[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 1501 through 1550 of 1631.

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History hasn't always been kind to bluegrass and folk musicians of yore who weren't so lucky to get recording contracts or be discovered by travelling musicologists. Case in point the story of Lena Hughes, a Missouri born fiddler, banjoist and guitarist who specialized in parlor music, a folk form that consisted of renditions of hymns, sentimental songs, 19th century airs and finger-picked tunes of fiddle songs, often played in specialized tunings. She was born in 1904 and died in 1998, and during her long life she only cut one record, which came out on a private press in the sixties. But, she was well-known on the Ozark mountains music circuit that she toured extensively throughout her career. Her finger picking style is magical, often employing an ethereal open tuning technique, on songs that have the sweet sadness of days gone by. Recently remastered, this Tompkins Square rediscovery is truly a joy to behold. Highly recommended!

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Norwegian singer-songwriter Hanne Hukkelberg's debut, Little Things, was an enchanting collection of delicate instrumentation, fluttering vocals, and sophisticated songwriting. It took more than a few of us here at aQ by surprise and became something of a sleeper hit for lazy sun-drenched afternoons. The same sensibilities that made Little Things so successful are evident on Rykestrasse 68: vocals pushed to the front of the mix, dry, personal and sultry while a kaleidoscope of drips, drops, bells and whistles flutters in the background. However, the darker mood and sense of melancholy on this record make it more suitable for grey days and rain-streaked windows than its sunnier predecessor. The obvious points of comparison are, of course, artists like Bjork, Feist and Tujiko Noriko -- powerhouse singers who blend fractured acoustic sounds, electronic flourishes and sophisticated songwriting; however, Rykestrasse 68 stands on its own as a beautiful work from a tremendously talented artist who manages to achieve a really engaging combination of naivete and a deliberate, self-aware intellectualism. It's a winning blend, evident in the mix between the toy instruments and found sounds that lend the record a certain childlike quality and the darkness and drama to that comes out in its best moments (take her cover of The Pixies' "Break My Body," for example). This, much like her previous, will undoubtedly fly beneath the radar, as it falls into that awkward middle ground between something you'd read about in The Wire and cafe-friendly pop. However, give this one a chance and it'll undoubtedly become the perfect soundtrack to some quiet, melancholy moment in your life. Simply gorgeous.

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We've been meaning to review this for a while now, record number two from the East Coast post-hardcore sludge pop combo Hull, whose first record positioned them alongside aQ faves Torche, with that sort of extreme heaviness fused to extreme poppiness thing, but on the new record the band have had a serious sonic makeover. The opening track alone, after a brief bit of sludginess, explodes into a furious blasting metalpunk blowout, with shrieked vox, buzzing guitars, slipping into chugging almost-breakdowns, before exploding into a roiling bit of lumbering doom, the guitars super distorted, the band lurching through some cool stop/starts, peppered with wild double kick drumming, and some psychedelic guitar shred, before shifting gears and locking into a super blown out mathy churn, before slipping right back into a strange sort of sing along punk dirge, and heck, the song is 11+ minutes so the band go all out, jamming wildly and flitting from sound to sound, managing to string it all together into something cohesive, and pretty massively crushing. The rest of the record is just as varied, with the second track getting all spacey and droney, never really metal more a sort of acoustic guitar driven dirge, big drums wedded to some almost Appalachian style buzz, swampy and bluesy, but still dark and heavy, before the title track finds the band launching right back into some bellowed, downtuned heaviness, all angular guitars, and pounding drums, the poppiness of their first record still finding its way into their sound, but more subtly, with this new sound being much more about texture and mood, riffing and metallic pound, but it definitely suits them, in fact in some ways, while this new sound is still beholden to many that came before, it's a much more original sound, and one they've definitely made their own, and one we're still exploring after repeated listens. Epic and varied, sludgey and thrashy, melodic and mysterious, and most definitely psychedelic, this is the kind of record that should hit the spot for heavy music obsessives of all stripes. WAY recommended.

Silence... thunder... shudder... shadow... those are some of the things evoked even by the first minute or so of this isolationist dark ambient piece crafted by the multi-talented Scott Hull, best known as the guitarist of grind heroes Pig Destroyer, also of Agoraphobic Nosebleed fame. The whole thing, which mostly just gets darker and more disturbing as it flows on, is about 12:36 in length, one track fitting neatly on a 3" cd (not cd-r, cd). We love it when we get actual 3" cds! Though we really like it when they come in those tiny little jewel cases (like tUMULt's Bathtub Shitter and Professor 3" releases). Whereas this is packaged in a cardboard sleeve. Looks good though, with appropriately atmospheric graphics by Seldon Hunt. Titled Audiofilm 1, this is presumably the first in a series of limited edition 3" cds on Crucial Blast. Hull's "audiofilm" is a scary one. Dramatic, sudden percussive clashings. Dronological whoosh. Nightmare heartbeat pulsations. The hiss and gurgle of some malevolent monster. Waves of whispery electronic terror... Don't worry, it's just a little 3" cd. It can't really hurt you. And some of it is actually lullingly beautiful, as with the gentle bell sounds tinkling about 7-8 minutes in. LIMITED EDITION. 1000 copies only (which seems like a lot, but Pig Destroyer are pretty popular). We only got a few, and don't know if we'll be able to get more. (But we also have a Scott Hull solo full-length on Relapse, another imaginary soundtrack styled ambient effort, to be reviewed in future.)

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Tomorrow is the first ever solo record from Carl Hultgren, aka Carl of psychedelic bliss pop drifters Windy & Carl, and we're happy to report, that even on his own, the sound doesn't fall to far from the dreamy psychedelia of W&C. Lush, layered guitars capes, that shimmer and glimmer, soft strums are blurred into heaving billows of chordal thrum, notes chime, and harmonics ring out, distortion if muted and smeary, and gives everything a druggy, dreamy vibe, all sun dappled and blissed out. There are some subtle bits of processing, electronics here and there, even some buried rhythms, but for the most part, Tomorrow is all glistening guitars, softly soaring, sonic streaks across the heavens, that blur into hazy, prismatic driftscapes, with some tracks reminding us of the Durutti Column for sure, the same sort of soft focus melancholia, but others getting downright noisy, a bit darker, even then though, the sound has a heavenly glow, a warm, enveloping sonic center that bathes everything in a blissful soft afternoon light. Others are strummy and melodic, with spidery guitars wrapped around a skeletal Appalachia, again all softly smeared into something a bit more otherworldly, and ethereal, a wonderfully wistful collection of soft-psych, dream-drift blissout. The cd version is limited to 350 copies and comes in a nice, hand letterpressed sleeve, with full color pasted on front cover artwork, the 2lp version is limited to 500 copies, comes in a heavy gatefold sleeve and is pressed on one black lp, and one orange. Both come with a download code, with 6 bonus tracks available only via the download!

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Back in stock! This amazing series of books seems like just what we (and all you fellow music geeks) have been waiting for. A whole mess of amazing records, Love's Forever Changes, the Smiths' Meat Is Murder, Neil Young's Harvest, Pink Floyd's Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and loads more. All written about by folks who love them, or whose lives were changed by said records. An unlike most music writing, these novella length tomes are not about the artist so much as specifically about the records, the making of, the thinking behind, and all the stuff surrounding the creation of these essential albums. Unlike Joe Pernice's fictional approach to the Smith's Meat Is Murder reviewed last list, Andrew Hulktrans dives factually deep into Forever Changes, Love's masterpiece from 1967. Very deep. Hulktrans is the former editor of Bookforum and it shows. This reads a lot like a book review, dense, insightful, rife with psychology, philosophy and musicology. No Rolling Stone style pop journalism here. The Watts Riots, The Sunset Strip Riots, Vietnam are all examined as crucial pieces of the curious puzzle that is Arthur Lee, a paranoid outcast convinced that his death was imminent. And driven to make Forever Changes before it was too late.

Record number two from the mysteriously monickered Hum Of The Druid, and as we mentioned in the review of the first lp, that's exactly what you'll hear, some serious druidic hum, which is just something we made up so you'll just have to take our word for it. The follow up takes the already intense and heavy caustic drones of the first lps and takes it even further. Darker, filthier, heavier. At times it almost sounds like field recordings of a construction site chopped up and assembled into something slightly more musical, at others it sounds like Earth, circa 2, overdosed and slumped against a wall of Sunn amps cranked to 10, and at still others, it sounds a bit like someone spinning Masonna records on a busted Victrola. Indeed. Massive swells of sound, all low end, and we mean VERY low end, super blown out, crumbling, Merzbowian, vast expanses of speaker destroying rumble, giving way to stretches of sound much more tranquil, like Masami Akita mixing Wolf Eyes. Sheets of murky industrial drift wreathed in corrosive buzz and wallowing in downtuned tectonic filth. Some parts sound like wind blowing on a microphone, but cranked to danger levels, other parts sound like a million turntables with the needle stuck in the run off groove of some super scratched up old record, peppered with the clatter and clank of some alien machinery, it's almost like a stereo test record, but instead of tones, it's a series of long, sprawling slabs of super intense drone, and speaker shredding grind and buzz. It's all very deep and abrasive, caustic and corrosive, but actually strangely mesmerizing. Gorgeous and super creepy cover art too! We only have 15 copies and then it's gone for good...

Hum of the druid indeed. Rarely does a band name so perfectly capture the essence of a band's sound. Societal is just one massive LP length druidic hum. The name may be spot on but the cover is a bit misleading, with its creepy evil Rudimentary Peni style cover, it definitely smacks of some obscure doom metal record, or when you also figure in the name, some sort of neo folk new weird America whatever. But no, Hum Of The Druid is indeed about THE HUM, which is essentially THE DRONE, which means this is definitely going to hit the spot for drone obsessives. However, unlike the slowly shifting static quality of a lot of drone records, Societal is a thick and roiling sonic stew, about as unsmooth as you can get. Static, crackle, hum, fuzz, the sound of ocean surf, radio interference, white noise, pink noise, record run off, it's as if HOTD took every naturally and un-naturally occurring source of hum and constructed this gorgeously thick layered chunk of squirming, twisting, shifting hum. It's ambient sure, but an impossibly grinding ambience, like some long lost Japanoise record with all the edges sanded off, or like listening to My Bloody Valentine, through the one remaining blown speaker on your car stereo, with the bass all the way up and the treble all the way down, rendering everything a warm mewling rumbly hum. Imagine listening to your favorite record with EVERY single cord and cable connecting your stereo components and speakers, pulled out far enough where they're just barely in there, the connection so tenuous, that your favorite record becomes an orchestra of bad connections, with only the occasional glimpse of the melody and music beneath the suffocating smear of glitch and crackle and indeed hum!

We recently reviewed a full length lp from Hum Of The Druid, Raising The New Wing..., a mighty caustic slab of noise drenched drones and fucked up ambience. For a record that harsh and harrowing, we really couldn't stop listening to it (and yeah, we have a few copies left). So we were psyched to discover a new record by them (him?), a split with another noisemaker we dig, but have yet to review anything by. The Hum Of The Druid side is more of what we've been hankering for. A dense sea of crumbling distortion and blown out grit, a spray of grizzled amp buzz and all manner of hum and crackle and glitch. There are brief interludes of abstract ambience, laced with bits of feedback, but those are merely brief respites from the relentless onslaught. The HotD side ends with some super creeped out blackened drones, lots of distorted in-the-red low end, and tortured anguished howls buried way down in the mix, culminating in a super jagged speaker destroying crunch and glitch outro. Fire In The Head most definitely hold their own, opening with slithery slowed down guitar drones, underneath creepy fucked up samples, plenty of buzz and glitch, all over a thick sea of processed rumbles and whirs, there's definitely an old school industrial vibe, intense and haunting, lots of vocal samples. It all builds to a seriously fired filed of static, underpinning cool super effected demonic vokills, doused in distortion and reverb. Super super creepy. The side ends with some awesomely distorted blown out rhythms, all stuttery and chopped up, like some damaged metallic noise dub. Cool. Super nice packaging. Thick black sleeve with paste on covers on each side, and Rudimentary Peni fans take note, the Fire In The Head side features original Nick Blinko artwork! Also includes a printed insert / lyric sheet, and of course, it's ultra limited, and we only got a handful.

Heavy-ish prog/psych power trio action outta Edinburgh, Scotland circa 1969, here's the sole album by this obscure but well-regarded band. This is its first fully official cd reissue, done with the help of the band members themselves, and boasts a 16 page booklet full of vintage photos, lyrics and reminiscences. This moody Beast was apparently much heavier in live performance than on this comparatively tame studio recording (a common problem for bands back then, lamented in the liner notes by bassist Ed Jones, who claims that only about 45 seconds of the record really reflects their earbleeding live sound). Even then, Volume One isn't without, well, volume. And power. Explosive electric guitar breaks and urgent rhythms, alternating with plodding and poetic dreamscapes. Wah-wah'd chicka chicka chicka guitar with Eastern-inflected melodies wending around and around. The first song is called "Mystic Man" and indeed the entirety of The Human Beast's album evokes a mystic, almost creepy feeling, accentuated by cryptic lyrics, lines like "We celebrate the feel of human meat" and "Mind escapes you, flies to freedom / Leaves your hollow gargoyle kingdom". There's certainly a special weirdness to The Human Beast, a peculiar, pagan freakiness. Their cover of The Incredible String Band's "Maybe Someday" fits right in. Very effective. And while the production never lets them get quite as Beastly as they wanted to be, for 1969 this is still pretty badass. These guys probably never heard Randy Holden's Population II, but they probably would have liked it. And they'd certainly heard their share of Jimi Hendrix and Iron Butterfly... While more '60s psych than '70s proto-metal (at their heaviest here, closer to Cream than Sabbath), we'd certainly rank 'em in alongside the likes of High Tide, Sam Gopal, NSU, The Dark, Arzachel, and Andromeda...

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Krautrock and weird music fans all around the world MUST being living right, to earn up the good karma required for something this cool and unexpected and downright uber-historic to drop into our laps. A previously unreleased, live concert recording from a pre-Cluster (and pre-Kluster) krautrock ensemble featuring Hans-Joachim Roedelius, from way back in 1968. Wow. Who knew? Maybe not even Roedelius, who apparently not long ago just received a tape of this in the mail from an "anonymous donor", someone who'd lugged recording equipment to the underground (literally) music club Zodiak several decades earlier and captured this show, then filed it away like a sonic time capsule of late '60s Berlin freakdom, i.e. Human Being, an amorphous collective of (mostly) non-musicians, a sort of "noise orchestra" that found a home at the Zodiak (a club co-organized by Roedelius's comrade Conrad Schnitzler), touring also all the way to Morocco we're told, but never releasing a record... until now! This rare document consists of one lengthy track, 56 and a half minutes long, of utter loud "early industrial" featuring guitar, organ, drums, saxophone, cello... and tons and tons of electronic FX, lots of echo and delay, feedback and tape loops, and what sounds like shortwave radio static... proving that there's nothing new under the sun, once again, THIS WAS DONE OVER 40 YEARS AGO FOLKS! Sounds like something we'd be selling on a cd-r from some floorcore noise-drone outfit nowadays! 20th century avant garde meets the anarchic spirit of the freeform psychedelic rock scene, with murky droning pulsations and percussive clatter building building into an insistent heavy throb by the end of the piece. It's abstract out-there stuff indeed, difficult to describe (the deep foghorn like rumbles remind us of Yoshi Wada's Earth Horns, if that helps). But you should experience it for yourself, especially if you're into the more droned out, free improv, experimental side of krautrock (or of anything)! Given that it's cool this is available at all, we really shouldn't complain about anything, but we will say the digipack doesn't look quite the way we'd like it to... the cover illustration and cd booklet frankly seem a bit cheesy to us, in fact we almost ignored this as a result when we first saw it (don't judge a book by its cover, all right all right) just 'cause, well, it's too modern generic computery designy lookin', those fonts, that art, yuck. But, the text of the extensive liner notes is informative anyway, and besides it's really the music that STILL matters, 40+ years on from when Human Being originally hit the scene, now thanks to this release more than just an obscure footnote to the career of the very much still musically active (in Cluster, solo, and other collaborations) Hans-Joachim Roedelius.

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Zines not dead! Here's the third ish of this excellent underground music fanzine in the grand old tradition. Covering proto-punk, power pop, glam rock, and other good stuff in that vein and/or of that vintage, Human Being Lawnmower (named after the MC5 song) comes across like a cross between Galactic Zoo Dossier and Savage Damage Digest. It's in the same format as the latter, 7" x 8 1/2", and features contributions from both SDD's Cory Lindstrum and GZD's Plastic Crimewave in fact. Graphically, Human Being Lawnmower is a treat. There's lotsa cool comix in here - several drawn by this zine's editor, Avi Spivak. But plenty of text too. Bands, some pretty darn obscure, covered here include: all-female rock pioneers Fanny, bubblegum punk Laurice, aQ fave fuzzsters Index, the Equals, The Troggs, The Sidewinders, The Hurriganes, Plod, Iron Virgin, Cock Sparrer, and more. Plus, a couple pages of reviews of current releases and reissues, mostly in the garage rock idiom. And, there's a hilarious "buyer's guide" to a bunch of iffy Lou Reed albums, mostly from the '70s and '80s, though last year's ill-conceived collaboration with Metallica, Lulu, gets an entry - you can tell where the writer is coming from when he says "This record stinks, there is nothing good on it� However this is still the best Lou Reed album in 30 years and the best Metallica album of all time". Can't agree, but ha! HBL#3 is not all fun and games and music though - one piece, illustrated by Spivak, tells the harrowing true-life tale of David Millstein's visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps in 2004. All in all, 76 pages of pure fanzine goodness for anyone hip to it.

Underrated gem of a record from this band that features Nathan Bell of Lungfish fame. Think recent Earth, Grails, Gary Lucas, a more restrained Explosions In The Sky, and the expansive desolate side of Ennio Morricone. This one slipped under the radar but damn is it great!

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MISSISSIPPI ALERT!!!! It seems like most "never-made-it" bands of the psychedelic era have a similar story. One seemingly trivial missed opportunity ended up having grave consequences for the band's future. LA's Human Expression offered the same gritty trippy vibe as The Seeds and Thirteen Floor Elevators, and in hindsight, they may even seem like a Seeds rip-off, but they were seemingly headed for bigger things than The Seeds with a more mature sound and song-writing. But they slept on a chance to record "Born To Be Wild" for their third single, before it was given to Steppenwolf who turned it into a mega-hit. The band never recovered and they were lost to the dustbin of history, which is too bad, because they had some awesome catchy songs with interesting psychedelic electronic effects. This records captures most of their entire output including a single by the singer who tried to pursue a solo career. This album has been reissued before on cd by the Cicadelic reissue label, but it's nice to have an affordable vinyl version. Hope Mississippi does some other cool psych lp reissues in the near future!

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The return of these noise rock sci-fi garage glam blooz punk weirdos, fronted by Timmy Vulgar, formerly of aQ faves Timmy's Organism and frontman of the Clone Defects. But in Human Eye, Vulgar and his cohorts whip up a dizzying collection of warped, whatthefuck, outsider psychedelic space rock garage punk, or something like that, it's heavy, spacey, garagey, bloozey, definitely psychedelic, and definitely kinda punk, all swaggery and groovy, the sound slipping from Stoogesy stomp to Hawkwind style space out, and from organ driven garage rock vamps to brooding almost echo drenched fuzz pop, there are organs whirring all over the place, the drumming is wild and chaotic, everything wreathed in wah wah guitar, with pounding piano, and clouds of FX. The vibe is definitely glammy, and there's all sorts of weirdness going on, bloops and bleeps, analog synths, blorping bass, Human Eye coming off like some alien glam rock combo, and in many way reminding us of the Lee Harvey Oswald Band, the same sort of irreverence coupled with crazy catchy songs, anthemic and hooky as hell. But it's noisy and grimy and sorta slithery and dark too, the sound is dense and dangerous, laced with extreme poppiness, but that poppiness often underpinned by a shadowy sonic malevolence. But just as often, the shrug off the darkness completely and kick out some impossibly poppy jam, or disregard any sort of musical gravity and go careening into the stratosphere, all blissed out and prismatically druggy!

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Remember the "blurry noise-rock-space-garage distorto rock off kilter groove damaged glam trash blooz" of the weirdly named Timmy's Organism that we listed a while back? A twisted slab of schizophrenic warped what-the-fuck from Michigan, the product of a very disturbed musical mind, one belonging to a fella named Timmy Vulgar (who fronted the Clone Defects once upon a time). Well Timmy is back, this time with a band in tow, that would be Human Eye, and they take the twisted sound of Timmy's Organism, and rev it up, giving it the full band treatment, creating a riff heavy chunk of psychedelic spaced out drug drenched outsider noise rock, that manages to be riffy, hooky, heavy, and occasionally totally and completely fractured and fucked. Take the awesomely titled "Brain Zip (Kickin' Back In The Electric Chair)", which begins all synth laden garage rock space buzz stomp, with snarly swaggery vox, and some of THEE most distorted guitars ever, totally blown out, and all twisted up, the various sounds somehow restrained and molded into some seriously tripped out post Stooges / pre Hawkwind space garage weirdness, until the guitar solo comes in, WAY up in the mix, and SUPER distorted, a wild melodic squiggle that relegates the rest of the song to a hushed background buzz. "Impregnate The Martian Queen Pt 2" is a glammy stomp, with Butthole Surfers style processed vox, not to mention a weird watery splash sound that seems to wreathe all of the sounds, there are even bongos and some acoustic guitars, like Ziggy Stardust on a SERIOUSLY bad (or good?) trip. "Junkyard Heart" somehow channels both Van Halen AND Monster Magnet, through a short sharp blast of drum heavy uber distorted effects drenched garage dirge crush. And so it goes, song after song of twisted fractured fucked up confusional new wave / space rock / glam garage / psych punk weirdness that we're digging more and more with every listen.

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More minimal wave weirdness from the archives of Alain Neffe, who was responsible for the huge archive of Insane Music tapes which were released back in '80s with all sorts of death disco rhythms, caterwauling electronics, and Cronenberg allusions to sex, death, and the demise of modern culture. Earlier in 2012, we discovered Neffe's recordings as Cortex, with cooing French female vocals and cosmically baroque electronic ambience. Given how much we (and quite a number of you as well!) were smitten by the sidereal radiophonic explorations of Cortex, which we went so far as to make a Record Of The Week, we've found yet another of Neffe's early projects - Human Flesh. Throughout the '80s, this was pretty much a solo project of his, although the entire Insane Music catalogue finds Neffe working with a small cadre of vocalists and electronic tinkerers. Pseudo Code was another of Neffe's projects, featuring Guy-Marc Hinant (who later founded Sub Rosa Records) and Xavier S; and this trio was quite active recording and performing from 1979 to about 1983. One day in 1982, Neffe had set up the studio for a session of Pseudo Code recordings, waiting for Guy-Marc and Xavier to show up. Instead, a friend from a distant Belgian town arrived at the studio unannounced. This fellow was named Guy de Bievre, and the two decided to use the all of the settings on the synths, sequencers, and drum machines originally for the Pseudo Code sessions to create something for Neffe's Human Flesh project. The Pseudo Code sound was much more dialed into the Cabaret Voltaire ethos of electronics with minimalist sequencing and plodding rhythms that inspired dread and horror. Neffe and Bievre add expressivist blooping electronics, scattered guitar distortion, and some punk-poet barking to the rhythmic sequences, that could almost be a Richard Pinhas & Chris Carter duet from that same period, if such as thing could be imagined. A single track of snaking electronic rhythms, splattered with cold melodies, haunted blurting noises, and those occasional vocals that all come together as a fine piece of industrial mesmerism. Limited to 300 copies!

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Michael Begg's name first came to our attention through those beguiling Fovea Hex albums which smeared and obsfucated the tropes of British Folk with a crushed velvet ambience, although it was hard to discern who might have been responsible for such activities given the heavy hitters that dot the Fovea Hex line-up, including Brian Eno, Clodagh Simonds, Colin Potter, and Andrew McKenzie. Begg was obviously a very good artist to recruit for Fovea Hex as he pursues an aesthetic of extracting a beautiful melancholy from any number of acoustic and electronic instruments. All of this is majestically on display here in his Human Greed project with Deryk Thomas. Fortress Longing is a nocturnal album through and through, with subtle melodic passages coming in and out of focus through a shimmering, gauzy sheen that wouldn't be out of place on the arrangements for any given Current 93 album. Violin, psaltery, piano, bells, and wordless female vocals all enter the Human Greed smears of post-classical ambience and obscurant sound design that cross back and forth between the Caretaker's weepingly nostalgic crackling and emotionally draining yet placid interludes found in Godspeed! You Black Emperor.

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So as soon as we dove into the extensive liner notes of this seriously awesome reissue of New Zealand's heaviest (and only??) psych band Human Instinct, we realized that despite their failed commercial success, these dudes were really way ahead of their time. After relocating to the UK in the late sixties and undergoing a handful of line-up changes, Human Instinct hit the local bar circuit with an original formula of heavy ripping psych played at blistering, amp melting volumes. Inspired by Hendrix and other dudes pushing the limits of the newly evolved electric guitar, Human Instinct developed a sound that was completely unique and possibly influential on the heavy bands that followed. While we wouldn't exactly call this stuff proto-metal, more like heavy psych, it definitely was a major step in reaching the heavy blackened riffage that bands like Sabbath and Pentagram would later perfect. That said, the album definitely has songs worth listening to over and over and over, buuuuuut there are a few tracks ya might just want to skip over. Oh and did we mention these dudes were known for having a lead singer who ALSO plays drums standing up!!?? Yes its true, Maurice Greer not only has a wicked sweet voice, but his drumming style is truly unique!! Track number one kicks things off with an awesome version of Dennis Wilson's "Black Sally". Definitely a track you can headbang to, it's easy to hear how their slow grooving heaviness could one day become the essence of doom. Needless to say, these guys were way ahead of their time, I mean according to the liner notes, they starting playing together in '58!! Crazy! "The Jugg-A-Jugg Song", our second favorite track on Stoned Guitar, starts off with a wall of psychedelic fury, blaring, amp frying guitar, rampant drum chaos, destroying eardrums and anything else that stands in the way! So good!! "Midnight Sun" follows with stoney (obviously), repetitive riffs layered with atmospheric fuzz solos that seem to launch into the sky, really kraut-like and hypnotic, not unlike Parson Sound or Wooden Shjips, sorta. So this is basically the complete package, four bonus tracks, killer liner notes with photos and basically the entire history of this underappreciated heavy psych gem! Stoned Guitar is fried out, in-the-red type blues perfection for fans of the recently reviewed Jerusalem, Bedemon, or even Flower Travelin' Band. We even hear some similarities to new psychedelic jammers Magic Lantern or Eternal Tapestry too. Take our advice and don't miss out on this super influential piece of psych glory!! And maybe Rockadrome/Vintage will follow up with reissues of the other two Human Instinct albums, we used to have all three as imports but they've been AWOL lately.

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The transformation of Human League from electronic experimentalists with punk affinity to the advocates of new wave fashion of style over substance was completed through the third album "Dare." Yup, this was the defining album which broke them as legitimate pop stars through the mega-single "Don't You Want Me;" however, there's no sense of adventure or daring on this album beyond their angular haircuts and androgynous appearance. This CD reissue also features 8 instrumental tracks from "Dare" that were released as the "Love And Dancing" EP. MPEG Download: "Don't You Want Me" [/audio/humanleaguedontyou.mp3]

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BACK IN PRINT!!! Perhaps you've heard the quiet rumbling accolades for The Human League's early non-synthpop recordings. Up until now, only mere glimpses were available via their Reproduction album from 1979 and to a lesser degree 1980's Travelogue. Well, here's a UK import of twenty previously unreleased songs that predate their '80s glory. They were compiled from the label's own collection of bootlegs as well as from restored master tapes that have been locked away in the group's studio for over two decades. In those days ('77 to '79) they were also known as The Future. Decidedly un-pop, this Human League was an altogether different entity back then with a line-up that included Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh (who went on to form Heaven 17). Actually many of these works were performed by only these two gents. It was they rather than Philip Oakey who pretty much ran the early Future / Human League show. They constructed much more abstract and exploratory soundscapes with a heavier, graver mood than the later Oakey-fronted fluff that would bring the group fame (i.e, the weak songwriting, thin synth sounds, and off-key vocals of "Fascination"). Odd, yet effectively frail falsetto and deep spoken vocals converse over the low viscous electronic marches and swooping spaced-out analog synthesizer excursions with no drums or guitars. It actually would be quite at home accompanying the art-wave film Liquid Sky or on a bill with the Residents. Truly, much of this sounds quite fresh and adventurous today. All except one track were produced by Ware and Marsh. Note: the sound quality does vary from track to track, however this compilation still stands up as a revealing and intriguing document of this group's early works. Much more impressive and much less dated than both Heaven 17 and later Human League combined. Recommended.

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"Reproduction" was the first proper album for the first incarnation of Human League, which was comprised of vocalist Philip Oakey, and electronic wizards Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh. Much like Kraftwerk, Human League took great care to play with the notions that all electronic music was cold and soulless but filtered through the lens of punk. At times, these tracks offer clinical rhythms and primitive electronic monotony; but at others, the trio would develop cascading melodies from shards of crystalline tones. "Reproduction" does feature Oakley's unmistakable baritone crooning throughout, which hits a low-point on the dodgy cover of "You've Lost That Loving Feeling," but for the most part is well matched for the grim electronic marches found throughout the rest of the album. However, "The Dignity of Labour 1-4" is the true gem on this CD reissue. An instrumental EP which was produced after their first single "Being Boiled" and preceding the "Reproductions" album, "The Dignity Of Labour 1-4" is an amazing piece of proto-electronica paralleling much of the syncopated electronics produced by Chris Carter for Throbbing Gristle and later as Chris & Cosey. These 4 lengthy cuts are easily some of the best work that Human League ever did, if very very far removed from the chart-topping synth pop of "Keep Feeling Fascination" or "Don't You Want Me." Also featured on this CD reissue are the studio banter housed on a flexi disc for "The Dignity of Labour 1-4" and both cuts from their Fast Product single "Being Boiled" which was prominently featured on the "In The Beginning There Was Rhythm" and on the Girls on Top mashup with TLC. MPEG Download: "Circus Of Death" [/audio/humanleaguecircus.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Circus Of Death" [/audio/humanleaguecircus.m3u] MPEG Download: "Dignity Of Labour 1" [/audio/humanleaguedignity1.mp3]

MPEG stream: Circus Of Death
MPEG stream: Dignity Of Labour 1
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"Travelogue" which was the second album from Human League released back in 1980 found the group moving much closer to a friendlier pop sensibility, although occasionally showing sparks of brilliance through darkened science fiction references. Philip Oakley's vocals had clearly taken center stage to Human League's production, offering cabaret mannerisms and theatrical panache to the electronic production. A redux of "Being Boiled" is also featured on "Travelogue," but the synth horns and polished production don't add anything to the original. After these sessions, the band split due to artistic differences with Oakley maintaining the Human League moniker and Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh formed Heaven 17, a band which ironically developed into another synth-pop chart topper like Oakley's Human League. MPEG Download: "The Black Hit Of Space" [/audio/humanleagueblackhit.mp3] MPEG Stream: "The Black Hit Of Space" [/audio/humanleagueblackhit.m3u]

MPEG stream: The Black Hit Of Space
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Part three in the Human Quena Orchestra's ever evolving sonic mission to create what could possibly be the darkest, and most intense post industrial metallic blacknoise EVER. Not like there's a lot of competition, and having worked our way now through all three records, even if there were any other outfits foolhardy to have a go at HQO, they'd most likely be dispatched in short order. As anyone who's heard either Means Without Ends or The Politics Of The Irredeemable can attest to. Easily, two of the bleakest, most abject and miserable collections of hellish hymns and burntblack dronescapes ever committed to tape. HQO's modus operandi is a combination of caustic black buzz, of pounding machine like percussion and howling anguished shrieked vokills, all wound tight into throbbing, churning, nightmarish chunks of jagged black filth, and crusty musical misanthropy. Think the usual suspects, Khanate, diSEMBOWELMENT, Winter, Skepticism, Esoteric, even Swans, and then tune it further down, slow it further down, pile on layer after layer of suffocating buzz, of oozing soul crushing low-end, and let it fester, and rot, and crumble and decay, and you'll begin to get close to the strange and sick soundworld of HQO. A Natural History Of Failure finds HQO mastermind Ryan Unks, joined by a handful of likeminded volunteers, each adding their own secret ingredients to Unks' noxious brew, and weirdly enough, if anything, more players has not resulted in more sound, or more accurately, the sound itself does seem MORE, more dense, heavier, thicker, more filthy and fraught with emotional peril, but the songs, the structures, somehow seem even more minimal. The opening track is more a thick, pulsing drone, a dense layered funereal creep, the sounds burnt and blown out, a single riff slowed down to near static, and left to churn and chug in slow motion, while more and more buzz and thrum and hiss is piled on top, a sound so heavy and so dense, it seems constantly on the verge of collapse. The second track two is more drone than crush or pummel, beginning as a hushed distant throb, an impossibly deep low end that drifts beneath ethereal streaks of grey melody, processed voices, and textured whirs, the sound builds to a furious roil, only to settle back down into what sounds like a symphony of warped SUNNO))) records, being played simultaneously with the needle stuck in the runoff grooves. And so it continues, a warped tarpit drift, vocals only show up in track three, and even then, so low in the mix, they just sound like jagged shards of static, nearly suffocated by the heaving rumbles above. The whole first half of the record is constant low end punishment, but part 5 is where it changes, a processed voice, stretched into a perpetual moan, a looped bit of human bred sonic texture, over a lumbering bit bit of low-end, soon subsumed by a dense cloud of corrosive hiss, of swirling white noise, which leads directly into the most minimal track on the record, a hushed minimal pulse, warm and languid, but still subtly menacing, laced with high end shimmer, and blurred tinkling melodies, leading you gently into a truly ominous and monstrous plod, a robotic pound, trudging along a series of deep buzzing swells, being slowly torn apart by some sort of static driven industrial grey noise demon, the sound rendered and recontextualized into a slowly stuttery field of deep whirs and jagged shards of crumbling static, before finally finishing off with a brief bit of muted beauty, again, the sound impossibly thick and heavy, but blurred into something almost shoegazey, but still grim and gorgeously hopeless.

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NOW ON VINYL VIA HANDMADE BIRDS!! Here's the review we wrote when the cd version came out on Utech... Part three in the Human Quena Orchestra's ever evolving sonic mission to create what could possibly be the darkest, and most intense post industrial metallic blacknoise EVER. Not like there's a lot of competition, and having worked our way now through all three records, even if there were any other outfits foolhardy to have a go at HQO, they'd most likely be dispatched in short order. As anyone who's heard either Means Without Ends or The Politics Of The Irredeemable can attest to. Easily, two of the bleakest, most abject and miserable collections of hellish hymns and burntblack dronescapes ever committed to tape. HQO's modus operandi is a combination of caustic black buzz, of pounding machine like percussion and howling anguished shrieked vokills, all wound tight into throbbing, churning, nightmarish chunks of jagged black filth, and crusty musical misanthropy. Think the usual suspects, Khanate, diSEMBOWELMENT, Winter, Skepticism, Esoteric, even Swans, and then tune it further down, slow it further down, pile on layer after layer of suffocating buzz, of oozing soul crushing low-end, and let it fester, and rot, and crumble and decay, and you'll begin to get close to the strange and sick soundworld of HQO. A Natural History Of Failure finds HQO mastermind Ryan Unks, joined by a handful of likeminded volunteers, each adding their own secret ingredients to Unks' noxious brew, and weirdly enough, if anything, more players has not resulted in more sound, or more accurately, the sound itself does seem MORE, more dense, heavier, thicker, more filthy and fraught with emotional peril, but the songs, the structures, somehow seem even more minimal. The opening track is more a thick, pulsing drone, a dense layered funereal creep, the sounds burnt and blown out, a single riff slowed down to near static, and left to churn and chug in slow motion, while more and more buzz and thrum and hiss is piled on top, a sound so heavy and so dense, it seems constantly on the verge of collapse. The second track two is more drone than crush or pummel, beginning as a hushed distant throb, an impossibly deep low end that drifts beneath ethereal streaks of grey melody, processed voices, and textured whirs, the sound builds to a furious roil, only to settle back down into what sounds like a symphony of warped SUNNO))) records, being played simultaneously with the needle stuck in the runoff grooves. And so it continues, a warped tarpit drift, vocals only show up in track three, and even then, so low in the mix, they just sound like jagged shards of static, nearly suffocated by the heaving rumbles above. The whole first half of the record is constant low end punishment, but part 5 is where it changes, a processed voice, stretched into a perpetual moan, a looped bit of human bred sonic texture, over a lumbering bit bit of low-end, soon subsumed by a dense cloud of corrosive hiss, of swirling white noise, which leads directly into the most minimal track on the record, a hushed minimal pulse, warm and languid, but still subtly menacing, laced with high end shimmer, and blurred tinkling melodies, leading you gently into a truly ominous and monstrous plod, a robotic pound, trudging along a series of deep buzzing swells, being slowly torn apart by some sort of static driven industrial grey noise demon, the sound rendered and recontextualized into a slowly stuttery field of deep whirs and jagged shards of crumbling static, before finally finishing off with a brief bit of muted beauty, again, the sound impossibly thick and heavy, but blurred into something almost shoegazey, but still grim and gorgeously hopeless.

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Various permutations of this disc have been floating around for a while, each in various states of completeness, but every one we'd heard sounded even better than the last. But this is the one, the final, finished product. The long in the works Human Quena Orchestra, the work of Ryan Unks, formerly of techgrind combo Creation Is Crucifixion, but don't be expecting grind, or even technicality, this all the way on the other side of the spectrum. Abject, filthy, pummeling, slow motion noise drenched doom. A plodding sonic monster, guitars, not just distorted, but treated and twisted into harsh, skin scraping, caustic slabs of sinister sound, a low end so thick, it's like dunking your head in a cement mixer, insane sounding drums, each snare crack like the recording of a million breaking windows, each kick drum the sound of a slowed down car wreck. And beneath it all, thick swells of black ambience, drifting and slithering, pulsing and swelling. A lurching, stumbling blackened doom dirge behemoth.� Think�Swans, Godflesh, Pitchshifter, that sort of machinelike apocalyptic industrial pound, mixed with some funereal ultra doom a la Moss, Bunkur, etc., but filtered through a druggy psychedelia, with a minimal shimmery drone bent, that ends up sounding like a way more�brutal, way more harsh, tripped out, psychedelic, industrial version of Jesu, that sort of blissed out sun baked vibe, but as if played by some misanthropic black metal horde,�harsh blackened vocals, shrieking hysterically and growling demonically over the relentless amp melting metallic trudge. Every track is rife with layer after layer of undulating low end. Like being tossed about on a stormy sea, but instead of water, it's an endless expanse of roiling black sound waves, rumbling drones, and thick snarled streaks of throbbing bass.� The magic Of Unks' Human Quena Orchestra though is that this hellish harshness is balanced with a nearly equal amount of meditative ambience, long stretches of deep shimmer, and even some of the harshest tracks are tempered by the swirling low end drift lurking beneath. So brutally gorgeous. Definitely essential listening for fans of all the above mentioned outfits, as well as Monarch, Nadja, the Angelic Process, Fear Falls Burning, Skullflower, Abruptum, Monument Of Urns, Trollmann, Khanate, The Body and all our favorite purveyors of crumbling downtuned beauty and dreamy damaged doom. Packaged in a gorgeous hand screened multiple panel fold over sleeve with super striking ADD style microscopic super detailed artwork.�

MPEG stream: The Ballad Of Ayn Rand
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Record number two from the strangely named Human Quena Orchestra, whose first record, Means Without Ends, was one of the most devastating slabs of blackened post industrial ultra doom ever, an abject crawl through layer upon layer of impossibly thick downtuned buzz, massive walls of crumbling distortion, pounding percussion, we mentioned groups like Godflesh and Pitchshifter and Swans, as well as Moss and Bunkur, but even on that record, HQO were going somewhere darker, and deeper, heavier and way more extreme. Take those same bands and mix in some Whitehouse, some Khanate, diSEMBOWELMENT, Thergothon, Lustmord, HQO is the soundtrack to a descent into hell, or at least sounds exactly how we imagine that must sound. Pants shittingly terrifying. For the follow up, HQO mainman (and only man) Ryan Unks, was joined by his former Creation Is Crucifixion bandmate Nathan Berlinguette, and the two spent months and months meticulously crafting this slab of bleak aural terror. Sampling drums, recording guitars and basses, creating loops and samples, layering and assembling and arranging, recording and rerecording and mixing and remixing, two sonic alchemists poised above their slumbering golem, waiting for the perfect moment to bring it to life. The Politics Of The Irredeemable is absolutely epic, monstrous, stunning in its scope, if the first record was the soundtrack to an earth stripped bare, of death and destruction and pestilence, then this record is the sound of the end of all life in the universe, of planets hurtling into suns, of stars collapsing into black holes, but the thing is, the music here is much more personal and emotional, it carries the weight of a universal apocalypse, but is more the sound of sadness, personal hell, not a literal trip down the rabbit hole, gnashing teeth and eternal hellfire, this is much more tactile and REAL, it's easy to describe music like this abstractly, but this is some seriously intense and brutal, and stunningly introspective heaviness. Unlike most of the sludge and doom, where the bands play as low as they can, tune down until the stings are hanging loose on the fretboard, playing as loud as they possibly can, and as slow and they are able, the elements that make up Human Quena Orchestra's sound world are deliberate, are crafted to evoke specific emotions, to conjure up images, to help your mind relate to the message within the music. Four long long tracks, two split into distinct parts, the opener "Progress" plays out like most bands' entire records. A heaving crush of downtuned crunch, the vocals wild and hysterical, wrapped in reverb and often left to wail in the wide open, only occasionally joined by the pound of a drum, or the slow motion avalanche of the next chord. All the while the sky is streaked with feedback and long buzzing tones, all woven into undulating smears, lit from below by buried melodies and a patina of cymbal sizzle. For 13 minutes, the darkness becomes sound, and that sound swallows the listener whole, preparing him for the harrowing musical journey to come. The rest of the record is split pretty evenly between sprawling expanses of windswept ambience, distant moaning whir and barely audible subterranean drones, deep bell like tones drifting along slow swirls of muted melodies, and lurching crushing slow motion sludge, but sludge seems too dismissive in the case of HQO, this is not filthy or crusty or lo-fi, it's definitely dark and harsh, but hauntingly beautiful, the crush and crunch are strangely lush and rich, layered and textured, the sound becoming almost orchestral at points, often receding into the background, an ominous backdrop to the slow slither of sounds up front, at its harshest, the sounds gather up into a squall of white noise, but even then the edges are dull and rounded, the noise is muted so instead of being brutal or painful, it manages to throb and pulse like the beating of a dying heart, that beating echoed by the reverbed crash of a lone drum, pounding out a simple rhythm, nearly obfuscated by the haze of rumble and buzz, the record finally coalescing into something resembling hopefulness, the last minute or so, a warm glowing ember of drone, drifting, drifting and then slowly fading out. It seems impossible that something this heavy and harsh and brutal and blackened could be so beautiful...

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Massive collection of everything these legends of grind/metal ever recorded. Surprisingly, for such an influential band (their influence due in no small part to drum god Dave Witte who would go on to play in Atomsmasher, Burnt By The Sun, etc.) they only ever released one proper EP, and a handful of 7"s and compilation tracks. This 2 cd set includes their EP, the 7"s, the comp tracks, an unreleased tune and all of their demos (4 to be exact). Human Remains were the masters of metallic grind, kicking out ultra complex jams with amazing musical dexterity, unbelievably crushing riffs, devastatingly heavy parts, and of course INSANE drumming. All of you grindcore freaks out there that managed to miss out on Human Remains, now's your chance to make everything right.

RealAudio clip: Weeding Out The Thorns
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This is a bit of a surprise. From our pal Chris at Soft Abuse, who was responsible for the Fransciscan Hobbies' Masks And Meanings and more recently the Old Bombs Audios cd, comes the release of this 3 song ep from Human Television, another in the new breed of eighties pop/new wave revivalists. Channelling the Smiths, Modern English, Wire, Pere Ubu and the like, Human Television, make a glorious din not unlike Interpol, Stellastar* or the Moving Units. Good stuff, when's the full-length?

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The duo of drummer Thomas Stronen (Food) and keyboardist Stale Storlokken (Supersilent) are back with a second album of playful, percolating improvisation on the ever-reliable Rune Grammofon label. Now these Norwegians are calling themselves Humcrush, which was the title of their album from last year, issued under their own names. Whatever they call it, the music they make is pretty neat. It's a restless blend of live instruments and electronics that somehow sounds catchy and composed, even though this is live-in-the-studio improv. Maybe it's too obscure of a reference, but Humcrush could perhaps be likened to a collision between the Shaking Ray Levis and Autechre. Inventive, very much rhythmically alive and full of glitchy abstraction, some of Hornswoogle would make groovy music for a jungle-themed lounge populated by dancing robots. Other parts feature cinematic atmospheres, or bleepy bloopy computer jingles, or sitar-y keyboards, or what sound a bit like fractured calypso beats... all very exotic and inventive and (importantly) quite listenable, considering it's just Stronen and Storlokken shaking out their respective bags of tricks, on the go. And then the final track, "Cyborg I" takes a turn for the uneasy. It's like the part of a horror film where the doll comes to life and kills everybody (sez Pam).

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Superchunk and Spent members get back to their roots.

If Argentina's awesome Los Natas was once considered a Kyuss clone (a band that had many clones) what does that make fellow Argentines Humo del Cairo? 'Cause it'd be easy to tag 'em as *Los Natas* clones, indeed at first we thought they were a Los Natas side project, maybe 'cause Meteorcity put this out and they also recently did the Ararat album too, which was indeed Los Natas related. But, while the Los Natas comparisons are unavoidable (long haired psychedelic stoner rock from Argentina!), and of course Kyuss comparisons are too, this trio is quite worthy of attention on their own, for sure. '70s sounding heavy rock here, of course, with fat riffs, wild wah-wah solos, Spanish-language vocals, lots of skilled percussive coloration, and pot-headed mystic desert atmospheres. The Egyptian pyramid painting on the cover sets the vibe, an otherworldly ancient scene at dreamy dawn or dusk... No big surprises for those familiar with Los Natas, for sure, but the jams HdC are kicking out are being kicked out quite well, mighty and melodic and very jammy indeed. And, as we listen to this, we realize, wow, this band has really got a knack for suddenly putting things into a sort of psychedelic energetic overdrive about partway through several of songs on here, there's often a moment where they hit on a repetitive hypnotic part a la Pharaoh Overlord or something, but also crank it up a notch, and you really understand why they call it stoner ROCK. Can't really explain it, but you'll know it when you hear it. Say opening track, "A Tiempo", at about 6:25 (it's an 11 minute long song), or in "Fuego De San Antonio" at just past the 3 minute mark. Those amphetamine moments are balanced by the other sort of trance-inducing stoner rock, when they bring it down, slow it up, just lumber along, reveling in the riff, like the nod-scene that is "Nimbo", a track which also blasts into a full-blown wailing by the end. Yeah, within their chosen style, Humo Del Cairo mix it up nicely, rockin' out garage-like at times, or just drifting peacefully along, some parts drenched in heavy FX, others stripped down to acoustic bones ("Errantes" being their most backporch number, complete with bluesy harmonica blowin'). We'd recommend this for fans of Los Natas, naturally, also Tia Carrera, Sons Of Otis, Colour Haze, Monster Magnet, La Ira De Dios, '70s Argentine heavies Pappo's Blues, and we're even thinking Jimi Hendrix, who gets hinted at at times. ANOTHER winner from Meteorcity, who have been on a massive roll lately!

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Raw fucked up garage / punk by these Portland punks. Totally hectic and noisy. Their live shows are legendary for being wild and you can feel it when you listen to this. Draws comparison to Pussy Galore and the Saints. They even do a cover of the Electric Eels song "Accident", which is utter crazy noise. It's all total chaos. Not unlike their label mates The Horrors.

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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. NOW AVAILABLE ON THE SKIN GRAFT LABEL DOMSTICALLY, THOUGH, SEE ELSEWHERE ON OUR SITE! This amazing 1994 debut by Ruins side-project Koenjihyakkei (aka Hundred Sights of Koenji) is supposedly out of print, but miraculously back in stock! We're not sure if it's actually been repressed or if somebody just found a hidden cache of these in a warehouse somewhere, but either way we're happy (and suggest you get 'em while you can)! If you're familiar with the Magma-obssessed Tokyo bass and drums duo Ruins, imagine them becoming EVEN MORE Magma-obsessed and adding female vocalist/keyboardist and a guitar player (actually, adding a bass player, as the Ruins bass player switched to guitar for this). This uber-Ruins quartet then wrote a bunch of insane, gorgeous prog rock tunes (or, in one case, adapted a traditional Bulgarian one) and play them to dazzling perfection. The French '70s prog band we keep mentioning (Magma) were insane, but not quite this heavy or hyper. If you like Ruins and/or Magma and/or weird prog music, you might want to get this if you haven't already. Probably the best of Koenjikhyakkei's three albums, which are all pretty cool ("II" being out of print still, though).

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Originally recommended to us by fellow Northwestern psychedelic doomgaze heavies Megaton Leviathan, Portland's Hungers return with their first full length lp, and like the previous tape we reviewed, it's another blast of churning, blackened, noise rock heaviness. We mentioned the tape sounding like the most recent Satyricon, but on The Unobserved, the band sound a bit more old school AmRep, at least on opener "The Devouring". After a stretch of trippy droned out ambient shimmer, the song erupts into a roiling sprawl of bass heavy, thick riff-ed churn and pound, the vocals a raspy growl, the band locked into an lost tranced out grind, before a brief bit of chuggy breakdown, just to lurch right back into it, sounding almost like a more upbeat, more punk rock Brainbombs, a similar sort of minimal heaviness, which seems to seep into the whole rest of the record, but then on tracks like "Ablution", things get downright melodic, sans the harsh vox, it wouldn't be hard to imagine the band on Temporary Residence, but before you know it, the song splinters and explodes into a jagged, chugging, churning noisy punk metal blowout. And so it goes, the band whipping up dense dervishes of sound, whether it be blown out blasts of metallic crush, wild flurries of tribal drummage, or lumbering doom crawls, the sound throughout locking into mesmeric metallic throbs in places, grinding noise rock freakouts in others, the band at their best when they weave everything into mesmerizing stretches of super heavy hypno-rock, lacing the sound with minor key melodies, lush textures, and plenty of epic atmosphere. Which thankfully is most of the record, barring the acoustic guitar driven closer, which takes the group's metallic heft, and fuses it to something WAY more melodic, sounding almost like some lost B-side or demo from Alice In Chains or Soundgarden, albeit a bit dronier and heavier. Killer stuff. Comes house in a eye popping red and black cover, includes a heavy card stock insert too.

These Northwestern heavies came highly recommended by aQ faves Megaton Leviathan, but don't be expecting a similarly spaced out psychedelic doom, instead Hungers deliver a super dense, blackened heaviness, that actually reminds us of the newest Satyricon, but these guys have more up their sleeve for sure. After blasting out of the gate with a mid tempo black metal / heavy rock churn, they switch gears into something more melodic and post metal, only to then explode into a dense progged out squall, only to return to that opening blackness. The sound is epic and thick, almost like Pelican crossed with Satyricon if that makes any sense, the raspy vokills definitely contributing much of the blackness, the music itself, lush and layered, dense tangled melodies, thick, distortion drenched chug, veering from blasting buzz, to woozy lope, to smoldering epic slow build, to mathy metallic crush, to churning Neur-Isis style majesty, super epic, and crushingly heavy, but still super melodic and nuanced. Not at all what we were expecting. These guys sonically are well beyond self releasing their own tapes, they sound like they should be on Relapse or Century Media, or back in the day, even Moonfog. Check out the sound samples, it's kind of a tough sound to describe, other than they kind of mash a bunch of stuff we love together, which shouldn't work, but does, big time. Epic, blackened, melodic, post metal, math-prog heaviness that we can't stop listening to, and we're guessing means big things to come for these guys. Limited of course, and includes a download code as well.

MPEG stream: Orchestrating Fate
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[ aquarius records catalogue — H ]