Byram once asked the rhetorical question, "What self-respecting composer doesn't have their oevre divided into three periods?" While Mr. Abbott was describing one of the many successes from the late period of Morton Feldman, Bernhard Gunter is a composer
Where albums like "Un Peu De Neige Salie," and "Details Agrandis" situated barely audible pin pricks of piercing sounds against fields of Promethean silences, that aforementioned trilogy finds Gunter increasing the volume to far more perceptible levels and filling lengthy spaces with fluid passages of gradually building / decaying tonalities. He has proudly exclaimed all of his influences (Xenakis, Rothko, Feldman, Nono, and Bill Viola) through his work, and these pieces clearly show how great an influence Feldman especially has been upon his electro-acoustic minimalism. Gunter has quite literally been extending the slow motion aesthetics of Morton Feldman out of the chamber ensemble and into the language of electronic abstraction.
Gunter still maintains that all of his compositions are the manipulation of everyday sounds, yet these processed elements hold richly complex sonorous qualities that are more in common with oboes, cellos, and church organs than radiator pipes or rustled cutlery.
The problems with the argument that Gunter has entered his second period are obvious: his changes aren't terribly radical in scope, and may merely give evidence to his aesthetic malleability, he hasn't made any grand existential changes in his life that could warrant a profound change in aesthetic; and, of course, Gunter hasn't made such a proclamation.
Regardless of this silly romp into semantics, Gunter has produced his best record to date in "Crossing The River (Night Music)." Thank you for your patience.
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"Monochrome Rust" -- which completes the ideas found on Gunter's "Monochrome White" double disc set -- finds Gunter returning to the space of near inaudibility as previously explored on his earlier work in "Details Agrandis" and "Un Peu De Neige Salie." I say near inaudibily, as Gunter has constructed this piece to maintain a consistency through the incredibly tiny crackling of digital shimmer and erratic high end warbling; but at normal listening levels, it is so quiet as to barely assert itself above the hard drive from the computer I'm using to write this review. When the drive powers down every couple of minutes and the sounds of "Monochrome Rust" are left to situate themselves against the background of Valencia Street road noise, this chorus of digital chirps is incredibly complex, building subtle repetitions and orchestrating various swells in density.
Gunter pairs "Monochome Rust" with "Differntial," an equally ephemeral construction that ripples with a vaguely noxious tonal frequency amidst the delicate digital clattering. I'm still much more of a fan of Gunter's recent "Crossing The River," but this is much more interesting than the majority of the Microsound encampment.
The ultra-minimalist Bernhard Gunter created Monochrome White in attempts to simulate the experiential weightlessness that Gunter found within a recent Bill Viola retrospective of his video installations. Gunter conceptualized that this mimesis could take place through a steady spectrum of high frequencies, as if they could "lift it off the ground, so to speak." Monochrome White is
As Gunter's last couple of releases have been dedicated to Xenakis, Feldman, Bill Viola, Rothko, and Luigi Nono, his work could be qualified as a sort of ultra-minimalist portraiture, with each album as a quiet impression of how Gunter remembers and / or has
The second piece "Abscheid" is a wholly different composition of softened orchestral elements, what could be french horn, cello, church organ, and even a few pluckings of a harp, that have been drawn out into lovely darkened drones and sustained tonalities. Very nice.
With the recent reissues from Luigi Nono and Morton Feldman, their influences upon ultra-minimalist Bernhard Gunter appear quite pronounced, mostly through compositional similarities in building slow organic fluctuations, although all three have arrived at a
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With all of the sirens, cell phone conversations that need to be directed outside, and ambient street noise, a Bernhard Gunter record with all of the details buried deep within the non-space of quiet shouldn't be able to be heard above the ambient din of Aquarius. Yet, "Time, Dreaming Itself" is an outrageous Gunter record, simply because it's audible. Fragments of organ drone fizzle from complex fields of haziness into delicate detail work of crackling digital minutae. It could be that Gunter's intent has shifted way from allowing his work to slowly build out of silence into a louder volume that captures the listeners attention and then wanes into his more trademarked sub-audibilities!
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Inspired by the modernist minimalism of Mark Rothko, Bernhard Gunter presents a rather audible composition (in comparison to his other not so audible records) of his dark gray minimalism in which gossamer fragments of droning sound are situated on the 'trademarked' silences as icy aural floes exposing their textural surfaces under sparse glimmers of lights. Recommended.
Minimalist composers Bernhard Gunter and Steve Roden had intended on selling this split CD exclusively on their tour in Japan in November 2001, but became so fond of the recordings they decided to let the rest of the world have access to them as well. Gunter
Oh boy! This is another one of those releases that pushes all of our overwhelming music obsessive buttons, like the Conet Project, The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv 1900-2000 box, the Yahowa 13cd box, the 50 cd Merzbox, the Ayler Holy Ghost box...
Compiled and produced by Gert-Jan Blom of the Beau Hunks, Harmonic Development brings to light the long lost harmonium performances of the fascinating Georg Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1866-1949) whom some of you will know much better as a thinker and philosopher than a musician. This release consists of a beautifully designed 140 page softbound book filled with tons of photos and historical and personal minutae, accompanied by two compact discs of music in a digipack AND an additional disc of mp3's (that brings the total amount of music to over 19 hours!!) as well as a cool MPEG video of Gurdjieff home movies. Holy crap! So first, who was G.I. Gurdjieff? Well, the simple version is that Gurdjieff was an early twentieth century Russian mystic (and retired hypnotist), who drew inspiration from Sufism, and was fascinated with music. Gurdjieff had composed for piano for some years, but late in life he acquired first a wire recorder, and then a tape recorder, to document his improvisations (his "moosic") on the harmonium, a sort of pump organ, that produces a sound that is rich and full, a sort of lush, wheezing melodious moan, haunting and otherworldly. This collection gathers up recordings from the forties, from the last few years of Gurdjieff's life, and feature loads of intimate performances, several talks, and lots of ambient chit chat. It seems that Gurdjieff would perform a piece, slow and sad and gorgeously dreamy, enveloping all of his listeners in the mood, and when he was finished, he would then crack jokes and make small talk. Many of these performances feature this strange juxtaposition of almost religious intensity, and breezy lighthearted banter, which was somehow another part of his unique world view. We've yet to delve completely into the book, but even on their own, the discs are wonderful and completely mesmerizing, offering up hours of droney, mysterious harmonium music, but all sorts of ambient sounds and snippets of conversations as well, giving these recordings almost the same sort of vibe as the Conet Project, a distant dark mystery, as if these sounds were pulled from the ether, captured from another world and another time. At once recognizable, but at the same time totally alien.
And as you enjoy the hours of recordings, you can peruse the book which contains a preface by Robert Fripp, information on the unearthing and restoration of the recordings, track notes, transcriptions of the talks, as well as recollections of Gurdjieff's final year from a host of friends and students, among them the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright.
There's an ongoing argument at aQ headquarters about which is more preferable: a selection of a artist's musical works or the -complete- recordings. Of course that questions is completely relative to which artist one is talking about, and everyone will have a totally different opinion based on who you ask. But it instantly came to mind when we got this gorgeous new Mississippi reissue of Gurdjieff Harmonium Improvisations.
A little backstory: The fascinating Georg Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1866-1949) whom some of you will know much better as a thinker and philosopher than a musician, was an early twentieth century Russian mystic (and retired hypnotist), who drew inspiration from Sufism, and was fascinated with music. Gurdjieff had composed for piano for some years, but late in life he acquired first a wire recorder, and then a tape recorder, to document his improvisations (his "moosic") on the harmonium, a sort of pump organ, that produces a sound that is rich and full, a sort of lush, wheezing melodious moan, haunting and otherworldly. He would often record these performances after hosting dinners and various social gatherings in New York and Paris both during its occupation and then right after the war had ended. Most of the surviving recordings come from the last year of his life.
Awhile back we got in a sprawling multi-disc / hardcover book box set on Basta (which is now sadly out of print), of his complete Harmonium Recordings. Over two cds, AND a third disc of mp3s, the entire output was 53 tracks and about 19 hours! That's a lot of harmonium recordings, and needless to say a bit daunting to take in and absorb, even if it was totally amazing. But what was really cool about that vast collection was the super intimate performances and long durations of the pieces (most in the 9-20 minute range), the sound of the harmonium peppered with all sorts of incidental ambience. It seems that Gurdjieff would perform a piece, slow and sad and gorgeously dreamy, enveloping all of his listeners in the mood, and when he was finished, he would then crack jokes and make small talk. Many of these performances feature this strange juxtaposition of almost religious intensity, and breezy lighthearted banter, which was somehow another part of his unique world view.
This current collection on Mississippi was originally issued as a French private press release in 1971 and is a sampling of seven performances between April and October of 1949. While taken from the vast collection of recordings, we believe they were edited down for length with much of the external ambience (banter, coughing, bellow clatter, etc) taken out, save for a final "Amen" at the very end of side 2, which is totally apropos, given the spiritual quality of the performances. The music though, is wonderful and completely mesmerizing, offering up lush, meditative, ritualistic, droney, melancholic harmonium music, a distant dark mystery, as if these minor key sounds were pulled from the ether, captured from another world and another time. Not quite ragas, more like slow and sad oceanic sea shanties. At once recognizable, but at the same time totally alien.
An early predecessor to the searching individualistic devotional recordings of Joakim Skogsberg, Daniel Higgs and Malachi, this is a perfect antidote for those seeking an immersion into Gurdjieff's mystical sound world without having to commit to a complete lifetime of listening.
A NOTE ABOUT THE SOUND SAMPLES: Due to the different title methods used between this record and the Basta collection, we couldn't find an exact match for sound samples, so we took similar sounding pieces from the same period from the Basta collection so you can get an idea of what this sounds like more or less.
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aka DJ Vadim. "Support the stop R&B killing hip hop movement" it says on the back.
Guru has one of the greatest voices in rap. Ice Cube's or DMX's are great too, but more mean and scratchy. I mean, when I imagine the devil, he sounds like Ice Cube. But Guru is smooth and effortless and his voice is deep and warm, and his flow is so
A new installment in the popular hip hop and soul jazz crossover series created by Gangstarr's Guru. Featuring Macy Gray, Erykah Badu, Kelis, The Roots, Herbie Hancock, Les Nubians, and more.
Here's an excellent live soundboard recording from this classic Krautrock power trio, performing at their early, uber-heavy peak. It's all drugged-out, mostly-instrumental cosmic stoner guitar jams, of course. You get versions of "Stone In" and "Der LSD-Marsch" from their spacey first album UFO, and "Bo Diddley" from their anarchic second album Hinten (which hadn't yet been released with this concert took place). Fans won't be disappointed -- it all sounds pretty great considering that these tapes were never originally meant for release, and the Garden Of Delights packaging job is superior as always, with a thick booklet of notes and photos.
Guru Guru have always been one of our favorite '70s German groups, definitely among the heaviest and freakiest in their early days, as documented here. Former free jazzers Mani Neumeier (drums, lots of drums) and Uli Trepte (bass), together with ex-Agitation Free axeman Ax Genrich, went on some heavy psychedelic improv trips yet to be exceeded. Perhaps Caspar Brotzmann heard these guys whilst but a toddler, years before he began his Massaker trio?
What it is exactly that constitutes "Krautrock" is definitely up for debate. It seems often largely construed to be the insistent, motorik pulses of Neu! and Can. But to limit the genre to just that would be a mistake. Bands like Guru Guru and Ash Ra Tempel were also present, bringing some of the heaviest psychedlia ever recorded. Hinten is the former band's second album, and a classic. Free range guitars grazing on open, organic jams. It is more evidently structured than their debut, UFO, while still retaining an improvisational feel that is as playful as it is crushingly acidic. This is one of both Allan and Cameron's favorites within the genre. Halfway between killer rock riffs and complete psychedelic blow-out. Essential, though an expensive Japanese import in its current incarnation.
After a few years of unavailability, now this krautrock classic has been reissued again, as a domestically priced digipak on Revisited, as part of their Brain label reissue campaign. This was the 3rd album from Guru Guru, recorded in 1972 with producer Conny Plank, and it was the the last of theirs to really be about the power trio heavy rock (as opposed to the lighter, jazzier stuff they got into later on), and boy do they let it rip on a lot of this. At the same time, Guru Guru's goofier tendencies are also to the fore, as you can see from the picture on the sleeve of a leaping, why-be-normal Mani Neumeier (the drummer), which despite being on the back cover has become one of the iconic krautrock album art images, along with Kraftwerk's traffic cones, Faust's X-ray fist, and Amon Duul II's Shrat-the-reaper...
There's four long songs on Kanguru, none under 10 minutes, one of 'em over 15. And you'll quickly hear why, for instance, Makoto Kawabata and all the Acid Mothers Temple folks are so into this band. Psychedelic freakiness that's HEAVY, yet playful. "Oxymoron" is a trippy groove, featuring treated vocals chanting "smelled like shit, but it wasn't it" (presumably a drug reference). High or not, guitarist Ax Genrich gets let loose to slay it up on his axe, Hendrix-like. "Immer Lustig", "Baby Cake Walk" and "Ooga Booga" also all feature plenty of complex, burnin' guitar/bass/drums interplay, with the latter boasting the doomiest fuzz riffage. Wild stuff, it must have been a blast to see these guys play!
Guru Guru's previous album, Hinten, had a track called "Bo Diddley". Kanguru's songs are also suggestive of primal '50s rock n' roll influences - although stretched waaaaay out, and given a hippified, improvisatory, drugged-up makeover! Hmm, have you ever seen the live video of early Black Sabbath covering "Blue Suede Shoes" on a European TV show? Maybe the Guru guys had seen that too and it got 'em thinking...
Neumeier's legendary krautrock band returns with a new record for '98, the Japan-themed Moshi Moshi...not a whole lot like their stuff from the early seventies, but inventive and rockin' nonetheless--similar to 1995's Wah Wah.
What it is exactly that constitutes Krautrock is definitely up for debate. It seems often largely construed to be the insistent, motorik pulses of Neu! and Can. But to limit the genre to just that would be a mistake. Bands like Guru Guru and Ash Ra Tempel were also present, bringing some of the heaviest psychedlia ever recorded. UFO is the former band's debut effort. Fans of heavy psych, German rock of the '70s, and free improv jams will consider this absolutely essential. And chances are, those fans already own this, or they simply haven't found a copy yet... here's the currently in print, Japanese mini-LP sleeve version. Repetitive, hypnotic, transcendent. And at the same time jarring. This is a fist full of mushrooms being shoved through the speakers. Embrace it.
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Like a blast from the krautrock past, Bureau B brings us the debut album from Gurumaniax. But, unlike a lot of the German label's releases, this ISN'T a reissue - it's a brand new album featuring the two surviving members of krautrock legends Guru Guru, drummer Mani Neumeier and guitarist Ax Genrich. Hence the name, GuruManiAx, get it? Sadly, original bass player Uli Trepte passed away last year, so the trio is rounded out by new bassist Guy Segers from veteran art proggers Univers Zero (with guest Mario Engelter performing bass duties on two of the tracks as well). The final track here is entitled "For Uli T." but it's as if the whole thing is dedicated to his memory, doubtless he'd approve 'cause Gurumaniax is about the closest thing to ye olde Guru Guru as could be imagined, really it sounds like they went way back to the earliest albums by the original trio for inspiration (UFO, Hinten, and Kanguru, circa 1970-72). Dunno if they dropped some acid too, to get into the mood, we wouldn't be surprised...
It's card-carrying krautrock all right, freaky and psychedelic, meandering and mesmeric, mostly instrumental. Psy Valley Hill is full of lengthy, pulsating jams and drifting, echoing FX, with just enough (but not too much) of Guru Guru's trademark goofiness / weirdness (ferinstance, "Telefonladies", with the voices of telephone operators mixed into the music). Much of it is super spacey, with swirling electronics in all the nooks and crannies. Their MO seemingly involves lots and lots of improvisational freedom, yet each song finds structure and identity. Results range from the jauntily spaced-out free-rock-abilly of "Voodoo Touch" to, on the very next track, the chain-rattling abstract soundscape of "Electrosaurus", that could be something by Absolut Null Punkt.
Gurumaniax are good natured and generally mellowed out, but still venturesome, traipsing to the edge of the void and sometimes beyond. The splatter of Mani's percussion and the echoed unfurling of Ax's axe is often slow and steady, even somnolent or sedate, but elsewhere utterly urgent and agitated... Quite obviously, these guys know what they're doing, heck it was about 40 years ago they first started making these sort of sounds, now the bread and butter of bands like LSD-march, Circle, and of course Acid Mothers Temple, with whom the ever-energetic Neumeier has collaborated. And, speaking of Circle, we're really reminded of that Scandinavian band by track four, "Ghost Of Odin", a lazy almost dubbed-out jam, blissfully hypnotic, with occasional quirky vocal mutter, eventually building to a loud, distorted climax... nice!!
Mani is always making records, but it's especially exciting to hear again from Ax, whose last solo album back in 1995, Wave Cut, was quite fine. It's commendable that, without T., they decided not to officially bill this as a Guru Guru reunion. But, listening to it, they certainly could have. Gurumaniax is the real deal. Recommended! And not only to krautrock heads, but also to post rock types who like Tortoise and stuff like that, check this out and see if it's not too hippy for you!
Does this sound familiar? Middle Eastern tinged psych rock laden with electric oud circa 1967? From Greenwich Village? Sounds like an album we wrote about some years back that we totally creamed over. Cream, as in Disraeli Gears, as in Felix Pappalardi, as in Devil's Anvil. You wanna know something weirder? The Gurus, who's seminal Are Here! album was shelved the same year as the Devil's Anvil's, also got their start at the same cafe in The Village: Cafe Feenjon. Unlike the Devil's Anvil, who were an existing band that was retrofitted through the brilliance of Pappalardi, The Gurus were, in a way, more of a contrivance by Feenjon co-owner Bob Englehardt and music lover at heart, jeweller by trade Ron Haffkine. And while their album Are Hear! might not reach the levels of sonic brilliance of Hard Rock From The Middle East -- none of the members of the Gurus were actually of Arabic decent, merely "fakin' it" -- it's none the less a great album, demonstrating the natural ease with which Eastern melodies fuse so nicely with rock. Along with the sonic resemblance to The Devil's Anvil, The Gurus' sound is peppered with shades of The Monks, and Love, and other good '60s stuff.
We didn't know too much about this, other than it's a lost eighties recording of turntable manipulation and plunderphonia from a member of Homosexuals related outfit Milk From Cheltenham (the band whose name inspired Stephen Stapleton of Nurse With Wound to name his label United Dairies by the way), but really they had us at turntable manipulation and plunderphonia, and that's just what this is, split into a bunch of short tracks, this plays as a single sprawling dizzying epic, which apparently was born of multiple mixes of a song built from a ROOM SIZED 24 track loop, and it's pretty crazy, sample voices, snippets of orchestras, pounding percussion, woozy strings, the sounds warped and warbly, distorted and a little crackly, booming reverbed pianos, creepy snippets of soundtracks, bleating horns, excerpts from some old language lesson tape, skittery jazz, constantly shifting pitches, lots of warble, the sounds themselves strange, but their condition, and their treatment, including what sounds like manual finger on the record manipulation, is what really makes this so psychedelic and tweaked sounding. Many of the sounds here were unused and remixed excerpts of recordings which would eventually become the title track of the Milk From Cheltenham lp, which according to the label was "a tape collage of the live mixdown of 17 cassette recordings of locked record grooves, simultaneously, with stray radio and an infernal matchbox."
Apparently, the second disc is a collection of recordings discovered while digging through tapes in search of a master for disc one, and plays out much like the first disc with the main difference being a bit of bizarre and primitive drum programming, otherwise, it's another dizzying collection of strange sounds, mysterious voices, sonic snippets, all constantly manipulated and messed with. Although those rhythms somehow make it sound even more fractured and fucked up. Definitely the sort of thing that should appeal to fans of John Oswald, Negativland, Philip Jeck, Otomo Yoshihide, Strotter Inst, LAFMS, Dennis Duck, Martin Tetreault and other tape loop / turntable experimentalists.
Both discs include lengthy bonus tracks featuring yet more material, in this case intended for a never realized second Milk From Cheltenham lp, and while there's a booklet / poster, it doesn't offer much in the way of liner notes...
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In Iceland maybe.
Jazz head Mats Gustafsson plays the music of Steve Lacy on solo saxophone (tenor & baritone) and fluteophone, plus a piece by Cecil Taylor and a couple tracks of his own creation. As he puts it: "It's wonderful to hear somebody playing something I never heard before on the saxophone. Especially using some of my material as a jumping-off place. I appreciate many things here, but especially the surprise. As they say, Jazz is the sound of surprise."
This isn't what we normally expect from Austrian label Rock Is Hell, who in the past have brought us all flavors of weirdness/heaviness, from folks like Shit And Shine, Burmese, Nate Denver's Neck, Mark Deutrom, Ocrilim, Thee Oh Sees, XBXRX and more, but here we have some serious jazz, obviously on the noisy side still, but it's legendary saxophonist Gustafsson, here teamed up with Austrian drummer Didi (aka Dieter) kern, and the two engage in some serious skitter and skronk. A 20 minute blast of wild, chaotic, octopoidal drum splatter wound around a fantastic cacophony of bleats and blorps, the two constantly locking into some serious grooves, sort of avant free jazz funk at times, but always splintering back into something super free and abstract, the whole jam a constant push and pull between free from outjazz and dense freejazz groove. Killer stuff, essential modern free jazz for sure, and only an excerpt of a much longer jam!
This is a single sided lp, LIMITED TO 222 COPIES, each one hand numbered, housed in a silkscreened jacket, with full color paste on cover art.
Ok, you know what? Let's just keep this review real short and nuts n' bolts. One line about the line-up: improv sax player Mats Gustafsson, who composed this piece dedicated to Patti Smith, teamed up with Steve Shelley, Lee Ranaldo, and Thurston Moore (all on guitar) plus also Loren Connors (guitar, naturally) and David Sackenas (more guitar) and Lotta Melin (audiobox, whatever that is) and the voices of Kim Gordon and Linda Kallerdahl, all live mixed by Mr. Jim O'Rourke. Ok, and another line about the music: arty, noisy, spastic, skronky, electronic, disturbing. Verdict? We especially like the fuzzy fog-horn drone sounds (that's Mats' horn of course) and all the dense guitar textures, but unfortunately we weren't so keen on Kim Gordon's half-way-to-spoken-word-poetry singing, but that's nothing new (and the Patti Smith dedication would make less sense without her contributions). Anyone who likes the really experimental/jazz side of Sonic Youth (including Kim's vocals) oughta dig.
Why hello there! This is something a little different for the usually very dreamy pop-tronica focused German label Morr Music. The Berlin duo of Julia Guther and Berend Intelmann make glistening golden honey pop with nary a pulse, glitch nor click within earshot. Instead the two play it all on guitars, keyboards and drums. What charms the listener most however is Julia Guther's vocals. Her breathy singing reminded us of their labelmates Lalipuna. Fresh, sweet, softly floral, and oh so nice.
There had been rumors circulating about this record for ages. Either that, or it just -seemed- inevitable, these two grunge icons who both went on to redefine themselves long after the bands that made them were long gone, and the scene that spawned them was long dead, finally together. It seemed like a no brainer. Two of the most distinctive voices in rock, both able to conjure up some seriously dark and volatile sounds, emotional, personal, intense, we couldn't actually imagine what this pairing would sound like. Who are we talking about? Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees) and Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs).
So does it live up to the hype? Most of the press has been about the personalities, the debauchery, the drugs and alcohol, they did name themselves The Gutter Twins after all, so we would imagine some folks doubted the record would ever get made at all. But here it is, and it's a dark beauty. A lot more lush and heavy than we expected, and thankfully it manages to bring out the best in both Lanegan and Dulli. The songs Dulli sings definitely sound like later era Afghan Whigs, which is no bad thing at all, Lanegan adding some gravity with his whiskey soaked gravely growl. And Lanegan gets to lead the slow smoky crawls, the guitars unwinding all serpentine, organs buzzing and warbling, he just always sounds more at home in a cloud of smoke, barely lit by the corner of a stage, bottle in one hand, microphone in the other.
But there are surprisingly few slow brooders, the drums play a big part, the guitars load and soaring, there are strings everywhere, a few tracks even have programmed drums, but the duo manage to imbue each song with some serious pathos, wrapping them in dark clouds and wreathing them in stale smoke. The production helping make the songs epic, evoking wide open spaces and rain swept highways as much as dark bars and shuttered rooms.
"Circle The Fringes" is all swirling strings, and shimmery FX flecked ambience, beneath strummed minor key steel string guitar and moaning cellos, eventually launching into a sweeping groove, complete with staccato dynamics, wailing guitars, the whole thing ultra intense and pretty dang heavy. "Seven Stories Underground" gets all Tom Waits, haunting abstract percussion, the duo's vocals tangling up in strange harmonies, a slithery brooding drift, that builds to a super dramatic climax, before drifting off darkly. "Front Street" begins with the sounds of birds, a pastoral background for a simple folk fingerpicked guitar, again the two vocalists, their different voices, blending in perfectly unlikely ways, unfurling in tense, moody slow motion, peppered with swells of timpani, and warm whirring organ, and eventually soaring strings.
It's hard to be objective, considering how much we loved the Afghan Whigs and the Screaming Trees, how much we dig the Twilight Singers, and treasure Lanegan's solo records, and fans of any and all of those will most likely love this, but like all great collaborations, it's not merely the sum of its parts, the two obviously draw from each other, discovering things that they don't on their own, the resulting music a sort of sonic push and pull, but it's subtle, the sound cohesive and assured, seemingly the essence of the two personalities, both dark and troubled, and with a certain loner vibe, but together, they manage to create a sort of hopeful sadness, a melancholy warmth, the gorgeous sound of dark rainy nights, but with the promise of a new day to come.
You might not recognize the name Peter Gutteridge, unless you're big NZ music nerd, cuz while Pure is the only solo record Gutteridge ever released, he played in a bunch of bands you most definitely DO know, the Chills, Snapper, the Great Unwashed, the Clean, the Puddle... holy cow! Pure was only ever released as a super limited tape WAY back in 1989 on the Xpressway label, and has essentially been unavailable ever since, but for fans of NZ underground music and Flying Nun, this is some primo home-brewed Kiwi pop, fans of Tall Dwarfs and Peter Jefferies will fall in love (if they weren't already). Totally of its time, but somehow utterly timeless, all it takes really is a couple tracks, the opener "Lonely" is all primitive drum programming, thick, droned out distorted guitar buzz, and some weirdly affected echo drenched multi tracked vocals, total 4 track pop genius, somehow heavy and noisy, but lilting and melancholic and sweetly dreamy. The next track is somehow even cooler, the drum machines seemingly gone haywire, spitting out a barrage of sped up spastic skitter, while guitars buzz and moan melodically, all wrapped in swirling, buzzing organs, again, somehow managing to be hypnotic and psychedelic, but also perfectly poppy. Which is pretty much how all of Pure plays out, Gutteridge laying down thick, distorted guitars, sometimes wrapped in weird FX, usually anchored by some Casio rhythms, his vocals often settled way down in the mix, but just as often crooning dramatically right up front, the whole thing fuzzy and washed out and definitely a bit psychedelic, with plenty of lo-fi home studio trickery, the sounds occasionally panned and swooping from speaker to speaker, not to mention weird hiss and buzz and drop outs (from the original tape we presume), some tracks sound like an underground NZ version of the Velvets, others super experimental and abstract, with fields of slow shifting static, pulsing bassnotes, blurred distorted drones, some sound all carnivalesque and tripped out, of course a bunch sound like classic NZ pop, and some border on almost Dead C-ish noise rock, the best moments of course when Gutteridge somehow fuses them all together, which happens more than should be possible. So great! For folks who have been flipping out over the recent Flying Nun reissue campaign, Pure is an absolutely essential NZ underground pop classic!!! Hopefully this means more reissued NZ rarities could be forthcoming, here's hoping for a comprehensive reissue campaign for the OTHER legendary NZ label, Xpressway!
Sadly, no download code (or cd version)...
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I've been seeing Brent Gutzeit's name popping up recently as the guy who will open for any experimental artist who is touring the States... He played with Reynols, Mikael Stavostrand, Oval, and Stillupsteypa. You can certainly see why he's been getting such nice gigs. "New Kmocas" is a recent cd-r release of ring modulating bell tones that continuously drone until tight controlled blasts of noise glitch change the aural scenario. Pretty good stuff, and look for a Mort Aux Vaches and a Meme release. Hopefully all of this work will be as good as this one and won't suffer the problem of too much promotion and not enough thought put into the music.
Ultra noisy chaotic hardcore from South Carolina featuring ex members of Initial State and In/Humanity. Blazing fast, frenzied and abrasive, shrieking and furious, with a wry, thoughtful/humorous lyrical bent (ala Dead Kennedys or In/Humanity). Great.
After recently making two recent offerings on the Medical Records label into Records Of The Week (Axxess and Lou Champagne System), we figured we oughta review a couple other kick ass Medical releases that somehow slipped under our radar. One of those is a collection of lost tracks from a Swiss teenage synth / electro-pop duo, with the unlikely name Guyer's Connection, whose Portrait lp originally released in 1983 is a synth nerd holy grail.
The tracks here were recorded around the same time as Portrait, but were only rediscovered in 2005, and include a mix of unreleased tracks and reworked versions of older songs. And the sound definitely seems right at home amongst the current crop of synth retro-revivalists, in fact, if these guys weren't so obscure, you'd swear some of the synth kids today owed much of their sound to these two. But unlike much of the brooding Carpenter / Goblin worship these days, a lot of the music here is fun and playful, even kind of goofy, it is after all a couple of teenagers with 2 synths, a drum machine and a 4 track, just check out opener Discoqueen II" with its woozy vocodered vox, bloopy bleepy percolating synths and skittery drum machines, or the krautrocky "Laugh About" which sounds a little like Kraftwerk gone haywire, with some bizarre sampled voices, and a deep dramatic main vocal.
There's also a strange cover of a German children's song, with lyrics by Kurt Weill, which sounds like the guy who plays organ in the mall, all cheesy easy listening organ and shuffling rhythm underneath weird sing songy vocals and twisted music box melodies.
And while all that playful goofiness is occasionally balanced by tracks like "Flow", a dark, brooding, slightly sinister, slab of soundtracky synth creep, the record seems to spend most of it's time pulsating through autobahn like expanses of sleeky synthy futurism, and groovy electro-synth, pop weirdness, the songs super varied, and featuring a surprising array of vocalists, and vocal styles, which gives the record a distinctly twisted outsider vibe. Killer stuff, and definitely recommended for the legions of aforementioned retro synth revivalists out there.
Pressed on 180 gram green vinyl, housed in super striking silver on green jackets, and LIMITED TO 600 COPIES, each on hand numbered. Sold out at the label, so these are the last copies we'll be able to get.
If I understand the liner notes correctly, this is music made by mentally-handicapped Buddhist priests? Regardless, if you're into the psychedelic sounds of other Japanese bands like Ghost, the however-IQ-impaired grooves of these folks may well appeal.
"Intellectually challenged" buddhist priests perform improv with Japanese bass player Motoharu- Yoshizawa.
"'Seisou' live as Buddhist priests in the temple, Kouganji, and are considered somewhat pushed out of society as 'intellectually challenged'. With Gyaantees as the nucleus, these 'seisou' perform free improvised music with many other musicians as well. Why improvised performance? Well, the 'seisou' seem to lack the ability to remember the songs and lyrics." -from the liner notes.
We're really feeling the early house music vibe these days. Sometimes we just want to slip into some tiny hot pants and roller boogie away (sez Allan? Scott? Andee?). At least that's the feeling we get from this comp from Ghana's prodigious keyboardist Kiki Gyan and his disco-era music from 1978 through 1982. As this release's liner notes explain, Gyan got into recording disco tracks after he defected from Osibisa, the influential pan-African outfit that helped start the whole UK Afro-rock scene in the late '60s. In his post-Osibisa years, Gyan continued fusing African highlife sounds, jazz, blues, soul, and rock with fellow Osibisa defectors. As Gyan became swept up in Europe's cocaine-fuelled party scene, he and collaborator recorded the title track. "24 Hours In A Disco" has all the lush violin arrangements and falsetto vocals common to popular '70s disco tracks, but it also includes a bongo breakdown! Unfortunately Gyan wasn't always the nicest guy, and he stripped Ayivor's vocals from the original recording and re-released it in Nigeria without his bandmate's permission so as to horde the profits. That's the version you're getting on this comp. We haven't heard the original, but with its super-tight conga playing, this one is still pretty spectacular. On "Keep on Dancing" Gyan adds steel drumming into the mix along with a cowbell breakdown. "Disco Dancer" features some great syncopated hand-clapping and Gyan's slap bass work and funky keyboard lines. The atmospheric vocals here will lift any disco denizen into the heavens. Many of the tracks would be right at home at Larry Levan's Paradise Garage or even David Mancuso's super-underground Loft parties. All the cuts on this comp work really well as a cohesive album and you'll find yourself playing it from start to end and then back to the start again!
Another gorgeous release from Mystery Sea, whose sonic focus is on "night-ocean drones", and more than anything we've heard on MS, Umbilicus Maris by New Zealand one man drone outfit Gydja perfectly embodies that focus.
Umbilicus Maris is very oceanic, aquatic, even sub-aquatic. The rhythm is tidal, a subtle pulse, a gradual swell, the sounds shift and shimmer like light through water, and of the handful of Mystery Sea releases we've heard, Umbilicus Maris is the loudest and most active. That's in no way to infer that this is anything but drifting blissy ambience. It most certainly is, but the sounds are not lowercase. Not barely audible. Abby Helasdottir, the sole soul behind Gydja, brings the sounds to the fore, they are dark and mysterious, droning and drifting, but they are loud, the listener can hear them, FEEL them, peer inside and around, can experience the sound physically, get lost inside the sound. A pair of headphones is all you need to get sucked under, floating weightless in a strange sun dappled undersea world of sound.
Field recordings (tides, oceans, streams?) are mixed with performances, all processed into some otherworldly soundscape, or seascape. Burbling, shimmering, glistening, glimmering, everything slightly blurry, warped and warbled, multiple layers, shifting and drifting, low end rumbles slowly drift to the surface, where strange sonic skitters and burbles float on the surface, everything drenched in echo and reverb, like some massive undersea cavern, lit only by a single shaft of sunlight, the sounds of dripping water magnified into swirls of sound, distant percussive pings, an ultra abstract undersea dub. So completely warm and dreamlike, headphones like a diving bell, eyes closed, no need to breathe, letting the sound wash over you, slowly sinking to the bottom of some warm sonic sea. Absolutely gorgeous.
And like all Mystery Sea releases, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each disc numbered, and gorgeously packaged in striking full color artwork.
All right, another "hawk" band. Lately there's been Freedom Hawk, and Doomhawk. Being somewhat "stoner rock", this is one that should also appeal to the same folks who liked Freedom Hawk. And going way back, maybe even Hawkwind. Though the classic '70s rock band that these guys most remind us of is Thin Lizzy. A LOT. They're overtly, utterly under the spell of Thin Lizzy (a band that's more influential now than ever it seems). The melodic but husky vocals are like a gruffer Phil Lynott, the twin guitars twine together harmoniously in classic Lizzy fashion. And heck, in case we didn't get it, they even do a song entitled "For Those Who Love The Lizz" that not only sounds like Lizzy, but has lyrics that cleverly consist of references to that band's songs, like "the hero and the madman", "renegade boys back in town", "that blue orphanage in the shade", etc., as a tribute to their Irish inspiration! Although, overall, Gypsyhawk are more than a tribute, bringing in elements of garage, doom, punk, prog, and good ol' metal along with the specific Lizzy/Lynott influence.
Turns out, Gypsyhawk vocalist/bassist Eric Harris used to be in blackened thrashers Skeletonwitch, another killer band we like quite a bit. What we heard was that he got kicked out of Skeletonwitch, or otherwise quit the band, while they were on tour. This happened in Los Angeles, and instead of catching a Greyhound bus back home to Ohio where Skeletonwitch are from, though, Harris decided to stay in LA and start his own band there! Which, we gotta say, is a pretty darn rock n' roll thing to do. Thus, Gypsyhawk was born. And they're quite a bit different from Skeletonwitch (whose dual guitars dated from a different era) but equally awesome. For those into more melodic stuff, anachronistically proto-metal, especially so. These guys have the riffs, the leads, the melodic hooks, and the heaviness, to be right up there in the "hawk" band pantheon. Rockin' and majestic stuff that should go down well with fans of Lizzy-lovin' bands like Bible Of The Devil, Hot Fog, Falcon, and Valkyrie.
A fine debut, and it's adorned with fantastic purpley-blue and gold artwork (that looks a bit Erol Otus-y), nicely packaged in a digi (the cd) or gatefold sleeve (the lp). And the vinyl version is limited, there's 200 on purple wax, 200 on half-and-half purple/multicolored splatter, and 100 clear with color splatter, we've got an assortment of the first two.
Hopefully we made it clear, we're stoked on this!
Rambunctious 2nd full-length here from these Pasadena, CA heshers, now on Metal Blade, whose rippin' retro rockin' sure as heck still worships Thin Lizzy and also, to a lesser extent, Motorhead. The twin guitar harmonies, the rollicking riffage, the gravely whiskey soaked vocals - yeah it's all about those two '70s proto-metal, partly punky gods, especially Lizzy. Though their influences don't stop there, of course� they do a decent NWOBHM gallop, and channel KISS catchiness and psychedelic Priest too; but not much after, say, 1980 makes it into the mix! And Gypsyhawk do it all damn well, kicking ass here with triumphant fervor, building on the promise of their debut which we also dug a lot. They've got the sound, and the songs, sheer good times for anyone who likes some '70s inspired, high energy hooky heaviness - though, we wonder if the closing cover of Rick Derringer's "Rock And Roll Hoochie Koo" isn't taking things a bit far�? Naw, they're just having fun, as will you. (Did the original version of that song have somebody yell "Smoke weed!" right before the lead break? Well if not, Gypsyhawk has rectified that oversight.)
Put this on, and sure you're probably gonna wanna follow it with some Lizzy, but not before you give the Gypsyhawk another few (or many!) spins. And it just begs for the volume to be cranked to ten or eleven. What else can we say? Really recommended for those who wanna rock! Especially fans of Thin Lizzy, Bible Of The Devil, Slough Feg, and heck that other AQ fave 'Hawk band, Freedom Hawk.
We've said it before, but it bears repeating, we LOVE when we discover amazing music made by one of our customers. Gyron V is in fact our customer / pal Terje Oeveraas, from Norway, who has been quietly self-releasing limited cd-r's, very few of which it seems have made it over here, in fact if we didn't know Terje personally, odds are we wouldn't have heard or seen any of them. So thanks to Jason at Living Tapes, who's stepped in on the 10th anniversary of Gyron V, and put together a sort of greatest hits / career retrospective, gathering up tracks from the first five cd-r's as well as some compilation tracks, and thus we have Muscae Volitantes. But what does it sound like? Well, the label describes the music of Gyron V as being "fueled by folk music and new wave in equal measure", and that's not all that far off. There's definitely a serious neo-folk vibe happening here, deep dramatic vox, urgently strummed acoustic guitars, spidery melodies, a moody intimate ambience, everything echo drenched and bathed in reverb, the opener "Climbing The Blue Pavillion", reminds us a bit of country-goth crooner King Dude, while "In The Circles Of Ether" adds primitive drum machine, a motorik mechanical rhythm beneath, shimmery chords, and some dreamy falsetto vox. There's definitely a new wave feel to some of the songs, but it seems to be more in mood and melody than sound, as most of Muscae plays out like a super intimate home recorded bedroom folk, although at times, we're alternatingly reminded of Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, Death In June, New Model Army, Angels Of Light, Current 93, Roy Montgomery, fans of any or all of those bands will dig this stuff big time, and will most likely find themselves hunting down the original cd-r's as well. Moody and darkly psychedelic, the instrumental backdrops lush and brooding, melancholic and achingly contemplative, the vocals transforming the mood of each song, whether it's haunting and hushed, moody and brooding, or strident and majestic. Gorgeous stuff for sure.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
Great cover art depicting the earth after an impact with an asteroid that leaves a GZA-logo shaped crater. A pretty darn good disc for those who need their Wu-fix.
