While his former Uncle Tupelo co-frontman Jeff Tweedy's country rock roots have sprouted into exploratory pop blossoms, Jay Farrar has nurtured and honed his own, keeping them closer to the country trellis both in his band Son Volt and goin' solo. We (particularly Andee and Cup) have been waitin' and waitin' for him to make an album as good as (if not better than) that of his old band's -- an album worthy of his remarkable voice -- but neither his previous albums, Terroir Blues and Sebastopol, nor his ThirdShiftGrottoSlack ep, have been quite able to capture that elusive magic. This being a live album filled mostly with songs from those three solo releases means we're probably not going to find our Farrar fix here. That said, some of the live renditions do outshine the album versions. And as always that voice is still so rough and gorgeous. Nineteen songs including two new ones and a closing double-whammy of Pink Floyd and Neil Young covers. Includes a bonus live dvd.
Even though Jay Farrar was the better songwriter in Uncle Tupelo, and had THE VOICE that defined their sound, all whiskey soaked and gravelly, he has been totally eclipsed post-Uncle Tupelo by his ex-band mate Jeff Tweedy and his band Wilco, who have been critical darlings since day one, and over the last year or two have managed to win over the public as well, selling tons of records and having the tale of their label swapping debacle and their subsequent artistic and commercial triumph told time and time again. And actually it makes a lot of sense, as Tweedy's songwirting really blossomed once he was on his own and out from under Farrar's formidable songwriting shadow. While Farrar's work in Son Volt and on his solo records has lacked the spark that made his work in UT so intense. And unfortunately that continues to be kinda true...
Now, the sound is there. It always has been. Drifting and plaintive and melancholy with that gruff gorgeous voice. Unfortunately, there are no songs. And that's the problem. If you can get it into your head that this is not a pop record of actual songs, but an extended assembly of sounds, then it may be more satisfying for you. Slippery slide guitars pick out warbly melodies, alongside thick rich acoustic guitars and warm reverberant cellos. And again, there's that voice. And this release boasts some interesting production as well as a six part suite of spacy, experimental instrumental interludes scattered throughout, but all that just doesn't quite make up for the lack of CATCHY songs. But like I said, it does *sound* SO GOOD. I just desperately want Farrar to knock one out of the park the way Tweedy did with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I know it'll happen. And I'm willing to wait, 'cause I know it'll be worth it.
This five song EP from former Uncle Tupelo founder Jay Farrar is, well, okay. As in *just okay*, i.e. there's nothing that stands out as extraordinarily beautiful here -- none of the heartbreaking chord changes, the instantly hummable melodies, the abject naked emotion -- that made his previous quality work so memorable. Not even one great song to make the price of the disc worth it. It's a bummer; I mean he still plays a worthy, if slightly generic, brand of twangy Americana, but it isn't as vital or intense as before. So I say, if you're a fan, you'll probably want this, but if you're new to Farrar, Uncle Tupelo, or his post-Tupelo band Son Volt, then you should really start with any of the Uncle Tupelo records (Anodyne being my fave, but all are grrreat).
We never reviewed the debut from German black metal outfit Farsot, though we should have, and this new one is kicking our asses big time (in retalitation?). From the beginning of the first track, these guys unfurl something that manages to be furious and fierce, but also pretty weird and tripped out. Some classic riffing, super aggressive and intense, combined with some woozy wandering basslines, some deep crooned vox and some bizarre samples, eventually some more 'proper' black metal vokills come in, but somehow it doesn't make the sound any more black, instead the music shifts too, and the sound becomes way more melodic, rife with cool guitar licks and layered chant-like vocals, the song shifting from propulsive pound, to churning slow build chug, to epic cinematic soar, it's a weird combination for sure, and one that's pretty difficult to describe, but we're loving it. The sound is incredible, the production massive, the band sound huge, and fucking intense, and that's just the first song. The second track starts out all doomy and proggy, lurching start/stop arrangement and weird angular melodies, and even when the song kicks in proper, the guitars are weirdly droney and blurred into tranced out mesmer, creating a sound that's somewhere between grim blackness, and some sort of post black metal. There's also some clean guitar, and an ambient interlude, lots of melody, some cool slow burn psychedelia, all of which is why these guys get pegged as post black metal, which they most definitely are, but the connotations of that classification might obscure the fact of just how heavy and weird and still pretty black metal these guys really are. The more we listen to this, the more we're reminded of a WAY heavier and way more black metal Ved Buens Ende, if that makes any sense, the same sort of twisted take on BM, definitely cut from the same sonic cloth, but with their own unique modern twist on black metal, which just so happens to include plenty of classic metal riffing, all sorts of different clean vocals, lots of atmosphere, and mathy repetition, some loping meandering post rock rhythms, a bit of clean guitar jangle, some awesome abstract guitar drone drift, but ultimately, all woven into some seriously dense and dark metal. We dig A LOT.
We were gonna try, but we just can't do it... we can't... First release from this local band, and it's a doozy, heavy as fuck, chaotic and unhinged with a wild maniacal frontwoman, but, and it's a big BUT (pun most certainly intended)... Farticus? Maybe the worst band name ever. And that's coming from a store who has always championed Cream Abdul Babar!! Come on guys, you're dooming yourself to a life of local band-dom, of being perpetually a joke band, no matter how kick ass you are. And trust us, we know, we have spent time in bands with terrible names, embarrassing names, even scatological names, but somehow none quite as bad as Farticus. Plus, embracing the name, by having your logo be a shitting woman, all your song titles puerile and scatological and goofy, it definitely makes it hard to get to the music, but once you do, holy shit, these four songs are intense and brutal, tons of low end, the guitars chugging and churning, occasionally getting all twisted and warped, evoking prime era Butthole Surfers, the drums pounding and chaotic, and the vocals, shit, a wild banshee screech, sounding like a Riot Grrl all grown up ready to kick your ass. Reminds us a bit of classic SF weirdo rockers, Tragic Mulatto, in fact, if you can imagine the Buttholes, Tragic Mulatto, but with Unsane guitars, that's what this is all about.
Apparently the live shows are insane, the vocalist mobbed by men AND woman, all grinding their faces into her pelvis, the band obviously are totally capable of destroying, so it's definitely worth it to try and make it past all the non musical stuff, the name, the song titles, the artwork on the cd, cuz once you strap on the headphones and close your eyes, this stuff will pummel you gloriously and utterly. At least in your iTunes you can change the band name and song titles and just enjoy the music. Reservedly recommended. If these guys revamped their aesthetic, and of course changed their name, they would be unstoppable.
Over the past few years, aQuarius pal, music obsessive, and multi-instrumentalist Monte Cimino has brought us many interesting releases of dirgey postmetal heaviness (Burial Tree), ambient drone (Time Spent), kosmiche bliss (Dark Matter Halo), and experimental new age noise (When Prophecy Fails). Now here's a demo disc from a new project he's in. Named after actor Michael Fassbender (??), this is a band playing not ambient noise nor brooding postrock, but instead straight up HARDCORE! A la '80s crossover acts like DRI and SOD. Aggro, metallic, fast and loud. Six songs in seven minutes. Monte plays guitar in this five piece, which also features members of local power violence unit Venkman and globetrotting punk vets Conquest For Death.
It's very moshable, raging stuff, that slows up for some nice heavy breakdowns. Not sure what they're all pissed off about (though one song is called "Fuck You, Hipster") but they are definitely working up a sweat here ripping somebody a new one. And they've obviously got a sense of humor too. If you liked the Iron Reagan we listed last time, you'll dig this as well.
No frills packaging, a plain ol' cd-r in a plastic sleeve, with black & white xeroxed cover and insert with their scrawled notes for the drummer on how these songs are supposed to be played.
FYI, if you're local and want to check 'em out live, Fassbender will be playing a Southern Lord showcase gig at the Knockout on October 21st...
We recently discovered a completely amazing Japanese label called EM Records. Pretty hard to pin down what exactly it is that they specialize in but that's precisely why we're so smitten. From not one, but -several- singing saw records, to acid psych reissues, long lost singer songwriters, early experimental tape music, bizarre robot disco, fifties rock and roll, Australian dub, Isophonic boogie woogie (?) and tons more. We've only begun to dip into the wonderful world of EM, but we're going to start listing them one at a time. This record was initially the release that convinced us to get in touch with EM. Jim Fassett's Symphony Of The Birds is bizarre and beautiful and had AQ written all over it. The liner notes are mostly in Japanese so it's hard to know too many of the details, but Symphony Of The Birds is an amazing example of early tape music, it just so happens that all the tapes used were recordings of songbirds, which Fassett chopped, and cut, spliced and sequenced into a totally unique symphony of bird calls.
The record opens with Fassett's explanatory comments featuring our favorite line: "But keep in mind, as you listen, that nothing has been added. If you think you hear something that sounds like a particular musical instrument, or a human voice, or anything else other than birdcalls, YOU'RE WRONG." The first movement is definitely the best, whistles and chirps, chopped and stretched into dense swirls of psychedelic sound, if you weren't paying close attention, you'd be hard pressed to hear that it was birds making these sounds. Very trippy and spacey and alien sounding, like some crazy analog synthesizer freakout. The second movement involves a lot more itch shifting and changes in tape speed, resulting in sort of clunky purposeful melodies, the same bird call in different pitches to assemble very simple sing songy melodies. The third movement gets back on track, with some of the bird call slowed WAY down so they becomes rumbling drones, while others are sped up and repeated rapidly making impossible trills that almost sound like some blast of Sunroof!-y skree.
The last three tracks feature Fassett narrating an imaginary trip through a meadow, allowing us to study closely the bird song of each different bird isolated from the others, with some deft mixing and stereo panning, and the affect is actually quite stunning, with each bird getting 30 seconds to a minute right up on the mic! Cool!
The whole thing comes packaged in a super tough oversized (to accommodate the massive booklet) jewel case. The booklet contains lots of great photos, liner notes in Japanese, transcriptions of Fassett's spoken word segments on the disc, the album's original liner notes, and strangest of all, a pictorial guide to various and random birdcall records, separated by theme it seems: whistling accompaniment of instruments or big band, field recordings, canary training, instrumental, experimental happening (?) etc. Weird!
We've been meaning to list something by these guys for ages. Some fierce and furious Santa Cruz hardcore, or fastcore, actually kind of powerviolence too, fuck it, whatever you wanna call it, these guys are brutal, and fast as fuck, heavy too. Very reminiscent of the classic Slap A Ham days, the songs are short, grinding mini epics, most clocking in at a minute or less (often WAY less), 8 tracks crammed into seven inches, but they manage to cram a shitload of frantic punk rock energy into each, deftly flitting from galloping punk rock, to churning lumbering chug-metal, to wild, chaotic hardcore. The dueling vocals are shriek versus bellow, the riffs are fucking killer, goddamn these guys rule, and we didn't even think bands like this still existed. And if you need further convincing, we just listened to this whole 7" about 5 times in a row, and we can't see ourselves stopping anytime soon.
Pressed on grey and pink swirled vinyl, includes a full color printed insert/lyric sheet, and stickers!
Fucked up lo-fi DHR style disco terrorism from Los Angeles, recorded by some dude from Le Shok. Supposedly someone in this group moonlights in Death Drug, who also shares said ex-member of Le Shok. Like a messy, less tweakedly cute, American version of Japan's Polysics. Atari Teenage Riot goes lo-fi pinball goth? Lame KKK artwork by the usually amazing Matt Brinkman of Load/Fort
So damn punk! So shamefully obscure! It's the fearless Zone brothers aka The Fast! Cup heard about this band (who've caused much discombobulated head-scratching around here) from her good friend and fountain of the most obscure bits of information, Nardwuar The Human Serviette. Although The Fast did release a few singles and one album (produced by Ric Ocasek, no less!), their music's pretty impossible to find. Up until now you might've been fortunate to catch a rare glimpse of this NY band on a Hyped To Death collection, but the fine folks at Munster have come to your rescue with this fantastic compilation of twenty three songs. This cd is the extensively detailed sonic documentation of their electrifying eight year evolution-meltdown through garage, power pop, mod, glam, goth, metal, new wave and electronic dance! And it comes with graphic documentation too! The cd's booklet bursts with band history detailing their early stage antic mayhem (gogo girls dressed as nuns, giant lollipops, cheap guitar destruction, Cheerio showers and a mysterious event called the pencil solo?!), a gamut of fabulous wardrobe changes (badass skintight vinyl suits, pencil thin moustaches, zebra striped spandex, suspenders, bandanas, and elaborate makeup including a big black heart over one eye reportedly predating Paul Stanley's star), not to mention some coifs that put the current crop of jet black angular 'dos to shame. Plus there's a bunch of candid photos of the band cavorting with members of Blondie, The Cramps, The New York Dolls, The Ramones and Suicide to boot. All this from the group that would eventually morph into the astounding ultra-leather boys Man2Man who are a whole other amazing story. Really, this brief review simply can't do the Brothers Zone justice. So if you think you need more, I can tell you that there was an obsessively thorough story in Roctober Magazine a while back (issue #25). Oh and lest I forget, The Fast's music is simply a super good time! So very very recommended... at least by Cup!
Quite possibly the best example of the pure power pop brilliance that is the Fastbacks. Three early releases from Seattle pop greats Kurt Bloch, Kim Warnick and Lulu Gargiulo on one cd. Not only do you get '... And His Orchestra' (which is pretty much the bestest from start to finish), but also 'Everyday Is Saturday' (with their cover of "Midnight Confessions"), and '...Play Five Of
Contains an extra song not included on the cd version.
After countless albums jam-packed full of ultra excellent power pop on such labels as Seattle's Popllama and SubPop, the Fastbacks are back with yet another catchy gem, this time on Spin Art Records. Still maintaining the high quality hooks'n'harmonies, and youthful exuberance they've held for well over a decade, Kurt, Kim, Lulu, and Mike will rock you. Yes, they will.
The return of Fastest! Longtime readers of the list are by now no doubt familiar with this weirdo outsider one man band, whose sound seems to meld eighties video game music, midi synth guitar metal, almost hip hop style grooves, growled/crooned sort of metal vocals, into a twisted head spinning concoction that either has people freaking out and wanting every single release, or freaking out and wanting it to stop. Odds are this most recent record will be no less divisive. It's funny to see regular aQ customers come in and FREAK OUT that there's a new Fastest, a way more visceral reaction that lots of other more high profile (and yeah, less ridiculous) releases. But that should tell you something. Odds are, everyone out there who bought most/all of the other Fastest cd-r's, are gonna want this one too cuz it's another twisted whatthefuck batch of homebrewed midi-metal weirdness, just check out the opening track "Fantasy II", with its chugging churning almost metallic riffing, the weirdly catchy atonal main melody, the whispered/crooned vox, the stumbling stuttery programmed drums, the track displaying some surprising malevolence, slipping easily from Legend Of Zelda style cloying 8-bit synth swoon, to weird electronic guitar chug crunch, and then stripped down bass driven dirgery before a strange syncopated breakdown. It's genius, and ridiculous, and impossible to stop listening too, and if you're like us, you can never have enough Fastest.
The rest of the record is more of the same, churning dark synth heavy, drum machine driven musical drama, wild blast of Bollywood drumming, all tangled up with woozy synth melodies, thick rumbling distortion and weird blown out production, there's definitely an eighties vibe, but also an alien video game vibe too, heck there's even a seriously warped 'dance' number this time around too! This is the sort of thing people like James Ferraro are trying to conjure up, but this is the real deal, the genius inner workings of a truly and fantastically warped musical mind, and a sound that is truly unique, and unlike anything you've heard. EVER. Join us in our ridiculous fascination / obsession with the fucked up musical world of Fastest!
This is in fact record number EIGHT, counting the awesomely titled greatest hits collection Magicmancy, if you need any/all of the other ones just ask, a few are reviewed on the aQ site, including Theme, which was a Record Of The Week. So if you're up for some seriously whatthefuck sounds, it really doesn't get much more damaged and awesomely demented than this.
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.
Fastest's Theme, a Record Of The Week a few lists back, was a surprise hit around here (not a surprise for everyone though, some of us knew, few would be able to resist the twisted confusional home brewed madness that is Fastest), but we sold them like crazy, and in that review we mentioned Fastest also had a handful of other records, and got a bunch of reponses from folks wanting more.
So here you go, Into The Night, not sure where it falls in the Fastest catalog, which is now up to 8 or 10 releases, but it's another one of our favorites, second only to Theme, and like Theme, the sound here is pretty idiosyncratic and difficult to describe, warbly buzzying synths, stumbling weirdly programmed drums, that seem to explode into impossibly tangled rhythmic flurries, that is when they're not locked into some warped robotic groove, the melodies are twisted as well, moody and melancholy one second, then all sunshiney the next, like the music for the final screen on some old school video game, all 8 bit bleep and bloop, underpinned by weirdly bloopy low slung bass, and those chaotic beats. And did we mention the vocals, sort of sung/spoken, Allan here thinks it sounds like rapping, and likens Fastest to mush mouthed headphone rapper Sensational, but Fastest is much more strident, his vocals urgent and dramatic, often delivered in what sounds like a growled death metal grunt, but just as often whispered or crooned, the vocals locked tight with staccato rhythms, the ominous buzzing synths, the midi guitar melodies, slipping from epic and intense and almost heavy, to fuzzy and bouncy, but more often than not somewhere right in between. In some ways, Into The Night is a bit darker than Theme, and the spastic avalanche like drum programming sounds even more out of control, which is most definitely a good thing. For more on our obsession with Fastest, check out our review of Theme elsewhere on the aQ site, but if you've yet to check out the fractured and fantastically fucked up musical stylings of this one man band, this is as good a place to start as any, and who knows, you might find yourselves needing ALL of them. We did!
Like Theme, the packaging is awesome and over the top and a bit confusional. A custom (not real) barcode right on the front cover, a cool tray card that wraps up and around the edge, the Fastest logo all sharp and heavy metal looking, notes exclaiming "digital audio compact disc" and "state of the art phonorecord", the ASCAP publishing logo/info not less than FOUR times on the back cover, a shoutout to TDK, and of course, like Theme, a production credit for someone/something named Daemaeen Hephaestus Chastical. Oh, and a cool lazer etched discface! Needless to say (but we will anyway) CRAZY RECOMMENDED.
We've noticed a lot of customers going a little Fastest crazy recently. Which doesn't surprise us. In fact, we were so nuts for Fastest, we made his Theme album our Record Of The Week one week. Although considering what Fastest actually sounds like, maybe we are a little surprised. It is, as we've explained in the past, some of the most fantastically twisted, and utterly polarizing music we've heard in ages. Like all the best art, there's no middle ground with Fastest. There are only two responses, the first, a baffled look on the face, and the thought that how could something like that exist and why would people want to listen to it. The second being, a baffled look on the face, and the thought that how could something like that exist and I MUST OWN EVERY SINGLE RECORD!!! And we're not exaggerating. While there may be a few folks out there who have indeed just bought one, maybe two, the majority of folks do indeed go nuts and order them ALL. This one might be designed more for you dabblers out there, as it's a sampler of sorts, featuring a couple tracks from each of the Fastest records, but we have to say, we've sold a bunch so far, and most to folks WHO ALREADY OWN ALL THE RECORDS!! Such is the power of Fastest. If by now, you're wondering what the heck we're on about, and haven't already checked out our Record Of The Week review for Theme, or or review of Into The Night, well, let us tell you all about the many joys of Fastest. This time it starts with the wonderfully redundant album title, MAGICMANCY, which yes, basically means 'magic magic', and this is indeed some magical musical magic. This one man bedroom band from the East Bay, seemingly armed with a guitar synth and a drum machine, creates some of the strangest music we've ever heard, it sometimes gets filed in the metal section, due in part to the very metal looking Fastest logo, but also because the vocals are a mysterious sort of black metal rasp, but the music is about as far from metal as it could get, Allan thinks it sounds like hip hop (no one else does), imagine warped synth melodies, sputtering stumbling rhythms, slipping from dark ominous creep, to sweetly melodic Legend Of Zelda style video game music, and back again, it's twisted, baffling and totally brilliant.
Check out opener "Blame", with it's wild free jazz blackened psych squall opening salvo which quickly gives way to some fuzzy synthy drift, the vocals here definitely almost rapped, the song constantly peppered with reprises of that opening squall, not to mention jagged shifts, from part to part, the sound buzzy and fuzzy, the vocals sounding very Lou Reed-ish here for sure. Then there's "Legend" with its pounded synth organ churn, it's mechanical drumming, dirgey and doomy, a little bit proggy, the grunted vocals all tangled up with the awesomely atonal synth buzz. "Foresee" offers up our favorite side of Fastest, wildly sputtery almost Indian sounding rhythms, haunting minor key melodies, the opening is dark and mysterious, but then it suddenly shifts into a fuzzy groove, again, constantly twisting and shifting, the sounds all over the place, often the song structured like changing channels, abrupt and off kilter. "Jetsound II" is one of our favorites, starting with the simulated rumble of jet sounds before slipping into a dreamy lilting little ditty that sounds like the final screen from some 8-bit video game, transformed into a sort of eighties soft rock ballad. We could go on, but by now you probably know if this is your cup of tea. For more about Fastest, and to feed what we can only imagine will blossom into a full blown obsession like it has in the rest of us, go check out the reviews of Theme and Into The Night elsewhere on the site. And for those who have resisted up until now, this might be the perfect way to ease your way in.
Brilliant and baffling. If you want all six of the other records too, just ask...
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.
It's been a boom in outsider music these last few weeks at AQ, first it was the random rediscovery of Doug Hream Blunt's Gentle Persuasion, a fantastic and fantastically strange disc of breezy lo-fi outsider funk, that was dropped off by the man himself and required quite a bit of reconnoitering to track him down to get more (a continuing saga). And now there's this. A mysterious disc by a one man band known simply as Fastest, a cd-r that just showed up here one day, and none of us can remember how or when. In the mail? Dropped off? Spontaneous generation? It was just here one day, and we were mesmerized from the second we laid eyes on it. The cover is a huge blue owl against a blue background. The band name Fastest is written in big green letters, in a sort of cartoonish metal font, and superimposed right on the cover is a big barcode. The whole thing printed out on a home laser printer. The tray card folds all the way up around the side so there's an extra panel visible through the clear tray that boldly proclaims: "digital audio compact disc - state of the art phonorecord." The tray card features the ASCAP logo (ASCAP is the company that determines musician royalties) no less than three times, the logo is superimposed again on the back in a little white square, and at the top, blue text explains that the record was "Produced by Daemaeen Hephaestus Chastical". We were almost afraid to throw it on, because we were convinced that there was no way the music could live up to the cryptic promise of the packaging. We were wrong.
The title track starts things off, and immediately you know this is like nothing you've ever heard... a flurry of lo-fi distorted programmed beats, that sound like they could have been lifted straight off that Vijaya Anand Dance Raja Dance Bollywood compilation on Luaka Bop from years back, but any resemblance to Bollywood ends there, as some strange atonal midi synth guitars swoop in, along with some woozy warbly bass, the strangely syncopated programmed beats sputtering wildly in the background, the song slipping into a moody drift, the vocals a strange ominously hushed whisper, that even remind us a bit of the slowed down mush mouthed rapping of Sensational, eventually there's a sort of chorus, the midi guitars buzzing, while a strange synth unfurls a twisted melody, and then there's the most brilliantly baffling break, a stop/start flurry of stuttering beats, and some more warped woozy melodies, eventually joined by a sort of midi guitar least, atonal and detuned, the whole thing sounding like it's melting before your ears, before finally returning to the 'chorus'. Holy shit. What just happened? What is this? How had we not heard this before? Very reminiscent in fact of those absurd midi guitar releases we raved about on lists past, all of them work of a single man, released under different names: Shevelreq, Xynfonica, Gluttony, Thursar. If you were as into those as we were, stop reading and buy this now. Everyone else, read on, and sink deeper into the glorious musical madness that is Fastest...
The first song is so perfect, and perfectly demented, we dared not go on. We just kept listening to that one song over and over and over. Heck we wanted it to be OUR theme song. But eventually we knew we had to go on, and somehow, Fastest managed to confuse us again. And again.
After some simulated jet engine sounds, "Jet Sound II" begins, but it's super melodic and all 8 bit sounding, and reminds us of music from The Legend Of Zelda, but those vocals, dark and ominous, weirdly offset the cheerful melodies and loping programmed rhythms. "Televise" begins with sample bells, and immediately returns us to The Legend Of Zelda, until the vocals come in, locked in tight with the main melody, making for some strange electronic lo-fi midi-pop mystery.
"While You're Here" might be our other favorite (if we were forced to pick), with it's haunting melody, over minor key distorted finger picked guitar, tinkling chimes, very cinematic, again like some dramatic moment in a video game, but definitely dark and haunting, but of course, the song slips right back into some Zelda-y minimal 8 bit balladry, replete with those slightly ominous gruff vocals.
"Million Lies" begins with some dramatic syncopated start/stop dynamics, before slipping into some pulsing electronic groove, but this time, the vocals are super distorted, and even more creepy, and the drums erupt into little flurries of rhythmic tangle.
And so it goes, the sound drifting from Bollywood flecked 8 bit video game soundtrack songsmithery, to eighties style midi driven synthwave, and some hard to describe stops in between, culminating in the final three tracks, maybe the darkest and heaviest of the bunch.
"Seasons Change" is all distorted bass, stereo panned so the buzz flits from ear to ear, the drums spastic and skittery, the vocals as grim and ominous as at any point, the melodies creepy and minor key, which leads right into "Alter Fate" all swirling synths and stuttery almost IDM sounding beats, the whole thing blurry and smeary, before slipping back into the dirgey synthy creep of the previous track, a sort of second movement, laced with more strange disembodied high end melodies over the tumbling drum fills and more gruff whispery vox, finally culminating in "The Wind", which begins with appropriately enough, swirling wind, distorted acoustic guitar, a gauzy patina of lo-fi buzz, before finally launching into a tense stretch of buzzing swirling electronic weirdness, the various chunks of low end fuzz and warped melodies, adding some serious pathos, growing ever more distorted and finally finishing in a blaze of super distorted programmed beats, chaotic and noisy and psychedelic, before winding down with more acoustic guitar.
Absolutely baffling and disturbing brilliantly, total genius outsider mystery music, this is the sort of thing groups like Gary War and Ariel Pink are striving for, but just can't ever quite reach. Fantastically idiosyncratic, highly personal, and completely warped and cracked and demented and literally unlike anything you've heard. It's not hard to imagine this finding its way onto one of those incredible strange music comps or one of those Songs In The Key Of Z collection, it's certainly divisive, it's definitely too much for some folks, so be warned, this is strange strange stuff. But folks around here have become a bit obsessed, and can't seem to get enough. Which is good, cuz there are at least THREE other cd-r's. If you decide you need those too, just ask...
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
In Allan and Andee's quest to keep everyone up on some of the choice metal they may have missed out on (Kix anyone?), we bring you Fastway. Featuring guitarist Fast Eddie Clark from Motorhead and the Robert Plant like wail of David King (who later found success in the popular Pogues-ish band Flogging Molly, believe it or not!), Fastway struck a perfect balance between '80s hard rock/ pop and heavy '70s Sabbathy dirge. Some might remember their 'big' hit, "Say What You Will". Catchy and groovy and heavy! Also, the song "We Become One" contains the best riff, EVER, Andee insists. Allan, of course, scoffs - well, he loves the riff, but scoffs at Andee's hyperbole. Both agree, though, that this album rules!
Last list we recommended an album of ethnic-improv jamming recorded in Morocco, circa 1991, by eccentric Canadian avant-garde instrumental trio FAT. That was one of two previously unreleased (and very different!) FAT albums from the early '90s that only just saw the light of day, and this is the other one - which, getting even more eccentric & avant-garde, doesn't actually even feature a single note of music played by anyone in FAT. Instead, it's an illicit, unauthorized 'remix' of a 1990 album by a then-popular Czech heavy metal band called Citron, the 24 track masters of which FAT somehow got their hands on while on a sojourn in Prague, and proceeded to completely fuck with, to the point where it sounds pulled apart and twisted inside out, Citron's cheesy metal processed into a very strange, unrecognizable soundscape, full of histrionic vocals soaring into echoing void-space, backing synth fills morphed into symphonic ambience, and stripped-down drums juxtaposed with random-seeming guitar licks. It's like the album itself took some very bad drug, with various elements oddly emphasized and effected, stuff sped up or slowed down, making for a delirious, utterly WTF? mix that's both creepy ('cause it's so insane-sounding) and amusing for the same reason, reminding us a little bit at times of what those 'shreds' videos on YouTube sound like, if you know what we're talking about. Certainly unique, and certainly weird.
We remember FAT from the late '80s, early '90s, a noisy experimental improv-rock trio from Canada (by way of Prague, for a while there) who palled around with the likes of Borbetomagus and Elliott Sharp, their music often difficult, but interesting and unique. Now, suddenly, FAT are back, or rather, a couple previously unreleased (and very unusual) recordings from their heyday have just appeared on cd - one that's an illicit, extreme "remix" of a 1990 album by a Czech heavy metal band (!) called Citron, and another, this one we're listing now, that FAT recorded in Morocco in 1991, collaborating seamlessly with a number of local Berber musicians that FAT befriended, and had already spent much time jamming with on visits over several previous years. It's full of squeaky, endless trance-like grooves, joyous voices, traditional folk melodies, dense percussive rhythms, and some bits of damaged Derek Bailey sounding guitar - quite an ethnic/improv fusion for fans of Sun City Girls, The Ex, and lots of the North African guitar music you'll find on Sublime Frequencies. Pretty phenomenal, and probably now FAT's most accessible album as well as most exotic.
You need this record just for the single 'We Thuggin', maybe one of the best singles of the year, a wickedly catchy track of bouncing, party gangsta hip hop, with an insanely catchy R. Kelly chorus (and lucky you, there are two versions; the remix
Supposedly, past members of long time aQ faves Deerhoof call Fat Worm Of Error home these days, and while you'll be hard pressed to hear any of the sweet poppiness or twisted hookiness that makes Deerhoof so near and dear, you will find magnified and even more twisted versions of everything else, the most damaged and demented parts of the noisier more abstract Deerhoof, here writ large, in huge swaths of confusional whatthefuck lurch and stumble, looped stutter and glitched out ambience, deconstructed antipop and damaged avant noiserock, with most of the rock removed. Each track is a slow building, sprawling sonic ooze, of gnarled strangled atonal guitars, bizarre vocals that swing wildly from murky mumbles to frenzied yelps, stumbling chaotic percussion, squiggly electronics, and clouds of malfunctioning electronics, streaks of skittery drum machine bleep and bloop, buried samples, loads of hiss and hum and whir and rumble and skree, held together by long stretches of mysterious ambience, flecked with chimes and bells, little rhythmic clicks, truncated barely there melodies, warm whirling layered textures, the tracks do occasionally coalesce into almost songs, and when they do, it sort of sounds like a field recording of OOIOO, OvO and Rubber O Cement engaged in some serious sonic warfare, but more often, the record just sort of swirls and drifts and lumbers, occasionally jaggedly, but just as often weirdly soothingly, sounding like Avarus or No Neck Blues Band bad-tripping though some Sid And Marty Kroft style psychedelic noise forest. Weird!
Sometimes some good old fashioned 'rock math' is the best way to start a review... Imagine Rhode Island spazz-rock duo Lightning Bolt, via Japanese hyper-prog heavies Ruins, mix in a little Hella, maybe some Crom-Tech and some Flying Luttenbachers, and then filter it all through the cartoon music of Carl Stalling, but don't stop there, this drums/keyboard duo also lace their sprawling drum-synth duels with stretches of gorgeously creepy Carpenter-ish synth soundtrackery, and bizarre samples, sometimes locking into churning sprawls of krautish hypno-rock, and other times exploding into shards of what almost sounds like Venetian Snares style drill & bass. Thankfully, there's more to Fat32 than pointless ADD mathiness, with the songs displaying a surprising knack for melody and groove, and cleverly hiding proper songs amidst all the genre stutter and controlled chaos. That said, this is still the sort of head spinning, ultra acrobatic musicianship that makes Fat32 sound right at home on Web Of Mimicry, alongside outfits like Secret Chiefs 3, Estradasphere and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, although sonically these guys do tend more toward the metal/punk side of the spectrum. Just check out the sample below for "Hard Drive", which might be the best of the bunch, a dizzying, super hypnotic blast of hyper rhythmic metallic pound, the Lightning Bolt vibe in full effect, but the keyboard gives Fat32 a much more expansive sonic palette, letting the keys somehow supply both the buzzing synth riffage, as well as blasts of 8-bit video game squiggles, all sort of effects and constantly morphing tangled melodies, the sound shifting frenetically from looped metallic mesmer to pounding chugging heaviness and back again. Then there's the epic 17 minute closer, which displays the group's Naked City like mastery of genre hopping, and the same sort of desire to cram it all into one song, and they pull it off, with most of the track pounding mathily, but they pepper it with squalls of psychedelic shimmer, bloopy video game goofiness, Pantera vocal samples (!), lumbering downtuned doominess, cheesy organ grinding polka, wide open stretches of abstract free noise drift, droned out textures and layers, super angular math-punk and plenty more. Fans of any or all of the above mentioned bands will dig for sure...
"The definitive and official DJ mix-cd by Fatboy Slim, packed with 19 slammin', hands-in-the-air party anthems..." says the sticker affixed to this documentation of the last night of the famous Big Beat Boutique club. Good for dancing, but armchair listeners' interest will dwindle quickly. A bit antiseptic and predictable. In fact, if it's party music you want, the locally-produced Future Primitive discs, especially Z-Trip and Radar's live set, have much more integrity, wit and originality. But each to her own!
One of two new tape releases from Root Strata this week, this one from the cryptically monikered Father, who we know absolutely nothing about, but whose sound will no doubt hit the spot for fans of other recent Root Strata cassette jams from Arrow Kleeman, Ekin Fil, Tom Carter and Ben Vida.
Return Of The Father is a hushed blurred shimmer of sounds, a collage of what sounds like tangled melodies, finger picked guitars, deep resonant drones, all smeared into hazy, gauzy, shapeless atmospheres, lush layered clouds of disembodied melody drifting through grey skies, a muted murky bleary eared churn one second, a soft cacophony of chimes and tinkling melodies the next, occasional tiny avalanches of percussion woven into dreamily clattery drift, but the sounds seeming to all slowly gravitate toward a gauzy pop ambient blur, channeling Tim Hecker, Belong, Mountains, Klimek and other similarly minded sonic obfuscationists. So nice.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Everything about Father Beard is far away, which makes sense since it's the project of former Mirza members Brian Lucas and Mark Williams and they live far away -- from us and from each other. Brian lives in Thailand and Mark lives in Spain, but somehow, it seems like they managed to meet in an air cave high above their two countries and record an album of narcotic, whisper-quiet songs. Plodding bass keeps the music from drifting aimlessly in the ether, while street-sound field recordings lend a Sublime Frequency sense of mystery and foreignness. Imagine Spacemen 3 buzzing out of a broken radio in an un-airconditioned cab on a street crowded with tuk-tuks and bovine - but instead of being sweaty, dusty and stressed out, you're high on delay pedals, drifting down the Mekong and off the edge of the earth. Recommended listening for humid afternoons and early morning opium dens.
This has actually been out for a while, and we've been meaning to review it, 'cause Father Befouled are a) pretty rad, and b) feature members of some other bands we know y'all like. Both dudes from doom-death duo Encoffination (Ghoat and Elektrokutioner) are in Father Befouled - with, as you know, Elektrokutioner also being integral to the recently reviewed likes of Decrepitaph and Wooden Stake, etc. Also, Chad Davis of Hour Of 13 and US Christmas, used to play drums in Father Befouled before Elektrokutioner joined (and after, sadly, the previous drummer committed suicide).
If you're into elegantly filthy, old skool, downtempo death metal, you're probably already aware of Father Befouled. This is their 2nd full-length but they've done lots of splits and eps as well, and have made a name for themselves in the retro-death underground, worshiping such '90s gods as Incantation and, well, mostly Incantation. And that's ok with us 'cause we loved the slowed-down death metal sound of Incantation back in the day. This also reminds us of a slower, sludgier Morbid Angel, and not just 'cause of the album's title. The vertigo-inducing, feedback drenched lurchery of these songs, laced with sick, sea-sawing guitar licks, is the main reason those acts come to mind. It's got that dismal, blasphemous, ancient atmosphere all right. An onslaught of distortion and battery and guttural vokills that sounds like the smashing of holy idols, with guitars chunking and scraping as if they're being used to dig up and desecrate graves, that sort of thing. Seriously pummeling some of the time, but then also, alternately, slowly grinding through ultra-doomic interludes (like the middle part of "Christless Mass" for instance). Nice. Or not so nice. But you know what we mean. Recommended to Incantation and Encoffination and most other "-tion" fans for sure!
Yet another Fleet Foxes offshoot whose sound doesn't fall that far from the FF tree. And we're not complaining. It took us a while to decide that we did indeed love the Fleet Foxes, but once we did, we couldn't get enough, which makes this proliferation of sort-of-sound-alikes good news for folks like us who love THAT sound and want more. But like the Poor Moon record we reviewed recently, Father John Misty, the work of former FF drummer Joshua Tillman, who seems to effortlessly capture the same sort of timeless sounding folk pop as the FF mothership. But where Fleet Foxes tended more toward traditional folk sounds, Father John Misty is definitely on the pop side of the spectrum, the arrangements lush and expansive, strings and percussion, piano and all manner of studio filigree, the songs rife with rich layered drones, lush old fashioned production, and Tillman's voice is fantastic, spending much of its time in the upper registers, sounding not unlike Roy Orbison at times, the music appropriately orchestral, and then there are the lyrics, which pop out once in a while, especially when Tillman is singing something about punching himself in the face, or something about Jesus Christ, but delivered in that gorgeous velvety croon, over some lush dreamy twang flecked pop, it's hard not to love. Lots of dreamy ooooh's and aaaah's, cool crunchy guitars, big bombastic drumming (just check out "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings", which might be our favorite track), wheezing organs, groovy electric pianos, programmed beats here and there, slippery slide guitar, the songs all over the map, stripped down folk, fuzzy almost indie pop, dark country, lush chamber pop, sixties psychedelic rock, and more often than not, some mix of them all.
Super cool eye popping psychedelic cover art too!
Acid Mothers Temple. Makoto Kawabata. Bearded gurus shooting energy beams from their eyes. Drifting, droning, eerie psych-scapes. Enough? Naked Japanese hippy women. Can I stop there? I think you've already come in and bought this cd. It's a compact disc reissue of the out of print Father Moo LP from a few years back, perhaps you remember it, or at least the Father Yod-inspired cover pic. I'm sure it goes for $$$$ on eBay now based on the sleeve alone. Anyway, the Acid Mothers Temple fanatics at UK label Swordfish have brought it back, now as a handy cd, for those that missed getting the vinyl when it was available (or who collect all configurations -- actually, this was once a limited edition cd-r, before it was even an LP, so you've gotta look for that too if you don't have it, good luck!). As the many, many Acid Mothers Temple projects and off-shoots go, this one is primo stuff. Lovely female vocal moans (courtesy of Cotton Casino, presumably), electronic drones, keyboard melodies, some sparse, far-off percussion, all very pretty and mysterious, blissful, but kinda dark. No wild Makoto guitar action here, just three tracks (the longest, a half-hour) of otherworldly, almost religious trance-muzz. And that's just fine. We too bow before Father Moo.
We get sent a ton of stuff to check out. And it's awesome, truly, So much amazing music to discover, but at the same time it's so overwhelming. But every once in a while a record pops up that makes it all worth while. Such is the case with this disc from these Italian weirdos Father Murphy. What makes it even cooler is that this record, and this band, are SO hard to describe.
It's a bit like folk, a little bit like post punk math rock, a little avant noise, but stripped way down into something skeletal, they definitely sound a little bit like one of the new breed of freak folk psych folk cd-r outfits, but at the same time, they sound like NOTHING you've ever heard. Detuned guitar plod, spaced out rhythmic thump, lots of deep shimmery ambience and FX drenched drifts, wavery falsetto crooning, warbly organs, and the occasional bursts of feral yowling, wow. Unhinged, fractured, freaky, passionate, super intense and awesome.
In discussing Father Murphy, other reviewers have mentioned Robert Wyatt, This Heat, Samla Mamas Manna, we also hear plenty of Marc Ribot in the guitars, all angular and off kilter, there's also some mysterious female vocals that surface here and there, field recordings, crickets, birds, all beneath weepy mournful Morricone-ish twang, a sound both woozy and ominous, dreamy and dense, a glorious deathlike dirge, part Dirty Three, part fluttery forest folk, a little wheezy organ dirge pop, some slooooooowed down Blonde Redhead, like we said this is super hard to describe. but what we do know is we love it. And you will do, if your tastes run toward the dark, the dolorous, the mysterious, the haunting, the dirgey and the deathlike.
Incredible packaging. The cd housed in a die cut multi layered fold over sleeve, that housed in a thick outer vellum jacket so the images on the inner sleeve are just visible through the blurred finish of the outer sleeve.
VERY LIMITED!
The return of these aQ beloved Italian sonic oddballs, and it seems they just continue to get more and more odd with every release. After their first record showed up mysteriously at aQ a few years back, we became pretty obsessed, their sound a twisted DIY punk rock / dronefolk / math rock weirdness, that creeped and slithered more than it rocked (although it occasionally did that too), but whatever FM were doing, it always seemed strangely rickety, and on the verge of collapse, haunting dirges, weirdly twisted industrial plods, the guitars gnarled and angular, the rhythms junkyard crunch and clatter, the melodies wheezing and woozy, the vocals hazy and druggy and lost in the mix, and if anything, this new one seems to be the culmination of that twisted sound, simultaneously pushing it even further, but also honing it into something impossibly tight, while still appearing shambling and darkly chaotic. The opening track almost sounds like some lost seventies folk outfit filtered through some more modern freakfolk combo, the vocals a lovely mellifluous croon, over tangled detuned melodies, wheezing chordal whirs, little squalls of angular crunch, all stretched out and blurred into some sort of hazy psychedelic sonic ritual, it's not hard to imagine these guys cover Comus, or even this as some sort of seance with the group channeling Comus' frenzied demonic acid folk, but here transformed into something a bit darker and woozier. The second track employs the same palette, and uses it to create a Swans like lumber, all super distorted crumbling crunch, and keening high end melody, so gorgeously creepy and darkly ominous, harrowing and haunting in equal measure, way too short at 2+ minutes, we definitely found ourselves wanting it to never end. But then the next track explodes with some strange pulsating processed riffing, sounding almost metallic, even a little black metal, but smeared and warbly, transforming into something more buzzing and almost jazzy, maybe like a more frenzied Necks, but over the top, the group layer strident boy / girl vocals, the result fierce and feral, but pulsing, pulsating and totally mesmerizing.
Normally, this is where we'd say something like, "and so it goes", or "the rest of the record plays out similarly", but it just doesn't. After a brief bit of doom flecked witchy dirge-folk, the band offer up what might be our favorite track, a dark intense industrial epic, all soaring strings, and martial percussion, with crooned male vox, yowled female vox, it almost sounds like some modern opera composed by Der Blutharsch or Death In June, which halfway through collapses into a glorious sprawl of swirling, shimmering, buzzing layered dronemusic, that again ends way too soon. The band touch on dark doom-ed balladry, twisted, bizarrely produced circus-y post industrial stomp, blackened dronescaping, and some strange gnarled detuned dream pop before it's over, proving impossibly adept at pretty much every bizarre thing they try, and at combining any seemingly incompatible sounds they fancy. So great, and once again, we find ourselves wondering how Father Murphy continue to fly so far beneath the radar. We imagine they won't remain there for long...
Croce is the newest collection of distorted, dark psychedelic, industrial cabaret from this Italian boy/girl duo, who, after a series of ever darkening releases, have arrived at this, a concept record about the cross, and yeah, it's THAT cross (Croce in Italian), with one side of the record sonically representing the suffering and sacrifice, the flipside reflecting what comes after, the end of said suffering, resurrection, or perhaps oblivion.
The sounds are shadowy, the atmospheres muddy and murky, from which spring unexpected blurts of impossibly catchy noise pop, approaching at times something almost operatic, like some twisted psychedelic musical detailing the trials and tribulation of the crucifixion, with male and female vox intertwined over distorted blasts of guitar crunch, anchored by stuttering homebuilt percussion, a sound both textural and nuanced, but also noisy and chaotic, that chaos carefully sculpted into jagged shards of fragmented pop, and that pop oven into a dramatic, almost theatrical songsuite.
At points, the songs can seem to gradually lose cohesion, the lumbering and loping angular grooves (d)evolving into wild psychedelic squalls, or alternately stripped down to just the skeletal essence of the song, while the duo proceed to add layer upon layer, rhythm upon rhythm, working their way up to another blast of glorious cacophony. That percussion is a driving force throughout, whether it's swirling billows or rubberband twang and big booted thump, or sinewy pulses, wound up into tense, and intense low slung swaggers, all beneath cascades of wild junkyard crumble and soaring devotional vox, sung/spoken intonations over bell-like clang and the almost tuned sounding metallic sproings of reverberating springs.
The first side finishes up with "In Solitude", an appropriately dour slab of murky miserablism that sounds like a slow sonic death, the hazy, nocturnal sound gradually fading, retreating further into the shadows, loping, lumbering creeps, soft chordal swirls beneath strange metallic rhythms, too slow to be motorik, but a similarly hypnotic vibe, albeit more sort of druggy and slo-mo, a haunting moody dirge that dissolves into that ineffable space that exists between the record's second side, the netherworld, the afterlife, Purgatory even, an endless expanse of nothingness, from which few return. But Father Murphy erupt from this Stygian blackness, with the second half of Croce, meant to be the light, to the A side's dark, and yet the opener is still somehow strangely doomy, a field of metallic shimmer, and more junkyard percussion, strung together into a spare framework, over which dramatic male vocals soar, the female vocals responding like some demonic Greek chorus, but true to the theme, the vibe grows strangely warm, an otherworldly glow, nearly sundappled in places, you can almost hear the rays of light breaking through the grey cloud filled skies.
But really, these two have a strange idea of 'light', with "All The People Yelling Fire" seemingly still cloaked in shadow, a lumbering cacophony of rhythmic crashes and metallic pounds, not to mention some elephant like bleats, moaning horns suspended in a field of distant drones, very ominous and sinister, but before you know it, it's right back to the clatter and clang, leading directly into the penultimate "We Walk By Faith", a harrowing hymn, both droney and almost liturgical, with throat singing like vocalizations, wound around long, softly undulating tones, modern minimalism by way of some ancient ritual, the music evoking flickering firelight, dancing shadows, primitive worship to the cosmos, driven by muted thumps and buried beats, another one of those rickety rhythms surfacing from beneath the murk, a swampy, apocalyptic psychedelia, melted down into a viscous sonic crawl.
The finale, "They Won't Hurt You", is all majestic pipe organ, a stirring and stately court music, lush and lovely and epic, the sound of rebirth, redemptive and ultimately restorative, a return from the beyond, arisen from the grave, ascended into the heavens, the sounds drifting upwards, beyond the galaxy, the universe, into the unknowable infinity.
A while back we went kind of nuts for these Italians, selling tons of their And He Told Us album. We've been hankering for more, and here we do indeed have more, sadly, we managed to get just TEN copies of this, a super limited live release, limited in fact to a mere 50 copies. Needless to say, this is already sold out at the label and out of print. But we figured folks who dug the full length might want to grab one of these, or folks who somehow missed out completely, might find this inexpensive live set a good introduction. Either way, we only have 10 copies, so act fast.
They're pro silver cassettes, and they're housed in cool hand stamped recycled sleeves.
So what's the deal with Father Murphy, let's revisit out review of And He Told us, and our description of FM's sound:
It's a bit like folk, a little bit like post punk math rock, a little avant noise, but stripped way down into something skeletal, they definitely sound a little bit like one of the new breed of freak folk psych folk cd-r outfits, but at the same time, they sound like NOTHING you've ever heard. Detuned guitar plod, spaced out rhythmic thump, lots of deep shimmery ambience and FX drenched drifts, wavery falsetto crooning, warbly organs, and the occasional bursts of feral yowling, wow. Unhinged, fractured, freaky, passionate, super intense and awesome.
Comparisons have been made to Robert Wyatt, This Heat, Samla Mamas Manna, we also hear plenty of Marc Ribot in the guitars, all angular and off kilter, there's also some mysterious female vocals, all beneath weepy mournful Morricone-ish twang, a sound both woozy and ominous, dreamy and dense, a glorious deathlike dirge, part Dirty Three, part fluttery forest folk, a little wheezy organ dirge pop, some slooooooowed down Blonde Redhead, like we said this is super hard to describe, but what we do know is we love it.
Latest mysterious missive from these Italian post punk noise rock drone folk oddballs, whom we initially discovered via a strange unmarked package that just showed up in the mail one day. We like to think it was preordained, cuz these guys seem like they belong in aQuarius. As the above descriptor again demonstrates, these guys are definitely hard to pin down, their sound constantly mutating, not just from record to record, but from song to song. A gloriously dark and haunting world of sound, that here takes the form of a brooding sort of dirgery, reverbed guitars, simple plodding percussion, wheezing organs, drawled down-in-the-mix vox, occasional bursts of strange effects, a mesmerizing bit of dronerock, equal parts post and kraut, fans of Circle will dig too, it's that sort of minimal meditative cyclical hypnorock, but here dialed way down, to something more brooding and haunting.
The whole record is equally compelling, shimmering guitars wreathed in hissy static, tense stretched out drones, pulsing percussion, slow building churns drenched in sonic grit, abstract vocals, all very dramatic and intense, brooding and darkly ominous, a swampy slithery gloom, some sort of apocalyptic slowcore balladry, like a way more minimal and abstract Woven Hand, occasionally peppered with creepy Comus like acid folk vocals, but for the most part stripped down and murky and gorgeously malevolent.
And they finish off with Leonard Cohen's "There Is A War", which the group easily transform into their own, with sung/spoken male/female vocals over looped sounding fuzzy melodies and propulsive muted rhythms, the whole track at once ominously Teutonic, but also strangely melodic and mesmerizing. Which pretty much describes this whole record. Such a weird and amazing band, such a weird and amazing record. Definitely recommended for anyone into dark and droney, murky and mysterious, dense and dreamy, which we'd guess is a whole heck of a lot of you!
We raved about the most recent record from these Italian weirdos, a confusional mix of droned out folk, abstract psychedelia, math rock, punk rock, and who knows what else, but that's precisely why we dig them so much. We initially thought this was a new single, but in fact, it's part of a remix campaign for that record, "Anyway, Your Children Will Deny It", with various tracks being reworked and reimagined by friends of the band.
The A side here finds Indian Jewelry transforming the FM original into a weird industrial abstract loopscape, a pulsing chordal bleat, over metallic shimmer and FX squiggles, which are soon joined by brass like moans, that begin to skip and glitch and skitter, the whole track becoming more and more rhythmic and hypnotic, all the while remaining murky and woozily psychedelic.
French composer and aQ pal Philippe Petit offers up his FM rework, a staticky field of glitchy pulsations, heavily panned, swinging druggily from speaker to speaker, before in swoop moaning processed cellos (?), but wrapped in a crumbing distortion, the sounds blurring and bleeding into each other before transforming into a drowsy dirge, laced with mysterious effects and random blurts of clatter and crunch. The sound suddenly warped and fractured, pitch shifted as if someone has their finger on the single and are altering the speed, the end result is a little bit dubby, and a whole lot creepy, and haunting, and weirdly lovely.
Pressed on bright yellow vinyl.
An mp3 cd - 30 hours!!!!
First time on cd (outside of the God and Hair box set, that is) for this, the 2nd album from the Ya Ho Wha collective... we of course strongly urge the purchase of that whole set, but if you want to get this one separately, now you can. And it does include new liner notes from "family" members written for this reissue. Contraction dates from 1974 (like most of the Yod LPs, including their ultimate masterpieces Penetration and I'm Gonna Take You Home), and of course originals are hopelessly rare.
So...does groovy loungey hippy jams, doing the choo-choo train build up, but never really totally freaking out, with flutes and organ and guitar, and most significantly the wacked-out weird wisdom of Father Yod rappin' o'er top, sound good to you? Half-spoken, half sung, kinda drunken sounding. Here's a transcript of a portion of one of his raps here, to give you a bit of the flavor: "Let it all out and take it all back. But take it all back with consciousness. Desire, man. Desire's a trick. That's the trick. That'll bring old Saint Nick. Here he comes, see him there. All those goodies on his back. And he ain't got no prayer. He just wants to give to you, energy. The greatest gift of all, you'll soon see. That's it. Give it with a beat. Come on. Give it..." Hmm. The Father Yod-Santa Claus connection made explicit by the man himself!
One 24 minute, 41 second track. But you know what, that's quite a dose...
Damn, the Numero Group does it again! At this point we don't need to go on about what an amazing and trusted label NG is. As their Eccentric Soul, Cult Cargo, and Wayfaring Stranger series continue to offer up so much amazing music that might otherwise have gone unheard.
Gathering dust in some garage for the last three decades due to the worst side of the music industry, this deep hitting, politically charged soul record finally gets to see the light of day. Father's Children were from the nations capitol, and took the influence of groups like the Stylistics, the Delfonics and the Dramatics and doused those sounds with fiery social consciousness and a slow burning psychedelic undertone. Like early Earth Wind & Fire, crossed with Curtis Mayfield's less funk and more full on deep soul moments. It's a record that really encompasses the most lasting and satisfying sides of '70s soul. The kind of record you can imagine inspiring folks like Erykah Badu, The Roots, Common, and Lauryn Hill.
As always packed with endless love and care featuring amazing photos and the story of the group's history.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Very nice tweaked electronica with lots of processed strings (which are not cheesy) that end up sounding like Matmos or something from Skam.
Elves, dwarves, birdies, deer, bunnies and every other woodland creature gather 'round when Faun Fables (aka Dawn McCarthy with assistance from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's Nils Frykdahl) sings her pagan-infused songs. And if you've been digging the recent burgeoning neo-folk movement (Jolie Holland, Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, Vetiver to name a few), you'd do well to follow their lead. You might recall that we reviewed her Family Album cd earlier this year, and Drag City has kindly reissued two of her previous albums -- this one which was her (originally self-released) debut and her second, Mother Twilight. Overall her voice is a surprising meeting point of unlikely bedfellows Cat Power's Chan Marshall, Grace Slick and Beth Orton. Early Song even closes with a little bit of lonesome yodelling. Some folks may find her unrestrained vocal style a bit challenging (or trying) at times, but those who are into it will surely be very much so.
Enchanting! The mysterious Faun Fables is primarily the work of Ms Dawn McCarthy. On occasion however, she's joined by Mr. Nils Frykdahl of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. This is her third magical album of timeless, transportive music. Her songs truly seem spirited from another era. This earthy, dramatic Family Album is not unlike encountering a pagan festival or... the Wickerman film! With both solo and chorus performances of empassioned male and female vocals, as well as some lively flutes and strings.
