We were really happy to see that Type has added Ezekiel Honig to their great roster, as he's someone whose been making fractured, fragile sounds over the last several years with such great results. His latest shows how masterful he is at crafting dreamy and drifty soundscapes with such a subtle touch. In many ways it's the subtlety of his work that really allows the listener to slowly get lost in the haze and sway of the tracks on Folding In On Itself. Like the most delicate moments on records by Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, Philip Jeck, William Basinski and Fennesz, and with the dream world atmosphere found on recordings by Colleen, Mum, and Koss... This has been our early morning and go to bed soundtrack, as it's just so perfect in slowly transporting you to a softer, dreamier dimension. Understated, shimmering beauty.
Ezekiel Honig has a delicate musical touch, and has crafted some well textured and nuanced electronica albums over the years, so we were surprised to find that somehow we had never actually listed any of his records. His latest, Surfaces Of A Broken Machine Band, is a great place to start for newcomers and a welcome addition to his backcatalog for those who've kept up with his warm and crackling soundscapes. Seamlessly melding bits of field recordings with minimalist beats and dreamy tones for a sound not unlike the most tender moments of Fennesz, Boards Of Canada, Mountains, Machinefabriek or Jasper TX. In fact Honig would make a great contributor to Kompakt's Pop Ambient series, as these are sounds made to drift, dream and get lost to. So nice!
This is the Honkies' difficult-to-find second album.
Album number five from this mysterious UK collective. Though quite disorienting upon first listen, the new musical direction Hood has taken is quite refreshing and highly original. Combinig elements of the Hood we once knew -- melancholic, guitar driven
Hood's recent albums have been exploring electronic production more, collaborationg with the likes of the Anticon collective on albums like "Cold House."
The stuff compiled on these two collections traces their evolution from earlier, low-fi indie experimentation and much more intimate, pocket-sized sound through to their more recent melancholy post-rock and "indie-tronica." All in all, very pretty in a non-straightforward, fucked up way.
MPEG Download: "Finger In His Ear" [/audio/hoodfingerinhisear.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Finger In His Ear" [/audio/hoodfingerinhisear.m3u]
Hood are so schizophrenic; each of their albums sounds different. With some bands you feel like this means they haven't really found their true sound yet, but then again Hood's records are so well done that maybe that means they're just good at whatever they do. This mid-length 5-song record runs the gamut from Mogwai-like loud-soft dynamics with tons of layers and drama, to
Remixes of Hood by Duo Fourteen.
Geez Hood, don't rush me! I'm barely done checkin' out (and thoroughly diggin') your newest EP when you drop a brand new album in my lap. Alright, I'll quit my whinging 'cause more Hood music is nothing to complain about. This album is really dreamy and delicious. That recent teaser EP hinted at more shoegazer leanings, but with regards to Outside Closer we say, "Nevermind shoegazer, this is a stargazer." On songs such as the third "Any Hopeful Thoughts Arrive" and seventh "Still Rain Fell", you can't help but be swept up, up, up and away. Everything -- from the wispy breathy vocals to the plucked acoustic guitar to the shuffling processed beats to the understated horns to the droning organ tones -- is interwoven into swirling total bliss. Gorgeous.
Hood's recent albums have been exploring electronic production more, collaborationg with the likes of the Anticon collective on albums like "Cold House."
The stuff compiled on these two collections traces their evolution from earlier, low-fi indie experimentation and much more intimate, pocket-sized sound through to their more recent melancholy post-rock and "indie-tronica." Lots of kinda poppy stuff on the first disc and lots of previously unreleased tracks on the second disc of this one.
MPEG Download: "Myself" [/audio/hoodmyself.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Myself" [/audio/hoodmyself.m3u]
MPEG Download: "England's Fine Fields" [/audio/hoodengland'sfine.mp3]
It's been a while since we last heard from Hood, but in anticipation of their forthcoming full length Outside Closer, they've resurfaced with these five breezy tracks. Much less split personality than their past efforts have had the tendency to be -- they would be postrock-y on one track and blissed-out indie-tronica the next -- Hood have integrated their two selves into a consistent shimmery dreaminess of glistening guitars, processed beats, gauzy washes and hushed vocals. On the surface, this may simply seem cut from the same cloth as the current crop of pretty euro-pop-tronica (such as Morr Music's Styrofoam, LaliPuna, etc... heck, not to mention that just like those artists, Hood's also been cavorting with indie hiphoppers such as Themselves!), but closer listens reveal Hood's music to possess considerably more dynamics and substance. Nice! Can't wait for the new album!
Moody vocals, arpeggiated guitar, stumbling cut up percussion. Hood's newest EP is all of that and more (the more being a video of the title track that you can watch on your computer.) Post-rock done right, and light. The guitarwork reminds me of fellow postrockers Sonna, and the vocals are just depressing in the best way.
The return of our favorite horror obsessed Finnish deathmetal doomlords, whose latest is another epic collection of sludgey blackened doom, filthy crusty riffage, echo drenched demonic cookie monster vokills, all woven into plodding psychedelic heaviness, with a classic, epic doom vibe, that definitely reminds us of the mighty Cathedral. And when we say death metal we're not talking the 'Tion's (as in Suffocation, Incantation, etc.), we're talking death OBSESSED metal, a death metal that's slowed way down to a doomy crawl, a creepy, downtuned chugging churn that sounds like classic death metal spinning at 16rpm, and few do it better (to our ears at least) than Hooded Menace, and while these guys are totally capable of thrashing and rocking out, they do spend the majority of their time stumbling zombie like, through fields of murky riffage and neanderthal drum pound. This is not knuckle dragging caveman doom though, these guys craft some serious SONGS, and lace these songs with killer melodies, mournful leads, just check out the end of the title track, total epic and emotional, but these guys are Finnish, and are called Hooded Menace, so a few seconds later, there's a cheesy clip from some old horror movie, before stumbling into the next stretch of grim death doom heaviness.
The production is massive, the sound crushing, there are melodies galore, there's even some Sabbathy swing to some of these tracks, and a definite psychedelic vibe, and the band do an awesome job of not just using movie samples as intros, like on "Evoken Vulgarity", a doomy chugfest that has a breakdown partway through, where the band slows down to a crawl, a swaggery slithery dirge, wrapped around a seriously creepy sample, which leads right into a killer psychedelic blowout, with some seriously shredding lead guitar. And then there's the outro, which could be a proper horror movie soundtrack, lacing harmonized guitars over another mysterious sample. The whole record finds the band deftly weaving horror movie ambience, and moody mood music into their hellish hookydeathdoomcrush, and the results are pretty fantastic.
(Note, it's also on cd of course, we're just low on 'em right now, but we should have more next week...)
Debut from these festering Finnish death-doom destroyers. On Razorback, so you know it's horror-riffic. Includes "Theme From Manhattan Baby".
We don't list a lot of death metal, really. But when it's on Profound Lore, comes from Finland, sounds more like doom metal, super slow and sludgy, is obsessed with cult horror cinema of the '70s, and features the dude (Lasse "Leper Messiah" Pyykko) from Acid Witch, we do!* And recommend it, too. This here's the second album from Hooded Menace, eagerly awaited by many ever since their 2008 debut on the Razorback label (who also released the amazing Acid Witch album Witchtantic Hellucinations, as well as a couple of the prolific Pyykko's other projects, Claws and Vacant Coffin), and it's a doomful, deathly doozy.
Never Cross The Dead plods forth with such wonderfully wretched heaviness, there's an immediate "this is for me" or "this isn't" reaction you'll have, needless to say, we're in the former camp. Pyykko's crushing guitar tone is massive yet morose, sounding quite Cathedral-like its despairing doomishness, also possessed by some of the buzzing bite of that old school Swedish death metal Sunlight studios sound. We're talking about early Cathedral (the UK doom metal band), circa Forest Of Equilibrium, yeah!!! Which is akin to Sabbath at their most molasses-like, guitar parts warped under their own weight, weeping and creeping, leaden and lachrymose, over which Pyykko's guttural crypt-breath exhalations (aka singing) put the ill in vokill.
Hooded Menace revel in riffs that trudge like the midnight procession of a coven, or hopelessly heave (metaphoric, musical) shovelfuls of earth like a victim compelled to dig their own grave... though they'll also often break into a gallop, or bust out some soloing, with melodic old school metal fervor, clawing forth like undead attackers from that very same grave! And as you can guess from our purple prose in this review, atmospherics are important, and indeed there's a palpable eeriness over it all, if not utter seriousness, horror fans having a sense of humor y'know (by the way, we noticed Pyykko happens to be wearing a hoodie in the band photo under the digi tray, wonder if that's intentional, ha).
Never Cross The Dead concludes with a cover of Anton Garcia Abril's "Theme From Return Of The Evil Dead", a lot more metal than the version that originally appeared in that 1973 film, for sure! Return Of The Evil Dead, aka Return Of The Blind Dead, aka El Ataque de los Muertos Sin Ojos, being the second in the "Blind Dead" series of Spanish horror films directed by Amando de Ossorio, featuring evil, hooded, zombie-like Knights Templar risen from the dead to terrorize humanity, from which Hooded Menace take their name, and inspiration for more than a few songs, though they also celebrate the likes of Hammer Horror flicks ("The House Of Hammer"), Frankenstein ("Terror Castle"), and other good things. If you like horror, you like heaviness, you like metal, Hooded Menace is for you. And thus for fans of the following, too: Cathedral, Hellhammer, Incantation, Winter, Acid Witch, Skeletal Spectre, etc.
FYI, Profound Lore is doing a special sale deal with us on these, so they're $2 cheaper than normal (regular price would be $13.98) for the next two weeks!
*Heck even just two of those attributes will do, the doomy death of another Profound Lore act, Vasaeleth, also getting the nod from us a couple lists back as well, even though they're not Finnish and take a more serious, less cinematic approach to the occult than Hooded Menace and those other Razorback acts...
Hands down one of the greatest pop records EVER.
Here's our '70s proto-metal pick for this week's list. It's an archival release compiling the never-released album this Houston hard rock quartet put to tape in 1978, along with a bunch of bonus tracks from the same era, and holy heck it smokes!! It's aptly titled for sure.
If you're reading this on our website, you can see the thumbnail image of the front cover, with the band's name and album in the form of a young lady's 'tramp stamp' tattoo, but we wish we could show you this disc's back cover photo too. It pretty much says it all, four long haired musician dudes, in a cloud of fog-machine mist, striking an assortment of classic, exuberant rock n' roll poses. And one of the guitarists is brandishing a particularly cool, cruel & unusual instrument - the body of his guitar looks more like some strange four-bladed axe. Very metal. And Hooker definitely incorporate some metallic moves into their badass blend of high energy rippage and heavy Southern blues rock. It's practically like NWOBHM done Texas-style! Although, they have their melodic, sensitive side too, even throwing in a little balladry and Jesus-lovin' honky-tonk (though we don't know how that comports with the sexy and/or sexist nature of some of their other material). Also, we gotta mention one of the mellower tunes, "Beatle", is indeed about imagining being a Beatle, as in, one of the Beatles - a "what if?" scenario any rock n' roller must have considered at one point or another, right? We like the weirdness of that one quite a bit, but the main draw here are Hooker's guitars, the riffs and dueling leads and so forth, to which "Turn it up!!" can be the only proper reaction. Definitely for anyone who digs other obscure American '70s hard rock/early metal action, like previous Rockadrome/Vintage reissues we've recommended by Poobah, Cain, Hillary Blaze, etc.
There's 8 songs here originally recorded for Hooker's unreleased ('til now that is) album, plus 5 more bonus cuts circa '75-'79 or so, including their cover of "I Want Your Body", originally recorded by early '70s proto-metal outfit Tin House.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
NYC energy drummer Hooker live in San Francisco with local powerhouse saxophonist Glenn Spearman and "illbient" DJ Olive (of the fab We). Surf over to Marc's web site [http://www.slip.net/~insulin/wormwood.html] for a look at the interview he did with Mr. Hooker right after this show!
Pearl Mystic is the first we've heard from this UK psych rock outfit, and just describing them as 'psych rock' probably has most aQ psych-nerds frothing at the mouth, imagining long sprawling sheets of swirling guitar shimmer, and droned out, heart-of-the-sun mega space jams, and while that stuff is definitely part of Hookworms' sound, those are not the only parts, the band tending toward a sound much more song based and focused, sure fans of Carlton Melton and the Heads and White Hills and all the rest will no doubt dig, but so will folks more into outfits like Spiritualized and Psychic Ills. Imagine a strange fusion of Spiritualized's long-form tranced out psych soul mesmer, and the more blown out sonic explorations of those other above mentioned bands and you'll get a rough idea of what's in store for you from Hookworms.
Opener "Away/Towards" is the perfect opening blast, displaying both sides of the groups' sound in equal measure, the first few minutes, presumably the "Away" portion, finds Hookworms unfurling a slow, undulating dronescape of Spacemen 3 like guitar pulsations, over a bed of churning tribal rhythms, and a sky full of weird super FX heavy yowled vox, the sound a brooding slow build, that eventually explodes into full on space/psych pound, the guitars wild and fierce, everything wreathed in clouds of dense drugged out swirl, but that only last for less than a minute before the sound shifts gears again, moving into what can only be the "Towards" section, with the sound settling into something less crunchy and chaotic, and more woozy and washed out, pulsing and motorik, the guitars a bit muted, and now wrapped in whirring swaths of chordal organ, the vocals, still echo-ey, but much more 'sung', totally tranced out and hypnotically groovy, at one point getting kinda swaggery, with a soaring chorus, and some cool stretches of guitar buzz sixties style garage-drone psych groove, that we can not get enough of. And that's just the first song.
That swagger definitely informs much of the rest of the record, with the sound shifting easily from Stooges-y like stomp, to tripped out Moon Duo like mesmer, to explosive, blown out, noise drenched heavy psych crumble (check out the end of "Form And Function"!), to woozy, bongsmoke swirled, zoner psych drift, all dreamy and droney, often touching on all of those in a single track. The record is peppered with title-less interludes, which are cool abstract stretches of experimental guitar drift, and wild FX drenched freeform, backwards FX laced ambience, and murky, drug-drong dreamdrift mesmer. Those interludes alone could have easily been stretched out and expanded into their own record (also most likely an aQ ROTW!), but it's the songs here that drive Pearl Mystic, from the murky, psych ballad "In Our Time" that almost sounds like Sub Pop era Afghan Whigs recast as modern retro psych, with its crooned, reverby vocals, prickly distorted guitars, and gorgeous backdrop of lush psychedelic swirl, to the epic slow burn Spacemen 3 style drug-rock dirge, infused with lush, soaring, swirling shimmer, and driven by some super mesmerzing motorik rhythms, all the various parts swirled and smeared into what might be the dreamiest, druggiest jam here, to the wild, tribal pound of "Preservation" with its yowled vox, clouds of fierce blown out psych guitar, fierce drumming, and its crushing, speaker melting final blow out that would most definitely give any and all other aQ approved psychedelic space rockers a run for their money.
Hookworms deftly balance actual songs, with wild, free-form, heavy space-psych excursions, an experiment that could easily have blunted both, but instead ends up the best of both worlds, and might just coax drugged out psych nerds into the light, and drag the psychedelic dabblers just a little bit toward the dark side. Awesome.
The return of these UK psych rockers, and much like their previous record, Pearl Mystic, their sound continues to be a high energy fusion of spaced out psych drift, and furious, pounding Stooges like swagger. In fact the opener explodes out of the gate, drenched in organs, the guitars seriously blown out, the vocals too, a ragged, raspy yowl, that near song's end disappears into a weird melty swirl of FX. But then straight from there, the band lurch into some super laid back, druggy, dreamy, Moon Duo style kraut-garage groovery, motorik rhythm section, the vocals a bit more subdued, some cool fragmented guitar melodies, more organ drones, the song soon building to something with a lot more heft, not exploding per se, but cranked up, epic and soaring, and peppered with some seriously dense squalls of guitarnoise.
And hell, that's just the first two track, the rest of the record is just as varied, from stretches of lysergic kosmische ambience ("IV"), to kinetic sixties style garage psych, all shimmy and shake ("Radio Tokyo"), to fuzzed out shoegaze pop, that almost sounds like Wooden Shjips meets Drive Like Jehu ("Beginners"). Pretty much every track here rules, but our favorite might be the smoldering "Off Screen", a moody sprawl of washed out slowcore drift, wreathed in drone-y guitar crumble, one big crescendo part way through, but less heavy psych and more like one of those Mogwai moments, before settling back down into a hazy slowburn extended fade out that eventually sheds sounds until it's nothing but a hushed, reverberating field of lush layered guitar drone. Awesome.
Recently we made the album Pearl Mystic by UK psychedelic space rockers our Record Of The Week, and really how could we not, the perfect mix of sprawling blown out, buzz drenched FX heavy space jams, brooding Spacemen 3 like druggy drift, and Stooges-y garage psych stomp. We played that record to death, and based on how many we sold, seemed like all of you were keen for more Hookworms as much as we were.
So here we have not a new record, but a reissue of an earlier Hookworms, a 4 track ep originally released in 2011, now available again, with a handful of bonus tracks, but more on those in a second. Anyone who bought and dug Pearl Mystic is gonna want this one too, cut from the same LSD soaked cloth, it's another batch of tripped out psychedelic heaviness, this one a bit more raw and noisy, with songs exploding into billowing clouds of swirling FX, buried vocals, and pounding motorik rhythms, laced with long stretches of krautrock like drift (check out the very Can-like opening of "Teen Dreams"), and minimal washes of druggy ambience, some tracks wreathed in warm whirring organs, others smoldering beneath tribal rhythms, and chiming guitars, all four eventually building to full on psychedelic freakouts, but each spending varying amounts of times drifting and shimmering, brooding and drifting dreamily, "Resolution" might be the dreamiest of the bunch, with only a brief foray into freakout, the rest of the track, pulsing and buzzing warmly, and eventually settling into a tranquil sprawl of washed out ethereal ambience. All four tracks really sound like they could have been plucked right off of Pearl Mystic which is not a bad thing at all.
The bonus tracks are culled from singles and compilations and again, are not that far removed from the record proper. "Form And Function" is all warm psychedelic churn and simple propulsive rhythm, but with the vocals soaring over the top, wreathed in echo and reverb, sound more 'rock', a little bit blooze-y, sorta Velvets meets Spacemen 3, but with some serious psychedelic heft added to the proceedings, while "The Correspondent" is all hazy and druggy, woozy and laid back, the sounds seeming to melt and ooze out of the speakers, the vocals even more drenched in FX, super tripped out and hypnotic, the sound lush and layered and eventually blown out and blissed out, and finally, there's the very brief "Deu" which compacts a psychedelic space rock epic into two minutes, fading in at the beginning as if someone popped on the recorded mid-mega jam, pounding drum pummel, swirling guitar skree, the band locked tight, almost looped sounding, until the drums drop out, the guitars turn backwards, and things get even more abstract and trippy. So goddamn good. Here's hoping the rest of that jam didn't end up on the cutting room floor and will pop up on some other record eventually... But for now, these seven tracks are more than enough to tide us over until the next full length!
As always, if your psych/space rock pantheon includes Carlton Melton, White Hills, Heads, the Janitors, Hills, Moon Duo, Wooden Shjips and all the rest, and for some reason Hookworms is not in there, now's the time to right that wrong!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!!
Latest new band from Captured Tracks, not sure what the name is all about, or the cover photo of little kids playing basketball, cuz if there really is some sort of sports theme, we're not hearing it, what we are hearing is a pretty fantastic slab of gloomy angular new wave-y artpunk that doesn't sound all that far removed from groups like The Editors, the Killers, Maximo Park and the like. Thick driving Joy Division like basslines beneath chiming jangly guitars, everything reverby and shimmery, but still dark and moody, with deep dramatic vocals, the B side ups the murky gothy vibe, and sounds a bit more like the Cure or Fields Of The Nephilim, even a little Interpol-ish, lots more electronics, pulsing synths, more programmed sounding beats, with some really strange cool parts that seem to swoop and swerve and get all swoonsome, there are plenty of hooks tucked in there too. For sure will appeal to the usual CT crowd, but they do seem a bit more mainstream, or at least less reverby and lo-fi and retro, the sort of band that could probably make the leap from Captured Tracks to the more mainstream musical world their above mentioned sonic compatriots inhabit.
A new lp from long beloved noisemakers Hoor-Paar-Kraat. Well, not entirely new, as one side was previously released as a super limited 3"cd-r, but considering how limited that was, most of you will be hearing all of this stuff for the first time.
The A side, previously released on Small Doses, is a tripped out burst of mysterious musical abstraction. Two tracks, clocking in at about 18 minutes total, an abstract and spacious drift through some lost alien soundscape. The first track is all tinkling melodies, glistening high end, strange rumbling fluctuations way off in the distance, bits of creak and scrape, everything bathed in foggy reverb and warm wet swirls of tape hiss and atmospheric whir. Melodies creep in and out, as do bits of field recordings, it all feels like some cinematic bleary eyed wander through a hazy druggy flashback, a washed out world of lost memories and fragmented dreams. Here and there guitars grind and reverberate, and strange percussive sonic events drift into earshot, like an even more abstract Wolf Eyes maybe. Quite gorgeous and dreamlike.
The second track starts out the same, a smear of high end shimmer, but instead of spreading out into languid pools of blurry sound, things get decidedly more abrasive, the high end becomes sharper, the percussion is more clattery and jarring, a disembodied voice intones some creepy monologue over the top, effects swirl and swoop, deconstructed riffs chug and churn, everything dizzying and disorienting, like the nightmare analogue to the opening track's dream.
The flipside also offers up two tracks, the first begins with a swirl of creaking metal, sizzling cymbals, clattery percussion, until suddenly the clang and crunch are transformed into a strangely rhythmic crunch, the metal sounding much deeper, more of a resonant bellow, all very chaotic and cacophonous, underpinned by deep distant rumbles. Which leads right into track number two, all birdsong and tinkling chimes, whispered voices, random sonic detritus, sharp slivers of momentary buzz, soft smears of static, very haunting and ominous and like the first side, quite cinematic.
Beautifully packaged as always, pressed on thick vinyl, housed in full color sleeves with super striking artwork from HPK mainman Anthony Mangicapra. We know it's LIMITED too, just not sure to how many.
Latest from one of our favorite sound sculptors, drone designers, and minimal soundscapers, Anthony Mangicarpa, aka Hoor-Paar-Kraat, who's been responsible for a clutch of gorgeous limited and meticulously hand assembled super limited cd-r releases over the past few years. The latest comes�in the form of this super limited lp, which consists of the groups most personal and emotional work to date, as it was all conceived, written and recorded in the shadow of loss and sorrow and death. But some of the most moving art is born out of tragedy and this slab of gorgeous sound is no exception. Previously released as two ultra limited microedition cd-rs, these two movements couldn't sound more meant to be together.�
The sounds as always, is deep and dense, long drawn out drones, but here, that swirling black soundworld is augmented by cricket like clicks, soft melodies and crumbling distant distortion, haunting spoken word buried in reverb and draped with feedback, while the whole time a buzzing guitar slowly builds into shimmery sheets of distorted rumble, the chords spread out like ripples in still water, everything blurred and indistinct, until finally, the guitar erupts into a corrosive, aggressive slow motion psychedelic dirge, finishing off with a wild squall of squealing feedback, and speaker shredding high end, intense and cathartic.�
The flipside is just as intense, billowing cavernous guitar swells, random bit of clatter, scrape and feedback, all smeared into an expansive sprawl of seasick ambience, melodies are muted and washed out, the distant pulses, and warm languorous swirls all woven into entrancing tidal like sonic swells. So good.�
And as always, gorgeously packaged. Hand screened lp sleeves, signed and numbered (LIMITED TO 281 COPIES!!), the lp too is signed on the label, and each one features AM's fingerprints...�
We hate to do this to you again, but here goes. This is a super limited (only 42 copies), gorgeously hand assembled cd-r release from the mysterious Hoor-Paar-Kraat. We only got a dozen or so, but at least that means 12 AQ customers will be among the chosen few.
Dark meandering soundscapes of creaking ambience, cavernous drones and slow burning rumble. Processed metallic clatter, whirring spacious muted murmur, occasional roars of ultra distorted feedback, drenched in FX and stretched into squirming streaks of fuzz and grit and all manner of serene drift and delicately diffused bliss.
So totally captivating. We promise next time we'll try to get ALL of them, but for now, act fast before these are snapped up.
The packaging is pretty fantastic as well. Thick textured oversized sleeves with a super wide rough edged Japanese style obi embossed with vines and ivy, a hand numbered insert with songtitles affixed to the underside, the obi attached to the sleeve with tiny black rivets, the textured paper of the sleeve artfully stained with dark watercolors, and signed by the artist. The disc too is off-white with water color splatter and is also signed by the artist. WOW!
It's been a while since we've listed anything from Hoor-Paar-Kraat, aka Anthony Mangicapra, but over the years, we've been enthralled and a little obsessed with Mangicapra's gorgeous surreal soundscaping. This new one is another fantastic collection of manipulated field recording, strange melodic flights of fancy, and stumbling abstract rhythms, a super personal project, the title refers to a type of nervous system disorder, one that claimed a family member, and this record is a tribute to him, and in it's strange herky jerky composition, reflects the symptoms of those nervous disorders, the rhythm seemingly provided by a typewriter, while the air around those clicks and clips is filled with scapes and clanks, super distorted chiming melodies, thrums and whirs, buzz and rumble, it's not so much noisy as there is much going on, the result is quite dreamy in it's own softly cacophonous way. The flipside is much more minimal, with what sounds like some of the A side sound flipped and played back in reverse, all wreathed in a keening sine wave high end, and again surrounded by bits of flutter and buzz, hum and drone. Haunting and quite lovely.
And as with all Black Horizons releases, the packaging is over the top, a silver ink printed slipcover, around a silver printed black J-card, as well as eight silver printed black cardstock inserts, and a small black envelope, signed and fingerprinted in gold ink, which contains a razor blade. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
It gets harder and harder to describe the music of Hoor-Paar-Kraat. A subtle blend of abstract noise, composed sound, and field recordings, deftly assembled into the musical equivalent of little dioramas, little soundworlds, where the normal rules don't apply, where the sound of lapping water can be a rhythm, where piercing feedback can be as lovely as a little lullaby, where the creaking of rusted machinery can become soft and warm and inviting, and beautiful melodies can become poisoned and ominous.
So while it gets harder and harder, it sure is fun to try. So we'll try again, to describe the sounds, and the little soundworlds contained in HPK's latest, In Eros Veritas, available as a super limited handmade cd-r (like past HPK releases), hand signed, numbered (limited to 38!) and with the artist's fingerprint (oh, and an extra track of dark droning ultra minimalism)! And for the first time, also as an ultra deluxe vinyl version, missing a track, but still, NOT a cd-r and super super nice...
The record begins with backwards guitar, bits of abstract clatter, streaks of feedback, the muted metallic thump of what sounds like bicycle spokes, or pachinko machines, all over a backdrop of what sounds like reverbed harmonica. The sound makes us think of some super lo-fi junkyard bicycle gamelan, which is eventually overtaken by circusy keyboard melodies and weird electronic squiggles, which quickly gives way to huge grinding chunks of distorted low end, roiling over creaking metal, everything smeared into layers of kinetic dissonance, tangled up into frantic fragmented melodies.
Later the record unfurls into spacious field recordings, voices, lapping water, more creaks and groans, all the while a distant whir paints the background a swirled grey, various sounds wrapped in reverb and allowed to float ghostlike.
Occasionally the sounds coalesce into something almost rocking, at which point we're definitely reminded of the washed out murk of the Dead C, with plenty of lo-fi muted clatter and deep resonant rumbles, and still the strange field recordings whisper in the background. The record finishes of fiercely, but still abstractly, with some seriously SUNNO)))-roof! style ur-drone, thick and low and heavy, but somehow impossibly glimmery and radiant, laid thick over the sound of lapping water and huge distorted chunks of grinding bass rumble. So good.
The cd, like all the past Goat Eater Arts releases, is packaged in a super deluxe hand made and numbered and autographed fold over card stock sleeve. The lp is in a gorgeous thick black gatefold, and pressed on thick milky clear vinyl. Both are again, EXTREMELY LIMITED!
When we listed the last release from Hoor-Paar-Kraat, it was limited to only 42 copies, of which we got 12. Which was definitely too bad as it was definitely one of the most amazing releases we had heard in ages and was exactly the sort of release that truly deserved to be heard by WAY more than 42 people.
So here we have a brand new release from Hoor-Paar-Kraat, again limited, this time to 93 (when you see the amazing packaging, you'll understand why these are so limited. It must take forever to make them!) and this time we managed to get more than HALF of the pressing, but we're pretty sure these will be gone in no time just the same.
While in some ways, Mercurial Little Jitterbug has much in common with its predecessor Asha Dasha, it is in many ways a whole new creature. It's still ambient, still dark and mysterious, spare and spacious. But on MLJ, the sound is much more rooted in found sound and field recordings. Voices, conversations, children laughing and playing, traffic, wind, footsteps, the clatter and clunk of shifting objects, people working, in fact the first track is as far as we can tell a straight field recording. Which is in no way to say it's not fascinating and lovely to listen to, it is. It's just not at all what we expected. which is usually a good thing.
The second track is also based around field recordings, the honking of horns off in the distance, children's voices, bird songs, all heavily reverbed and dramatically panned, so a stick run a along a steel fence will trill from one ear to the other. But track two is also where Hoor-Paar-Kraat begins to shape and craft the sounds into dark ambient soundscapes. Adding thick swaths of low end rumble, deftly and subtly using effects to turn the sound of the city and the sounds of nature into an otherworldly dreamlike music. The next track is a barely there ambient whir, punctuated by the sound of dripping water, and some sort of distant bell or chime. Very abstract, but quite beautiful. The ten minute long fourth track is the most active, with the sound of bells and chimes and pipes, metal on metal, doused in reverb and allowed to hover in wide open expanses of room sound, only to occasionally be overtaken by huge throbs of low end and little squalls of kitchen sink clatter. Again so simple, but so strangely haunting and hypnotic. The final track is another muted clattery soundscape, although in this instance, part way through, the sounds bleed and blur, smearing into a washed out whirl of droning sound, metallic reverberations, struck metal, all stretched and blurred into a slow shifting, glacial shimmer, probably the most overtly 'musical' track on the disc. So lovely. In fact, this entire disc is just so completely and utterly captivating. Some of the most affecting, deep listening drone music we've ever heard!
And again, SUPER LIMITED! ONLY 93 COPIES TOTAL, WE HAVE LESS THAN 50!! So act fast.
Gorgeously packaged in a super elaborate, hand assembled sleeve. Hand stamped and glued thick paper sleeve, with a printed obi that is riveted to the sleeve, and folds over to seal the sleeve. The obi is also hand stamped, signed, and hand numbered. The cd disc face is hand stamped and signed as well.
Brand new record from the always amazing Hoor-Paar-Kraat, whose last few ultra limited cd-r's have flown out of here in no time (we have a tiny clutch of the most recent one, The Nagaraja Movements, but those will probably be gone soon too) and like we've mentioned before, it kills us that music this good, in packaging this gorgeous and elaborate will never be seen or heard by more than the 90 or so folks able to get their hands on them, so c'mon, some big label needs to step up and shower these guys with money. The mind boggles at what they might come up with.
Anyway, this is a brand new full length from Anthony Mangicapra and his band of not so merry men, and they've managed to kick up another serious din, this one even more dark and creepy and noisy than the last. The opening track is like a lo-fi cd-r modern free-noise version of Whitehouse, a dense field of guitar hum and amp buzz, all manner of strange wailing and moaning, distant percussive thumps, little squalls of grinding glitch and high end skree, over which a voice intones some strange tale of record stores and Steven Stapleton and David Tibet and butterflies, only brief bits of the story are audible over the swirl of feeding back guitar and roaring buzz, weird but strangely compelling and listenable. At times it also reminds us of Dutch black ambient technicians Stalaggh, the way they stir up a dense chaotic skree and then have mental patients wail and gnash their teeth over the top, this opening track is like a more subdued version of that.
The rest of the record is also noisy, but in a much more subtle fashion. Guitars and amps buzzing and humming seem to bee the constant, each track offering up various levels of general din, with each, twisting it into a unique shape, sometimes it's muted monklike chants and haunted house creaking, sometimes it's a whirring world of mumbled melodies and strange clicks and skitters, sometimes it's a series of high pitched teapot whistles over a blur squeaks and tinkles, and other times it's reverb drenched loops of girlish laughter and weird crackly static, but it's always dense, and always mysterious and creepy, and always so completely amazing.
And like the music, the package is mind blowing, Mangicapra is an accomplished visual artist as well as a musician, and it shows. A gorgeous oversized dark blue cardstock sleeve, with a thick textured silkscreened band (a bit like a Japanese obi) affixed to the bottom with two brass rivets, and then wrapped around the whole sleeve where it tucks in the front and seals it shut. Inside, the liner notes are pasted to the inside of the strip and on the sleeve beneath the strip is a cool silkscreened symbol, Mangicapra's signature and the number denoting which disc it is (out of a mere 93). So awesome.
LIMITED TO 93 COPIES!!! We will never be able to get more so don't blow it!!
It's been a long time since we've heard from Hoor-Paar-Kraat, aka Anthony Mangicapra, whose records have definitely been big time faves around here, each one a series of delicately crafted dronescapes and ambient atmospheres, of abstract Dada-ist sound, modern minimal acoustics and of course strangely twisted sonic rituals. This is not in fact a new record, instead it's a compilation, collecting various ultra limited and long out of print releases, as well as at least one unreleased track.
Previously released on Small Doses, Peasant Magick and his own Goat Eater Arts label, these three volumes of what is essentially now The Eureka Tapes, find Mangicapra and crew digging deep into sounds both haunting and horrifying, mysterious and minimal, haunting expanses of keening high end shimmer, tinkling chimes, strange voices, deep tectonic rumbles, piercing tones, churning industrial crunch, strange field recordings wedded to barely there rhythms and disembodied riffage, twisted tape experiments, rumbling guitardrone, warped audio collages, all blurring and bleeding into one another creating a fantastically fantastical world of sound. The closest comparison would maybe be irr. app. (ext.), who has a similarly Dadaist aesthetic, or maybe Nurse With Wound, although Mangicapra definitely takes his own route, deftly weaving difficult listening into lush hypnotic soundscapes, and turning dreamlike expanses of sound into something a bit more nightmarish. These two discs are a pretty great sampling of Mangicapra's activities over the last few years. And it will be interesting to hear the sounds he conjures up from here on out, now that he has finally left Eureka behind.
A brief burst of mysterious musical abstraction, from one of our favorite purveyors of strange sound and minimal dronemusic. Two tracks, clocking in at about 18 minutes total, this is another gorgeously abstract and spacious drift through some lost alien soundscape .
Thee first track is all tinkling melodies, glistening high end, strange rumbling fluctuations way off in the distance, bits of creak and scrape, everything bathed in foggy reverb and warm wet swirls of tape hiss and atmospheric whir. Melodies creep in and out, as do bits of field recordings, it all feels like some cinematic bleary eyed wander through a hazy druggy flashback, a washed out world of lost memories and fragmented dreams. Here and there guitars grind and reverberate, and strange percussive sonic events drift into earshot, like an even more abstract Wolf Eyes maybe. Quite gorgeous and dreamlike.
The second track starts out the same, a smear of high end shimmer, but instead of spreading out into languid pools of blurry sound, things get decidedly more abrasive, the high end becomes sharper, the percussion is more clattery and jarring, a disembodied voice intones some creepy monologue over the top, effects swirl and swoop, deconstructed riffs chug and churn, everything dizzying and disorienting, like the nightmare analogue to the opening track's dream. Cool cool stuff.
Limited to 153 copies! Packaged in a super deluxe mini sleeve. A die cut two sided thick colored paper sleeve, screen printed, folded around a full color vellum inner sleeve, the cd face, the vellum inner sleeve, and the outer sleeve all visible in a super striking layered affect, so nice.
Another way too limited cd-r release from the mysterious Hoor-Paar-Kraat, who we have been digging pretty heavily as of late. It's time for someone to step up and do a proper unlimited actual cd release for these guys, cuz this stuff is to dark and weird and cool to only be hear by a handful of folks. But for now, this is what we got. And what we got is the last 30 copies of this 16 minute 3" cd-r, a single track of slow moving, textural creepiness, ambient maybe, but there's a whole lot going on. Grinding distorted slow motion guitars lumbering glacially way off in the distance, murky mumbled vocals meandering amidst the tangled strands of low end buzz. Up front, still more low end, but sort of glistening and shimmering, nearly transparent, barely obscuring soft barely-there melodies drifting nearly inaudibly low in the mix.
The guitars build and build, a huge lumbering wall of slow motion riffing, the low end is gradually sucked out of the mix, leaving a snarling buzzing brittle wall of hissing fuzz and coruscating guitar grind, that becomes more and more noisy and muddy, eventually the buzz splinters into abrasive shards, and song collapses into blackness.
Easily the most aggressive thing we've heard from these guys, might appeal to fans of SUNNO))) and Birchville Cat Motel and other modern noiseniks as well as the ambient drone set...
LIMITED TO 40 COPIES!! WE GOT 30!!! After that they are gone for good....
Much less unsettling and mournful than the brilliant Portishead. Much less jarringly antsy and aloof than Lamb. Much less interesting than both. Of whom are we talking? Hooverphonic. Comparisons can't help but be drawn. Affecting a very similar vocal style to the two women in the aforementioned groups, Hooverphonic are akin to a female-fronted Thievery Corporation. Oh and yes, as we're so clearly told by a sticker on the case, the song from the VW commercial is included as a bonus track.
Hard to know what to expect from a new batch of tapes from The Tapeworm, one of our favorite outsider/experimental/whatthefuck cassette labels, sometimes it's drone, sometimes some lost downtempo electronic record, or a mysterious unreleased jazz gem, the soundtrack to an avant garde art installation, or... some harmonica driven blues. Huh? Yeah, even for The Tapeworm, this one is a little out of left field. Or maybe in this case right field. Peter Hope-Evans was a member of seventies blues band Medicine Head, a favorite of John Peel, and here, offers up some skeletal home recorded stripped down blues, just guitar and harmonica, recorded on a boat, floating on a canal, sometime in 2010. The liner notes point to some relevant precursors / inspirations: The Coasters/Donovan/Sleepy John Estes/Blind Mamie Forehand/The Fugs/Skip James/Peggy Lee/Lotte Lenya/Sherrie Levine/Uncle Dave Macon/Moby Grape, and we definitely buy that, but this is essentially some acoustic blues, the guitars minimal, the harmonica soulful, the vocals sung/spoken, the vibe is super intimate, easy to imagine, windows open, the sounds seeping in from all around the canal, candles lit, much alcohol imbibed, and a long night of just jamming in the dark, simpler stripped down old school blues...
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! Featuring original cover art by Savage Pencil.
The rumors are flying. Well, at least on all the underground hip-hop blogs they are. Who is Clutchy Hopkins? Could he really be this Ted Kaczynski type hermit living in a cave somewhere out in the Mojave Desert but who perhaps sometime in the '80s recorded these recently discovered and amazing instrumental funk-jazz tracks? And then came out of hiding briefly to put a new record out on Ubiquity only to then disappear once more? Seems doubtful. Details are shady at best. No one has really seen him, except for some less than trustworthy sources. There are only some old photographs of him looking like some serious Moondog cave hippie, like if Gnarls Barkley was an actual person maybe. It's an interesting back story which adds an exciting twist to the origins of these killer tracks, but would they be less killer if the rumors going around were true that maybe this is in fact an alias band project for either Money Mark, Madlib, Cut Chemist, or DJ Shadow? (Our guess? Kid Loco. Seems like he's been in a cave for awhile.) It shouldn't matter, because this shit is good. And who wouldn't rather believe we live in a world where cave-dwelling hermits could make such awesome grooves. Originally released in 2005, it has 12 untitled tracks ranging from flute groovers, and spy chases to strange percussive interludes. We will review the Ubiquity release on a later list, as this one here we like a bit better and want to make it available to you before it, like Clutchy, disappears into the ether.
The funky desert cave nomad is back again! And apparently he's been listening to a lot of Augustus Pablo and Jackie Mittoo too, because Music Is My Medicine is inflected with all kinds of dub and reggae vibes. Echoey bass, melodica, flutes and sunny rhythms, but not in a heavy-handed way that would interrupt the natural flow of Hopkins soul jazz style. Obviously music is not Clutchy Hopkins' only medicine. This is a stone groove!
Last list we featured a release by the mysterious Clutchy Hopkins, a hippie recluse who was the son of a Motown engineer, and who recorded these amazing instrumental jazz funk tracks sometime in the eighties or early nineties and then disappeared. Rumors have been circulating that this was actually an alias for DJ Shadow or Cut Chemist, as like Bigfoot, only a few people claim to have seen Clutchy Hopkins.
Well, Ubiquity, has released another batch of Clutchy tracks along with a dvd with clips from an unreleased documentary about this mysterious figure. Of course this does little to shed any light on whether this is fact or fiction or a little bit of both. According to the dvd, the tapes were found with a bunch of homemade and middle eastern instruments by a junk collector in Hawthorne, CA. The homemade instruments including a really cool flute wired up to a wah device, a modified electric kalimba, and a mini-electric organ were kept by the collector while the tapes were sold to a friend. Supposedly there were enough tapes to release ten albums, and they were shopped around to various places, and two full albums (including this one) were released. The rest of the tapes were allegedly stolen back and hidden by the junk collector who is now in prison somewhere in Southern California. Other testimonials come from a masked Mexican record collector who fought over the same record, a hippie lady in Venice Beach who lived with Clutchy for three months before he disappeared and a Seattle record store who has some grainy footage of someone believed to be Clutchy shopping. Meanwhile we learn from these testimonials that Clutchy was not only an amazing multi-instrumentalist, but an artist, visionary architect and spiritual philosopher as well. On paper, it sounds so absolutely far-fetched, yet most of the folks on the dvd actually seem quite genuine. So we're really confused. But like the last review, we're gonna stick with our gut and just wholeheartedly buy into this. Why, because the music is awesome for one, and this release also shines a light on another soul obscurity, Darondo, who guest vocals on a track. Whether Darondo recorded the song with Clutchy or was added in later is still a mystery, they didn't include him in the interviews. Recommended!
NB. the dvd portions of this review don't apply to the vinyl format...
Local all-around nice guy's WONDERFUL new album of impossibly lush pop songs that remind us of Chris Bell and Big Star, yes they're that good and that touching. With the added talents of Barbara Manning, Melanie Clarin, and Greg Freeman.
Join Kev Hopper (former bassist of Stump) on his third album as he meanders down a gently winding path festooned with pretty marimbas, vibes, and musical saw. Textured percussion and strings weave their way. At times diaphanous and shimmering, and at others shadowy and mysterious. Hopper (who has played on albums by High Llamas and Stereolab) is accompanied on his journey by Charles Hayward (This Heat) and Sean O'Hagan (High Llamas).
One of two cassettes that we're listing from Serbian cassette / objet d'art label No Basement Is Deep Enough. This one comes by way of local wackadoodle Hora Flora (nee Raub Roy); and the tape itself is buried within a large knot of rope braided out of plastic bags that stands in as the ready made artwork. Annoying? Awesome? Stupid? Brilliant? Yes to all of the above. The two twenty minute pieces document one of Roy's sound installations that involve a series of simple aeolian harps constructed out of flexible bamboo rods and giftwrapping ribbon which resonates with all of the eerie harmonics of Egyptian reeds. The first side is a straight field recordings of these objects through a couple of well-placed condenser microphones that never get overblown by the wind itself, with the sounds of passing trucks and wind-chimes swirling around the constant raga-drone flutter from Roy's aeolian harp. The second side finds the objects recorded by contact microphones, offering less of the harmonic interplay and more of a dichotomy between death-knell rattlings and deep thrumming vibrations. This is one of those pieces that falls into the Fluxus category of sound research alongside the works of Gordon Monahan, Alvin Lucier, and George Macunias. We've got five of these; and it's VERY unlikely to be restocked.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Bay Area sound artist Raub Roy goes by the name of Horaflora; and his performances are really impressive exercises in controlled electro-acoustic chaos, with low-tech electronics skittering above various tactile scrapes counterpointed by reversed currents of placid bass frequencies and tonal undulation. One of his best performance stunts is to fill up large balloons, shove a trumpet mouthpiece inside the balloon, and drop the metal mouthpiece on a large drumhead. With two of these devices going, Horaflora can generate prolonged vibration and acoustically phased drones that are really amazing.
Gland Canyon is a small run edition released by Instal Records (which had released a Caretaker disc a while back, although this shares little aesthetic similarity), and works through many of the clamorous, decomposing sounds that Horaflora generates in a live setting. It can't be qualified as 'noise' as these collages are more in keeping with a tradition of automatic writing through sound, with idiosyncratic juxtapositions of electronic bloops, ring modulated flanges, minuscule clatter of wood and metal, mad-scientist weirdo percolations, and those sublimated balloon drones. As such it's more in keeping with some of the HNAS collages or something deconstructed from Small Cruel Party and old P.16.D4 tapes. The various tracks ebb and flow with an unhurried pace that slowly magnifies some of the many sounds into more sparse hypno-repetitive passages and then sweep everything into rather dense crescendos of scattershot sediment. Limited to 100 copies.
San Francisco's Raub Roy (aka Horaflora) met Ryan Martin (aka Secret Boyfriend), during an ambitious Horaflora tour in 2008, whereby he biked from Georgia to Maine, playing his unique brand of acoustic noise along the way with just what he could carry and what he could scrape together at each show. Martin hosted one of these shows in his hometown of Carrboro, NC; being impressed by the performance, he offered Roy a split release on his own Hot Releases imprint. While it would have been cool to have a document from the Horaflora bike tour, this is a damn fine split release of nocturnal murk linking the two projects. The Horaflora side is actually a recording of a live radio broadcast at KALX in Berkeley, with Roy being accompanied by Andrea Williams. One of Roy's best tricks - expanded balloons expelling their innards across drum heads and metal surfaces - is on display here; and it's great to hear the variety of these blustery elongated textures in an audio environment when it has been such a great visual aspect to his live performances. Amidst these sounds, Roy and Williams interweave acoustic noise-junk textures from found metal, tin cans, and hypercompressed recordings from hand-held tape decks, spluttering towards a dense climax of floor rattling low end and aerated acoustic noise.
The Secret Boyfriend side opens with a meandering set of Roy Montgomery styled noise-drone guitar melodies collapsing into a murky spectral-decay wash of no-fi shoegazing. Fuzzy piano tones begin to emerge as graceful calliope like melodies, still hung with enough grit and cobwebs to make these sound haunted. All of this comes to an end with a menacing burst of noise grafted upon a cheap synth melody that tone bends from the depths of cavernous cistern, but the noise begets a couple of darkened mope-folk tunes of just acoustic guitar and voice buried in echoplex.
300 copies and that's it for this great split!
Quiet/loud saxophone squealing and squawking, over a background ambience of ominous clatter and drone...piano, percussion, tape hiss...
Free jazz fairy tale music from France circa 1971. It's very moody and dark, but then there will be eruptions of Warner Bros cartoon music, almost. You could imagine a cartoon mouse tip-toeing around to some of this. A very scared little mouse. This ultra-rare Futura LP now sees cd reissue via Italian label Mellow, and fans of skronky Euro-improv as well as the more cosmic psych soundscapes of, say, Taj Mahal Travellers, should investigate.
