Here's one that perhaps need no introduction nor description... 'Tis quite impossible to sum up this grand dame's expansive career as one half of Dead Can Dance and film score composer (Whale Rider, Gladiator, etc) on one compact disc, but The Best Of Lisa Gerrard is an admirable attempt on 4AD's part. It offers the merest glimpse of the sweeping grandeur of her classical and world music steeped compositions, but such an enveloping one. Diehard fans (and there are legions of them!) probably own every one of these tracks already, but it serves as a great introduction for newcomers. Evocative and sumptuous.
Lisa Gerrard's soundtrack to the movie The Whale Rider glides and cascades gorgeously. So wonderfully moving regardless of whether or not you've seen the film. It's a finely composed, predominantly instrumental album but one that's laced quite effectively with her ethereal voice. With it's lustrous harp sounds and delicate piano melodies, it very easily could be found filed in the New Age section of some record stores simply towering over the rest of the flock. A soothing delight for any Dead Can Dance fan.
More gorgeous worldly film score work from Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard! Following up her fine compositions for Whale Rider, Ms Gerrard joins Jeff Rona in scoring the soundtrack for A Thousand Roads. Needless to say, she's definitely found her (second?) calling. On its own without the film's visual accompaniment, the soundtrack's numerous diverse voices, woodwind and string arrangements and haunting drones make for a deeply moving 'of the earth' listening experience. Sure to please fans of her solo work as well as those of Dead Can Dance. Guests include John Trudell, R. Carlos Nakai, Ulali, Douglas Spotted Eagle, Primeaux & Mike.
My goodness! When did Lisa Gerrard become Enya?
Just (sorta) kidding! Really though, there is a striking resemblance on Immortal Memory. Following her Whale Rider soundtrack, Ms Gerrard (Dead Can Dance) continues on her solo path of otherworldly aural elegance. Fans have undoubtedly already swooped in for their copy of this sumptuous, ethereal new collaboration with Irish composer Patrick Cassidy. Who'd like to wager that we'll be hearing her on the soundtrack to the next Peter Jackson film? Well, maybe the one after King Kong!
Some of you may know Gerritt as a noise musician, and some of you may know him as the guy behind the super cool Misanthropic Agenda label responsible for that amazing double disc of Merzbow remixes and the Merzbow Frog release. But here, on the latest orange 12" from our pal Drucifer's seemingly infallible Dielectric Records he is neither. While traces of his industiral noise side occasionally surface, this is a way more subtle and creepy beast. Percussive clatter sounding like pipe fights and rushing water, gurgling and bubbling, hissing static, and throbbing crunch are stretched and spread out over a dark and spare soundscape. Very haunting and disorienting. Creepy, squealing clanks and clunks, horroscapes of high-end creaks and indescribable knocks and bumps, coalesce into lugubrious non-rhythms, culminating in the epic final track that is more empty nothingness than anything requiring close listening and evoking dark musty hallways, lonely dirt paths, and all sorts of unspeakable darkness.
A resurrected slab of blown out heaviness from this druggy sludgerock combo, featuring a current member of metallic post rock heavyweights Isis and the Red Sparowes. You won't hear much epic moodiness or brooding metal lope here though. Most folks compare the Gersch to bands like Sabbath, Sleep and Kyuss which is definitely fair, but if you ask us, we're hearing a whole lot more Amphetamine Reptile, like a total timewarp back to the good ol' Amrep days, you know, Halo Of Flies, the Cow Bullies, Lubricated Goat, Unsane, Surgery, Tar, Killdozer, the Cows, Boss Hog, Helmet, Vertigo, King Snake Roost and the rest...
What's weird is that the recording quality sounds genuinely old, almost as if it could have been recorded in the seventies, although the band sounds just a wee bit too metal to actually be from way back then. But the combination of Amrep style heaviness and that seventies production, makes for a deadly combo, and had us imagining the miraculous discovery of some lost tape from this weird band from 1971 called the Gersch, who were somehow channeling the spirit of Sabbath though a super chaotic metallic freaked out buzz. By now you should be able to tell whether this is your cup of tea or not. It most certainly is ours. A steaming hot cup of dense jagged guitars, convoluted mathy rhythms, chugging downtuned grooves, shouted and grunted vocals buried in the mix, massive slabs of rumbling low end, all stretched and twisted into churning, thrashing, pounding seventies-via-nineties metallic RAWK. Awesome!
It's as though Owen from Casiotone For The Painfully Alone and Alec Empire went through that teleport machine in The Fly and got fused body and soul. Insane, insistently catchy pop-punk ditties, with crack cocaine powered casiotones, overdriven guitars and vocals. This is the type of record that, when we play it in the store, people will invariably want to buy a copy or ask "Can you play this ______ cd?" (ie: "take this off") Highly recommended.
Krallice side project!!
With Autechre's "Draft 7.30" being such a dodgy proposition, we've approached the concurrent single from their alter-ego Gescom with considerable trepidation. While it once appeared that Gescom was the more experimental venue for Sean Booth and Rob Brown, the roles may have reversed as "Draft 7.30" is clearly the more obtuse of the two constructions. "SS SA" isn't that far off from the IDM / electronica patterns of disjointed breakbeats and shimmering melodies found on Autechre's "AE5," and fortunately doesn't suffer from any of the problems that "Draft 7.30" did. Not their finest moment, but certainly worth checking into, if not for the music than for the crazy finish-fetish artwork within of spiralling chrome-plated exhaust pipes.
MPEG Download: "ISS SA" [/audio/gescomisssa.mp3]
Nowadays, Autechre invokes the Gescom moniker whenever the IDM duo wants to experiment outside of their well-defined Autechre sound as in their contribution the "Absolute Zero" compilation and their collage friendly MiniDisc only release. Yet during the
Skam has also sadly retained the annoying package that housed the vinyl with the re-issue of the cd, which is just a sleeve of plastic bubble wrap. Oh well, the music inside more than makes up for it. "Keynell 1" lumbers through chopped string samples, which form a surprisingly catchy piece of understated melody to match the steady tumble of a wooden eletro beat. While most Autechre / Gescom pieces contain signature elements that easily qualify them as being by Autechre or Gescom, "Keynell 1" holds remarkable similarities to fellow IDM forefather, Aphex Twin -- especially from the "On" ep or the Phillip Glass collaboration. "Keynell 2" is a return to the Autechre sound, with sputtering mechanical rhythms, cybernetic flanges, and subtle afterhour rave melodies that have been synchronized into an unlikely groove. The third track is one of the Mancunian duo's more minimalist pieces, with the infinite repetition of a filtered hip-hop beat laced with an elegant, yet melancholic synth melody. During the five years that have passed since Gescom released "Keynell," 'intelligent dance music' has run the risk of self-parody, in losing the intelligent element of its name by stupidly searching out overly complex rhythms (i.e. Richie Devine, Otto Von Schirach) or wallowing in the irony of being dorky (i.e. Cex). There was a time when IDM was a viable musical form, and "Keynell" is one that era's highlights.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Gescom is better known as Autechre and has released this collection of fractured sounds, skittering noises, and disjointed beats on minidisc so that the listener can reassemble the order of the tracks to meet his or her own whims. This was ONLY released on mini disc and is located behind the counter.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We have come across a few copies of this early single from Gescom (who is better known as Autechre). Gescom has always been the outlet for the more 'club friendly' sounds of Sean and Rob. This 1994 single is no exception... 303s noodle their way into straight up European electro and early-90s Warp style bleep techno.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
As much as some of us love grind, we definitely don't get enough grind on the list. This split cd, released we think to coincide with a Japanese tour, features unknown to us until now Japanese grinders Gesewa, and SF grindlords Utter Bastard, who since have broken up, but who happen to feature aQ pal Roberto behind the kit.
Gesewa definitely hit the spot, the songs mostly clocking in at less than 30 seconds, aren't so much blazing fast, although there are bursts of extreme grind, instead, Gesewa are of the weirdo, pounding metallic what-the-fuck school of grind, sharing more in common with say Bathtub Shitter than Unholy Grave. Lurching start stop arrangements, plenty of D-beat pound, wild hysterical dueling vocals, one grunty and low, the other shrieky and high, the guitars downtuned and chuggy, plenty of buzz and chaotic noise drenched thrashing, pretty awesome stuff.
Utter Bastard are much more technical and heavy than their twisted and bizarre Japanese compatriots, and tend toward a more classical grind sound, pounding and relentless, the guitars frenzied and furious, the drums pounding and blasting, with mathy complex arrangements, but UB too offer up some bizarre dueling vocals, only here and there, but for the most part, they chug and churn, spewing out some seriously crusty classic American grind. Rad stuff for sure. Too bad they're no more.
Beautifully designed cd as well, super striking layout, with liner notes and lyrics inside.
Okay, I know that the general consensus from people seems to be that the Mulatu Astatke disc (Ethiopiques #4) is the best in the Ethiopiques series. And yeah, it's a great disc. But to really experience the zenith of Ethiopian popular music from the golden era you really gotta have the vocals. The workouts these singers put their vocal chords through are as unbelievable as they are beautiful. Case in point is Tlahoun Gessesse. And we are thankfully blessed with a full CD of his passionately yodelled Ethiopian funk groove. Gesesse was the most popular Ethiopian singer of the times -- bigger than Mahmoud Ahmed, Alemayehu Eshete or any other singers. So great was his vocal stature that he was dubbed "The Voice". Pretty much says it all. And well applied the title is; his vocal control is insane, wavering vibrato all over the place and melisma stacked upon melisma. To boot he's backed by the best in the business: the Body Guard Band, All Star Band, Exhibition Band and Army Band. The usual arrangements of guitar, bass, drums, percussion, horns, piano and incredibly strange organs play the most haunting accompaniment to Gessesse's impassioned vocals. And for what its worth, several of the tracks here were even arranged by Mulatu Astatke. Though Gessesse's career dates back to the fifties, the recordings included here are all from the early seventies. Included is a 30 page booklet with biographical notes, photos (including a two page spread of 45 jackets) and lyrics. This one comes highly recommended!
An absolutely amazing movie and a really cool, albeit peculiar soundtrack, GET CARTER has been a holy grail of sorts, kind of like the Wicker Man. British dance artists (Stereolab among others) have been borrowing heavily from and flat out covering the theme from Get Carter for the last couple years, and the original has finally been reissued (but as an import only, unfortunately). It's a nice package with tons of liner notes and lots of photos from the film. The cd has way more stuff than we remember being in the movie, as well as lots of dialogue. It's an import, hence the steep price. The sound? Some cool sixties spy jazz, some loungey Bond-ish exotica, some hippyish folk rock. Plus, it comes with a poster!
Finally one of our favorite soundtracks, from one of our favorite movies, available again, this time without the crazy steep import price. For those in the know, Roy Budd's soundtrack to Get Carter has always been a sonic holy grail of sorts, kind of like the Wicker Man. British dance artists (Stereolab among others) have been borrowing heavily from and flat out covering the theme from Get Carter for years, and the original has always been tough to track down or crazy expensive, or both, until now.
Just like the import, this version is pretty sweet too, with loads of photos, tons of liner notes, interviews, ruminations on the music, the composer, the director, as well as notes on the making of the film.
But it's the music that counts, and the music is incredible, from sixties spy jazz to loungey Bond-ish exotica to hippyish folk rock to groovy seventies funk, the main Get Carter theme is immediately recognizable, that repeating motif, haunting and sexy and mysterious. The rest of the record manages to be super catchy, yet weirdly confounding, super eclectic and peculiar, flitting from jangly pop song to soundtracky string laden shimmer to woozy druggy groove to over the top showtune style croon to crunchy almost hard rock to classical piano to gorgeous cinematic ambience. If that wasn't enough, all the tracks are separated by short snippets of dialogue, super intense, Michael Caine is a monster, if you've seen the move you know, he's so intense, freaking out, violent and scary, brooding and BAD ASS.
Needless to say, SO recommended. By the soundtrack, and if you haven't already, see the movie!
We're not sure if the band Get Him Eat Him are actually carnivorous, but if their music is any indication, we can tell you that they do have an appreciation for sweet treats of the pop variety. Geography Cones is loaded up with dreamy boyish pop very much along the lines of Death Cab For Cutie and Pinback. In fact, the vocals bring to mind a more gaspy Benjamin Gibbard. Their new label home Absolutely Kosher has certainly become quite the trusted hub of brainy pop studiousness -- Wrens, Sparrow, Rob Crow and the abovementioned Pinback to name a few artists whose releases grace that label. For those of us who always crushed over the shy bookworm sitting in the front row versus the loudmouth rowdy bruiser or eye-catchin' jock Adonis in the back... catch our drift?
A snotty young crew of Providence Rhode Island roughnecks, both male and female, kicking up a seriously intense racket. Aggro, over the top, grinding, post punk / punk rock. Angular guitars, furious drumming, like some long lost Amrep band brought back to life and given a serious hit of screamo, and dosed with a little metallic sludge.
Limited to 500 copies, on cotton candy pink vinyl, in cool hand cut sleeves.
We had heard rumours that this record was going to ROCK and would be the Get Up Kids' return to form, form in this case being the pop/emo masterpiece Something To Write Home About from a few years back. A record so kick ass, and so heavy, and so catchy that we still find ourselves listening to it all the time. Well, the good news is that compared to their last record, the Guilt Show does indeed rock. The bad news however is that while this may sort of rock, when you get right down to it, this is basically super polished, generic, glossy pop rock. Could be any one of millions of bands. Gone is all the angst and tension that made Something... so lyrically intense. Gone too are the amazing songs and crazy catchy hooks. The sound is immediately familiar, but just totally watered down. And thus, I'm sure we'll see this all over MTV. Good for them. If you're new to the Get Up Kids, then you'll find this to be a perfectly decent slab of bouncy pop rock, but for those of us who LOVED this band, it's hard to get over the disappointment of listening to an amazing band get less and less amazing with each record. Do yourself a favor and pick up Something To Write Home About to hear what this band is (was) truly capable of.
Really good, straight up emo-pop. Reminiscent of early Superchunk singing their guts out. Lyric sheet included.
The current darlings of emo pop/punk scene have released this collection of odds 'n' out-of-print ends for anyone who hasn't been collecting since day one. Those of us addicted to melodic pop with punk energy and lots of sentimental boy feelings (just imagine
The first thing you notice is that this record does -not- rock. Not at all. So already you're a little disappointed, because after all, the Get Up Kids did rock. The second thing you notice is how 'indie rock' this record sounds. And I mean like R.E.M-eighties-college-radio-indie-rock. And most of us kind of got tired of that sound years ago. Still with me? Good. 'Cause even after all that, this record manages to be really really good. But not at first. At first we were all sort of horrified. What happened. This is so...mellow. But the more I listen to it, the more I find these songs stuck in my head ALL the time. A whole different scenario than The Get Up Kids' last record, which was instantly catchy, so catchy in fact that we all played it incessantly until we were darn near sick of it. But this record didn't stick until listen #10 or #11. And by that time it was too late. This will definitely lose them some fans, I imagine. But maybe what we hear as 'indie rock' (the negative connotation) is just a band growing out of their underground rock ghetto. Or maybe they just suck now. But if you're like us and LOVED the last record, odds are you'll end up loving this one too.
Okay, there's no denying that We Can't Be Stopped is one of the all time classic rap records. From the cover photo, Bushwick Bill on a stretcher after being shot in the face, to the brutally realistic tales of gang violence, drugs and sex, to the weirdly poignant classic "Mind Playing Tricks On Me". Such a great record. So what happens if you take this classic and slow it waaaaayyyy doooowwwn. Well, it takes on a whole new vibe. DJ Screw (the originator of the screwed remix, essentially just slowing records down to a cough syrup like speed) may be gone, but his spirit lives on, as any number of remixers have taken to screwing and chopping classic albums. We Can't Be Stopped is still classic, but with its beats slowed to a lugubrious crawl, and the rapping turned into a slow motion slur, it's even creepier and more haunting than the original. Takes a while to get used to it (a bottle of cough syrup will definitely aid the process) but once you do, it's a dark, and dangerous (and very very slow) ride.
Profound Lore offer up yet another slab of twisted death metal, this one from a Canadian duo called Gevurah, whose sound is a furious, gnarled, downtuned, blackened, furious churning heaviness. After a brief lumbering doom-ic intro, the band immediately launch into a sonic onslaught that belies the fact that there's just two guys making all this noise. Unlike much of the blurred, twisted death metal we've been obsessing over of late. Gevurah lace their black death with plenty of melody, the songs often shifting into dark expanses off woozy melodic midtempo drift, but just as often exploding into Deathspell style atonal gnarled black noise, and returning here and there to that lurching doom-ed pound that opened the proceedings, but in all three cases, those elements are woven seamlessly into Gevurah's relentless, and furiously frantic death metal churn, the result is actually something that often transcends the tropes of every day death metal, transforming Gevurah's debut ep into something much more varied, more textured, and ultimately much more satisfying, and definitely the sort of blackened death, that might just appeal to folks who don't always find themselves digging death metal so much...
It seems Japanese psychedelic noiserock insanity in the tradition of the good ol' Boredoms is alive and well! We're talking crazy Boredoms back in the day, at their hyperdelic height, but NOISIER. This debut album from Japanese outfit Gezan (in English, that may mean Descending, which makes sense given a close look at the cover art), unleashed over there in 2012, now gets a domestic release via Important and we gotta say, hell yeah, 'cuz Gezan rulez! Don't just take it from us - Gezan has garnered adulatory cover-blurb endorsements from the likes of Merzbow, Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins) and Agata (Melt-Banana); and apparently Acid Mothers Temple guru Makato Kawabata was the one that brought 'em to the attention of Important, citing Gezan as his favorite live band in Japan. Seems like those guys all think of Gezan as nextgen torchbearers for the classic Japanoise surreal psych sound, and we're hearing it here, freshly intense and energized, dark and psychotic.
The buzzing distortodelic chaos of the aforementioned early Boredoms comes to mind right away, as leadoff track "Mishima To Kuchibeni" hoves into earshot, riding a headcaving Butthole Surfers sorta riff, warped and damaged, FX bubbling up everywhere. The in-the-red 'Tokyo Flashback' acid rock sound of psychedelic speed freak gangs like High Rise and Mainliner is obviously also deeply encoded in Gezan's DNA. And even harsher stuff, like Eye from the Boredoms' earlier noise unit Hanatarash, is touched upon here too - the industrial-strength devastation of "Kouchuu No Wakai", ferinstance, sounds like Merzbow meets Guitar Wolf! Meanwhile, the likes of "Kyoushin" channel the blackhole heaviness and lumbering, lurching feedback-drenched doomic riffery of such notorious Japanese psych-prog heavies as Zeni Geva, YBO2 and even Fushitsusha. Dang. Gezan do it all, in terms of freeform, unafraid, bold & bombastic freak flag flyin'. Never a dull moment.
You get glitched-out rhythmic cut-up shenanigans, organized screaming, spacey shoegaze warble, fractured blues, even some bleakly beautiful parts. There's often strange, sudden segues into cinematic samples, echoing whisper-voiced interludes, and distortion-bombed soundscapes. But these are structured songs, mind you, and as experimental and extended and distended as they are, there's eventual rock n' roll payoff, usually. Also, Gezan are capable of surprises all the way through to the end, treating us to the (mostly) melodic blissed out finale "Haru No Hiza", didn't see that one coming. Nice.
We've made a ton of references here to other Japanese bands - and should also mention some more, Gezan is likely also for fans of LSD-March, DMBQ, Omiode Hatoba, Up-Tight, and Boris (if they went totally nuts). But you don't have to be a Japanoise nerd to get into Gezan. Or at least, you don't have to know you're a Japanoise nerd, yet. Gezan's blown-out, blown-up brand of noisy psychedelic mayhem could and should appeal to lots of folks yet to delve into Gezan's overt antecedents. Just be into distorted, damaged, freaky, rocking WTF-ness and you'll dig this!
With a name like Ghash, we kind of expected some sort of old school crusty punk, but this is some seriously unhinged and hateful buzzing blackness. Beginning with a weird ambient dronescape, complete with guttural growls and anguished wails, the band quickly stumbles into some of the strangest midtempo black metal we've heard in a while. Minus the drums, we'd be in serious Abruptum territory, simple riffs, repeated over and over, hovering in swirling fields of black ambience, with completely fucked up, reverb drenched, demented vocals, the sound is so abject and miserable, mournful and hopeless. The ultimate depressive suicidal blackness, but the drums... the drums change everything. Super simple and rigid, no fills, hardly any cymbals, just a never wavering machinelike midtempo beat. It's so relentless it sounds like it must be programmed, and the riffs are locked in perfectly with the drums, making it sound like this black buzz machine. A neverending loop of riff and drum beat, while over the top those vocals wail and howl, so doused in effects they sound like strange animals howling at the moon. Completely bizarre but totally mesmerizing. AWESOME.
We were all prepared to write this review thinking that this Ghast, from Wales, was in fact, the same as the Ghast whose last two split albums we had reviewed recently. The sound was quite different, but hey, bands do that all the time. Thankfully, we dug a little deeper and discovered that indeed there are two different Ghasts, one French Canadian, one Welsh!
This Ghast is the one from Wales, and since they are in fact not the Ghast we already knew and loved, they are totally new to us, but there's plenty of room in our shrivelled black hearts for two different Ghasts, which is a good thing as we're starting to think we love these guys too. Where the -other- Ghast traffic in a crumbling lo-fi slow motion blackened doom, the Welsh Ghast, on So May The Curse Bind, their first proper full length, up the black quotient quite a bit. Right out of the gate, opening track "Crawl, Blighted And Afraid" explodes in a flurry of punkish blast beats, harsh vokills and buzzing frenzied riffage, raw and primal and a bit lo-fi, this is definitely frosty and grim sounding, but before too long the band can no longer resist the black hole pull of doom, and the tempo slows to a lurch, the blast beat transforms into a pound, the riff churns and chugs, occasionally, spinning out into little squalls of furious buzz, the melodies minor key and epic, a relentless black doom dirge, that shifts back to blasting buzz to finish off in a blaze of blackened fury.
The rest of the tracks follow a similar path, veering back and forth between stumbling chaotic frenzy and lumbering doomic crush, buried within the murk and the mire though are haunting hook filled melodies and surprising guitar harmonies, which add a bit of texture and color to the blurred blackness. A few of the tracks slip into a D-beat pound, others stretch out into woozy seasick almost-waltzes, while "Pale Robe" slows everything waaaaay down for a weary depressive crawl through clouds of Burzumic buzz and spidery minor key guitar melodies, a sort of black doom ballad, melancholy, miserable, and weirdly beautiful.
This Ghast thing continues to confuse. There's the sick and sludgey Canadian Ghast, and then there's these guys, a Welsh blackened doom horde whose sound is similar enough to keep us constantly wondering if we've got the right Ghast. Both bands traffic in slow and low and heavy, serious doooooom for sure, but the Canadian Ghast are filthier and crustier, more a twisted sludge, like Bunkur or Moss, whereas these guys are more classically black doom, their sound melodic, but still grim and black, flitting easily from epic doomed trudge to frenzied blasting blackness. We've been digging their May The Curse Bind record A LOT (it was also just reissued as a swank double lp!) and had been DYING for more, and finally here it is, in the form of Terrible Cemetery.
First, how amazing is the name Terrible Cemetery, it almost sounds like one of the guys in the band let his kid name the record, grim and scary maybe, but also sorta dorky, which just makes it cooler. The music though does sort of evoke a scary cemetery, the opening track a haunting loping bit of midtempo minor key blackness, with a KILLER main riff, seriously harrowing, lumbering melodic doom, rife with sick guitar buzz, plodding drum pound and maniacal screeching vocals, the second half finds the sound shift into full on black metal, with still more killer riffage, weirdly melodic, wound around a relentless blast beat, and more shrieked vox, total classic (c)old school black buzz for sure, raw and filthy and EVIL.
The 20 minute title track is up next, "TERRIBLE CEMETERY", and right away it sounds like it, buzzing bass plod, spare skeletal drum pound, then clouds of frenzied buzzing guitar, howled demonic vokills, the vibe mournful and menacing, a gorgeously abject miserablist black doom death march, super emotional and intense and heavy, the track explodes in a brief stretch of gnarled black buzz, the guitars droned out and melodic, lending the blackness a strange sense of melancholy, only to shift back into a gorgeously epic plodding dirge, again epic and majestic and gloriously fraught with emotion, and like the first track, totally classic black metal flecked TRUE DOOM!! TROOOOOOOOM!!
We're pretty sure we have this Ghast thing all sorted out, there's a Ghast that's Welsh, and whose May The Curse Bind just got reissued on vinyl, who traffic in a sort of doom laced black metal, then there's this Canadian horde, whose sound is way more filthy and fucked up, a sort of glacial blackened crawl, all downtuned sludge, crumbling distortion, and harsh gurgled demonic vokills, not to mention the strange swirl of grit and grime and buzz and hiss that seems to surround everything they do like a glorious black sonic cloud of hiss and crackle. And that's precisely what you get on these two tracks, two extended filthfests, crushing, lumbering dirges, each a lurching sonic behemoth, howling and hateful and despondent and depressive and heavy and brutal as fuck. These ultradoom crawls creep malevolently along, the vocals sometimes doused in reverb, sometimes just grunting and gurgling demonically, melodies played out over minutes, buried in the murk and mire, super dynamic, and a little bit bizarre, especially the second track, the vocals sounding almost like a Muppet, the sonic death march being bombarded by strange electronics and streaks of skittery static. Pretty goddamn great. These guys should really get the same love bands like Moss and Bunkur and Corrupted do...
We'd never heard of Abandoner before, but apparently, they're a sort of blackened post industrial drone outfit made up of members of US doom sludge juggernaut Unearthly Trance. Weirdly enough, UT would have been a perfect sonic match for Ghast, maybe too perfect, so instead, we're treated to, or punished by, Abandoner's caustic soundscapes, all wild bolts of feedback, strange processed noises, loads of buzz, and rumble, guitars not so much played and allowed to spew gouts of crunch and howl and skree, everything wrapped in a hazy field of murky thrum, laced with damaged electronics, noisy, but not NOISE, more like a sort of even more twisted, less melodic Wolf Eyes? But definitely cool stuff, and an interesting foil to Ghast's monstrous downtuned black doom trudge.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Some seriously grim blacknoise weirdness here...
We first heard from Ghast on their split with Yoga, we were pretty obsessed with both bands and have been on the hunt for more from both ever since.
So Ghast have returned, on yet another split, offering up two more loooong tracks of their unique not-quite-doom, a dirgey crawl, that spends as much time shimmering and buzzing as it does pounding and lumbering. The opener here is 21 minutes of grinding corrosive soft buzz, think Tunnels, Wolf Eyes, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, that sort of thing, deep whirring low end, drifting beneath clouds of metallic buzz, plenty of fuzz and hiss, beneath it all, there does seem to be some sort of thick tarpit like riffing, but it's WAY down, more like a distant drone than anything overtly metal, but it does lend the track a serious sense of dread and foreboding, as if any second the track might splinter into pieces and explode into crushing doom, but it never does, instead ratcheting up the tension, like the soundtrack to some super abstract foreign horror film. An actual rhythm dose seem to develop, but it's cobbled together using hissy white noise, ominous whirring synths, buried and blurred vocals, and a super drawn out low end melody, creeping and creeping before the low end drops out leaving just a sea of high end electrical buzz, and weirdly enough the sound of sheep (!). The second track clocks in at nearly 12 minutes, and again, is more ambient than anything, bits of crackle, melted tape loops, field recordings, processed electronics, all blurred into a strange undulating drone, peppered with fragments of melody, some buried riffing, which finally crawls up from the murk, and the band, for the first time in nearly half an hour, launch into some lurching lumbering doom. But the sound is not massive or crushing, instead, it remains murky and muted, more bass heavy than anything, if there is guitar it's tuned WAY down and is locked in with the rumbling bass, the rhythm mechanical and machinelike, with a definite industrial vibe, the track slipping into brief stretches of ambient drone-like shimmer, before the band lurches back into action, pounding away, stripped down, but still heavy and doomy and mysteriously grim.
Rape-X existed until now, as an MP3 file someone sent us a looong time ago, a half hour slab of blown out metalnoise, industrial drone weirdness. We'd notice it on the computer every once in a while and fire it up, and always think, "wow, this is pretty great, I wonder when they'll have a record". Well here it is. And Rape-X is a pretty good match for Ghast, seeing as they traffic in a similarly abstract doomy ambience, falling closer to Wolf Eyes or Blue Sabbath Black Cheer than any classic sort of doom. The vocals are huge part of the sound, and are harsh and super processed, demonic and maniacal sounding, giving the track a bit of a Whitehouse feel, ranting and proselytizing over a constantly shifting backdrop of blackened noise and droning harsh ambience. A glorious metallic cacophony, wreathed in hiss and skree, a bit like a way more static Sunroof!, the sound roiling and churning below the surface like some rough black sea, while that hellish voice continues to testify, the unholy scripture from some lost black gospel.
Caveat Emptor, though: these have a pressing defect, it's minor, but it's definitely noticeable. The band was contacted about it, but apparently there's some bad blood with the label, so there will never be a new, corrected version, so we figured we would list it anyway, since otherwise it's pretty amazing, and the defect is so slight. Basically, the problem is, there's a digitial click at the beginning of each track. Annoying, distracting, yes, but it doesn't affect the songs themselves, so if you can handle that (you can also edit out the clicks yourself on your computer when you import it into your iTunes or whatever), then by all means pick this up, some seriously abject and harrowing doom-ed blacknoize.
Yoga is a pretty unlikely name for a black metal band. But then Yoga from Portland, Oregon are a pretty unlikely sounding black metal band. So much so that we're not even sure they really are black metal. Or metal. But they are. Sort of.
The sound of Yoga takes the lo-fi practice space recordings of grimmest of the BM outfits, and combines it with the murky muddy noise drenched blur of bands like Wold. But then take it even further rendering their sound so muted and lo fidelity that even when they're blasting furiously, it still sounds like a busted music box or an old black metal 78. And then there's the fact that Yoga spend a good amount of their time not blasting blackly, but instead, crafting synth heavy Goblin style film music, all throbbing bass and buzzing synths, creepy minor key melodies and tons of haunting ambience. Those songs too are wreathed in a foggy night-on-the-moors sort of murk, which ties those songs closely to the more blackened ones.
The strange combination of grim and Goblin, the tripped out fucked up recording quality, the damaged arrangements, the looped hypnotic quality, turn Yoga into something totally out there, most likely way to abstract and psychedelic and deliriously lo-fi to appeal to folks �looking for grim buzzing blackness, but for the rest of you, if you can try to imagine some impossible mix of Philip Jeck, Wold, Goblin, the Skaters and some of the super weird EEE unblack bands, all produced by John Maus and Ariel Pink, then you will flip for this.
The other band on this split, Ghast, are also not at all typical black metal, although they are much more distinctly metal than Yoga. Their sound is a super spare, slow motion blackened doom, still plenty lo-fi, the drums murky and down in the mix, the guitars more of a distant moan, sometimes soaring to the forefront, before drifting off again, the vocals super distorted and effected and harsh. All around this plodding blackness, creepy drones soar and shimmer, wail and keen, offering up a mournful abstract backdrop for Ghast's miserablist blackdoom. There's also a live track, where Ghast's sound is transformed into a crumbling blown out blackened drone, sounding almost like a metal band playing from behind a brick wall, the whole thing captured using a mic in a bucket of dirty water. The result is pretty fantastic, only the drums are at all identifiable, and then just barely, all the other instruments have been transformed into a mesmerizingly damaged, murky, muddy, sludgey pulsing drone. Awesome.
We got these direct from the band, and got the last copies, so once we run out, we might not be able to get more...
Must suck to be Ghast, considering that pretty much every review has to start with "not to be confused with the OTHER Ghast", so it probably sucks for the OTHER Ghast too. But in this case, we're not talking about the Welsh black doomlords, we're talking about the Quebecois black doomdronedirge horde Ghast, with an umlaut over the 'A', whose sound is a much more raw and filthy proposition, droned out and blackened, and who strangely enough seem to only release splits. Their first with avant black metal weirdos Yoga, their second with blacknoize horde Rape-X, and now, this one, a brand new split with Japanese ultra doom sludge outfit Zombie Blasphemy.
As always, Ghast do not disappoint, offering up two lengthy slabs of abject, nihilistic slow motion creep, lumbering, lurching, troglodytic crush, the guitars massive sprawls of low end buzz, feedback everywhere, like Eyehategod doused in (more) cough syrup, a funeral crawl, a throbbing cloud of buzz and thrum, the vocals a beastly grunted howl, way off in the distance, keening high end skree plays out a melody stretched out over minutes, the riffing glacial and oozing and black, the track gathering momentum eventually, but peaking at a plod. Somehow, the other Ghast track is even MORE minimal and abstract, loose drumming laid over a haze of feedback and amp buzz, distant sirens, almost ambient, no riffs, just soft swirls of guitar noise, and some strange mewled vox, all the while the drums pounding sporadically and erratically, the last few minutes, the various strands seeming to come together to form something much more dense and droney, still black and abstract, but a strange sort of chanted sludge raga ritual. Awesome.
We had never heard Japanese sludgelords Zombie Blasphemy before, but much like their sonic compatriots in Coffins, they traffic in slow and low extreme doom, with an awesome guitar sound, so distorted it sounds like your speakers are fried, the vocals an impossibly guttural grunt, this is Moss / Corrupted style doom, but even more sludgey and crusty, the guitars occasionally offer up wild tangles of unhinged spidery melodies, almost leads, draped over the woozy warped lumbering chug and churn, the band do crank the temp here and there, but even then, the sound is SO blown out, and low fidelity and in the red, it turns everything into a glorious blackened noise drenched buzzy blur, and when they unfurl some wild psychedelic leads during the final track, it almost sounds like some sort of Tim Hecker / Merzbow mash up. So good. Total metal noise drone doom radness. For sure need to hear more from these guys. And hell, wouldn't hurt to finally get a non split Ghast full length too.
Totally recommended blast of twisted noise drenched extreme heaviness, two different, but equally twisted and genius takes on ultra slo-mo doom drone sludge...
Finally back in stock, one of the AQ-staff's all time favorite drone recordings! This came out in '95, but we thought we'd list it anyway, after ordering a batch directly from the label 'cause we like it so much. Electronic instrument inventor Q.R. Ghazala (you may remember him from the instrument-inventor compilation "Gravikords, Whirligigs...") presents his "first insect symphony", performed on his "Vox Insecta" -- a synthesizer than specializes in simulating insect voices! The beautiful instrument (depicted on the cover, it looks like some sort of Art Deco stenographer's machine) may or may not always sound like a swarm of insects, but it certainly produces some gorgeous drones... Dark stuff, with keening higher-end tones supported by bass-y undulations. Creepy and beautiful. For fans of Tony Conrad and Lustmord and that sort of thing. So totally recommended!
There's very little known about the British born artist Abigail Ghimp, other than that she died in 2012 of a heart attack at the age of 30. The recordings on this cassette are presumably the only remaining traces of her artistic career, as her belongings and artwork seemed to have vanished after her death. But when she was living in Belgium and working on a series of experimental films, she handed out a number of cassettes to colleagues and to some experimental labels around Belgium and Germany of the soundtracks to the unfinished films. One of these tapes ended up at garage sale of some dude who used to run a record shop only to be discovered by proprietor of Soft Corridor records, who was smitten by the mysterious looping collages of slow-motion chants, decontextualized tribal rhythms, and tape-delay aggregation worthy of comparisons to Robin Storey-era :zoviet*france:. In the quest to find the "Gail Ghimp" who had penned scant information on the hand-dubbed cassettes, Soft Corridor discovered that Abigail Rosa Ghimp had recently died. Keeping the recordings on a micro-edition cassette is a pretty perfect homage to this strangely poetic and morose tale. Ghimp's soundtracks are narcotized collages of Dada appropriation, some of which presumably came from the African recordings she grew up with in London. She snaps those samples into monochromatic patterns of chiming guitar, distantly dreamy chants, and eerie rhythms are as evocative and profound as those haunted turntable collages from Phillip Jeck or even those interstitial fragments that dot the Demdike Stare recordings. So very nice.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Japan's premier psych-folk outfit produces another amazing domestic 7". One song is from 1989; the other is from 1994, another version of a piece from the first record; said new recording sounds utterly fresh and rich and features a blazing, screeching guitar solo from White Heaven's Michio Kurihara.
Hallelujah! Ghost are back! Since Drag City's simultaneous release of their Snuff Box Immanence and Tune In, Turn On, Free Tibet albums back in 1999, we hadn't heard hide nor hair of Japan's wonderful acid-folksters Ghost (unless you count their liason with Damon & Naomi). Indeed we'd begun to wonder what was up with Masaki Batoh, Michio Kurihara and crew -- we missed them! And in those four or five years, it seemed that fans of '70s inspired Japanese psychedelic music had switched their allegiance to the much more prolific Acid Mothers Temple camp led by Kawabata Makoto who emerged in the meantime. But we Ghost fans know that, as good as AMT can be, in the realm of cosmic communal Japanese hippy rock, there is no comparison. Ghost rule that particular hypnotic underworld. Depth, beauty, originality -- on all those counts they have it over AMT. Unlike the excessive pastiche of AMT, there's nothing tongue in cheek about Ghost. And as for quality control, well, you do the math.
So, needless to say, we were supremely excited to get this brand new Ghost album! The sun was sure 'tangging' the day this showed up. Word was that this might be Ghost's best album yet, and while we each have our favorites (mine's Lama Rabi Rabi, with their self-titled debut in close competition) this was immediately revealed as a contender. In short, it's freakin' great. Ghost explore some heavier, rockier, more prog-tastic directions in some of these songs, yet let their incomparable delicate psych-folk flow as well. Stirring guitar/drums workouts coexist with Batoh's fragile vocals and trembling sunshine melodies. And Terrascopic trainspotters will be interested to know that Ghost interpret songs by both Syd Barrett and the obscure '70s Dutch prog-rock act Earth & Fire, and make them completely their own. The album takes its name from the four-part, 25-minute suite that opens this disc, which ventures from lovely, hazy jazz-inflected jams to bombastic, utterly prog-rock flourishes complete with grandiose choirs. That alone is worth having waited four or five years for!
The follow-up to 2004's magnificent Hypnotic Underworld from Japanese communal psych vets Ghost is finally here! The heavy-prog moves of that album are still in evidence, as well as their perpetual penchant for otherworldly folk -- and, as well, on the nearly half-hour "Hemicyclic Anthelion", Ghost venture into the realm of what goes beyond mere prog to sound remarkably like avant-garde 20th century classical! Ghost are certainly an ambitious band, with talent to match. With the dark, abstract, droning vibes of "Hemicyclic Anthelion" hanging over the proceedings, In Stormy Nights proves to be, well, a dark and stormy album. Downright aggressive, even, are the trio of tracks that follow it in the middle of this disc.
True, In Stormy Nights starts placidly enough with "Motherly Bluster", classic Ghost style acid folk, Batoh's calm voice singing from some mystic plane of crosslegged bliss. But then, the aforementioned "Hemicyclic Anthelion" takes the stage -- literally, as this piece is apparently constructed from excerpts of live in-concert improvs, an electro-acoustic, slow-mo freakout that represents Ghost at their most out-there and experimental. Following that, it seems that Ghost have fallen to the Dark Side of the Force. Indeed, the ominous "Water Door Yellow Gate" actually reminds us a bit of the music from Star Wars (!), with martial drumming and majestic chant. "Gareki No Toshi" is noisier, with distorted vocals and suspense-film urgency. What's next? Something even more frightening -- a stirring cover of the song "Caledonia" by none other than cult ESP-label sixties psych-rock "tribe" Cromagnon!! Wow. Of all of Batoh & Co.'s various cover versions over the years (they've done songs by Syd Barrett, Pearls Before Swine, The Rolling Stones, and Earth & Fire, just to name ones we can think of right now) this has to be our favorite. Partially 'cause we'd never thought we'd hear a Cromagnon cover, partially 'cause it's such a great song, and partially 'cause Ghost do it so well, complete with bleating Celtic horn, black metallish vocal rasping, and swirling, droning, bellicose ambiance. For us, this penultimate track is the climax to the album, but Ghost provide a coda, "Grisaille" coming full circle back to the gentle balladry of "Motherly Bluster", the dark side having perhaps been vanquished... for now.
Gatefold vinyl or cd, the domestic full-length debut for the psychedelic sounds of Japan's answer to Can. "Who Found A Lost Rose In The Warship?"
Ghost and Drag City bring us this cd + dvd set, a quite fine, fan-o-centric release that will definitely excite the many folks devoted to these modern masters of Japanese psych! Indeed, one customer of ours, Brent from Chattanooga, already chimed in with a review (to save us some time and trouble he says), which goes something like this: "OK, first things first, for all of you Ghost freaks out there, there's no reason you will need to even read this review. Just order it now, cause it's great, it's songs that're not on anything else you've got, and it's, well, it's Ghost. One hour of folked-up improv music, from their early days, say late 80's. Plus not to mention the two hour DVD that spans they're entire career. But, if this is not enough, well read on. For all you fiends of the Finnish psych bands like Avarus and the rest, then this disc will please. Very krauty, droney, out there stuff that sounds like it was recorded in some dark forest in a remote part of Japan. Tribal, chants, moans, it's all here. Even the Jewelled Antler fans will love this stuff..." And that's pretty much our take on it too. (Thanks, Brent!)
We'll expand a bit on his review by saying that although at first glance the music cd is perhaps overshadowed by the novelty of the DVD that's got two hours of rare live video footage (of a band that not all that many people over here in the States have had the opportunity to see, after all), we think that it's the cd that's what you'll keep coming back to, after you've several viewings of the DVD of course. The cd is certainly not a *new* Ghost album or anything -- and is about as far from the professionally progged-out compositions of Ghost's well-liked, most recent album Hypnotic Underworld as you can get. These "Unreleased Ghost Tracks From the 1980s" see Ghost in sorta Sunburned Hand of The Man or NNCK territory (or the Finnish/Jewelled Antler realm as suggested by Brent), doing improvised fractured folk (a la first album outtake "Cow's Green Cosmic") and noisy free-jazz freak-outs (as on the half-hour minute track "Children Of The Earth"). Even without the dvd disc, we'd be recommending this, it's right up the AQ alley.
Meanwhile, the DVD assembles home video style footage of Ghost performances from the early days (all the way back to a solo Masaki Batoh protest "concert" in front of the Chinese embassy in Tokyo, back in 1984!!) up through 2004. The more recent footage (along with the menu graphics and box cover) reveal just how dangerously slick Ghost have gotten, while the earlier stuff has a charming amateur edge to it. In either case, a treat for Ghost fans -- though we wonder if a band that makes such otherworldly music (and is named Ghost, after all) risks losing some of their mystery by being documented visually like this... But fans can't really complain! Comes packaged with a booket containing notes and credits for everything you'll see and hear here.
