Now on deluxe thick double vinyl with bonus tracks!!!
Mixing elements of world, funk, dub, and electronic music has for the most part turned out to be a recipe for disaster. All too many have attempted this mix with a glossy shine and a clumsy hand and without fail have produced pretty tepid attempts at cross cultural imagination. From 1979-1980 Brian Eno and David Byrne recorded -their- take on this fusion years before it became chic and of course with just the right kind of careful and talented hands, and were actually able to make those elements come together and create a brand new language. What's so nice about hearing this reissue is how it's both ahead of its time but also so OF it's time as well. With moments that bring you back to the bits on early Talking Heads records that you could listen to over and over, and with a recording quality so refreshingly raw and primitive. This record was recorded by a large ensemble cast including Bill Laswell who was just then starting his band Material with lots of the same ideas and elements. While not totally related in exact sound we can totally see how many of today's cross cultural sonic explorers were influenced by this record. There's no doubt these were sounds soaked up by the best hip-hop & electronic producers of the '80s and '90s as well as folks like Animal Collective, Excepter and even Glissandro 70, whose record we review elsewhere on this list. This reissue adds a handful of bonus tracks not on the original version and unlike most extras these are in fact all essential.
Fully remastered on 180 gram vinyl with 7 previously unreleased tracks as well as selections from the multi-tracks (drum track, vocal track and ambient track) of "Help Me Somebody" and "A Secret Life" !!!!
Boring and uninspired new Eno collaboration with J. Peter Schwalm. Really unnecessary and sad. I sure wish my musical heroes would learn when to retire. Sigh...
As true a return to classic form as could be expected by this pioneer of ambient music, the one and only Brian Eno. Eno's later records are always met with a bit of trepidation as he seems more often to collaborate or explore musical realms that are perhaps more interesting to him than his listeners. But we were excited and curious to learn that Warp would be releasing this new record, and the label's pretty strict quality control ensures that it doesn't disappoint, but it's not altogether revelatory either, as much of a nice listen it truly is.
We've heard Small Craft on A Milk Sea as being billed as a series of filmless soundtracks, but we've also learned that the albums genesis was from the rejected recordings for the film, The Lovely Bones. The cinematic quality of the tracks especially the opener, "Emerald and Lime" is highly evident and harkens back to classic Eno records, Music for Films or Thursday Afternoon, with their billowly atmosphere and far-away piano tones. Later tracks evolve with more urgent dynamics as distorted guitars, percussion and processed electronics up the rhythms and textures significantly from the earlier tracks, and remind us of Eno's fourth world strategies heard on Another Green World and on his collaborations with Jon Hassel. The last third of the album calms back down with more placid ambient moods and ethereal washes and layers.
This is definitely a record to spend some time with as it doesn't quite reveal itself completely after two or even three listens. It's the best Eno record in years, which might not mean that much, but it's not for the easily dismissive. Like the best Eno records, it graciously rewards the patient.
Mixing elements of world, funk, dub, and electronic music has for the most part turned out to be a recipe for disaster. All too many have attempted this mix with a glossy shine and a clumsy hand and without fail have produced pretty tepid attempts at cross cultural imagination. From 1979-1980 Brian Eno and David Byrne recorded -their- take on this fusion years before it became chic and of course with just the right kind of careful and talented hands, and were actually able to make those elements come together and create a brand new language. What's so nice about hearing this reissue is how it's both ahead of its time but also so OF it's time as well. With moments that bring you back to the bits on early Talking Heads records that you could listen to over and over, and with a recording quality so refreshingly raw and primitive. This record was recorded by a large ensemble cast including Bill Laswell who was just then starting his band Material with lots of the same ideas and elements. While not totally related in exact sound we can totally see how many of today's cross cultural sonic explorers were influenced by this record. There's no doubt these were sounds soaked up by the best hip-hop & electronic producers of the '80s and '90s as well as folks like Animal Collective, Excepter and even Glissandro 70, whose record we review elsewhere on this list. This reissue adds a handful of bonus tracks not on the original version and unlike most extras these are in fact all essential.
Recorded in 1980, The Plateaux of Mirror is the least successful of Eno's ambient works, with the exception of its success in being the blueprint for the myriad new age records that would soon follow in its footsteps. Budd's meandering legato piano lines sound so maudlin in comparison to the austere rigidity of Wyatt's playing on Music For Airports. There are less syrupy moments here that make for fine soundtracks. In fact, I think I've seen no less than a dozen student and/or low budget documentaries in my day that have used these tracks in their scores.
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.
Five songs of hellish blasphemy from this Scandinavian black metal brigade, including one with lyrics by the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley... Amid the continuing influx of run of the mill, second rate black metal, this actually stands out as having both musical hooks and a convincingly evil atmosphere.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The third and final installment in this Finnish black metal band's "Telocvovim" series (whatever that means). Enochian Crescent aren't yet a big name in the scene, but they should be. This album destroys. For fans of Satyricon, Keep of Kalessin, and the like.
Another disc we knew nothing about and just luckily stumbled across (with our interest whetted due to its label affiliation, Kning usually being quite interest-ing). We were initially struck by the gorgeous cover, an embroidered landscape, all oranges and blacks, the texture of the background fabric adding grit to the already dark and mysterious shapes and hues in the foreground. The words Farval Falkenberg printed in huge gold metallic letters, strangely poetic song titles.
We later discovered that this is in fact the soundtrack to a Swedish film, a coming of age story, sad and bittersweet, and the music couldn't be more perfect. The opening track had us completely smitten within seconds. A gorgeously melancholy acoustic guitar, spinning a soft sad melody, mournful and moody, the main melody is whistled, giving the track a certain childlike vibe, a bit of a Morricone / Bjorn Olsson feel too, it seriously gives us shivers just writing about it. Then the 'chorus' kicks in, and adds soft focus piano plinking in the background, another guitar higher up in the mix, simple tambourine percussion. It's so evocative, you can't help but let your mind start making up different scenes from this movie you've never seen. Lonely walks, sitting by the window, rain pouring down, wandering along railroad tracks, laying in bed staring at the cracks in the ceiling. Wow.
And the rest of the record is just as compelling. Every song a mini super emotional epic. Organs wheeze ominously, acoustic guitars flutter and flit, chimes drift and shimmer, the piano returns in dense swells, bits of static and glitchy hiss intrude like someone changing stations on the radio, there are creaks and groans, distant rumbles, bits of electronic skitter, subtle drones, chimes, bells, even the occasional vocals, but it's always about the guitar, it's delicate dreamlike melodies, and how it's so perfectly intertwined with the piano and the organ. So moving and intense. Think Rachel's, Dirty Three, Pinetop Seven, Japancakes, Godspeed, but somehow much less arty, and more genuine, subtly experimental, but practically perfect, dark, emotional, so incredibly moving. Makes us want to see the film so bad, but in the meantime, it's the ideal music for whatever film you have running through your head. And of course the absolutely perfect soundtrack for lonely walks, staring at the ceiling, staring out the windows in the rain, wandering along railroad tracks, etc...
We've been trying to get ANYTHING by this band, this GUY actually. A seriously sick drummer (he's been featured on SickDrummer.Com multiple times), the awesomely monickered Bornyhake, not only drums up a fucking storm, he also handles all the other instruments as well. Enoid is his one man band, but so is Borgne, and beyond that, he plays in 5 or 6 other bands, from doom to grind, but it's extreme blackness where he really excels. We'll keep trying to get some Borgne for the store, but for now at least we can extol the radness that is Enoid.
Right out of the gate, Ataraxiis explodes in a frenzy of blizzardy beastliness, furious and frenzied and frantic, soaring melodies, drumming so fast, we're thinking it might even have to be a drum machine, or he really IS a sick drummer, and while he may be Swiss, the sound is definitely Nordic, or Swedish, think 1349, or Marduk, Immortal or Satyricon even, this is super intense frostbitten blackness, relentless, sometimes the tracks breakdown into lurching grooves or pounding doom, but those moments are fleeting, it's never long before Enoid launches back into more seriously blasting black grimness. Brutal and kult, soul flaying heaviness that is definitely not for the meek. If you like it frosty and fast, grim and black, you probably can't do much better (or blacker) than this!
Another blast of furious blasting blackened sickness from Swiss one man horde Enoid, masterminded by Bornyhake, who also does time in the equally awesome Borgne. We reviewed the Enoid full length Ataraxiis a few lists back, and Suicide Genocide takes up right where that one left off, furious and frantically blasting black metal, Norwegian style, and yeah, he's Swiss, but the sound is classic Scandinavian black metal, the riffs epic and soaring, the drumming brutal and lightning speed, the vocals demonic and bile spewing, the buzz cranked WAY up, the tracks dense and complex lurching from maniacal frenzied blasting, to sludge-y doomic pounding to weirdly melodic, often all those elements colliding midsong. And he's not just a killer player, he's capable of crafting some pretty excellent songs too, hidden amidst all that gnarled blackness and buzz drenched blast, lurk plenty of hooks, subtle perhaps, but there nonetheless infusing this filth with a vibe that keeps it from being just another slab of grim black whatever.
What is it about the Swiss, it's hard to pinpoint, but we're becoming mildly obsessed with bands from Switzerland, Paysage D'Hiver, Darkspace, Wacht, Ordo Infandorum Rituum Occultus (both reviewed elsewhere on this list), Sun Of The Blind, Borgne, and yeah, like the Ukraine, it's probably all the same 4 or 5 guys, but who cares, they've tapped into something, that's positioning Switzerland to give France and Norway And heck, the Ukraine a run for their black metal money.
All right, admittedly the "_______ meets _______" is an easy/lazy reviewer's tactic, but sometimes we've gotta use it. In Enon's case, it is Deerhoof meets Blonde Redhead, and no, it's not just because all three have Japanese chanteuses whose voices flitter up high into the rafters. We must stress that this is not a bad thing by any means. We love the tweaked lush stylings of all three bands! Where Enon stands apart from those two though is in their penchant for veering into more rugged, raucous terrain. John Schmersal hollers and snarls vocals along with the buzzing angular guitars (except for the song "Mr. Ratatatat" when he sounds a lot like Steve Bays of Hot Hot Heat!), but this grit and aggression is nicely tempered by the cooing high female voice of Ms Toko Yasuda who sounds more confident and downright sultry on Grass geysers... Carbon Clouds than on previous recordings. This is Enon at their most straightforwardly poppy, their punchiest and catchiest, but it's not without a trademark stormy, strange twist or two. Listening to this is like speeding along a winding road at midnight in the pitch black. As your headlights catch fleeting glimpses of mysterious structures and figures in the darkness, your mind juggles between the benevolent and malevolent. Enon's new album is a wild pop ride are just as likely to menace broodingly in the dark as burst out in a flurry of sparkling fireworks. Recommended!
Been wonderin' what ever became of Enon after their debut album (released in 2000) sorta fell through the cracks following the dissolution of their label See-Thru? Fret no longer, they are back with their sophomore effort on the much more sturdy label Touch & Go. High Society is another mishmash of styles (just as Believo was, but perhaps a bit more poppy and upbeat, and less eccentric and angular). Sometimes they quite adeptly meld the disparate elements into a sound of their own, other times less so. The third song "In This City" is quite Blonde Redhead-esque, but imagine Kazu Makino's expressive off-kilter vocals replaced by a more cloying baby doll delivery of -surprise!- former Blonde Redhead member Toko Yasuda (also of The Lapse). Despite this aspect, it unfortunately falls short of BR's art rock greatness in other ways as well. Somewhat lacking in dynamics, its single synth melodies take turns over a basic hi-hat/snare beat and sparsely funky bass line. Seemed like it was going somewhere, but didn't. When combined, Yasuda and John Schmersal's vocals - hers the soft kittenish coo, his a hoarse, Girls Against Boys / Jon Spencer sexed-up growl - often make for an interesting mix especially on tracks like "Natural Disasters" on which they come across as a sort of emo-new-wave girl/boy call and response. "Leave It To Rust" is a strangely intrusive mildly darkwave-ish number resembling something off of the recent Deadsy album. What other styles does Enon throw into the mix? Indie/college radio rock, trashy garage, and various shades of pop, but as mentioned earlier with varying degrees of success. Engineered by Girls Against Boys' Eli Janney and produced by Dave Sardy (alt-metal producer/engineer for the likes of Marilyn Manson and System Of A Down, formerly of Barkmarket and See-Thru label boss).
With no full length of brand new sparkling songs on the horizon from our beloved indie-power-pop superstars, Enon, this will have to do for now for all us fans. This collection of rarities and singles (mixed by Eli Janney -- formally of Girls vs. Boys) shows off John (Brainiac) and Toko (Blonde Redhead)'s looser, more experimental side of songwriting. Our favorite track here would have to be their super catchy, oompah noise-pop track, "Marbles Explode", a track that was cut from a previous album for some unexplained reason. Glad they finally put that out! This cd/dvd also exhibits their penchant for uber talented friends in the video and motion graphics industry, as an enclosed region-free dvd is devoted to an impressive collection of music videos. Long live ENON.
You know you want it. Members of Sunburned Hand Of The Man and No Neck Blues Band sneak out in the middle of the night to perform their strange alchemical musical experiments. Sonically not all that different from the above musikal kults, the hostile growl of stumbling angular guitar, atonal skronk, mysterious world music warble, dangerous hippies spewing abstract psychfolk grit and grime, occasionally blissing out into tranquil otherworldly ragas of sitar like shimmer and tribal paganism. Packaged in a beautiful hand screened Godspeed like cardstock digipak!
Ensemble is actually one fellow named Olivier Alary, but he isn't alone. He's made a habit of working with fine singers (Chanelle Kimber and Bjork to name just two!). Here on his sophomore album he's enlisted the vocal support of Lou Barlow, Camille Claverie, Mileece and Chan Marshall. Alary clearly allows his guests' respective styles to dictate each song's direction -- the Barlow song sounds Barlow-penned, the Marshall one closely resembles a Cat Power tune, and we're not familiar with Mileece but her collaboration is markedly different from the rest in its downtempo groove. That said, the overall vibe is one of Sea And Cake-y breezy mellowness and softly lit Sondre Lerche-esque smoothness, so much so that this is almost like yachting music for the indie set. Time to take your boat out on the lake.
Not so much an ensemble as it is the work of one of the Starving Weirdos, the one who also records in the equally cool RV Paintings. Although it's unclear why the new monicker was necessary, besides the fact that it's a solo record, since the sound is not all that far removed from the Weirdos', which is no bad thing, if anything, the sound on At The Foot Of Nameless Roads is like a more intimate, more hushed take on the Weirdos' abstract avant ambience. Where the SW sounds like a handful of guys bathed in shadows, around a roaring fire, banging on mysterious objects, coaxing sounds out of big old hunks of electronics and busted musical instruments, the sound of EE, is more tranquil, movements measured and precise, lit not by fire, but by moonlight, or soft sunlight filtered through grey clouds. A series of longform dronescapes, shimmering smoother out high pitched skree spread out over layers of burnished hum. Deep metallic shimmers create fields of swirling overtones and buried melodies, delicate tendrils of washed out buzz spread out like a crack in the ice, creating intricate patterns that when viewed from afar are barely visible, but up close reveal all manner of shapes and designs, dense fields of looped percussion get tangled up with reverberating tones and overlapping chunks of fragmented melody, drums are dubbed out and delayed to the point that they almost become a static blur, and finally the sound of a crackling fire underpins hushes whispered dronelike ambience.
This is after all, for all of it's various sounds and timbres, arrangements and processes, a very minimal drone record, and a quite varied and lovely one at that.
Cover art by Tarentel's Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
The latest release from Mr. Bryan Pyle, one half of the Starving Weirdos, as well as one half of RV paintings, both groups who we've raved about in the past, as is the case with Pyle's solo project, Ensemble Economique, whose sound is even more difficult to pin down than either of his other two groups. Both the Starving Weirdos and RV paintings seem to be cut from the same sonic cloth, the difference seemingly being that the SW stuff is roughly torn, while the RV Paintings is delicately cut, the former trafficking in a sort of ramshackle experimental droned out abstract ambience, while the latter, dials back the ramshackle, and deftly weaves in field recordings and produces something much warmer and pastoral. Needless to say, we're huge fans of both. Pyle on his own, is all over the place, incorporating obviously elements of both SW and RV, but definitely doing his own idiosyncratic thing, whether it be progged out krautpsych electronics, dark synth-croon songsmithery, filmic melancholia or dense layered dronemusic, so we were definitely prepared for Pyle to throw us a curve ball with this new one, his first for Dekorder. And we were not disappointed. Not one bit. Opener "Heat Waves" sounds remarkably like Salem, straight up witch house, all fuzzy sun dappled synths, those skeletal crunked out handclap rhythms, some very John Carpenter like melodies, but Pyle definitely makes it his own, adding strange flurries of percussion, stretches those synths out into something a bit dronier, but regardless, Salem fans might find themselves flipping out. "Vanishing Point" dials back the witchiness a bit, but it's still all synthy and drum machiney, very retro eighties, a little bit of that synthdrag we dig so much, but with lush string laden swells, and darkly delicate melodies. And so goes the rest of the records, a songsuite of witchy cinematic eighties retro-futurism, but Pyle definitely is a master, transforming what in lesser hands could be bandwagon jumping, into something all his own, mixing in some downtempo Portishead style grooviness, loads of texture, subtle percussion, the vibe haunting and ominous, even hearing a little Barry Adamson here and there, that same sort of faux soundtrack Adamson did so well. But here it's a bit more twisted, the sound seeming to revisit that Salem-y witch housiness throughout, but on tracks like "Everything I Have, I Give To You", making something new and exciting and sonically compelling, out of a sound that's been done to death, and in doing so, creating his own genre, which is basically what he seems to do with every record. Borrowing a little, but then basically tangling and twisting it all up until it's totally unrecognizable.
This might just be our favorite EE record yet, but pretty sure we say that about every one.
Absolutely RIYL Salem, Umberto, Dylan Ettinger, Xander Harris, Roll The Dice and various other purveyors of witchy / synthy / retro sounds...
At his marine outpost on the western shore of Humboldt County, California, Brian Pyle (aka Ensemble Economique, as well as a member of the Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings) is in a prime location to dial into the ether for radiowaves across the Pacific. With the nearest communities of Eureka and Arcata far less irradiated with electro-magnetic interference which makes shortwave radio listening down right impossible in urban areas, and with Pyle's proximity to the Pacific Ocean (it's a couple hundred yards from his back door) acting as a massive antenna, he's able to listen to transmissions that seem to come from Russia, Thailand, Papua New Guinea, China, and numerous other locales. Along with the baffling radio phenomena of utility signals and numbers stations, Pyle found himself captivated by the sounds of 'interval signals'. These are the specific sounds, phrases, or melodies that announce the end or beginning of a particular program. Often very simple, so as to work within the limitations of shortwave, these signals can sound very eerie and truncated when broadcast halfway around the world. Pyle first incorporated these sounds into a performance back in 2011 for 23five's now-defunct Activating The Medium festival, and those echoing phrases have become a staple in Pyle's live sets. So this entire album dedicated to interval signals, finds Pyle lacing these sounds with insistently dark, piano solos and bleak field recordings of abandoned spaces pounded by monsoonal winds and rains. Interval Signals is a very solitary, impressionist work, showing a sense of spaciousness found more in the likes of Basinski and Coleclough than in most of Pyle's previous work. Still very cinematic in scope, but its an entirely different movie for Pyle this time. A Pixelvision version of Last Year At Marienbad? Yeah, it's that cool.
Drugs. Hallucinations. Isolation. Death. Some pretty classic / heavy-as-fuck metaphors run through the work of Brian Pyle, the mad genius of Manilla Beach up in Humboldt County, California. He's been at it for a long time now, first knocking on our door with his homespun variations of floorcore psychedelia with the seemingly inactive collective Starving Weirdos; then, there was the fraternal act of nature jamming drones through RV Paintings; and Ensemble Economique is Pyle all by his lonesome, where he's proven deft at density of sound laced with a nocturnal pop streak that could even warrant some Demdike witchy references. Pyle's hypnotic structures are deceptively simple and proven emotively effective - a lilting layer of blown-out guitar drones cycling through elegiac melodies, another layer of electronic sequences, oceanic driftings, chanted vocalizations, rasps of bowed metals, maudlin church organ explorations, or thumming dial-tone samples, with crumbled film samples of what could be some Russian / French / Hong Kong noir film of some woman frantically whispering about some crime that may or may not have happened. The individual tracks glide into a purposeful, cinematic song cycle narrative that begins with the thoroughly gloomy, portentous opening track "If You Need Help" that is a real downer of an acid trip spent staring at a ghost ship sinking in the depths of the Pacific with sand, sea foam, and black rain kicking you in the face to make the sense of hopelessness all the more real. Pyle links the two sides of the album with "Ksenia" - a track split in half of percolating acidic electronic sequences girding those female vocal samples and guitar drones. By the end of the album, his delirious slow-motion take on '80s bombast lifts the album's weightiness with two drone-pop ballads of marching rhythms and radioluminescent hypno-melodies. Another mighty fine album from Brian Pyle!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Not really a live recording per se, but a focused session at the Manilla Beach compound where Brian Pyle lives and works in Northern California. Pyle is well known around these parts for his work in the DIY cosmic explorers The Starving Weirdos and psychedelic "nature jammers" RV Paintings, with his solo work being under the guise Ensemble Economique. 2012 has been a busy year for Pyle, even by his manic work ethic, thanks to a lengthy tour from the western end of the European continent all the way into the depths of Russia; and he also took a handful of excursions up and down the California coast bracketing that tour. When Pyle performed his set, which he mapped out for the European tour, it was already an impressive array of discordant Tim Heckerish blasts of semi-melodic fuzz, post-Goblin arrangements of ominously minor-key church organs, and a vibe pointing to late-nite habits of getting stoned and aimless trawling through the vacant spaces on cable television. By the time he got back from the tour, he had the set nailed down; and this recording is THEE document encapsulating all of the detours, epiphanies, and experiments Pyle made along the way. Pyle offers up seven or eight distinct movements within the seamlessly mixed session; and in those movements, electro-tribal rhythms and delirious synth tones gird the swelling arrangements for left-field ambience, punk raga-drones, crusty guitar blasts in prolapsed Morricone-styled melody, and brain-cracked vocalizations, with interludes from field recordings of fire, crickets, and whispering cyborg women. More great work from Brian Pyle. And yup, it's super limited.
First off, this is a super fucking limited cd-r, produced in the fog-laden confines of Manila, California by the one and only Brian Pyle. This dude is one of characters in the Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings, with Ensemble Economique being the moniker he's chosen for his solo work. The last couple of Ensemble Economique albums - especially the Psychical lp recorded for Not Not Fun - had been veering from a home-grown psychedelic improvisational splatter and into wonderfully off-kilter takes on cinematic melodrama. Psychical was clearly hedging towards the VHS-horror / John Carpenter vernacular, but here Pyle's jumping into dark-synth croon territory as he's molding sparse songs out of his morass of loops, witch house rhythmic skitter, and occasional arcs of luminous downer guitar tones. What's more is that Pyle SINGS throughout the album - not the reverb-soaked sustained caterwaul he would utter in the Weirdos, but more of a late-nite stoned balladeering that could have infected Pyle's brain from too many Miami Vice re-runs. One could imagine this to be Brian Pyle's ode to that show's incidental music - not the Don Johnson chase scene frenzy, but the crying tone-bent guitar excursions that would peg a scene's cinematic tragedy. Bits of dialogue splattered with delay tricks and synth nodes flash with neon intensity against Pyle's naked electronica, all of which was recorded in a marathon session on one day in the summer of 2011. It's pretty dang amazing actually, it even had folks coming up from the back room to find out what the heck was playing, which is always a good sign.
We're probably the only source for these discs... and who knows if more can be procured!
Bryan Pyle should no longer need much in the way of an introduction here at aQuarius as we've long championed the shambolic drone-pop and improbable psychedelia that Pyle has been crafting on the sodden beaches of Humboldt County, California. This once and future Starving Weirdo has been on a roll with his latest stream of Ensemble Economique work. Along with the two recent albums released by Denovali, there's this limited, one-sided picture disc produced for Dekorder's series of releases in conjunction with their tenth anniversary. The three tracks on No Thing-Ness represent a more caustic, more industrial aesthetic for Ensemble Economique, which never shied away from the haunted and the gothic; but here, there is a claustrophobia and paranoiac feel unlike much of Pyle's previous work. The opening cut "All Our Water" is a slinky, ritualized piece of electronica with Muslimgauze-like rhythms, hypnotic media samples, and buzzingly flanged guitar drones that exhibit colorations similar to those found in Soft Moon's motorik work. "Banking System" is the most sinister thing we've heard from Pyle yet, though the cybernetic concoction of monochromatic synth percolations somewhere between Conrad Schnitzler, John Carpenter, and maybe some Bourbonese Qualk. The lengthy "Dream Homes" layers tone-bent synth lines onto militaristic drum machine marches with radiophonic signal beacons and diabolically chanted vocals echoing throughout. A great release for sure, but we should note that it's unlikely we will be able to restock beyond what we currently have on the shelves.
The Italian horror artwork that graces Psychical is something of a red herring, as Brian Pyle guides his Ensemble Economique into the orbit of Conny Plank and Moebius in his use of electronics rather than one of Goblin or Zombi. Pyle is an artist who should need no introduction as one of principals in the Starving Weirdos as well as RV Paintings, with records on pretty much every cool label under the sun (Root Strata, Blackest Rainbow, Weird Forest, Olde English Spelling Bee, Digitalis, and now Not Not Fun). While the debut Ensemble Economique record was very much dialed into what Pyle was conjuring in RV Paintings through a superb stoner-zoner-drone vibe of gorgeous guitar shimmer and suspended harmonic intonations, his solo EE recordings have been carving out a separate identity other than the Starving Weirdos or RV Paintings. Beginning with the Standing Still, Facing Forward LP released earlier in 2010, Pyle's Ensemble Economique has been mining references from '70s and '80s progressive electronics, mostly looking back to those seminal Germans. Certainly, Holger Czukay, Plank, and Moebius come to mind; hell, even Cranioclast and Stockhausen wouldn't be that much of a stretch.
Psychical is wholly dark-trip cast upon waves of two note synth melodies that bounce back and forth against a backdrop of hand percussion and heavily looped drone-shadow. Snippets of dubbed voice and radio transmission crackle ooze a fourth-world, rhythmicist eeriness somewhere between Muslimgauze and that Zero Set record from Moebius and Plank, furthered along by bloodshot guitar snarls. Tom Carter makes a guest appearance on one of the track, bringing a rather incendiary prolonged solo to Pyle's raga-drone rhythms. All in all, another great record from Brian Pyle!
Brian Pyle is a musician with far too many ideas bouncing in his head to let them lie still. He's best known as one of the Starving Weirdos, specializing in druggy and junked avant-drone work, which we have championed for years. But he's also produced equally impressive sonic opiates through the nature-jam project RV Paintings and his solo outing Ensemble Economique. There are obvious similarities in all of the Pyle projects, found in the foggy psychedelia oozing from the sodden landscape of his native Humboldt County and into the billowing passages of guitar drones that perch between overcast industrialism and stoned wanderlust. Standing Still, Facing Forward leans a bit more toward the early experiments of krautrock electronics, especially in comparison to Holger Czukay's oft forgotten masterpiece Canaxis.
The album opens with a set of somber strings overlapping and colliding into a filmic melancholy, transitioning into an Andromeda Strain type of sonic paranoia with electronic twinklings dispersed upon a ghostly drone smear. The noir horns that repeat throughout "Angkor Wat, In The Mist" harken to a slow-motion John Barry at his peak and certainly the facet of Morricone's work for Italian slasher films. Pyle furthers the tension of those allusions with a sustained rasp from a Tambura and a weird chirping from what sound like electric birds. The finale of minor-key synth tones grafted to a harmonica transmitting extended tones through waves of echo and reverb. Mysterious, haunting, and recommended as with pretty much everything that Mr. Pyle touches.
Love the cover on this one! An homage to those Sisters Of Mercy singles on Merciful Release back in the mid '80s, in particular the bleakest Sisters release The Reptile House EP. That's about as Goth as you get for a reference, and the druggist mania from Ensemble Economique touches on the existential void and the spatialized darkness that the Sisters Of Mercy crooned on that EP. Yet, EE bends the Goth into an unhinged, fractal-spinning universe that plays equal parts to ritualized psychedelia, autodidactic electronica, misremembered '80s pop hits, and drone-splattered horror scores. This 'Ensemble', as many of you will know, is the solo work of the Northern California mad-genius Brian Pyle, who's mostly been recording and touring solo in recent years but has an extensive back catalogue through the epic collective The Starving Weirdos and the animist hypnogogia of RV Paintings. Here on The Fever Logic LP, Pyle layers disheveled heaps of melodic synth loops on top of reverb-soaked drum tracks, with his pleading vocals and occasional strums on the guitar breaking into the mix. While the production is very much in keeping with Pyle's everything-at-once approach, the atmosphere he crafts dwells in that realm of the pharmaceutical miserablism that the Sisters Of Mercy brought to that aforementioned Reptile House EP as well as those Cure style introspective interludes that dot Faith and Seventeen Seconds. When we were playing this in the shop, an astute customer commented that this was like a goth version of Broadcast! Well said!
Ultra limited cassette from Ensemble Economique, aka Brian Pyle, 1/2 of Humboldt avant abstractionists Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings. We've long loved the SW's sprawling rhythmic dronescapery, and on his own, Pyle explores similar sonic territory, but Pyle's approach sans partners seems to be more dense and dark, caustic and abrasive, the rhythmic element balancing the atmospheric elements, like here on the title track, which spreads out over all of the first side. A thick, swirling low end thrum oozes and undulates, it's a hazy blurred rumble, over which Pyle layers heaving shards of crunch, thick throbs, deep bell-like tones, rhythmic machine gun stutters, all of which pile up and overlap, creating a soft cacophony of clatter and crunch, chug and churn, a strangely haunting, and sorta noisy, almost industrial creepscape, that sounds like some weird hybrid of Wolf Eyes, Philip Jeck and Umberto performed by some strange robotic minimalist chamber ensemble. A swirling, heady, and darkly psychedelic barrage of loops and rhythms, layers and textures, mesmerizing and intense.
The flipside is another permutation of Pyle's abstract beat laden drones, another thick swirling morass of sitar-like buzz and sci-fi synth squelch, this time the beats buried, little flurries of stutter and shuffle, squalls of glitchy tangle, more coloring the proceedings than driving them. The last track is a tense soundtracky stretch of layered buzz, haunting melody, a sprawl of pulsing high end over deep ominous rumbles, like the music from the scariest moment in some lost Italian giallo, stretched out into minutes instead of seconds, all tension, no release, brooding and intense, haunting and mesmerizing, fantastic stuff.
LIMITED TO 120 COPIES! We only have a handful direct from Mr. Pyle himself when he was in town, and it's very likely that these are the last copies we'll be able to get...
Avant guitar great Fred Frith, along with Ikue Mori (drum machines) and Zeena Parkins (harp), join one of Germany's premier new music ensembles (the aptly named Ensemble Modern) for what sounds amazingly like, if you can imagine, Aaron Copland at the Knitting Factory. A downtown NYC jazz take on 20th century classical, verging into Carl Stalling cartoon-music territory at moments. Not silly-sounding though, rather it's beautiful, pastoral and grand. Really great. On Winter & Winter, with their distinctive packaging. Dedicated in part to the memory of cellist Tom Cora.
Ensemble Pearl is a new psychedelic supergroup of sorts, featuring SUNNO))) guitarist Stephen O'Malley, Boris basher Atsuo, legendary Japanese psychedelic axeman Michio Kurihara, and William Herzog (guitarist for Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter) along with a handful of guests including violinist extraordinare Eyvind Kang. This unlikely collective have whipped up a heady brew of smoldering slow motion doom psych lumber and blackened kosmische drift, all murky and muddy, wasted and washed out, the core sound a smoldering, twang flecked tarpit trudge, a little bit Earth, a little bit Barn Owl, a little bit former Record Of The Weekers Torlesse Super Group - the same sort of windswept, apocalyptic, desert drone dirge, only this time, imbued with a pulsing psychedelic cosmic energy, a ferocity and intensity that seems to lurk just below the surface, as if barely restrained, a glowing black heart beating within Ensemble Pearl's bleak, bleary, blackly blissful exterior.
The sounds here are dense and dark, and yet simultaneously free and abstract, a trudging rhythmic plod, offering the only real structure, the sounds only tenuously moored to the surface, as if all it would take is a subtle shift in the solar winds, for the whole thing to drift heavenward, which it does at several points, the sound then seeming to blur into a more spaced out version of modern minimal dronemusic, almost like a more blackened, demonic Tangerine Dream, or a seriously sinister Phill Niblock, a hazy, softly churning kosmische thrum, lush and layered, pulsing and rich with chordal coloration and slow shifting overtones, laced with all manner of mysterious tonal shifts, like the soundtrack to some super abstract sci-fi art film, those stretches of droned out buzz could be the music of the cosmos, the streaks and contrails in the night sky translated into sound, a haunting, serene sonic stasis, that still somehow seems to be in perpetual motion, tranquil, slow swirling clouds of sonic debris, imbued with a warm glow of divine dreaminess.
But those sounds invariably coalesce into the dark dirgery that defines Ensemble Pearl's soundworld, the record bookended by to slowburn epics, the closer maybe our favorite, an epic sprawl of smolder and shimmer, a dreamy sonic death march, the guitars doused in reverb, the drums subtly dubbed out, the whole thing a woozy weary wander, a skeletal slo-mo lope through softly undulating swirls of smokey chordal shimmer, and heaving hushed drones, wreathed, like the opener, in fragmented shards of blurry ambience, spidery melodic tangles, the soaring sheets of keening high end here muted and smeared into distant glimmers, the occasional howl of feedback, or soft squalls of achingly keening high end guitarnoise, disappearing into fields of dubdrone blur, before returning to the motorik dirge creep that churns ever onward, gradually disappearing into a hushed field of atmospheric black buzz, warm and darkly billowing.
Fans of minimal drone smolder and abstract cosmic psychedelic space-doom drift will be in heaven.
The Art Of Being comes courtesy of Minimal Wave, the label that has been digging deep, very deep into the realms of post-punk and new wave to uncover many a release that might have been lost otherwise. For those who have procured plenty of terminal obscurities from such blogspots as Mutant Sounds, No Longer Forgotten Music, or Systems of Romance, some of the vinyl-only reissues on Minimal Wave may be familiar. But these are no grey area reissues. Minimal Wave has assured us that they have taken great care to procure the rights for each of these recordings!
Ensemble Pittoresque was an obscure Dutch electro-punk band, who managed to release a couple of LPs in the mid '80s. Having been averse to performing live, they didn't garner that much of a following beyond the small distribution they had managed throughout the Netherlands and a few neighboring countries. The Art Of Being is a collection of lost recordings, none of which had been released until this edition for Minimal Wave. Ensemble Pittoresque submitted some of this material as a demo to Polydor in 1982, only to fail to move beyond opening negotiations. The recordings are very synth heavy, drawing in equal parts from John Carpenter's soundtracks, Fripp and Eno's Evening Star, and the early albums by the Human League. Amidst the icy bellowing from the synth melodies and sci-fi eerieness, Ensemble Pittoresque dotted their songs with acoustic guitars and vocals buried deep in the mix. Really great stuff, we must say!
There aren't a whole lot of grim black metal hordes who call Indiana home as far as we know. In fact we can't think of any, other than this here trio, Ensepulchred. But these guys don't really sound like they're from Indiana at all. In fact they don't really even sound like they're from Norway. Or Sweden, Or Finland, Or any other nation of renowned musical blackness. They sound a whole lot more like they're from Italy, and from the mid seventies. Where they spend all their time wandering in fog shrouded graveyards, lurking in crumbling old cathedrals, terrorizing nightgown clad boarding school girls, digging up dead bodies, AND SCORING IMAGINARY SEVENTIES BLACK METAL ITALIAN HORROR MOVIES!!
Ensepulchred weave their buzzing blackness from thick walls of horror-movie synth, so much so in fact that most of the time, we're hard pressed to hear any guitar at all. Little bits of buzz here and there, but the riffs are mostly handled by keyboards. A creepy midnight world of gauzy, dramatic and cinematic Goblin like sweeps and swells, over simple programmed beats, howled harsh vocals, the melodies haunting and minor key, evoking all sorts of chilling atmospheres and blood curdling ambience. Suicide In Winter's Moonlight indeed. Dark depressive, doomy, but eyes closed, this is the sound of some misty moor, some darkened castle, a haunted bog, the world painted red with blood, the air alive with the terrified screams of dying virgins, the rattle of bones and the whispering wind, the sound of death, and dying, of misery and hopelessness, the sound of panic and mayhem and terror and horror. Ever wonder what a black metal Goblin might sound like... Or if Argento had Nortt or Xasthur score Suspiria...
Hail! Our favorite Viking black metal band is back again, with another tour-de-force, their 11th full-length album. A long way from where they started with their first teenaged demo back in 1991, and amazingly still totally kicking ass, artistically and otherwise (unlike a lot of their contemporaries from the '90s Norwegian black metal scene who have definitely fallen off). Nowadays, Enslaved play "Viking Metal" as if Vikings grew up listening to tons of '70s prog rock like King Crimson, Yes, and Pink Floyd. They've been sailing their longboats in that direction for quite a while, on such great releases as Monumension, Isa, and Below The Lights. And their previous album, Vertebrae, was probably their spaciest, most Floydian excursion yet. If you were on board for that one, you should like new one this too, which while of course quite proggy, seems heavier and more fearsome sounding than the relatively mellow Vertebrae. "Clean" melodic vocals are still present, confidently so, along with plenty of nasty blackened raspy vokills of course. The clean singing towards the end of opener "Ethica Odini" might throw the unexpectant listener for a Radiohead/Muse styled loop, but as majestically "poppy" as it gets there, Enslaved maintain an equally extreme allegiance to the metal side of the equation elsewhere in the same song. So it goes throughout the record, with memorable melodies languidly adjacent to uptempo aggressive outbursts, the ardently experimental Enslaved juggling jagged orchestration, jazzy chords, complex rhythms, lush symphonics, atmospheric ambience (the lulling droney soundscape of "Axioma"), and straight-up metal mayhem. Somehow the sudden sonic shifts are accomplished oh so smoothly, so this disc is simultaneously speedy and haunting. While fire and steel are part of their arsenal, these Vikings also know how to conquer with catchiness!
Norway's Enslaved are by now established as being at the top of the black metal heap, a band from which you can expect nothing less than sheer brilliance. As such, it's hard to write a review that doesn't simply revisit all the superlatives we've already applied to their previous releases. So we won't even try with this, their seventh full-length album, other than to say it's great and you should buy one! ...well okay, here's a little bit about what it sounds like:
A lot like previous album "Monumension" and the one before that, AQ-Record-of-the-Week "Mardraum"! Though, the lineup is a little different -- this marks the first appearance of new lead guitarist Arve Isdal (replacing Roy Kronheim). Longtime drummer Dirge Rep does play on this, but has since left the band. But anyway, more of the same in Enslaved terms is not a bad thing. Basically, they're in a similar situation career-wise as fellow metal masterminds Opeth. Can they get any better? You know what, they just don't need to! And also just like Opeth, Enslaved are brilliant at making juxtapostions of melody and heaviness (spacey psychedelic Pink Floyd interludes vs. raging thrash, clean singing/chant vs. death growls and screams).
For instance, in the very first track, you get the pairing of a slow, melancholy, even sappily beautiful guitar solo by Ivar with lower-than-low death metal belches and furious drums. The next song concentrates on utter metal ripping but also incorporates electronic embellishments that could have wandered in from a Radiohead album, and is followed by the disarming acoustic intro to the pummelling and majestic track three, a song which demonstrates Enslaved's command of heavy 'post rock' a la Isis. Total Kinski/Godspeed might mixed with andrenalized, angular riffing. The Fucking Champs doing spacerock maybe? Yet another track begins with some fruity leftfield chamber jazz/prog (w/ flutes!) to make you doublecheck your stereo, before the metal soars into view again, tumultous and epic. After that, martial progressive rock drumming is backed by a heathen choir.
Yet to me, the key to Enslaved's appeal is that, however weird they get, they always keep it kind of simple too, never losing sight of the rock n' roll imperative. So unlike, say, the last Emperor album, with all its jazz fusion parts and circusy convolutions, you can still definitely rock out to Enslaved. Avant art rock with Viking majesty and headbanging energy -- no wonder they're Allan's favorite black metal band!
MPEG Download: "As Fire Swept Clean The Earth" [/audio/enslavedasfire.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "As Fire Swept Clean The Earth" [/audio/enslavedasfire.m3u]
Another dose of Viking metal mayhem from these artistically aggressive Norwegians, who rank up there with countrymen Emperor in the pantheon of modern day black metal. A brilliant band, combining the epic and avant-garde with violent thrash fervor. The best band ever that has made a practice of wearing tights and tunics. This one is dense and violent, less spaciously psychedelic than some of their other recent records.
Allan and Andee's personal favorite album from these Viking metallers!! Epic, violent genius.
An early masterpiece from Enslaved, one of the top Viking black metal outfits ever.
Gosh, we're rarely as, um, anticipant (is that a word?) of a new album release by a metal band as we are of anything new by Norway's Enslaved! Pant, pant, pant. And this new album from them, Isa, really got us worked up waiting for it, as an European version was released towards the end of last year but we never were able to buy, beg or steal import copies of it -- although we did get a handful of the vinyl pressing, now gone. But, those extra few months of waiting was worth it, as this domestic cd version boasts some bonus cd-rom footage: the video for the title track, and a twenty minute band interview. Patience pays off. So why were we so excitedly anticipant about this you may ask? Well Enslaved have always been a band who've been adept at pushing all of AQ's buttons (in a good way, that is). There's the old-school Nordic black metal button (which Enslaved, who's first release was a split with Emperor, has no trouble pushing, and here they get guest throats Abbath from Immortal and Nocturno Culto from Darkthrone to apply extra force). There's the epic Floydian psych button. The mood-shattering dynamics button. The Viking tunic and tights button. The avant-garde '70s keyboard-laden prog button. The leather and spikes rock n' roll button. Even the vaguely jazz-fusiony guitar soloing button. The so many buttons button. Now, to be sure, their various records (this is number eight, or so) push these buttons and others in various combinations. At first listen to any of their albums, we often think, hmm, is this working for us? And always it does. Isa is no exception. It continues in what we might call the Opethian progression of recent Enslaved efforts like Monumension and Below The Lights, away from the pure speed and violence of such earlier albums as Frost and Blodheim, but all the polished parts and techy time-changes and such are always offset by a stab at that blackened Norwegian nastiness button, y'know? Jarring yet repetitive riffage coexists here with some clean, Michael Gira style crooning, and droning metal blur, Geiger-counter drumming, and majestic minor-key melody: an art-rock cruise ship rammed and boarded by a Viking longboat. Even with new members (Dirge Rep's replacement on the drum stool is the guy from Red Harvest, we think) and hence new directions, Enslaved have crafted an album that's definitely a progressive part of their now hallowed legacy, replete with menace and grandeur. Too soon yet to tell if this is pushing ALL the same buttons as the godly Mardraum (an AQ Record of the Week once upon a time), or Eld, or Below The Lights but that's what those records are for, anyway. Time for them later, here at last is the NEW Enslaved, so let's let it let us enjoy it!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Whoa! I thought that Weakling's "Dead As Dreams" was gonna be the uncontested "Black Metal Record of the Year" until I heard this, the new album from Norwegian Viking-metallers Enslaved. Now Weakling has some competition! "Mardraum" ("Nightmare") is probably Enslaved's best record to date, no mean feat considering that their "Frost" and "Eld" albums are two of the best Nordic black metal discs ever, in AQ's humble opinion. This new album somehow combines the violent and epic qualities of Enslaved's past works with what can only be considered (despite our dislike, and over-use, of the term) a 'post-rock' sensibility. And, on top of that, there's a full on ROCK element at work here too. During the very first track ("Larger Than Time -- Heavier Than Night") you'll swear that (despite the very metal attack) you can hear in the droning guitar harmonies and mathy drumming the post-rock of a Codeine or A Minor Forest! Enslaved have created a new, multi-layered complexified psych-metal, mixing dangerous speed with slow doom epic majesty (the waves pounding on shore during the Viking longboat raid)...then, amid all this beauty and brutality, they'll go and whip out some leather-clad, almost-punk rock n' roll riffing that's just as foreign to the black metal template as the 'post-rock' aspect just discussed. Not that any of this seems purposefully jarring or ill-fitting (or Mr. Bungle-like) -- it seems quite natural, more artful than artsy. Another example: track seven, "The Ending Empire", starts off with a catchy riff-cycle that strongly reminds me of something like "Insidious Detraction" off the first album by Greg Ginn's Gone, but then the song takes a turn into an almost honkytonk country-western flavored breakdown with a melodic rock guitar solo, before the Viking battle re-commences! Brilliant. Is this the most intense, heaviest, most psychedelic, rockin'est, 'post-black-metal' album ever recorded? We think so. Norwegian genius that puts almost all heavy-duty avant-rock acts to shame, metal or not.
Ivar Bjornson, Grutle Kjellson, Dirge Rep and R. Kronheim are Enslaved. We mention them individually because they and their band deserve to be household names, at least among Aquarius customers. Enslaved are definitely one of our absolute favorite Norwegian
Ok, enough hyperbole (for the moment). What's "Monumension" really like, and how *does* it compare exactly to "Mardraum"? Well, somebody had told us to expect that the new Enslaved would sound like Genesis, but that's definitely not the case. True, '70s prog rock a la Genesis (or, maybe more accurately, King Crimson and Van Der Graaf Generator) certainly flows in the blood of Grutle, Ivar and Co., along with the more ancient blood of their Norse ancestors. Opeth fans will hear the parallels. But are they truly warriors of modern prog? Not quite, as they are so much more. The first thing an Enslaved fan will notice is the surprising prevalence of death metal style vocals alongside the black metal rasps and Viking chants. Vocally, lyrically and musically, this is some seriously heavy stuff, and violent. But it all flows, sometimes into realms so tripped-out and Floyd-ishly psychedelic that you'll forget you're listening to "metal" at all. But then, the next song will start with a blood-quickening, bone-jarring riff to remind you. Like on "Mardraum", the band brilliantly weaves various metal/rock styles into pure Enslaved music, perhaps upping the "folk" aspect a bit (which balances those death metal elements nicely). There's even a bonus track by a related band called HOV (Trygve Mathiesen and a "tribal choir" which includes all the members of Enslaved) that's meant to evoke traditional Viking music -- although the band stresses that "Enslaved has never been about reproduction or literal interpretations. It is more of a quest for creating our own musical traditions and dimensions. The band is built upon the philosophy, magick and myths of the Vikings, not a desire to dress like they did during a historical period or to talk exactly like them. It is something deeper than a mere roleplay to please the outer eyes and ears." These efforts by Enslaved certainly have resulted in surreal, epic, timeless metal for the mind, body and soul.
So yes, these rune-obsessed geniuses, mere youngsters wise beyond their years, have created another utter masterpiece. And it's not just me -- everyone I've discussed this record with agrees that it's amazing. Arrrgh -- my fanboy ramblings can't even begin to do it justice. Emperor, Satyricon, Ulver are all great Norwegian black metal bands that in various ways and to various degress have also branched out into the beyond, but Enslaved are something else again.
For a while there, Enslaved were one of our favorite black metal bands, maybe our favorite in fact, Frost, Eld, Mardraum, all firmly ensconced in our BM pantheon for sure. And we always appreciated the band's progression, and sonic shift toward something more proggy, more 'proggressive', cuz obviously we love when bands get weirder and push their sound into new, weird directions, but even so, eventually we still sort of began to lost interest, so much so that some of the old school Enslaved fans around here (one of which is writing this review) didn't even bother listening much to their last couple records. But word was this new one was a return to form, or as close to it as could be expected, the band returning to heavier more classic black metal sound, without ditching any of their newfound/longtime progginess.
And while we definitely do dig this new record, rumors of the group's return to something blacker and heavier were definitely a bit exaggerated. There are still some heavy bits for sure, but the non heavy parts are WAY more abundant, and the while the progression over the last few records may have been subtle, returning to the band several albums down the line is pretty shocking, with the band sounding more like letter era Opeth, and often like Muse or Queens Of The Stoneage, both bands we love, but those sounds coming out of Enslaved still seem a bit weird, and the group seem to have shed their Viking metal sound almost entirely. That said, they do this new metallic prog pop thing really well, and if it wasn't Enslaved, we probably wouldn't have as many reservations, we'd just be thinking, wow, this is a seriously kick ass metallic prog combo. Which is probably the best way to approach it, as if they're essentially not the same band that made Frost and Eld. But really, even Monumension, which is probably our favorite record from the new era of Enslaved, seems pretty far removed from the sound on RIITIIR. But there are still heavy moments throughout that knock our socks off, like, there's a brief bit in "Death In The Eyes Of Dawn" where the sound coalesces into a killer stop/start break, before exploding into a wild tangle of furious snare drum and swirling psychedelic shred, all beneath shrieked and bellowed vox, serious prog metal bliss for sure, and then just as suddenly the band slip into some seriously poppy fuzzy crooning that sounds like Katatonia, and yet, as disparate as those parts are, they still sound pretty cool together. And on the other side of the coin, there are some seriously sublime poppy moments, hooky riffs, crazy catchy melodies, fuzzed out bass grooves, that would most definitely put most pop bands to shame.
We know this review is starting to sound wishy washy, but we're torn, still getting our heads around the new Enslaved, and trying to get over our undying love for those old records, but digging most of this record like crazy, and the more we listen to this, and the more we stop wishing it would start sounding like Frost, the more we realize just how good this record really is.
While they last, we've got the deluxe version with the bonus DVD, featuring a making of RIITIIR documentary. The vinyl is pressed on bone colored, charcoal splattered vinyl, and comes in a super swank full color gatefold sleeve.
For a while there, Enslaved were one of our favorite black metal bands, maybe our favorite in fact, Frost, Eld, Mardraum, all firmly ensconced in our BM pantheon for sure. And we always appreciated the band's progression, and sonic shift toward something more proggy, more 'proggressive', cuz obviously we love when bands get weirder and push their sound into new, weird directions, but even so, eventually we still sort of began to lost interest, so much so that some of the old school Enslaved fans around here (one of which is writing this review) didn't even bother listening much to their last couple records. But word was this new one was a return to form, or as close to it as could be expected, the band returning to heavier more classic black metal sound, without ditching any of their newfound/longtime progginess.
And while we definitely do dig this new record, rumors of the group's return to something blacker and heavier were definitely a bit exaggerated. There are still some heavy bits for sure, but the non heavy parts are WAY more abundant, and the while the progression over the last few records may have been subtle, returning to the band several albums down the line is pretty shocking, with the band sounding more like letter era Opeth, and often like Muse or Queens Of The Stoneage, both bands we love, but those sounds coming out of Enslaved still seem a bit weird, and the group seem to have shed their Viking metal sound almost entirely. That said, they do this new metallic prog pop thing really well, and if it wasn't Enslaved, we probably wouldn't have as many reservations, we'd just be thinking, wow, this is a seriously kick ass metallic prog combo. Which is probably the best way to approach it, as if they're essentially not the same band that made Frost and Eld. But really, even Monumension, which is probably our favorite record from the new era of Enslaved, seems pretty far removed from the sound on RIITIIR. But there are still heavy moments throughout that knock our socks off, like, there's a brief bit in "Death In The Eyes Of Dawn" where the sound coalesces into a killer stop/start break, before exploding into a wild tangle of furious snare drum and swirling psychedelic shred, all beneath shrieked and bellowed vox, serious prog metal bliss for sure, and then just as suddenly the band slip into some seriously poppy fuzzy crooning that sounds like Katatonia, and yet, as disparate as those parts are, they still sound pretty cool together. And on the other side of the coin, there are some seriously sublime poppy moments, hooky riffs, crazy catchy melodies, fuzzed out bass grooves, that would most definitely put most pop bands to shame.
We know this review is starting to sound wishy washy, but we're torn, still getting our heads around the new Enslaved, and trying to get over our undying love for those old records, but digging most of this record like crazy, and the more we listen to this, and the more we stop wishing it would start sounding like Frost, the more we realize just how good this record really is.
While they last, we've got the deluxe version with the bonus DVD, featuring a making of RIITIIR documentary. The vinyl is pressed on bone colored, charcoal splattered vinyl, and comes in a super swank full color gatefold sleeve.
Our favorite proggy Viking black metallers, Enslaved, turn in a fierce performance on this live DVD release, documenting a show recorded May 2005 in their hometown of Bergen, Norway. It features mostly tracks from their most recent disc, Isa (a typically brilliant album which we have called a "progressive part of their now hallowed legacy, replete with menace and grandeur"). Like their previous DVD effort, Live Retaliation, this is a professional, polished production with multiple cameras and great sound -- though with the cutting and zooming and the video projection they have behind 'em on stage, the results are perhaps a lot more MTV-like than you'd expect from what to us has always seemed like an "underground" band. But if proggy Viking black metal can rise to MTV-levels anywhere, I guess Norway would be the place. More power to 'em. As bonus material you get about 25 minutes of documentary tour footage, a band interview, and the music video for the track "Isa" (previously seen as a cd-rom extra on the domestic version of the Isa cd).
Some years back, a new album from Norway's Enslaved was an occasion for pagan celebration only among those few who honestly appreciated "Viking" black metal of EPIC quality... people like AQ's Allan for whom a band in tunics and tights was indeed "cool". But more and more folks came around to this band's undeniable if eccentric brilliance (and their stage clothes have become less archaic). Now they're one of the biggest acts in the world of "extreme metal" and the release of a new album like this one (Ruun being their ninth full-length in a 13 year career) is a big deal. As it should be. We've always made a big deal about Enslaved's albums here at AQ, as you may know, going so far as to make 2000's Mardraum a Record Of The Week. So as always, excitement ran high here for this new disc. And our reaction to it is similar to how we felt about their last one, Isa -- it's obvious immediately that Ruun is another proud entry in the Enslaved discography, and one that promises to be a grower too. The carefully crafted, complex collision of aggro black metal and '70s inspired prog rock (a la Rush, Genesis, King Crimson) that Enslaved have been perfecting (or, at this point, could be said to have perfected!) is in full effect, each composition holding hidden secrets to be revealed only on repeat listens, while not for a second stinting on the venemous METAL that you want right of the gate. Already there's certain tracks that we just want to keep hitting "repeat" on.
Grutle's vocals still alternate between vicious rasping growls and "clean" Viking vox, the music similarly incorporating both jagged metallic riffing (stormwracked seas, longboats tossing) and spacier, more melodic symphonic passages (astral travels to ancestral lands beyond the stars)... the classic Enslaved dynamic at work! Though maybe there's something smoother about such transistions nowadays as Enslaved have matured (if not mellowed). Or maybe we're just used to it now. What we do know for sure is that Ruun's technical, emotional, majestic music for the discerning headbanger will earn Enslaved even more plaudits, not to mention the usual well warranted comparisons to Sweden's Opeth, who have been travelling a similarly progressive path from black metal roots. But we also hear traces of such Nordic BM bands as Emperor and Satyricon -- and of course Voivod, and psychedelic grandaddies Pink Floyd, on the album's dreamier moments.
