guitars, bass and drums) such additional instruments as cello, organ, and Rhodes piano, along with "real" singing for sure... previously we'd mentioned how the vocals made us think of some good old Seattle grunge, now that comparison could resolve into a more specific Mark Lanegan reference. Recommended! FYI, vinyl version due in July.
First release on a new label, co-conspirators as it were with long time aQ faves Paradigms, whose roster, as most aQ peeps know by now is a truly esoteric collection of metal, psych and drone: Hjarnidaudi, Titan, Utlagr, Amber Asylum, The Angelic Process, Wraiths, Ondo, Gnaw Their Tongues. But as Paradigms seems to be moving away from the metal side of things, it makes perfect sense that they would team up with a label that specializes in "jet black cutting edge extreme metal esoterica".
And thus we have Eichenwald Industries, who in some strange way do compliment the wide ranging Paradigms catalog, and with two new releases, show a surprising amount of breadth themselves.�
Elsewhere on this list you'll find the epic occult psychedelic doom metal of The Wounded Kings, while this right here is the debut release from Dwellers Of The Twilight, a French duo who channel the hateful blackness of groups like Anaal Nathrakh and Carpathian Forest (the bands that the label references), but also plenty of super clinical heaviness a la countrymen Blut Aus Nord, as well as a bit of that classic Scandinavian sound, we hear a lot of 1349 in the mix actually, with the impossibly furious drumming (programmed not played) and lightning fast riffing. The production is super tight and polished, the sound is massive and heavy, the band shift effortlessly from blazing blasts of black, to lurching doomy grooves, to long blown out guitardrones, to crushing megadoom, the fast bits rife with fucked up mathy twists and turns, the slow parts peppered with dissonant chords and woozy Deathspell like arrangements, and while there are plenty of experimental flourishes, the trippy ambient guitar buzz of the record's closer, the awesome stretch of murky muted full band rocking closing out "Domus Mundi", the abstract guitar drone dirge of the title track, as a whole, this is less experimental, and more a fierce and furious head shearing super technical black metal blast from below. Way recommended, for fans of any of the above mentioned bands, and pretty much anyone into the classic sounds of both French and Norwegian style buzzing blackness.
When we reviewed the Gnod record Dwellings & Druss a while back, at the time we didn't realize that Dwellings was in fact an entirely separate project. We described that record as diverting from the group's usual psychedelic space rock heaviness and into a twisted dark strain of electronica, which makes sense when you realize Dwellings is in fact the name used by the bass player of Gnod, when he's making, yup, you guessed it, twisted electronic music, which is exactly what you'll find here. Shouldn't be too much of a surprise as a handful of the recent Trensmat releases seem to have been exploring a sound well removed from what had become a sort o 'Trensmat' sound. Here, Gnod's bass player weaves a dense landscape of minimal Kompakt percolations, swirling stuttery rhythmic skitter, that explodes into driving, pulsing, noisy, psychedelic electronica, wild tangles of beats, swirling atmospheres, buried heavily reverbed vocals, looped melodic fragments, the opening track begins sort of chaotic, but for the last few minutes locks into a seriously tranced out, murky hypno-groove, that we kinda wish would go on forever. "Drone Invasion" follows a similar pattern, starting out more rhythmic, but gradually, the surrounding sounds building to a dense pulsing drone, blown out and super distorted. "Holographic Mirror" is a lot more skeletal and brittle, super mesmeric and hypnotic, but the final track, "Wave Propagation", is a dark pulsating gem, sounding like Vatican Shadow crossed with some dark Kompakt jam, thick swaths of swirling low end, skittery beats, minor key melodies, all blurred into a murky, moody, motorik haze. So good.
Includes a link to download the whole record, as well as a 17 minute bonus track not on the lp! Already sold out at the label, when we run out, not sure we can get more, but if we can, it might take a little while, so act fast, or be prepared to be patient...
Everyone's always trying to be more extreme, whether it's ass piercing, eye gouging or penis splitting, bungee surfing or rollerblading or in-line vert bio para-gravi-sailing. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of heavy metal. Every band, in every interview and every article, claim to be the heaviest and most extreme. And for the most part, they never are. But Dying Fetus -- they actually stand a chance. And having recently witnessed them live, I have to say that so far they've got my vote. Super blazing fast, impossibly complicated and convoluted songs that somehow manage to be kind of catchy, as well as being maybe the tightest band I've heard in forever. And absolutely the most unbelievable drummer I have ever seen. So fast, I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it, and still managing to hit really hard! The record doesn't quite do them justice (the main problem being a snare drum that sounds sort of like 'doink', kind of losing some of its power) But other than that, this record is fucking awesome, super heavy and totally essential.
