I (Andee) was initially very resistant to this new strain of post punk new wave whatchamacallit. Bands doing their best to take Pere Ubu, Wire and all that sort of stuff and supercharge it. Interpol did a lot to change my mind, but then the legions of Interpol wannabees and punk-rock-bands-who-were-suddenly-funky-and-thus-hip-again almost cancelled out all my progress. Then came Franz Ferdinand, who initially I couldn't stand, but quickly came to love, and of course the Moving Units who I dug the first time I heard them. Now we have the Futureheads, who embody everything appealing about those other bands. Jagged angular guitars, throbbing bass lines, simple hypnotic almost-funky rhtyhms, shouty sloganeering vocals, and just fucking great songs! Sort of like Interpol mixed with the Strokes. Or a punkier Franz Ferdinand. Short and sharp, bouncy and totally catchy. I was definitely prepared to hate this band, just based on all the best-new-band hype, before I'd even heard them. But the second this hit the deck, I knew it was too good to hate. Recommended for fans of all the above bands was well as jaded fuckers like me who desperately wanted to hate all this stuff!
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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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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Managed to get a handful of these SUPER LIMITED lathe cut 7"s from New Zealand noise rockers the Futurians, and it's a doozy. Already they were a sludgey, garagey, noisy, a bit damaged, freaked out and arty, some mix of Chrome, the Stooges and the Brainbombs. If anything this 7"s pushes them even further out. Adding sheets of white noise distortion, some old school Butthole Surfers style vocal processing, and a production that barely surpasses tin can and twine through dictaphone, the band churn out a super repetitive hypnotic groove, the guitars not so much riffy as chunks of static, the drums a muffled barely there throb, the two elements that hold it all together, are the buzzing low end that pulses and throbs beneath the surface, seeming to fade out completely before exploding back into motion, a blackened rumble, and the vocals, a skipping, stuttering, hiccupping high end chirp, that almost sounds more like a malfunctioning synth than an actual human voice. The result is pretty fantastic though, a fucked up garage sludge noise rock wetdream, equal parts Buttholes, Siltbreeze, Brainbombs and shitgaze.
Hand painted sleeves, clear lathe, INSANELY LIMITED. Already out of print. We have 7 or 8. Don't blink...
We kinda forgot how much we love NZ noise rockers The Futurians, but within seconds of throwing this on, their latest, and first for Last Visible Dog (also LVD's first vinyl, and vinyl-only, release), we most definitely remembered. The band clobbering us with their buzzing lo-fi psychedelic minimal garage noiserock dronedirge crush, the guitars crusty and fuzzy and drenched in distortion and buzz, the vocals a buried yelp, the drums so distorted that they sometimes sound electronic, and the production, totally fried and in the red, with the sound seeming to continually shift from brittle and tinny, to murky and muddy, to fully blown out. So weirdly produced in fact, that much of this ends up sounding more avant and experimental than noisy and rocky. The sound is motorik and repetitive, tripped out and mesmeric, NZ style, like a krautrock Dead C or a noiserock Faust, tribal and trancelike, a few tracks are just wild tangles of psychedelic guitar noise, but others, like the final nearly sidelong track, are just total low fidelity outsider spacerock krautgarage bliss. Noisy, heavy, in the red, fucked up and so kick ass.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Pressed on 80 gram vinyl, with super heavy jackets.
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Cottage-industry label boss Glenn Donaldson has been splitting his time between the avant-folk productions of Jewelled Antler and the distinctly noiser productions for his other label Pink Skulls, which he describes as being more "punk" than Jewelled Antler. Alongside the militant iconography of Teenage Panzerkorps, the belligerent hallucinations of Leafyard, and the boombox black metal of Dead Raven Choir, Donaldson's definition of punk is not the commonly accepted one. New Zealand's rock primitivists The Futurians add another facet to Donaldson's atypical vision for Pink Skulls. Hailing from the equally obscure, noise rock band Armpit, The Futurians are not a band that resolves any of their art rock songs, prefering to leave a jagged guitar line or a simple drum kit plod or a monomaniacal vocal chant as the only semblance of structure to scrabble through the post-Chome synth squiggles, bleary clattering sound, and general lo-fi ugliness. Think Gate's "Metric" with megaphone vocals delivered by a Lydia Lunch / Mark E. Smith hybrid, toss in The Troggs and Destroy All Monsters for even greater anti-rock references, and you'll come pretty close to The Futurians. For all of the 'fucked up' art rock bands that sound too calculated and too ironic for their own good, The Futurians with their semi-conscious narcolepsy through noise propulsion are a rare gem uncovered from a pile of shit. More please.
The last we heard from NZ sludgy noise rock outfit the Futurians was a long out of print cd-r released on Jewelled Antler offshoot label Pink Skulls waaaay back in 2003. We were pretty into it, a sort of monotone garage rock trudge, simple plodding drums, blown out fuzz guitar, vocals way way way down in the mix, bits of synth squiggle, a sort of Stooges, Chrome, Fall, Brainbombs chunk of lo-fi noise rock dirge.
Well, here we are almost 4 years later, and the Futurians' primitive stomp sounds as good as ever. In fact, it sounds way better than we remember it.
Simple and stripped down, Each track an endless looping riff, swathed in grungy guitar grrrr and tons of reverb, synths in there too it sounds like, but if anything, their sound got more blown out, more primitive, more skeletal, and somehow more filthy and fuzzy. And who can argue with that?
Like a caveman Dead C, these noiseniks, pound out a relentless slow motion krautrock groove, a simple riff ground forcibly into your skull, drums that don't so much swing as thud, over the top drift shards of damaged electronics, swooping alien synths, extra guitar noise. The vocals are usually lost in the skree and buzz, but occasionally, the vocals take center stage with frontwoman Beth Duckling howling and crooning, her voice drenched in effects, the vocals another layer in the Futurians dense barrage.
In addition to Beth, the Futurians also features a who's who of NZ underground rockers, Clayton Noone (Armpit, CJA), Stefan Neville (Pumice) and Antony Milton (PseudoArcana head honcho)
Limited to 300 copies, each hand numbered, packaged in a cool black and silver screened cardstock sleeve, with a color photo affixed to the inside...
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It seems like a really long time since we've heard from Fuxa (or from fellow Michigan space rockers Windy & Carl, for that matter). During their hiatus, Fuxa have made a number of changes to their sound, most notably being the near abolition of rock, in favor of a clean drum machine sound standing way out in the mix as if these are to be electronica pieces, which could make sense in comparison to somebody like LTJ Bukem. Their signature psychedelic guitars and constant haze of washed out electronics make themselves known, but submit to the dominance of the rhythm. Fuxa's clean, measured "2000" sounds as if the Durutti Column were to release a trip hop album...
"Spacey analog synth burbles wending their way outwards, floating, propulsive instrumental melodies." From Dearborn, Michigan.
Wow, haven't heard from Fuxa in awhile (hey, didn't we start another Fuxa review with a similar sentiment?). The Michigan space dreamers have never received as much attention as their peers, Windy and Carl, or Add N to (X), but maybe cuz their records are so few and far between. Well, it's always nice to hear from them, and their latest offering is this single which features a cover and collaboration with of all bands, Suicide!? Well, it sort of makes sense, doesn't it, as Suicide were a key bridge between minimalist punk and space rock. Fuxa with the help of Martin Rev along with Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500, Lun, Dean & Britta)and Sonic Boom (Spaceman 3, Spectrum) take on a gorgeous and driving retelling of Suicide's classic "Cheree" that sounds a bit like all of these bands combined. Hopefully, it won't be forever before a new Fuxa full length.
A split release between the two bands. Fuxa's entry is what you've come to expect, long drawn out melodic post-rock with vintage synth action. Welsh group Ectogram's contribution is the reason to buy this disc -- their repetitive groove will remind you of
Yowza. Hells to the yeah. It's Fuzz II time. If'n you don't know, Fuzz is the stomping heavy psych power trio featuring garage pop wunderkind Ty Segall (playing the flailin' drums) as well as the Ty Segall Band's Charlie Moothart, wailin' on the guitar, and rounding out the trio, Chad from The Meatbodies is now their bassist. After a couple brilliant singles, Fuzz released their eponymous debut in 2013, blowing us away and earning Record Of The Week honors at aQ. Now they're back... with another ROTW, natch!
Fuzz II means the next level of Fuzz. Advanced Fuzz. Definitely more Fuzz - there's 14 tracks here, some short blasts, but others mega jams - including a lengthy, 13+ minute album-ending epic freakout that is apparently titled "II" (yes, a numbered album with a title track, brilliant!).
Of course, if you call your band Fuzz, that's what you gotta deliver. And they sure do, job number one. Lots and lots of fuzz, check. Moothart again channels the likes Leigh Stephens, Randy Holden, Martin Weaver, and other legendary axe-wielding fuzzmasters of yesteryear. Ye olde stoner rawkin' Blue Cheery, Black Sabbathy heaviness is a big part of the Fuzz equation, as are the garage psych pop smarts Segall is known for on all his other records. For us, it's a killer combination!! And this time 'round their longhaired retro-proto-metal riffage is maybe a mite more proggy and complexified, more Sir Lord Baltimore baroque than Blue Cheer basic. Well, they still turn the air into cottage cheese, but there's a whiff of some fancy camembert in there too, with a couple tracks bringing in some orchestrated sounds (must be by the guest credited with "InterstellarStringSweeping"). And there's keys and synths and stuff too. Not that it's nothing but muscular hard-hitting rock action though, sounding like some lost late '60s / early '70s classic that just couldn't be, 'cause it's so grindingly badass and freshly in your melted face.
We're digging it big time, all the freaky sounds and hooks and riffs and FUZZ. Ty Segall never lets us down, and as serious heavy psych lovers, Fuzz is one of our favorite projects of his. For fans of all its proto-metal inspirations like Sir Lord Baltimore, as well as the music of Ty's pal King Tuff, and even moreso, King Tuff-related band Witch.
Second in a new series of live records from John Dwyer's Castle Face records, the first being the recent live White Fence set captured just a few blocks down from aQ at the Amnesia (formerly the Chameleon), and now this, a kick ass smoker of a set from Ty Segall's -other- band Fuzz, whose debut we made our Record Of the Week recently, and whose sound is more like sixties psych meets seventies proto metal, super Blue Cheer-y, all fuzzed out, heavy, and spacey. There's lots of wild and chaotic drumming (courtesy of Segall, who mans the kit, while somehow handling vox too) along with some insane guitar shreddery, courtesy of Charlie Mootheart of the Moonhearts and Segall's band proper, who somehow melds classic rock crunch with blown out, cosmic, brain melting Hendrixian Hawkwindian howl. Live they're even MORE fierce, caught here in the act at local leather-daddy dive the SF Eagle, and on Segall's birthday too (the crowd sings happy birthday, and Segall gets a cake and blows out the candles mid-song!!).
Needless to say, if you dug the Fuzz full length, odds are you're probably gonna want this too, the songs way more loose and raw, stretched WAY out (only four songs!), the sound noisy and fuzzy and in your face, the band are on fire, it's the sort of sweat drenched, blood soaked blowout that deserves to be preserved for all of eternity. Dig it! And if you get the chance, don't miss these guys next time they play in your neck of the woods. Give this a listen and you'll understand why...
For a while the identity of this local garage fuzz combo was a big mystery, and the group's first single disappeared in a heartbeat, multiple pressings gone before you know it, with most of those ending up on eBay for stupid amounts of money. At that point we still hadn't actually heard Fuzz, but they were rumored to be like a garage rock Black Sabbath, and to include some local garage rock bigwig. Well, the second part definitely proved to be true, as Fuzz was revealed to be none other than Ty Segall and a couple of his pals, kicking out jams, a bit more heavy and fuzzed out (so much so that it even spawned a custom Fuzz distortion pedal!). And while it might not quite be Sabbathy, it is pretty fierce and fuzzed out, blown out and super rocking, with big chunky chugging riffs, and LOADS off fuzz (obviously), and yeah, the vibe IS sorta sixties/seventies proto metal, wild drumming (courtesy of Segall, who mans the kit here, while Charlie Moothart handles the axework), a little bit progged out, the recording super hot and in-the-red, and the songs, both of 'em here, could almost be lost proto metal artifacts, the B side in particular, has a serious "Godzilla" vibe, a lumbering, churning BIG riff crunch, peppered with slithery psychedelic breakdowns, which continually explode into wild proto metal freakouts, and it's not that difficult to imagine these guys, and these songs on one of those seventies TV shows, where the band plays on a stage, while trippy primitive video FX swirl all around them. Needless to say, it's fuzzy, crunchy, heavy and hooky, Ty Segall fans who aren't already hip to these guys, here's your chance, and anyone else into the current crop of garage fuzz locals (Thee Oh Sees, Segall, Mikal Cronin, Blasted Canyons, etc.) these guys might be your new favorites. And while this must be pressing #3 or #4 by now, imagine even this batch won't stick around for long, so you know what to do...
The latest single from these local psychedelic fuzz rockers, featuring none other than Ty Segall behind the drumkit. Although listening to this (and the other singles) it definitely sounds like Segall had more to contribute than drumming, cuz Fuzz definitely doesn't sound that far removed from Segall's own records, maybe a bit more fuzzed out (obviously), but fans of Segall, Mikal Cronin, Thee Oh Sees and all the rest will no doubt flip for these guys too. Imagine a slightly Sabbathier Segall, and you're getting closer, the A side is total sixties psych radness, super charged and doused in crumbling fuzz guitars, a wicked hooky, and some wild drumming, has us dying for the forthcoming full length (soon!).
The B side features Fuzz taking on the oft-covered "21st Century Schizoid Man", by King Crimson of course, and they definitely do it justice, sounding like some lost proto metal band, the sound furiously fuzzy, more wild drumming, the vocals raspy and feral, the whole thing appropriately fierce and heavy, especially the double time freakout, here totally supercharged and seriously metallic. Fuck yeah!
At first blush, the debut full length from local trio Fuzz, sounds a lot like a Ty Segall record, as it should, since Fuzz is actually Segall's new band, which was originally described to us as sounding like Ty Segall crossed with Black Sabbath. Needless to say we were pretty skeptical at first, but their preceding 7"s proved the point, and now that the highly anticipated full-length is here, goddamn if this isn't some seriously heavy garage-psych proto-metal retro-rock radness! In fact, you'd most certainly be forgiven for thinking this was in fact some genuine lost proto metal artifact, the songs, the sound, the guitar tone, all harken back to the classics, that sound we here at aQ obsess over, in fact, if we were trying to describe Fuzz with some succinct rock band math, we might replace Sabbath above with groups like Power Of Zeus, or Dust, or the Groundhogs, cuz it definitely has that old school hard rocking vibe BIG TIME.
The interesting thing about Fuzz, is that while Segall is still singing, he's now behind the kit, and is actually a seriously kick ass drummer, very much in the style of say Ginger Baker or Mitch Mitchell, busy and loose, slipping from wild octopoidal freakouts to locked in hard rocking grooves and back again, while guitarist Charlie Moothart (who also plays in Segall's band, as well as the Moonhearts) proves himself to be a serious shredder, who should be getting the same sort of love that dudes like Isaiah Mitchell does, in fact fans of Earthless will find much of the jamming here right up their alley, with Moothart unfurling, crumbling, blown out heavy rock riffs, alongside wild blasts of mega shred psychedelic freakout. And while most of the songs her are loose and jammy, with much of the record sounding like different parts of the same mega-jam, rife with lots of space, and stop/starts, stretches of amp hum, lurching abstract almost doomy breakdowns, even some almost-drum solo bits, a few pop gems surface here and there, like "What's In My Head", which would have sounded right at home on any of the Segall record proper, so catchy, with a hook to die for, but still somehow fitting into Fuzz's retro fuzz-rock soundworld. That sound in full effect on "Loose Sutures" which is about as loose as these guys get, the midsong breakdown total heavy seventies psych-prog radness, complete with fuzzed out bass solo, killer drumming, and when the main riff comes back in, SO HEAVY. The record finishes of with three more blasts of blown out riff heavy psych rock that kills, lurching from fuzzy lope, to full on near metallic crunch, to total classic old school heavy psych, and as much as we love pretty much everything Segall has done, this Fuzz record is fast becoming our favorite.
Killer psychedelic space dragon cover art, the lp includes a download code as well!
The LAMC series of 7"s features tons of our favorite bands (Fuzz, Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees), delivering an exclusive track on the A side, while the B side features one of THAT band's favorite new artists. A pretty cool concept for sure and we're reviewing 3 of our favorites in the series.
Number 10 comes from none other than Fuzz, Ty Segall's heavy psych combo, who offer up, you guessed it, a fierce and fuzzy slab of super rocking psychedelic garage crunch, churning, blown out distortion, wild drumming, shredding leads, wailed vox, this jam in particular reminds us of Redd Kross at their heaviest, which is a very good thing for sure. A jam that would have been right at home on the recent Fuzz full length.
Fuzz's pick for up and coming artist is a band we had heard of but never heard until now, CCR Headcleaner, and it's easy to see why Fuzz would have picked them, murky, drone-y, druggy psychedelia, urgently strummed acoustic guitar, wreathed in a gnarly haze of blurred distortion, wasted, drowsy vox, the whole thing woozy and washed out and seriously trippy. Mesmerizing psych-noise garage-dirgery that sounds a bit like a ramshackle, lo-fi Loop! Killer tracks from both bands. And as you might imagine, also SUPER LIMITED!!!
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Here's a lovingly homespun assemblage of field recordings which have been altered and pieced together over the last couple years into a hushed collage of mysterious texturous scrapings and ambience. These three hazy soundscapes were created by Bay Area artist Fuzzboy (aka Dan Borstein). 'Tis the gentler side of experimental noise that he treads.
