From the same label that brought us the avant ambient dubstep of Clubroot and Swarms, comes the debut solo 7" from John Haughm, the guitarist for black metal outfit Agalloch. If that sounds like a weird mix, you might not think so as much once you've heard it, as this finds Haughm trying some spaced out solo guitar on for size. A looped bit of almost krautrocky kosmische mesmer. you can definitely hear some Agalloch-isms in the sound, and the mood and vibe does get dark and ominous, and you can almost imagine the band suddenly crashing in all chug and pound and howl, but it's not to be, this is just a gorgeous little chunk of hypnotic solo guitar, the sounds looped and layered, subtly processed, melodies intertwined, tones run through the computer and spit out a little bit Fennesz-y on the other end. The result is pretty dreamy, even for non-metalheads, or metalheads who don't really care for Agalloch, the only bummer is that it's so short, it's the sort of sound that once stretched out to the length of a cd, or a whole side of an lp, would be the ultimate loopguitar krautpsych bliss out. Let's just hope this is a teaser of more to come.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! It's a one sided 7" with the B-side silkscreened and hand numbered, housed in a swank, super striking sleeve, with a download code to boot!
We have to admit, we don't know too much about Haunted Castle, other than they shared a killer 10" split with the band Grey Skull a while back (which featured a cut out and hairy (!) sleeve), and more recently collaborated with recent AQ faves Robedoor on a killer droney ambient lp. But on that record it was tough to tell who was doing what. Robedoor tended to be a noisier heavier proposition, so we just sort of assumed that Haunted Castle were the quiet ones, getting Robedoor to mellow a bit and bliss out. But based on Void Lake, now we're not so sure. Four lengthy, brutal and caustic face melting blasts of psychnoise guitar damage, ultra blown out, dripping with crumbling distortion, all downtuned, and strangely processed, wrapped in thick clouds of, well, more guitar we'd guess. Shimmery streaks of high end feed back and grinding growling guitar fug, bits of muted percussion, what sounds like bizarre vocals and little scrapes and scratches, but it's mostly guitar, squealing and strangled, beaten and mangled, the instrument's anguished cries a huge squall of musical pain and abject fury, with big crashing chunks of industrial clatter dropped into the melee here and there for good measure. It's like Keiji Haino jamming with Heavy Winged, Mouthus, Vulture Club, Burmese, Whitehouse and Liquor Ball, after a night of serious drinking and way too much horse tranquilizer, and maybe with some frontal lobotomies to boot. Damaged free form psych that should appeal to the Brooklyn hipster noiseniks as well as old school Japanoise fanatics and everyone in between.�
Packaged in a hand painted collaged cardboard sleeve, the discs themselves hand painted as well, the sleeve nestled in a hand screened and hand sewn fabric bag. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered...
What a great way to end the year, two new songs from one of our favorite and most enigmatic songwriters of the present day, Ariel Pink. Now backed with a full band including members of Lilys and Beachwood Sparks.
While Ariel Pink is most often thought of for his lo-fi recordings and his on-the-verge-of-total-disaster live performances, the truth is that besides all his eccentricities and beyond all the hiss and mystique, Ariel Pink crafts some of the most endearing, catchy and brilliantly crafted songs EVER. Some folks try so hard to seem weird and unique, but with AP, his originality and singular musical vision is totally for real and ALL his own. He definitely fits perfectly in the great legacy of outsider pop luminaries having truly carved out his own place in the landscape of the underground music scene.
The last few times we've seen him live we've been blown away, by the music of course, but also by all the crazy ideas and weird sonic invention he manages to somehow cram into his songs and now finally we get to hear a couple of new tracks he's been performing live, recorded and damn do they sound great! The A side is one of the most smooth sounding AP jams yet, the band really works wonders creating some gorgeous alternate universe FM radio soft rock, complete with a totally tasteful sax solo (!) which would usually have us cringing but somehow it manages to totally work. And the B side is much more raw, dirgey and haunting. We keep listening to both songs over and over, and probably will until the new full length arrives, oh, and this 7" is way limited, only 500 copies, so it'll be gone all too soon and you know what that means....
Fiercely thrashy yet melodic second effort from this celebrated Scandinavian metal group (ex-member of now-legends At The Gates, plus riff-master Jensen from the equally popular Witchery). Better vocals than the debut, thanks to the new singer who isn't as shouty as the previous dude, although it's still run-of-the-mill gruff death metal vox. But musically, The Haunted maintain their hereditary post-At The Gates crown, but with elements of '80s metal that remind one just a little bit of, guess what, Witchery's irresistible retro-rock. That was easy...
Fourth full-length from one of the leaders of the modern Swedish melodic thrash/death scene with former members of scene legends At the Gates, Witchery, and let's not forget, the mighty, criminally-overlooked Seance. Allow me to digress for a moment and state that if you're a fan of this sound/scene and your collection is lacking Seance's classic '93 album "Saltrubbed Eyes", point your browser to eBay and get on it! But do that after you pick up this, the latest from some of the finest riff-writers in Scandinavia (or anywhere for that matter), the Bjorler twins (guitar and bass, respectively from At the Gates) and Jensen (Seance/Witchery). While not as technical as contemporaries Arch Enemy or Soilwork, The Haunted instead aim for the throat with a straight-forward speedy thrash approach, successfully merging break-neck (literally) speed with catchy and memorable riffs, and the result is a generous view from atop the thrash heap solely on the merit of kick-ass song-writing. For fans of all things Swedish, melodic and fast!
Record number two for the Emeralds' synthesist on Kranky; and like pretty much everything from that prolific trio, Hauschildt's sonic fruit doesn't fall too far from the Emeralds tree. Where his cohorts delve more into emotionally saturated post-kraut explorations of guitar and synth, Hauschildt's ethos tends more toward a grid-snapped electronica with taut sequencing and the occasional drum machine pulse, and he's probably the responsible party for bringing the beatbox to the 2012 Emeralds album Just To Feel Anything. He reprises those electronic rhythms once again on about half the tracks here, and those rhythms are anything but heavy and deep. Their airy spaciousness is only outdone by Hauschildt's luminously bright arppegiations, melodic sequences, and faux-chorale vocal samples that again look back to Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre for inspiration. While the more rigid tracks with their LFO squelching and vintage synth stabs come across at best as a decent attempt at Kraftwerk homage (e.g. "Accelerated Yearning") and at worst pre-fab soft-porn fluff (e.g. "Constant Reminders"), he's much better when he applies his craft to the atmospheric and the cosmic sensibilities of a track like the ethereal "Kept" and the gauzy, lovely title track.
Both Mark McGuire and John "Blue Randa" Elliott maintain quite a public profile outside their work in the kosmische synth-guitar trio Emeralds, but the third member of that outift, Steve Hauschildt, has remained relatively quiet. We had a super limited cd-r of his solo work on Gneiss Things which came and went in a just a few days, but beyond that, nothing outside Emeralds. Tragedy & Geometry is Hauschildt's first full album beyond a small and unavailable selection of cassettes, and it's found a suitable home on Kranky. If McGuire and Elliott have embarked on parallel trajectories for effervescent, impressionist ambience through guitar and synth respectively, Hauschildt's own vision is that of the machinist - ratcheting the electronic percolations that he brings to Emeralds within very precise grids and architectural blocks for his electronics to operate. Oneohtrix Point Never is also obsessed with the mathematical poetics of electronic music; but where OPN always skews his retrogarde flares through lost time, Russian mistranslation or sci-fi replication, Hauschildt adopts a tightly controlled rigor in his engineered electronica. Nowhere is that more true than on "Batteries May Drain", with its clockwork drum machine ticking at autobahn speeds amidst rasping motorik electronics and comet dusted synth melodies, in line with Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis. Elsewhere, hints of Emeralds' signature bittersweet atmospheres seep through the pulsing arpeggiations and synthesizer swoosh, aligned on tracks such as the "Overnight Venusian" which alludes to Aphex Twin's heralded Selected Ambient Works Vol. II. Quite fine!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A 'repress' of a cd-r that we never got the first time around. Mr. Hauschildt is one of the three members of Emeralds; but unlike John Elliott and Mark McGuire, he doesn't seem to be as prolific in terms of solo and side projects, with less than a half-dozen tape and cd-r releases to speak of (compared to mountains of material from those other two). With The Critique Of The Beautiful, Hauschildt doesn't stray too far from the Emeralds sound of kosmiche dronescaping through analog synths and pedals. The album is dying to be made into a piece of vinyl, with the first four pieces acting as one suite that would be nicely matched by the lengthy finale. One of those first four - "What One Does To Another" - has almost a brightened Tim Hecker feel with percolating melodic phases piled below a thickened mass of warmly buzzed distortion. This is followed by "Runway" lovely post-Cluster track of pastoral synthesis built from a rhythmic arpeggiation anchored by a spiralling set of sequential notes and tone-bent phrases. And that extended finale opens with an oscillating flange of church organ minimalism, settling upon a melancholy melody which slowly shifts between just a few minor key notes which gradually wanders into zoned-out passages of electronic bubbling and fizzed textures. Very beautiful, very moving stuff.
Limited stock on this, so don't be surprised when this one sells out.
Time to get swept away by some deep dreamy Icelandic beauty, as our favorite experimental cellist Hildur Gudnadottir teams up with composer and pianist Hauschka for a stunning collaboration. We already deeply smitten with the meditative music Gudnadottir has made on her own as well as in collaboration with Angel, BJ Nilsen, Mum, et cetera. But we hadn't spent much time with the music of Hauschka, but this pairing definitely has us wanting to hear more of his stuff. Together they create music that sounds like a solemn soundtrack for ghost towns, abandoned buildings, and isolated existence.
With elements in sound, composition and an overall feeling that reminds us of some of our favorite works by Gavin Bryars, Charlamagne Palestine, Harold Budd, Sylvain Chauveau, and The Rachels, this is one of those records we love playing early on a crisp winter morning or as it turns dark on a Sunday night and it's time to clear our heads of the distractions of the world, and start taking deep breaths and immersing ourselves in thoughtful introspection. Utterly beautiful and stirring.
Let's just get it right out in the open, first thing. This should have been record of the week. It's beautiful, weird as fuck, mysterious, it's two whole discs of far out sounds, it comes with a massive photocopied book, filled with lyrics and text from some mysterious professor, and they're called Have A Nice Life...
BUT, the band decided to not make any more copies, and let us have their last 40. It will probably be available as a download or something in the future, but for now, these are the last 40 physical copies available EVER. And the only way, as far as we know, to get the book as well.
So what's the deal with Have A Nice Life? People are always emailing us about the new wave of shoegaze bands, nu-gaze as some folks like to call it (the same ones who now have us using the term metalgaze), and someone recommended Have A Nice Life, telling us the band was some sort of doom, metal, black metal, gothic, new wave, shoe gaze outfit, so obviously we were pretty curious. So we emailed the band. No response. Emailed the label. No response. Then we just happened to be going through piles of records, and found this one just sitting on the desk, where it must have been for weeks, a cool creepy cover, a color painting of a man's arm, bleeding, the words "the plow that broke the plains" on a black field above it. And it was bundled with a book. Hmmm. With the word Deathconsciousness printed on the front. And wham. It clicked. Those guys had already sent us a copy, which had somehow slipped through the cracks. So we quickly threw it on, and it was everything we had expected, everything we had hoped for, and more. We finally got in touch with the band, who told us they were not going to make any more, but would make one final batch for us.
So here they are.
Two discs, jam packed with dark blissed out shoegazey, new wave-y, slightly metallic nearly perfect pop. The songs insanely varied, but impossible cohesive. Some sort of sprawling bliss rock opera. Each track, perfect on its own, but even more perfect as part of the bigger whole.
The first disc is the prettier and poppier of the two. The opening track is a creepy stretch of Goblin like synth ambience, peppered with simple minor key acoustic guitar, haunting and lovely, which quickly gives way to thick ropy basslines, and reverbed electronic drums, a definitely Joy Division vibe, swirls of thick guitar, gorgeous melodies and heartfelt vocals, it's dirgey and doomy and depressive, but so catchy and poppy. The next track is a big blown out pop epic, all effected vocal harmonies and washed out watercolor guitars, reminding us quite a bit of M83. The rest of the first disc slips easily from gloomy goth pop, to minimal drone, to shimmery shoegaze, often all at once. The disc finishes off with a gloomy dirge, all downtuned grindguitar and pointillist piano. Softly crooned vocals, and a surprisingly catchy melody.
Which perfect leads into the second, darker and heavier disc, which begins with a track the boasts probably the greatest song title EVER: "Waiting For Black Metal Records In The Mail". But don't be expecting any black metal, instead it's a killer slab of eighties style indie doom pop, jangly guitar, propulsive drumming, and killer vocals, all wound into an awesome blast of hooky retro gloom, very reminiscent of the Comsat Angels. Hot on the heels comes another awesomely named song: "Holy Fucking Shit: 40,000", but again the title gives no clue that the song is a lilting mostly acoustic jam, with more piano, sad vocals, minor key melodies, a super reverby eighties production, all set to that Casio keyboard preset metronome rhythm. But about half way through, the track shifts and becomes a pounding rocker, the guitars thick and distorted, the drums pounding, but then all around synths buzz, vocals croon, the heaviness transformed into something much more dreamy and blissy. "The Future" is an aggro, almost no wave workout, all jagged guitars and shouted vocals, and more of that thick throbbing bass, but just like the rest of the tracks, it gets totally twisted around, his time by the addition of fake strings, and yet another killer and totally irresistible hook.
"Earthmover" finishes things off, but instead of being some dirgey doom epic, it's another blissed out popscape, lots and lots of fuzz and buzz, glistening melodies, minimal rhythms, all buried beneath layers of woozy whir and sun dappled sparkle. Almost like a much prettier and poppier Nadja.
And the thing about this record and these songs, is that, they all manage to be outrageously catchy, but not obviously so, and while they straddle about a million different genres, they manage to weave them all seamlessly into each other, making Deathconsciousness feel less like a rock band's collection of songs, and more like one massive organic mass of blackened dronepop jangle-goth bliss. Which as far as we're concerned it actually is.
The packaging is amazing. A slimline dvd case, two cd-r's each hand spray painted, full color cover, super spare and striking, and then there's the book. A dvd sized 80 page book, filled with lyrics, liner notes, woodcuts, engravings, illustrations, and a massive amount of text on the soul, spirituality, death, sorcery, Medieval heresy and more, all supposedly penned by an East Coast professor and scholar.
So awesome!
The first release from this twisted avant shoegaze, black-doom, new wave, industrial psych pop duo, Deathconsciousness, was a sprawling double disc, complete with a huge book filled with lyrics and obscure text, strange illustrations, sonically and conceptually it was utterly stunning, we had been getting emails about that band and record for months before we got our hands on copies, and in our review of that record, we proclaimed that it really SHOULD have been a Record Of The Week, but the band decided to stop making copies, and we had the last copies ever. We were so obsessed with the record that at one point it was even slated to be reissued on Andee's tUMULt label too, but sadly, that never came to fruition either, and we hadn't heard much from Have A Nice Life since, a tape, a cd-r of outtakes, a few live performances, we began fearing the worst, that Deathconsciousness was the first and final proper record we'd hear from these guys.
But now, six years later, local label The Flenser continues their shift from black metal to twisted dark pop and avant heaviness, and reveal a brand new Have A Nice Life record, and we get to right that old wrong, and finally make Have A Nice Life our Record Of The Week, cuz the new record is really damn near as good as the first. And sonically a good fit for The Flenser too, their new even less metal sound settling somewhere right between outfits like Aussie black-jangle noise poppers Loss Of Self and math-doom electro-sludge goth rockers Wreck And Reference. And yeah, HANL were really never metal, and now, they seem to have settled into a sound that's equal part gloomy death rock, noisy jangle pop and nineties style shoegaze, with a weird lo-fi production, almost entirely clean vocals, lots of angular guitars, reverb heavy goth rock drumming, and huge thick swirls of crumbling distortion and psychedelic freakout guitars. The record opens with "Guggenheim Wax Museum", a heady blast of fuzzy, super distorted dirge pop, blown out and shoegazey, with deep, dramatic vocals, and wild squalls of swirling psychedelic noise, like a slo-mo Godspeed fused to a blackened My Bloody Valentine, which bleeds right into "Defenestration Song" a super melodic, gloomy, goth pop gem, all thick fuzzy bass, a little Joy Division, molded into a sort of post industrial doom-gaze death rock with some super dramatic, almost emo vox.
"Burial Society" sets moody pianos amidst a slowly skittering drum machine, beneath crooned hushed vocals, buzzing guitars, sounding almost like a darker, meaner, more underground Deftones (which is a VERY good thing by the way), the same sort of goth informed, dramatic metallic pop, but filtered through a much more fractured and fucked up sonic filter, laced with some surprising vocal oooh's and aaah's that add even more poppiness. "Music Will Untune The Sky" unfurls as a creepy raga like drone, keening, wailing vox, heaving low end swells, lush and layered, slowly blossoming into something darkly melodic and prismatic, before slipping into the confusionally chaotic opening to "Cropsey", a tangle of overlapping samples, buried muted rhythms, chiming barely there melodies, before the song finally explodes in a frenzy of tribal drumming, swirling strings, and more strident death rock vox. "Unholy Life" is some serious, total eighties style goth pop, a little bit new wavey, echo drenched drums, minor key melodies, but with some cool angular metallic guitars, and a wild noisy, psychedelic shoegaze second half, which gets gloriously blown out and blissed out. "Dan And Tim" cranks up the mathy post punk, sinewy and slithery, before transforming into more hazy gloom pop shimmer, the mathiness of the opener continually churning away beneath ethereal swaths of fuzzy guitar and heavily reverbed vocals, blurry and bleary. And finally, closer "Emptiness Will Eat The Witch" is all hushed and dreamlike, buried melodies and muted shimmer, all beneath a hypnotic drone, that shifts subtly, changing timbre and tone, vocals surfacing, the sound coalescing into some dour pop dreaminess, but still darkly droney, it's not until 5 minutes in that the song truly takes off, but instead of exploding into something heavy, the vocals soar and swirl, thick clouds of dreamy, droney vocal harmonies, pulsing and pulsating, peppered with strange abstract percussion, before settling into one final drift, haunting, and hypnotic, and darkly and dreamily mysterious.
So goddamn great, and while it was totally worth the six year wait, let's hope we don't have to wait that long for more...
From Finland, a three-way split of chaotic industrial metal, chock full of noisy distortion, dance beats, and scary samples. Two of these bands are actually the SAME band, they just changed their name (Havoc Unit was known for the past ten years as AndOceans, who did several previous albums of avant-garde black metal that we liked in the past). So you get the first ever Havoc Unit track, and the last from And Oceans, plus two (very different) remixes of each. And then there's the third band, The Sin:Decay, also in the same brutal industrial-metal vein, and it turns out it's a side project of one of the members of Havoc Unit/And Oceans... So despite being a "split", this could easily be heard as an album by just one band, Havoc Unit we'll say for simplicity's sake. And Havoc Unit, oddly enough, sound a bit like the '90s band Canadian Malhavoc, if you remember them. So well worth checking out if you're any of the following: a fan of AndOceans / a fan of Malhavoc / just into some blackened industrial metal weirdness. Brought to us by the rather off-the-wall metal label Vendlus (Wolves In The Throne Room, Grayceon, Audiopain, etc.).
You can never have too much Hawd Gangstuh Rappuhs MC's (Wid Ghatz). And god knows we're trying! Full length number two, in less than a year, and it's everything you've come to love from these East Coast miscreants. Bad drum programming, stupid lyrics, bad
Oh yeah! Finally, a full length from the best worst rap group EVER. God Albino, Duke Crapmore and Flybot Van Damn are three skinny white guys who absolutely destroy on the mic. Fuck Paul Barman and his wacky 'college guy' shtick, this is the shit. Stupid and funky and juvenile and offensive and so so funny. HGRMWG are like the Geto Boys, if the Geto Boys were immature, whiny, skinny white art-school drop outs. We've been following these guys for a while -- they've contributed standout tracks to all three of the WordSound comps as well as cameos on the Spectre records. Primitive loops, lo-fi recording, ridiculous fake voices, and lots and lots of skits! And ANYONE who bought a Steven Schultz record off the last list, HAS to buy this. In fact, I'm just gonna go through the files and send out copies to those people. You know who you are...
The history of rap will forever change with Guy Albino, Dook Crapmore, and Flybot Van Damn, a trio that is easily the most retarded hip hop outfit ever to grace the earth. Self deprecating, bombastic lyrics proclaim themselves as the mythical 'Sucker MCs' ridiculed throughout hip hop since the beginning of time, while shouting about being stupid white kids high on crack... loaded with scatalogical rhetoric that we really want Snoop Dogg to utter, through an exemplary rhythmic if wholly caucasian delivery... the ultimate transmutation of African-American culture into a suburban nightmare via Phoenix, Arizona. Absolute.
So highly recommended by Andee...
Latest disc from Mr. Jeremy Barnes, formerly of legendary indie rockers Neutral Milk Hotel, and a staple of various other Elephant 6 bands, but for the last nearly nine years, the mastermind behind A Hawk And A Hacksaw, his solo project turned proper band, which performs music in the style of American folk music and Eastern European, Turkish and Balkan folk music. Now expanded to an EIGHT(!) piece, not counting various guest musicians, the expanded instrumentation of accordion, bass drum, cymbal, violin, viola, bouzouki, trumpet, flugelhorn, tuba, euphonium, dumbek, riq, guitar, cello, dobro, clarinet, and saxophone, has made the group's sound even more rich and expansive and expressive, from gypsy folk, to wild flamenco, to super intricate and lush klezmer music, Romanian folk music, Mariachi... Barnes and company are voracious, and deftly master whatever music they try their hand at, all woven into an incredibly festive, almost psychedelic, world music brew, which slips from frenetic and energetic and irresistibly danceable, to moody and mournful, to woozy and weary, to propulsive and playful. We had sort of forgotten how great this stuff was, but we can't seem to stop listening to this new one. A new favorite for sure.
Gorgeously packaged in a textured papers, screen printed, origiami style sleeve.
... is noneother than Elephant 6 Collective member Jeremy Barnes (of Neutral Milk Hotel and Bablicon). We know very well the degree of creativity and craft that goes into all of the E6 family's musical endeavors, and Barnes' latest musical pursuits are no exception. This is his second release under this moniker, and it picks up right where his self-titled debut left off, traversing the great expanse of folk music from around the globe (of which he's done his fair share of exploring in the past year). However, whereas he made his first AHAAH album all by his lonesome, for this one he recruited a full band. Heck, we can see why! In typical E6 fashion, he's encorporated an overflowing mixed bag o' acoustic instruments (various horns, bagpipes, accordion, ouds, piano, harp and assorted percussion). Barnes invites seemingly divergent elements from distant plains to entwine on Darkness At Noon. Keep your ears peeled for moments influenced by klezmer, flamenco and mariachi as well as interludes seemingly inspired by Carl Stalling, Steve Reich, and the solo accordion work of Lars Hollmer (member of Swedish prog rock greats Samla Mammas Manna). Like musical ivy, they creep and wind their way in and around each other. Very much in a similar film soundtrack-y vein to Tin Hat Trio's most recent album, the gorgeous Book Of Silk. The lead-off track "Laughter In The Dark" is a fitting entrance point. The seven minute long, richly atmospheric piece gradually lures you away from the lights and roar of the city towards more fire-lit enchanted surroundings. Barnes allows his adventurous spirit to run free, and we're fortunate to have a front row seat on his musical caravan.
Also available on vinyl... Following up their glorious, but sadly very limited edition 78rpm 10" record Foni Tu Argile, A Hawk And A Hacksaw present their latest full length via more modern technological means. As always, the band remain deeply reverent and faithful to the traditional Eastern European gypsy folk styles that they hold near and dear. Their songs rush by at a frenzied pace. It's almost faster than your toe can tap, but the music does spur your limbs into action. We found ourselves moving a bit quicker around the store while it played. Even without our morning coffee fix! So if you've been trying to kick caffeine, maybe consider this a healthy substitute... no, seriously! Check out the wild piano action on "Kertesz" and the twisting horns on "Turkiye". Amazing musicianship! Stunning stuff! They do slow things down briefly for numbers such as the mesmerizing "Raggle Taggle" (though it ends with an unexpected lively clip!) and "I Am Not A Gambling Man", only to start back up again at an even more frantic tempo! If you've dug their previous recordings, this will surely please you a-plenty! Also recommended for fans of Beirut and Gogol Bordello!
Following up their glorious, but sadly very limited edition 78rpm 10" record Foni Tu Argile, A Hawk And A Hacksaw present their latest full length via more modern technological means. As always, the band remain deeply reverent and faithful to the traditional Eastern European gypsy folk styles that they hold near and dear. Their songs rush by at a frenzied pace. It's almost faster than your toe can tap, but the music does spur your limbs into action. We found ourselves moving a bit quicker around the store while it played. Even without our morning coffee fix! So if you've been trying to kick caffeine, maybe consider this a healthy substitute... no, seriously! Check out the wild piano action on "Kertesz" and the twisting horns on "Turkiye". Amazing musicianship! Stunning stuff! They do slow things down briefly for numbers such as the mesmerizing "Raggle Taggle" (though it ends with an unexpected lively clip!) and "I Am Not A Gambling Man", only to start back up again at an even more frantic tempo! If you've dug their previous recordings, this will surely please you a-plenty! Also recommended for fans of Beirut and Gogol Bordello!
Wow! If you loved this duo's last album Darkness At Noon and/or Beirut's Gulag Arkestar album and/or eastern European folk music in general, keep the love a-flowin' cause we think this might be your new fave! Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost (also of Beirut) clearly possess a deep respect, admiration and understanding of traditional Balkan, Bavarian and Turkish gypsy music. Together with guests Beirut's Zach Condon and old aQ faves Fanfare Ciocarlia, they've crafted a fantastic, faithful patchwork of the distinct regions' sounds. In fact, the latter were recorded in the tiny remote village of Zece Prajini, Romania. The air prickles with the intricate interwoven rhythms of sputtering brass, rattling percussion, reeling accordions and flourishing strings. Immensely vibrant and moving. Very very recommended!
No sense in messing with a sure thing! A Hawk And A Hacksaw's latest release delivers more of their wonderful authentic Balkan folk sounds, but this time we also get the added delight of visual accompaniments. The group's enthusiasm and deep reverence for the music's history and artistry remains true, lively, and vibrant. Sure to please their growing legions of fans and win them a few more in the process.
I believe that this is the first recording for Gerald Hawk, who managed to land this recording on the Sun City Girls' Abduction label. I have to say that this is more interesting than the recent series of monthly Sun City Girls releases, sounding much more like the solo recordings from either of the Bishop brothers. Simple off key acoustic guitar strum with a Jandekian vocal meandering that often has a ghostly double as an ominous whisper. Certainly for fans of No Neck Blues Band and the aforementioned Sun City Girls.
Second album from Gerald Hawk on the Sun City Girls' Abduction label. As on his first recording, King Of The River Canoe Mr. Hawk continues to delve deeper into his unique mumbling, psycho-sexual, angry-Jandek folk. However, on The Honey Guide Bird brooding experimental folk takes a back seat to dark soundscapes. Using looped recordings, guitar, processed keyboards, short wave radio blasts (even some snippets of numbers stations recordings), field recordings and ring modulated vocals this album sound much more like Zoviet-France than No Neck Blues Band.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Hip hop remix. Rhythm = "Get Ur Freak On" (Missy Elliott).
Local singer-songwriter who surprises with a remarkably un-singer/songwriter debut. Fahey/Nick Drakey fingerpickin'.
Traveling Songs is the second folksy twang album from Mr. Clay Hawkins. Vocally, he falls close to the sensitive male singer/songwriter tree a la Damien Jurado, Elliott Smith -- earnest and deeply heartfelt -- but where this album truly shines is when it's just him playing solo in his acoustic guitar on songs such as "Stepping Lightly" (or when he's simply joined by the sound of birds twittering on the ninth song "The Trip"). This Bay Area-based gent originally hails from Arizona and it shows. His skillful string plucking glows with golden desert sunset tones. Very comforting and warm.
The first we heard from these mathy noise rock heavies, was on a 7" split with Minneapolis noise rockers Buildings, and we finished that review by saying: "There's a Hawks full length out there somewhere, and these two songs have us begging for more!!" And here it is, a crushing collection of dense, mathed out heaviness, with bellowed Melvins like vox over churning downtuned riffage and big booming drums (recorded by Harvey Milk's Kyle Spence!), and that Harvey Milk connection can't be a coincidence, they're from the same state, and even though this isn't nearly as slow and low as the 'Milk, it is definitely drawn from the same sludgey well.
Think classic old school AmRep noise rock, Midwest Homestead style pigfuck, and nineties math rock, all wound tight into some serious RAWK action, the bass thick and grimey, super distorted, all tangled up with the wild, intricate drumming, while all around guitars grind and buzz, chime and chug, sometimes everything bleeds into surprisingly melodic and downright poppy shapes, but more often, it's all angular, chaotic crush and knuckle dragging caveman pummel, the finest moments here when it's a little of both.
Fans of current noise rockers like Gay Witch Abortion, Harvey Milk, the Melvins, Buildings, Seawhores, Kowloon Walled City, Hex Machine and the rest will flip for these guys. As will anyone who missed the good ol' AmRep / Homestead days...
Seems like Minneapolis noise rockers Buildings were the big hit from the last list. We sold out of their record immediately, and hell, for good reason, that record was a fierce chunk of old school AmRep style heaviness, beholden to all the bands we grew up with and still love, Buildings paying homage, but making that sound their own.
So here we have a brand new split single from those guys, teaming up with fellow noise rockers Hawks. Buildings offer up more of what we dig, chugging, churning, rhythmic mathy radness, the bass super distorted, the guitars buzzy, the band immediately locking into some serious crush, swaggery and snarly and heavy as fuck, both tracks here laced with squalls of feedback and driven by some seriously kick ass drumming, not to mention some soaring distorto guitar swirl and some blown out bass buzz. Cannot get enough of these guys!
Hawks counter with their own take on mathy, noisy heaviness, starting off with a weird sample, and a slow swell of distorted guitar, before the drums kick in, and the song lurches into a pounding, riffy swagger, the vocals a bearded bellow, it all reminds us of that old classic Sub Pop sound, a bit grungy, a little poppy, but seriously heavy. And when the lead guitar swoops in, it transforms everything, and the song is suddenly catchy as fuck! The second track is a bit busier, with weird chiming guitar harmonics, wild drumming, more bellowed vox, and again, the grunge vibe is huge, which is really the only way we could dig this sort of noise rock sound ANY more. There's a Hawks full length out there somewhere, and these two songs have us begging for more!!
While they last, we have the yellow vinyl version. Includes a download code too!
I've been going Hawkwind crazy lately. I [Andee] pretty much missed out on Hawkwind completely the first time around. I was only 2 years old when this record came out. Later, I missed out again, having opted out of the whole high school, pot smoking, parking
This reissue contains the original album plus 5 bonus tracks!
More Hawkwind. And more and more and more. Lately all I [Andee] want to listen to is Hawkwind. Somehow I manged to make it to 32 without hearing Hawkwind ever. And man, did I miss out. "Hall Of The Mountain Grill" seems to be the poppiest of these 4 Hawkwind
One of our favorite records EVER from one of our favorite bands EVER (and yeah, we said that about the other Hawkwind reissue on this week's list, but in fact, the first 4 or 5 Hawkwind records most certainly qualify for such effusive praise!), newly reissued as a super deluxe lp, 180 gram colored vinyl, in super swank, heavy gatefold sleeves, here's what we had to say about this record when it was reissued on cd a while back (expanded a bit)...
We've been going Hawkwind crazy lately. We pretty much missed out on Hawkwind completely the first time around. We were all about 2 or 3 years old when this record came out. Later, we missed out again, having opted out of the whole high school, pot smoking, parking lot, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind thing as well. Third time's the charm though, and we are now immersing ourselves completely in HAWKWIND! And we're not entirely surprised to find that some of our favorite bands have been borrowing heavily from Hawkwind (consciously or not) for years. This stuff is heavy and drone-y and hypnotic and endless. Like the Stooges or the MC5 stretched and stretched until they become these epic riffscapes of wah wah guitars and thrumming low end drone, all stretched loosely over an unwavering motorik beat. Monster Magnet, Circle, Salvatore, and basically every stoner metal band/psych rock ensemble we have ever heard owe it all to the 'wind, whether they know it or not.
It's probably worth mentioning the opening track "The Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear In Smoke), which besides being a total space rock drug psych classic, also happens to be an impossibly perfect pop song to boot, with a chorus that KILLS, that is woven seamlessly into the otherwise soaring and swirling psychedelia and crunchy fuzzy stomp that surrounds it. And the rest of the record ain't too shabby either, heavy and heady, tripped out and hooky as hell, total psychedelic space rock bliss for sure. Anyone into the current crop of retro psych combos who have somehow yet to discover Hawkwind, here's your chance...
Also features a youthful Lemmy Kilmister, pre-Motorhead, and like the cd, the lp re-ish, contains a handful of bonus tracks!
If you need a little background on my [Andee's] current Hawkwind obsession see the review for "Doremi Fasol Latido" elsewhere on the list. Needless to say, these records are killing me. How did I mange to miss Hawkwind for all this time. All the stuff I love,
Originally released in 1971. This reissue contains the whole original album plus 3 bonus tracks.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Two discs of sonic mayhem beamed from space through a hazy cloud of pot smoke. Hawkwind are seriously kicking my [Andee's] ass. This is a double live disc of Hawkwind at their best (that would be Lemmy-era). Taking the studio cuts and stretching them out,
