It's generally a pretty bad idea to have a pun as a band name. Once in a while, if the band is pretty good, and you put some effort into it, eventually you can get used to it and forget it's a pun (Jucifer), sometimes you don't even realize it's a pun until you finally say it out loud (Vulture Club), sometimes it never gets any easier to say or type (Cream Abdul Babar), and once in a while, VERY rarely, it's actually a pun that makes sense, and suits the music, and thus is actually a perfect name for the band. That just so happens to be the case with Genghis Tron, who combine a punishing super complex grinding downtuned metallic onslaught (like a musical Genghis Khan) and tons of synths and video game sounds, and electronics and glitchery (like the video game Tron?), which is a chocolate-and-peanut-butter combo that is tough to beat.
We've always dug Genghis Tron, but something seems to have happened since the last record. The way we remember it, the old Genghis Tron wielded a non stop torrent of super spazzy buzzy synthgrind, we even described their sound as "synthcorespazzmetalfusion", but Board Up The House, while retaining plenty of spazz and buzz and grind, is a much more mysterious beast, much darker and dronier, with the gnarled blasts of hypergrind, peppered with awesome fuzzy synthy Gary Numan style new wave, all dour and moody, with crooned robotic vocals, tangled swaths of minor key synthdrone, Autechre like skitter, super spare minimal old school electro, some gorgeous washed out dreamy drift, and while some of those sounds end up tangled up with jagged shards of downtuned chug, or churning Neurosis-y sludge, or chaotic screamo freakouts, much of the time the band lets those sounds sprawl, creating gorgeous darkened soundscapes, very cinematic and epic, intense and majestic. It's like John Carpenter jamming with Pig Destroyer sometimes. Very few of the heavy songs make it to their ends without being awesomely complicated by the band's weirdo electronic proclivities, but somehow, instead of sounding like pointless genre hopping, or some infuriating ADD drive aggro rock band, the diverse parts are fused seamlessly, to the point where some soft synth shimmer couldn't sound more perfect than sandwiched between a wall of stumbling grind and a blast of hyperspeed Iron Maiden style guitar harmonies. And actually, the ratio of electronic weirdness and dark droned out synthscapes to full on mathgrind leans WAY more heavily toward the former this time around. And it definitely suits them.
The clincher is the 11 minute closer, "Relief", which is a gorgeous, post rocky dirge, all clean vocals and languorous riffing, the track builds to some serious chugging crescendos, and even offers up a few breathless skittery ambient interludes, but when the band lock into THE RIFF, the one they pound away at for the last 6 minutes, it's total drone-doom-kraut-groove nirvana, a loping seasick drum part, underpinning a slithery minor key riff, thick and relentless, glistening with harmonies, the various melodies slipping in and out of the churning groove, vocals and synths soaring in the background, another one of those parts we wish would go on for another 40 minutes, so much so that we've been driving everyone crazy by playing this track over and over and over.
Like we said above, we always dug this band, but even so we definitely weren't expecting a record this dense and epic and melodically mature. Fans of heavier stuff, of groups like Pelican, Conifer, Isis, Tides, Ice Bound Majesty, as well as dronerock combos like Pharaoh Overlord, Circle, Cave, might get WAY into this record, assuming they can dig some of the more manic freaked out stuff. And this just might be the disc to get Genghis Tron out of the synthspazzgrind ghetto. That is if they even want out.
WAY RECOMMENDED!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Now this is the one we've been waiting for!! The final installment in the 5 part Genghis Tron remix 12" series. For some reason we only ever reviewed the Temporary Residence 12" (each was on a different label), but there were other volumes on Lovepump United, Relapse and Anticon. We're predicting (hoping for) an eventual cd compilation release, but for now, this is the GT remix record not to miss. Nadja. Tim Hecker. Not sure who Dudes You Can Trust are, but they had us at Nadja and Tim Hecker.
Hecker's mix obliterates the original, in fact, if we didn't already know it was a remix, we probably would assume it was a proper new TH track. All warm and washed out and glistening and gauzy and sun dappled and woozy and blissy and dreamy, organic and shimmery, it's the sound that everyone shoots for, but only Tim Hecker seems to have perfected. The fact that there's a Genghis Tron track in there somewhere only makes it even cooler.
Dudes You Can Trust, which we just learned is actually one of the Genghis Tron guys, most definitely have a Nadja / Jesu vibe happening, the original track is stripped down and then bathed in dense shimmer, until most of the extraneous sounds peel back, leaving just a super minimal rumbly buzz, over a looped drum fill, before slipping into a brief stretch of lo-fi Ariel Pink like FM radio drift, and then finally a bit of glitchy minimal electro (!). Weird, but cool.
Nadja's remix takes up the whole of side 2, the first half of which is all minimal and drifty, with muted electronic bloops and bleeps, subtle effects, all very abstract and ambient, barring some barely there glitchy skitter.
Eventually, bits of the original jam burst through, a pounding howling metallic crunch, that sounds like it could have been looped or processed, but there's no time to figure it out for sure, as it quickly blisses out again into a haunting swirling whoosh of blissed out almost new wave shimmer, draped delicately over the remnants of the original track. So cool.
Needless to say, essential. LIMITED as all of the volumes are, this one is pressed on wicked red and green splatter vinyl!
Aaaargh, a band name only an Andee could love... yes, Genghis Tron does rank right up there with, ahem, Corn On Macabre and Cream Abdul Babar, don't ya think? Actually Allan likes the name too. At least, it made him wonder, what does this band sound like? Well, first here's what the label says, then we'll critique:
"The debut EP from Poughkeepsie-based trio GENGHIS TRON. Cloak of Love is a virulent pop mutation that seamlessly splatters acrobatic shred and machine gun blastbeats across soaring synth pop anthems and electronic melodies. Five tracks of absurd brutalia and electro pop glory."
And it's true, some of this does sound like M83 being attacked by Discordance Axis. Some foofy '80s ish electro-dance beat will start up, only to be obliterated by a thunderous shitstorm of aggro axe shrapnel. But although they do make a successful effort at trying something new, Genghis Tron don't really strike quite as even a balance between their blastbeats and synthpop melodies as the description on the disc's obi might lead you to believe. A "virulent pop mutation"? Well it definitely leans heavier on the metal than the pop. Clearly they're more schooled and skilled in the latter. The "pop" elements, if there really are any, come in the form of brief keyboard noodles and retro-techno grooves, but actually that's more about instrumentation rather than style or structure. Alright, we don't wanna get totally sticky about the technicalities, but geez, the aforementioned obi description sure did raise our expectations. But then again, we should have known all that was too good to be true. So let's enjoy Genghis Tron for what they are. Less a true synthesis of synth-pop and metallic blasting than a spazzy collision of the two with the metallic stuff definitely getting the upper hand, the metal secure in crash helmets and seatbelts while the pop gets thrown from the vehicle, crushed on the roadway. But it does make for a spectacular crash, something that fans of The Locust and Mr. Bungle and Knodel and Melt Banana and Schizoid and Agoraphobic Nosebleed and The Daughters oughtta find rubberneckingly riveting. Depending on how you feel about such (diverse) bands, by the time the not-quite-13 minutes of music here are over, you'll either be pressing play again with a big smile on your face, or already have left the room, plotting the destruction of whomever was playing it to annoy you.
Genghis Tron might have a joke name, but their music comes across as serious business. Not played for laughs, anyway. They blenderize genres like electro pop, grindcore, techno, screamo, and heavy metal into a delicious smoothie packed with blasting "boosts" and nutritious noise. Their name is still silly, but also fairly descriptive. The power and might of metal meets the computer age of music making! It's 100mph headspinning mayhem and sorta new wavey '80s synth pop sensibilities in collision, one or both of 'em subverting the other, it's not clear. Those of us here into The Locust and An Albatross and Horse The Band and the like were all thumbs up for GT's hyperkinetic debut ep Cloak Of Love and are equally stoked on Dead Mountain Mouth, which spreads their love all over ten tracks, a whole half-hour plus of gonzoid synthcorespazzmetalfusion. Very cool.
Note too, they have a few tracks on one of our recent Records Of The Week, the Drummachinegun compilation!
First in a series of remix 12"s, each being released on a different label, each with a different collection of uber cool remixers, all tackling various songs from recent aQ highlight, Genghis Tron's Board Up The House. Off to a pretty good start with volume one, just check out the remixers: Justin Broadrick from Jesu, Steve Moore of Zombi, Eluvium and of course Mr. Rob Crow of Pinback and Heavy Vegetable.
First up is Steve Moore and as we might have expected (and hoped), he gets all Goblin / Heldon on our asses, transforming the original into some awesomely creepy and cheesy eighties soundtrack, all murky sci -fi synths and old school drum machine pulse, haunting and cinematic, definitely evokes all sorts of gruesome and scary images and ideas, why isn't this guy scoring movies??? This may be a GT remix, but boy it sure just sound like Zombi. Who's complaining?
Broadrick steps up next and takes a clunky chunky rhythm and chops it up a bit, loops it into a strange mechanized lurch, wrapping the whole thing in thick streaks of Jesu like fuzz, taking the vocals and drenching them in effects and burying them in the mix, adds in some soaring strings, streaks of feedback, and we're definitely in some metal bliss territory, the second half gets a bit heavier, much more doomy and ominous, but still quite shimmery and dreamlike.
On the flipside, Rob Crow tries his hand at a GT remix, and his ends up being the most schizophrenic of the bunch, mangling it into super strange shapes, stripping away all the metal guitars, adding acoustic strumming, only to flip it around and have it all come crashing back down, draping the vocals over some weird bloopy electronics, pulling up the drums, turning it all tribal, before letting it explode back into some face melting crunch. It's almost like they pumped Crow full of caffeine and let him loose in the control room where he proceeded to go nuts with the faders while they were mixing, but it sound pretty excellent.
Finally, GT transformed into deep shimmering dark ambience, fuzzy and gauzy and washed out and expansive, hushed melodic blur, over deep soft swells, eventually building to something a bit heavier and blissier, almost sounding more like a Jesu mix than the Jesu mix, or maybe more of a soft Sunroof! Either way, quite nice.
Pressed on cool grey and gold swirled vinyl, and SUPER DUPER LIMITED. We only got a fraction of the copies we ordered, so these will probably be gone soon.
One of five new tapes from the awesome Austin based experimental tape label, Holodeck. Largely documenting the growing and diverse Texas underground scene of synth conjurers, drone lords, psych meditators, and classical folk devotionalists, each tape conceived as a unique listening experience with beautifully designed minimalist packaging. We listed tapes by Lumens, Smokey Emery and Thousand Foot Whale Claw awhile back, and this time around we have another tape from Thousand Foot Whale Claw as well as tapes by Silent Land Time Machine, Amasa Gana, Survive, and this one from former Pocahaunted and Robedoor member, M. Geddes Gengra, who was also an accomplice with Sun Araw on the last Frkwys collaboration with The Congos.
No drones here or dramatic psych build-ups, just some of the most playful and bubbly modular synth explorations we've heard from a modern day practitioner. "Ball Trick" is more second generation of electronic composers Moog synth experimentation, reminding us at times of Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel or F.C. Judd. A bouncing syncopation and synth squiggles create a helium like atmosphere that gradually turns thicker and more rhythmic, like dance music made from air compressors and balloon textures. "Air Solo" has a more "industrial" soundtrack vibe, and by that we mean like Raymond Scott's commissioned interludes for IBM commercials, which have a hopeful techno futurist feeling, yet one that is not pastiche, but draws from a perhaps naive sincerity that music can be transformatively positive. "Beyond The Curtain", which comprises the entirety of the B side has a drunk machine vibe, like a happy-go lucky android who's had one too many, and runs amok with good intentions, but can barely keep itself upright. Interweaving percolating rhythms turn woozy, some rushing, some slowing, in a topsy turvy tailspin, winding themselves into the ground, moving forward as their edges grind down and garner a smooth roughness. Continuing to dance with busted eyes and blunted extremities yet at some point remarkably gaining balance and maintaining an intense diamond-edged focus like minimalist proto-techno in a Venutian atmosphere sucking up the helium and getting deadly high, endlessly waiting for the inevitable short circuit. Limited to 100 copies. Incredible stuff!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
First proper solo record from the mysterious M Geddes Gengras, who recently collaborated with Sun Araw and the Congos, and has popped up on records by Robedoor, Pocahaunted and others. And while we weren't entirely sure to expect from Gengras on his own, the first clue was probably the fact that this was released on the Intercoastal Artists label, run by folks from Cloudland Canyon, cuz this definitely explores some of the same territory, sprawling kosmische synthscapery of the highest order. The entirety of the first side is taken up by the epic "Waldorf (Pts 1 & 2)", which sends ping ponging electronics back and forth through a field of swirling synths, and percolating melodies, a woozily sequenced sprawl of futuristic pulsations, tinkling chimes, and washed out new age-y shimmer, gradually building momentum, a panning shot of the endless depths of the solar system gives way to some sort of sci-fi chase scene. This definitely fits in well with the usual suspects, Cloudland Canyon, Umberto, Majeure, Zombi, lovers of all things Goblin and Carpenter will definitely be in heaven, but it's not all pure bliss out, the sound is underpinned by a haunting minor key malevolence, that infuses the sound with a definite pathos, the track eventually blissing out into near ambience, before finishing off in a tangle of distorted electronic crunch.
The flipside mixes it up a bit, adding in some skittery skeletal programed rhythms, deep ominous thrum, and clouds of glitch and static. The krautrock vibe is huge on the first track "Night Work", propulsive and motorik, giving way to the way more dense "Cairo", which explodes like a swarm of electronic bees, a dizzying churn of layered melodies, swooning and swirling and roiling, dense and driving, but still spaced out and seriously mesmerizing, probably our favorite track here. Finally, the record finishes off with the third part of the "Waldorf" suite that began on side one, a hazy, washed out softly psychedelic coda, that runs MGG's retro-synth sound through some sort of Tim Hecker like filter, resulting in a gorgeously blurry, crumbly stretch of muted bloopy bliss out that builds to a seriously dreamy, softly noisy, densely layered finale.
Includes a download coupon!!
Yes, the "(Nippon)" in their name means that these genocidal gents are from Japan. Also, they're from the '80s, and very VERY metal. Makes for a cool combo! We'd never heard of 'em until this deluxe reissue recently appeared, but don't doubt it's a cult classic, as we were immediately were struck by the awesome metal craziness of this band. They've got wild dual guitars, evil riffage, and most significantly, truly over the top vocals. INSANE vocals. Dynamic, dramatic high pitched wailings and demonic lower register declamations... Mercyful Fate fans will definitely enjoy this, the guy sounds like an unhinged student of King Diamond, also somewhat like Messiah from Candlemass, but possessed by sinister Japanese spirits, laughing and screaming.
Black Sanctuary was first released in 1988. Musically, the band play classically influenced trad metal (not quite thrash or speed, but sometimes fairly doomy), manic yet melodic, and pretty much hellishly heavy for that sort of thing, though there is one wimpy, almost new agey tune, an instrumental with acoustic guitars and weepy keyboards. What happened? Dunno but as soon as that's over they start killing again, so it's just a weird interlude (on a weird album)! If you picked up the Slauter Xstroyes reissues we listed recently, and are ready for some even more outrageous underground '80s metal with ridiculously expressive vocals, look no further.
It's a nicely done reissue, the cd booklet contains a band history (1979 through the present day!) as well as the lyrics, the English portions of which are exceedingly strange and cryptic, perhaps because of the translation, perhaps not. At the band's request, Shadow Kingdom has provided brand new cover art, but the original cover is also included on the back of the cd booklet, which we always appreciate (so you have the option of which to use, flipping it over if you want). And, there's a whole bonus disc included of demo tracks, different recordings from the album versions.
The 'best of' Guru Guru's psychedelic Krautrock guitar legend Ax Genrich. Includes 2 previously unreleased *live* Guru Guru tracks, plus all of Ax's 1975 "Highdelberg" super session record, and 2 tracks from his 1994 and 1995 amazing solo records. Freak out!
Beatles covers and more done '70s synth-funk-soul-psych style.
With Isobel from Belle & Sebastian, Gentle Waves is something you'll either avoid or drool over.
The third cd release from former Belle & Sebastian-ian Isobel and co. opens with the title track of this EP sounding so familiar we'd swear it was a cover of an old ballad originaly sung by some French chanteuse a la Francoise Hardy. The only thing missing is a pretty la-la-la refrain. Breathless crooning, finger snaps, clarinet, double bass. Slow, pretty and destined for the next string of Volkswagon commercials.
With the sheer number of releases coming from the Kawabata Makoto / Acid Mothers Temple camp, we tend to get a little jaded. But the fact remains that if any of these discs was presented to us as being by a new band, we'd be pretty excited. Such is the case with this one, which IS a new band that we're not familiar with -- an Italian psych/pop outfit with the odd name of Jennifer Gentle -- simply teaming up with hairy Japanese acid guitar guru Kawabata for a fine display of out-there instrumental interaction. Recorded live this past year, this disc includes Kawabata-added versions of two JG songs, both sprawling 12 and 14 minute long psych epics w/ guitars, keys, electronic effects, drums, and bass all over the place. Between these two tracks you get six or so minutes of Kawabata scraping and droning away solo at his Indian sarongi, a nice if eerie respite from the energetic electric Pipes of Pan rituals he enacts with the Jennifer Gentle people. A collaboration not to be overlooked by AMT fans, or anyone into heavy, claustrophobic freakout jams of almost occult power. Now we're really curious to hear JG's prior recordings, if any!
Introducing a new warm and sunshiney combo from SF pop veteran Jon Fellman and co. Gentlekin spin retro psychedelic 60s style pop with soft male vocals much like the Posies or Go-Betweens. Lots of sweet and yes, ever so gentle harmonies and jingle-jangle guitars. Particularly tempting confections are the very first and very last songs ("Fair Weather" and "Something Changes Here"). Delightful!
Hey, all right! This British band is back, at long last, with their 2nd album, and once again sound like a blast from the past (the past circa 1972 or so) even though they're from this day and age. We're almost sorta surprised they're not from Sweden, usually it's Swedish bands like Witchcraft, Graveyard, Horisont, and Noctum who do the bellbottomed retro-rawkin' thing this damn well, but heck the bands Gentlemans Pistols most sound like - Sabbath and Zeppelin - were from England, so it's in their blood after all. We wuz big fans of their self-titled debut a few years back, and are damn happy to hear 'em kicking out the jams once more, this time with new axe slinger the one and only Bill Steer (Carcass, Napalm Death, Firebird) on board, GP's upping the ante on all others in the realm of '70s styled stoner rock with their wailing vox, crunchy fuzz guitar riffage, and hard to beat bouncy energy. They're delivering the goods here, is what we're sayin'. A dozen new songs, all catchy and heavy and authentically '70s proto-metal sounding, they could hold their own with Pentagram and Hard Stuff and Leaf Hound and Highway Robbery, etc.... and they've got a sweaty muscularity to 'em that makes 'em more of a powerful proposition than just some kind of imitation or approximation. They're real, and rockin'. A ripping good time. Another one of those bands, in our view, that should be HUGE, and would be if we ran the rock n' roll world! F'ing recommended.
Blimey, this is our favorite pure heavy rock n' roll album in a month of Sundays, pretty much, well since the Birds Of Avalon debut a few lists back anyway. '70s stylings to the max, fully indebted to the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and the MC5. And paying those debts with freshly minted $100 bills. (If only, in a perfect world these guys would be raking it in like Wolfmother.) Signed to the Rise Above label over in England, home to Electric Wizard and Witchcraft and sundry other sterling stoner/doom outfits, this British band is indeed kinda Witchcrafty, if Witchcraft were more single-mindedly concerned about kicking out the jams... like a more cock-rock Witchcraft perhaps. Certainly Gentlemans Pistols are as much convincingly "out of time" as those Swedes, a bellbottomed retro-rockin' good time that ought to get your head to banging with such should-be car stereo staples as "Just A Fraction", "Widow Maker", and the MC5-ish high energy "Out Of The Eye" amongst the ten equally rad tracks on offer here. Gentlemans Pistols win us over with confident melodic vox, an abundance of catchy riffs, and a bit of clever... what's up with the song title "Parking Banshee"? They're sly ones, these guys, even when displaying some slightly cheesy, lemon-squeezin' rawk and roll lyrics that we suspect are halfway tongue in cheek, on the track "Heavy Pettin'" in particular, which is a slower, bluesy number a la Zep's "Dazed And Confused"... Definitely an album for Pentagram and Leaf Hound and even Raging Slab fans... Recommended, rockers!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
More of what we've come to expect from Australia's shockingly badass Homeless label (The Night Terrors and their anomalously motorik theremin kraut jams aside) - total noisy nasty scuzzrock gutter dwelling punk action! The seven trax here are just one feedback-damaged, mean-spirited, primal rawk blast after another. Yum! As some 'zine or blog called Tape Piss blurbs on the cover sticker, "Rabid vocal presence over sick fuck guitar hate". And, yeah, this 12" did start life as a DIY cassette tape before Homeless vinyl-ized it.
For fans of another Homeless act, Cuntz, and also the likes of Aussie reprobates Cosmic Psychos, King Snake Roost, Slug Guts, et. al., as well as other like minded miscreants from elsewhere in the world such as Pissed Jeans and Baxter Stockman.
Limited to 300 copies. 45rpm. Comes with download code so you can filth up your mp3 player along with your turntable.
It's like Christmas around here (we know, it is ACTUALLY like Christmas around here right now), whenever we get a new batch of tapes from Auris Apothecary, not only is it bound to sonically all over the map, without fail the packaging is totally stellar, often high (or low) concept, meticulously hand assembled, often involving organic matter, or broken glass, or sponges, or scrolls, or who knows what else. Needless to say, every AA release is special, and is often as much a work of sonic art, as it is a piece of music.
This is the first we've heard from the oddly monikered The Gentlemen's Butcher, who have apparently broken up, or ceased recording, as this is apparently the second in a "posthumous recreation of THE GENTLEMEN'S BUTCHER's catalog", but we're pretty into this, the sounds more along the lines of the modern re-appropriation of new age, drifting long tones, washed out hushed shimmer, lushly layered ambient minimalism, hypnotic and hushed, dreamlike and tranquil. According to the label, the purpose of the music here is "to enhance subconscious dreaming while under the influence of sleep, all without the use of pharmaceutical medication", which is pretty spot on, this is the perfect fade out drift off chill out late night blissdrift soundtrack, a gorgeous expanse of barely there thrum, and minimal melodic drift, the program repeated on both sides, so if you can set your Walkman to repeat, you could strap on those headphones and have this play all night long.
LIMITED TO 101 COPIES! Fancy full color "static-textured" glossy cardstock J-cards. Recorded onto grey tapes with tiny full color art in the clear tape windows and each tape numbered on the spine.
We're so glad this actually exists - that somehow the guys in Gentry Lord thought this was a good idea. 'Cause if this band had asked almost ANYONE else if what they were doing was a good idea, the answer would have been no. But fortunately they didn't ask, or maybe, like a heavy metal honey badger, they just don't care. Anyone in their right mind wouldn't make this music, but Gentry Lord (what's with the name?) did, and it's so amazingly rad. Over, over, waaaaay over the top '80s influenced prog/power metal, so shreddingly dense and intense that it comes off as almost total chaos, like each song is really 2 or 3 songs playing at the same time. And then there's the vocals. High pitched, falsetto Mercyful Fate style. Shrieking like King Diamond with his family jewels caught in a vice. Backed by music that sounds like several Sigh albums in a blender. It's like Crimson Glory (if you remember them, '80s mask-wearing prog metal) jacked up on all the drugs and stuff that Jason Statham takes in those Crank movies. With that "everything all at once" production feel, like the first Satan's Host album. And tons and tons of reverb, a vast fantastic cosmos of reverb.
It's only a 4-song ep, but boy does Gentry Lord pack in the "music", tons and tons of bombastic synths, speedy shred guitar, blasting drums, ominous keys, popping bass, sheer shrieking insanity, even some choruses of "nyah-nyah-nyah" laughter. Just frantic batshit WTF?-ness all over the place. Maybe a good thing it's only 4 songs, really, 'cause even then it's overload. It'd be hard for the brain to process many more songs this confusionally brilliant.
We're also happy that Gentry Lord didn't make the mistake of asking a sane person what they thought of the garish cover art (the alien has a mustache!), or ridiculous album title, or their tag line "Magic Metal Mystical Experience"!! 'Cause it's all perfect, perfectly insane.
It says here: "The signals were transferred to understandable forms during Earth Years 2012 - 2013 in the CRYSTAL CAVE studio." Understandable? Uh, right.
By now you're probably sick of hearing how much AQ adores DJ Jester -- the Filipino Fist, the Boca Burger Slingin' Travelling Turntablist. His bedroom turntablist debut River Walk Riots disc is still a bestseller here, a crazy and a super funky/funny ride through hip hop, classic rock, country, and just complete weirdness, where he incorporates samples of Richard Simmons, Iron Butterfly, the theme from S.W.A.T., Run DMC, Hank Williams, Black Sabbath, that Ofra Haza song, Aerosmith, James Brown... the list goes on.
Anyway, like Kid Koala did with Bullfrog, Jester has now released a disc with a band, Genuine Electric Latin Love Machine. It's loads of fun and a logical progression from the lo-fi River Walk Riots. Here the sound is much more hi-fi, the samples are fleshed out with upbeat and booty-shakin' rhythms, and the result is an honest to gosh party disc on the level of Milk Cult, Cat Five, and those Future Primitive live mixes. Yep it's that good. And I have to say the "Edgar" track with the sad sack Simpletext voice lamenting how lonely he is ("it sucks to be me") gets us every time! Very fun, worth a listen, say Windy and Andee.
We're always amazed that so much awesome and little known music from the sixties and seventies continues to be resurrected, and remain very worthy of its cult status. Case in point, this anachronistic synth-heavy psych gem from 1977 by the George-Edwards Group. While punk, disco, glam, bland FM radio, and heavy metal ruled the musical zeitgeist of the era, two multi-instrumentalist friends with a love of synthesizers, home-taping and melancholic spacey folk-pop made a mini-masterpiece in their Detroit, Michigan basement. Briefly mentioned in the Acid Archives book, it doesn't feel so much a late hippie-psych artifact, as it does a sublime and moody soft-rock epic that would have been huge on '70s AM radio in a parallel universe of our fantasies. Where instead of Bread, Chicago, and Seals & Croft, being played ad nauseum, music by Dreamies, Shuggie Otis, Fresh Maggots, Roger Rodier, Emmanuelle Parrenin, Collie Ryan, Biff Rose, Big Star, Scott Walker, Warlus, and of course, the George-Edwards Group would have scored our parallel universe childhood. Yet even that said though, 38:38 is much stranger than we can describe. Often the tracks with their multilayered Arp, Moog, and Mellotron drones and harmonies often sung in falsetto, sound like the less musically-damaged touchstones of what Ariel Pink recorded on his Doldrums album. And though the synthesizers are most prevalent, especially in sci-fi themed instrumental tracks like "Solar Flare" and "Magnetic Variation", other instrumentation like xylophones, autoharps, bells, piano and acoustic guitar play a big part in the compositions. One of our favorite tracks is "Floating Away", a druggy ballad with just acoustic guitar and what is purported to be recordings of ocean sounds, but sound like huge sheets of metal crashing in the background. Even the longest track, the instrumental "Hypertrain" is a kraut-y fuzzed electric guitar raga over drums that reminds a bit of Circle and Cave, while the second to the last track called "Some Fun" features maniacal laughter over a repetitive groove that adds an element of bad trip creepiness to the proceedings. One of the headiest records from the seventies we've heard in a while; those into druggy cyber-space folk-pop weirdness will be very satisfied with this. Solid!
Vinyl only, not sure if there's plans for a cd reissue too.
Something new on the label that brought us Bright Eyes, The Faint and Cursive! Georgie James is not a loner, it is the name of girl/boy duo John Davis and Laura Burhenn. The nearest comparison that we immediately thought of was: if Halifax boy band Sloan collaborated with Halifax girl band Jale this is what they'd sound like! Check out "Look Me Up" and the handclappy "Need Your Needs". Bright, buoyant, polished pop possibly inspired by The Kinks, Bread, The Raspberries and maybe the TV theme song from "WKRP". Sweet!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Produced by Pell Mell's Steve Fisk, the new Fibbers record is heady mix of dark twang, screeching violin, and benefits especially from the experimental guitarwork of one of our favorite musicians, Nels Cline, who like Marc Ribot can go from improv skree to song-oriented work as displayed here, and still imbue his signature sound all over the record. Features one of the best covers of Can's "Yoo Doo Right" that we have ever heard.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another fine Elephant 6 (Apples In Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power...) group. Their debut full length.
Mellow, lo-fi Elephant 6ers The Gerbils rollick along like a travelling band of musical mischief makers. If this quartet of Scott Spillane, John D'Azzo, Will Westbrook and Jeremy Barnes look and sound familiar, well it's probably 'cause they've spent a great
It'd normally be enough that Finders Keepers / B-Music decided to reissue a soundtrack, we'd assume it was awesome just 'cause they gave it their stamp of approval. That's true. But this one, though, well how could it NOT be good, with that title/concept?? Awesome music aside, heck we wanna see the movie. Werewolves On Wheels, for reals? As one of the radio adverts included here as a bonus track puts it: "Here comes the most eerie, the most chilling, the most terrifying motorcycle horror film ever made... Werewolves On Wheels - in color - is the most unusual bizarre film yet... Werewolves On Wheels is the ghoulish story of a wild motorcycle gang lost in the desert, mocking the supernatural... one by one they die... unnatural unbelievable deaths... they are afraid of nothing but they cannot fight what they cannot see and do not understand!" Sounds good, doesn't it? As lovers of another Satanic psychedelic '70s motorcycle horror film, Psychomania, we're sold. And like Psychomania, this has a way cool soundtrack. Which can also be filed alongside another biker B-Music release, Billy Green's Stone OST.
This 1971 low budget chiller thriller's "Main Theme" is 5+ minutes of percussive rhythms adorned with flashes of fuzz guitar, simple and effective, as hypnotic as it is haunting. Groovy! That's followed by the hippie country rock of "Mount Shasta Home", and there's another cool slice of country tonk later on with "One Foot In Heaven", but the majority of the soundtrack is devoted to more abstract, weirdly stumbling, atmospheric stuff, perhaps trying to evoke a tripped out Native American desert vibe, with ringing and rattling and what sounds like wrasslin'... there's sudden stabs of synth and the occasional line of campy movie dialog. Several of the tracks (the three spooky "Ritual" ones in particular) could be sinister krautrock jams, full of thumping hand drums, crackling fire, and synthesizer sounds. Other tracks are more groovadelic, yet creepy too, with propulsive rhythms, acid guitar licks, droning FX, and of course revving motorcycle engines and screams of terror.
For all we know, the movie, the directorial debut of Roger Corman/Russ Meyer associate Michel Levesque, isn't even so bad it's good. But the soundtrack, it's for sure fantastic! If The Byrds had teamed up with Goblin to do a soundtrack, maybe this is what the results would have sounded like!?! We're also reminded of Ry Cooder's Cyleib People - if they jammed with Sylvester Anfang, perhaps. The label suggests a Sandy Bull/Amon Duul team up, and we won't argue with that comparison either. Another winner - of course - from the Finders Keepers folks!!
One of two new dvds from the always amazing Sublime Frequencies label, this one, like a visual version of those Sublime Frequencies "Radio�" compilations, where the compilers would flip through the radio stations in whatever country they were visiting, capturing little chunks of sound, radio plays, pop jams, folk music, etc. And while this is not quite as short-attention-span as those comps, it's generally the same idea, a sprawling, musical and visual collage of live shows, impromptu performances, local scenery, bits of television shows, nature footage, night markets, street scenes, all woven into a slightly psychedelic expanse of sights and sounds, with of course a KILLER soundtrack.
From live nightclub hip hop workouts (covering House Of Pain no less!), to casual jam sessions, seated around a coffee table, players smoking and relaxing on couches, to funky musical reviews, complete with a journeyman band and a sexy dancing and signing teen superstar frontwoman, to far out sci-fi monster movie clips, to strange performances from variety shows, homeless dudes rocking out on busted old Casio keyboards, lots and lots of birds, chirping and trilling over mysterious dronemusic , violin players weaving a cacophonous tuning-up din, gorgeous haunting classical music complete with the instructor correcting his students, sultry nightclub torch singing, amazing traditional folk music and costumed performances, incredible broken glass dancing, acoustic beach jams, complete with the sound of the surf, children playing, and best of all, just tons of footage of people, and places, playing music, hanging out, doing business, relaxing, dining, traveling, living their lives, all set to an incredibly varied selection of music, from folk to pop, to classical and anything in between.
Includes a bunch of extra footage, more amazing performances, extra footage of some of our favorite bands in the feature proper, as well as a a whole segment of trailers for other Sublime Frequencies dvds.
We know nothing about this release except that it's not German. And that it's an awesome slab of tripped out tribal psychedelia. Apparently there's a thumb piano being played but it's doused in FX so it sounds more like strange buzzing insectoid melodies, all wrapped around a propulsive tribal drum jam. No Neck and Sun Burned Hand are the obvious references, and anyone who likes either of those groups will no doubt dig this. Lots of buzz, and shimmering ambience, the drums are a continuous presence, a never ending, far out, outer space drum jam, not over the top, just steady, and subtly intricate, a solid framework for the various strange sonic goings on draped over the top. Thick swaths of flanged buzz drift over soft streaks of high end feedback, vocals are garbled and looped, all surrounding a core of trance-y disembodied skeletal krautrock. Killer stuff for sure. Too bad this is another one of those discs that has been sitting on our shelves for months. It -was- LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Now it's obviously out of print and gone gone gone. We have about 10 copies, and they won't last long, so act fast...
BACK IN STOCK, new slightly higher (sorry) price! Still totally worth it though!
We're kind of obsessed with weirdo LA pop-murk minimalists German Army. We've only reviewed two of their records so far, but they have tons of releases and we've been trying to track more of them down. Everything we've heard has been bafflingly brilliant; twisted outsider genius, with a distinctive sound that straddles multiple genres, and fuses them into tangled, fucked up musical hybrids. It's likely a sound that will leave more casual music fans's heads spinning. But folks who dig their pop music fractured and damaged, who like when electronica is pulled apart and reassembled into downcast new wave, or woozy downer pop, or who love to hear music that sounds utterly alien, or like it must be from an alternate dimension, with just enough sonic landmarks to make it familiar, but in every other way, something nearly indescribable, well then German Army might be for you.
In Transit is a collection of rarities, singles and unreleased tracks, a whopping 27 in all. Many of them short avant pop fragments, others smoldering landscapes of crumbling ambience and buried rhythms, and still others noisy, clattery, experimental post punk. Tracks are laced with bizarre found sounds, random samples, squalls of wild guitar noise, programmed beats, processed vocals, skittery electronics, fields of crackle, whirr and thrum, fragmented twang and bizarre industrial crunch. There's also mysterious whispering, haunting music box melodies, stretches of bouncy electro pop, along side stretches of muddy, muted electronic pulsations, some tracks sound like a proper band, others sound like some bedroom alchemist, or some studio recluse, the sound warps and warbles, drags and speeds up, guitar parts and vocals and rhythms do the same, everything in constant flux, on the verge of collapse, sometimes blossoming into something surprisingly lovely, more often splintering into something distressingly tense and trippy, all of the tracks here strangely mesmerizing, and as a songsuite, In Transit sounds like some impossible lost electronic new wave / post punk / gloom pop gem unearthed from a golden era of music that never existed, and likely never will.
There was a bit of confusion on the last list, when we finally got around to reviewing a record from LA minimalist murk pop duo German Army, we mentioned in the review that the band had lots of records, and as if to prove that point, we ourselves got confused and, uh, reviewed the wrong record. This week, all is put right, we're finally reviewing the 'right' record, the one we meant to review in the first place, and we got the other one in, the one we actually DID review. So double dose of German Army on this week's list, and odds are, if you're anything like us, you're probably gonna want both.
Last Language is not all that removed from their record on Skrot up, drawing from a similar sonic palette, opening with a bristlingly brutalist bit of electro-dirge pop, a glitchy skeletal rhythm, over haunting swirls of low end thrum, the vocals a mumbled whisper, wreathed in gristly buzz, the whole thing blurred and smeared into an abstract electronic creep, a slow stuttery skitter that almost sounds like it could be a backing track for some lost Sensational album, blunted and wasted and washed out, but also prickly and staticky, some seriously heady sonic miserablism. Not all of the record is so bleak and blasted, but it is all hauntingly spare and blissfully tripped out, the band's MO seemingly unfurling crystalline sprawls of rhythm and texture, with lots of space, the vocals almost like an afterthought, delivered in a sort of couldn't-be-bothered drawl, the sound slipping easily from twang flecked, woozy shimmer, to grinding industrial churn, and back again. The vibe definitely seems to fall somewhere near classic cold wave, but this is cold wave from some terrifying other dimension, fractured and freaky, this is some band from the eighties, the sort of band you might have seen at the Scream club, playing with Kommunity FK or the Abecedarians, but transported to some alien world, and then whisked right back, their music mutated and damaged in the process, the resulting sounds, a twisted outsider gloom-wave dream pop, some of the tracks downright lovely, like "Rebuild The Story", which is all hazy, casting some spidery almost Durutti Column sounding guitars amidst soft synthy swells, and some swooping, backwards effected rhythms, and some echo drenched vocal warblings, but others, like that aforementioned opener, are caustic and intense, and still others, elsewhere, drift from twisted new wave, to post-krautrock avant pop, to blown out industrial clatter, to mumbly Residents like art rock whatthefuck weirdness, to almost DHR like electro-crunch, to trippy, drifty, dreamy murk-wave shimmer, with most tracks somehow mashing all of those together.
Fantastic stuff. And like we said, we'd recommend grabbing both of the German Army lps on this week's list, and then tracking down anything and everything else you can find! you won't be sorry. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!! Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Includes a download code!
There was a bit of confusion on the last list, when we finally got around to reviewing a record from LA minimalist murk pop duo German Army, we mentioned in the review that the band had lots of records, and as if to prove that point, we ourselves got confused and, uh, reviewed the wrong record. This week, all is put right, we're finally reviewing the 'right' record, the one we meant to review in the first place, and we got the other one in, the one we actually DID review. So double dose of German Army on this week's list, and odds are, if you're anything like us, you're probably gonna want both.
This self titled lp is on Skrot Up, a label who in the past has given us records by the Grave Babies, Water Borders, Psychic Ills, and they released the recent lp from long time aQ fave and former Net Shaker Ernest Gibson. German Army's distinctive sound is in full effect here, a gloriously dour post punk murkiness, hauntingly rhythmic, ominous drones, creepy sung/spoken crooned vox, opener "Guinea Strong Arm" almost sounds like This Heat at their poppiest, but slowed way down, and filtered through a cracked cold wave filter, a minimal pulsing beat, throbs beneath long moaning tones, and buzzing spidery guitar melodies way off in the distance, all of the sounds gradually growing more and more intense, all except the vocals, which remain perfectly cool and detached, wreathed in occasional swaths of dubbed out echo and reverb, all eventually crumbling to a bleary blackened halt.
And that pretty much lays out GA's sonic template, and it's a good one, all six tracks here sounding like they could be lost eighties industrial post-punk rarities, from the arrangements, to the sound, to the recordings themselves. Lo-fi and raw, darkly primitive, murky and muddy and mesmeric, woozily psychedelic, the vocals in constant flux throughout, way up in the mix, strident and dramatic, then suddenly slowed down to a monstrous gurgle, before being quickly sped up a la Butthole Surfers, but all the while, the music remains a blurred, tarpit miasma, of loping, lumbering bass, primitive programmed tribal rhythms, and swirling old school FX.
Sadly, in the long journey to the US from overseas, the package was a little bit brutalized by the US postal service, so most of the jackets are a little worse for wear, some bumped corners, some slight bends, the usual, so if you're super anal and a collector who needs to have his records be pristine, then you might wanna pass on these, but for everyone else, come get a taste of one of our favorite weirdo outsider dirge-murk post-punk creep-wave combos.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES! Includes a digital download too!
Music For Sick Queers is very strange album from the bowels of the San Francisco synth-punk scene during the early '80s. The band was founded by Stephen Scheatzle and Sandy Stark in 1981, who concocted lumbering, atonal synth blorping and stumbling drum machines that served a very loose backdrop to the flat, cynically delivered lyrics that mocked the paradigms of control - politics, morality, and religion, complete with the requisite Jim Jones appropriation that was commonplace for the proponents of Industrial Culture. Their first single from 1981 featured a song entitled "Booty Jones" which told the true crime story of child molester who kidnapped a young boy and then raised him as his son for many years. The infamy of that song devolved into the suicide of Sandy Stark who in 1984 was awaiting trial on trumped up charges of child molestation. The band continued on with Mark Hutchinson replacing Stark, well sort of... as Stark and Hutchinson were in fact the same person, and the Sandy Stark suicide was all just a publicity stunt to support the 1984 album Music For Sick Queers. Woah!
The album is an exercise in deliberate confusion, with the songs being loose, visceral collages of sicktone electronics lurching around broken rhythms and megaphone vocal distortions that at their best take on the guttural aspects of Factrix or what Debbie Jaffe would later manifest as Master/Slave Relationship (might any of her stuff get reissued?). On more than a few tracks, German Shepherds push the vocals forward in the mix and their lunatic ranting embraces an unrefined, performance art ethos with an affected, flat intonation of sarcastic mockery.
This was one of those records that you would see around San Francisco pretty much everywhere back in the '90s; but obviously they slowly got snatched up, making this a pretty intriguing reissue for those outside of the Bay Area interested in the more out there proponents of DIY post-punk electronics. The Superior Viaduct reish comes wth a bonus 7" of unreleased material, and the LP has a single-only cut not found on the original vinyl. Yup, there is a download code.
Another breathtaking album from Ms. Lisa Germano. Few are capable of capturing in song the shadowy outer limits of total heartbreak and distressed frailty as she does. Her slightly unstable, velvety voice alone can cause your heart to unexpectedly find itself lodged in your throat. Add in the accompanying melancholic strings and willowy piano and you just might be reduced to a quivering puddle of tears. Deceptively potent. Wow. Need we say more?
Vomit shit ha ha ha!
BEFORE YOUR READ THIS REVIEW, BE AWARE WE ONLY HAVE TWO COPIES. WE WILL NEVER GET MORE. BUT I REALLY LIKE IT AND WANTED TO GIVE MAILORDERS CUSTOMERS A CHANCE. SO FIRST TWO CUSTOMERS THAT ORDER IT GET IT. SORRY. AND ODDLY ENOUGH, I ALREADY HAVE A FEELING I
Anyway, album number 132 (or something close to that) from Japanese noise musician / sound artist / professional masturbator Juntaro Yamanouchi. Gerogerigegege (loosely translated as vomit, diarhhea, ha ha ha) has gone through all sorts of sonic incarnations, noisy splatter punk, bombastic japanoise, experimental musique concrete, with some of those incarnations featuring the added bonus of Juntaro's trademark live and mic-ed masturbating. On 'None Friendly' (actually recorded in 1987), he tackles THE DRONE and it's quite a listen. Deep and sonorous, lush and mesmerising. I was convinced it was a synthesizer until I noticed on the sleeve, that it specifically points out that there was 'No synthesizer used.' So what the sound source actually is remains a mystery. Maybe it -is- processed masturbating. I mean, I hope it is. But either way, this is a fantastic record. One extended buzzing and humming, slowly developing hypnotic drone. Really great.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Of all the (in)famous Japanese noise bands, The Gerogerigegege might be the most extreme and unusual. Always super difficult, whether indulging in hardcore spazzrock or destroying piles of 45s in a concept-art conflagration, The Gerogerigegege are also notable for the often audible presence of a middle-aged masturbating man! The recordings on this new cd date from 1992 to 1996, and the material here ranges from what sounds like field recordings in a karaoke bar to near-ambient piano improv to live electronic drones n' tones. Strangely mellow and subdued but nonetheless intriguing.
It was sort of inevitable that this disc would end up being an aQ record of the week. But before we tell you the strange tale of how we got to this point, how we discovered this band and this disc, let's offer up a quick, succinct, three word description that might render the rest of this rambling review moot:
CAVEMAN THIS HEAT.
Sold? We would be. Imagine Man Is The Bastard transported back to the early seventies and let loose in This Heat's Cold Storage recording studio, or take the black hypno kraut noise of former aQ record of the week, Aluk Todolo and strip it down to its bare essence, a sound based almost entirely on rhythm. A pounding, Neanderthal groove, pelted with squelches, and laced with a strangled inhuman mewling, huge chunks of grinding minimalism and long swaths of dreamy shimmering bliss, an ultra intense slab of kraut-doom power violence for sure.
The weird thing is, the first time we hear Geronimo was several years ago, when Circle came to play some shows on the West Coast, and so I (Andee) was happily drafted to drive them around, roadie for them, all that stuff. So one of the shows was at Arthurfest in LA Circle were playing with SUNNO))), in a way-too-small seated theater, based on how many angry folks were turned away (as in HUNDREDS!). I spent the whole time, running back and forth, up and down the stairs, trying to sneak as many people into the show as possible, through the emergency exit, the backstage door, every time I went back out I would run into someone who wanted me to get them inside. While this was all going on, a band started playing, and they were AMAZING. A bunch of cholo looking dudes, handkerchief headbands, all sort of just standing there, behind huge racks of busted looking equipment, making the most unholy racket, a gorgeously destructive rib cage rattling pummel, eventually I had to stop running back and forth, cuz this band was totally sucking me in, and so I just sat down on the floor and let the band's vibrations wash over me, the floor literally shaking violently with every note.
Well, we later discovered they were called Geronimo, but no one knew anything about them, and the folks waiting for Circle and SUNNO))) didn't seem to get it or be that into it at all. We never got to talk to them in the chaos of getting Circle sorted. And eventually it sort of just slipped my mind.
So flash forward two years to the end of 2007, when we highlighted that No Skull Left Unturned comp a list or two back, collecting the various offshoots of Power Violence pioneers Man Is The Bastard. And we were particularly taken with the band Sleestak, a doomy math rock variant on MITB's bassy grind, and their sound reminded us of THAT band, the one that opened for Circle back in 2005. Then we sort of randomly stumbled across this here disc, and suddenly everything clicked, THIS was the band we saw and loved so much, and whaddayaknow, Geronimo just so happens to feature folks from both Man Is The Bastard and Sleestak. And it sounds even better than I remember, heavier, groovier, way more fucked up and WAY more freaked out. So here's a song by song breakdown of this devastating chunk of brutal beauty and monstrous minimalism:
The opener, the 18 minute "Firewater", is perfectly placed to test the listener's mettle, an endless epic stretch of looped high end klaxons and choked cymbal crashes, like a metal intro stretched into an entire song. All around this constant crunch and whine, whip flurries of electronic glitch and crunch, swaths of grinding crumbling analog buzz, while beneath it all a rumbling minimal bass line lopes lazily, until about half way through, when the track suddenly switches gears, and turns super abstract, minimal smears of drone and muted feedback, LOTS of space, and huge percussive crashes spread WAY out. It's like a super minimal abstract doom. But with bits of atonal keyboard and strangled vocals. Like the rhythm section of Khanate scoring a Dario Argento movie. That soaring high end from the beginning of the track returns, along with some speaker destroying analog buzz, still spaced out around long stretches of silence, finishing off with a brief burst of intense fury, distorted vocals, thick wall of crumbling distortion, If you survive the first track, then track two, "Headdress", is your reward, a short sharp shock of rhythmic groove, it's all about the drums, a simple, killer rhythm, the drums slightly distorted, locked into a relentless loop, while all around it, malfunctioning synths and skittering shards of glitch and skree soar and swoop, until it too shifts suddenly, into a mathy breakdown, another mesmerizingly minimal and hypnotic looped drum fill, pounding its way through a sky filled with creaks and groans and whirs and garbled grinding lo-fi squelch, finishing off with another furious blast, this time a spray of super distorted bass riffing, howled ultra effected vocals, and total drum destruction.
"Spiritwalker" offers up another side of Geronimo, the strange homemade electronics muted and smeared into much softer shapes, allowed to drift and shimmer, the drums a muffled pulse, lots of low end rumble and whir, darkly droning and cinematic, thick swells of minor key melodies, over a wasteland of glitch and buzz, slow motion tribal percussion, everything wrapped in a gauze-y haze of psychedelic textures, low end murk, and abstract FX, a gorgeous soundscape, of slow black krautrock ambience. "Medicine Man" is another brief chunk of abstract doom. A simple plodding rhythm, a thick grinding rumbling low end synth, huge blasts of effects-drenched crunch, and ominous spoken vocals and shrieked demonic howls,
And then there's "Facepeeler", which begins with a propulsive drum part, a serious metallic jam, huge bass riffs, shrieked maniacal vocals, and speaker shredding, super stereo panned effects, until suddenly the song slows down into a lurching doomic plod, the drums blown out and in the red, locked into another super simple, but completely intense and relentless slow motion rhythm, again, the sky full of FX, squealing and grinding and buzzing and screeching, but now sprawled over Geronimo's angular what-the-fuck minimal math doom, are some of the most fucked up and intense vocals ever, alternately growling, roaring, howling, whispering and mewling, it sounds a bit like an industrialized Wolf Eyes-ian Oxbow, until you realize that the vocals in question belong to one David Yow, of Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid (if only Qui sounded this bad ass). The suddenly it begins to sound like some Jesus Lizard outtake, slowed down, pulled apart and run through a bank of rusted and duct taped effects. One of those songs that easily could have been stretched out to the length of a whole record. Abrasive and brutal and hateful and super intense and heavy as fuck, but somehow weirdly hooky, and impossibly catchy, it's almost like having your pain and pleasure centers swapped, so having that anvil dropped repeatedly on your head ends up feeling so so divine. Definitely the song we keep coming back to, and playing over and over and over and over...
Finally, the band finish things off with the uncharacteristically mellow "Prints Tie", wrapped around a fluid almost jazzy bassline, drifting keyboard melodies, and shuffling abstract percussion, the Neanderthal electronics are still present, but used much more sparingly, gorgeous and glimmering, a soft smeared minimal workout that almost sounds like a more lo-fi Necks. Super dreamy and darkly shimmery, and just pretty enough to almost make you forget the 47 minutes of glorious sonic punishment you just endured. Almost.
So so so recommended. The minute we threw this one, we knew, THIS WAS THE ONE. Definite contender for record of the year (and actually, since I got it in December, it WAS my record of the year for 2007, even having only had it less than a month!) Folks who dug the Aluk Todolo will for sure dig this too. Likewise if the idea of, say, Mammal doing This Heat songs sounds cool to you too. Basically anyone into brutal rhythms and abstract minimal heaviness NEEDS this...
One of the legendary figures of traditional folk and bluegrass music , Alice Gerrard's new album is devastatingly beautiful, deep and dark. Most known for her collaborations with Hazel Dickens on the Folkways and Rounder labels, the ache in her voice has only made her singing more penetratingly profound over the years. Here it's a tour-de-force, its tone of resilient strength through trying times is brought up directly front and center over compelling but restrained arrangements courtesy of Hiss Golden Messenger's M. C. Taylor, who also produced. The album is a mix of traditional and original songs, from stark folk ballads to vintage country tunes, some with full band and some more spare, with her lovely banjo playing and guitar. And then there's the eight minute a cappella track, "The Vulture", which left us quietly shaking in awe. Just Incredible!
