Perhaps you've already come across the cover of this album, it's one of those classic kitschy covers, two innocent looking teens, in cheesy white jumpsuits, unzipped in the front, with huge collars, one of the guys wielding a guitar, both looking pretty earnest and heartfelt. The record's called Dreamin' Wild, which is printed in bubbly red letters. We had seen this pop up on best/worst album covers lists forever, and like most everyone else, we had a chuckle and forgot all about it. But then we started hearing about this song called "Baby", most notably covered by weirdo outsider pop nerd Ariel Pink (the 12" of which we just got in today!), originally recorded by a couple kids named Donnie & Joe Emerson, and holy shit, we suddenly made the connection. We assumed the original version of "Baby" must suck, and Ariel Pink just took a crappy cheesy old song and weirded it up and made it warped and catchy, but instead, it turns out, the original just might be THEE coolest jam we'd heard in ages. Then we learned that Light In The Attic was gonna give this lost gem a proper reissue and we were pretty excited, even before we learned about the record's crazy backstory.
Apparently Donnie and Joe were raised in the middle of nowhere somewhere in Washington state, lived and worked on a farm, when their dad, after making them promise to focus on writing and recording original material, took a second mortgage out on the farm and built his sons a recording studio filled with amazing equipment, spending more than $100K! But that's not all, he also built them a THREE HUNDRED SEAT venue, complete with stage, ticket booth AND snack bar. As you might imagine, those 300 seats were never filled, and while the boys toiled diligently on their original music, even being featured in a local news special, all culminating in their dad paying to release the original version of this record, a selfless act that ended up causing the family to lose a significant amount of their farm when the record failed to sell. And thus, very little was heard from these boys, until now.
And while these days pretty much any old unknown record can be dug up and presented as some sort of lost treasure, very few deserve the accolades bestowed upon them, and even fewer fulfill the promise of crazy album covers and over the top backstories like Dreamin' Wild.
Really, just check out "Baby", somewhere between the sweet soulful shimmer of Shuggie Otis and the dreamy reverby pop of Roy Orbison, it's lush and lovely, the sort of mix tape killer that had we heard it before would definitely have featured prominently in past courtships. And while we're tempted to say, that it's worth the price of admission for that track alone, there's so much more to dig here, the wah guitar disco funk groove of "Feels Like The Sun", the classic rocking bass heavy buzz of "Good Time", the old school soulful smolder of "Give Me The Chance", the psychedelic yacht rock balladry of "My Heart" which manages to sound fantastically droney and druggy and dreamy, and makes it obvious just what had Ariel Pink so smitten. The record is rife with reverbed psychedelic guitars, lush vocal harmonies, ingenious arrangements, and some KILLER tunes, all cooked up by two teens in a basement studio on a farm in the middle of nowhere. So awesome!
Includes a massive booklet with extensive liner notes and tons of pix. And check out this mini-documentary on Donnie and Joe: http://vimeo.com/39424998#at=0
FYI vinyl lovers, this is on lp too, we've got a few but not enough to list, our supplier just happened to be out this week, but we should get some more soon!
Everyone here fell in love with Dreamin' Wild, a rediscovered pop gem from 1979, we made a Record Of The Week a couple years ago. The story of two teenage farm boys from rural Washington dreaming of making it big and the family who believed in them so much that they took out a second mortgage on their farm so their sons could build a studio and release records was as compelling as their music. The fact that their goals for success ultimately eluded them, only gives their music with its heartfelt earnestness, a deeper weight. But now their past efforts have finally gained the Emerson brothers some attention and with that, a discovery of more recordings made after the recording of Dreamin' Wild. All in all the brothers recorded over 70 tracks in that home studio, mainly led by Donnie's ambitions not to give up on his dreams of becoming a successful musician even after their sole record failed, while Joe turned more of his attentions to taking over the farm his family started and nearly lost.
Still Dreamin' Wild is less cohesive in form than its predecessor, mainly because the tracks jump various genres from power pop and new wave to synth balladry and soft rock. While there are some great jams like the opener, "Don't Fight" with its pulsating beat and haunting harmonies that we could see bands like Ariel Pink or Once and Future Band taking on, as well as the closer, "Don't Disguise The Way You Feel" which hearkens back to the sincerity of the first record, there are a few tracks that sound like music from any number of teenage movies of the eighties. Good thing? Bad thing? You be the judge! Definitely a deep cuts record that will appeal to fans of the duo and era in which they were made. Not as essential as its predecessor, but still a curious and entertaining artifact.
We always seem to go on and on about loads of rare prog. We love that stuff. Lost Italian prog, rare South American prog psych. But let's not give short shrift to American and British progressive groups, especially the more popular mainstream acts. No prog lover worth his salt would dare deny the brilliance of Yes, or Jethro Tull or E.L.P. Especially E.L.P. In fact if you asked Andee who his favorite band was, not just prog band, but band period, he just might answer E.L.P. Why? Because they are the ultimate prog band. Excessive in everything they did, instruments, outfits, song choices, song lengths, solos, EVERYTHING. Plus all three members of E.L.P. were unbelievable players. When rock kids were worshipping at the altar of Neil Peart, some of us were bowing before the godlike drumming of Carl Palmer. This double DVD is jam packed with so much classic E.L.P. footage it's unbelievable. There's a bit of pre-E.L.P. stuff: the video for "Fire" by the Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, which features a masked Carl Palmer on drums, King Crimson live in Hyde Park in 1969, the Nice on German TV show Beat Club in 1968, all amazing. Even just the DVD menu footage features lots of classic E.L.P. images, the band in their silk kimonos getting on stage in Japan, the infamous semi trailers, each printed with one band member's name on top, billboards, fireworks and pyrotechnics. Then there's just loads and loads of amazing live footage from Europe, the UK, Japan, including their debut performance at the Isle Of Wright festival with Carl Palmer disrobing during his drum solo and Keith Emerson playing his keyboard from the wrong side, pounding it, jumping over it, then launching cannons from either side of the stage. Holy fuck! They definitely don't make bands like that any more. There's lots of videos too, from European TV, including an amazing Carl Palmer drum solo filmed live on a TV show called Aquarius, where he plays chimes, timpanis, four bass drums and even rings a bell with his mouth! Disc two features E.L.P.'s whole California Jam set as well. Bonus footage includes an unseen rehearsal film from 1973, interviews with Bob Moog about his relationship with E.L.P., analysis of the album covers, videos and more. But even without the extras, heck, even without disc two, there is just so many amazing sights and sounds and performances here. This stuff is so absurd and so brilliant, and the songs are so classic, and the playing is so goddamn good, it just makes me feel like an old man for lamenting the state of modern music. Anyone out there who wants to start an E.L.P. for the new millennium get in touch with Andee via the store!
This is going to be short and sweet. At the risk of some of you losing faith in my (Andee's) reviews, Emerson Lake and Palmer are the greatest rock band ever.
Period.
Everything you like about every one of your favorite bands, ELP do better. Heavy, bombastic instrumental virtuosity, gorgeous mellow pop chops, everything. A greatest hits record can't really do justice to a band who almost never wrote a bad song (at least until 1977), and if you were actually interested, you'd be better served buying one of their actual albums. Or all of them. But for the timid or the not so daring, this is not a bad place to start.
Thirteen tracks by of the most successful, most reviled, act in prog-rock history!
What needs to be said about the 'Em. You all know him. You all already either love him or hate him. I happen to really like a lot of Eminem songs. And this new record is pretty darn good. Some catchy songs, some wickedly funny lyrics. The real weak point is when Em gets all sensitive and trys to SING. Ugh. Badbadbadbad. And the wicked Dre production that was all over the Marshall Mathers lp isn't quite as prevalent this time around which is too bad. But overall, a big fun, catchy dumb record. Limited edition comes with a bonus disc DVD!
Dr. Dre's newest protegé and great white hope. Literally. Ultra silly and nasty and confrontational, perhaps to kill the inevitable Vanilla Ice comparisons before they start. Too late. Catchy and juvenile and way offensive. Guess that's the point.
Ostensibly a black metal record, A Sword Of Death For The Prince seems more like sort of an abstract experimental industrial dark ambient record. Or something. Actually, to be totally honest, we're not sure what the hell it is. We are sure of one thing though, this is quite possibly the weirdest fucking record we've ever heard. Reverby riffs, not distorted at all, sort of clangy and chime-y, are struck violently and sent into space to hang there in wide open expanses of haunting creaks and drones, everything heavily delayed, so each riff sort of reverberates into the ether, echoing endlessly, with creepy almost spoken vocals also drenched in delay. It's like someone took a pop record, took out ALL the song structures and all the melodies, ran the whole thing through a bank of effects peddles and then had King Tubby make a dub version of the whole thing. Like songs by Wolf Eyes or the Dead C being reinterpreted by Benighted Leams. Riffs and notes are spit out seemingly haphazardly, as they careen back and forth, echoing and colliding with vocals and all the notes that follow. This is one of those records, that is either so completely high concept that no matter how hard we try, we will not be able to wrap our puny minds around it, or it's just some kid fucking around with a 4 Track and his first delay pedal. Either way, we LOVE it. So completely damaged and far out and WEIRD WEIRD WEIRD.
We go on and on at length about all the fucked up and damaged, weird as fuck black metal bands we love so much, but we don't really mention Emit usually, which, as we listen to this final Emit release seems just plain wrong. Might be due to the dearth of recordings, only 3 proper releases, one a split, now mostly unavailable, this latest is another collection, gathering up all manner of unreleased tracks as well as a handful from various demos. And holy shit is this stuff amazing. We absolutely loved A Sword Of Death For The Prince, but Abortions makes that one seem downright tame in comparison. This is a tough one to describe, but we'll do our best.
Emit exist somewhere between raw black metal buzz, and creepy black ambience, but their take on both is absolutely tweaked and damaged and pretty insane. The opener here is a thick wall of buzzing guitars, layers of feedback, and what could be analog synths, some serious drone, but all draped over a VERY un-metal rhythm, a weird jaunty shuffle, all offbeat high-hat, like a calypso or something, the beat changing tempo wildly and randomly throughout, speeding WAY up, then right back down again, while the track continues to undulate and buzz fiercely. Right after that the sound shifts to something much more abstract, a dark and brooding drift, laced with strange ambient sounds, warbly low end melodies, bits of crackle and hiss, only to immediately transform into a blast of caustic noise, before slipping back into minimal drone, and finally a haunting reverb drenched spoken word invocation. And we're only 4 tracks in. The rest of the record is equally and gloriously schizophrenic, some highlights: super spare drums over a thick whirring organ drone, and what sounds like a super high pitched harmonica melody, super angular and slightly off key black metal buzz, with an organ or a synth, making the whole thing sound super sinister like a busted metal music box and the drums still doing some sort of UN-metal beat, a totally bizarre, processed buzzscape, all stuttery and staticky, like a skipping cd, but shaped into something weirdly metal and very twisted, swirling thick clouds of black drone and chanted vocals, lots of quite beautiful dark ambience, all very creepy and haunting and ethereal, finally finishing off with the 13 minute epic "Visions Of Timeless Nought", a super obtuse sort of black metal jam, more of those fractured fucked up drums, vocals wrapped in reverb and careening wildly all over the place, guitars that moan and groan and squeal, everything weirdly dubbed out, the drums bouncing wildly, the high-hat loud and sizzling all over the place, the entire song sounding like it's being reflected in a funhouse mirror, warped and warbly and woozy, just listening makes your head spin, which is pretty fantastic actually.
The band has recently ceased to be, reinventing itself as Hammemit, with a new sound and new direction, so for those of you who have yet to discover the warped joys of Emit, and have been hankering for some new blackened weirdness, freaky and fucked up, druggy and confusional and so so so strange, this is probably your last chance...
The return of one of our favorite mysterious black hordes, Emit, although not technically a return as the band is defunct and have already re-emerged as the similarly named Hammemit, instead, this is the second posthumous collection from these bizarre black alchemists, gathering up two old recordings, The Dark Bleeding ep from 2003 and the The Dark Gods demo from 2004. The cool thing about Emit was they were never really black metal, but their sound was blacker than many of their buzzier / blastier compatriots. They trafficked in a raw sort of primitive free black noise, more like Abruptum really, with clouds of noxious distorted guitars, howling anguished processed vocals, and often no drums to speak of at all.
The Dark Bleeding is the group at their rawest. Distorted tangles of free form guitar, drenched in reverb, vocals grunting and growling, some actual riffage for sure, but buried beneath dense slabs of crumbling distortion, and heaving low end rumble, the final of the four tracks features some awesomely distorted church organ, resulting in a super creepy, ultra noisy chunk of circusy black drone-noise.
The Dark Gods is a bit more song oriented, but only a bit, still plenty abstract, spaced out swells, melodic and downright pretty, give way to creeping black riffage, and warped and warbly low end, sick vocals, garbled and processed, drums show up, but instead of blasting or pounding, they are totally abstract, another element to drift and meander and get all tangled up in the ever swirling morass of blackened sound. Near the end, the drums do make their presence more known, giving the sound a distinctly doomy vibe, but still totally unhinged and chaotic and fractured and gloriously fucked up.
Like WOLD meets Abruptum meets Circle Of Ouroborus, noisy, heavy, abstract, weirdly pretty, totally and completely damaged, and thus WAY recommended.
Last year, in our never ending quest for the weirdest black metal ever, we discovered the mysterious and perplexing Emit. And while technically they may in fact be black metal, realistically, they are more of some sort of ambient, ethereal, damaged drone outfit, spewing a deconstructed, abstract whatthefuck crash, clang and creep. Definitely black, but more in mood than sound. Either way, we were totally taken and were super psyched to discover a new record from these freaks, a split with Vrolok, more on them later. On their half of this split, Emit start off the proceedings with all vocals, the first track a soft shimmery swirl of ghostly reverbed vocals, floating and drifting, the second track is more vocals, this time some sort of monkish chant, low and liturgical, over a whirring distant drone. It's only by track three, that any sort of 'metal' becomes evident, but even then, it's metal of the most abstract fucked up kind. A buzzing blasting burst of lo-fi blackness, that starts of blazing but as it forges forward it falls apart more and more, each separate element becoming more distorted and more twisted and tweaked, until it's like listening to Darkthrone on a transistor radio through an endless series of funhouse mirrors. Woah! The rest of the tracks delve deeply into a dark realm of medieval ambient drones, a sort of more damaged Abruptum, with haunting atonal detuned guitars, and creepy tiny monster vocals, occasional bursts of super distorted black buzz and sonic shrapnel, but for the most part, a dizzying onslaught of chaotic creepiness and bizarre blackness.
Vrolok while not nearly as weird as Emit, are definitely a bit more overtly black metal, but are the perfect match for Emit with their furious and fucked up black buzz. From the tumultuous blast of blazing lo-fi blackness of the first track "Hellchoir (Pestilence 1440)", a snarling, squirming riff, tangled up with lightspeed blast beats and buried under all sorts of suffocating sonic sludge, to the weird martial soundscape of "Black Chemical Waltz", a super blown out simple drum beat, amidst swirls of subsonic drones and buzzing weirdness peppered with creepy distorted snatches of found sound and bits of conversation, to the epic blackness of "Inverse Devotion" sounding like a glorious collision between Xasthur and Immortal, albeit recorded on a busted 4-track, to the epic closer "Between The Astral Shades", which starts off as a shimmering creeped out ambient soundscape, turns into what sounds like Bathory recorded in a high school gymnasium, and finally morphs into an ultra distorted seasick black dirge, replete with anguished howls and washed out black drone guitars, the whole thing blurring into a glorious blackened dronedrenched waltz.
More absolutely essential bizarre blackness for sure!
We're big fans of J.D. Emmanuel who has been self-releasing his own private press new age music since the early eighties. His 1982 masterpiece Wizards may be our favorite release of his, at turns evoking a Tangerine Dream like synthscapery with soft-focus kraut-rock propulsions. But this newly reissued 1981 release is in our opinion just as good, even if it is more gentle and new-agey, but still quite mysterious and meditative. Evoking ideas of past-life journeys, Emmanuel employs multi-tracked organ and synthesizers with occasional acoustic guitar and windchimes in compositions that remind us of works by Terry Riley and Peter Hammill but filtered through a mesmerizing pastoral sensibility. Wonderfully kaleidoscopic and vibrant, like sunlight piercing through a dark cathedral-like chamber, this will appeal to fans of atypical new age music like Ariel Kalma, Iasos, and Jordan De La Sierra. Download card included.
Yes! Finally, J.D. Emmanuel's late seventies, early eighties mind expansion music is more readily accessible. Mostly previously available through rare private pressing lps and vinyl rip blogs, Emmanuel is pretty much one of the main underground touchstones of the present wave of sunny new age meditative minimalist outfits such as The Alps, Emeralds, Ducktails, and White Rainbow. We had that limited reissue of his 1982 Wizards LP which flew out of here in a flash and now we have the less-limited Solid Dawn disc, which is a compilation of works between 1979 and 1982 in which Emmanuel seemed to be superhumanly productive. Taking the minimalist template of Terry Riley, the continuous music of Lubomyr Melnyk, and Brian Eno's discreet music, filtering it through a more soft-focus mystical kosmiche veil of Klaus Schulze, Ariel Kalma and Eberhard Schoener, Emmanuel makes long-form compositions that are vaporous and propulsive like swiftly moving clouds using wind chimes, blurry shifting drones, and arpeggiated synth-scapes. Check out his website for more info about this Texan native, who not only offers spiritual consultation, but offers automotive and business management solutions as well! Outsider New Age doesn't get much better than this!
Back in 2007, when J.D. Emmanuel was reintroduced to the world via Lieven Martens (aka Dolphins Into The Future) through Martens repress of Emmanuel's 1982 masterpiece Wizards, it completely revived his career, and we've seen many archival releases of Emmanuel's organic new-age synthscapery reissued since. Soon after in 2011, he was touring Europe with Martens and Paul Labreque and finding large new audiences embracing his fluid performances, Emmanuel decked out in a cowboy hat and Hawaiian shirt complete with psychedelic visuals behind him. We even managed to see him live at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival that same year performing on a bill with Kevin Drumm and Gregg Kowalsky (what a night!). This new double lp on the Aguirre label documents his live set from that tour with long form excursions that have great sci-fi titles like "Adrift in The Gamma Quadrant" and "Ghost Emanations From Seti Alpha 6", but also new age references like "At-One-Ment" and "Path Inward" that reveal Emmanuel's lifelong dedication to meditation, healing and cosmic harmony. Emmanuel's sound is rarely dark, but it's otherworldly in a way that avoids coming off as fluff. We can follow his mind-journeys through music anywhere he wants to take us. Recommended!
J.D. Emmanuel's beautiful 1982 new age release, Wizards, was a unanimous aQ favorite when it was reissued first by Lieven Martens of Dolphins Into The Future back in 2007, and again by Important Records in 2011. Subsequent reissues of the Texan synth wizard's other releases have been equally praised. We managed to catch him live a year ago when he played in SF's Electronic Music Festival, and it was mind-blowing, especially with the psychedelic visuals behind him.
We never managed to get the Aguirre label release of Trans Formations I: Ancient Minimal Meditations, but we jumped at the chance to get the follow-up, Into Separate Realities reissued by Deep Distance, an imprint of UK label The Great Pop Supplement.
This set, recorded by Emmanuel on the road while travelling for a job in the nineties, is a bit different than the meditative works we have heard before. Recorded using a Yamaha QY-10 synth module/sequencer or Korg X5DR synth module and a Novation MM10 keyboard into a Windows laptop, this album employs more rhythmic and percussive elements. Like Oneohtrix Point Never or Umberto (both of which we're pretty sure Emmanuel has been a major influence on), there is more of a driving vibe to Emmanuel's compositions here that still harness the feeling of cosmic expansiveness, but with a more forward-leaning momentum. Limited to 500 copies, we got about a dozen and that's it. Take flight!
New age gets a bad rap. And rightfully so in many cases, but it's not fair to paint it with such a broad brush, there have been plenty of artists who have dabbled in new age, explored meditative musics, and made some amazing sounds. When it's done right, it can be dark and lovely, deeply spiritual, soothing and hypnotic, complex and intense, without being cheesy. All of the modern DIY drone music should be evidence enough, what is all of that if not a contemporary extension of new age music... dreamy, contemplative, mesmerizing, minimal....
Here we have a lost legendary 'new age' synth classic from 1982, from J.D. Emmanuel, while unknown to us, according to some friends of AQ and some customers definitely had a certain hipster cache, tracks and whole records being outsider music holy grails...
With song titles like "Attaining Peace" and "Prayer" and "Focusing Within", Wizards - Music Of Other Memories, is a five part meditation realized in extended synthesizer soundscapes, gorgeous, languorous, all soft focus melodies, soaring and shimmery, stretched out into blurry streaks of sound, peppered with the muted bloop bloop melodies, nestled deep down in the shimmery softness.
Some of the tracks are more active, one almost proggy and spaced out, another sounding a bit like a more dreamy Kraftwerk, all propulsive synthesized krautrock.
Absolutely recommended for fans of Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, IASOS, Terry Riley, Steve Reich as well as the softer side of all the modern cd-r dronemusic we all love so much...
The most highly-anticipated black metal album of the summer. You already know that, and you want it, right? Otherwise, what can we say... Emperor is pretty much THE black metal band of the 90's, unsurpassed at what they do, despite their legions of imitators, and this disc not only meets our expections but exceeds them. Formerly on Century Black, now a Candlelight reissue with bonus tracks.
While the Century Black domestic edition included as a bonus the songs & cd-rom video from their import "Reverence" ep, this newer reissue includes the same three ep tracks plus live footage from 1997-98 and an interview on a Finnish television program.
The live intensity of Norwegian black metal standard-bearers Emperor captured on disc, from a show at London's Astoria theatre (the same show featured in the video of the same name, of course). This is probably a better investment than the video version, however, 'cause let's face it, it's the music that rules, not Emperor's rather static and grimfaced stage "act." Good sound, and a great selection of songs from all three proper Emperor albums. With Charmand Grimloch (Tartaros) on keyboards and Tyr on bass, plus the Emperor core of guitarist/vocalist Ihsahn and guitarist Samoth, and drummer Trym. Includes a cd-rom track with the video to "I Am The Black Wizards" as well as Emperor screensavers! Hmm. Screensavers aren't very evil. Maybe t-shirts are a little evil, but a screensaver!? Better yet, why not an Emperor computer virus? If you get any email with the subject line "Curse You All Men!" DON'T OPEN IT!
Kneel and worship. No, seriously, they're not called Emperor for nothing. These Norwegians strike yet again with an amazing, state-of-the-art black metal masterpiece. Fans of the genre won't have read this far, they're already down here at Aquarius buying it. But the obligatory description is thus: Emperor remain just as progressive and epic as they were on their prior album, adding some amazing King Diamondesque screams (go, Ihsahn!) and a bushel of death metal brutality...making for an album that pretty much defines the word "killer".
A landmark Scandinavian Black Metal album essential to any good Satanist's collection. The forward impetus of this album is incredible, as the majestic keyboards, rasping cries, and pummelling drums all sweep together like a freezing, evil wave carrying pagan Viking longboats across the North seas to attack and pillage Christian lands. Like opera music for howling wolves. A Nordic church-burning classic. Formerly on Century Black, now a Candlelight reissue with bonus tracks.
Norwegian black metal emperors Ihsahn, Samoth and Trym are back with what's billed as their latest and greatest achievement in a career of evil that's second to none. And by latest we also mean last: supposedly this is their final album, ever, sob. And so
This is the inevitable 'greatest hits' collection from the undisputed masters of hyper-technical, super proggy, grim and frosty Norwegian black metal EMPEROR!! Disc one is heavy on the covers as almost half is culled from tributes to Darkthrone, Mercyful Fate, Mayhem, etc... and is filled out with EP tracks and a few tracks from the amazing Thorns Vs. Emperor album. Disc two is all album tracks spanning their whole career. There's nothing here unreleased. About as "rare" as it gets is an Ulver remix that was a bonus track from the limited version of IX Equilibrium. So consequently, there's not much essential here for those of you who have been loyal subjects from day one, but definitely a great introduction for the uninitiated.
Random note: The disc comes with the official Emperor merchandise catalog and holy shit! No less than 8 cds, 1 DVD, 7 posters, 20 shirts, 12 badges, 2 knit caps, 2 baseball hats, 1 jacket, 1 patch, 1 mouse pad and 1 silver pendant!! Phew.
MPEG Download: "Curse You All Men!" [/audio/emperorcurse.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Curse You All Men!" [/audio/emperorcurse.m3u]
There aren't a whole lot of grim black metal bands from Michigan. And Empire Auriga aren't gonna do anything really to change that. They are grim, and black metal maybe, in their own way, but they're also industrial, gothy, a little new wavey, a bit shoegazey, even pretty poppy. In fact they're almost definitely more of all of those than they are 'grim black metal'. Yet they're on Moribund, and they are being touted as a sort of avant black metal outfit. We do see the appeal, black metallers have been expanding their horizons lately, opening up to bands like Brown Jenkins, Wrath Of The Week, Have A Nice Life, Nadja, and there have been groups like Blut Aus Nord and Spektr, distinctly black metal, but who have transformed their sound into something much more industrial and avant.�
So thus we have Empire Auriga, a duo from Michigan, Lansing to be exact, one guy on "communications", the other on "transmissions", and on repeated listens, we're gonna have to go out on a limb and say this isn't actually black metal at all, at least not in the traditional sense. The opener is all marital drumming, militaristic snares, over a nearly static sheet of slow shifting distorted buzz, some mournful horns (?) or at least a keyboard melody that sounds like horns, it ends up sounding like a metallic version of some medieval music, the vocals are a drawled sort of croon, more Joy Division than Darkthrone. And while it may not be black metal, it's still eminently cool. The next track is a lugubrious doomic trudge, super processed percussive pound, lots of drone and buzz, howled vocals buried in the mix, all very machinelike and lumbering, almost like a more washed out drone-y Godflesh. Later tracks get super industrial, the drums a mechanical pound, the vocals a demonic croak, again the melody distinctly medieval, almost like blackened Renn Faire music, others are just long stretches of staticky noise, buried radio transmissions, bursts of jagged interference, a weird sort of crumbling caustic drone, while still others are deep drifting stretches of creepy black ambience, rife with found sounds and disembodied voices. Only one track can really be called black metal, and even that one is pretty far out. The main riff is not so much a riff as a long drawn out buzz, the vocals are a strangled guttural growl, over the top a haunting Burzum like keyboard melody, but the cool thing about it, and exactly what makes it so not black metal, is the lack of propulsion, it's more like some fucked up buzz drenched ambient Whitehouse, really cool and creepy and grim, but only marginally black metal.�
All this talk about whether Empire Auriga is black metal or not, but to be fair, we could really care less, it's just the fact that they seem to get lumped in with other black metal bands, even though the connection is tenuous at best. But fuck it, we love black metal and we dig this big time. You won't necessarily love this if -all- you listen to is metal, but if you're into weird metallic noise, or dark rhythmic weirdness, or abstract blackness, or any sort of abstract arty heaviness, this is definitely all of that and more.
Another killer tape of weird black metal buzz. This time it's Australia's Empire Of Hate and US black metal horde Morthond (not to be confused with the Cold Meat Industry Morthond).
Empire Of Hate whip up a black storm of relentlessly buzzing guitars, stumbling blasting drums, and some truly tortured vocals. Harsh glass gargling howls that dip into death metal gargles as well as the occasional hysterical shriek. The production is perfectly murky, a depressive suffocating crush, perfectly suited to the hellish buzz and inhuman howls.
Morthond counter with their own brutal black burst, channelling the raw trancelike sound of early Burzum and classic Darkthrone. Some mournful keyboards and whispering winter winds lead us into their wintry world. Mournful melodies give way to murky black buzz, galloping drums, everything drenched in reverb, a furious classic blast of vintage Norwegian style blackness. So good.
Awesome high school binder cover art, with a scary tree and a rabid dog or wolf and a dead body that kind of looks looks like a magic marker version of Munch's The Scream...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Oh, how we still love Alec Empire. We just can't help it. We loved (and heck, still love) DHR so much. Atari Teenage Riot, Shizuo, Fever, EC8OR, Patric Catani, Bomb 20, for a while we were downright obsessed with all that stuff. Like all things new and exciting though, Empire and his crew sort of lost their relevance, their silly sloganeering, rehashed metal riffs, pummelling drum beats and screecheed vocals became more tired and boring than thrilling. Some stuff Like Empire's Destoyer stood the test of time a little better, but as music got more extreme, that whole DHR thing just didn't seem so badass. So the return of Alec Empire, could've been a sad rehash, but guess what, he's managed to knock us for a loop again. Your fist hint is Empire on the sleeve toting a guitar case, but Futurist is all ROCK. And heavy too. A super aggressive pounding metallic garage punk stomp. At times it sounds a but like Ministry or what we WISH Nine Inch Nails sounded like, which is hard to avoid when you're talking pounding beats and metal guitars, but it also sounds like the Hives or the Refused, super charged and slightly DHR-ed (some of the drum fills become that instantly recognizable DHR digital drill) A few tracks do slow down into chugging punk rock dirges and sound like some fucked up take on Fear or Fang or Flipper. But for the most part this is wild and sweaty, kick ass metallic garage stomp future rock. And we LOVE it.
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SORRY.
Marking the end of his dealings with Mille Plateaux, Geist collects the best tracks from those albums, compilation appearances, and unreleased tracks. No digital hardcore...rather electronica, odd hip hop and musique concrete.
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SORRY.
Another in the continuing onslaught of Alec Empire output, this one foregoes the brutality of Digital Hardcore for a more "loungey" techno sound, as it says on the cover: "file under Easy Listening & Space Jazz." Fun stuff.
With the demise of Atari Teenage Riot due to Carl Crack's untimely death, Digital Hardcore's mainman Alec Empire continues to preach / sing / scream to the hordes of disaffected electro-punk youth. On the first disc of this set, Empire's tactics remain consistent with the ATR output, as heavy duty punk explosions signified by the relentless samples of gated, grindcore riffs are punctuated by huge 909 throbbing drum kicks and stabs of searing white noise. Not surprisingly, "Intelligence And Sacrifice" finds Empire aligning himself more with the industrial / metal crossovers of Ministry and the guitar crunch attacks from the mid-'90s Wax Trax! clones. The second disc lands more in a disjointed acid breakbeat / micro-glitch realm, that is as good as anything Mille Plateaux / Ritornell has been releasing during the past few months. Quite effective, but neither of the two aesthetic sides of Alec Empire can be purported as entirely groundbreaking.
Unlike the adolescent brutality of this chameleon-like producer's digital hardcore, this is influenced by musique concrete, Stockhausen and Schaeffer. Cluster fans should dig this. No beats.
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'You'd be hard pressed to find something this caustic from another eye-liner-wearing global citizen' preaches the gospel of Hrvatski. This Digital Hardcore Limited release (of 1500 copies!!!) is more of a reflection of the scope of Empire's work from the trebly lo-fi Amen drum & bass crash to trebly lo-fi polyrhythms which sound like Terry Riley on a crappy tapedeck to trebly lo-fi cacophonous collages from the crowd noise during a riot following a Black Sabbath show. Mostly recorded during the sessions for Atari Teenage Riot's '60 Second Wipe Out' while Alec was waiting for the rest of the band to show up...
Sundries previously released on 12" 1994-1996. Killer digital hardcore rap techno.
The domestic issue of the bruitist drum & bass / Rotterdam fusion that opened the floodgates for future Digital Hardcore albums by Atari Teenage Riot, Shizuo, and the rest of the gang. Two new tracks added to this US version.
Most people probably remember Alec Empire best as the head of Digital Hardcore Recordings, or as the front man of Atari Teenage Riot, or for his various solo records, but here at aQ he's probably best know for the LOUDEST instore ever. It was pretty insane, not sure how we even got away with it. Folks were coming down from stores 4 or 5 doors down to see what the heck was going on. There was as big a crowd of lookie-loos as there was people to see the show. He was DJing with Merzbow albums or something.
But it's been years, and Empire has gone through a bit of a transformation since then, he's not so much into the super distorted jungle anymore, his more recent records have been more industrial, sounding like Nine Inch Nails or Ministry, but actually good. We dug his last, The Futurist, a slab of metal riffs and drum machine beats, of howled vocals and stomping garage rock. A weird mix, but one that definitely suited him. But this most recent disc is different all over again. First there's the glamour shot in the booklet, all bleached bangs and aviator shades, and the legend underneath the disc that says "This is an indie rock noise record...", and it is, sort of. But we'd also say it's a sort of industrial synth pop new wave record, borrowing HEAVILY from prime era Gary Numan, and a little from Suicide too. It may be derivative, but it's still awesome. The opener is worth the price of admission alone. A killer hook, total new wave goth-industrial dream pop, equal parts Interpol and Gary Numan (the synth line is criminally Numan), the vocals a bit robotic, a weird atonal bridge, but the whole song so fierce and catchy, and the sort of thing that would destroy a dancefloor filled with silver booted, multi-scarved glam pirates for sure.
There is some weird shit here too, robotic proto-funk, angular electro, murky ballads, groovy garagey buzz, it's all good, we're also reminded of the Mark E. Smith + Mouse On Mars project Von Sudenfed at times too. But the best parts are definitely rife with thick fuzzy synths, and killer beats, all wound up into groovy late night, strobe lit, stilleto heeled, funky, sexy blasts of buzzing new wave. Way cool.
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SORRY.
Hmm. Worst title ever? Digital Hardcore maven and Company Flow guy team up. [/cat/e14.html]
A clash of the titans like this undoubtedly has noise freaks everywhere salivating like crazy. It sure as heck did back in 1998, when as part of CMJ, it was one of a handful of must see shows. By some weird set of circumstances, I (Andee) actually got to witness said clash, and it was something else. Something else in this case being a noisy, ear drum destroying mess. It was definitely a blast (literally). Easily the loudest show I have ever been to. So much so that we had to leave early. This set of supersonic skree translates a lot better on record than we expected it would. Live it was a minimal set up, Masami Akita hunched over his equipment, Alec Empire behind his sampler, occasionally shouting over the din. Sonically it's much as you might imagine. BIG digital hardcore beats pelted by jagged shards of white hot noise. Occasionally everything clicks and it sounds like the best DHR record that never was, and occasionally it just sounds like you're standing in the hallway of a practice studio listening to Empire and Merzbow doing their own thing, oblivious of each other. Either way, this is a beautifully furious, crushingly caustic set of big beat noise that should hit the spot for those who dig that sort of thing.
Such a lullaby of an album! Ultra barebones... this British duo often craft their songs of just the same two or three notes plucked over and over ever so gently on a guitar while the sweetest, softest female vocals whisper-sing dreamily and a hushed organ-y drone drifts in and out. Lovely, fragile and haunting.
Completely stunning, delicate and crystalline, slow motion dream rock. A bit like Movietone in mood, but Empress replace the murk, with a glowing diffused warmth and clarity, the musical equivalent of those little glowing orbs on the lens of a camera when it's pointed at the sun. Super nice. Definitely for fans of Low, Movietone, and the like. On the Pastels' Geographic label.
Empty Mirror is New Zealanders Ben Spiers and Karl Willis, utilising a strange array of soundmaking devices including acoustic guitar, violin, baby monitor, radio, reed organ, turntables, saucepan lids, dictaphone and more. In 'Extricate' (tracks 1-6) a
New SF band Empty Rooms made quite an impressive first impression when we pressed play on this, their self-titled debut five-song EP. The band oozes with composure as they unfurl their solemnly brooding, verging on goth style of rock. They'll undoubtably draw plenty comparisons to the moody likes of Interpol and their forefathers Joy Division and Bauhaus. One song that particularly stands out is the second to last, "Form Has Two Faces" features additional female vocals from Carly Schneider which offer an effective counterpart to lead singer Andy Beyers' deep dour delivery. Hopefully she'll surface again (and more frequently) on their next release. Another highlight is the final song "Black Sugar", a super catchy smoldering pop song.
