Local foul mouthed crazy party girls (and one boy) are here to kick out the jams at last. This is all about the 6th grade toilet talk but dirty only the way we grownups can be. Lo-fi and high pitched squealed vocals that will drive you nuts or delight you only the way good 'ol peurile fun can (depending on where you stand). Sonically a little like Bratmobile, but with this whole eighties party-rap angle that's pretty charming. Tough to call, fun and freaky or a total waste of fucking time. But if you like dirty, silly embarrassing songs about sex and hamburgers, this may just hit the spot.
MPEG Download: "Titties Bounce" [/audio/gravytraintitties.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Titties Bounce" [/audio/gravytraintitties.m3u]
Preteen sassy harlots comin' at you with sexy, foul JJ Fad-style lyrics, on top of fucked-up and ghetto sounding drum machine and keyboards. This dirty little threesome is from the Bay Area and are touring with Bratmobile.
Probably best known for scoring such television classics as Space: 1999, Captain Scarlet, Thunderbirds, and loads more, Barry Gray also had a career in advertising, applying his same quirky compositional style to whatever product needed his special attention be it tobacco, milk, banks, gin, spaghetti, washing powder, ice cream, shampoo, tea, you name it. And Gray's sound was pretty crazy, classic and classical one second, symphonic the next, poppy the next, but also experimental and far out, tape loops, electronics, effects, reverb, echo, a little Joe Meek, a little BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a dizzying barrage of sounds and themes, different jumbled genres, goofy, fun, silly, brilliant, and CRAZY catchy. Anyone into industrial music (as in commercial and advertising music) will go nuts for this stuff. Imagine a commercial for a washing machine with a soundtrack that sounds like it could be for Plan 9 From Outerspace, or a supermarket commercial that sounds like some sort of experimental electronica, or what sounds like a Perrey & Kingsley Moog workout, which is in fact an ad for something (or someone) called Poor Pablo, then imagine those interspersed with all manner of playful sonic silliness, super catchy miniature pop songs, insanely catchy jingles, many with Gray often taking up the mic and singing his little ditties himself. So good!
Another fantastic, and fantastically far out, collection from Trunk Records. Includes a massive booklet with tons of liner notes, including notes about Grey, his music, and most interestingly, blurbs on all the various products advertised in the various commercials!
Darin Gray presents his debut recording after years and years of working the Chicago noise-rock circuit (Dazzling Killmen, Brise Glace, You Fantastic, and Yona Kit, etc.). "St. Louis Shuffle" is a continuation away from those outfits of mutant hardcore muscularity towards improv noise splutter. Here, the central noise making means is through plugging and unplugging (guitars from amps, microphones from 4-tracks, etc.), resulting in an assortment of cracks, hums, scrapes, clicks, and pops disrupting a discordant din of gritty feedback. Unlike the electronica glitch aesthetic of Raster, Mego, Fennesz, etc. which purifies sounds, Gray's use of the glitch is a celebration of ugliness through dislocation.
The second collaborative effort from this guitar/bass duo. Loren Mazzacane Connors is of course known as a unique guitar improviser with a hauntingly beautiful style of "Venusian blues". Darin Gray you may know as the bassist from Chicago
Big is the fourth studio full length from Ms Macy. Heck, that title could very well fit any one of this slightly unhinged soul pop singer's albums. It features guest appearances by Natalie Cole, Fergie, Nas, Justin Timberlake and Will.i.am. Big, slick and groovy, would you expect anything less?!
San Francisco's unclassifiable (though don't worry we'll try) Grayceon are back with a limited edition lp for The Flenser label, after several full-lengths on Vendlus and Profound Lore. This vinyl-only release consists of two long tracks, one per side, "Pearl" (10:11) and "End Of Days" (17:21), both demanding, emotional epics of beauty and power. Immediately even those previously uninitiated into Grayceon's unique sound will get the idea - their chamber-prog-doom-post-rock-metal (there you go!) blenderizes gloomy lugubrious plod, operatic female vocals, classical cello, and nervous proggy chopsiness into a very moody, majestic, art-metal mixture. Uh, can you imagine a cross between Zs, Apocalyptica, and Hammers Of Misfortune? Besides the latter, some other Bay Area "metal" acts like Worm Ouroboros, Giant Squid, Ludicra (RIP) and Asunder come to mind as well, and not just 'cause Grayceon's singer/cellist Jackie Perez Gratz has also sawed the strings for most of 'em too.
Some might have a problem with the "thespianism" of some of this, and/or find the swinging betwixt extremes here - from the lovely atmospheric parts to the punked-out progmetal ones - a bit TOO extreme. But others will absolutely fall in love - or already have. No doubt Grayceon is someone's favorite band EVER. Maybe yours, and you just don't know it yet.
In tip-on jacket. Comes with download.
San Francisco's own Grayceon follow up their self-titled 2007 debut with This Grand Show, a moody and majestic work that seamlessly merges gothy cello (yes, cello) dirges with more metallic riffage, resulting in a highly textured album, further augmented by the cleanly sung female/male vocals that bring to mind a sort of British folk/doom metal hybrid. Think Amber Asylum (of which cellist Jackie Perez Gratz is also a member) meets a less overtly crushing ASVA, with a bit of Pentangle thrown in. The complex, multifaceted songs take you on a dreamlike journey full of serpentine guitar riffs, plodding drumbeats and gloomy atmosphere. All the while, the cello keeps things nice and mournful, and just when you've serenely slipped into Grayceon's beautiful world of despair, the band effortlessly shows their METAL pedigree with hyperspeed blastbeats and an almost black metal heaviness. The result is hypnotic, beautiful, and intense. Recommended.
Sounding just a bit like a weird cross between slo-mo doom bringers Asunder and tunics-and-tights folk metallers Falconer, San Francisco's Grayceon are an uncategorizable combo who rock the majestic medieval metal riffs in a sort of chamber-prog / post-rock context, with a big part of their sound deriving from the droning classical cello stylings of Jackie Perez Gratz (who indeed also saws the cello strings for Asunder, and also plays in Amber Asylum). Pummelling drums and sometimes thrashy guitar round out the trio's lineup, with both clean male and female vocals in the mix, though Grayceon's approach could work just as well instrumentally. The caress of their loud-soft, soft-loud dynamics should find this appealing to both indie/post rockers and, say, fans of Hammers Of Misfortune and the Fucking Champs. Imagine Rachel's on a date with Apocalyptica, perhaps. This self-titled debut consists of four songs in 45 minutes -- the last and longest track clocks in at an epic, elegant 20 minutes, and, like the rest of the album, provides stately and somber moodiness alongside headbangingly metallic moments... it's mournful, technical, and we think pretty cool!
The lowercase aesthetic is one that hasn't manifested all that often in recent years here at aQuarius, but we have been known to champion the likes of Bernhard Gunter and Steve Roden in years past. Andy Graydon is a New York based sound-artist who follows that particular minimalist aesthetic with his own highly conceptual precepts surrounding the three pieces in regards to negation of form and the construction of empty spaces. Graydon intentionally engineered the first piece at less than half the normal listening volume, through which the subtle gestures and manipulated field recordings tease in and out of existence. Electrical buzzes and flickering neon-tube hums flash around a rumbling urban din and strangely musical phrases that looks back to Robert Ashley's seminal piece Automatic Writing. Over the course of the three pieces, the overall volume steadily increases, through the subterranean low-end stasis of the middle track that blossoms into a radiant Haflerian blur of tightly woven tonal oscillations. Those slippery surfaces of placid yet eerie tones reprise at a lower octave on the 21 minute finale of Unterwegs with pneumatic hisses snaking through the composition. Really nice work found within, all of which is attuned to the rigorous minimalism of Jakob Kirkegaard, Richard Chartier, and Richard Garet, the latter of which released this on his always impressive Contour Editions. Limited to 150 copies!
Latest from Northwestern weirdo electronic label Fukdup, who most famously gave us the awesome grungecore 7" that featured Shitmat covering Nirvana and came packaged in a real flannel shirt! This new one is from Seattle based Graz, who describes his sound as "rapid-fire-amen-infused-mashcore federally certified to crush any party" or as a "glitched out high-speed rave rendition of radio's yesteryear", both pretty much nail it. The beats are all jungly, but not all hyperspeed drum and bass, more often sort of midtempo groovy and funky, and the samples, well, they're all radio hits, past and present Busta Rhymes, Avril Lavigne, Toni Basil, the Archies, Yello and tons more. Those samples sped up, chopped up, layered, twisted up, turned inside out, flipped backwards, slowed down, and strapped to wild unhinged off-kilter beats, rambunctious and chaotic and fun as fuck. Track pulse and throb and pound and bang, housey one second, jungly the next, dipping toes into happy hardcore, dancehall, ragga, rave, drum and bass, and whatever twisted hybrid of all of the above Graz can whip up.
Fun and funky, goofy and pretty much the perfect fractured and freaky and fucked up dance party record.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, packaged with candy bones in the cd spine, and a button!
The lovely Vancouver singer/songwriter Ida Nilsen came through town while on tour opening for The Waterboys. Why? Well, story has it that she covered one of their songs on her last album, and band leader Mike Scott caught pleasant wind of it. He also invited her to help out with the recording of their new album.
Anyhoo, Ms Ida kindly dropped off a batch of her new full length How They Fly, and it's terrific! She's buddies with many Canadian aQ faves too, particularly from the Mint Records stable of artists. Everything is warm and comforting about Great Aunt Ida's music -- her singing, the well-placed entrance of horns, a nicely recorded piano, some understated electric guitar. We can see why Mr. Scott among others have taken a shine to her music. While it's rooted in country folk, there's also glimmers of '70s West Coast soft rock and '90s indie girl pop. So nice, she just might become our new Canadian darling!
Killer doom from Spain. Candlemass meets Celtic Frost. Ultra true doom, heavy and sorrowful, huge guitars, great riffs and soaring emotional vocals. Good stuff.
From the same label that brought us two amazing records from Hotel Alexis�(aka Sidney Lindner who also played in Golden Hotel):�Goliath, I'm On Your Side and�The Shining Example Is Lying On The Floor, comes another captivating slab of dark moody twang.�
The Great Invisibles was recorded as part of�The Record Production Month, styled after the�National Novel Writing Month, the challenge being to write and record a full album in 30 days. The Great Invisibles was the entry from folk / free jazz guitarist and�professor of Surrealism in literature ,�Michael Deragon, and is a gorgeously dark and dreamy chunk of dark ambience and lilting abstract Appalachia.
Recorded on a 4 track, but surprisingly lush, these tracks are mini epics, rife with moaning minor key melancholia, strange distant rumbles and whirs, muted effects drifting in grey sonic skies, guitars that buzz and shimmer, ring out dreamily and unfurl mournful laments, the various tnagles of steel string strum, are strung within�murky drifting cinematic smeas of sound, distant drifting harmonics, often over soft wheezing whirs and swirling seas of soft tape hiss. A few songs have vocals and are dark gems, sounding a bit like Califone or Red Red Meat or even Hotel Alexis, sultry and slithery, brutally beautiful back porch ballads, lovely and utterly heartbreaking.�
Deragon would perform live in galleries, accompanying short films by local film makers, and this set includes a bonus dvd featuring a short film used as the visuals for the Great Invisibles first performance, from�filmmaker Michael Winters, a part-time truant officer. Truly striking, mostly black and white or sepia tone (a brief bit in color), scratchy film stock, old images of factories and children, flowers, old buildings, strange shadows, dolls and leaves, strange graphics of clocks, passing landscapes, haunting masks, the whole thing quite beautiful and mysterious, and really the prefect visual accompaniment to�Deragon mournful twangscapes.�
The packaging is amazing as well, every single one unique, handmade by Deragon, a collaged fold over sleeve, so dense and covered with clipping and bits of paper it's almost 3-D, old newspaper clippins, drawings, blueprints, various bits of writing in pencil and pen, hand numbered, with a stapled and typed insert, the two discs affixed to the two inside panels of the gatefold. So nice.�
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! When we run out we won't be able to get more.
With the teeny-tiny baroque logo on the back branding Great Lakes as a member of the Elephant 6 collective, The Great Lakes provide a smidgen of 60s psychedelia, an instantly forgettable pop hook or two, and the envy of wanting to be as good as Jeff Magnum (Neutral Milk Hotel), but not really coming close.
The Great Northwest combine hazily effected guitar textures, clean acoustic pick'n'strum, chiming toy box melodies, and sleepy head vocals into one lush, lullingly lovely listen. So inviting, you can't resist melting into these warm, drowsy songs. Each one is drenched with dreamy atmosphere, but never drifts too far from its central pop song structure. Grand and expansive. Whimsical and intimate with a gentle plaintiveness. We sense that the band draws ample inspiration from the Beatles and Pink Floyd as well as the unmistakably '70s west coast soft rock. Thus, they fits in splendidly alongside bands such as Radar Brothers, Sparklehorse or their labelmates Fredrik. Speaking of which, this was released on The Kora Records who treated us to the sounds of Fredrik and Stricken City a few months back. With such a wonderful recent one-two punch, we figured we'd better pay closer attention to this fine label who also put out the Aidan Baker Scalpel cd and a couple of Gregor Samsa albums a few years back. What a terrific track record so far! So yeah, we're backtrackin' a little bit, but figure even though this came out in 2008, it's still new to us and perhaps to you as well. Very recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
'80s punk-folk ala the Shimmy Disc canon, but from Columbus, Ohio. Come on, you remember: Great Plains were the ones who asked the eternal question "Why do punk rock boys go out with new wave girls?" And Great Plains guy Ron House went on to front The Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments. This double cd collection includes most of the songs from their Homestead and Shadowline releases in addition to a few some more hard-to-find songs. 'Bout time this stuff was reissued!
All it takes is about 30 seconds of the opening track, the awesomely titled "Temple Lurker", on this debut full length from Chicago psych rockers The Great Society Mind Destroyers, to realize these guys are serious psych freeks and are here to drag us into a drugged out sonic stupor of unparalleled proportions. Their initial squall of White Heaven like freak-out had us expecting a nonstop barrage of wild shred and drum chaos, but instead, the band settle into something much more trancey and hypnotic, thick undulating basslines, wah wah guitars, and dense busy drumming, all blurred into a thick cloud of propulsive psychedelic mesmer, the sort of motorik spaced out psych that should have fans of Wooden Shjips, Comets On Fire, and the like losing their shit. And while TGSMD share much with those groups, their sound is also much more poppy, definitely reminding us of Bardo Pond too in that sort hazy washed out dreaminess, but the band do have some freak-out in them, after lulling you into a dreamy drugged out state, they'll blast you with another blown out burst of psych-noise chaos, only to slip right back into the groove. And it's only the first track!
"Divinorum" offers up more of the same, but this time more rocking, reminding us of Loop, or a heavier Spacemen 3, the band locked tight, the drums a force to be reckoned with, somehow as psychedelic as the guitars, the groop getting lost in endless jams, we're talking White Hills, Monster Magnet, Hawkwind, Burnt Hills, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, 3 Leafs, The Heads, in a perfect world, these guys would be just as well know, as it is we can only imagine it's just a matter of time.
"Samsara Drag" is the shortest track here, and also maybe the poppiest, but even this brief blast of popsyke displays much of what makes these guys so good, soaring swirling guitars, shuffling propulsive drumming, those hazy dreamlike vox, the only difference is, the song never explodes into a heart of the sun psychedelic freak-out, but then, that's what the rest of the record is for. "Equation Of Time" is another short(ish) one, at nearly six minutes, and the band meld a woozy almost droney dirge, and a delicate washed out intro, to wicked gouts of wild distorted psych, evolving into a fierce blown out jam, that sounds like it could have gone on forever. "Now Riot!" finds the band doing what they do best, seemingly continuing on from the album opener, before slipping into "Mystic Warriors", which sounds remarkably like aQ faves Cave, which makes sense, as there is definitely a Cave / TGSMD connection, but where Cave take their sound, lock it in, and get lost in a sort of krautbliss, these guys add hazy vocals, wrap everything in dense wah guitar, let the sounds slowly ooze and spread, everything seeming the bleed and blur, the drums the main constant, pounding and anchoring and keeping everything else from just floating away.
And then finally, there's the nearly 10 minute closer "Higher Bodies", which starts out a slow abstract brooder, then gradually evolves into a field of distorted guitar skree, before finally blossoming into a gorgeous expanse of dreamy, gauzy psych pop, woozy and laid back, sun dappled and drug drenched, and while this might be THE JAM, drawn out and droney, the sort of set ender that depending on the crowd could extend into the wee hours, but the band gets to stretch out big time, the effects are everywhere, the vocals loose and dreamily chaotic, the song splintering midway through, into what sounds like a symphony of malfunctioning tape players, but the band plays on, that loping psychedelic groove, swaddled in a tripped out cloud of shimmer and glitch and that gloriously twisted tape manipulation, heady and hypnotic, and again, the sort of sound you never want to end.
Super sweet packaging, nice full color psychedelic matte jackets, with a printed lyric sheet / poster inside, and if you're lucky, mixed in with the black wax are a few copies on tripped out gold and red splatter wax! Don't ask for colored vinyl, it's random, just cross your fingers (or don't worry about it since black wax sounds better anyway!!)...
It's been ages since we've heard from Yeti, the killer bombastic space/psych/prog rock band from Texas. The Great Tyrant features two of the fomer Yetis and if anything is even more bombastic, but in a bit of a new direction. Yeti definitely had some musical drama going on, a hint of Goblin, but this new band takes it WAY farther, into something weirder, more gothic and WAY more dramatic, crooned vocals, lots of piano, bells and chimes, but wrapped around some off kilter metal, a sort of blackened circusy metal, blast beats over swirling dizzying melodies, the sound weirdly new wave-y and a bit punky, with synths and twisted textures, a very dense tripped out slab of doomy blackend space pop? Or something. It's hard to describe so that must be a good thing, definitely want to hear more from these guys. The swirled colored vinyl 7" comes with a cd-r featuring 3 extra tracks and A MAGMA COVER!!!
More from the Flying Nun archives and we couldn't be happier. This particular artifact comes courtesy of David and Hamish Kilgour, who formed the Great Unwashed right after the break up of legendary pop group the Clean, this record recorded in 1983, and fans of the Clean will of course hear much of that group in the Great Unwashed. In fact, folks who have flipped out over the recent Flying Nun collections Tally Ho and Time To Go, most likely dug the killer GU tracks included on both (both included here). The vibe of the Great Unwashed is a sort of woozy home brewed effects laced psychedelic jangle pop, heavy on the Syd Barrett vibe, the music loose and ramshackle, lush and layered and jangly one second, more woozy and minor key the next, the vox a sort of mumbled croon, occasionally slipping into a haunting falsetto, the music drifting easily into some haunting Pink Floyd like psych pop just as easily as something more distinctly classic NZ indie pop sounding. And like much of the NZ pop of the time, while on the surface everything may seem jangly and super poppy, there's a dark undercurrent of droniness and subtle minor key malevolence, whether it's simply a sort of Velvets style droned out hypno-strum or some dark almost Birthday Party-ish twang draped over the otherwise dreamy jangle, or even the occasional bit of tripped out psychedelic effects, or in places a bit of gloomy dirgery (moments definitely remind us of fellow Kiwis the Pin Group).
Another essential Flying Nun / NZ indie rock classic, finally available again. Pressed on thick vinyl, and housed in an old school Stoughton tip on style sleeve. Sadly, no download coupon though.
When this arrived in the shop, there was a collective cry,"Whoa, Greater Than One? What ever happened to them?" Well, it turns out that the once prolific industrial dance duo ceased to be after Lee Newman died of cancer in 1995. While the pairing of Lee Newman and Michael Wells had a handful of fantastic if agitated Greater Than One albums that graced the Wax Trax! catalogue throughout the late '80s and early '90s, they were also a leading proponent of the bleep techno sound that marked the early incarnation of Warp Records in recording as Tricky Disco. Needless to say, Kill The Pedagogue predates all of that stuff, having been originally released back in 1985 as a self-released cassette. Greater Than One had much more in common with the rhythm and noise collages of Throbbing Gristle and TG's many disciples (esp. Hunting Lodge, Portion Control, and Hula) through distorted tape loops, media samples disfigured through warbling varispeed tricks, and post-Cabaret Voltaire drum machines pushed toward exhaustion with their tumbling patterns of tribal rhythms. Given that the original cassette was a mere 28 minutes long, those fine folks at Brainwashed filled out the disc with MP3s including all of the material from another self-released cassette from back in the day called Lay Your Penis Down plus a bunch of photos and the like.
We're constantly shocked by the fetishization of the eighties, the music, the fashion, it was really only a matter of time, and yeah, folks who didn't grow up in the eighties probably have a way different perspective, but we're even more shocked by how good some of the new wave of eighties worship has been sounding to us lately. Culminating in this, a new 7" from Greatest Hits, a pretty apropos name considering, they sort of do sound like a strange amalgamation of various eighties hits.
Beginning as if it was coming out of an old transistor radio, the song quickly swoops out and explodes from the speakers, a fantastically cheesy burst of kaleidoscopic sound, a sort of super danceable eighties pop, fuzzy, and groovy, and crazy catchy, lots of electronics, drum machines, even some 'scratching'(!), but it's all just a little twisted up, the vocals sometimes chopped and looped, the sounds a bit distorted, everything a little bit twisted, but at its core, it's total weirdo retro MTV eighties dance pop. The second track is murkier and darker, but still rhythmic, with woozy, funky bass, and cool strangely twisted guitars. The next track is all fuzzy and squelchy, rife with cheesy synths, girl vox, minimal drum machines, it sort of sounds a little like a weirder Vanity 6 of all things. And finally, the final track returns to the exuberant energy of the opener, sounding almost punky, with a total "Video Killed The Radio Star" or "Dancing In Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)" vibe, lots of weird sound effects, wildly manic drum programming, some killer vocals, lots of warbly synths, all strangely reminiscent of our misspent teenage years.
Two new releases from UK vinyl horror movie soundtrack reissue label Death Waltz this week, elsewhere on the list you'll find the soundtrack to John Carpenter's They Live, one of our favorite movies EVER, and then there's this, a more recent proposition, the soundtrack to 2011's The Devil's Business, which we have yet to see, but the trailer looks pretty incredible. And the soundtrack too, not Death Waltz's first foray into modern soundtracks (they did Let The Right One In recently), but it is their first foray into compact discs, this being the first DW release available on both vinyl (being restocked soon) and cd. And they've gone all out on the cd, with some of the coolest, most creative packaging we've seen, but more on that in a second.
The soundtrack/score here is by Justin Greaves, who many aQ-ers should know as a member of sludgelords Iron Monkey, as well as the mainman in atmospheric post rock brooders Crippled Black Phoenix, which makes sense, as the music here is not that far removed from Crippled Black Phoenix. The excellently titled opener "My Enemies I Fear Not, But Protect Me From My Friends", perfectly lays out the sonic template sounding like a haunting, brooding, slow burn post rock, loping and doomy, soaring and darkly majestic, the vocals though a deep croon, the sort of voice to imagine singing old hymns in Latin, which perfectly fits the vibe. There's some Morricone-ish twang too, and swirling strings, tense and moody, building to a seriously intense climax, before slipping back into a droney brood.
And the thing is, unlike a lot of scores and soundtracks, only a handful of these tracks are cues, most are proper songs, hard to say if the whole songs are used in the movie or just parts, but those tracks are pretty great, droney, and dark, psychedelic and smoldering, super atmospheric and cinematic (obviously), laced with synths and strings, buzzing guitars, plodding rhythms, a few tracks have a gypsy vibe to them, sounding almost circusy, others are slow, creepy doom folk drifts, occasionally laced with operatic vocals, or field recordings, but just as often, allowed to creep ominously, and some songs full on rock sounding like Godspeed or Explosions In The Sky or yeah, Crippled Black Phoenix.
A few tracks get reprised at the end of the record, one song is revisited, only spookier (the 'spooky version'), another is an alternate version that recasts the original as sounding more like Goblin or John Carpenter, and one of the shorter jams gets fleshed out as a huge, majestic post rock blow out. The shorter cues are pretty great too, from ghostly high end ambient shimmer, to woozy, sinister synthscapery.
As with all Death Waltz, the packaging is super swank, the label's first cd is no different, with a spot varnished cover, with new art, that makes the movie seem like it could be from the seventies, all housed in a six panel gatefold pop-up (!!!), and the cd is affixed to the little part that pops up. So when it's open, the cd is vertical, suspended above the artwork. So cool!!
As summer comes to an end, we're left with those lingering nights that offer up so much room for wandering reflection, and early mornings where all you want to do is gaze out the window and watch birds and butterflies fly free in the sky. This new outing from Green Blossoms is proving to be the absolute perfect soundtrack for those days of hazy daydreams, letting your memory and imagination flow so easily. The Green Blossoms' sound and aesthetic explores similar pastoral bliss as equally delicate and rewarding music makers like Tenniscoats, Eddie Marcon, Miko, Ethan Rose, Nagisa Ni Te, crafting a sound that has us imagining Mum, if they ditched the electronics and found a path to organic pastoral bliss.
Many wonderful sparse yet finely textured instrumentals here as well as a few stunningly beautiful tracks with Aiko Koga's vocals, that even those of us who don't understand Japanese can still totally understand, emotional and passionate, evoking the simple themes and understanding of nature and the life around us. The music of Green Blossoms is such a great reminder that sometimes the most powerful moments are conjured by the most delicate and quiet of creators. Beyond lovely! And rife with a richness that keeps us turning to this album for early afternoon naps in the park, the kind we wish we could have every single day of forever...
Managed to get a few more of these dreamy gems back in stock...
The Green Blossoms are the duo of Anthony Guerra and Aiko Koga, and the two create gorgeously sun dappled little universes of droning ambient twang pop perfection. With just ukulele, guitar, harmonica, pitch pipes and vocals, these two stroll through some fantastical world of constant summery bliss, sometimes it's night, but even then, their world is brilliantly lit by sparkling stars, a full moon, and warm crackling campfires. Guitars and ukes play delicate little melodies, each melody then looped into an hypnotic swirl of blissed out mesmer, then each one is wreathed in some sort of diffused fuzz, a deep glowing halo of sound, be it tinkling chimes, warm processed vocal harmonies, or dense dreamy drones.
This is some absolutely gorgeous, late afternoon, early early morning, hammock swaying in the breeze, back porch sunset, late night crackling fire, staring at the stars, floating in the middle of the sea looking up at the clear blue sky, cool mountain stream, sleeping in the tree shade, closing your eyes and drifting off, sweet, soft, warm and wonderful blissful dreaminess!
Here's a new example of an up and coming (albeit questionable) subgenre in the metal realm: the onesonghourpluslong disc. Sleep, Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Sabbat, Boris, Corrupted, now Green Carnation. Their experimental bent goes beyond the song length,
Some of us still remember seeing Green Day play at Gilman St. or small $5 all-ages shows in our hometowns (Phoenix, San Diego, etc.) and what a crazy evolution: from bratty, catchy pop-punk band on Lookout! to one of the most famous rock 'n' roll bands on the planet. We have to say mainstream rock could do a lot worse then Green Day, whose sound has adapted to fit the large arenas they now find themselves rocking all across the globe. For their latest you can tell they looked to the big guns of arena rock for inspiration, plenty of huge Who and Queen moments busting out on 21st Century Breakdown as well as a healthy dose of The Clash (of course). It does go on a bit longer then we think it needs to but we guess that's what all that arena rock excess is all about, right? There are definitely songs here that are already somehow stuck in our heads, and hell, for polished commercial radio rock Green Day still stand far above the rest.
This new Green Day release has a pretty amazing story attached to its making. Apparently the band completed a full album only to have it subsequently stolen. Egads! What's a band to do under those devastating circumstances? Some bands would surely throw in the towel, but if you're the Green Day boys, you do nothing of the sort. No! You start over from scratch. The results? American Idiot -- a taut, full throttle, politically and personally charged album with some really really great songs like the title track as well as "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" and the two lengthy multi-chaptered songs "Jesus Of Suburbia" and "Homecoming" that open and close the album (well, sort of, they come second and second to last). Billie Joe Armstrong has always been a razor-sharp songwriter (albeit a criminally underrated one) able to articulate his observations of both the big and small picture -- not to mention, bringing the fist-pumpin' punks and the mushy romantics together in one room without too much bloodshed -- and he more than rises to the occasion for American Idiot. His voice is in top form too as are the performances of his bandmates Tre Cool and Mike Dirnt. It's definitely their most focussed, fervent and eloquent album to date.
A side note: Andee and Elliott both noted that part of the aforementioned second song is a deadringer for "On With The Show" from the first Motley Crue record... which is definitely a good thing!
Oh dear, quite a disappointment. The title track's guitar line is a deadringer for The Kinks' "Picture Book"... except it's not a cover. Track #2 sounds not unlike a Cheap Trick tune. Plus it sounds like they've utilized that very overused Cher "Believe" vocal effect. Alas, from a band whose own sound was replicated ad infinitum by endless copycat "punk" bands. And alas, from a band whose last album was not without some fresh new sounds and directions.
Got three new releases from the Carbon label on this week's list, one being this kick ass one sided silk screened 12" from an outfit called Green Dreams, who take old school AmRep style noise rock and inject it with some serious poppiness, reminding us at times of Alice Donut (especially the vocals) and another recent aQ fave Roomrunner. Seven songs in 16 minutes, thick distorto bass, fuzzy crunchy guitars, frenetic drumming, and some seriously cool/weird vox, each song a churning tangle of wild riffage and animalistic drum pound, but rife with some serious hookiness, as well as some muscly metallic moments as well. The vibe is seriously reminiscent of Nirvana's Bleach for sure, but the whiney nasally vox definitely give the sound its own distinctive vibe. Crazy catchy and seriously infectious, heavy and noise rocking in a style that seems to be making a resurgence of late - the nineties never sounded so good!!!
The packaging is super sweet too. A folded over silkscreened eye popping almost 3D looking sleeve, the vinyl silkscreened on the B side, includes a xeroxed insert and a download code as well.
Frogs!!! Can AQ-customers resist frog recordings? We think not. Certainly we can't. This cute lil' 3" cd is the first in a series dubbed the "Jewelled Antler Library" from our fave SF cd-r label of the same name. The idea being to release stuff that stands alone in twenty-minute doses and doesn't need to be padded out to full-cd length. There'll be entries from Jewelled Antler regulars like Thuja, likeminded folks such as Dead Raven Choir and Antony Milton, and also odd, one-off quirky projects like this one, for instance. Green Laughter is primarily frog field recordings made and edited by Loren Chasse (Thuja, Id Battery, Of, Blithe Sons, etc.). It's twenty minutes of the call of the wild (featuring frogs, cicadas, and perhaps birds), starting off as a fairly straight documentary and then blending into a computer-processed drone-wash constructed by Chasse from his original recordings. It's like wandering in a dense creature-inhabited forest back East somewhere in the summertime, your ears overwhelmed by the natural sounds, you getting dizzy and almost passing out, the ribitting and chirping and buzzing and tweeting taking over your mind. But it eventually dissolves back into a blissful background ambience. Real nice. And many of the sounds on here that sound insect-like or electronic Loren assures us are in fact frogs. It's nature's electronic music, the sound of a laptop computer overwhelmed by heat and long grasses and the green laughter. Just the thing for when I (Allan) get homesick for Pennsylvania.
MPEG Download: "Green Laughter" [/audio/greenlaughter.mp3]
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.
Finally!!! The first two Green Machine records, originally released on Man's Ruin, re-released with three bonus tracks each! And not a moment too soon considering how much we've all been freaking out for their most recent full length The Archives Of Rotten Blues. Unlike the monstrous sludge of that one, these two records are slightly more stoner rock, and a bit more melodic, but somehow harder: thrashy, noisy and chaotic, with lots of leads, almost like classic hard rock / proto metal but WAY heavier and more aggressive, very reminiscent of midwest aggro sludge like Helmet, Unsane and all that growly Amrep stuff. But all run through that Japanese bizzaro filter we love!
Plus song titles like Cunt Maniac, Burdens Of Karma, Barbarian Of Dope, Hempty God Returns To The Sky, Machinists Smoke and Holy Grinder tell you anything else you need to know.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
2nd Man's Ruin effort from these Japanese sludge rockers--actually not so sludgy as before, this has more of a "stoner groove" thing happening, although the vocals are still in the harsh Eyehategod-style screaming realm. Song titles that may clinch the deal: "Barbarian of Dope", "Slug", "Hempty God, Returns To Sky"...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Finally, the return of Japanese sludgemetalmeisters Green Machine! Not sure about you, but we LOVED those Green Machine records on Man's Ruin way back when (also back in print, though not listed yet, see the 'instock not reviewed' section!) and after that they seemed to just drop off the map. Which was really too bad as they were a massive monstrous sludge / groove metal behemoth few could touch. Well, we're happy to say that Green Machine are indeed back, and more sludgy, groovy and monstrously heavy than ever. Can't hurt that Atsuo from BORIS produced the record! But it's not just the production. This band is tight and heavy and huge. And so are the songs. Bulldozing riffs, pounding drums and throat shredding vocals. Like classic stoner rock, supercharged and run through a special Japanese 'sludge' pedal. Think High On Fire, Motorhead, Venom, Eyehategod, Cavity and of course Boris' Heavy Rocks. And don't let the counter on your cd player display confuse you. Track seven is split into about sixty individual five second tracks to throw you off before the final track, number 69, "Hammer And Burner", a lighting fast, hammering barn burner, like Motorhead on 45. Fans of all the above bands and Boris and Boris-related obessives will want this for sure!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Finally!!! The first two Green Machine records, originally released on Man's Ruin, re-released with three bonus tracks each! And not a moment too soon considering how much we've all been freaking out for their most recent full length The Archives Of Rotten Blues. Unlike the monstrous sludge of that one, these two records are slightly more stoner rock, and a bit more melodic, but somehow harder: thrashy, noisy and chaotic, with lots of leads, almost like classic hard rock / proto metal but WAY heavier and more aggressive, very reminiscent of midwest aggro sludge like Helmet, Unsane and all that growly Amrep stuff. But all run through that Japanese bizzaro filter we love!
Plus song titles like Cunt Maniac, Burdens Of Karma, Barbarian Of Dope, Hempty God Returns To The Sky, Machinists Smoke and Holy Grinder tell you anything else you need to know.
