The Lord Of The Noise? Well it's either Hijokaidan or Merzbow, innit? And this "best of" (greatest hits??) disc and dvd is a strong argument in Hijokaidan's favor. Though any fan of Japanese noise is probably a fan of both artists. And to purchase The Lord Of The Noise, you'd almost certainly have to be a fan, although, price aside, this actually might qualify as a good entry-album for novices. That's 'cause it brings together a 78+ minute, six track sampling of their most chaotic, noisy, mayhem from recordings spanning the years 1979 to 2004, including such ear-raping classics as "Before The Heat". And (in case you didn't know, or haven't figured out) chaos, noise and mayhem are what Hijokaidan are all about! Don't believe us? Well, check out the DVD disc. That's the real treat here for fans: four archival live performances in living color (mostly black), two from '81, one from '87 and the most recent from 2003. The earliest two have the most physical chaos and absurdity, but all of 'em are plenty noisy! Don't expect easy listening, or even easy viewing: the video footage is dark and grainy from the early years, and even the 2003 performance is a strobe-fueled apocalypse. In other words, utterly how it should be.
Japanese noise alert! Here's Volume Three in Alchemy's Hijokaidan Rarities Series: remastered live recordings circa 1987, that originally appeared on the LPs "Limited Edition" and "No Paris/No Harm". The Hijokaidan line-up here consists of Jojo, Junko, and T. Mikawa (of Incapacitants). This disc features their version of Jimi Hendrix' "Purple Haze", believe it or not!!
If all Japan's Alchemy Records label ever did was keep Hijokaidan stuff in print, noise-lovers around the world would be happy. Alchemy does a lot more than that, as you probably know, but their cd reissue program of rare '80s and '90s output by their flagship noise outfit is definitely a good thing. So here's volume 5 in Alchemy's "Hijokaidan Rarity Series", another crucial entry in that band's murky, dissonant discography: Viva Angel, originally released on LP back in 1984.
The track "Seeds Rock'n'Roll" starts things off with maniacal, repetitive babble over a constant drum beat, amidst ambient noise... then with "Hellthy Girl", Hijokaidan (and Alchemy) kingpin Jojo Hiroshige's skronky shrill swirling guitar feedback takes center stage, for an onslaught of garbled, damaged drone... drone that continues on "Secret Desire", sounding like a defective, lo-fi tape playback of a barely-heard free jazz session. Next, "Twilight Guitar" sounds like just that. So far so good, a varied palette of noisy treats. But when the title track hits, with throbbing psych-rock heaviness and wordless singing (not screaming, amazingly), even non-noiseniks might be intrigued. This could be some really extreme krautrock jam, or Hawkwind fronted by Yoko Ono. Very cool. Elsewhere, there's more than enough harshness to impress any Merzbow or Wolf Eyes fanatic...especially on the 24+ minute album-closer "Bad Character, But Great Sounds". Yet still there's something always underneath, on Viva Angel, that's either really rockin' or (more strangely) blissful. And again it's pretty clear that Faust was a big influence on these folks.
Another Hijokaidan re-issue for salivating Japanese noise junkies. "Zouroku No Kibyou" was a 1982 LP featuring some legendary early Hijokaidan performances, back when they had a over a dozen people in the band! The folding cd booklet includes a photo collage documenting the insanity, with much in the way of food and fluids being flung about. Packaged in a jewel box with cardboard slipcase, bizarre cover painting intact.
Ranging from goofy electronic pop to jazz/rock collage to noise improv, this band really runs the gamut of underground Japanese sound. Of course, they've been at it for about 25 years, so it's not surprising that this collection is so varied and bizarre.
As we said, the music here is quite varied, utilizing toys, mellotron, synths, sax, samplers, cornet, guitars, etc. -- and on the more recent material, there's even some turntable scratching courtesy of Otomo Yoshihide, whose Ground Zero band might have taken some inspiration from the cut-ups of Hikashu. The Boredoms probably did too. It's a mixed bag (some of the more poppish stuff wasn't really to our taste, although it certainly has a uniquely Japanese flavor), but for fans of wacked-out left-field Japanese avant-pop-whatever this is one of the more necessary Tzadik releases to date.
We knew John Hill as producer of the stunning folk funk lps of Susan Christie and Margo Guryan, but this concept record is where his producing genius is on full display: an epic electronic space jazz composition featuring Susan Christie, Jimmy Valerio, Gerry Mulligan and Walter Sear. Based on a poem by Ian Michaels called "I Am The Storm of Dawn" that suggests life on Earth originated on one of the six moons of Jupiter, Europa (the only other place in the solar system with water and ice), the 6 Moons of Jupiter features Susan Christie reciting the poem with Moogy electronic drones, cellos,� delayed flutes, and percussion. While we're not always huge fans of spoken word, somehow it works here, adding some serious tripped out drugginess to the already pretty far out proceedings.�
According to the liner notes, this was the first part of a proposed 13 piece concept performance, with each piece written in a distinctly different style, somehow combining poetry, electronic technology, classical, jazz and of course 'space rock' (quotes required!) Not sure sure how that would have panned out had they stuck to the plan, especially since it seems that for this first volume they jammed all that stuff together, into one single awesomely mind melting sonic hodgepodge.�
The tracks range from shimmery free jazzscapes, all abstract percussion and buzzing raga like drones, haunting and mysterious, to full on groovy keyboard drenched space-y garage jams, complete with fluttering flute, wheezing organs, creepy chanted vocals, and wailing psych leads, to strange off kilter chamber music, heavy with reverb and long lonesome tones, to pounding sixties style stomp, but all twisted up around jazzy horns, and jaunty Springtime shuffles, to haunting solo strings, dour melancholic melodies over buried soft buzz, to total acid wah guitars, laced with creepy pizzicato strings and warbly rubbery funhouse melodies. Mix in Christie's deadpan spoken word and this becomes a serious jazzy groovy musical mindfuck. And you know what that means. BUY IT!
If you wanna hear Ms Lauryn Hill's voice in all of its unadorned power and beauty, well you're in luck! Here's not just one, but two discs worth for you. Yup, sorta surprising that it took so long, but she's finally gone "Unplugged". However, unlike many others who've trod through this MTV presentation, she doesn't simply rehash her songs acoustically, but seizes the opportunity to reach out further with her thoughtful, impassioned and quite substantial between song banter (in the track listing, these are labeled as "interludes"). And the audience's response? Of course as you'd expect, super adoring and enthusiastic, absolutely hanging on her every word both sung and spoken.
***Expo '70 alert*** ***Expo '70 alert*** ***Expo '70 alert***
That's right, we're sounding that alert 'cause you might not know these names... suffice to say though that Justin Wright is better known (to AQ customers) as the guy behind Expo '70, whose new full-length cd Black Ohms happens to be our Record Of The Week this list. And Matt Hill is his touring partner, whom you've seen together with Wright if you caught 'em recently in SF at the Hemlock with Wooden Shjips, or elsewhere on tour. Also, their pal Duane Pitre is another guitar-wielding dronester with tendencies in line with the cosmic Expo '70 aesthetic. The prolific Expo '70 being an outfit we've continually championed as they constantly amaze us with their sooooo gorgeous, '70s krautrock inspired, spaced out instrumental drone musick.
There's four tracks here on this solid black cd-r. The seventeen minute long track one, finds Wright, Hill and Pitre playing together, droning out mightily, live at someplace called The Pistol Social Club. The credits have 'em all playing guitar, all responsible for "textures, drones", with Pitre also on "prepared percussion, disjointed lines" and Wright handling "melodic lines" as well. It starts as a hushed ambient soundscape, at once spacious and intimate, hesitantly melodic and repetitiously trancelike; raw, rough edges softened by gentle whirr, their guitars' volume gradually increasing, eventually building into a quite dense, distorted finale.
Then there's one track apiece from Hill, Pitre, and Wright. Hill's seven minute contribution is all acoustic guitar and field recordings, sparse pickings and pluckings, sounding like a broken music box, crank turned at half-speed, backwards, amidst nighttime insect buzz. Unidentifiable crackle, rustle, and hiss infuse the plinking proceedings, which could be a mellowed out Derek Bailey with Jewelled Antler production. Pitre's piece, "Motorized Music for Electric Guitar (live)" is what that says: a live performance, at a church in Brooklyn, with Pitre applying a "handheld high-speed rotary tool" to the strings of his electric guitar. The result is a twelve minute Niblockian drone divine, slow-building and shimmery. Wonderful. And then Wright bats cleanup, ending the disc with a live improv guitar piece featuring the use of two amps, and, we're told, a squeaky chair. It's ten and a half minutes of dreamy, subtle cosmic throb and drift, with sci-fi electronic FX whispering from outer space to swirl around this piece's glowing meditative center. So nice.
For Expo '70 fans and anyone into the guitar-drone-zone, this here's a varied four-part treat indeed!
Hella drummer solo album.
Okay fans of Hella and their musical buddies, here's something a little different for y'all! Zach Hill (the drummer for that Sacramento math rock band as well as Nervous Cop and Team Sleep among others), has corralled the likes of Pinback's Rob Crow and the Flying Luttenbachers' Jonathon Hischke for his Zach Hill & The Holy Smokes album Masculine Drugs, on which much dissonant noise fuckery ensues. One of its highlights is certainly the fifth song "Getting In The Head Of Your Galaxy" which offers some trademark Crow vocals and melodicism amid the cacaphony. But Hill didn't stop there! He also wrote and illustrated a paperback book called Destroying Yourself Is Too Accessible: Old Children's Ramblings For The New And Improved Child And Hypocritically Desterous Hippy to accompany the cd. Each page (of which there are 138) features an abstract pen'n'ink drawing along with a brief (1-3 sentences) entry. The cd lives in a plastic pocket at the back of the book.
Zach Hill is one busy man. Besides constantly touring and releasing records with his duo Hella he also somehow found time to make records with Greg from Deerhoof (Nervous Cop), Rob Crow (The Ladies) and now he's teamed up with the relentless guitar outbursts of Mick Barr (Orthrelm, Octis, Quixotic) for an album that never lets up, brutal intensity from start to finish. Hill's frantic drumming is the perfect backdrop for Barr's impossibly over the top guitar freakouts. Barr has become one of our favorite guitar players in recent years. His ability to full on rip and never let up has held us in thrall with a iron gloved grip. This is the kind of record that makes you want to drink 8000 cups of coffee and finish your life's to-do list in one fell swoop, no rest, no sleep, no mercy!!!! This is the sound of relentless spirit at its most triumphant. Like Glen Branca on a dirty diet of speed, teamed up with a scrappy drummer making the sort of sounds that put most math rock to shame. This is advanced calculus metal for unrelenting students. One of our customers said it best while listening to this "Whoa the Voltron of shredders!" We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Who could possibly be a match for Mick Barr's (Crom-Tech, Orthrelm, Octis, Ocrilm) insane avant sci-fi guitar shredding? We would have thought no one... But it makes sense, that the only true match for Barr's fretboard wiggery would be Zach Hill, a sort of Yngwie Malmsteen of the drum kit. A spastic octopoidal drum freak, who can cram a million more beats into a song than the busiest drummer you can think of. Not sure why no one thought of getting these guys together sooner. Their first meeting took place on last year's Shred Earthship, and now we have ZH/MB Volume 2.
And the results, much like on Shred Earthship are just what you would have expected. A mind blowing, ear shredding, speaker melting squiggle and noodle shredfest. Dense squalls of wildly dueling drum splatter and guitar freakout. Often note for note. Is it free jazz? Is it avant metal? Is it outrageous instrumental wankery? Well yeah, it sort of is, ALL of those. Ultra complex, incredibly convoluted, might be a stretch to call these songs, instead they seem to be exercises in instrumental dexterity, each one an over the top psychedelic metal freakout that has the listener panting and about to pass out after only thirty seconds, lord knows how these guys can keep it up for a whole record. The opener is the jazziest, due in no small part to some surprisingly melodic sax, but after that, it's one on one, drums vs. guitar, each wrapped around the other in some sort of insane ultimate fighting chokehold, a non stop barrage of notes and beats... imagine that someone had been collecting every note ever played, and every drum beat, and just piling them up in a huge dumpster, they're tiny, they don't take up that much room, but a trillion, or a million billion trillion, have that dumpster just about full. Now imagine being strapped down to a huge slab of black concrete, with strange metallic implements holding your ears wide open, then imagine that entire dumpster being upended and all of those notes and beats showering down on you like some sort of musical avalanche or metallic hailstorm. Sound good? Well then, my friend, this is indeed the record for you...
Packaged in killer white cloud on bright yellow sleeves, most are on black vinyl, a few are on yellow, so you might just get lucky. But don't ask, we said: YOU. MIGHT. GET. LUCKY.
Limited to 303 copies!!! We got a handful, and will NOT be able to get more.
Like Robert Fripp and Manuel Gottsching, the UK's Steve Hillage is a stellar guitarist who came out of the prog era (Arzachel, Khan, Gong) to mine his own unique cosmic territory that could be the blueprint for latter day ambient techno. His amazing guitar work on Gong's Radio Invisible trilogy, especially the epically spacious "You", was just the first stepping stone toward this 1979 avant-new age masterpiece, Rainbow Dome Musick, originally recorded for an on-site installation at an actual Rainbow Dome in London.
While it must have been -really- an experience inside the Dome, it's even now a fantastic listen at home on headphones. Two 20-minute, side-long tracks built from the sequenced filtering of guitars, piano, synths and bells, that organically glide from phased rhythmic passages to expansive cloud-like washes of sound.�It's definitely much more ambient than Hillage's other albums up to that point, but as blissed out and new agey as it is, with the sounds of gurgling water (starting side one) and shimmering drones, you won't forget he's a killer electric guitarist either. Obviously,�a heavy influence on The Orb, who later collaborated with Hillage, after they met in an club where to Hillage's surprise, Alex Patterson of the Orb was spinning Rainbow Dome Musick in the chill-out lounge, so the story goes! Another essential entry of cosmic proto-new age sounds for fans of Fripp and Eno, Cluster, Ariel Kalma, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Eberhard Schoener and Ashra. We recently got into this album, ordered it for the store on cd, and heartily recommend it - though it seems to sell itself anyway when people see the cover, something about that hypnotic vibrating rainbow dome image...
Woah. What the heck is this? Pretty badass, as reissues of '70s sci-fi inflected proto-metal glam rock we've never heard of before goes!! Now, we're not sure why these guys were called Hillary Blaze, there's no girl nor guy named Hillary (or Blaze) in the band, but maybe it's an Alice Cooper kind of move, they must have been big AC fans for sure. They started off as a '60s psych pop act called The Paper Garden, but by the mid-'70s, after a name change and some lineup changes too, were MUCH more metallic (though still spaced-out enough for this to get a positive mention in the Acid Archives book). So, yeah, all you proto-metal lovin' folks, you'll want to pick this one up and crank it loud, another excellent obscurity rescued by the reliable Rockadrome/Vintage label, whose Cain and Poobah reissues could kinda be seen as foreshadowing this one...
Originally released in 1977 on "30th Century Fox Records", this, the sole album from Hillary Blaze, is a dramatic, high energy entertainment attack, full of sizzling sci-fi synths (and plenty of distorto geetar too), quite theatrical in the vocal dep't, indeed full on freaky overall, their glammy '70s sounds influenced not only by AC and Ziggy Stardust, but also The Sweet, most definitely! A real Rocky Horror Show of early heavy metal histrionics, before heavy metal was codified into more a conventional/conformist direction in the '80s, commercially and otherwise (and '80s "glam metal" has NOTHING to do with what we're talking about here with regard to Hillary Blaze).
No, these guys have more in common with such eccentrics as Zolar X and White Boy And The Average Rat Band, really. Heck maybe Queen's Flash Gordon soundtrack could be another contemporary comparison. And today, maybe Danava??
Cool stuff, thanks once again to the folks at Rockadrome for bringing this to our attention, we're lovin' it... not sure why they made a new cover, though (the original mushroom cloud one can be seen thumbnail sized on the back, however).
San Francisco's Anna Hillburg has has been making noise in the garage-pop community for a good portion of the past decade, guesting on albums by The Dodos, Greg Ashley, and The Fresh & Onlys; and we would be remiss not to mention her twee-pop ensemble Dreamdate. This eponymous record is her debut, and finds her again in very good company working with Greg Ashley and Greg Moore (of The Moore Brothers and Joanna Newsom's ensemble), in producing this elegantly simple album of folk-inflected pop numbers. Beach House would be the most obvious reference in the daydreaming pop hooks and hip-swaying / '60 girl-group arrangements, all with some subtle hints of Nashville twang, and an earnest seductiveness, although Hillburg's production is far more intimate, with added flourishes from Hillburg's trumpet. With summer right around the corner, here's a great slow-burner of an album for a lazy Saturday afternoon. Limited to 500 copies.
Looks like we like this one so much that both Allan and Andee, unbeknownst to one another, each wrote reviews of it for this list, whoops! But they're almost the same review, which just goes to show that what they say about Hills Live must be true. For an exercise in comparative literature, here's both reviews, Allan's first:
This is one of the first records we've managed to get in on the new Cardinal Fuzz label out of England. Frustratingly, we missed out on some stuff they did earlier by the likes of The Heads and Hookworms, but at least we now have THIS, a live album from Swedish hypno-rock jammers Hills, whose previous two albums we're totally loved (we reviewed Master Sleeps on list #391). Their spacey, krautrock channelling grooves hit the spot like those of that other 'Hills' band, White Hills, and we recommend 'em to fans of Wooden Shjips too, big time, for another positive contemporary comparison.
This record finds Hills in their element, the title simply says it all: Live. Stretching out improvisationally over two sides of vinyl, this contains two roughly 15-minute long tracks, "Kristallen Den Fina" and "Frigorande Musik", the latter recorded exclusively for this release. Both are just want we want - massive, mantric, sometimes flutey rhythmic churn with underlying Eastern drone vibes...
What's especially obvious from the music here, and dunno why we didn't mention it before, is how much Hills are serious acolytes of their aQ-beloved countrymen Trad, Gras Och Stenar, sounding a heck of a lot like them in their various incarnations of decades past (TGOS, Harvester, International Harvester, Parson Sound). If you love those groups you'll totally dig this!!
And then Andee's very similar take on this lp:
We've been dying to carry records on UK label Cardinal Fuzz, but with no US distribution, we had no luck at all, UNTIL NOW! Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find a double lp from Swedish heavy space psych combo the Janitors, and then there's this, a long out of print cassette from hippie psych space rockers Hills, reissued on vinyl with a whole second track/side exclusive to this release! Recorded live, the A side (and the new B side for that matter) find these guys channeling their Swedish forefathers (Parson Sound, Trad Gras Och Stenar, etc.), and we're ALWAYS skeptical when a band is compared to a group like Parson Sound, but these guys totally pull it off, and if we didn't now any better, we might have even bought that this was some unearthed live tape from back in the day. Tranced out psychedelic krautrock style instrumental minimalism woven from motorik drumming, buzzing distorted guitars, looped sounding psych guitar riffage, everything fuzzy and hazy and druggy, laced with cool wah guitar leads, and rife with subtle shifts and sonic variations, but ultimately, the band locked tight into a single groove, playing on endlessly, utterly mesmeric space-kraut that sounds like classic minimalism (Reich, Riley, Young) recast as heavy psychedelic hippie folk hypno-psych. The flipside is even cooler, slower, dirgier, murkier, just as tranced out and hypnotic, but all woozy and washed out, all churning low end, and killer drumming, loose and free, but forever bound up in this droney druggy psych-murk mega-jam, that sort of epic psychedelia that could and SHOULD go on forever...
Obviously WAY recommended! LIMITED TO JUST 200 COPIES for the USA, vinyl only, get 'em while you can. With this as a teaser, we're really looking forward to Hills upcoming album on Rocket, as well!
We imagine the master sleeps soundly, if THIS is the music loudly vibrating in his dreams! He may never wish to wake up. Here's the 2nd album from (to be sibilantly alliterative) this spacey Swedish psych band, the first we've listed - though if this proves as popular as we think it really should, we'll try to get more of their self-titled 2009 debut to review as well. Plain old Hills are not to be confused with WHITE Hills, though they almost could be - their brand of mantric, mesmeric, FX laden, krautrocking groove is definitely in the same druggy realm as White Hills, and that of other AQ faves like Circle, Salvatore, and especially Wooden Shjips. No doubt they all share many of the same influences, from Can and other krautrock to Hawkwind to Spacemen 3. So if that sort of stuff is your bag, Hills comes highly recommended!
While mainly instrumental, there's more singing here than on the debut, but the echo-effected vocals are just another part of the throbbing wash of sound, riding waves of heavily phased guitar, motorik drums, and insistent organ (that specifically reminds us a bit of Circle relatives Itavayla). While we KNOW we're always saying stuff is repetitively hypnotic, Hills really do it to perfection, locking into to inescapable, all-encompassing grooves you never want to end. They also delve into instrumental electric, folky passages with melodies that perhaps draw upon their native Nordic traditional tunes, a la Kebnekajse back in the '70s, though they can sound somewhat Eastern-inflected as well. And final track "Death Shall Come" is a spaced out droning ritual, getting into OM territory there...
We'd love to see these guys (and gal) play live, do a US tour soon please please please! In the meantime, this disc will be in heavy rotation 'round here, and should be required listening for anyone into SF's Wooden Shjips for sure...
We recently reviewed an lp reissue for the soundtrack to Wes Craven's brutal exploitation flick Last House On The Left, and now One Way Static return to bring us another Craven classic, The Hills Have Eyes, the soundtrack by Don Peake, who might be most famous for composing the iconic theme to the TV show Knight Rider. For The Hills Have Eyes, the story of a vacation gone wrong, when a family becomes stranded in the desert and is terrorized by a clan of deformed cannibals, Peake conjured up a seriously weird score, combining traditional orchestral instruments, with electronics and some super weird noise makers, including something called "The Beam', which was a ten foot long aluminum beam strung with a single string, as well as the bone necklaces the cannibals wore in the film, which were used as shakers and percussion. Another cool thing about this reissue, is they left in all the studio chatter, which while it might take a little away from the mood, for soundtrack obsessives, is pretty fascinating. And heck, the music itself is pretty fantastic, lots of ominous electronic buzz, low end rumbles, droning synths, a lot of the moments reminiscent of John Carpenter for sure, peppered with bits of tribal folk that sound to us a bit like No-Neck Blues Band or Avarus, but wreathed in space-y synths. There's also some groovy funk, some long stretches of spare, spaced out electronic minimalism, that sounds like some lost 20th century classical, the best moments for sure are the organic/electronic hybridized tracks, piano plonks wrapped in keening strings and swirling synths, or bleating horns, blurring into synthy shimmer. The tracks are all SUPER short, more like cues, so a lot of the tracks are 30 seconds long, some are just one bar, but they all hold together pretty well. And we sorta forgot how crazy scary the score was, has us wanting to see the movie again.
And like the Last House reissue, One Way Static did a great job, a full color insert with rare photos and liner notes from the stars (including Dee Wallace and Michael Berryman) as well as the director, the cameraman/director of photography and Peake himself. All housed in a super heavy gatefold jacket, adorned with some awesome shots from the film, most featuring the instantly recognizable face of the movie (as well as a ton of other horror classics) Michael Berryman!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
If you dug Hillstomp's album The Woman That Ended The World here that we got in recently here at AQ, then you might want to give a gander to another one of their full lengths. One Word offers up more of the raw, rowdy twang that this Portland, OR band do so well. Seems they've started a trend that whenever they're in town to play at the Makeout Room around the corner from our shop, they bring us another release. Keep 'em comin boys! Kick up those mud-crusted boots and swing yer baby round 'n' round. Yee haw!
A new album from this Portland, OR combo who just swung through town and played right around the corner from us at the Make-Out Room. Although they define themselves as "North Mississippi-Style Punk Blues", we'd venture to say that they've much more traditional sounding Appalachian folk than that. Definitely for you if you've dug the recent offerings from Mercury Dimes, Crooked Jades, etc. Hillstomp are sorta like those considerably more mild-mannered, refined bands' rowdy, raucous cousins.
We're really happy that this is back in print, originally released back in 2001 this was the score to the Icelandic film Englar Alheimisins (Angels Of The Universe). Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson is an amazing composer whose brooding, moody and elegant post-classical sounds evokes such a dark and heavenly cinematic quality. He has collaborated over the years with the likes of Current 93, The Hafler Trio and Psychic TV. It makes so much sense that he enlisted Sigur Ros to join him for this score. Don't be expecting a Sigur Ros record though, as this really is the brainchild of Hilmarsson, but you can still hear the band's sound very clearly on a few of the tracks, hints of Sigur Ros' distinctive dark and dreamy sounds. Elegant and lush, with a haunting quality that's made this a favorite of ours for those late rainy nights and somber afternoons.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Back in stock (and at an extra nice price!), but maybe not for much longer! Very few copies remain and it is actually now officially out of print, so nab one while you still can. We are the only store in the known universe where you can still get it!
Folks are certainly all a-buzz about the new Brian Eno documentary film, 1971 � 1977: The Man Who Fell To Earth, and at a recent screening here in SF, there was a special rare performance by the amazing Enochestra led by hardcore Eno enthusiast Doug Hilsinger. We sadly missed it, but were spurred to revisit his wonderful adaptation of Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) album, and heartily encourage you to do the same (or check it out for the first time)! Here's what we said about its original release back in 2004:
What apparently began as a lark has absolutely snowballed... and with what is quite possibly the (unintentional) best timing ever! Indeed it seems the planets have aligned in the most fortuitous fashion for devoted Brian Eno fan Doug Hilsinger (presently in SF band Waycross, and formerly in Bomb and Gifthorse) and his bandmate Caroleen Beatty. Initially planning to record covers of just two of the songs from TTM(BS) for their own enjoyment, they got caught up in the inspired swing of things and progressed right on through the rest. Hilsinger has emphasized that this was not intended to be some grand transformation nor interpretation of Eno's original. This is simply their celebration of a great album, with the hopes of drawing attention back to the original. And it certainly does just that, but it also bears the mark of an immensely talented duo in their own right. If you dig this, be sure to check out Waycross too. Now, we're probably going to catch some flack for this, but we'll dare to say that he improves on a few of the originals. C'mon all of you Eno fanatics who're screaming "Impossible!", it's not all that hard to fathom. Consider the following: back when Eno recorded the album, these songs were fresh and new to him. They tingle with the electricity of experimentation and spontaneity, but there are moments that are perhaps not fully realized. On the other hand, Hilsinger has lived and loved these songs for thirty plus years! He knows them like the back of his hand. With the exception of the lead vocals which were the domain of Beatty, Hilsinger played and produced all that you hear. With a full command of each instrument and the aforementioned inside'n'out knowledge of the songs, his performance and the recordings are breathtaking. The interplay between the instruments captures the subtle dynamics of a kickass full band playing together live. You'd never know it was laid down track by track, piece by piece. Heck, the prerequisite organizational skills alone are daunting. Completing this loving, enthusiastic tribute in the best possible way, Beatty's languid voice winds its way around the slinking arrangements, delivering Eno's words in a most seductive, heavily lidded fashion. Highlights include a great carnivalesque rendition of "Back In Judy's Jungle" transitioning it into a pint-raising singalong, as well as their slowed-to-half-time, intoxicating version of the originally near-punk, Wire-ish, propulsive "Third Uncle". The winding chorused guitars and textural wheeze are rich and effective while the vocals add to the air of subtle unease. Splendid!
So back to the magical tale of good timing... The pair completed the work right around November 2003 which just happened to coincide with a special lecture that Brian Eno was giving here in SF. Of course Hilsinger was in attendance, and personally delivered a copy into Eno's hands. The very next day he received an enthusiastic phone call from Eno giving it his mighty stamp of approval. He even wrote the liner notes! To boot, that year marked the 30th anniversary of the album.
Highly recommended!
Percussionist / drummer Doug Scharin's talents are such that he's found equally comfortable homes with the sublime indie rock slow-core of Rex, and the twisted, weed-happy Brooklyn-based WordSound collective, hybrid home of forward-thinking hiphop, dub, 'n
Doug Scharin, percussionist for Brooklyn's Rex. Comes in the most unimpressive Thingmaker sleeve yet. But wait, it's good! Groovy "dub" played on a wide variety of traditional "ethnic" instruments, percussion from S. Asia etc.
Have you ever opened a can of sliced pineapples, or tuna, and it smelled really bad? And you immediately knew something was terrible wrong? Well, clearly, things do not bode well for Him if there's an unpleasant olfactory metaphor to describe the "Many In High Places Are Not Well" album. Doug Scharin, once responsible for the mightly percussive pummel behind downer-core legends Codeine, has been orchestrating the post-rock ensemble Him during the past decade and unfortunately devolving into a sub-rate Bill Laswell. Now with "Many In High Places Are Not Well," Him emerges with an indeterminant "world music" feel: a dash of Afro-beat, a pinch of Brazillian jazz, and a Hawaiian slide guitar thrown in for the sake of diversity. The result is terminally bland music that has all of the global specificity of the Gypsy Kings. "Many In High Places Are Not Well" should go down as one the utter low points to the once vibrant Chicago post-rock community that spawned Tortoise and their ilk.
Very well executed, but somewhat bland contemporary jazz grooves from the seemingly relentless percussionist Doug Scharin (former member of Codeine, Rex, June of 44). While Him's previous effort 5/6 In Dub was a very good, short and sweet take on a sort of millenial Afro-funk sound (albeit filtered through a white guy in Brooklyn), this record stretches out the grooves into
Doug Scharin.
Drum'n'bass full-length from this young Japanese artist.
Dark and lilting acoustic pop ala Red House Painters. No surprise as he is a friend of Mark Kozelek's, plays Kozelek's guitars, the record is produced by the same guy who produced the last Red House Painters record, and Hindle made his debut on Kozelek's
John and Peter Hinds (of Sun Ra Research 'zine fame) return with their second album of hybrid jazz/electronica grooves. The mix includes drum'n'bass beats, dub elements, spacy synth, faux-classical compositions, AND incoherent interviews with homeless people
The Brothers Hinds return with another eclectic release. Don't let the title fool ya, this is a far cry from a typical dub mix collection. It's a super trippy meltdown of jazz, drum'n'bass, and yes, some dub too. As always, well executed and with a few unexpected twists thrown into the mix.
The brothers responsible for the locally-produced, fab, & obsessive "Sun Ra Research" zine have released this very original and enjoyable electronica/jazz recording, kinda like a meeting of Muslimgauze and Bill Laswell. Organic grooves. Recommended.
This is one of the most amazing new bands we have heard in a while, and they're from France! This is Hint's second album and it's a bit more varied than last year's ultra pummeling and quite brilliant Dys. On Wu Wei, the punishing brute rock is stretched and twisted, advancing from huge thunderous dirges to sampler/turntable-heavy 'musique concrete' (hey, that's a french word) to soaring cinematic soundscapes. This band destroys so many other bands with their amazing versatility, musicianship and sheer breadth of scope.
You don't even have to hear this to know this is another perfect Aquarius disc: A work for magnetic fields, weather satellites, custom built antennae and force fields. Whoo yeah! Force fields! Lucky for us, it sounds as good as we hoped it would. Very reminiscent of Stephen P. McGreevy's Auroral Chorus II: The Music of the Magnetosphere and Electric Enigma discs of VLF recordings of the Aurora Borealis and other atomospheric electronic phenomena. But Hinterding's recordings are even better, which is saying a lot, considering how much we LOVED those McGreevy discs! The elements are quite similar: staticky buzz, squeaks and whistles, rumbling whirs, clicking and chirping, buzzing hiss and warbly white noise, but on Spectral, those sounds drift and shift, causing all sorts of rhythmic variations and almost-melodies to emerge. There are moments where throbbing pulses and random clicks coalesce into minutely propulsive little micro-rhythms, that chug along until they slowly disipate into the ether. Also the overall sound is thicker, with a solid, warm, whirring drone, underpinning all of the various sonic activities, making this a little less harsh and a lot more dreamy and way more substantial. There's still lots of upper register skree, but it's nestled in a churning roiling bed of fuzzy, humming whir. Beautiful stuff. Proving once again, that no matter how hard we try to make strange and original music, nature was there first, doing it better.
Odd, left-of-center electronica from Kim Hiorthoy, who I believe runs the Rune Grammofon label (and does their distinctive graphic design). An abstract and playful disc that brings to mind stuff like Mouse on Mars, Autechre, Mira Calix, Concentrick, and other
It's been a while since we've seen a proper full length from Norwegian artist and Rune Grammofon label design guru, Kim Hiorthoy. Better known as a designer for both that label and for Smalltown Supersound, he has amassed quite a body of visual work, but we're glad he hasn't given up on electronic music. My Last Day is a varied playlist of idiosyncratic and leftfield sounds comprised of dance tracks, energetic pop, mutant jazz, carnival lullabies, melodic abstractions and sampled beats, that flows surprisingly well despite its almost haphazard nature. Smalltown Supersound is already on a roll with their recent batch of releases with Arp, Bjorn Torske, Sunburned Hand of The Man, Tussle and Lindstrom. Add My Last Day to their long list of stellar releases.
Here's an archival ep from Eighties SoCal thrash titans Hirax, featuring their three song demo from '87 and one bonus track ("Bombs of Death") from '84.
Hirax is back! At least, with these three songs, recorded in 2000 by a line up featuring the original vocalist, bassist and drummer (dunno about the guitarist). They don't sound much different than they did back in the '80s, it's SoCal thrash with Katon W. DePena's trademark high-pitched vox. Supposedly there's a full-on full-length on the way from these reunited metal
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Japanese psych fans! Here's the follow-up to Alchemy label boss and Hijokaidan guitarist Jojo Hiroshige's Donari Chirasu Boku No Koe Wa Amari Ni Mo Chiisai (whew!) disc that we reviewed not long ago on list 200. At the time, we erroneously identified that as being a Jojo collaboration with the all-girl psych band Doodles, when in fact only one half of the Doodles duo that was present on Donari Chirasu..., that being guitarist Akiko Terashima. And the other, non-Doodles musicans were bassist Yoshie Tanuma and drummer Naoko Otani, she formerly of Angel'in Heavy Syrup. This same backing band is, um, back with Jojo this time for Boku Wa Mo Utawanai Daro. And again it's one of the most 'musical' efforts we've heard from the notorious noise-meister, Jojo and Co. getting really into a '70s inspired heavy psych thing that all you stoner rockers and krautheads and Terrastock natives ought to dig. The gentle and melancholy parts (with words we wonder if, as on the previous album, are by cult '70s singer Sai Yoshiko?) are perhaps more prevalent here, the album striking a balance between blown-out, thudding rock riffery and actual out-and-out psychedelic pop, that tilts more towards the latter. For a guy that's best known for utter destructo noise mayhem, this can be shockingly sweet and melodic! If you liked those Night Gallery comps from Jojo's label, or that other recent Jojo disc, or a lot of other things on Alchemy or PSF or wherever that fall in line with the Tokyo Flashback aesthetic, this is definitely one to check out!
Japan's Alchemy Records has started releasing discs in a new cosmic-music-oriented series called "Inner Mind Music", and label boss Jojo Hiroshige's Crimson Voyage is one of the first offerings. With guitar, keyboards and percussion he creates some spacey
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Er...we think that's the title. Anyway this appears to be a collaboration between Jojo Hiroshige (boss of the Alchemy label and guitarist for legendary Japanese noise band Hijokaidan) and one-half of the all-girl psych-rock duo Doodles (who you'll also hear on the first Night Gallery comp of "21st Century Psychedelic Underground" music, also on Alchemy), plus a couple other friends. And it's great. Press start and you're immediately confronted with some totally heavy, thudding noise rock, dense and rhythmic. With the ripped-from-the-throat vocals of Jojo (screams of anguish as much as they are singing), this reminds us of KK Null's Zeni Geva. Track two follows, a lumbering, stoner rock, slow-mo stomp. These gals and guy are a noise band, a psych band, a tripped out doom band. What's not to like? And it's not quite ALL distortion-infused bludgeoning, dundering, damaged Blue Cheer riffage. There's some spacier, haunted sound-worlds to wander lost and lonely in on here as well, melodic minor key melancholia that soon enough is joined by crashing waves of heavy guitar and drums. We wonder, has Jojo borrowed Keiji Haino's shades and black clothes? Certainly Jojo and the Doodles girl's mutual love of heavy psych and krautrock freakiness bear massive, ripe, deformed fruit here. Goes well with the Up-Tight album, also new on Alchemy, reviewed this list too!
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Solo album from Hijokaidan guitarist.
