In the tradition of such AQ classic recordings as Peter Cusack's Baikal Ice, recordings of melting glaciers, Alan Lamb's recordings of singing telephone wires, Colin Olan's recording of melting ice, Jonty Semper's recordings of BBC radio silence, Bob Sturm's Music From The Ocean and especially Tsunoda's amazing field recordings of everyday vibrations, comes this latest release from French sound artist Manu Holterbach, who by using a microphone hermetically sealed inside a bottle and allowing it to float in a choppy river, captured an amazing array of alien sounds, the strange hiss of the rushing water, muted and warped through the glass, the percussive plinks of pebbles striking the bottle, dense clouds of hissing whir created from the constantly shifting pebbles on the bottom of the river, the distant sounds of voices, all warbled as they are filtered through both the water and the glass. An amazing experience, an exploration of a rushing river, heard from within, a hissing, soft focus drone being the constant, quite mesmerizing and strangely melodic. Listening at high volumes in headphones reveals still more strange sonic mysteries, giving one the sense, with eyes closed, of actually floating down the river, encased in glass, a fantastical sonic journey for sure.
Packaged in a mini 3" gatefold sleeve.
Without much fanfare, The Helen Scarsdale Agency may have just released one of the best drone records of 2010 with this collaborative outing from Manu Holterbach and Julia Eckhardt, two relatively obscure sound artists from France and Belgium, respectively. The only other time we had come across anything from either of these artists was by way of an mini-album that Holterbach had released through the ill-fated Clouds Of Static label, showcasing an ingenious instrument that Holterbach built out of modified wine glasses whose stems had been hollowed out, so that the water in the glass harmonica could be raised or lowered, thus changing the instrument's pitch while playing the rims of those wine glasses. The resulting sounds were absolutely stunning constructions of tonebending arches of pure drone - just dissonant enough, but wholly beautiful nonetheless. Since then, he has begun the process of sifting through Eliane Radigue's archive, being responsible for the Triptych and Vice Versa discs which came out in 2009. Julia Eckhardt comes from more of an academic / classically trained tradition, and has performed in a number of avant-garde string ensembles over the past few years, including a stint or two performing with Phill Niblock. Those two titans of minimalism certainly loom large in this exceptional Do-Undo recording, with both Holterbach and Eckhardt strong enough in their own right to further those heavy-minded drone constructs with their own agenda.
For some time now, Eckhardt has been collecting recordings of her long-passages for droning viola performed exclusively in the key of G, and she had been presenting those recordings to various artists to repurpose those sounds as they see fit. Holterbach had met Eckhardt at a residency program in Belgium, the two hit it off, and Eckhardt gave him the initial recordings that went into constructing this album, which was completed through Holterbach's production and very impressive field recordings.
The slow repetition of a temple bell being struck opens the album, gradually accompanied by a tactile scrabbling produced from branches scraping together during a windstorm. Eckhardt's viola elegantly moves from the event horizon to the foreground in the form of a radiant if rasping sustained drone whose acceleration in density hits those headwrangling harmonics and overtones that Tony Conrad, Niblock, Yoshi Wada, LaMonte Young, and Charlemagne Palestine have promoted for a decade or four. Holterbach doesn't linger much upon a crescendo with this thickened drone mass, gradually pulling back upon those tones to reveal further field recordings of that aforementioned windstorm alongside a quiet buzz from a chorale of crickets. Shockingly beautiful and shockingly simple. And that's just the first half of the record.
The second piece grafts field recordings of various electrical phenomenon onto Eckhardt's viola drones, with Holterbach taking considerable care in collecting buzzes, hisses, pierced tones, vibrations, and rumbles which were already in the key of G. It's pretty fucking crazy to think that Holterbach is going out and collecting field recordings from power substations and Parisian subways, but only those which were tuned to G! Here, the composition is a bit more reductivist in the use of those sounds advancing into several glacial movements of sustained tonal vibration. Pure transcendence.
Fans of Andrew Chalk, Jonathan Coleclough, BJ Nilsen, Thomas Koner, Organum, Harry Bertoia, Brendan Murray, and any of those aforementioned proponents of 20th Century minimalism we mentioned earlier should definitely take note of this album.
Very nice letterpressed artwork, in an edition of ONLY 300 COPIES!!!
Here be the first full length album from Mountains-man Koen Holtkamp. You may recall we got in (and sold out) his contribution to the A Room Forever series of LPs commissioning artists to match a field recording on one side with a sympathetic composition on the other. Where his offering there was a dark-hued, ominous crescendo of crackled drone sourced from acoustic guitar, Field Rituals has its head in the clouds. Holtkamp begins the album with a lovely round of brightly rendered acoustic guitar finger picking with some tricked out ring modulation effects giving each of the tones a sun-flecked glow and funhouse mirror curvature. Sustained drones from loops of melodica and harmonica mutate into an ersatz harmonium with the soaring overtones and sweeping fluctuations of tonalities gently crashing into each other. The loops every once in a while coalesce into a rhythmic underbelly, but mostly they settle as a effervescent bubbling of overlapping delay patterns and softly shimmered ambience. On top of all of this, Holtkamp dapples everything with his shimmered guitar and occasional crackles of tactile objects (he mentions water, seeds, ice, and paper) as well as field recordings of giggly children romping in a playground. The effect is somewhere between the immaculate pieces from Keith Fullerton Whitman's recordings and the bright-eyed naturalist wonder of the Jewelled Antler camp. Really gorgeous stuff from the ever impressive Type label.
A brand new solo record from Mr. Holtkamp, who besides crafting lovely droning blissed out records on his own, also plays in long time aQ faves Mountains. On this latest record, Holtkamp set out to document his shift from digital to analog, combining both live performances, and studio recordings into a single whole. That whole being these two extended tracks.
The first, combining synths, electronics, harmonica, organ, acoustic guitar and a glass of ginger ale (!). The result is hazy and washed out and a little pop ambient, muted minimal bits of percussive thump and crackle, hover over streaks of warm liquid low end and shimmering static buzz, a sound that seems to fall right between new age-y krautdrone and Oval's skittering sonic experiments, mesmerizing and subtly psychedelic, the various elements shifting slowly, a forward momentum that borders on glacial, but deep listening reveals a symphony of subtle shifts and gradually mutated tones and overtones, the timbre changing as well, from brittle and hissy, to warm and lush, the whole thing fantastically dreamy.
The second track, "Loosely Based On Bees" is in fact loosely based on bees, a field recording of actual bees made on a friend's roof, the various studio elements tuned to a sympathetic frequency so the organic sounds and electronic sounds would blend somewhat seamlessly, the sound shifting so it's difficult to discern which parts exactly are the bees, and which are the bee-like sounds. Hardly matters thought, cuz the whole thing is a warm, softly smoldering bit of deep dronemusic, tranquil and peaceful and surprisingly melodic, the sound of the bees eventually recedes and becomes more textural, leaving analog synths to unfurl undulating layers, which seem to pulse and throb, before eventually blossoming into a full on distorted buzz drenched psychedelic blowout, blissy and shoegazey and almost heavy, but still remaining melodic and cyclical until finally settling down into a warm whirring outro. As always, gorgeous stuff from Holtkamp.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, and packaged in a gorgeous letter pressed hand pasted sleeve.
Finally, volume three is here. This long in the works vinyl project finally sees the light of day, and the results are more fantastic and striking, both sonically and visually, than we could ever have imagined. We'd been hearing about this series, a boxed set of vinyl records, each with one side of music, one side of field recordings, a sort of physical extension and manifestation of a long running podcast, both the podcast, and these lps, an experiment in the art of listening. Each lp is limited to 300 copies, comes housed in an oversized box, with a gorgeous actually photographic print affixed to the cover, inside a metallic inked, letter pressed insert. You have to see them to believe them, well worth the price, as they are visually stunning, and the music is breathtaking.
The first volume featured Machinefabriek, the second Svarte Greiner (we have very few copies left of each, if you still need them, order asap! They're reviewed elsewhere on the site), this third and final installment in the first salvo, is from an artist called. Koen Holtkamp, one half of the drone duo Mountains, as well as the head honcho of the Apestaartje label.
The musical side begins with thick electronic buzzes, that gradually spread out, swooping and shimmering and becoming more orchestral and musical and underwater sounding, a bit like Oval, but much darker and not as glitchy. As the track progresses, all manner of crackle and hiss surfaces, bathing the drones in a rough patina and giving it all a warm tactile texture. The acoustic guitars drift in and the song is transformed into some gloriously hissy acoustic dronefolk. So lovely. The track builds to an intense and frenzied climax, before gradually winding down again, the acoustic guitar drifting amidst soft static and subtly stereo-panned hum.
The field recording side is amazing. Strange, bizarre, the sounds while at one moment are obviously birds, at others they sound totally alien, or manufactured. The recording sounds like it took place in some massive space, a warehouse, a train station, someplace with high ceilings and tons of open space, everything is dripping with reverb and natural delay, the birds coo and twitter, the muted ruffle of wings, occasional squabbles erupt into wild squalls of tweet and screech, eventually mellowing out into a constant drift of soft avian murmurs. The sound is just fantastic and intense, so well recorded, and the sound are just amazing.
The cover photo is gorgeous too, an body of water streaked with golden ripples, the insert is gold ink on letter pressed textured black paper.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. We got a bunch, but they've been flying out of here, and it's apparently already out of print, so it's very likely that we have some of the very last copies (of the first two volumes too!), so once the batch is gone, we will not be able to get any more.
The Gern Blandsten label has quite the full stable of post-punk, emo-drenched boys. Most wave the retro Brit flag, but The Holy Childhood leans more towards the more rootsy side of things. Emotive howling dominate over the folky guitar melodies.
Latest from this Oakland tape label, who has been killing it recently, with the reissued synthscapes of Ron Berry, the grim, liturgical Black Legions black ambience of Moevot, the droned out buzzscapes of Bre'r, the grinding and gorgeously glitchy Starlite Coffins, the debut tape release of solo surf twang guitar from artist Rich Jacobs, sheesh, we can barely keep up, but it's been a blast trying. There's two more good 'uns from Sanity Muffin on this week's list, elsewhere you'll find some fantastic bay area new age from the eighties, and then there's this, the first we've heard from a mysterious outfit called Holy Family, which in fact is a duo half of which is none other than Lawrence English, and whose sound is settled uneasily right between the classic psychedelic minimalist drones of groups like the Taj Mahal Travellers, and the more noisy, blown out floor-core of modern synth/drone combos. Three sprawling slabs of minimal dronemusic trip out, thick sheets of pulsing, pulsating thrum, gristly and distorted, churning and blackened, but sort of blissed out and cosmic, the first track begins as a total zoner-drone drift before splintering into something a bit more atonal, sound like some lost Hermann Nitsch aktion recast into something a bit more blurry and abstract, a sky of bleating keening tones, smeared into lush chordal swells. So good.
The relatively brief second track, begins as a barely there shimmer, a whispery low end creep, before blossoming into some seriously corrosive crumble and crunch, a weird stretched out upper register drone wreathed in swirls of superdistorted buzz, heady and hypnotic and seriously dense and heavy. Which leads directly into the 16 minute final track, a weird field of fractured, fragmented electronic melodies, delivered in sharp spurts, chopped and spread out, surrounded by wide open expanses of hum and thrum, laced with little soft swirls of effects, all above a sea of ever shifting textures, super laid back by comparison, a tranquil bit of buzzy, dreamy drift, that seems to smolder with some sinister shadowy undercurrent, one that always seems to threaten to overwhelm, but instead, just pulses ominously beneath the roiling soft noise shimmer above, when what finally overtakes the sound, is a sort of gristly static, that rises up in an insectoid cloud, before fading out into a hazy, hardly there hum...
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Individually tea-stained tape labels!
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How 'bout some blown out loops of space kraut-iness pushed into overdrive? Yes please, and could you make it with some wonderfully thick stewed synthesizer flatulence pouring across the driving drums? Okay, why not? Better hope nothing gets in their way 'cause when their full throttle music juices up your speakers it'll vaporize anything in its path. Imagine Stereolab meets Man Or Astro-man? but produced by David Fridmann. Hell, yeah! It might even make us exclaim the band's name! The fifth track "They're Going To Take My Thumbs" unexpectedly slams on the breaks, but for good reason. It reveals a different facet of HF in its super brooding dubby tones that brings to mind Massive Attack and Twilight Circus. Oh and did we mention that there's a sloth on the cd artwork? That always wins bonus marks. Very cool! And very very recommended.
It's been a while since we heard from Holy Fuck, we were pretty into their debut, a swirling mash up of blown out loops and space krauty synths, of fuzzy bass and fractured beats, and it seems like maybe things have gotten even more twisted and far out on this latest. After a slow tranquil drone, that gradually builds to a wall of white noise, comes a sort of looped Beastie Boys style funk jam, all loping bass, wah guitar, shimmery synths, but it's not necessarily as simple as that, it sounds, well, created, not played, so there's an element of lurch and stutter, the sounds jagged and not entirely smooth, occasionally locking into parts that almost sound like skipping cds, peppered with little shards of glitch and squelch. And that's sort of the way the record plays out, fuzzy, synth heavy grooves, that sound a bit motorik, a bit spaced out, super propulsive, and heavy in their own way, sometime slipping into almost jazzy sounding post rock, a la Tortoise, but still like that opening track laced with all manner of subtle electronics and production weirdness. There's definitely a pop element, as well as a space age bachelor pad vibe too, a la Stereolab, and tracks like "Silva & Grimes" are total krautrock Neu! worship, repetitive and hypnotic, swirling synths and clouds of distorted buzz wrapped around total head nodding beats, and while those elements inform the rest of the record there's also plenty of big block rocking beats, Daft Punk style synth wave, lo-fi electronic skitter and crunch, and a closing jam that's like some super cool eighties new wave jam, super charged and doused in crumbling distorted synths and buried blown out beats.
Latin might just be the weirdo dance party record of the year... And both the cd and the lp come in super cool, super swank diecut covers!
Technically this doesn't come out until next Tuesday, so locals will have to wait until then for us to put 'em out in the store, but mailorder customers, go ahead and order like normal, since it'll take at least until Tuesday for you to get your package anyway, most likely.
Debut full length effort from these LA based retro metallers, formerly members of White Wizzard. Cool, but not quite as retro as we would have liked, actually.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Here's a new smoky, swaggerin' single from The Holy Kiss. Very much in the grand tradition of Birthday Party, Gun Club and Nick Cave, lead singer Matty Rue Morgue once again sings of love, death and despair in his leer and sneer delivery. Dawn Hillis' guitars are extra sinewy and slinking this time out, and all the while Nick Ott pounds out his steady primal rock beat. This Bay Area trio just gets better with each release!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A double 7" record set from this SF trio! The Holy Kiss continue to mine the crushed velvet lined catacombs of such angst-laden artists as Nick Cave, Gun Club, and Birthday Party, however unlike their debut 8-song cdep 'The Sacred Heart Of Eddy and Jones' on which they seemed somewhat caught emulating their idols, it seems they've got their own genuine fire and passion happening these days. Four songs: "Black, Etc.", "The Holy Kiss Revival", "Sister Temptation" and "Motel Room Cabaret" (the third appeared previously on the Sound Of San Francisco compilation). Lyric sheet included.
After a string of 7"s and eps which commenced back in 2003, The Holy Kiss come swaggering up to the bar with their first full length. Shot Love On The Back Line finds the SF band sounding at once far looser, fuller and tighter than ever. It's a volatile gathering of cheap red wine, vampire novellas and Birthday Party records... maybe a few by The Scientists and Pleasure Forever for good measure. No, The Holy Kiss aren't in pursuit of originality, but they do what they do increasingly well with each subsequent release. Matty Rue Morgue, Nick Ott and new members Alli Pheteplace and Panther MacDonald break the intoxicated tension halfway through the album with their rendition of Erik Satie's "Gymnopedies: III. Lent". Afterwards, they then slip right back into their blood red, bluesy funeral procession.
Having recently disbanded after their European farewell tour, the Holy Kiss have reached from beyond the grave to throttle us one last time with this four song ep, limited to a scant 50 copies! As on their recent Under Noon Of Night album, the Holy Kiss channel the spirits of druggy, blues based post-punk greats like the Birthday Party, the Gun Club, and the Cramps, with enough post-millenial insanity coloring the songs to better suit the kids of today. Singer Matty Rue Morgue's unhinged vocal delivery and the overall group dynamic make it clear that the Holy Kiss called it a day at the top of their game, as this darkly aggressive four song ep is full of reckless abandon and a bleary-eyed but cocksure swagger. Super trebly, reverb drenched guitars wrap themselves around wandering Birthday Party styled basslines, as the drums thump frantically (courtesy of our very own Nick) like a heart getting ready to explode. It's as if these deranged songs are alive, like feral children covered in grime and moving about the shadows, waiting to pounce on and sink their teeth into the shoulders of an unsuspecting populace. It may be true that parting is such sweet sorrow, but at least we have this delightfully insane last affront by the Holy Kiss to accompany us in all future moments of mental instability. R.I.P.
Local dark scary prettiness and sneering trashiness. Truthfully, this San Francisco trio's debut album (named not after two people as you might assume, but after a street intersection) sounds completely like early Birthday Party and Nick Cave, which is not entirely a bad thing although that shadowy, angstful path has already been feverishly tread bare by innumerable young bands. The raw, unadorned basic rock line-up - vocals, guitar, bass and drums - is fleshed out well with some organ and piano. The latter is most notable on the final song, a short somber piano interlude that sounds like they're moving more in the dramatic direction of former San Franciscans now Portlanders Pleasure Forever. This is also not a bad thing, but hopefully future recordings will meld all of those influences that they wear so prominently into something distinctive and much more of their own. Eight songs in all.
MPEG Download: "The Exquisite Corpse Of One Mr. Lucius McBride " [/audio/holykissexquisite.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "The Exquisite Corpse Of One Mr. Lucius McBride " [/audio/holykissexquisite.m3u]
Proudly following in the tradition of druggy punk blooz derelicts like the Birthday Party and the Gun Club, San Francisco's the Holy Kiss (featuring the tallest aQ staffer and all around good guy Nick Ott pounding the skins) is sure to satisfy your demented lust for bluesy, gothic tinged post-punk on their third album, which is also sadly their swansong. Bittersweet indeed, as the sounds within come off like the work of a quartet of sooty-faced Victorian street urchins, frantic and generally teetering on the edge of total madness, with enough restraint to make you feel nice and nervous before completely losing yourself to some sort of absinthe-induced mental breakdown where you gleefully tear your hair out, rip off all your scabs, and burn down the orphanage where you grew up. Under Noon Of Night possesses a sexy swagger that makes you want to dance wildly AND writhe around in your own cold sweat. The band's darkly sardonic humor and lyrical approach will definitely appeal to fans of groups like Jonathan Fire*Eater and Pleasure Forever, with singer Matty Rue Morgue spitting out deranged tales of love, lust, and death over a frenzied hurricane of shakers, bluesy guitar squall and basslines that would make Tracey Pew proud if he weren't, you know, dead. There are even two delightfully melancholy piano ballads. Things flow at a steady pace, with a wry, underlying wit and general sense of red-eyed insomnia keeping it all together. There's also a bit of swampy apocalyptic folk in the mix, adding to the end of the world / end of the night vibe, and making them the perfect band to open for Woven Hand, which these guys (and gal) did recently.
Limited to 500 copies, this vinyl platter comes housed in a cool hand silkscreened cover and also conveniently includes a cd for the non-turntable inclined. So choose your format, throw on a pot of coffee, break out the whiskey, kick up your boots, turn down the lights, and let yourself get lost under noon of night...
This cd features 7"s and compilation contributions as well as two unreleased songs from this SF trio!
Here's great disc that we got clued into thanks to heavy druid dude Julian Cope's Head Heritage website (and label, that put this out). The UK's Holy McGrail (perhaps a silly name, but the guy behind this project is named Chris McGrail) is definitely one for any AQ customer who digs heaviness, droneiness, and krautrockiness. That's a lot of you, eh? Well then, how 'bout three looong tracks ("Lady Holle" running to 23:45, "'Quake Appeal" at 28:51, and "Ur-cow" just 19:59) of pagan drone rock, one with buried-by-bass Amon Duul meets th' Stooges drumming and the rest totally beat-less cosmic guitar and synth-scapes, guest-starring the likes of Doggen (Brain Donor), Julian Cope himself and SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley?? From the freaking lovely purple cracked earth mountain cover art to the dense drones within, this is utterly right-on. Turn it up and let it rumble. Damn beautiful. If you like SUNNO))), Growing, Earth, etc. you should check this out. Now we're looking forward to Holy McGrail's upcoming plunderphonic tribute to Iggy & the Stooges, something called the Raw Power Suite! And soon (next list) we'll be reviewing a cd-r entitled "The Creep" by Slowmo, an aptly named Earth-like duo also featuring McGrail.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Italian label Get Back is producing vinyl reissues of selected titles from the legendary ESP label.
We've been trying to get his new Holy Other record for ages, and while the vinyl version remains tantalizingly out of reach, we did manage to get the cd in, and for you cd folks, grab one asap, cuz it was well worth the wait, another gorgeously warped and woozy collection of nocturnal slo-soul post-witch house groovery, but with some bigger beats, the sound still druggy and drowsy, but with some seriously extra heft, that doesn't detract from that nocturnal / somnambulant vibe AT ALL. Shit this record would be worth it for the first track alone, with a garbled, crunchy, distorted intro, a throbbing pulse, swirling disembodied processed vocal fragments, the momentum building quick, to a loping laid back groove, laced with blooping, bleeping melodies, some handclaps, all sorts of buzzing clanging percussion, sort of muted and muffled, and then when the big beat drops, it's epic, somehow totally bangin'/boomin', but still gorgeously murky and lysergic.
The rest of the record takes a sound that could very well be a straight continuation of With U, all Burial style slo-mo soul, with sped up vocal fragments, and muted muddy barely there beats, and twists it all up, making it even more fucked up and experimental in places, while in others going full on commercial, while somehow managing to stay plenty fractured and fucked up. Check out "Inpouring", which sounds like a straight up radio pop soul ballad, but chopped up, jumbled up, and reassembled as some sort of avant dub soul, turning it into precisely the sort of stuff we WISH was all over the radio. In fact, much of this new Holy Other record, sounds like H.O.'s misguided stab at commercial radio, taking just some of those commercial elements, and then weaving them into his way-too-tweaked-for-the-radio sound. And the end result is some of the deepest, darkest 'soul' music we've heard. The sound shifts constantly from swirling Pop Ambience, to stuttering almost dubstep, to murky skittery drift, to -almost- straight up pop, the record super vocal heavy, but in a way that doesn't at all alienate the diva vocal averse around here, in fact, if anything, we're digging this even more that With U, which we LOVED. The tracks much more lush and fully realized, as much about song as sound, it's like these twisted murky witch housey soul jams were written specifically to be pop hits, but then Holy Other just couldn't help himself, and sliced and diced and fucked with the sounds until what once might have had some commercial potential, ended up this twisted slab of dreamy electronic outsider dub-soul weirdness.
Yet another fantastic disc of murky mysterious electronica from the Tri Angle label, after records from oOoOO, Balam Acab and How To Dress Well, Holy Other falls right into place, another group straddling the line between witch house, slo-mo soul, dubbed out minimalism, and just murky otherworldly spaced out psychedelic hip hop. And while Holy Other has his own distinctive take on the sounds, it will probably only take you a matter of seconds to feel the sound's warm embrace, and make the connections to other groups mining similar territory. The tempos creep and drag, the vocals, when there are any, are chopped up and processed, looped to make hauntingly layered rhythms, or placed judiciously to help create a sort of spectral soul. Skeletal grooves drift over spare rhythmic skitter, low end whirs and rumbles, beats surface and submerge, the hooks, as unlikely as they are, seem to be built from those fragmented vocals, and when a certain phrase, delivered by a clipped voice is sent bouncing from speaker to speaker, creating ghostly harmonies, it's pretty incredible, and then when those are woven into lush dreamlike arrangements, total electro dreamdrift bliss out. "Touch" might be THEE jam here, its definitely the most Burial beholden, but the vocal hook, and the arrangement, the lush dark groove, it's so darkly dreamy and mysteriously soulful, and the thick buzzing low end just makes it that much more haunting and gorgeously ominous. Tri Angle are pretty much untouchable when it comes to this shit, they're four for four at this point, we can hardly wait to see what's up next. So if you're in the market for hazy, gauzy, washed out, dreamy and druggy, then Holy Other is probably right up your alley.
This is the second release we've listed from The Holy See, the ferocious Tarentel side project featuring two members of that ambient bliss rock ensemble. But you won't find any ambience here, or rock for that matter, but plenty of bliss, that is if your idea of bliss is blown out white hot slabs of coruscating feedback and dense squalls of shimmering guitar skree. Which if you're anything like us, most certainly is!
The opener is just that, a 25 minute ur-drone, massive and throbbing and pulsing, it's like 100 Skullflowers and 100 Sunroof!'s all playing at top volume through the same amplifier. Beautifully distorted and in the red, overblown melodies swallowed whole by thick sheets of metallic shimmer, everything cracking and crumbling before your very eyes, a soothing sonic shower, like dunking your head into a pool of molten sound.
The brief two minute blast of the second track is more of the same, a lightning bolt of grinding blown out electronic buzz, but it's the last track where everything changes.
The corrosive skree of the first track is dialed back a bit, so it's more of a low level sea of glitches and grinding malfunctioning electronics, but beneath, is a strangely serene soundscape, gentle melancholy melodies hover and drift, a warm and languorous shimmer wrapped in dense swirls of fuzzy sonic psychout, eventually building to a fever pitch, but managing to not become 'noisier' just more dense and intense.
Two thirds of Tarentel (Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Jim Redd) take their already abstract bliss even farther into outer (or inner) space, with 70 plus minutes of alien transmissions beamed from the heart of the sun to a dark cave 1000 miles below the surface. From slow shifting slabs of high end drones, all caked in crackle and grit, to muted murmured minimal thrum, to simple spare streaks of nothing but percussion, to pulsing robotic rhythms over a backdrop of humming machinery and industrial clatter. Dark and dense and divine!
Hand painted wooden covers, each totally unique and each with a hand painted, typewritten insert.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. THERE'S A VERY GOOD CHANCE THAT ONCE THESE ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOREVER.
We have been craving some Holy Shit so bad for so long! The last time we got a record from these guys it was the mind blowing 2006 album Standing At Two Harbours, a brilliant washed out pop record that predated the onslaught of lo-fi pop that's exploded in the last few years. The band is Matt Fishbeck and Ariel Pink, and together they are able to create music that rings with a stronger emotional quality then many of Ariel's other great projects. Fishbeck really has such a great understanding of songcraft, and Ariel brings his innovative and recognizable sun baked aura to these two warm and woozy songs. The B-side "Priest Fucks Nin In The No-No" might even steal the show, a long and hypnotizing instrumental that we could hear go on for infinity. But the A-side "Rough And Tumble" ain't no slouch either, total understated gem of a warbly pop nugget. A pretty damn perfect 7", now maybe just maybe, could there be a new full length on the horizon!?
HOLY SHIT! we can't get enough of this record...or overcome the urge to say HOLY SHIT every few seconds while talking about this new great collaboration between our favorite art-damaged pop songwriter Ariel Pink and his unlikely partner in musical crime, Matt Fishbeck formerly of the shiny happy LA power-pop band The Push Kings. But don't worry Ariel Pink hasn't gotten all normal and boring on us...in fact in lots of ways this is his most captivating and compelling release yet! With a fuzzy folk lo-fi sound that reminds us of the glory days of the great New Zealand label Flying Nun or like some amazing amalgamation of Daniel Johnston and Roky Erikson playing Orange Juice covers. This is what we wish AM radio really sounded like, fuzzy and warped, demented and all twisted up like some poprock funhouse mirror, while underneath it all lurk perfect and precious. Totally catchy pop hooks and great timeless sounding songs. Fishbeck actually tackles most of the vocal duties here, although you'd be forgiven for thinking it was indeed Mr. Pink, and his voice sounds so perfect amidst the dabs of tape hiss, staticky cracklings and WAY off-kilter production. But deep down inside we know, it's Ariel Pink's cracked pop sensibilities that really mold and create the overall sound, warm and lucid, dreamy and trippy, an album that unfolds revealing a deliriously damaged dreamland and takes you on a pop trip that's weird enough to get lost in but cool and catchy enough that you want to stay lost FOREVER. HOLY SHIT we're in love with this record!
Packaged in a cool shiny metallic gold and silver digipak. With a cute photo inside of the bandmates smooching out in a grassy field. Awww...
Drummer about town Emil Amos (Om, Grails) is back with Criminal's Return, his second Holy Sons full length of '09 (by our count at least; apparently there are something like 5 other full lengths out there). As was the case with that last album, Drifter's Sympathy, some folks familiar with Emil's other groups may be a little surprised when hearing this stuff, but not in a bad way at all. It's just that you may find yourself expecting skull crushing stoner jams, or maybe some lush, brooding post-rock. Well, you get neither, as Holy Sons, more than anything, showcases Emil's songwriting and his skill at instruments other than the skins (he plays everything here, and damn well we might add). The overall sound is mellow but tense, pretty dark at times, and totally awesome. The vocals are a hushed drawl, and the impressive instrumentation has definite nods to folk, jazz, and psychedelia. Maybe even the blues, probably, and the songs that feature old analog drum machines give things a touch of classic bedroom indie rock. Not sure how much of this stuff is home recorded, as there is a nice intimate feeling, but the interesting production techniques definitely bring things to the next level. This is perfect music for hanging out alone, walking through the woods under headphones (also alone), and just getting lost in your own mind. Kind of like the hooded figure on the back lounging with a giant green geometric orb in front of massive rock forms and expansive irrigation ditches (is that what they are?). That said, it's not too "weird", and at times it gives off the vibe of some dusty lost classic or obscure private press lp that you might stumble across if lost classics were still easy enough to stumble across. The songs are dramatic and flow perfectly, though we're still trying to piece together the narrative. Whatever that may be, Criminal's Return is another winner, and even better than Drifter's Sympathy as far as we see it. The best thing here is that Emil has arrived at a sound that is clearly his own. The strength of these songs should be apparent to anyone who hears this. Really awesome stuff.
Holy Sons is the solo endeavor of Emil Amos, best known for his drum work with Grails, and more recently, Om. While Drifter's Sympathy certainly contains elements of Amos' other groups, it is surprisingly its own strange beast, a unique blend of folky acoustic guitars, droning psychedelic noise, and modern programmed drum beats. Eerie samples fade in and out alongside what sounds like short wave radio static, and Amos' slow drawl, combined with the atmospheric home production (we're assuming, anyway) make this a difficult one to pin down, but the results are pretty stellar. The whole thing plays out quite cinematically, with heavy drones and decaying soundscapes of various textures scraping, pulsing, and buzzing about. While some of the songs seem almost folk based, everything becomes twisted and tangled within Holy Sons' world, with each element contributing equally to the potent brew that makes up Drifter's Sympathy. As confounding as it all is, the album flows quite naturally, even though the eight songs were recorded over a span of two years. Each track is like another part of a strange dream, a dream in which we are more than happy to get stuck.
Once again, these two Chilean psych bands, Follakazoid and The Holydrug Couple, each sharing a member with the other, release their records at the same time, giving us a glimpse of two sides of a similar sonic personality. Elsewhere on the list you'll find the latest from psychedelic space-kraut combo Follakzoid, but here, we're reunited with cosmic, sun dappled dream psych duo The Holydrug Couple. Unlike the stretched out psych jams of Follakzoid, The Holydrug Couple traffic in a sound more overtly poppy, while still constructed from the same psychedelic building blocks, fuzzy guitars, propulsive motorik drumming, echo drenched vox, the song structures looped and hypnotic, THDC locking to endless grooves, and then playing those endless grooves at pop song length, the longest track here close to eight minutes, but most clocking in around 3 or 4. Fans of the Wooden Shjips, Spyrals, and other local SF psych combos will once again find much to love here, a sort of revved up Spacemen 3 vibe, but with plenty of jangle.
A quick listen to opener "Counting Sailboats" will tell you whether this is your sort of jam or not. Hazy, hypnotic, darkly groovy, infused with plenty of melody, and subtle hooks, psych pop minimalism that's hard to resist. And the rest of the record plays out similarly, mixing in swoonsome strings, acoustic guitars, organs, loads of FX, and weaving them into all sorts of different sonic shapes, from the fuzzy drift of "Sailor", a psych pop trifle, to the seventies sounding dreampsych soft rock groover "Follow Your Way" (which sounds a bit like a more psychedelic Bread), to the woozy, murky, druggy, longform drift of "Out Of Sight", that really could have been twice as long, even at eight minutes, to the echo drenched garage pop of "Red Moon", to the super warped, lysergic jangle of "Willoweed", to the seriously heavy garage psych of "Paisley", and on and on.
Definitely a sweet slab of psychedelic pop, for folks who dig the Shjips, Assemble Head, Sleepy Sun, Moon Duo and the like.
One of two new modern Chilean psychedelic outfits on this week's list, both on Sacred Bones, and both sharing a member, The Holydrug couple is a duo who traffic in spaced out, hazy, druggy, cosmic jams, laid back and lysergic, a little bit stonery and sun baked, the sound lush and layered, a definite raga vibe, totally cosmic and pretty heavy, and definitely heady, minimal vocals, the crux of these tracks filled up with hypnotic, krautpsych JAMS, the drums solid and propulsive, the guitars swirling and swooping, soaring and wailing, plenty of effects, the whole of side A, a single extended jam that pulses and jangles, chimes and crunches, like Los Natas meets Pink Floyd maybe, gradually growing more and more spaced out mellow, before finally, slipping into a swirl of shimmery droned out ambience.
The B side is two shorter tracks, the first a crunchy chunk of garage-y groove, even more stonery than the flipside, all Hawkwind, Monster Magnet, Kyuss, Earthless psych space jam bliss, the second half a total heart of the sun blowout. The second track (and the shortest of all three), is also the mellowest and dreamiest, all washed out jangle, melodic shimmer, shuffling drums and hazy sweetly sung vox, the perfect psychedelic wind down / chill out coda...
Latest short and sharp blast of snotty, punky power pop from these former Record Of The Week-ers, the A side is a doozy indeed, woozy and warped, total classic seventies style power pop, but cracked and fractured, the guitars melting and detuning, the vocals that unmistakably whiney croon, the band seemingly on the verge of total collapse, the song veering druggily from propulsive classic rock jangle to lysergic warble and back again, but rife with crazy hooks - albeit they're not always so obvious, but then that's sort of the magic of Home Blitz. The flipside is more of a Stones-y / Stooges-y / Velvets-y swaggery groove, loping and mesmerizing, with a cool weird second half, where the track gets wild and noisy, everything wreathed in a cloud of noise / static / hiss, and like the A side, buried classic rock hooks make this stick in your hand no matter how warped and damaged it sounds. As always, so good.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered!
We'd been trying to review this record for the past several weeks, but our distributors continued to sell out before we could get our hands on enough copies to list. Most avid readers of the aQ list know how much we love weirdo power poppers Home Blitz, not only did we make their O.ut O.f P.hase album a Record Of The Week, but we also had them play our very first showcase at South By Southwest. This new ep is essentially more of the same, another collection of Yellow Pills style power pop, rough around the edges, scrappy and kinetic, hook heavy, jangly and crunchy, the sound definitely defined by frontman Daniel DiMaggio's super distinctive vox, sort of drawly and a little bit precious, but perfectly suited to the groups jangle and strum, DiMaggio's vox sometimes paired with guitarist Theresa Smith's dreamy vocals, making for some divine harmonies. And the guitar parts (which we discussed at great length in that past ROTW review) are amazing, slippery and a bit proggy, somehow deftly integrated into the group's seemingly simple stripped down sound, the little guitar filigrees subtle, but so effective. There's some keyboard too, here and there, and a moment here and there when the band indulge their experimental bent, but those moments are typically bookended by some glorious jangle and crunch. Just check out the title track here, which is the title track for a reason. SO catchy, we've listened to it about ten times so far today. And really it only just barely edges out the rest of the tracks here in the catchiness department, the sound slipping easily from loping fuzzy pop, to caffeinated jangle, to buzzy garage crunch
The rest of the record pretty much follows suit, "Dark Summer" starts out all woozy and washed out and dreamy, before bursting into another frantic blast of power pop crunch, with some sweet harmonies and a killer chorus, while "Rolling With The Moody Girls", is swaggery and a little bit glammy, with super lo-fi Casio keyboard adding melody and texture, while the band pogos through some old school jangle pop. "Blind Nova" sounds a little like DiMaggio's other band Car Commercials, a much more difficult proposition, but catchy in its own way, and it's only two minutes, which leads directly into "Secret Wave", which is another slab of classic seventies style pop, such a dead ringer, right down to the production, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was plucked form some obscure power pop comp. Barring, of course, the weird blast of staticky noise that makes up the last few seconds...
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
Another out of left field record that just knocked our blocks off. Not sure what we were expecting, something super noisy and fucked up actually, but what we got was some totally irresistible sloppy chaotic garage power pop, that actually sort of ends up sounding a bit like noise rock guys unleashing their inner power pop demons. Before we go any further though, listen to the first sound sample, "Two Steps", we'll wait...
Man that song destroys, some of you have probably already added this to your cart, heck, that's what we would have done, there's no resisting that one, easily THE pop jam of the year, we've literally listened to that song about 50 times in the last week, so much that it wasn't until a couple days ago that we finally listened to that whole record, which thankfully revealed a whole 'nother bunch of killer pop chaos, not to mention some even more chaotic off kilter noisiness.
Let's talk about that song first, it's definitely the best song on the record, and we would gladly pay $14 for a one sided single with JUST that song, it's pretty much the most perfect pop song we've heard in forever, with wild almost cracking vocals, some incredible riffing, including a weird slippery almost slide part that gives us chills every time, sloppy drumming, and a killer tempo shift part way through that's just fucking perfect. And the hook, that song has been stuck in our head non stop since the first time we heard it.
But after you get it out of your system and listen to it 20 or 20 or 50 times, the rest of the record will reveal itself as a pretty much non stop kick ass punky power pop gem, like some eighties pop record transported through time. but on the way it got all tangled up in the slipstream with some random noise and garage rock records and emerged like, well, THIS.
"Other Side Of The Street" is a short sharp ultra distorted pop jam, with a punky frame but laced with all sorts of amazing hooky guitar melodies, "Route 18" (after the 3 minutes of near silence that is "Live Outside") is total bubblegum FM radio pop, but all twisted up and tweaked, and just like the other tracks, it's the extra guitar that turns it into something super special, adding some super rad melodic filigree. It's hard to not hear some Guided By Voices and other purveyors of lo-fi pop, but this isn't traditionally lo-fi, it doesn't sound muddy and 4-tracky and much as it just sound ramshackle and haphazard, and if there are hints of those other lo-fi rockers, these guys definitely make it their own, plus there's the weird extra noisy parts which manage to fit perfectly, not disrupting the flow at all, rather highlighting the subtle noisiness in the poppiest tracks, while hiding some serious poppery within the various layers of crunch and howl, the angular no-wave opener "Nest Of Vipers", with its sampled broken glass, fucked-with tape speed, mumbled vocals, super blown out drumming, and dreamy hushed detuned piano backward outro, "A Different Touch" is super in-the-red, the drums so distorted they sound like bursts of radio static, the guitars practically melting, but the whole thing wrapped around some killer hooks, with amazing guitar melodies, an impossibly noise drenched murk-pop blow out, and that's basically the magic of Home Blitz, the practically perfect pop is infused with noise and on the verge of total implosion, while the fucked up noise jams are infused with pop, threatening to shed the noise completely and explode into another burst of wild eyed power pop. If these guys went in a real studio and spent a fortune, it's almost possible to imagine them getting huge, but smooth out the rough edges and it just wouldn't be the same band.
Absolutely killer noisepop, and yet another record to add to our year end faves list...
Not only did we make the last Home Blitz our Record Of The Week, we also had them play our showcase a few months back at SXSW, and despite showing up super late, and having to cram an abbreviated set into 20 minutes, they kicked serious ass, super crunchy and jangly and hooky and frantic and just completely killer.
This single is the first new music since their O.ut O.f P.hase full length, and both tracks sound like they could have been outtakes from the same sessions. "Perpetual Night" is another chunk of HB's noise rock / power pop jangle and crunch, guitars are as jagged as they are jangly, the drums are super lo-fi practice space pounding, there's some piano this time around, and then those whiney, snotty irresistible vocals, all wrapped around a super catchy noise pop blowout. But it's the B side that steals the show, "Murder In My Heart" sounds like it could have been snatched off some best of the eighties power pop comp, albeit a tad more ragged and off kilter, but just total classic eighties style power pop jangle, hooks galore, some cool squiggly leads, weird vocal harmonies, but all somehow tangled up into some seriously perfect pop.
We'd been meaning to review this for a while. After HB's unanimous fave and aQ Record Of The Week, O.ut O.f P.hase, and a kick ass, and way too short set at our South By Southwest showcase this year, we know we needed more more more. This comp collects all the early out of print material from these short sharp snotty noise poppers, their first two 7"s, a split cassette, a super limited 12", not to mention a couple unreleased track, and while this stuff is WAY more raw and lo-fi, it's easy to hear the ramshackle perfect pop juggernaut these guys would be come. And considering how noisy and unhinged and loose and on the verge of collapse these guys were on their newest record, you can imagine what a looser more fucked up version of THAT might sound like.
All the stuff we love about Home Blitz is already firmly in place, sharp angular riffage, jangly guitars, wild drumming, killer hooks and classic melodies, and that voice, an about to crack warbly yelp, that occasionally slips into a falsetto, the recording definitely low fidelity, but super bright and weirdly lush at the same time. And the songs, like total classic power pop / punk pop, but more homebrewed, most 1-2 minutes, rollicking and wild and super rocking, slipping from total chaotic freeforall, to crunchy jangle, to lo-fi bedroom pop, to faux arena rock out, to blasting garage punk, to woozy druggy Velvetsy drone rock, and back to full on blistering trash pop again, sounding like a band that would sound right at home on Siltbreeze, but with many of the songs sounding like they could have been plucked right off one of those lost pop comps like Yellow Pills.
There are a few tracks where the band gets more far out, "Bored" is a reverb drenched dirge, clouds of cymbal sizzle float over muted trashcan percussion, big clanging guitar chords, howled vox, or the 9+ minute "Yard", which almost sounds like some sort of Dead C ballad, all splattery percussion, detuned guitar, swaths of crumbling distortion and static, a stumbling chunk of free rock that gives way to a weird piano driven vamp, that sounds almost like Elton John via Sentridoh or something, eventually crumbling into some sort of abstract field recording driven noise rock workout. But then it's back to more loose unhinged noisy power pop bliss, including a killer glammy Slade cover! We love these guys!
We won't go into too much detail with these as we only got a tiny handful of each. Latest batch of ultra limited lathe cuts from New Zealand label CMR. Each one packaged in a super striking, simple cardstock jacket, most with printed inner sleeves, Limited to 60 copies, of which we got the remaining stock. Once these are gone, they are gone forever.
Hometown Feilding (yep, that is the correct spelling) is yet another NZ ensemble we had never heard until now but are digging quite a bit, their sound a crumbling abstract world of fuzz and crackle, haunting alien melodies, strange bits of fragmented rhythms and chunks of melody, almost like some old wax cylinder recording, all the music buried under layers of grit and crackle, weirdly and nosily pretty. Definitely essential listening for the hiss and crackle turntable crowd...
It was only about 6 months ago, that the Homosexuals first and only proper lp was re-released on cd. Now half a year later comes the ultimate Homosexuals collection, 81 songs, over three hours, spanning the Homosexuals' whole existence from 1977-1983, and including that first album in its entirety as well as almost everything they've ever recorded. Wow. This triple cd set collects their singles, the EP, the legendary cassette, the LP, all the stuff they released under pseudonyms, as well as lost vocal parts to songs that until now were thought to be instrumental. Here's what we wrote about the Homosexuals the first time around:
On first listen, it's hard to believe that this is the legendary punk artifact that music geeks everywhere speak of in hushed, reverent tones. Not because it's not good, it is. It's great in fact. It's just not all that...weird...or avant garde, really. Recorded in 1978, this stuff sounds like it should've been at the top of the charts. And it probably would have been too were it not for their purposefully provocative monicker. And it seems that this, along with the Homosexuals' willful obscurity is what turned what is essentially an amazingly catchy pop punk band into collector snob fodder. But ultimately that is neither here nor there, we're just glad this got reissued because the Homosexuals rule! Sonically well in line with their contemporaries, the Buzzocks, the Damned, the Undertones, the Adicts, the Jam and the like, the Homosexuals opted to infuse their bouncy angular punkish pop, with bizarre surreal lyrics, occasional creative production techiniques, some retarded sounding harmonica and wickedly sharp guitar riffing making them stand out, and perhaps causing them to remain on the fringe. But beyond that, the Homosexuals were simply a great band writing great songs, songs that were charged and intense, due in no small part to band tension, and with a wild vocalist with a voice part Feargal Sharkey, part Howard Devoto and part Olga from the Toy Dolls. Don't be intimidated by the hype/legend/collectability of the Homosexuals, or you might just miss out on a really amazing band.
On first listen, it's hard to believe that this is the legendary punk artifact that music geeks everywhere speak of in hushed, reverent tones. Not because it's not good, it is. It's great in fact. It's just not all that...weird...or avant garde, really. Recorded in 1978, this stuff sounds like it should've been at the top of the charts. And it probably would have been too were it not for their purposefully provocative monicker. And it seems that this, along with the Homosexuals' willful obscurity is what turned what is essentially an amazingly catchy pop punk band into collector snob fodder. But ultimately that is neither here nor there, we're just glad this got reissued because this record rules! Sonically well in line with their contemporaries, the Buzzocks, the Damned, the Undertones, the Adicts, the Jam and the like, the Homosexuals opted to infuse their bouncy angular punkish pop, with bizarre surreal lyrics, occasional creative production techiniques, some retarded sounding harmonica and wickedly sharp guitar riffing making them stand out, and perhaps causing them to remain on the fringe. But beyond that, the Homosexuals were simply a great band writing great songs, songs that were charged and intense, due in no small part to band tension, and with a wild vocalist with a voice part Feargal Sharkey, part Howard Devoto and part Olga from the Toy Dolls. Don't be intimidated by the hype/legend/collectability of the Homosexuals, or you might just miss out on a really amazing record.
Note to consumers: if you're a HUGE Homosexuals fans, be aware that in a few months (exact release date as yet uncertain) there will be a Homosexuals triple cd box set entitled Astral Glamour available, which should include ALL of the material found on this cd, plus plenty of other obscurities and unreleased stuff. However, most people will be perfectly happy with this disc alone, containing as it does all of the crucial Homosexuals tracks.
It's a little surprising that we haven't reviewed anything by these knuckle dragging noise rock punk thug weirdos, some of us are big fans, every one of their records, all twisted blasts of fractured, fucked up gnarled distorto stomp 'n crunch. Here's a list of bands, if you dig any or all of them, odds are you already love these guys too, or really seriously should: Harry Pussy, Rusted Shut, Violent Students, Liquorball, Drunkdriver, Twin Stumps, Breathilizor, Dead Meat, Billy Bao, Shit And Shine, White Mice... You get the drift, this is chaotic, noisy, punk as fuck, sub Stooges, garage noise chaos, loose and wild, and unhinged, seriously fractured and frantic, blown out lo-fi and sweat soaked, sludgey and crusty and grimy and filthy and fucking RULING.
Plus they're just bizarre, the record opens with what sounds like a long slow stroll to the studio, culminating in a quick piss, before the door opens, the guitars get louder, the band eventually stumbling into action, and what glorious, lumbering and lurching action it is, the bass thick and buzzy, the drums loose and wild, the guitars all Black Flaggy and the vocals, yelped, crooned, mumbled, multiple voices, not really harmonizing, just sort of all doing their own thing. But within all this messy chaotic rocking, these guys rip, the songs killer, the riffs bad ass, the Stooges vibe is huge, but filtered through thick clouds of bongsmoke and heaping helpings of bathtub meth, the sound shifting from warped midtempo creep, all atonal guitars and low slung bass to full bore rocking, in-the-red and on the verge of total collapse.
And the weirdness definitely extends well beyond the sound, check out the song titles, all inexplicably with some variation of 'man' in the title: "Beneath The Blackman", "Cannon Fodderman", "In The Basementman", "Nightman", "Noseman", "Sea Wolfman", etc. And what does any of that have to do with the fruit-y title: Strawberry Orange Peach Banana? Or the thrift store oil painting artwork? Who cares? All we know is we love everything about these twisted noise rock psychos, and this record is kicking our asses!
Eucademix is the second solo album from the more esoteric half of the sadly defunct, beloved US-based Japanese electronic pop duo Cibo Matto. Once again Ms Honda traverses a broad expanse of style and mood. However unlike her last solo experimental pop effort which was, for lack of a better word, more 'serious' (i.e, more experimental than pop) and on which there really wasn't a hint of her former band's sound (which some C.M. fans found to be somewhat alienating), on Eucademix she actually brings some of her playful, funky Cibo Matto side back into view. Just check out the first two engaging tracks "Humming Song" and "I Dream About You". From there she roams through cirrus and altocumulus cloudlike formations of atmosphere'n'rhythm-rich space jazz, groovy beats, psych guitars, pretty chamber strings, and more. Much lighter in mood and perhaps more palatable to a broader audience than her previous album Memories Are My Only Witness, Eucademix very well might be the most accessible release on Tzadik. Helping to keep her trippy flying carpet aloft are her pals Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle, Fantomas), Marc Ribot, Petra Haden (That Dog), Timo Ellis and... Miho Hatori her former C.M. partner! Recommended.
Cibo Matto's Yuka Honda takes the solo path. It's clear her mind is fully stocked with sonic ideas and inspirations, and she certainly shows off her skills in bringing them to fruition. She's definitely expanding and exploring beyond the perky, funky
Fifth in the series of archival releases from Lee Hazelwood Industries, this is the first reissue of the complete recordings of this storied pop-psych girl group, Honey Ltd, whose sole album goes for big bank these days on eBay, though it failed to chart upon its initial release. We first heard them on the Hazlewood 45 collection released for the Black Friday "Record Store Day" last year (there's still a copy of that in stock, btw). Four friends, two of them sisters from Detroit, fed on the Motown sound, never thought they would form a band, but after a college talent show where they silenced the room, they formed a a group called The Mama Cats and even performed with a young Bob Seger. Pretty soon with riots in Detroit, the girls hitchhiked to LA and landed an audition with Lee Hazlewood. Taken by their angelic four-part harmonies and fresh faces, he changes their name to Honey Ltd. and immediately got them in a studio with the Wrecking Crew. For a whirlwind year, they performed on all kind of TV shows and showcases, meanwhile never realizing the studio had released their record (they thought they were recording singles) and then the record failed to take off. Relatively unphased by the news, the band soldiered on and joined a USO sponsored tour with Bob Hope in Vietnam before moving on. One of the girls got married and the rest formed the country pop trio, Eve. Though Honey Ltd. were amazing singers and they had a great repertoire, the late sixties was not the best time for girl groups, and even if they touched on some current social themes (for example, the anti-war song "The Warrior"), the group were hardly countercultural. But they did have some really great songs, and incredible harmonies, plus the production is top notch!
This remastered reissue includes comprehensive liner notes and interviews with all four members and never before seen photos. The vinyl version is 180 gram & includes a fold-out poster.
On the same label that brought us the amazing avant grind of PIVIXKI on the last list, comes another stunning find, this one from UK avant/free/math rockers Honey Ride Me A Goat, who apparently have been around for a while now, although this is the first we've heard from them, but we are appropriately blown away.
You think with a name like Honey Ride Me A Goat, we would have been all over these guys, but hell, here we are now making up for lost time. Imagine some dizzying collision between old school SST style free jazz weirdness, stop on a dime NoMeansNo style mathiness, the tangled riffy jangle of nineties college rock, and super spazzy sonic tangles a la everything Mick Barr, and you'd probably be close to capturing the head spinning sonic weirdness these guys traffic in.
After a stretch of swirling abstract free jazz avant noise splatter, the band launch into the first track with something almost surfy, gnarled riffs, skittery rhythms, crunchy distorted guitars, all very looped and hypnotic before finishing off with another squall of chaotic crunch.
But it's the second track where we're totally and irreversibly smitten, a seriously progged out post metal, space metal math jam of epic proportions, think the Ruins and Orthrelm battling it out on stage, only to occasionally slip into some churning hypnotic almost krautrock grooves, with lots of woozy basslines, angular abstract guitar grind, and some of the most perplexing arrangements EVER. And so it goes, the band leaping dexterously from mesmerizing Necks-like avant jazz drone creep, to spastic math grind freakouts, to churning carnivalesque genre leapfrogging grooves, to blown out free jazz / avant grind, to sounds even more abstract and difficult to describe.
Needless to say, this stuff RULES, freaked out and frenetic, frantic and frenzied, fans of Orthrelm, Ocrilim, Ruins, NoMeansNo, Hella, Lightning Bolt, Upsilon Acrux, Flying Luttenbachers and all that sort of post prog / math / grind / avant weirdness will dig BIG TIME.
Here's a new full length from this folk pop songstress following her lovely debut Honey For Breakfast album from 2002. Her slightly weary lilt of a voice hints that she might be the long lost kid sister of Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval. She picks right up where she left off with this lengthier gathering of unadorned acoustic guitar, banjo and vocals. Hushed, sweet and intimate. Please note: If you've seen her play recently and bought a copy of the cd-r that she had for sale, this might be the cd version of that same material (this is according to a Honeywell-lovin' AQ customer who did that very thing).
Ms. Honeywell possesses a lilting, lamenting voice quite akin to that of Trailer Bride's Melissa Swingle, with the added sultriness of Cat Power and the dark hum of Edith Frost's delivery. On her debut album, we have gentle porchswing songs with
Zow! The new-new-wave synth-driven onslaught is definitely in full swing with one of the newest entries into the fray being The Hong Kong. Slowly smouldering, the thick synth lines wind themselves around the simple, uneffected guitar as the straight up drumming keeps things driving forward. Note: The Hong Kong are one of the many "The..." bands of the moment (ie, The Faint, The Vue, The Lapse, The Go, etc).
