All-acoustic, gloomy folk music from this German "black metal" band, who have abandoned the raspy vocals and distorted electric buzzsaw guitars of their previous releases (we're guessing, haven't heard 'em) for mournful string strum and doleful chant. Allan thinks this is beautiful, Andee considers it 'renaissance faire metal' without the metal. For fans of "Kveldsjanger", the acoustic masterpiece by Norwegian black metal eccentrics Ulver (I'm guessing that Empyrium are). And, c'mon, how can you resist a song (and album) title like "Where At Night The Wood Grouse Plays"??
Lion Productions' extremely welcome krautrock reissue campaign continues! This reish is another from one of scenemaker Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser's labels, Pilz (after one by Guru Guru originally on his OHR label and Sergius Golowin's album on Kosmic Kuriere), and is appropriately trippy. Indeed, it's a minor masterpiece of cosmic-folk that no less an authority than Dag Erik Asbjornsen's encyclopedic krautrock tome Cosmic Dreams At Play calls "absolutely essential".
Emtidi were a hippy duo, Maik Hirschfeldt from Germany and Dolly Holmes from Canada, supposedly brought together by their participation in the Berlin production of Hair (not the first time we've heard such a story about artists from that era!). Emtidi made just two albums in their brief career, a self-titled, not-so-cosmic acoustic folk debut in 1971 (which has also recently been reissued by the way) and then THIS one.
1972's Saat is so special in part because they labored over it in the studio with well-known producer Dieter Dierks, creating a multi-tracked, synth-floating, electronically treated environment to support Dolly's airy and delicate vocals. Her sweet singing reminds us of UK folksters like Sallyangie and Pentangle, while the spaced out music is far freakier (generally placid, but including some acid rock guitar eruptions).
Maik plays vibraphone, synthesizer, bass, flute, guitar, percussion, and also contributes rougher, accented vocals, dueting with Dolly on several of the tracks, taking lead himself on the German-language closer "Die Reise". Dolly, as well as singing so beautifully, plays keyboards, Mellotron, organ and piano. And Dierks also performs on several instruments as well, including more Mellotron.
The album's centerpiece is the blissed out shimmer of the nearly 12 minute "Touch The Sun" but the cosmic journey actually begins with a walk in the park, on opening track "Walkin' In The Park". The combination of mellow, effected guitars/keys and the gentle vocals of Dolly (joined by Maik partway along) belies the stoned humor of the lyrics, something to the effect of: "There's a sign here... keep off... don't sit on the grass, it's too cold for your ass"! Though they do sound quite earnest about it.
As with all Lion reissues, this one boasts a thick cd booklet, with original album graphics, extensive liner notes, and a discography of the Pilz label.
Yet another great tape from the Los Angeles imprint Monorail Trespassing; and as with many of the MT releases of late, the noise has been reduced in favor of narcotizing tone-float. Emuul is the nom de plume of Seattle's Kyle Iman, operating in the friendlier confines of ambient composition which enjoys the company of Celer, Stars of the Lid, and of course the man Brian Eno. On The Origins Of Motion sets forth a series of warm, enveloping driftscapes upon which slight melodic phrases, night-time / deep-thought droning, and shoegazingly distorted guitars demarcate the ambient soundscapes. Pure lulling music is to be found within this fine 28 minute cassette, which is the first that we've encountered from Emuul, even though he's released some cassettes via Digitalis, Stunned, and Blackest Rainbow. Limited to 100 copies.
A stellar follow-up to 2010's The Absent Coast on Root Strata, Already Gone from this local San Francisco drone duo, Maxwell Croy and James Devane, aka EN, finds theses two with an even more focused and nuanced dynamic sensibility. Of course that sensibility centers around Croy's classically trained koto playing, which plays a large part in EN's overall sound, but here that element is really given ample room to stretch out and breathe. Instead of being merely one component in a layering process of cascading shifting dronescapes, the high relief sound of the texture of strings, the slow growing lyrical motifs and the solemn resonant pauses between phrases set up the pieces as they bloom into delicate shimmers and then oceanic swells of drifting unsettled moods. Pushing the momentum along on the first track, "Lodi" is the loping bass pulse of Trevor Montgomery (The Drift, Date Palms, Tarantel), that has us surfing waves of sound before settling into a swirling miasma of crystalline tones and airy phases. Taking us to the final track, "Elysia", the longest track at 20 minutes is set up by a long introduction of gorgeous and breathtakingly spacious koto playing that like falling leaves in gusts of winds unfurl into bellows of sky high cloud drones, gathering and darkening in fields of rich pulsating grey thunderous tones and then watercolor washes of blissful ambiance, the storm cleared and fading away, set to awaken in some far-off place. Beautiful!
The Absent Coast is the debut recording from the duo En, made up of James Devane and Maxwell Croy (one half of the duo that runs the Root Strata label), and is a gorgeous collection of melancholy, otherworldly dronemusic, a varied selection of miniature epics, each an evocative and emotional travelogue in sound, utilizing organs, melodica, piano, guitar, vocals, koto and various other instruments and devices, the duo weave lush expanses of layered, organic sonic energy, warm buzzing tones stretched into sheer blissy shimmer and lush chordal swells blurred into gauzy slow motion melodies become an ever shifting soundtrack to a series of fading memories, brief flickering filmstrips in sound, the indistinct images allowing the listener short glimpses of stories untold, decisions unmade, lives yet to be lived.
The opener is a rich crumbling landscape of layered shimmer, crackling with electrical energy, an energy which gradually dissipates, eventually leaving a smooth glassy stretch of gently pulsing thrum, eventually fading out completely, the resulting vacuum filled with a miniature symphony of scraped steel strings, their overtones ringing out in the ether, leaving shadowy melodic traces, those strangely melodic metal scrapings overflowing into yet another sprawl of lush layered longform dronemusic, a sea of softly undulating buzz, a mesmerizing field of sympathetic steel, which then itself blossoms into yet another bit of drone, this one a sun dappled bit of ethereal ambience, peppered with deep distorted notes, and flitting electrical fields, all wrapped in a woozy cocoon of burnished blur.
And so The Absent Coast unfolds, waves of hissy white noise wash over plaintive piano like some late afternoon sonic sea, glistening fields of celestial glimmer shed notes like falling stars, the result a prismatic cascade of unfulfilled wishes rendered in sound, deep drifts of muted melody are stretched and pulled apart, letting the light from within infuse the sounds all around them, ghostlike drones change color before our very ears, like the leaves turning, Jeckian dirges crawl glacially through moonlight, spitting sparks that smolder in blues and greens, leaving the glow of gradually dying embers, a delicate piano's notes send sonic ripples into the ether, the melodies overlapping and intertwining creating subtle ever shifting patterns that gradually flicker and fade, and finally, hushed sonic shadows give way to a soft sun dappled blush, which in turn becomes a slowly intensifying radiance, a sky full of luminous flares, a visual symphony of sound, lush and rich and almost orchestral, only to finally dissolve, the colors fading to brown, then black, the sound following suit. So so nice.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This limited one-sided collaboration between artist Chris Johanson and local SF literary punks The Enablers is the second release on Johanson's record label, Awesome Vistas. Starting as a request to write a song that he could illustrate, Johanson and The Enablers instead came up with a more open idea for a piece where both parties would riff off of each other's work as it happened. Reading the lyric sheet for "The Achievement", the colorfully damaged South of Market characters seem directly inspired by Johanson's drawings of San Francisco streets, while the cover art by Johanson is more bruised, urgent and damaged, with all the process of mistakes and ideas vibrantly displayed Fitting right in line with the Enablers distorted amp squalls and Slint like sludge.
The guys in Enbilulugugal have been sending us cd-r's for a while now. Each one a perfectly putrid blackened slab of black metal drenched in full on NOIZE. Buzzing and snarling and speaker-melting white noise brutality that ended up falling way more on the noise side of things, with riffs subsumed by huge washes of scalding electronic fuzz, and any semblance of songcraft, dropped kicking and screaming into the fiery pit. On this latest cd-r, their first 'official' release, Enbilulugugal have finally harnassed their two sides, the confrontational head smashing noise side, and their troo, grim, cult BM side, and have somehow managed to put it all together into a crushing face-melting blast of ultragrim blacknoize, equal parts brutal lo-fi black metal, Whitehouse style pummel, and Faxed Head fuckedupness. Killer riffs collide with bizarre tape drop outs, howling demonic vox come screaming from dense clouds of Merzbow worthy analog skree, blastbeats become so distorted they sound like your speakers are malfunctioning. On top of all that they heap plenty of forest sounds (wind, owls, etc... ), demonic laughter, blooping bleeping damaged electronics, fucked up effects, and about a hundred extra layers of grime and girt and fuzz. Imagine Darkthrone circa Transylvanian Hunger, with Merzbow on lead guitar, Masonna on drums, and a steam locomotive on bass, remixed by Alec Empire, and you wouldn't even be close!
Oh man, have we been waiting for this. Been ages since we heard from the mighty Enbilulugugal, and who better to share a split with those blacknoize freaks, than redneck black metallers Blood Cult?
So yeah, Blood Cult first, who we've raved about in the past, from Illinois, with a singer who moonlights as a country singer, who are seriously twisted and whose sound is like classic Scandinavian black metal, run through the raw primitive scum of Von, and then peppered with all sorts of weirdness, samples, clean guitars, catchy melodies, strange falsetto vocals, and whatever weird shit they can cram into a song.
Their half of the split starts off with some strange movie samples, than then explodes into what sounds like some furious grindcore before the band inject some strange spidery post rocky guitars, some haunting childlike vocals, and then more samples. But then the next track drops and it's as serious as all get out, dark and buzzy, with an incredible main hook, the riff churning, the drums blasting, but it's Blood Cult, so there's some weird twangy breakdown in the middle, that sounds a bit like the Butthole Surfers! The track after that is all strange keyboards and tribal drumming, mysterious vocals, the sound almost new wave, and a bit surfy. Later on they totally steal a Fleetwood Mac riff and blacken it all up. What the fuck? These guys are so amazing. Anyone who slept on We Who Walk Behind The Rows, the last BC full length needs to get into these guys. So fucked up and bizarre and heavy and genius. In fact, what the heck, we'll relist that record so check elsewhere on this list and if you don't own it already, do the right thing! You won't regret it.
But Blood Cult are only fucked up and demented sounding when they're NOT up against Enbilulugugal, who are indeed, one of the most freaky and damaged sounding black metal bands EVER. Think Faxed Head if they were black metal, and you might be getting close. Most of what they do is only barely black metal, instead it's like noise, and Butthole Surfers, and fucked up punk rock, and blacknoize, and D-beat and grindcore all tangled up into one seriously confusional chunk of blackened noise drenched whatthefuck.
Guitars buzz maniacally, shrieking hysterical vocals draped over everything, tons of sample and film clips, wild chaotic drumming, their sound slipping from punkish ultra raw pound to, chunky eighties style metal, to freaked out grind, to total damaged noise. Lo-fi, and accidentally experimental, the vocals totally remind us of Dr. Rockzo, the rock and roll clown from Metalocalypse, which is a VERY good thing. We always talk about how we're constantly on the search for the most retarded, fucked up, demented and bizarre black metal, but bands like Enbilulugugal (are there bands like Enbilulugugal) pretty much ruin the curve.
As always awesome high school rock binder, seventies van black metal cover art, and as always, we say YOU NEED THIS.
2nd mortuary slab from this doom/death duo whose 2010 debut, Ritual Ascension Beyond Flesh, proved deservedly popular 'round these parts, with the underground abuzz about it like flies on a corpse. If you liked that, you know what to expect from this sequel, which is equally up to snuff in terms of old school slowed-down, doomed-out death metal sickness.
If you haven't encountered Encoffination before, you know the old adage? "Only death is real." That's what death metal is always all about, right? A lot of death metal is specifically about the moment and manner of death; unnatural death, the gory act of killing in war and crimes of violence, bloodthirsty horrors. But some bands take other approaches - Carcass ferinstance infamous for their clinical, medical lyrics. And Encoffination, as you might surmise from their name, are about death itself, and what happens afterwards... no, not so much regarding the soul's journey into the afterlife (if any), but what happens to the physical form of the body after death, the ceremonial rites and rituals of our culture, about embalming and burial and so forth, and the meaning of such... Dust to dust, flesh to filth, that sort of thing. Although all that is part of sending the soul where it is supposed to "go" as well.
Therefore, song titles include "Rites of Ceremonial Embalm'ment", "Elegant in Their Funebrial Cloaks, Arisen", and "Washed and Buried". Encoffination's obsession here is part metaphysical, part aesthetic, and part professional - as one of the band members is studying to become a mortician!
So unlike most death metal, this is so much aggressive, then, than rather almost literally funereal. Fuzzed out, full of painful feedback and tolling bells, the hoarse, fetid crypt-breath vokills but another layer of many beneath which the listener is sonically, symbolically buried.
So very serious and gloomy, and gorgeous, if you dig it. It's all about atmosphere for sure, Encoffination's songs and riffs subservient to the sounds, towards the totality of effect of the entirely of the record. It's all one ritual, from first track to last (the 10+ minute "Annunciation of the Viscera"). Imagine "typical" death metal, but at 16rpm... on downers... with production by Leland Kirby, 'cause there's often ambient crackle like you're listening to a scratchy old lp... though in comparison to the debut, the production here is perhaps thicker and fuller and even more miasmal, heavy-ing 'em up a few notches in that dep't. Quite an experience.
And once again, the cd booklet is beautifully designed, also the work of band member Ghoat (the mortician-in-training).
So, enough. If you're still reading, you probably already love this band as much as they love the dead...
The underground's been buzzing about this band, they're the latest and one of the greatest doing the extreme death metallized ultradooooom thing, a style harking back to the days of Incantation in the '90s. Much like the Vasaeleth release on Profound Lore we recommended last year, Encoffination have turned the slo-mo brutality of death/doom into something almost artistically ritualistic, murky, morbid, and mesmeric, convincingly conveying blasphemous atmosphere. Bathed in funereal fuzz, Encoffination's riffs and rhythms are both akin to death knell bell tollings, the vokills guttural exhalations of fetid crypt breath, the guitars thick and foul and almost gaseous as well, this music mostly slow, sullen, a plodding funeral procession indeed, everything working towards a totality of insalubrious effect. Which, oddly enough, embraces a certain sort of sickly beauty. Their attention to detail extends to the b&w graphics in the cd booklet, elegant and old fashioned looking.
All in all an impressive debut from this depressive duo, the band consisting of Ghoat (Father Befouled, Festered, Hills Of Sefiroth, Vomitchapel, etc.) on vocals, guitar and bass, and Elektrokutioner (Decrepitaph, Scaremaker, Festered, Tombstones, and myriad others, including Wooden Stake, also reviewed this list) on drums. Your rotting corpse couldn't be in better hands... We're not kidding, turns out that Ghoat in fact is studying for a mortuary sciences degree and currently works as an assistant funeral director!
What to say about this guy that we haven't already. A long time aQ fave, every one of his records an absolute drone bliss gem. That's really the most difficult part of this job a lot of the time. First time out, a band's debut, it's easy to gush and get all poetic describing a band's sound, even with the second record, we're usually able to come at it from a different angle, to further describe the sound in a way that conveys what we're hearing through words. But after that, it gets a little rough, especially with a band whose sound remains fairly consistent. On the one hand, we could just say, "it's awesome, buy it", and that's all folks will really need if they're already a fan, but with every release, there are always a few more folks who are discovering a band for the first time, and their discovery is as valid as that of the folks who got the first super limited long out of print cd years back. And thankfully, most of the bands worth listening to record after record, do in fact alter their sound a bit, growing, progressing, exploring, Encomiast are no different.
Thus we have the latest from one man dronescaper Encomiast, on Crucial Bliss, the, uh, blissier sublabel of the more heavy oriented Crucial Blast�
From the first few notes, we're transported to some swirling sonic nether region, where everything is slightly out of focus, blurred around the edges, lit from within, sun dappled and misted with glistening dew, warm whirling washes of sound drift weightless, voices are pulled apart into their constituent parts and allowed to float freely through the ether, swirling and realigning themselves into dreamlike melodies, in fact the overall sound of Encomiast is so very dreamlike. Fans of Kompakt's Pop Ambient sound will probably wonder why they haven't heard this guy on one of those comps. The sound is appropriately breathy and blissy, soothing and serene, the opening track is the perfect soundtrack for somnolent drift. The second track is another bit of low end shimmer, but introduces some Eastern sounding percussion, tablas maybe, but very minimal and spare, spread out over a creeping doom chord progression, laced with swirling steel string guitar, gorgeously moody and dramatic.
The next track too, offers up minimal percussion, and some minor key steel string guitar, which instead of sprawling into some sort of moody ambience, takes the shape of some super abstract folk, lilting vocals way down in the mix, the melody sorrowful and melancholy, there's even some fluttering flute. The second to last track returns to more familiar Encomiast ground, a billowing dronescape of metallic shimmer, a sea of softly reverberating gongs, cymbals, and other chimes and bells, smoother out into long drawn out tones, and woven into what sounds like soft voices and whirring organs. Quite lovely.
The biggest surprise is probably the closing track, which begins with soft strummed acoustic guitar, crooned vocals, what sounds like strings in the background, until about the last two minutes, when the drums kick in, some distorted guitars swoop in, and the track is transformed into a slightly metallic soaring shoegazey coda before drifting off again in a fading cloud of processed cymbals and tribal percussion.
Gorgeously packaged like all Crucial Bliss releases, a full color two panel sleeve, the front panel folded over like an obi, revealing the full color, hand sewn sleeve inside, as well as a full color two sided insert with liner notes. And as always, EXTREMELY LIMITED.
Another gorgeous collection of thick glistening drones from the man known as Encomiast. Whereas his Havens record that we listed a few months back was a more varied affair, dabbling in grinding industrial soundscapes, fuzzy ambient flutter and everything in between, Espera finds him in a more minimal, seemingly more subdued musical mood.
The tracks are still varied, but they are much more static, these are deep dark drones, the variations are subtle, each track is a slow shifting glacial sonic expanse, layered and dense, most of the tracks drift long darkly, all ominous low end, with some barely there streaks of upper register harmonics, a bit like an even more minimal SUNNO))) at times, but just as often referencing Chalk and Coleclough, even Organum, massive and thick, each stretch of sound a nearly static dirge. Gloriously bleak and dreamily dark and dreary. Essential listening for the drone obsessed for sure.
And as this is an older release, that we got directly from the band, we may not be able to get many more of these once we run out...
Crucial Blast has supplied us with plenty of head melting, ear shredding pummel over the last few years, Skullflower, Genghis Tron, The Mass, the Goslings, but they have a soft side as well, not really 'soft' exactly, but a little bit more, well, blissful. Thus we have Crucial Bliss, a sublabel dedicated to more blissed out drones and dense dark ambience.
We had never heard Encomiast before, but this release most definitely has us kicking ourselves.
Beginning with some drifting flute passages, these forest flutters are soon consumed by a thick churning wall of white noise, before everything suddenly blissed out into a dense drone, rife with deep reverberations, and grinding industrial ambience. Where as most drone records fine a sound, and just let it drift on and on and on, the tracks on Havens never stop shifting, sounds morph into other sounds, murkiness becomes crystal clear, before slipping into lo-fi hiss again, metallic sounds soften, dreamy fluffy smears harden and become spikey and dangerous. It's always dreamy and droney and moody and gorgeous, but each track is so dense with subtle shadings and is an exhaustive journey through an endlessly shifting soundworld. Equal parts Andrew Chalk, Troum, My Bloody Valentine, Jonathan Coleclough and Wolf Eyes, the duo of Ross Hagen and Megan Garland weave programmed rhythms, field recordings, guitars, flute and vocals into completely immersive and endlessly fascinating soundscapes. Delicate and beautiful, but at the same time harsh and threatening.
Definitely one of our new favorite 'drone' records. Absolutely recommended.
SUPER LIMITED. Since we only just discovered this disc, it's close to being sold out at the label, we did get a whole bunch but we'd bet they won't be around for long.
Packaged in oversized, hand sewn full color sleeves with a cool fold over sort-of-obi. Nice!
Latest chunk of buzzing, swirling, atmospheric doomdronedreamdrift from this long time aQ fave, a single 21 minute track, derived from an old folk song, and it sounds like it. Warm billows of washed out warm whirling buzz, a landscape of languorous melodies stretched way out into softly undulating layers of blurred sound, reverberating steel strings transformed into clouds of pixelated thrum, all woven into a haunting sprawl, a sea of abstract melodic swells. The various sounds all wrapped in streaks of gauze and haze, a gloriously indistinct bit of drift that definitely reminds us of folks like Tim Hecker, Machinefabriek and the like. A new sonic world conjured up from a jumble of decaying elements, borrowed from the old, a slowly unfurling exploration of this new dreamworld, rendered in bleary eyed sheets of hushed, darkly ominous hum and deep rumbling shimmer. Long stretches of minimal thrum, bookending squalls of more metallic intensity, but eventually all smeared into a single continuous stretch of burnished ambient mesmer.
Minimal artwork, housed in a mini 3" case, and of course EXTREMELY LIMITED...
The problem with cd-r's, especially super limited editions, is that folks who are late to the party, usually through no fault of their own, end up missing out on so much amazing music. The other problem is that there really is no good reason for cd-r's to be limited, or to EVER go out of print. Because you can always make more! That was supposedly the whole draw of the cd-r, no need to press up 1000 or 2000 copies that may end up sitting forever in boxes in your house. Just make the discs as people order them. Sure, that doesn't play into the limited edition collector frenzy, and discs maybe seem more special if there are only 100 copies made. And sure we can understand wanting to move on and work on other projects, but as far as we're concerned, that shouldn't keep you from making more copies for folks who are dying to hear your music. After all, that's part of why we make music, for other people to hear, and enjoy.�
Anyway, the whole point of all this is, we've reviewed three different titles by Encomiast, all of them amazing, and unfortunately all of them no longer available. So now we've finally got a brand new disc, also a limited cd-r, that's just as gorgeous as any of those other now unavailable titles, we got a bunch but we have no idea how long they'll last, so if you're an Encomiast fan already you'll definitely want to grab one of these pronto, and if you've yet to experience the dark drifting beauty of Encomiast, well, then now here's your chance. And as the saying goes, you snooze, you lose...
Transit Bed is a glistening wide open expanse of interwoven low tones, spacious epic ambience, peppered with super reverbed percussion, and warm resonant swells. Besides the usual mysterious sounds, there are samples of a live performance, bits of flute and prepared piano, but those too are smeared into fuzzy indistinct shapes, left to float and flutter dreamlike amidst all manner of rumbles and whirs. Dark and dense, warm and so gorgeous. Highly highly recommended. And as always, it's highly recommended that you grab one of these sooner rather than later...
Ever since we first listed Havens, a cd-r by one man free-noise/drone outfit Encomiast, folks around here just haven't been able to get enough. So we tracked down another older release, Espera, reviewed back on list #259, and that too flew out of here like crazy, so we grabbed a handful of another old title, Winter's End. Not sure how available this still is, we got a bunch direct from the man himself, but as it's been out for a while we may not be able to get more once these are gone.
So what is it exactly about Encomiast that has people all in a tizzy? A delirious blend of dark dreamy blackened drones and shimmering cinematic ambience, both deftly woven into long expanses of glacial, oceanic dreaminess. It's a crowded field for sure, anyone with a computer and a cd burner seems to have a label, or at least a drone record our, but there are a select few who are masters at sculpting sound, at creating music with depth and emotion. It's not as simple as notes sustained for the length of a disc. It's all about layer and texture and composition.
Winter's End, more than maybe anything else we've heard from Encomiast, is incredibly evocative and cinematic, in fact listening to this, it's hard not to imagine what images should be accompanying these sounds. From drifting fog banks of bleary fuzz and minimal shimmer, to haunting, string-like smears of minor key melody, rife with ominous longing and sublimated terror, to spacious expanses of murky thrum, hovering around drifting mysterious female vocals. From grinding buzz drenched blurs to abstract modern classical, this is music so visual and visceral, it's hard to just classify as 'drone music'. And it's equally hard not to think in terms of cinematic sound. This is the music of some mysterious journey, a lost kingdom, a tragic loss, impossible loves, restless spirits, an abandoned village, it's pretty remarkable that a single disc can invoke all of these thoughts and images, but Winter's End does. Definitely a new favorite...
Yet another disc from one of our favorite cd-r dronelords, Encomiast. Last heard from on the divine Bathed In Sunlight released on Crucial Bliss earlier this year, this disc is actually an archival recording from way back in 1999, gussied up in 2006, finally seeing the light of day right now.
Bathed In Sunlight was a big surprise as It featured more actual songs, with singing, acoustic guitars, even drums, we still dug it, but definitely nothing like the rest of the Encomiast catalog. This disc however returns us to the brooding slow motion dronescapes that made us dig Encomiast in the first place. Unclear what exactly the instrumentation is, but whatever the source, it's obscured enough that it really doesn't matter. The original sounds are offered up in streaks and blurs, whirs and rumbles, melody here is muted and subdued, this is not nearly as tranquil as some drone records, much of this is harrowing and ominous, sinister and downright scary, Lustmord, Wolf Eyes, you're not far off, some sort of post industrial sprawl, the rumble of distant machines, of subterranean engines, thunder filled skies, a world in ruins, painted in blacks and greys.
Later on in the record, strange percussion is introduced, a lurching distorted crunch, that gives the record some sort of strange propulsion, once again, trudging through an eerie wasteland, while all around strange sonic events occur, shining brightly and briefly before fading away.
"Concupere" is the record's nearly half hour centerpiece, an ultra minimal low end drift, shifting slowly beneath warm metallic swells, and haunting black ambience, eventually the track morphs into something much softer and dreamier, sounding almost angelic up against the bleak sonic sprawl that came before.
Incredibly dark, but also incredibly beautiful. Fans of the slow and low, of deep drones and of dark miserablism, this is your stop.
Latest from Encomiast, a long time aQ fave, whose expansive mysterious dark drones have never failed to blow us away, but this is not just a new album, it's a sprawling double disc concept record split between two separate groups, and recorded in one of the most haunted buildings in Colorado. The story behind this record revolves around the Belvedere Theater in Central City, Colorado, a group of musicians repeatedly visited with the idea of capturing EVP (aka electromagnetic voice phenomena), where else but an extremely haunted old theater would one be able to capture the voices of the dead, but alas, no such sounds were discovered or captured, BUT, the musicians did manage to record, and those recordings were reworked into the two discs found here. The first is by Encomiast, the second is by a group called The Copper Thieves, which is Encomiast along with members of Mandible Chatter. Both discs conjure up the dark spirit of that theater, each in its own way.
The Encomiast disc is downright frightening, all creaking moaning low end, deep ominous rumbles, all manner of tiny sounds drifting up out of the inky blackness, cold and sinister, abstract and ephemeral, the sounds of the theater's busted up old grand piano, smeared into blurred atonal clouds of clustered notes, the overtones drifting like lost specters, voices moan and bellow, the natural room sound as much an instrument as anything else, these deep dark drones totally evoke the spirit of that haunted space, headphone required, to truly get lost, and submerge yourself in these seemingly bottomless sounds.
The Copper Thieves disc is not nearly as minimal, but just as ominous and haunting, the piano again plays a big part, but the notes are distorted and blurred into a massive warm wall of softly crumbling sound, which gives way to a strange haunted house of thumps and creaks and glitches and disembodied voices, groaning layers of low end thrum, soft filed of overtones overlap chiming bells, pounded notes on the piano drift up from below like monstrous growls, the disc finishing of with long tones, that seem to glow, warm and almost sun dappled, as if capturing shafts of light, drawing delicate lines on the dusty floor, and illuminating the snowflake like motes drifting in the still air.
Both discs are fantastic, darkly evocative, and gorgeously droney, for fans of Lustmord, Andrew Chalk, Jonathan Coleclough, Troum, Organum and other droning denizens of the dark...
LIMITED TO ONLY 200 COPIES, a double cd-r housed in a textured cardboard box, hand stamped on the outside with two printed inserts featuring liner notes and photos.
Yeah, there's a lot of black metal bands out there, guys running around in corpse paint, drawing indecipherable logos, and posing for photos with burning things. Why should you pay attention? 'Cause if you didn't, you might never know about some really really great bands, like this one, End, from Greece. Their black metal is, in a word, supreme. It's a fuzzed out frenzy of buzzing, blasting riffs and atmosphere, perfectly complimented by the disc's beautiful black and white and grey watercolor artwork. For fans of Weakling, Eikenskaden, Khold, Satyricon, and Burzum -- which means basically, if you like black metal, you want this! Actually, forget black metal for a second. If the idea of speaker-threatening fuzz-dirge loping from your stereo appeals to you, then you still want this. This second End record is as good as their first. Get it.
It's been more than 6 years since we last heard from Greece's End, whose last record, entitled of course II, we described thusly: "For fans of Weakling, Eikenskaden, Khold, Satyricon, and Burzum - which means basically, if you like black metal, you want this! Actually, forget black metal for a second. If the idea of speaker-threatening fuzz-dirge loping from your stereo appeals to you, then you still want this."
Which heck, still holds true with this most recent disc, the only difference being that the sound is a bit more polished, a bit tighter. Whereas the first two End records were pretty raw, III finds End taking their raw buzz and furious blast and adding some heft, and a bit of groove. For every explosive face-melting soul-shearing burst of frenetic grinding black fury, there's some lurching, loping doomic dirge, often slipping into gorgeous spidery drifts, or drifting toward something much more post rocky than black metal, there's still plenty of acoustic guitar, but instead of peeling back all the other instruments, the buzzing steel strings are woven into the buzzing blackness, adding another woozy almost folky dimension.
And the mention of Khold in the old review is even more applicable now, and heck Code too, as this new End, spends much of its time droning dramatically, or in cool mathy gnarled bits of Deathspell-ed crunch, with lots of stop starts, dizzying arpeggiated guitars, warped almost gothic sounding breakdowns, soaring melodies all over the place, weirdly technical, and dramatic, and emotional, there seems to be a new wave of avant post black metal, and End seemed to have tapped into it, and perfectly fused it with their classic Greek blackness. III seems to be another one of those records that benefits from repeated listens, the poppiness and sonic mystery that pervades pretty much every song, seem to no longer lurk in the background, instead, driving these songs and defining End's awesome new sound.
Packaged in a super deluxe 6 panel digipak, with a big booklet, and some seriously gorgeous (and scary) black and white artwork.
These Greek guys just aren't happy about being a part of the human race. The grim, blasting, uber-distorto black metal musick they make is evidence of that, without one even needing to read the lyrics to such songs as "Pitiless Paranormal Reek" and "Humanitarianism". Pure nihilistic poetry. And even if you, like me, like being human, we all sometimes feel a little bit of what these guys feel, right? Anyway, we're happy they feel the way they do if only 'cause of the great music that they make as a result. If you like the droning distortion of such great acts as Burzum, Weakling, and Eikenskaden you'll want to experience End for sure. But, their metal has moments of quiet, too, with good use of synth and acoustic guitar and even what must be field recordings or at least pseudo field recordings (from the forest, of the sky?). RecommENDed. Oh, and we also must applaud End's record label for the following statement: "NOTICE ISO666 Releases support CD-R copying. We encourage anyone that cant afford to buy our releases to burn a copy from a friend. Let the music be spread. We are against to all labels that lock their releases to prevent copying."
We've never reviewed any records from Seven Minutes Of Nausea, but for the grind/noise core freaks around aQ, they've been a long time favorite. This new record from Israeli label Heart & Crossbone is the latest from End Of Silence, an experimental side project of the long running 7MON, and while fairly far removed from that group's noise drenched grind, EOS does somehow weave some of that sonic fury into these three sprawling abstract tracks of minimal free noise weirdness. The 22 minute opener starts with cymbal crashes, set amidst a field of near silence, super minimal and spaced out, it's not until nearly 5 minutes in, that anything else happens. The anything else in this case, a pulsing sine wave stretch of high end feedback, which is eventually joined by a buzzing low end thrum, as the cymbal hits grow more and more rapid, in some weird way, it almost sounds like experimental classical doom, or something, it also reminds us of the tripped out abstract heaviness of Habsyll, but things have only just gotten going. Soon the sound coalesces into a weird pounding, almost looped sounding metallic minimalism, pounding rhythm, swirls of dense noise and sculpted feedback, buzz and squelch and swirl, finally the drums explode, a flurry of wild octopoidal pound, all of the instruments drifting free, the final few minutes a strange sort of noisy feedback driven free jazz style free for all, dense rhythms, noise squalls, more feedback, some serious stellar psychedelic freenoise freakout for sure.
The second track dials back the noisiness, and unfurls a haunting sprawl of abstract shimmer, and soft processed thrum, ethereal cymbal shimmer, and a murky rhythmic pulse, sounding almost like a more abstract Necks, but before they locked into any sort of groove. The sound never explodes, instead, broods and drifts, the background electronics growing more staticky and gristly, the drums only swooping in near the end, and even then, not bombastic so much as textural. And finally, the relatively short closer (13+ minutes to the other tracks' 22 and 23 minutes respectively) begins as a wall of crumbling static, underpinned by deep rib cage rattling rumbles, buried melodies, slow shifting textures, which do soon expand into dense swirls of mangled electronics and tangled strands of feedback, and while it is noisy, it's not noise, it's much more about mood and atmosphere, for this final stretch, one that's a bit caustic and chaotic, but still not completely free, a writhing roiling cascade of blown out sound, which is soon harnessed to another bout of wild drumming, the final few minutes playing out like a blast of Merzbowian free jazz. Cool stuff for sure, recommended for fans of abstract noisiness and heavy free form experimentation.
End Of Your Garden was a minimal-wave / post-punk quartet from Denmark, whose "Celebration" single from 1981 has just been reissued (on a split lp with Da Ma Vaere Belgiere) via Dark Entries. And this disc features those four tracks, plus four bonus tracks (two in the studio and two live recordings). Their skeletal arrangements for cheap electronics, drum machines, violin, guitar, bass, and vocals that all come together like Siglo XX trying to work out Young Marble Giants covers. The vocals alternate between monotone male vocals from Benny Woitowitz and Jan Laursen with a guest spot on female vocals by the breathy Angie White on the downbeat and slinky tune "Don't Walk Away In Silence." The other tracks, especially the anthemic "Celebration" and the messthetical "The Autumn" are considerably more up-tempo and urgent in their delivery. "Test" is one of the bonus tracks, and had appeared as another single from EOYG's Replik Muzick, with a two-note arrangement for guitar and synth plopped upon a noisy drum machine groove that Cold Cave might have very well lifted for their Cremations album. Agitated guitar noise gives more of a This Heat impression towards of the end of this track, and makes us wonder why nothing else was released from EOYG or anything from any of the members of the band, who all seemed to disappear around 1982. The other studio track and the live material also offer a lot of intriguing art-punk electronics, that certainly would lend themselves to a long career throughout the '80s. But alas, this is all there ever was.
More post-punk / minimal-wave obscurities by way of Dark Entries. Both of these bands were Danish outfits dating back to the early '80s, and don't seem to share much beyond their Danish good looks and the fact that both of these recordings had been released by the small Replik Muzick imprint. End Of Your Garden is more in keeping with the minimal wave vibe that Dark Entries has been promoting, through a skeletal arrangements for cheap electronics, drum machines, violin, guitar, bass, and vocals that all come together like Siglo XX trying to work out Young Marble Giants covers. The vocals alternate between monotone male vocals from Benny Woitowitz and Jan Laursen with a guest spot on female vocals by the breathy Angie White on the downbeat yet slinky "Don't Walk Away In Silence." The other tracks are considerably more up-tempo and urgent in their delivery.
The first cut from Da Ma Vaere Belgiere is a deadringer for what Interpol had been producing at the beginning of their career with this impassioned, darkly tainted post-punk with death disco rhythms, galloping basslines, and spiky guitars. Again, Siglo XX (alongside Crispy Ambulance) pops up as a reference through the monotone vocals and the downcast mood set throughout the rest of the tracks, and a less obscure citation is made on their final track which lifts Robert Smith's riff from "M" of Seventeen Seconds. Not a bad thing at all!
All of the material had been released as 7" singles back in the early '80s and now has been lovingly remastered and repackaged by Dark Entries. Recommended as with everything on the label!
Pre-Tucky Buzzard Swinging '60s psych-pop band, pretty great!
Crazy Dillinger-esque metalcore.
We've long been fans of LA's retro black thrashers Lightning Swords Of Death, we'll get their record reviewed one of these days. But recently we've become even more obsessed with LSOD guitarist Roskva's other outfit, the much blacker and buzzier Endless Blizzard, who channel classic Norwegian style BM (we assume the Blizzard in their name is an homage to the original Blizzard Beasts, Immortal) through more traditional classic metal, with lots of prog going on as well, which you know we love. Heck, they even begin the record with their own interpretation of a classic Popol Vuh Track!
But at their heart (of winter), they are a blasting grim war metal beast, offering up epic majestic riffage, furious blasting beats, intricate melodies, killer hooks, and awesome shrieking vokills.
Most of the tracks are blackened juggernauts, roiling and relentless, but the record is peppered with unexpected sounds, the haunting liturgical organs of "Luciferian Crown" complete with soaring strings and mysterious chanted vocals, the looped medieval folk of "Under The Tranhelm", a totally mesmerizing stretch of mysterious buzz and moody melody, and the epic two part final track, "Buried Still Breathing / Remember Your Death", which begins with a whirring warbly organ, playing out a minor key melody, lots of wheeze and buzz, almost like some sort of bagpipe style raga, before shifting into a plodding doom drift, heavy on the buzzing synths, which shift into some deep minimal dronemusic, before acoustic guitars join in and allow the track to unwind dreamily.
But it's not just the weird bits that make this so good. The tracks, beyond being buzzy and heavy and complex, are also catchy as hell, blending classic eighties style metal with more modern black buzz, the riffs and melodies sticking in your head like crazy.
One of our new favorites BM records for sure!
Also now on vinyl!
The grindy political punk metal brigades have a new iron gang of northernmost killers in their ranks now! Toronto's The Endless Blockade brings 13 brutal tracks to the attack on their 20 Buck Spin debut (and 2nd full-length overall). If you liked the Iron Lung album we raved about earlier this year and want more of that brand of modern power violence brutality, a pissed off blend of hardcore, noise and sludge, look no further (in fact, the two bands recently shared a split 12").
Jello Biafra puts in a cameo vocal appearance on the title track, which is funnier than most Jello guest spots 'cause that song is all of 4 seconds long, Napalm Death style, and the lyrics in their entirety consist of: "The Endess Blockade!" (which Jello puts his unmistakable stamp upon).
Brand new vinyl only, ultra heavy match up between NY's low end doom metal titans Unearthly trance, and Canadian powerviolence grind duo The Endless Blockade. Unearthly Trance go first, and fill up a whole side at 33 rpm, of their roiling doomic dirgery, thick downtuned riffage, bellowed howls, the sound epic and majestic and blackened, like a crustier version of Mastodon or Neurosis, that same sort of mighty bludgeon, but here sprawled into something way more abstract, with the track drifting fro, churning crush to loose doomy drift, with creepy tangled minor key melodies, a gorgeous and haunting, repeating motif, ominously intoned vocals, it sounds like the track will eventually erupt into more heaviness, but instead it goes the opposite direction, or at least explores a different kind of heaviness, breaking down into a long stretch of ambient dronemusic, a shadow of that original riff/motif remains, ghostlike, the track shimmering and slithering and evolving into a sort of ultra doom dirge, spacious and spare, a spaced out plod, that gradually grows more and more abstract before dissipating completely.
On the flip, Endless Blockade temper their usually furious flurries with some lumbering riffage and almost doomy drift, beginning with a dense cloud of glitched out electronics and feedback drenched shrieked vocals, before exploding into a face melting wall of blasting powerviolence crush. Flurries of frenzied drumblast, insane insectoid riffage, dueling grunted/howled vox, a furious grind wrapped in thick swaths of swirling noise, occasionally slipping into something a bit more dirgey or doomy, but eventually erupting back into some seriously aggro pummel. Their side finishes off with a dense and intense abstract noise squall, all grinding and crumbling in-the-red buzz and skree, tangled vocal freakouts, and then finally a strangely pretty field recorded ambient outro.
The grindy political punk metal brigades have a new iron gang of northernmost killers in their ranks now! Toronto's The Endless Blockade brings 13 brutal tracks to the attack on their 20 Buck Spin debut (and 2nd full-length overall). If you liked the Iron Lung album we raved about earlier this year and want more of that brand of modern power violence brutality, a pissed off blend of hardcore, noise and sludge, look no further (in fact, the two bands recently shared a split 12").
Jello Biafra puts in a cameo vocal appearance on the title track, which is funnier than most Jello guest spots 'cause that song is all of 4 seconds long, Napalm Death style, and the lyrics in their entirety consist of: "The Endess Blockade!" (which Jello puts his unmistakable stamp upon).
Killer power violence tag team, in one corner, newbies The Endless Blockade, who more than almost any current band embody the sound and spirit of classic power violence, and in the other, the grandfathers, and direct descendants of the genre's namesake, Bastard Noise, who have returned to the sound of their Man Is The Bastard antecedents, while still incorporating plenty of twisted Bastard noise noise.
We haven't heard Bastard Noise sound this fierce and heavy in years, throbbing low slung bass, pounding caveman drums, howled feral vox, wild screeches, tangled riffs, all woven into tightly wound tarpit grind jams, lurching and stuttering, stop start, freaked out blasts of furious thrash bookended by lumbering doomy crush, all shot through with streaks of electronic skree, clouds of glitched out FX, in fact, if anything this sounds like the perfect mix of classic Man Is The Bastard and another aQ fave MITB offshoot, Geronimo: rhythmic, hypnotic, cyclical. There are some moments of droned out Bastard Noise electronics, but those moments usually end up exploding into shards of hyper rhythmic pound and chug. So awesome. This would be worth it alone for the Bastard Noise side, but we haven't even gotten to the best part of this split...
Which is "Advanced Directive", an Endless Blockade remix by legendary academic electronic pioneer Noah Creshevsky (we had a killer retrospective of his work on Japanese label EM!), that is a total skittery, stuttery, psychedelic plunderphonic freakout. Riffs and vocals chopped and looped and pitch shifted and reassembled into a weirdly hiccupping experimental power violence mash up, reminds us a little bit of the recent Record Of The Week by Whourkr, with its impossibly complex and head spinning heaviness. Wow. The fourteen minute track that precedes it is a killer too, pummeling, pounding doomic heaviness, that slips into a strange electronic flecked trip out breakdown, and then a super in-the-red grinding buzz drenched feedback slathered noise freakout, before lurching back into some riffy crunch to finish things off.
There is one more track, a remix by noisemaker The Rita, but that one is for the TRUE noise lovers only, 15 minutes of crumbling, blown out, earshredding Merzbowian digicrunch.
Kinda too bad this didn't make it onto our list last week with the other Endlessess (Dismal Moan, Blizzard) found therein, woulda been funny, but this is a whole different thing anyhow as you can tell from the second half of their name. Endless Boogie (now that's a handle that will make 'em or break 'em!) are a NYC band featuring two dudes who work at Matador records (we think). Real famous record collector types or so we're told. Now doing their own brand of dumbo psych rock blurt, indeed boogying (they wasn't kiddin'!) and probably all too endlessly for some, in the spirit of their evident sixties/seventies heroes. They got de mojo too, it seems, rubbin' off all those elpees they been collectin'. Cool enuff stuff (though they ain't no Vermonster).
"Smoking Figs In The Yard", the first track, starts off with a spoken "get down have a real good time" intro done in a hokey, jokey (we hope) Beefheart/Billy Gibbons/Edgar Broughton sorta grunt. Ouch. Then they git to rockin'. It's sorta Monster Magnet, sorta Rolling Stones (well, the vocals are kinda Jagger). Meh. But then track two's hypnotic throb, and beerbellycrawlingkingsnake scat singing moves, make it more akin to a redneck version of Circle, or Pharaoh Overlord. Starting to like this better... Endless Boogie coming on like a wanky hybrid of somethin' Circular, with the likes of Drunk Horse or maybe Howlin' Rain.
When track 4, "Executive Focus" rolls around, it's guitar solo wah wah time (moreso even than earlier), stuff that any Comets On Fire, Wooden Shjips or Julian Cope fan can flash on and dig... Acid Mothers too. By the time this song was over, eleven heavy and a half minutes later, we'd been swayed. Endless Boogie is all right with us. And we think we've got the idea. Yep, soon enough, sure enough, track six "Steak Rock" is another repetitive throbber with weird caveman mumblin' Tourette's babble o'er top. Circle's Mika Ratto could speak in tongues with this guy, and they'd understand one another we're certain.
A little later, the album's eighth cut "Jammin' With Top Dollar" sounds like "Mississippi Queen" Mountain with more of that tweaked out-of-the-side-of-the-mouth bugeyed blues holler...
That's followed by the over sixteen glorious guitar-centric minutes of "Low Lifes", a moody, mesmerizing epic of stretched out six string psych action. And then, they rock out the 2:38 duration of the disc's final number "Move Back!". As for the tracks we didn't touch on, "Bad River", "Gimme The Awesome", "Coming Down The Stairs", you can more or less guess at descriptions from the above.
So, the verdict - this gets better n' better as it goes along, though we still find it tough to tolerate the vocals, which are a tongue in cheek tribute to ZZ Top we guess. Struth, if we didn't think the Endless Boogie guys were NYC hipsters taking the piss, we might cut 'em more slack on that. Like, if they were Finnish... but that's hardly fair. Still, the guitars are way cool (if'n you like geeetar), but vocals sorta sound like it's a joke. Yr mileage may vary. You do pretty much get what you'd expect from a band called Endless Boogie! Fans of Wooden Shjips, Itavayla, and of course ZZ Top should check it out.
Here's the second album for No Quarter from Brooklyn's Endless Boogie, and boy howdy do they live up to their name, there's a couple songs here upwards of eight minutes long, also tracks that clock in at 9:36, 10:49, and even 22:36! That one, entitled "A Life Worth Leaving", is the album's finale, recorded live on cassette for maximum sweat and grit and grunt. Though the whole album isn't much different. With extreme repetitive blues rock grooves, Beefheartian holler, and loads of wild electric geetar wail, it's hypnotic shitkickin' psychedelia like Wooden Shjips and ZZ Top and Circle and the Rolling Stones all jammin' together for ever and ever.
If you liked EB's previous album Focus Level, you'll like Full House Head too. And like we said about that record, the one thing that sometimes doesn't work for us is the vocals, they're a bit too "authentic" to really be authentic, if you know what we mean. But we could be wrong, maybe the singer (whom we assume is also playing guitar or something) really is a grizzled old white blues hippie dude with a long beard, wearing a floppy leather hat, and spitting tobacco juice out the side of his mouth when not pouring the whiskey in. 'Cause that's what he sounds like, or sounds like he's trying to sound like. But anyway he certainly shuts up and plays his guitar plenty so we're not really complaining. And actually, when he is on the mic, we like him at his most gruff, psychotic and strangled, like the ranting of "Top Dollar Speaks His Mind", not so much the more intelligible singing/speaking of "Slow Creep", which is one of the album's mellower moments, if you can call a nearly 11 minute long track a moment.
But mellow this mostly isn't. Mesmeric, though, yes. At their best, Endless Boogie's psychedelic choogle gets positively savage, and we start thinking, it's like Blue Cheer's Randy Holden crankin' it out backed by the Plastic Ono Band rhythm section, or something equally fantastical. Not sure if it really sounds like that, but that we'd even think it for a second is a good thing. So, yeah, while we once had our doubts about this band, again we've been convinced. The real deal, or what passes for in this day and age. Go unto it and get into it, brothers and sisters! Unless the name Endless Boogie totally turns you off. In which case, 'tis truth in advertising, thus this ain't for you.
Endless Boogie continue to do what they do best, endlessly boogie-ing, on this their third album for No Quarter. If you've heard their other two records (we hope), if you're a fan of their other two (we are), then you have a not-so-rough idea of what the heck the haps are here, and oughta dig Long Island big time. Boasting a scary/spooky cover painting that looks more like it's meant for a black metal album, Long Island is all asprawl - over four vinyl sides or one literally jam-packed (nearly 80 minutes long) compact disc side - with EB's trademark by now Stones meets Beefheart meets ZZ Top meets Wooden Shjips style of old school sixties record collectin' bluesy choogle 'til ya droogle extreme jammage damage. For those of you not familiar with these NYC (by way of the fabled crossroads, perhaps) jammers, please do go read our reviews of Focus Level and Full House Head - in fact we were just reading 'em over ourselves the other day and thinkin', hey wow good job on those reviews, we should relist those records just so folks will scope them again. But anyway, they'll give you a decent idea what's Long Island is all about, too. But, if you want a review of this IN this review, here's the rundown�
Vocalist "Top Dollar" (his vox a potential dealbreaker for some, as we've previously noted, depending on whether you believe or care if his maniacal gritty drawl is authentic or parodic or not) does his old blues coot holler over the guitar blurt and rhythmic churn of these eight tracks, none of 'em short, all (except "Taking Out the Trash") with fairly cryptic/esoteric titles. They range from moody numbers wherein Endless Boogie "bring it down" and Top Dollar reigns it in, to put forth a semi-spoken Nick Cave-y sorta vibe, to power rockin' bangers aswirl with plentiful 'lectric geetar psych soloing, a preponderance of the tracks leaning to the latter cantankerous category, or at least in the murky middle ground of mesmeric instrumental groovin', so get ready for the rumble.
Just imagine a world in which there's only one kind of music: the blues. As the basis for ALL other types of music. (Ok, maybe this is almost true, but take the idea to an extreme). So there's no rock, just blues rock. No electronica, only, uh, blues electronica. No black metal, only blues black metal. No reggaeton, only blues reggaeton. And no tranced out throbbing krautrock except, well, ENDLESS BOOGIE. Makes sense they'd be on the same label what's put out records by Circle, Pharoah Overlord, and The Psychic Paramount.
Vinyl version is a gatefold, with download, fyi.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The second of two "Endless" black metal bands on this week's list. While the other Endless (Blizzard) channels the spirit of classic Norwegian blackness, this Endless (Dismal Moan), finds his inspiration somewhere much darker and way more fucked up. This is record number three from Japan's Endless Dismal Moan (aka EDM) and is another glorious blast of gnarled dissonance and off kilter metallic blackness. The work of a single entity, curiously named CHAOS9, EDM traffic in super repetitive trance like black metal, grinding buzzed out riffs, convoluted and obtuse, locked into mesmerizing loops, the tracks repetitive and hypnotic. The vocals are a maniacal shriek way down in the mix, the drums not always blasting, sometimes pounding out strange stuttery rhythms alongside the riffs, and it's all about the riffs, thick and massive and jagged, sometimes everything locks into super precise stop start dynamics, before exploding again into buzzing black chaos.
It's sort of hard to explain the sound of EDM, it's like the intro or a bridge of a traditional black metal track, all twisted up and stretched out into a whole song, super droney and woozy and tripped out and dizzyingly dense. There are a few brief respites, some Goblin-y horror movie keyboards, some creepy doomy almost industrial blackened crunch, bits of cinematic black ambience, a long loopscape of still more Italian horror movie style synths and weird machinelike rhythms, and the final track, a blissy almost shoegaze-y abstract drift, drums dense with reverb, the barely there melodies drifting in a sea of soft hiss and blurred muted buzz, which just barely balances the furious fractured blackness that makes up the rest of the record.
Yet another disc of essential fucked up blackened genius! TOTALLY recommended.
Debut release from this East Coast duo, who weave a dense swirl of softly rhythmic ambience, druggy dronemusic and abstract psychedelic space drift, utilizing a strange assemblage of instruments. Along with guitars, vocals and pedals, they also utilize a Gameboy, the result is not that far removed from the sounds of folks like Expo 70, Gnod, Sounding The Deep, Pulse Emitter and the like, but these guys describe their sound as "triumphant post-noise and stretched out bummer-wave", which translates to washed out expanses of skittery programmed rhythms, warm shimmery guitars, muted loops and subtle glitchery, everything raw and lo-fi but still lush and expansive, there are vocals, but they tend to be blurred into soft swirls of layered hum and whir, the sound is dreamlike and mediative, but not mellow, instead it's minimally propulsive and blissed out, sometimes slipping into full on Autechre-like skitter, but even then, the rhythms are set amidst dense layers of drone, disembodied melodies, hushed ethereal ambience, or tripped out soft noise. Cool, mysterious and definitely psychedelic, this is the perfect headphone drift soundtrack, or sounds for a rainy day lost wander, or music to help you achieve the next level, to leave your body and attain enlightenment, or to just put on and chill out.
SUPER LIMITED RUN, 53 tapes and 47 cd-r's, we only got the cd-r's, and each one comes bundled with a bad ass lazer etched black triangular talisman, that according to the band, will "bring you infinite power", and that Andee has been wearing since we first got these in!! (proof is here: http://twitpic.com/ya15g, http://twitpic.com/ya1cu)
To a certain degree, Endless Humiliation sound pretty much exactly what a band called Endless Humiliation -should- sound like. The review we read described EH as a mix of Ildjarn and Hijokaidan, which was enough for us to track some of these down. And heck, that's not all that far off the mark.
A total face melting wall of blacknoise, a continuous blastbeat beneath a churning, ever shifting sea of harsh hissing buzz, blown out circuit blowing distortion, crumbling clouds of processed vocal chaos, thick sheets of feedback, this is definitely NOISE, but that damn drum beat, and we seem to hear riffs, whether they're there or not, this is the sort of thing that puts all those other noisy black metal bands to shame. For Endless Humiliation, noise is an instrument, with which they craft some virulent and abject black fury.
Blasting crusty D-beat style drumming, pounding away beneath a cloud of Merzbowian freakout, shrieking vox, guitars? Maybe, but if so, they've been melted down and poured over the speakers, the sound shifts dramatically and fantastically throughout, from gritty and lo-fi, to brittle and tinny, to thick and corrosive to muted and washed out to sharp and jagged, and those drums just keep pounding away, the whole record throbbing and churning and heaving, we hear Dead C, Prurient, Akitsa, Bone Awl, Malveillance, Hijokaidan, Incapacitants, lots and lots of blasting pounding rrrrrrooooooaaaaaaar. But amidst all this noisiness and brutality and mayhem, there are some seriously sublime moments, like halfway through side two, when the sounds all lock tight into this high end drone, the drums an insanely repetitive metronomic plod, the guitars or synths or whatever the fuck is making that racket coalesce into a near static sheet of high end buzz, the whole thing managing to somehow sound more than noisy, tense, intense and dramatic. Oh and noisy. Totally killer. Noisefreaks will need this for SURE. Metalheads who like their blasting and thrashing just dripping with blown out buzz, and spewing white hot gouts of in-the-red NOISE, well then this is for you too.
Wicked packaging, hand silkscreened on thick cardstock, super striking, inside and out, comes with one photocopied insert, and one full color insert. And pretty sure it's crazy limited too...
No idea who Endless Time is or where they hail from, but his/her/their Coasting cassette on Monorail Trespassing is a great introduction, and stands well with some of the disturbed drone passages that have come from the recent output of Emaciator and Infinite Body. The first side ripples with an ominous drone from a single synth line transmitting beneath a series of haunted piano notes, which split the difference between the Caretaker and Cranioclast (if anybody remembers that once prolific German post-industrial outfit of peculiar darkness). Stretches of iron-clad static burst through these sci-fi atmospheres, giving way to a melodic interlude between two harmonized notes. The second side seems to be a soft dub of the first with alienating bleeps set in motion across an undulating and unsettling electrical field of an analog synth sawtooth drone, placated by pastoral flutes which emerge toward the end of the piece. Here, Endless Time has more of the '80s ambient feel of Vangelis, particularly from some of the Blade Runner soundtrack. Limited to 125 copies, of which we only have a few.
