It's hard to put our finger on what exactly it is about this record from UK electronic / dubstep producer Guido that has us so obsessed, but all it took was a single listen, and we were hooked. We haven't been able to stop listening to it since.
The first three tracks are pretty much perfect, not quite dubstep, not quite electro, but super melodic, a little skittery, playful and weirdly soulful, The opener pairs a spare beat to a dreamy minor key melody, letting the song develop slowly, the notes sounding like pizzicato strings, the vibe spare and skeletal, but very cinematic, synth stabs surfacing in the background, while little melodic flurries swirl around that main melody and that stuttery beat. "Orchestral Lab" might be even catchier, with its main squelchy synth melody, totally irresistible, almost anthemic, and then when the track switches gears, and gets all moody and minor key, it sounds again like the weirdo synth soundtrack to some super dramatic sci-fi space opera, laced with soaring strings, and then some cool dubby dubstep bass counterpoint, giving it some groove and heft, but then it slips right back into that main melody. The third track "Woke Up Early" just seals the deal, beginning with a sputter of stumbling beats, before a woozy squiggly synth melody gets all tangled up in there, and some fizzing spacey swirls of hiss and shimmer, lurching along, sun dappled, a little psychedelic, a lot groovy, stuff like this is often to light for us, but this is so goddamn good. The only real bummer is, that these first three songs are so awesome, we've barely made any further headway onto the rest of the record. There are definitely worse problems, and giving the rest of the record a quick once over right now, reveals that there's most likely more favorite tracks to come, more ridiculous sonic obsessions, including a handful of vocal driven tracks that rule, fuzzy and buzzy and skittery and a little spacey, the vocals chopped up and wrapped around the lurching beats, the record closes with a fierce chunk of late night dubstep, driven by some seriously thick bass wobble, an ominous and dark bit of stutter step that pretty much matches the opening trio in terms of complete radness. And be sure to stick around, there's a secret track tucked away at the end.
Another new electronic favorite for sure.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Japanese avant-rock duo Guillotine Kyodai enlist a who's who of underground Japanese experimental guitarists to play a kind of "pass it along" game: each track features two guitarists dueting on an initial theme, which mutates as it is passed from guitarist to guitarist. Axemen include members of Ground Zero, Boredoms, Melt Banana, Solmania, Optical*8, Altered States, Bondage Fruit, and Kirihito. Not only conceptually interesting, this is good listening and probably essential to anyone who owns more than two records by the bands listed above.
In his one-man wrecking crew Guilty Connector, Kohei "The Fast" Nakagawa arms himself with homebuilt effects boxes that he physically attacks with metal pipes(!). Having previously presented us with jet-engine 'covers' of Black Sabbath and The Ramones as well as successful outings alongside Birchville Cat Motel and Zeni Geva's Tabata, Kohei takes his volatile Utsu / Shibaki electronics to the Ground Fault label, who ranked this album a III (loud) using their intensity of scale they employ to grade their releases. III is a polite way to describe the volatility of Cosmic Trigger / 2AM Visit, as Kohei blasts out of the gates with volcanic noise eruptions with all of the violence heard in the pre-digital Merzbow recordings from the mid-'90s. Mechanical grindings, claustrophobic scapings, train-wreck rhythms, and drum-kit pummelling all give the impression that like Burmese and Aufgehoben, there might actually be a band underneath all of the noise and cacophony; but in fact, there's only Kohei The Fast! Cosmic Trigger / 2AM Visit also features a guest appearance from Schimpfluch's Sudden Infant for one the more dadaist recordings on this album with its spastic squiggles of reel-to-reel tape warble punctuated by head-splitting noise. Listen on headphones at your own risk, this one can be pretty damn painful.
Guilty Connector is Tokyo's Kohei "Fast" Nakagawa, the one-man goliath of jet engine sonics. Not since Merzbow's "Rainbow Electronics" have you witnessed sheer power and unrelenting force. Remember the first time you put on Monde Bruits? If you miss the Golden Years of noise (circa 1991-1996), this'll certainly take you back...
Japan's one man, harsh electronic,metal machine wrecking crew returns with a 3" cd of 'covers', of Black Sabbath's 'Symptom Of The Universe' and the Ramones' 'Blitzkrieg Bop.' And while Kohei The Fast, the man behind GC, does play actual guitar, the bulk of his sound is made up of "UTSU electronics" and field recordings. You get a glimpse of those classic riffs before they are thrown melody first into the tree shredder, and what comes out the other side is a ear shredding, brain rattling, bone breaking wall of shrieking feedback, buzzing instrument hum and an avalance of white/pink noise. Japanoise fanatics are gonna need this!
Unfortunately a split and not a collaboration, 'Assholes Of The World...' finds New Zealand's Campbell Kneale and Japan's Kohei 'The Fast' (aka Guilty Connector) joining forces in the elite brotherhood of noisy assholes! Kohei starts things off quite unlike the stuff we're used to hearing from him, a simple, static high register drone. But that doesn't last long. All sorts of speaker shredding intrusions pile up on what is now a howling air raid siren-like screech, and then immediately into a sort of Merzbow-ish rhythmic stutter. The second track is a 4 minute blast of hyperchaotic metallic noise. Like some sort of ACTUAL SONG buried under the rotting corpses of Merzbow and Masonna.
You might think Kneale would pull out the big guns and answer back with a mighty blast, but he instead shows some gentlemanly restraint, and offers up one of his most serene pieces yet. What sounds like a single strike of a bell, stretched out as far as it will go, slowly oscillating, sound waves spreading out forever. Subtle insect-like flutters and the SPAREST percussion imaginable, a tiny bit of clatter, a reverby thud every couple of minutes. Quite nice, and a surprisingly subtle rebutt to Guilty Connector's boot to the face.
Wow, an interesting collaboration here. Mitsuru Tabata you may know as K.K. Null's co-guitarist in Japanese heavies Zeni Geva, as well as being an early member of the Boredoms, among other bands on his lengthy resume. He's also a solo artist -- his 1999 album "Brainsville" became a big favorite around here, an excursion into "rural Eastern psych" guitar that demonstrated his obvious love of '70s krautrock head music (Kawabata Makoto isn't the only Japanese guy obsessed with that stuff!).
Meanwhile, Tokyo's Kohei "The Fast" Nakagawa has made quite a few uber-noisy recordings under the name Guilty Connector, brutal power electronics in a punky Merzbow vein, including a split with Birchville Cat Motel. Good harsh stuff.
So, what does a collaboration between these two sound like? Well apparently Tabata (a big record collector) had been mentoring his friend Kouhei's interest in dub and psychedelic music, and naturally enough the duo was soon inspired to do these recordings, which turned out much more abstract and noisy that Tabata's "Brainsville", although Kohei's noise antics are tempered by Tabata's melodic psych ideas. Instruments utilized primirarly include electric guitars, guitar-synth, effects (Tabata) and "UTSU electronics" (Kohei), plus everything from acoustic 12 string guitar to toy music boxes to theremins, percussion, contact mics, and electric heaters! Oh and tape loops, lots of tape loops. The tracks are dynamic and varied -- some pieces end up all spacey and droned-out, with howling layers of distortion, while others are full of blip and electro-acoustic glitch, with bell-like sounds and echoey electronics. Certainly Japanophile fans of Acid Mothers Temples' most erratic and eccentric stuff, the Boredoms Super Roots experiments, Boris with Keiji Haino, etc. should dig this. Boasting a nice cover painting by underground manga artist Imiri Sakebashira, this is a fine debut release for French label Even Stitle.
MPEG Stream: "Le Schiaue Esistono Ancora" [/audio/guiltytabataleschiaue.m3u]
Weirdly enough, we first heard Guilty Ghosts on some mysterious witch house / drag compilation someone made for us, that track a haunting bit of morose skeletal downer guitar pop, all chiming 4AD guitars over skittery clipped rhythms and soft focus swirls of hushed dreamlike shimmer, not to mention swoonsome strings, listening to that track again now, has us wondering why exactly the rest of the world hasn't caught on to Guilty Ghosts. It's the sort of thing a label like Matador or Fatcat or XL should be flipping out over.
But for now, GG, aka Tristan O'Donnell, is going the DIY route, releasing his own tapes and cd-r's, and we managed to get a handful of the deluxe version of his most recent full length, which does in fact include that mixtape jam we loved so much back in the day, and we're happy to report that the whole record is brimming with more of the same, lush expanses of layered guitars, softly tangled melodies, warm swirling buzz, looped breakbeats, the sound melancholic and wistful, the drum driven jams sounding like a darker, more mysterious underground lo-fi shoegaze pop version of the Happy Mondays, while the more guitarscapey tracks remind us of the Durutti Column, and when the vocals come in, it's total shoegaze dreampop bliss. Just check out "Everlasting Evening", which is the sort of jam we wish would go on forever, a thick swirl of guitar buzz, beneath strummed acoustic guitars, underneath ethereal streaks of tangled psychedelic melodies, buried mysterious samples, and some gorgeous angelic female vox, it's definitely easy to see why GG would be embraced by the witch house camp, but the sound is so much more lush and composed, O'Donnell's sights set somewhere much higher, these tracks expansive and cinematic, with tracks like "Everlasting Evening" reminding us of MBV and Portishead and the like.
The whole record unfurls like a dream, the lush swirling tangle of guitars all on its own would be enough to have us smitten, but the occasional vox, and the various rhythms, the ever shifting drones and textures, all deftly woven into gorgeous sonic dreamscapes, and be sure to check out "Begotten", tucked away near the end of the tape, which just might be our favorite jam here, haunting and lovely, like the brooding slow building soundtrack to some heart wrenching scene in an arty big budget blockbuster, we're surprised someone hasn't snapped this up for some Christopher Nolan trailer or something. So awesome. And obviously totally recommended!!
This limited version includes both a tape, with a printed J-card, a sticker AND a bonus mix cd, which offers up a ton of cool and super varied GG beloved jams, all gathered up in a screen printed canvas drawstring bag.
The Guilty Party keep their music in the shadows of night, lacing it with a slight goth and cabaret edge. On this full length follow-up to their 2004 Five Songs debut ep, the Bay Area foursome's brooding drama is more defined and recalls that of early '90s Northeastern U.S. rock bands such as Come or Versus, or more recent likeminded Westcoasters such as Duchess or Whysall Lane. Woozy and intoxicated / intoxicating, their troubled torment ramps up sharply as the album progresses, not unlike a rapid unravelling of emotions and nerves. The spotlight is wisely centered on the powerful throaty vocals of Angelica Maze. The potency of her pipes totally hold its own next to the imposing swagger of the guitars and driving rhythm section. Together they pack quite a wallop. Check out the eighth track "Switch Away" in which the band injects a little Sonic Youth-y art/noise rock dissonance at the end. Very cool. Recorded and produced by SF rock maestro Doug Hilsinger (of the very like-minded but more rural Waycross and Enochestra, they of the 'Taking Tiger Mountain revisited' project) who's also been known to play a little drums and guitar with the band too.
Five Songs is the debut release of this Bay Area moody rock band. What you first notice when you put this EP on for a spin is the contrast between the low, druggy female voice and the high pitched slinking guitar. The vocals and guitars sit prominently atop a bed of slow-boil bass guitar and drums. Shadowy, smoldering and more than a little bit gothy. Mixed by Doug Hilsinger (Waycross, Enorchestra).
Record number two (?) from these Ohio psychedelic spaced out garage rock knuckle draggers, and another glorious collection of stumbling, blown out, super distorted swagger, big and dumb metallic garage-punk riffs wrapped around drawled vocals and ridiculous lyrics, buried way down in the mix. The drums a Neanderthal pound, everything angular and atonal, noisy and off kilter, the sound slipping easily into crunchy grooves, but just as easily collapsing into seriously bent free-form garage-psych chaos, usually falling awkwardly between the two. It's dirgey, and noisy, and barring one track that sounds like a Residents sea shanty, it's a nonstop barrage of buzzing garage rock heaviness and warped psych jam blissouts. The whole thing sounds a bit like a more garage-sludge version of The Spits, but take The Spits' obsession with the Ramones, and replace the Ramones with the Stooges and Hawkwind, but somehow filtered though Liquorball or Faxed Head. Fuck yeah.
We had never heard of these guys, which kinda makes sense seeing as up until now they've flown pretty far under the radar, having released a bunch of cd-r's and only one proper 7", but hell they're called the Guinea Worms, the record is brilliantly titled "Sorcererers Of Madness (4rd Year In A Row!), and yeah, you read that right, SORCERERERS, multiple 'er's, and 4RD, not 4th, plus they came highly recommended by a loyal longtime customer, who besides being a great guy with impeccable taste, also used to play in a certain band of spacelord motherfuckers, which makes any recommendation of his even more worthy of serious consideration. Plus c'mon, they're from Ohio and their first record is a massive 22 song double lp!! Did we mention they totally rule too???
But what do they sound like you're probably wondering by now? Well, sort of like a drunken and damaged, drugged out and demented, super noisy, stumbling, chaotic, metallic, garage rock combo, with awesomely ridiculous lyrics, delivered in a super distorted howl, over blown out fuzz drenched Stooges style riffery, pounding brickbat drumming and some wild psychedelic flourishes, but that's only part of their sound. These fuckers are seriously far out, goofy, ridiculous, and as likely to bust out with some heavy crunch and chug as some silly fuzzed out sing along, or some twisted drugged out blues dirge, the lyrics are totally and brilliantly dumb, reminding us just a bit of Breathilizor, but the sounds here are all over the map, every song totally different, "Drunk In Yr Uggs" is a "Hey Mickey" style call and response, but with a killer woozy bluesy main riff, and some awesome female vocal harmonies on the chorus, "Accidental Space Tourist" is all low slung drunken garage blues, "Lounge Waltz" is angular and twisted, as it lurches and lumbers, "Kick In The Door" is a fuzz drenched garage rockified country hoedown, "Come Here Baby" is a thick slab of psychedelic dirgery, "Afternoon Party" is total Hawkwind worship, but way more damaged and dumb, "Never Giving Up" is a killer slithery jam that gradually erupts into something much heavier and darker, the vocals definitely reminiscent of Nomeansno, but the music much more like some bastard mix of Liquorball and Warlock Pinchers (minus the hip hop), or Bunny Brains crossed with Brainbombs as reimagined by fellow Ohioans Guided By Voices? Tough to describe for sure, but then the coolest weirdest things usually are.
You definitely need to have a pretty high tolerance for goofball dumbshittery, cuz there's lots of that, all over the place, and yeah, normally that stuff might drive us nuts, but it just suits these guys, they're funny as fuck, and can thankfully back up their goofy puerile sense of humor with some serious chops. Our favorite jams are the fuzzy distorted psychedelic numbers, which do make up a pretty good chunk of the tracks here, but somehow, if you took those tracks on their own, it wouldn't be the same, the dumb songs would be more dumb, and the killer songs would be way less killer, but together, it's pretty goddamn perfect. Absolutely recommended. Especially if you dig stuff like Liquorball, Breathilizor, Bunny Brains, Faxed Head, Half Japanese, Happy Flowers and other purveyors of ridiculous and brilliant whatthefuck weirdness.
We're pretty sure we've got the last few copies they had a the label, so when they're gone, they're gone.
French sound-artists and improvisers Jean Luc Guionnet and Eric Cordier have built a large interconnected sound sculpture constructed out of parts of stringed instruments (guitars, detuned piano, and cello), percussive elements and metal resonators... all suspended from the ceiling with various wires and instrument strings. As all of these elements are hinged from the same point on the ceiling, each action affects the whole system. So if Jean Luc scrapes one of the wires, the whole systems will shake and bang against each other, with pretty much unplanned results. So their improvisations with the Synapse device are a fusion of post-Einsturzende instrument building, No Neck Blues Band pipe fights, and the conceptual playfulness of "The Way Things Go" filmmakers Ficheli & Weiss.
We weren't sure what to expect from a Scantily Clad side project, but it certainly wasn't this! But we like it. In fact we sort of LOVE it. Unlike the cosmic synth drone of Scantily Clad, Guisher specializes in a dizzying, short attention span collection of home brewed lo-fi cut and paste, slice and dice, collaged, sample heavy, hyper rhythmic loopscapes. Sped up soul samples, snippets of songs off the radio, are slathered in crumbling distortion, then assembled into strange stuttery beatscapes, waves of white noise swallow up the proceedings, only to spit out fragmented shards of pop on the other side.
The sound is awesomely raw and primitive, like some caveman Art Of Noise at times, but the structures and rhythms are often surprisingly complex, and downright groovy at times, while pulverizingly noisy at others. The sound is pretty fantastic, slipping from DJ Shadow like moody skitter to weird world music collage to barely there short wave static in the same track, only to weave some sort of analog assembled electronica on the next track, all lumbering rhythm surrounded by flurries of tangled melodies, and weird swooping backwards effects. And so it goes, a head spinning kitchen sink concoction, a blast of crunchy electric guitars, shards of yacht rock, blasts of static and slowed down voices one second, warm and warbly, shuffling sort-of-electronic woozy rhythmic groovescape the next. So great! And apparently all recorded while on prescription drugs, which definitely might explain everything...
SUPER SUPER LIMITED. ONLY 55 COPIES, partially because the packaging is so deluxe, an oversized photocopied booklet with tons of fold out pages, secret panels, a little multi paneled triangular booklet in the middle, and a foldout poster, all in a plastic bag, each one individually sewed shut with multi-colored thread.
Record number two from this offshoot / sideproject of cosmic synth drone combo, Scantily Clad, and in a way it's a continuation of the wildly chaotic cut and paste collaged weirdness of Hide Your Cold Dome cassette, which we compared to a caveman Art Of Noise, but this time around, it seems like the chaos was reeled in a bit, the sounds more measure and melodic, still fractured and fragmented for sure, but more warm and melodic, in fact tracks like "Tiger Spa" remind us of the whirling underwater sound of Oval, albeit a bit more home brewed and low fidelity. For every streak of soft focus shimmer, there's a little flurry of wild rhythmic skitter, or a cascade of weirdly chopped and screwed melodies. "Jetsam" is another one that displays the 'new' sound, all woozy, crumbling swells, slo-mo rhythms, the vibe more Philip Jeck, a dizzying time lapse sonic drift, lots of gristle and crunch, the sounds raw and rough around the edges, but somehow blurred and smeared into something more more soothing and mesmerizing, the jagged chaos of the first record transformed into a more controlled chaos, which Guisher has swaddled in all manner of lush, soft focus shimmer. Super nice.
Killer packaging too, the lp housed in a reflective anti-static sleeve, that sleeve adorned with a full color paste on track listing, that all wrapped in a super DIY photocopied jacket, and housed in a peach colored plastic sleeve.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!
We'd venture a guess that Guitar aka Michael Luckner is not a man of many words. He chose the name of the common musical instrument as his moniker, and makes uncommonly dreamy instrumental music from a broad palette of processed guitar sounds that offer a healthy nod to My Bloody Valentine. On his latest album which he's titled simply with the name of a major Japanese city, he's got Japanese vocalist Ayako Akashiba adding some honey-sweet murmurred vocals to three of the tracks. The music has a hazy translucence as if each track (vocals included) were painted in watercolor with a smattering of heavier brushstrokes applied with koto and programmed beats. Lovely!
All hail Guitar Wolf! Bands from Japan often take their music to the extremest of extremes, and blisterin' brutes Guitar Wolf are a perfect example of this. While some bands of the same ilk occasionally hit the red on the volume and intensity meters, this rad Japanese trio consistently push things waaay further, frequently roaring right through the red into parts unknown. It's not hard to imagine their vocals and guitars literally tearing your stereo speakers to shreds, and their hammering rhythm section knocking all the fixtures right off your walls. Not always in tune nor in time, but shit, that hardly matters when you're having this kind of frenzied fun! This is a wild collection of twenty six tracks, both "greatest hits" from their albums as well as some rare, out-of-print or previously unreleased material from their past eighteen years of garage rawk mayhem. Yes, it fuckin' rules, but it's also bittersweet because it marks the close of the Guitar Wolf chapter that starred bassist Billy (aka Bass Wolf aka Hideaki Sekiguchi) who passed away earlier this year at the age of 38. News bulletin: Surviving members Toru and Seiji have chosen to go on, searching long and hard for a new bassist. The new Bass Wolf is nineteen year old UG!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Billed as "the loudest cd ever recorded"! Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf and Drums Wolf don their leather and shades and kick out the jams for yet another blast of the distorted-all-to-hell garageabilly that this Japanese trio is known for. Only Guitar Wolf could get away with doing yet another version of "Summertime Blues"...
Japan's garagey Guitar Wolf dishes out more! more! more! punishing guitar frenzy. The recording on LOVEROCK sounds so much like the studio was blowing up everywhere while they tracked, it's a little scary, but it totally captures aurally what it's like to see them live. Like everything's blowing up all around you but it's ok because in the dusty wake of its destruction will be... a wild pack of Guitar Wolf. LOVEROCK! LOVEROCK!! LOVEROCK, 4ever!!!!
Watch 'em comb their hair! And rock like mofos. Japanese greasy garage rock at its most unhinged and high-concept.
Ohmigod. This sounds like it was dubbed off a cassette tape a million times. And then mastered at, like, 11, man. Guitar Wolf's Rock'N'Roll Etiquette features a cover of "The Way I Walk" originally made famous by Robert Gordon and then covered again by The Cramps as an extra track not found on the Japanese version. Another machine-gun blast of Japanese garage-rock glory. Start your day off right! Listen to RRE with (or in place of) your first cup of coffee. Yeaoww!!!
The first domestic release from garage greats Guitar Wolf since 1999. These sexy men from Japan can be commended for their stick-to-it-ive-ness, and consistency of style. Raw old school garage taken to an almost avant-garde level of noise and ridiculousness. This record is more of the same, really fast and punk. Released on Narnack, that same label that put out the Coachwhips album, this is their eighth full length record!! Bands so often go through different phases and genres, changing with the times, and that's fine and all but I'm happy to see Guitar Wolf hasn't changed. Playing their fucked up, feedback-filled, punked-out, hair-slicked-back garage rock n' roll.
Most of you weird music obsessives should probably remember Dutch black ambient freaks Stalaggh, whose MO was creating harsh atonal drones and buzzes, hellish noise drenched soundscapes as backdrops for various vocalists, those vocalists all inmates at a local psychiatric hospital. Yup.
The results were chilling, and creepy, and pretty fucking demented and incredible. Those Stalaggh recordings made even the evilest black metal sound totally tame in comparison. Some seriously emotional, demented and damaged, psychological sonic terror.
Since then, the band has regrouped, now called Gulaggh, with a similar plan of attack, with one little twist, according to the band, Gulaggh will be about "the perversion and inversion of Classical music combined with the vocals of the mentally insane". Definitely sounds good. Or maybe good is not the right word. But like Stalaggh, it seemed like Gulaggh would be equally disturbing.
So here it is. One track, 45 minutes, of totally haunting, mysterious... music? Sound? Soundart? Hard to know how to classify this. The sound of a voice, reverbed, over a deep distant thrum, all wrapped in little bits of hiss and creak, long tones rumble and drone, and then the voices begin to surface, mewling and moaning, groaning and mumbling, all over an insidious low end thrum, horns bleat, various bits of percussion pound scrape, and still the various voices get louder, more and more frenzied, the overall vibe ever more terrifying. The sound does seem to get classical, but more like an orchestra tuning up, abstract tones and atonal bleats and blurps, and then things go fucking apeshit, with all the vocalists, shrieking and screaming and howling, pounding on walls, stomping on floors, the cries growing more and more anguished, then out of nowhere some random drumming comes in, just in the middle of this cacophony of howls and shrieks, building to a frantic climax, before the voices begin to fade, swirling screams, sounding more like kids on a playground, but still intense knowing these aren't kids and they aren't on the playground. The horns step it up, honking and skronking and bleating and moaning, the drums skittering to a halt, then it's a weird fade out, quite voices, humming and murmuring and squeaking beneath the slowly fading horns, streaks of feedback, and that commanding, authoritarian voice from the beginning returns, the track ending how it started.
Holy shit, definitely super intense, and squirm inducing, somewhere between abject black ambience, a horror movie soundtrack, an educational film, a field recording, and a smattering of stumbling musical experimentation. Freaky as all get out, but in it's harrowing miserablism, does lurk moments of beauty, bits of melody, but for the most part those are definitely overshadowed by the evil and misery and terror, that the maniacs in Gulaggh have somehow rendered into music. Or at least sound.
Reservedly recommended. Difficult listening of the highest order, but would definitely be right at home on your cd shelf next to the Conet Project, the Ghost Orchid EVP recordings, and other mysterious and challenging collections of sounds found and otherwise.
A Russian fairytale about a man with an axe who makes "flying porridge"?? Huh? Supposedly that's what this gorgeous album is "about" though since it's mostly instrumental and/or in Russian it's hard to say for sure, in any case it's certainly creepy and bizarre enough to be the soundtrack to such a story, and makes for a fine follow-up to Gultskra Artikler's record for Lampse last year, Pofigistka. That one was one of the strangest and most "actively" melodic or songlike of that label's ambient treasures but went quite well with Jasper TX and Machinefabriek, just as this fits in with Gultskra's new Miasmah labelmates Elegi for instance.
Kasha Iz Topara iz over an hour long, one track flowing into the next, the whole thing a continuous crackling soundscape of darkly dreamy textures, creaking sound FX, ominous chords, fractured and folky guitar, glitchy electronics, and sinister strings... among other things... a mix of haunting cinematic instrumentation, old time Eastern European tradition, and mysterious field recordings. What's not to like?? Axeman, bring more flying porridge please. Definitely for fans of Finnish forest freaks Kemialliset Ystavat, the aforementioned Elegi, and Miasmah label head Svarte Greiner, amongst others.
We've said it before (more than once) but it does bear repeating AGAIN, Lampse is the label of our dreams. Quite literally in fact. Not only have we been totally captivated by every release we've heard so far, each one a gorgeous glistening slab of ethereal ambience, each buried in or delicately obscured by thick layers of gauzy sound or record crackle or tape hiss or any manner of fuzz and buzz, but these Lampse releases are all the perfect drifting off music, late night, lights low, cool breeze, floating off to never never land, sinking into a deep warm blackness, the absolute perfect going to sleep music. Our bedside listening has pretty much been exclusively Jasper TX, Machinefabriek and this dreamlike sonic document from the hard to pronounce Gultskra Artikler.
GA might be the strangest of the bunch, which is saying a lot. The songs are much more active, with more obvious instrumentation, lots of guitars, most rendered into weird little angular shapes, sometimes stretched into gauzy smears, strings everywhere, sometimes pizzicato, drenched in reverb, floating dreamily in a swirling black void, sometimes soaring in the distance, weaving emotional epic backdrops to the sounds in the foreground, lots of mysterious percussion, and wheezing keyboards, fuzzy synths, but where the other two Lampse records we've reviewed employ a serious arsenal of sonic detritus to give their sounds a melancholy soft focus patina, Gultskra Artikler utilize a series of subtle field recordings, low level conversations, clinking silverware, footsteps, wind and rain, as well as what sounds like haunting disembodied tape loops, all woven delicately into the already ephemeral fabric of each song. And the thing is these are actual songs, there are melodies, and refrains and riffs, buried rhythms and soft swells of sweet sound, all rendered in deep shadows and indistinct hues. Grainy sound worlds that creep and swirl, drift and hover, an alien pastoral folk music buried beneath dense whirls of thick fog, slow, sleepy stretches of abstract ambience stretched into songlike shapes and allowed to drift lazily amidst a haunting world of shrouded beauty...
So absolutely lovely!
Philip Jeck. Janek Schaeffer. Otomo Yoshihide. Thomas Brinkman. Saule. These have been some of the recent crop of avant-turntablists whose praises we've sung in the recent past; yet the use of the turntable with experimental music is nothing as novel as the current infatuation would indicate. Turntablism could be traced back to John Cage's Imaginary Landscape (1939), but perhaps a better historical jumping off point for those artists' delirious collage work would be with the early work of Christian Marclay and Non, who both reconfigured the noise and disembodied cultural reference from skipping records in the late '70s. It was that environment of Industrial culture that spawned Gum -- the Australian avant-turntablist duo which began quite literally with a skipping Brian Eno record. While Gum's Andrew Curtis and Philip Samartzis shared a common interest in Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and Whitehouse, their work centered upon the volatility of surface noise from cheap turntables that they rescued from thrift stores and junk shops. At the same time, Gum balanced their destructive pursuit of tumultuous noise and electrically charged static with a clinical disembodiment. Even when disco-grooves from the Bee-Gees or porno climaxes get mangled in their Frankensteinian aggregates of loops and layers, it's hardly funky or sexy... rather a wonderfully disturbing mess. Having only a couple of singles on RRR and Korm Plastics as well as two self-released LPs, Gum had remained a secret history within the prolific oeuvre of Australian sound art; and now, thanks to this Vinyl Anthology compendium which features the bulk of their recorded works, the ecstatic expressionism of Gum can now be rediscovered for what it really is: precocious genius.
Chinese punk!! In folded silkscreened poster packaging that's probably all stuck together...
Brand new single with what might be our favorite track from the most recent Gum Takes Tooth record, Mirrors Fold, which we recently made our Record Of The Week. The A side is the version from the full length, a wild, percussive, tribal workout, a churning sprawl of tranced out rhythms, wreathed in hazy vocal harmonies, the sound falling somewhere between Animal Collective at their most abstract and rhythmic, and William Bennett's post Whitehouse one man Afro-Noise project Cut Hands. So it makes perfect sense that GTT would recruit Cut Hands to remix that track, especially since it already sorta sounded a little like Cut Hands anyway.
But Bennett takes the original, slows it way down, adds tons of distortion, and transforms it into something meaner, and darker and more industrial sounding, still groovy and tribal, but fierce and pounding, those background vocals turned into strange spectral smears, swirling around a monstrous rib cage rattling beat, flecked with stuttery percussive filigree, a whirling psychedelic sprawl of roiling rhythmic crunch, that kills! And has us super excited for the forthcoming Cut Hands full length, and kind wishing Gum Takes Tooth would get Bennett to remix their whole record!
We made the first record from this awesomely monikered UK outfit, Silent Cenotaph, our Record Of The Week, way back in 2011, and at the time described them with some band math that looked a little like this: Shit And Shine + Butthole Surfers + Lightning Bolt. The sound was a dizzyingly psychedelic barrage of grinding, rhythmic, electronics doused in druggy tribal freakout, like a super charged This Heat, the drummers kit wired to a mad scientist array of machinery and noise making devices, turning the kit into some giant rhythmic noise machine, and enabling a duo to kick up a din that sounds like it couldn't possibly be made by just two people, and while that first record generally hewed toward a sound that was more chaotic and bombastic, this new one seems to be a bit more melodic and dare we say mellow, there's still plenty of sonic ferocity, and rhythmic bombast for sure, but it sounds more measured, more deftly assembled, maybe less 'punk', but only in the way that bands get better at what they do, and in theory, take what was great about their previous records, and add to it, creating something, even more forward reaching, and ultimately perhaps even better.
Such is the case with Mirrors Fold. We still do LOVE Silent Cenotaph, and it routinely gets play on the iPod even still, but this new one is more subtle, more textural, whereas that first one was the sort of music you wanted to rock out to, jump around and go crazy, this new one, manages to harness that feral energy into something much more focused. The opener begins all swirly and serene, with hushed ambient shimmer, chant-like vocals, be before long the drums explode, adding a churning rhythmic component, without detracting from the melodic component or the vocals, it's not really until a brief bit of hushed shimmer, a barely there ambient interlude, that the song truly launches into crazed sonic chaos, a dizzying blurry flurry of drum madness, a wild octopoidal tangle of tangled jumbled rhythms, that eventually give away to a skeletal bit of rhythmic drift, before one final push, where the drums, the vocals, and swirls of FX are all wound into a dense propulsive tribal spacey noise rock blowout. Phew!
And so it goes, the band laying down mesmerizing hypno-rhythms, while all around strange effects swoop in and out, extra percussion, echoey vox floating above, thick rumbling bass below, sitar like buzz slithers throughout, the sound and arrangement super dynamic, a bit proggy, certainly psychedelic, a sort mutant psych-prog, Afro-space groove. Some moments are like some outer space version of Afro-fuzz Swedes Goat, others sound like a super charged, space rock Necks, a few tracks get downright heavy, and sound like some tripped out psychedelic space outfit, a few tracks sound like a crazy demonic alter ego of This Heat, a few others remind us of the twisted afro-noise of William Bennett's Cut Hands, there are moments of Muslimgauze like Eastern rhythmatism, there are even moments that remind us of Animal Collective at their very weirdest, but really most of this just sounds Gum Takes Tooth, and absolutely nobody else, a totally twisted genius amalgam of all the above mentioned references, deftly shaped into something at once warped and weird, wild and experimental, but also totally hypnotic, and melodic, strangely lovely and in its own way, extremely catchy. A new favorite for sure. And a total shoe-in not just for Record Of The Week, but for our year end best of's too...
Imagine a band that sounded like a bastard mix of UK-via-Texas, multiple drummered noise rockers Shit And Shine, grinding bass and drum duo Lightning Bolt and legendary weirdo drug rock combo Butthole Surfers. Then imagine the sort of din such a band could and would kick up and mix in all manner of mangled and freaked out electronics. Finally, imagine all of that noise being conjured up essentially by a single drum kit. And thus you have UK duo Gum Takes Tooth, which is essentially a drummer, whose drums are wired up to a dizzying array of home brewed electronics and tone bent circuit boards, with a second member tweaking and fucking with the sound in real time. 43 minutes of electronic-ed drumming might not sound that appealing to some folks, but don't make the call until you get an earful of the sounds these two whip up. Sure at times it's raw and rhythmic, noisy and chaotic, but the sounds here are all over the map, from super charged This Heat style rhythmic workouts, to blasting almost grind metal like blow outs, minimal FX fueled ambient drifts, to tripped out sci-fi psychedelia, murky, meandering distorto slow-core to frenzied noise drenched prog and pretty much every conceivable stop inbetween. Add in some Merzbow style noise, a little Psychic Paramount drum heavy post rock heaviness, some world music like tribalism, and stir it all up, and voila.
Opener "Young Mustard" is a pretty good sampling of what these guys are capable of, offering up a wild frenzy of tribal drum pound, weird processed vox, swirling electronics and FX, which eventually explode into some seriously aggro Lightning Bolt style, blast beat driven, downtuned grind, only to blossom into some Six Finer Satellite like synth-drum craziness, before the whole thing devolves into a abstract stretch of minimal clatter, random bloops and bleeps, swirling electronics, all beginning a slow build, the tribal drums swooping back in, slowly goring more distorted and intense, until finally fracturing into what sounds a bit like the Ruins crossed with Man Is The Bastard, thick blown out buzz low tones, pounding drums, howled processed vox, all woven into a seriously crushing electro-dirge.
"Tankjott" is another good one, starting out with some rapid fire kick drums, some gurgly vox, some squiggly electronics, building to a lurching, stuttery groove, soon more electronics, and more of that heavy bass buzz swoop in, and it's some sort of metallic krautpsych groove, with all manner of buzzes, strange twisted vocals, electronic pulses, before exploding into another fried and buzz drenched rhythmic workout, sounding to us like a way more chaotic / noisy / electronic version of MITB offshoot Geronimo, definitely the heaviest track here, sounding almost metal, but via Hawkwind and This Heat and Melt Banana and all blurred into some impossibly mesmerizing electrometal krautgroove, WAY too short at 7+ minutes.
And in between those two tracks, plenty of hypnotic, cyclical, rhythmic noise, progged out heaviness, stuttery drum heavy buzz and psychedelic noise rock, usually all at the same time, "Strychnine Motive" probably the most traditionally song sounding, but it's really relative, while "The Earth's Mantle Colonised" takes that same sort of sound and trips it WAY out into some sort of psychedelic space rock, the vocals chopped and processed, plenty of spacey squiggles and weird chanted vocals, the whole thing still drum driven big time, "Nomad/Monad" sounds like some bastardized gamelan orchestra, or a punk rock electronic noise version of Konono No.1, all looped thumb piano like melodies, tangled up and barraged by all manner of strange sounds, and then finally, record closer "Hermaphrodite And Nourishment" which does in fact feature a member of Shit And Shine on second drum kit, and while we were expecting a super frenzied drum heavy blowout, instead, it might be the pretties song on the record, all moody and loping and melodic, laced with ringing Tibetan bowls, crooned softly distorted vocals, squalls of feedback, and the cool thing is it never really explodes or freaks out, instead, it's just gorgeously mesmerizing and hypnotic, droned out and tribal, the perfect sort of sonic come down at a record that spends much of its time at a serious musical fever pitch.
Probably one of our most exciting recent musical discoveries (thanks Jason P.!), and with every listen this record continues to confound and delight and reveal more of the weird shit that seems to constantly be going on just below the surface, and odds are if you like any/some/all of the above mentioned bands, imagine them all mashed together and distilled into some wildly and gloriously twisted hybrid, and we imagine you'll probably be as knocked out as we were.
Who cares who Shinju Gumi is? Whoever they are, they've got mixes by Kid Loco (same as on the "Press Play" comp), Solex, Tarwater, etc. Dubby pop triphop electronica...
Superior Viaduct does it again, bringing us much needed reissues of not only one but two classic LA underground records from 1981: The Flesh Eaters' amazing A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die, and The Gun Club's incredible debut, Fire of Love. We're gonna (gotta!) make 'em both Records Of The Week!
Death, drugs, sex, voodoo, evil blues, macabre horror and a sublimely detached southern gothic sensibility pervade the music of these two bands who sat somewhere between the margins of the "death rock" and "cowpunk" or "gothabilly" genres of the LA punk scene of the late seventies and early eighties without fitting neatly into either.
The commanding vocal prowess of Jeffrey Lee Pierce leads the scorched delta blues of The Gun Club, a darkened mixture of Johnny Cash, Charley Patton and Elvis recycled through a furious yowling intensity. The band rotated line-ups often and has featured throughout their existence key players of the LA punk scene such as Kid Congo Powers (The Cramps, The Bad Seeds), Patricia Morrison (Sisters of Mercy, The Damned, The Bags) and Terry Graham and Rob Ritter (The Bags). While the band had a run of great albums, Fire of Love is largely regarded as their most influential, containing an impressive string of punk hits: "Sex Beat", She's Like Heroin To Me", "Fire Spirit" "For The Love of Ivy", "Ghost on The Highway", and "Jack On Fire", many of them produced by Chris D. of The Flesh Eaters.
Such a great album and without it bands like The White Stripes and The Black Keys simply wouldn't exist.
Note: Unlike The Flesh Eaters, Superior Viaduct didn't do a vinyl version of this reissue - but it turns out there was a vinyl reish on Spain's Munster records a few years back that has been recently repressed, so we'll probably get copies in sometime soon...
We made the Superior Viaduct cd reissue of The Gun Club's Fire Of Love one our Records Of The Week last time, and now have the 2014 repress of the Munster lp reissue too! Here is what we said about the cd:
Death, drugs, sex, voodoo, evil blues, macabre horror and a sublimely detached southern gothic sensibility pervade the music of The Gun Club who sat somewhere between the margins of the "death rock" and "cowpunk" or "gothabilly" genres of the LA punk scene of the late seventies and early eighties without fitting neatly into either.
The commanding vocal prowess of Jeffrey Lee Pierce leads the band's scorched delta blues, a darkened mixture of Johnny Cash, Charley Patton and Elvis recycled through a furious yowling intensity. The band rotated line-ups often and has featured throughout their existence key players of the LA punk scene such as Kid Congo Powers (The Cramps, The Bad Seeds), Patricia Morrison (Sisters of Mercy, The Damned, The Bags) and Terry Graham and Rob Ritter (The Bags). While the band had a run of great albums, Fire of Love is largely regarded as their most influential, containing an impressive string of punk hits: "Sex Beat", She's Like Heroin To Me", "Fire Spirit" "For The Love of Ivy", "Ghost on The Highway", and "Jack On Fire", many of them produced by Chris D. of The Flesh Eaters.
Such a great album and without it bands like The White Stripes and The Black Keys simply wouldn't exist.
'60s Cali teenage garage punk band, Gunge not Grunge! Pretty cool archival release.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Steve Gunn of GHQ and Magik Markers among others, offers up some truly dreamy drone-y ragas on this WAY out of print super limited cd-r, originally released early last year, and inexplicably unreviewed until now. Guitars, banjo, voice and sample, woven into thick hypnotic mesmerizing swaths of buzz and strum, like Fahey arranged by Niblock. But that's just the first track. The other three tracks slip from blissed out psychfolk drift, lazy smoke-y guitars slithering through wispy clouds of whir and shimmer, to abstract, avant Appalachia, all obtuse strum and pick, to soft acoustic folk music, with lots of space, and gorgeous little tangles of minor key melody.
Definitely will appeal to fans of Blackshaw, Rose, and other dronefolkers. Packaged in cool hand assembled sleeves, hand stamped, with a photocopied insert, and a phot pasted to the front. Originally limited to 90 copies, this is obviously WAY sold out, and these are thus the last copies ever...
Time Off marks the first album from psychedelic axe slinger Steve Gunn (GHQ, Magik Markers) out on his own as bandleader, and the first thing we noticed, is that maybe his recent collaboration with Hiss Golden Messenger (for the recent Record Store Day Golden Gunn release, now sadly out of print) rubbed off on him, because opener "Water Wheel" is some seriously lush, twangy country rock goodness, Gunn's usual druggy psychedelic folk here wreathed in swirling acoustic guitars, woozy basslines, simple shuffling rhythms, sounding like classic Appalachia fused to seventies classic soft rock, all warm and hazy, softly psychedelic, with Gunn's swoonsome raspy croon, it's pretty great, but definitely slightly unexpected. In fact, it was actually reminding us of a slightly darker, slightly more psychedelic Iron & Wine, which is most definitely not a bad thing at all.
And it's not just that first song, not sure if it's a permanent shift, but Gunn's 'new' sound is definitely following a similar path to his Hiss Golden Messenger compatriots, doesn't seem like a coincidence, that both the new HGM and the new Steve Gunn are being released at the same time, and on the same label, cuz they're definitely sonically similar, warm and sun dappled, darkly dreamy, the seventies vibe huge on both, but on tracks like Gunn's "New Decline", it sounds like he's channeling classic Grateful Dead, a super tranced out extended country psych jam, that could easily have sprawled into a 20 minutes space jam. And those jams pop up throughout, check out the last half of album closer "Trailways Ramble", the same sort of laid back druggy drift, all acoustic guitars and tangled spidery leads, all over a softly propulsive groove, and laced with wild sawed cello. Other tracks look back to classic seventies folk, "Old Strange" has a definite Incredible String Band vibe, with cellos and flutes, and simple percussion, and some gorgeous finger picked steel string guitar, but inevitably Gunn brings the sound back to that twangy, groovy, psych country folk, which we're definitely digging more and more with every spin.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Yet another one of the ultra limited Record Store Day releases, we got enough of this one to review for all the faraway folks who couldn't be here on the day. A killer split, one side longtime aQ fave Ilyas Ahmed, teamed up with Steve Gunn on the other.
Ahmed offers up some warm sun dappled Appalachia, lush strummed 12 string guitars, all minor key and melancholic, accompanied by wispy reverbed vox, plaintive and intimate, the sound hazy and hypnotic. Near the end, buzzing streaks of electric guitar swoop in, hushed swells and layered harmonies, turning the folkiness into something more moody and softly psychedelic.
Gunn counters with his own take on Appalachia, a stripped down bluesy vamp, a little bit bluegrass, a bit folky, warm overtones, lots of layered buzz, Gunn's vocals deeper and more gruff, swaddled in reverb and delay, the various spidery melodies seem to grow more tangled as the song progresses, a gorgeous chunk of bluesy psych folk for sure.
LIMITED TO 800 COPIES, only 200 on clear, which are the ones we have. Housed in a super swank jacket with original artwork by Ahmed.
Gunshop is the work of Chicago noise artist Blake Edwards. This album (quite possibly his first) falls cleanly within the purist boundaries of noise culture and power electronics, with elements of Mego's computerized collage stutter introducing extended passages of whistling electronic squeals found on all of the Whitehouse albums (no William Bennett-esque nightmarish rants on Gunshop tho). What is surprising about this record is how it relies on the subtlety of sound rather than the all consuming control of the listening experience...
Now this is what we're talkin' about. The return of France's Gunslingers, not too long after their amazing No More Invention album and the cd release of frontman Gregory Raimo's equally awesome solo endeavor as GR & Full-Blown Expansion. How does one go about describing a band like this? If you had to simplify things, you might call them a psychedelic punk band with krauty inclinations. It is also interesting to note that the rhythm section is comprised of dudes from black metal behemoths Diamatregon and weirdo occultic post rockers Aluk Todolo, not that this sounds anything like either. Gunslingers possess plenty of what we all know and love - crazy psych-surf riffing, a frantic rhythm section that manages to be both tight and sort of drunk sounding, and GR's unhinged vocals, which we accurately described as a cross between Johnny Rotten and Mark E. Smith, or better yet, the Trashmen's singer on the infamous "Surfing Bird". But the truth is, Gunslingers don't fit so easily into any categories. They are a crazy sounding bunch, capable of whipping up songs that are frenzied and totally demented, but also catchy and fun. And unlike many bands attempting this type of thing, Gunslingers avoid falling into the "retro" category, sounding, if anything, more like the true extension of the wild sounds of the late '60s/early '70s. So if this band HAD existed 40 years ago, you wouldn't be too surprised, but Gunslingers sound so self-aware that they seem to exist out of time, a quality we always appreciate.
The band kicks in right away with "The Spectre's Sinister Commandment," a firebreathing number that lurches forward menacingly with awesome sounding bass, melodic riffing, and some ride heavy drumming as GR's crazed vocals will make you wonder what the hell is going on in France these days. Without really letting up, Gunslingers go right into their strange world once again with "Coupe-George", a dense hurricane of fucked up biker psych mayhem heavy on the treble. "Stub Of Fortune" is another monster with super distorted guitars that seem to recall SST's glory days, all twisted, atonal, and jagged but strangely melodic at the same time. The album ends on a sort of upbeat note with the winding riffage of "Condor's Radiant Spawn", with the drums providing a super tight bounce that will make you feel like your heart will explode at any second. In a good way, of course.
Manifesto Zero is another highly welcome entry from a band we simply can't get enough of, which is why some of us will be heading down to the Hemlock tonight to check this shit out in the flesh if we can get done with the list in time! (That's right, they're on a US tour right now, go see 'em!!)
Amplifiers begin to quiver in fear whenever Gunslingers guitarist Gregory "GR" Raimo straps on his axe, 'cause his band (a trio, with the rhythm section being the two guys from blackened krautmetalers Aluk Todolo!) is all about amp-frying psychedelic garage rock mayhem. The latest blast from these French freeks, a 12" vinyl-only release, will do nothing to calm an innocent amp's nerves, that's for sure.
It consists really of one single 17 minute long track, sprawled over two sides, parts one and two of the same massive "massacre-rock" inquisition from these deviants, and no we don't know what the title means either, but we do know the title "Massacre-Rock Deviant Inquisitors" does describe Gunslingers pretty well, somehow, as do the descriptions of what each member of the trio brings to the party - "Thunderbass", "Prophetic Drums", and "Guitar Distillation Arguments". You can tell it's gonna be loud, you can tell it's gonna be weird. And most importantly, the third pillar of the Gunslingers' sacred promise to you the listener, it's gonna rock. In the most primal, punk-as-psych manner possible. Bloody, groovy, greasy, splintery, freaky freeform rock n' roll the way ol' Link Wray just might have envisioned it in his worst nightmare or on a bad drug trip.
Woah. What a surprise! See, the German psych/prog/kraut specialists at World In Sound have been responsible for a lot of cool '60s/'70s reissues and comps (Cold Sun, Modulo 1000, Psychedelic Minds Vol.1...) but they also have released some unfortunately not-so-hot cds by a bunch of modern prog and stoner rock bands doing the retro thing, and well, we haven't reviewed any of those based on the old "if you don't have anything nice to say..." principle. Just not worth bothering. BUT, that was until this disc came along. Like we said, a surprise. This Julian Cope approved (Record Of The Month for August '08 on his Head Heritage website) band has come up with a doozy of debut (?) here, a real humdinger from these Gallic guitarslingers. Featuring Matthieu Canaguier on "thunderbass", Antoine Hadhoannou on "prophetic drums", and most importantly, badass-in-chief Gregory Raimo on "guitar & guitar lighter, yaya preach, feedback", this trio's No More Invention sounds something like the French answer to The Heads, or White Hills, or even Mainliner. Utter aggro over the top distortodelic geetar excess. Frickin' savage. SAVAGE.
Nope, not at all what we'd have expected from World In Sound. Not only have they found a current signing that's good, in fact great, said signing are also a lot more punk than we'd have thought. Heck we bet these guys grew up on Metal Urbain, maybe even Soggy! The rabid vocals are somewhere betwixt Johnny Rotten and Mark E. Smith, babbling indecipherably. They also remind us a bit of the guy from The Trashmen (if "Surfin' Bird" was a raving, epick 12:50 long biker/garage meltdown blowout kraut jam called "Lighter Slinger Festival", ferinstance). Some other song titles, just to whet yer sick appetites: "Into The Garage", "The Beheaded Motorbiker's Head", "Black Dwarf Man", "Gigolo Albinos", and (uh-oh) "Auschwitz Boogie". Nothing holy here. Simply full tilt, fucked up, freaking out-out-out. Don't come looking to Gunslingers for songs and melodies and suchlike. Come looking for the blinding white lighting of FX overloaded, speed freak amp-sploitation, and the rhythm section rough-and-tumble of mainlined rock action energy, and you'll find it. Timeless stuff, heck if this WAS a '70s acid-punk reissue we would be less surprised. Gunslingers could do battle with the likes of Gaseneta, based on what we're hearing here. Recommended!
