The Finches' Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs and Aaron Morgan follow us their self released debut 6-song ep with this full length. Human Like A House is comprised of some of the gentlest folk pop imaginable. It's a bit more polished and fleshed out with the addition of cello, pedal steel and percussion joining their Spartan vocals, guitar and bass. As charming as their previous release, the dozen tunes are dewy skinned and doe eyed, sort of like the aural equivalent of a Margaret Keane painting.
A no-frills and super down to earth debut. As the title states this is a half dozen tunes from Bay Area folksy folks The Finches. The duo of Ms Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs and Aaron Morgan share the singin' and guitar playin' duties, and Morgan also handles the bass playin' too. Each of their songs is thoughtful, well-crafted and slightly rough around the edges much like Carolyn's lovely lino-cut cover art. Achingly intimate and pretty, and quite along the lines of folk-pop songstresses such as Cat Power or Julie Doiron. Nice!
Originally, posthumously released in 1972, this album collects late '60s recordings by these long haired Illinois boys, apparently a band renowned for their live show. We were initially interested in this reissue from a proto-metal perspective, as the reason we'd ever heard of The Finchley Boys in the first place is 'cause of a pretty killer, almost MC5-ish, track by them included on the heavy psych comp Up All Night some time ago. That song, the hard rockin' anthem "Outcast", is the lead off track here, and it's only flaw is that it fades out too soon. But as much as we like that one, it's another track, their cover of The Kinks' "I'm Not Like Everybody Else", that's our pick for the true classic here, a hard-hitting, garage psych workout with enough melancholic grandeur that it maybe coulda/shoulda been included on that Forge Your Own Chains comp that came out a while back. In their hands, it sure sounds like a track Roky Erickson/13th Floor Elevators fans oughtta dig. There's plenty more fuzzed out hard psych and rebellious acid rock on offer here besides, such as "Restrictions" and "Hooked", but what we discovered delving into this disc is that The Finchley Boys were a versatile (and talented) bunch. Among the 16 tracks total here, there's also some folkier acoustic hippie rambles, though they never go full-on country like you might have expected from a band with a name like theirs. Really, they're all over the hard/soft spectrum, doin' some wild RnB ravers and harmonica-laden blues rock (our fave is the way tripped out, almost underwatery-sounding "Finchley Boy Blues", plus they get points for the title "Deep Throat Blues" too), along with lovely dark psych ballads like "It All Ends". And there's even one seemingly out of place Motown style soul-funk number ("Bad When The Teardrop Falls") complete with horn section. Huh, wow. Pretty good though!
Definitely a very enjoyable reish for anyone into '60s acid blues action, who don't have to have it heavy ALL the time.
PREORDER! ARRIVING MONDAY. As you hopefully saw already on our list, next Wednesday June 10th, we're hosting an instore appearance by Jon Fine, the author of this here book. Jon was/is the guitarist in Bitch Magnet, and band many of us love dearly, later on in other projects including Coptic Light. Now, he's a writer and magazine editor. We're looking forward to having him here next week; not only will he be signing books, but our own Andee Connors (himself of '90s indie rock band A Minor Forest 'fame') will be interviewing Jon about this book and its subject matter. Should be hilarious and insightful. As we suspect this book is, though we won't have them until Monday. So this is a preorder, if you're interested. And if you do order one, if you want, you can mention in the comments field of our shopping cart that you would like Jon to sign it for you on Wednesday. (If not, we can get it shipped to you sooner...)
So, again, we haven't read this yet, but we're looking foward to it - knowing Jon as we do, we're sure it's gonna be good. A memoir "charting thirty years of the American independent rock underground", inspired by Bitch Magnet's 2011 reunion tour that brought into focus the changes that had occurred in the 'music industry' since the pre-internet days back when Bitch Magnet first was doing their thing. The publisher supplied us with a press packet, including all sort sort of advance praise blurbage from the likes of James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem) and Stuart Braithwaite (Mogwai), but the best one was from good ol' Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices, here's what he says about Jon's band, and book:
"When we played festivals, we used to have this thing where we'd walk up to the other bands and ask, 'What shitty band are you in?' I would dare never have asked Bitch Magnet that same question. In fact, I would probably have run and hid from them the same way I would have from Wire or Iggy Pop, or a tear-streaked, mascara-running Courtney Love, in her 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?' dress, being escorted through the backstage area on the arms of a couple of police officers. Their music was that intimidatingly good. And in Your Band Sucks, Jon
Fine lovingly chronicles, with strong accuracy, the zeitgeist in which his band excelled."
Hardcover, 320 pages. Again, this is a preorder, it won't be in stock until Monday the 8th of June. And, again, if you want a signed copy, let us know! And/or of course, if you can, come by on Wednesday for the live event with Jon here at the shop - or tune in on the web, our friends at PressureDrop.tv will be live-streaming it.
Following up their debut cdep, last year's Pacemaker EP, these sprightly SF popsters continue to keep things short'n'sweet on their second release. This 7" features two snappy pop numbers with buzzing guitars, crisp drumming and emotive female vocals from Ms Carly Schneider. When they slow things down a bit on the b-side "March Into The Flames" they bring to mind a more brooding Sleater-Kinney. More please!
Limited pressing of 300 on ultra pale green clear vinyl.
These new SF band proudly let it be known that they in fact are spring chickens (their bio says that they "were born in the '80s, raised by the '90s"), and their youth definitely shows in Pacemaker's punchy energy level and wide-eyed vocal sweetness, but the band also shows some pop smarts beyond their years. Influences that they cite include Pavement, Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead and Cursive, and the impact of those bands is clearly evident. However, they fortunately haven't fallen into the easy trap of simply mocking their idols. They're not just a soundalike. Theirs is solid guitar driven indie pop defined by some interesting postrock-ish twists and graced by the swoonsome female vocals of Ms Carly Schneider (whose soft voice you might've also heard on the equally well-received debut release from another Bay Area band Empty Rooms). This EP fits well alongside fellow Bay Area smart pop upstarts Tartufi, and also recalls acclaimed 90's indie bands such as PEE and Velocity Girl. A very promising debut!
Onwards and upwards, Bay Area pop darlings Finest Dearest have returned with their second cd release, and it's filled with some terrific driving tunes! Indeed, since 2005's Pacemaker cdep and even last year's Off Sides 7", it sounds like they've gotten a whole lot darker and edgier, and the shadowier tones are evident right way with the cd packaging's deep hues and stylin' fontography. it's a definite marked contrast with the delicate homespun art of their previous releases, and yes, the music contained within follows suit. Led by Carly Schneider's sweetly biting vocals, the band definitely still recalls the early '90s indie pop dreams of Velocity Girl and Tsunami, but with more of the modern day sheen and wise-beyond-their years complexity of groups such as Tegan & Sara or Rilo Kiley.
We try to carry everything we can from Time Released Sound, and we generally do, but some releases sell to quick, or are too limited, some are just too expensive, but well worth it, as those of you who've purchased one of TRS's over the top, extravagantly packaged deluxe editions can attest to. So this new one from Benjamin Finger, we almost weren't gonna carry for all those reasons, it's crazy expensive, and the label nearly sold out already, but there are a handful of aQ list readers who are pretty dang obsessive about TRS, so we managed to finagle a tiny handful of these, so at least a few aQ customers will be able to get their hands on one of these. Cuz holy cow are these incredible, easily the most fantastic packaging we've seen from TRS, which is saying a lot, since they pretty much pull out all the stops every time, but they've outdone themselves with this one for sure. The whole thing is housed in an extensively modified chocolate box, collaged inside and out, with century old educational musical strips, it's stamped and hand painted, the boxes feet made from brass piano capstans, inside the box is a bird marionette, a sculptural/skeletal creature made from the parts of an antique piano, that bird marionette is laid atop a nest of random piano parts, nestled in little sections, separated by antique and hand printed inserts. The mythical bird, the marionette in the box, is then described in extreme detail on the inserts, its history, and the story of its eventual extinction. Yowza, you sort of have to see it to believe it, and it's totally worth the price, just imagining how much time and work went into making every one of these sort of boggles the mind. And it's limited to just 70 COPIES, of which we have 3 or 4, and can NOT get more.
But enough about the packaging, it is a musical release after all, and a lovely one at that, Finger weaving hypnotic landscapes of looped piano, Reich and Riley like figures, wreathed in echo and delay, and laid over a soft swirling background of barely there thrum, the shimmery piano augmented by strange ethereal, processed voices, melancholy and wistful, some tracks shot through with a shadowy, slightly sinister vibe, but others purely pastoral, sun dappled and dreamy, the production is strangely lo-fi, giving the sound an immediacy, often sounding like you're right there in the room, but other times, the sound smearing and blurring into something more ephemeral, shadowy and softly psychedelic, those voices surfacing throughout, and giving the whole record a strange haunted faded photograph feel. Definitely cinematic, a little bit old timey, and definitely darkly dreamy.
Here's the super cool new issue of the young dvdzine Fingered! It features rad Bay Area indie bands Erase Errata (live clip and tour diary), Tussle, Clip'd Beaks, Fuckwolf, Lemonade, and Black Fiction; plus work from visual artists Olivia Park and Krak! May be best consumed in a somewhat altered state. To boot, the dvd-r comes in a cool screenprinted sewn canvas sleeve, perfect for toting your assorted amenities.
The latest blast of free-noise-out-rock from Campbell Kneale's always reliable Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label comes courtesy of The Fingers, a duo that takes free jazz and dips it in a boilng, churning vat of 100 proof Fushitsusha and then wraps it in some Harry Pussy. Wild and wooly guitar freakouts, drenched in reverb, careen wildly amidst some splattery, chaotic and very loose free drumming, that crashes and pounds relentlessly, only occasionally tighting things up into almost-straight-ahead-rhythms, before crumbling back into the thick and gorgeous mess of this drum/guitar battle. But the guitar is definitely in control, laying a thick, viscous layer of six string skronk and atonal no-wave clatter over EVERYTHING. Noisy and nice. Fans of Japanese psychedelic noise freakouts, and all things chaotic and free will dig this like crazy.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Last list we had the heavy, heavy Moses from Denmark, this list again another great Shadoks reissue of a Scandinavian psychprogpop album from the early '70s, the Norwegian duo Finjarn & Jensen's eponymous elpee from 1970. A one-off classic in the annals of Norwegian rock, it brought together a few key members of a late '60s supergroup called Jumbo. Svein Finjarn (guitars and vocals) and Leif Jensen (drums, plus additional guitars and vocals), with some help from, among others, Norwegian guitar hero Freddy Lindquist (also ex-Jumbo) and British producer John Mills, carefully crafted an exciting, entertaining, anything-goes slice of hard rock / pop that encompassed Beatlesy balladry and rockin' proto-metal umph, quite a bit like the UK's Blossom Toes, we'd say.
Sung entirely in English, it's indeed got an Anglophilic angle to it, being described by the label as "a real British psychedelic flower power album made in Norway". Irreverently so, though, as they're surely taking the piss with the silly-Brits, upper-class-twits skit in the middle of the track "Lady Windsor" (not that's not something Blossom Toes wouldn't have done too).
Lead off track "One More Day" has moments that remind us of Led Zeppelin (and also the White Stripes!). It features rollicking blues rock licks, a catchy vocal chorus (rising into an outrageous falsetto), and an overdose of burbling sci-fi spaceship noises. Brilliant! The remaining six songs on the record often include such elements as well, along with other proggy surprises. Some cuts are rather more gentle and melodic, others get heavier with the wah wah guitars. Oh, and drum solos! Jensen shows off a bit during the percussion-heavy "What Else Can We Do?" and "Grey Skies", especially. Plus, there's what's got to be the perfect title for a nearly 8 minute long acid blues jam, "Sorry Girl, But Now I Know Things Will Be Much Better Now You've Gone".
Quite delightful. And as usual, it's a nice Shadoks reissue job, the booklet containing vintage color photos, lyrics, and the original liner notes translated into English.
Very few things have changed for Simon Finn's mythological folk music in the twenty-five years between his nearly forgotten debut Pass The Distance (1970) and his second album Magic Moments (2005). If anything, the current infatuation with the acid folk meanderings of Six Organs of Admittance, Devendra Banhart, the Skygreen Leopards, and Fursaxa has opened the way for obscure folk artists from the '70s such as Simon Finn. Without David Michael of Current 93 stumbling across one of few original copies of Pass The Distance, Finn would have continued to toil as farmer in Canada; but fortunately, David (don't call him Tibet anymore!) Michael reissued the album with much acclaim and provided Finn with the impetus to record many of the songs that he has been quietly composing during his 25 year hiatus.
Like Pass The Distance, Magic Moments still speaks of a Gnostic mythology, in which knowledge, revelation, and secrets creep throughout his tales of death, sex, gods, devils, and his relationship with those archetypes. It's the darker side of psychedelia, hallucinations, and liminal thought that Finn explores; but the music itself remains a simple vehicle for Finn's expressionism, as his arrangements are little more than voice and acoustic guitar. This bare aesthetic is the major difference from his Pass The Distance album, which enjoyed a complex production with wild stereo pans and eccentric instrumentation from collaborator David Toop. Also missing is the epileptic rage which punctuated several of the tracks from Pass The Distance, but Finn is considerably older allowing his lyrical content to speak through his Syd Barrett meets Cat Stevens voice rather than through phlegm and spit. All things considered, Magic Moments is certainly recommended listening for acid folk fans.
No frills bootleg 1970 UK folk-psych reissue, featuring a young David Toop (currently a musician and writer, of "Oceans of Sound" fame, among other things), who not only plays on this disc but did the cover as well. Supposed to be really nightmarish and weird, but we didn't quite "get it". Definitely nothing like the Comus or Cromagnon we were hoping for! However, it does have a spirit of mellow melancholy that some might enjoy.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Silent City Creep is a very limited, five track EP from Simon Finn, whose recently reissued Pass The Distance holds an eerie similarity to contemporary acid folk troubadours like Devendra Banhart, Six Organs of Admittance, and the Skygreen Leopards. Not surprisingly, Mr. Finn had been a long time favorite of Current 93's David Tibet who was responsible for reissuing Pass The Distance as well as Silent City Creep. Originally intended as something that would only be sold at a Current 93 / Simon Finn show earlier this year in Canada, a few copies have surfaced for general consumption. But we must stress that there's only a few, and we will not be able to get anymore than what we currently stock. All of these tracks were recorded back in 1975 and appear to feature Finn all by his lonesome. Any number of these tracks could have easily fit onto Pass The Distance, even if they didn't feature accompaniment from David Toop and Paul Burwell; thus this makes a great additional for all of you who had fallen in love with Pass The Distance.
A Finnish black metal band, all of whose music is about trolls. Hence the name! This is their sophomore release, their first disc was a concept album apparently about the war between the trolls and the Christians (!) and it was a big favorite of both of AQ's
The first disc from these Finnish troll-metallers... Black metal polka at its best. Yup, polka. So great. This album tells the story of the (hitherto obscure) war between the Christians and the trolls.
This completely absurd yet amazingly fun Finnish band, whose members pretend they're TROLLS and play a mixture of black metal and the Finnish folk music called "humpa" (which sounds a heckuva lot like polka music) is back. And we have no choice but to raise a flagon of mead and join in another trollish hoe-down with them. Somewhat surprisingly, Finntroll's last three albums have all been minor hits here at Aquarius, not just among the usual staff suspects (Andee and Allan) but with our customers as well. We get mail-orders for Jaktens Tid and Visor Om Slutet on a fairly regular basis! And this new one, Nattfodd, will make a fine addition to anyone's collection of trollish music. Or maybe we should say your trollish music collection ain't complete without it. If you haven't heard 'em yet, imagine growling, grunting, tough sounding 'trolls' doing the vocals in a style not unlike many other black metal bands. Their music is quite heavy and metal as well but simultaneously gets so extremely jaunty and folky and keyboard-happy in the humpa-style that it's impossible not to be swept away. Maybe a good title for a future Finntroll disc would be Anthems To The Lawrence Welkin At Dusk? Listening to this, you'll soon be doing your own approximation of a trollish jig. And there's a few interludes of forest sound effects and indecipherable (to us) troll-talk to further set the scene. It's like Za Frumi meets Uz Jsme Doma meets Falconer meets Satyricon. Crazy Finns!
We know how into Finntroll some Aquarius customers are (we are too). So we thought we'd better list this, 'cause we definitely don't want to deprive anyone of the chance to acquire every last track by this amazing / ridiculous Finnish black metal band who pretend they're trolls. Trollhammaren is the 5 song cd ep that preceded the release of Finntroll's latest opus Nattfodd, and it features one track from that album plus four entire new, non-album tracks of rollicking humpa-metal as only Finntroll can dish out. Some of the songs here seem especially heavy on the horns, having a grooviness that gives us visions of these trolls up on a bandstand wearing tuxedos! If you love Finntroll already you might well need this, and if you're not yet familiar with 'em, this would serve as a good lil' taster of their hyper hoedown metal stylings!
Sometimes we're amazed at just how popular this Finnish band has become. Raging, rollicking folk-metal played by people who pretend they're really trolls from the forests of Finland? Sure, that could be a cool curiosity, but a commercial success, spawning even a copycat band (Norway's Trollfest)? Yup. It's not just customers here at AQ -- where Finntroll's back catalog is a steady seller -- that love Finntroll. All sorts of totally random people we've met, who we didn't even think liked any metal, have turned out to be big Finntroll fans.
And all Finntroll fans will be happy that they're back with another album, their fifth. They've also got a new singer, but he's just as gutturally trollish as the previous guy, and their "black metal humppa" sound is the same as ever. Humppa being traditional Finnish dance music, sorta the polka of Finland. So there's banjo and mouth-harp on here, along with loud guitars, thumpin' drums, and swelling, symphonic soundtrack-style synths. You'll want to dance a headbanging jig to this, or swing your mug of ale to and fro. Their blend of dark atmospherics, Wagnerian bombast, and jaunty humppa rhythms is a blast... a bit silly perhaps but really no sillier than most other black metal bands when you think about it, wearing their panda-like corpse paint. Besides, while Ur Jordens Djup ("From The Depths Of The Earth", in English) boasts its expected share of drunken jollies, it also demonstrates that trolls can be scary creatures as well, with plenty of sinister ambience and ultra-heavy blackened brutality, moreso perhaps than past efforts.
As their name suggests, this is music by, or at least for, Finnish trolls. They should tour with Za Frumi, the Swedish orc band. Their self-described brand of black metal polka (or "humpa", as the Finns call it) has made 'em a fave here at Aquarius where anything less ridiculous gets barely a listen, after all.
This third album from Finntroll sports a sticker on the front reading "Special Price Acoustic Album". Well, the price isn't any more special than their others, and it's also not an acoustic album, so we're not sure what's going on there. It is, however, pretty special! Starting off with ominous forest noises, this soon builds into a doleful (is that an oboe?) square dance for monsters, stomping and growling. That's followed by some rather more lively jigs, that sound a bit like Czech maniacs Uz Jsme Doma, if they had a chorus of grim-voiced trolls backing them up. Other numbers are on the bombastic side, symphonic in scope even, very medieval and fantastical of course.
I guess the deep-woods hoedown aspect is what prompted Spikefarm to label this "acoustic" even when there's obviously lots of non-acoustic instruments (keyboards, electric guitars!) being used along with traditional Finnish/trollish instruments like jaw harps and handclaps... and it certainly is Finntroll's least "metal" album. Finntroll goes in the direction of early In Extremo, cool.
MPEG Download: "Asfagelns Dod" [/audio/finntrollasfagelns.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Asfagelns Dod" [/audio/finntrollasfagelns.m3u]
Good grief! FUZZ. Don't you love it? These guys do. Or, should we say did, since this was recorded back in 1973. Fire were a power trio from Yugoslavia, relocated for the purposes of playing and recording to Holland. Could You Understand Me is the only album they made -- though they cranked enuff fuzz guitar on this sufficent for ten albums! Aside from one run of the mill bar band blues cut (track three), this disc BURNS (as per their name) with heavy duty psych guitar mayhem. The last and gnarliest track here is even called "Flames". It's an instrumental, nearly nine minutes of extremely distorted, repetitive, pedals mashed, goin' for broke brainmelt. Dunno how they recorded it, musta done something wrong, but it's brilliant. They can also pen a decent tune, with the title track fer instance having a nice melodic element amidst the fuzz riffage.
Their influences were most likely Hendrix and Cream and possibly Blue Cheer. But when Fire really get burnin', we think this sounds more like current psych-mongers The Heads from the UK, or Japan's motorpsycho outfits High Rise and Mainliner.
The Scottish quartet Fire Engines only released one album back in 1981 along with a couple of singles. In the British Isles, the band developed a considerable following amongst the Brit-Pop nobility of Alan McGee (the one-time king of the Creation empire), The Jesus & Mary Chain, and more recently Franz Ferdinand. For better of for worse, Codex Teenage Premontion is not a compendium of that one album (entitled Lubricate Your Living Room) and those singles; for that, you need the Fond anthology released by Rev-Ola / Creation. Rather, this is a collection of super-raw live recordings and home-recorded demos. The Fire Engines' sound is driven by a punk jangle, reflecting the ramshackle energy of The Fall and even Captain Beefheart (e.g. Shiny Beast); but there's a maniacal repetitiveness to their incessantly shrill chords that can be downright toxic. There's numerous variations of their track "Discord" showing how fucked-up they could get during their live sets, and a Peel Session track of "Candyskin" which was their most well known single at the time. Curiously enough, they decided to round out the record with a 2004 recording of Franz Ferdinand's "Jacqueline."
Imagine this... Perry Farrell becomes the vocalist for Radiohead who've decided to take an excursion into some very Yes territory. Such was the vision which swirled into view as the first song of The Fire Theft's self-titled debut played. Odd! Who is this mysterious new band? Why, it's noneother than 3/4 of Sunny Day Real Estate (Jeremy Enigk, Nate mendel and William Goldsmith) who decided to regroup and embark on some new musical adventures. The rest of the album doesn't quite stir such unexpected images as the opening song, but instead settles into a more familiar yet still refreshing sound. Shades of their emo past float to the surface every so often, but as a whole the album evokes a more complex and dramatic path. Devout SDRE and Enigk fans have been asking about this for months, well kiddies, here it is!
Another killer heavy rock outfit from down under. Grey Daturas, Whitehorse, Agents Of Abhorrence, Striborg... In fact it was AQ faves Whitehorse who had been telling us about these guys for a while now, but it wasn't until quite recently that we finally managed to get in touch with them and get our hands on some of their music. And boy are we glad we did. Their label is called We Clear Rooms, which besides being a killer name, gives you a hint as to what you're in for. We were expecting some Whitehorse styled sludge and pummel, and while Fire Witch do indeed bring the noise with plenty of heaviness, they are a bit more moody and melodically subtle. Drums pound, guitars growl and roar, but there are long stretches of moody meandering, dreamy drift, in between the bouts of furious psychedelic freakouts. Two tracks, two versions of the same song. The first is an instrumental epic, a cross between Pelican and Khanate, just the right balance of head caving sludge and minor key post rock, slow building, lots of dynamics, expansive and grand, a massive grooving post sludge psychrock blow out. The second, lengthier track sonically resembles the first, but immediately strikes out on its own, WAY free-er tangent. the drums are way more spread out, the rhythms are much more abstract, the feel is much more plodding and glacial, guitars don't riff so much as they slither and scrape and squeak, a creepy soundscape of strange guitar sounds and a massive layer of low end rumble, letting the drums sit right up front where they belong, alternating between slow motion crush and complex tribalism, the drums offer up a densely woven world of pound and pummel, a tangled web of strangely shifting rhythms, over a blown out psychedelic swirl. Killer!
And the packaging, HOLY SHIT! Super deluxe origami style silkscreened fold-out sleeve wrapped in a vellum slip case. The disc is printed and sits inside beneath a clear plastic insert, beneath yet another printed insert and with a miniature reproduction of an old show flyer where they played with the Grey Daturas. Cool. The packaging says this was limited to "around 100 copies" but according to the band, these are the last 30, that they had been saving specifically for us!
We've yet to get a record from these guys that wasn't super limited, and this one is no different. We were meant to get 50 copies, but only got 15. But we'll keep trying, for now, at least a handful of you can get your mitts on this one...
Fire Witch are a guitarless, two bass and drums killing machine from down under, who weave delicate soundscapes of low end drift and simple pounding rhythms, peppered with blasts of skull crushing heaviness, free noise splatter, and gorgeous shimmering ambience. Their sort of aligned with bands like Whitehorse and the Grey Daturas, but somehow, what these guys do is way different.
I Spit Lies is split into two looooong tracks, "I Spit" and "Lies". The former is a slow burning gradual build, with bass feedback draped over a throbbing low end pulse and a simple shuffling rhythm, with occasional lapses into sludgy doom, before resuming the lugubrious groove. Right in the middle there's an extended stretch of delicate drifting low end swirl, that eventually gives way to some seriously hooky propulsive post rock crunch.
The latter is equally mathy, almost groovy, another simple rhythm underpinning soaring bass melodies all held together by the pulsing bass #2. Eventually, things gradually break apart, into epic expanses of space, with just the occasional chord or drum hit. It's doomy, but more in the way Low or other slowcore bands are doomy. A gorgeously abstract ultra minimal deconstructed slow motion math rock, that by the end of the song has turned into a grinding heavy, almost metal groove. Fucking awesome!
Usually we lament the fact that bands choose to jettison the guitar, there are so many bass and drums duos out there, many of which would sound so much better with a guitarist, but one of the bassists in Fire Witch swings his bass like an axe and it makes all the difference in the world!
Packaged in a strange accordion style fold out sleeve, thick silk screened paper attached to little textured wooden (or wood-like) squares.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! We got 15... You do the math.
The return of these Aussie low end heavies. Two basses, drums, NO guitar, recorded on the tail end of their recent Japanese tour, more of what we love from these guys, mathy, doomy low end heaviness.
The A side is all one track, and it's a beaut. The basses loooow slung, thick and syrupy, streaks of feedback everywhere, the drums scattered, the whole thing gorgeously abstract, the bass lines sound woozy and warped, it almost sounds like one of the basses is being played with a slide, part way through it erupts into a full on free for all, drums going nuts, basses buzzing and roaring, the band managed to sound super tight, but also loose and improvised, slipping from droney to super complex to mathy to space-y to sparse and plodding to freaked out and frenzied.
The flipside begins heavy and downtuned and mathy, sounding like a more metal ruins, super tight, locked into impossible grooves, before slipping into another stretch of drifting abstract free jam, before finishing off with a super rocking jam that is total early nineties Homestead worship. Awesome!
Beautifully hand screened covers, black and metallic silver on white (peep the inside of the cover, they're all printed on recycled Oxes / Arab On Radar sleeves, haha), each one hand numbered and signed, LIMITED TO 355 COPIES! Includes a photocopied insert too.
Finally available again, now on a proper cd, the first two long out of print cd-rs, I Spit Lies and Critter / Kirtta, from Aussie heavies Fire Witch, a bad ass guitarless, two bass and drums killing machine from down under, who weave delicate soundscapes of low end drift and simple pounding rhythms, peppered with blasts of skull crushing heaviness, free noise splatter, and gorgeous shimmering ambience. They're sort of aligned with bands like Whitehorse and the Grey Daturas, but somehow, what these guys do is way different.
I Spit Lies is two looooong tracks, "I Spit" and "Lies". The former is a slow burning gradual build, with bass feedback draped over a throbbing low end pulse and a simple shuffling rhythm, with occasional lapses into sludgy doom, before resuming the lugubrious groove. Right in the middle there's an extended stretch of delicate drifting low end swirl, that eventually gives way to some seriously hooky propulsive post rock crunch.
The latter is equally mathy, almost groovy, another simple rhythm underpinning soaring bass melodies all held together by the pulsing bass #2. Eventually, things gradually break apart, into epic expanses of space, with just the occasional chord or drum hit. It's doomy, but more in the way Low or other slowcore bands are doomy. A gorgeously abstract ultra minimal deconstructed slow motion math rock, that by the end of the song has turned into a grinding heavy, almost metal groove. Fucking awesome!
Critter / Kritta is two tracks, two versions of the same song. The first is an instrumental epic, a cross between Pelican and Khanate, just the right balance of head caving sludge and minor key post rock, slow building, lots of dynamics, expansive and grand, a massive grooving post sludge psychrock blow out. The second, lengthier track sonically resembles the first, but immediately strikes out on its own, WAY free-er tangent. The drums are way more spread out, the rhythms are much more abstract, the feel is much more plodding and glacial, guitars don't riff so much as they slither and scrape and squeak, a creepy soundscape of strange guitar sounds and a massive layer of low end rumble, letting the drums sit right up front where they belong, alternating between slow motion crush and complex tribalism, the drums offer up a densely woven world of pound and pummel, a tangled web of strangely shifting rhythms, over a blown out psychedelic swirl. Killer!
Usually we lament the fact that bands choose to jettison the guitar, there are so many bass and drums duos out there, many of which would sound so much better with a guitarist, but one of the bassists in Fire Witch swings his bass like an axe and it makes all the difference in the world!
Housed in a super swank, hand screened origami style cardstock sleeve, with a printed insert, LIMITED to 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered of course...
An oldie but a goodie (well oldie as in 2004) from Aussie low end sludge doom terrorists Fire Witch. Recorded live at a hotel in Melbourne, in, you guessed it, 2004, this set shows more sides of the band than we've seen. Very little of this is actually sludgy and slow motion, instead it's dense and chaotic and mathy, convoluted and HEAVY. The opener is a two minute burst of bass heavy groove, with a killer staccato break down, all machine gun snare and swooping crumbling bass. After that, the band stretch out and channel a bit of Lightning Bolt through their drums vs. low end arsenal. The drums a constant splatter, tribal and intense, fills everywhere, pound and pummel relentlessly while various chunks of bass throb and grind, all three players in some vicious fight to the death.�
Unlike�the usual breed of modern doomlords, the vibe here is way more math rock and Amphetamine Reptile than SUNNO))) or Boris. A super sludgy, groovy and convoluted mathdoom workout, slathered in low end and sent careening into the sweaty crowd. As is the case with most bands like this it's all about the drummer, and Jem Fire Witch is a demon behind the kit alternating between simple propulsive pound and wild off kilter chaos, but never losing sight of what the two basses are doing. A few of the tracks slow way down, and the band begins to sound like some strange bass heavy doomed version of the Necks.... which we shouldn't have to tell you is a very good thing indeed.�
Should definitely hit that math-doom-post-spazz-psych-bass-power-trio-sludge-metal spot, assuming you have a spot like that... We sure as heck do!
Packaged in a super swank fold out card stock digipak.
Vinyl-only (limited to 500 copies) debut release from an all-girl garage-fuzz five-piece band that takes their record collector obsession with mystical '70s heavy psych stoner rock to an insanely distorted, primal extreme -- these four songs rumble along like an unholy hybrid of Comets On Fire, Angelblood, Hawkwind, Harry Pussy and Amon Duul II. And we sure are sure about the latter 'cause they cover the slayin' "Archangels Thunderbird" from ADII's Yeti album on the b-side of this, and do it so well (the vocals are perfect!), it's worth buying just for that alone, though the other three tracks are great too. They also give thanks to the Edgar Broughton Band, the James Gang, UFO (really early UFO weed, I mean, we'd guess), and you can hear that strain of heavy, hippy, boogie/space rock here, but updated into the grungy lo-fi avant-punk now (either that or cast back into the prehistoric past!). Did we mention the utter utter distortion in which this whole record is bathed? 'Cause they're women, somebody has said that they sound like "hot tar being poured onto the Go-Gos." But not in a torturous way at all, we should hasten to add. It's love, this sound. One song here it titled "Witchy Ways" and yes, these young ladies from Brooklyn are a new wave coven conjuring noisy psych rock grunt.
On 180 gram vinyl, packaged in a hand-screened cover with insert. Get one while you can... and then, like us, wait expectantly for a full-length.
LA stoner rockers Fireball Ministry are like a more metal version of Queens of the Stone Age: same irresistibly catchy songwriting, same fuzzed out heaviness, same laid-back vocals, but with much more of a denim clad, iron fisted, devil sign waving,
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Don't worry about the French title, this disc is in fact pretty darn good. Simply put, if you like the post-Kyuss project Queens Of The Stone Age, you'll probably like this. We do. Fireball Ministry sounds A LOT like the catchy stoner rock of QOTSA, with maybe a little bit more of a metal-ly Sabbath (circa '74) vibe. Almost irrelevant guest musician info: ex-members of The Obsessed/Goatsnake and Megadeth (!) contribute to this album...
LA stoner metal templars Fireball Ministry return with their 2nd full-length album, first with former Hammers of Misfortune (and current Pink!) four-stringer Janis Tanaka on board. There she is, right on the cover, alongside the rest of the band in the fantastical comic book vision of a rock n' roll revival meeting that adorns the disc. Pretty cool, and a lot to live up to, but Fireball Ministry deliver the goods, if you're in the market for some retro-styled, rawkin', grungy stoner tunage. They're kinda like Queens of the Stone Age gone denim and leather, teasing out more of the Sabbath vibe while remaining totally radio-ready. Who knows, they're on a bigger label now, maybe MTV fame and fortune are just around the corner. In the meantime they can be new cult heroes for those already into the likes of QOTSA and Spirit Caravan...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
British death-metal icons Carcass have, since their break-up, spawned a whole bunch of bands, as their ex-members pursue their own projects. Strangely, none stuck with the gore-grind that made Carcass famous. Instead, you've got Jeff Walker's death-n'-roll band Blackstar, Michael Amott's several projects, among them the Deep Purplish Spiritual Beggars, and now, Bill Steer's Firebird, who, like the Spiritual Beggars, seem more at home in the '70s than in today's "extreme metal" scene. Both band's use of organ is the tip-off, I guess. Totally retro "stoner rock", almost too perfectly '70s (they even cover a Steve Winwood song!!), with Bill's guitar and (rather surprisingly good & authentic) vocals backed up by friends from the bands Cathedral and (hey!) Spiritual Beggars. Not super-heavy or anything, but really well-done and able to satisfy anyone's laid-back, retro rock needs.
Here's a reissue of some kind of 1969 psychsploitation artifact...if you're into heavy FUZZ a la Blue Cheer you ought to perk up yr ears at this. There's not much information given (something all too many cd reissues needlessly suffer from) and in fact the track listing is not even accurate: the album starts off rather than ends with their instrumental cover version of The Doors' "Light My Fire", and while you do get the song "Free Bass" (yes, a lengthy bass solo) it seems that "Free Drum" and "Free Fuzz" are missing in action. This may be the fault of the original LP sleeve, though again the reissuers could have made things a bit clearer. Anyway, what we do know is that The Firebirds were a British band who played heavy psychedelic blues rock influenced by the likes of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream and Blue Cheer, and while this ain't quite Vincebus Eruptum it does come close at times. One critic has called this album "soulless campy noise" and you know what? someone probably said the same thing about Blue Cheer too. Not recommended for everyone, but some of you out there, who are ready to really delve into the lower depths of heavy '60s psych LP reissue-dom, will dig this for sure...
The debut album from this new Bay Area electronic pop band is brimming with confidence and solid songwriting. It starts out all sweet, chiming and heartfelt treading in the territory of bands such as Postal Service and Magnetic Fields with a little bit of Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard-ness too. There's definitely echoes of '80s Brit synth pop thoughout. That said, as the album progresses, things gradually shifts into and between a darker, more atmospheric, almost gothy feel a la Tindersticks and a heavier, more guitar driven sound. Nice.
There's nothing we love quite as much as discovering a new weird band we had never heard of, and then discovering that the band in question is in fact a side project of yet -another- weird band we hadn't heard of either.
Such is the case with The First Cosmosis Artchestra On Vlubaland (quite a mouthful!) who happen to be an offshoot of the much more simply monickered Vluba.
Not sure what Vluba are all about but we are definitely digging the strange sounds of TFCAOV. The first track ("Cok") is a super abstract soundscape, a sort of free noise drift, lots of high end, feedback, cymbal sizzle, strange whistles and distant squeals, but underpinned by strange simple insistent rhythms, peppered with muted thumps and random blasts of crunch and shimmer. Like a more unhinged, less static Sunroof! or Hototogisu. Or like if someone took a super dense Dead C track and pulled it a part and stretched it out until it was almost transparent.
The second track ("Mok") is an ultra minimal soundscape of mostly percussion. Rattles and shakers, bits of clanging metal, little squalls of manic hand drumming, what sounds like various objects being rolled along other objects, very chaotic but subtle and with a certain elegance, a kitchen sink percussion jam transformed into a strangely meditative rhythmscape. Really cool.
Packaged in a very cryptic color sleeve, with a printed insert, a gorgeous transparent leaf and sealed with a bit of green string tied in a knot.
LIMITED TO 77 COPIES!!!
- MPEG stream: Cok
- MPEG stream: Mok
Don't be fooled by the promotional DJ sticker, this is in fact a proper full length from weirdo witch house / ghost drag outfit First Flesh, the dead eyed seventies zombie hottie on the cover your first clue as to what lurks inside Zombie Rave, and actually, the jams here sound less Zombie Rave, and more warped new wave chopped and screwed eighties house pop, which is not a bad thing at all. Imagine some Rick Astley style cheesy eighties pop vox slowed way down, to a ghostly, almost Antony sounding dramatic baritone, then lay those vocals over some woozy slo-mo house music, some HI-NRG grooves, sapped of most of their energy, and recast as a sort of symphonic gloom house, woozy and warped and pretty fuckin' cool. The second track takes those same vocals and wraps them around pulsing synths and ominous tolling bells, the whole thing rife with a 'wrong speed' vibe, a dark drowsy drag, a ghostly house music pop ballad that sounds like it could be the music from some cheesy montage in a seventies zombie arthouse flick.
The flipside starts out with another slab of ghostly draggy gloom pop, the vocals sounding auto-tuned, but instead of tuned up, tuned WAY down. The final track is more pounding and industrial, but mixes in a crazy poppy chorus, a sped up Kesha style radio pop chorus, which sounds so weird with the otherwise gloomy pound, but somehow sounds so cool at the same time! Fans of weirdo witch house will dig for sure, and folks who like the warped pop of Ariel Pink, John Maus and the like, might also find themselves getting into FF quite a bit...
Second 12" of weirdo minimal electronica from this New Zealand producer, and it might be even stranger/cooler than the first (Preparations, which we reviewed back on list #441). In our review of Preparations we describe FiS as sounding like a Tri Angle band, but totally deconstructed, and pulled apart, into something super abstract and slo-mo, but on Iterations, the sound is strangely lush and expansive - check out the title track, which pairs a fractured, super noisy beat, with soaring swoon some strings, the whole thing wrapped in gristle and static, but the end result is somehow epic and majestic, darkly groovy, but almost cinematic and symphonic. That beat does just gets more and more twisted and jumbled as it goes, the perfect foil for that melancholic backdrop. The rest of the record is not too shabby either, "Womb Dreams" is all skeletal dubstep, more hiss and static sculpted into slowly undulating waves and anchored by a dubbed out pulse, and some buried melodies, murky but darkly lovely. "Fever Sweats" cranks up the distortion, sounding a bit like a Burial B-side gone haywire, all blown out and in the red, grindingly rhythmic, with distant angelic voices, and swirling synths, beneath the crumbling latticework of decaying beats. And finally "Her Third Eye (Drum Rain)" lays down a flurry of wild percussion beneath softly stuttering melodies, all smeared into a prismatic haze, shot through with pulses of bass-synth, and strange percussion, a total come-down, minimal electro-dub trip out, that has us hankering for more more more!
First we've heard from Kiwi producer FIS, even though he apparently released a couple super hyped 12"s over the last year, but we can definitely see why folk are digging this, or at least folks like us! Preparations is a twisted bit of murky minimalism, that while definitely fitting pretty well amongst other Tri Angle outfits (Balam Acab, Vessel, Holy Other, Forest Swords, oOoOO, Haxan Cloak), is really way more grim and claustrophobic, we can't even imagine the sort of dancefloor DJ who would subject the heaving throngs to this hiss drenched creep - actually we can, OUR kind of DJ. Imagine any of those other Tri Angle artists, doing that sort of blurred, smeary slo-mo-soul, dubbed out and dark, and pull it apart, douse it in FX and slow it down even further, the results are fantastically gristled and grim, dubby pulsations buried WAY beneath fields of abstract thrum, a barely rhythmic sprawl of near static (well, actual static!), a field of hiss and hum, sculpted into dark shadowy clouds of sound, shot through with high end streaks, shards of muted crackle, pulsing loops that occasionally coalesce into abstract stutter-step beats, but more often seem to just hover on the verge of total collapse, a blackened electronic drift, skeletal, stripped down and minimal, a gorgeously gloomy, avant electro-creep that oozes ominously over the whole of the first side.
The flipside, though, is a bit more musical, a sort of gloom-house, swirls of synths, buried beats, the vibe soundtracky and sinister, sweeping and ambient, with just enough rhythmic heft to give the sound a dark motorik energy, anchored by some rib cage rattling bass throb, and blurred into still more mesmeric swaths of lumbering slow-dub creep.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Subtitled: Into The Pandemonium Of Celtic Frost. And that's what this is, cult '80s metal band Celtic Frost frontman Tom G. Warrior's tell-all autobiography. An unexpected book, to be sure! But it's a fascinating story, telling the whole strange saga from Tom's youthful metal fantasies as a teenage Swiss headbanger in the Venom-inspired (and since acclaimed as seminal) black metal band Hellhammer, to the heyday of subsequent band Celtic Frost touring America, and on to their major label glam rock disaster "Cold Lake", and beyond. The book reminds us a lot of Klaus Kinski's infamous autobiography, the same wealth of embarrassing personal information, the same obsession with sex (although in the case of the decidely nerdy Tom G., it's more often than not that he recounts tales of NOT having sex with groupies). Frost were the sort of band (despite their "evil" image) that wouldn't make it on stage on time not 'cause they were all blasted on drugs, but because their bassist was still at the comic book store! Anyway, this is a very entertaining book, with a lot to say about the absurdity of the record industry as well as the absurdity of Tom's 'avant-garde' metal band! Celtic Frost fans will of course find much of interest (did you know that their unreleased final record was going to be produced by Jesse Johnson of Prince proteges The Time?? or that Ken Russell asked them to do the soundtrack to "Lair of the White Worm" but they didn't have time? Or that Tom liked to record raps busting on his record label, unfortunately not released on their rarities compilation?) and other readers might well become fans as well, just because Tom is so smart and strange... Recommended!
Is your coffee table sturdy enough to support this book? 'Cause it's HEAVY! It's not just that it's a lavish, oversized, hard cover tome, with 290 glossy pages, weighing in at almost 4 pounds, but it's also about HELLHAMMER, and the very early daze of the band Hellhammer morphed into, the late great Celtic Frost. Anyone into death, doom and/or black metal should be salivating.
Tom G. (with the assistance of fellow former Frostie Martin Eric Ain, and quotes from others) delves deeply into the history of this seminal extreme metal entity, the text accompanied by a plethora of amazing vintage photos, you've never seen so many studded armbands, bullet belts, and draped chains in your life! There's also lots of fliers, demo tape covers, stuff like that. Total eye candy for any metalhead.
There's always been all this mystique about Hellhammer, and now for all diehard fans it's incredible to get this book of pictures and stories that really put you into their teenage Swiss bunker making all that unholy noise. Also, it's wonderfully ironic for a band widely considered at the time to be TERRIBLE, so raw and primitive, to now be considered so influential, true pioneers (cf. Gallhammer, also reissued on this week's list!) and be honored with this totally over the top deluxe coffee table book - they definitely got the last laugh!!
You probably already know if you want this or not, we knew as soon as we heard about it, and it lives up to expectations and then some. So cool.
NB. For shipping purposes, if you're a domestic mailorder customer, please note that this will have to go at the UPS rate, or the cheaper media mail way. No fitting it in one of our priority mail flat rate boxes, that's for sure!
If Adult. scored "Hedwig And The Angry Inch" or... if I Am Spoonbender went Broadway. If the cast from Fame played electro. Glammy and slick with many cool parts and sounds but unfortunately weak arrangements undermine Fischerspooner's drive for #1. And well, I really could do without the diva singer too. The second track on the album is a cover of Wire's "The 15th", and quite a great
Odyssey... the new eau de parfum... er, eau d'album from the fashion house of Fischerspooner. They've revamped their formula since their audacious debut -- holding onto those tried and true arpeggiated basslines and rocking things up with electric guitar, live drumming and... flute! They've apparently even given the diva singer the boot, drawing the spotlight more to Casey Spooner's vocals which come across as much more sing-song-y and sensitive guy (think: a more 'pumped' Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys), but please excuse us for being more than a little wary of their sincerity and substance when the group's career thus far has been unabashedly fabricated from truckloads of gloss, glitter and gall. This time when soliciting contributions the unapologetically shrewd and calculating duo shunned the fading electro-clash fashionistas and approached the likes of Susan Sontag, Linda Perry and David Byrne for assistance. Plus here's a head-scratcher for ya: they close the album with a cover of a Boredoms song -- a strange, truncated but oddly effective synthesized transformation of "Circle" from Vision Creation Newsun! There's two bonus tracks: one is a remix of "Just Let Go" and the second is an incongruous swirly pop song sung by Lizzy Yoder. Hmm, dare we guess that they're testing that genre's waters for a potential next new direction? Something to consider 'cuz it just might be the best song on the album. Sure had us scratching our heads a second time, goin' wtf!? though.
Here's a novel concept... Why not let Fischerspooner be your tourguide to gettin' around New York City? Those obsessive who-what-where-when mavens at Time Out (makers of those hip city guides that are usually found in magazine and book form) thought it a dandy idea, and have issued a series of three travel guide dualdisc (cd one side, dvd on the other) sets compiled by select taste-makin' startlets from London (Damian Lazarus), Paris (Black Strobe) and New York (Fischerspooner).
The eclectic musical selections are a funfilled romp although they're oddly not limited to New York based artists -- Bloc Party, Fiery Furnaces, Au Pairs, Princess Superstar, Broadcast, David Carretta, Plastique De Reve, Big Boys, Lassigue Bendthaus, Electronicat, Thomas Schumacher, Model 500, Richard Bartz, Martin Rev, Pixeltan and Laurie Anderson. Of course, shrewd businessmen that they are, they also include one of their own in the mix -- a remix of "Emerge".
The dvd side of The Other Side is hosted by Casey Spooner and offers a glimpse of his choice picks around the Big Apple.
Wonderful! Hop aboard Dave Fischoff's dreamy twilight pop ship and float up up up amid the shimmering stars. His soft, sensitive vocals melt into the lush, sweeping orchestral pop of The Crawl. A Chicago Public Library librarian by day, Fischoff namechecks Beach Boys, Burt Bacharach and Boards Of Canada as influences for this his third full length, and they definitely do make themselves apparent. That said, the results are a dreamy sweet confection which nuzzles in comfortably next to the likes of mellow pop-tronicans Canada's Caribou and pretty much everyone on Germany's Morr Music label. Absolutely sigh inducing!
