Not a new record, but a vinyl reissue of the long out of print cassette demo debut from LA black metal trio Harassor, and actually, the first proper full length we've heard from these guys, having only ever reviewed their split 7" with SF horde Moon Dark. But for those of you who remember Harassor's side of that split, this full length is more of the same, if anything more twisted and fucked up and weirdly raw. Plenty of d-beat style raw black metal pound, the guitars filthy and crusty, the vocals an effects drenched bellow one minute, an alien garble the next, the drums a wild chaotic pummel all but buried in the noise drenched mix, the sound primitive and blown out, lo-fi, but still caustic and noisy and heavy, the songs tending toward the punkish, but slipping easily into furious buzzing blast or lumbering doomic lurch.
Two of the tracks here are modern re-recordings of tracks from the original demo, and thus, sound way more polished, but polish in black metal is really relative, so while the guitars are thicker, the drums more powerful, the vocals are still a demonic croak, and overall, the re-recorded sounds are just as buzzy and frenzied and crusty as the originals.
There's also a new song, "Killed By Inanity", which unfurls thick crumbling superdistorted riffage, pounding midtempo drum pummel, the vocals a caustic glass gargling growl, careening from tangled gnarled blast, punky gallop, to full on blown out almost noise rock, which definitely hints at the groups non-black metal roots, and perhaps points to the band's new material continuing to push the boundaries of the raw, primitive blackness they so clearly are masters of. Definitely recommended for fans of Bone Awl, Maleveillance, Akitsa, Ildjarn, and similarly grim practitioners of the primitive black arts...
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, pressed on 140 gram vinyl, comes with a sticker.
When you read our Saviours review below, you'll probably get the idea that we thought that it was the best metal of the trad '80s influenced (denim, leather, fists in the air) variety on this week's list. Well, it might be... but then again this record might be too (i.e. they're both pretty rad). Since we don't do our reviews in alphabetical order, though, Saviours happened to get written first, and into that review went many of the superlatives and expletives that we'd also apply to Harbinger.
Harbinger are deliberately '80s NWOBHM styled metal, but kick everything (especially everything ridiculous) up a notch, delivering the goods with all the hyperactive energy of school children hopped up on sugary breakfast cereals. It's all very intentionally over the top, but they mean it sincerely. We know they do, 'cause we heard about them in the first place from some friends of ours who are also in a metal band (Slough Feg), who always rave about how much fun it is to play in East Lansing, Michigan, 'cause that's where these Harbinger dudes dwell... they've got a total party house, drink tons of beer, only listen to vinyl (ironic then that this is cd-only as yet!), and watch movies only on VHS tape, not dvd. They probably don't have cel phones or use the Internet if they can help it. But these are kids, not actual '80s burn outs, just 20-something kids doing their best to live an imaginary '80s metal lifestyle. And, in addition, making old school heavy metal music to match!
What we really like about Harbinger is that as retro as they are, they're also completely willing to "own" the music themselves and do surprising stuff so that they really don't sound like a generic clone of any actual '80s band. Instead, like we said, they seem a bit more crazed than that. Invariably their songs, after relatively sedate intro, suddenly surge forward faster, as if you'd flipped the switch from 33 to 45 rpm. Their guitars are super distorted, this record a real rickety ruckus of a racket. Blazing along, these songs are crammed with unexpected cool parts, lots of shedding solos and burbling bass licks, blasts of drum clatter and plenty of high pitched waaaaaooooooooooohhh screams on the edge of insane. The vocalist also sings with a raspier nasal yowl that can convey melodic catchiness quite well, straight off the Sunset Strip... spin, ferinstance, "Die For Metal - Live For Death" more than once and see if you're not singing along. The disc is also littered with amusing samples - including some taken from our favorite metal mockumentary, no not Spinal Tap, we're talking about Bad Newz!
So maybe Harbinger aren't the most serious band ever, but they're having a blast, and it really do kick ass. It's hard not to get caught up in the spirit of things. Which allows us to appreciate the terrible cover art, a painting of a scary-looking warrior woman, quite buxom in her spiked breastplate, brandishing a morningstar in one hand and, in the other, what looks like an oatmeal or chocolate chip cookie but is upon closer examination actually dirt-globe of some sort, on or inside of which tiny silhouettes of other medieval fantasy fighters do battle. Weird, but maybe not as weird as the inner tray photo of a fist (with studded leather wristband, wearing a fingerless Harbinger brand weightlifting glove) thrusting upwards from beneath a pile of pocket change... pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters! That's their idea of bling, apparently. And somehow it goes along with everything else here that makes 'em seem more real and raw and fresh (idiosyncratically so) than some other bands we also like, who are doing the "New Wave Of Old School Heavy Metal" thing too.
We reviewed Dave Bixby's Ode To Quetzalcoatl record on the last list. A glorious batch of born again, weirdly damaged outsider folk, chronicling Bixby's struggle to recover from drug abuse, and to find God, which culminated in receiving actual messages from God.
Needless to say, that record was pretty intense, the music not that far out, spare and sparse and jangly and folky, but the lyrics, woah, harrowing and twisted and depressive and dark dark dark, and did we mention a bit bizarre, especially considering Bixby had achieved some sort of physical covenant with God apparently.
So here we we have Bixby's second record, released shortly after Ode To Quetzalcoatl, circa 1969, but much had changed in his life, he had hooked up with a dubious spiritual advisor / guru who eventually joined the band and wrested some of the control from Bixby (as well as being investigated by the government in connection with his sort-of-cult the Group), the performances were much larger, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, at Christian colleges and at secular venues, Bixby had found a home, and had friends and support, but was still tortured by the same questions and fears that haunted the first record.
Harbinger is much more polished, recorded in an actual studio, with occasional female vocals, lush harmonies, overall a more positive vibe, but still the songs are intense, and emotional, mysterious and dark, just check out "Cosmic Energy", tense and minor key, Bixby's vocals more confident, but at the same time more intense, haunting atonal guitar figures, lots of buzz, a killer track for sure. And the rest of the record is pretty excellent too, a warm sunshine-y dark Christian folks, with definite dark undertones. A rare lost gem for fans of freaky outsider psychedelic folk and anyone into Jandek, Nick Drake, Bill Fay, Roy Harper, Perry Leopold, Charles Manson and other troubled folk troubadours...
Here Be Monsters sounds not unlike a dreamy meeting of Sparklehorse, Elliott Smith, Nick Drake and Rufus Wainwright. Harcourt's hoarse, weary vocals - often a frail whisper - coupled with pretty darn fine songwriting and lush instrumentation make for quite
Besides being killer (of course), this new tape from Ormalycka has the distinction of being one of the few releases on the label that we could find anything out about online. These Virginia hardcore crushers deliver a demo that's frantic and furious, old school hardcore heaviness, equal parts early eighties UK punk and classic Boston HC, bellowed vox, buzzing riffage, caveman drumming, frenzied punk rock intensity that slips into lurching lumbering doominess, and brooding knuckle dragging swagger here and there. Short sharp bursts of aggro punk fury, tempered by some bass driven dirgery, and some downright poppiness in places. Fans of SS Decontrol, Black Flag, and old school classic hardcore will dig big time...
One of the few non Drop Dead or Drop Dead related records released on the Armageddon Label (run by one of the Drop Dead dudes) which in itself should be a pretty strong endorsement. A half hour long blast of punishing hardcore grind/sludge from this now defunct (?) outfit. Furious thrashing Drop Dead style hardcore combined with doomy dirges, druggy, sludgy Eyehategod groove, weirdly lounge-y interludes, bizarre samples, complex arrangements and lots of beautifully fucked up riffage. Features current and former members of Electric Wizard, Iron Monkey, Teeth Of The Lions Rule The Divine and the Dukes Of Nothing.
Scotty Hard (producer of New Kingdom, De La Soul, Wu Tang, Ice, etc.) makes his solo debut. Brutal, damaged, slo-mo, dubbed-out hip hop that sometimes ventures into druggy spacerock territory! With cameos from Sensational, Mr Dead and a bunch of other messed up rappers. Another totally superior WordSound release. We love this.
What do you think, is it about time for another Turkish psych sensation 'round these parts? Hardal fits right in with Shadoks' previous reissues of Istanbul-based "Anatolian rock" bands we've loved, like Bunalim and Edip Akbayram, even though the date on this is a bit later than those. Hardal (featuring members of Erkin Koray's Underground 4 band) formed in 1976, releasing this, their debut album, in 1980. Maybe a little disco has infiltrated their sound, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Kitschy '70s cop show synths, acid rock guitar solos, and '60s psych-pop catchiness are all also in the mix.
Just listen to the first track, the super groovy, yet poppy "Bir Yagmur Masali" and tell us you're not hooked. It's impossible to resist that groove! They should have added this to the Psych Funk 101 curriculum (that comp we reviewed last list)! Reminds us a bit of South Korea's great San Ul Lim, who were of similar style, and vintage.
Soulful male vocals are contrasted with fuzzed out, funky bass. Whistling synth lines and cinematically wordless female vocals also adorn these songs. Hardal definitely have a typically romantic vibe derived from the traditional folk music of their homeland, but even at its mellowest, some tasty fuzz or badass groove is never that far away.
We don't know what Hardal means, but the album title Nasil? Ne Zaman? apparently translates as How? When? If the question involves getting down to some killer Turkish tuneage, the answer is: this is how, and the time is now!!
And as usual with Shadoks, the cd booklet provides informative liner notes, color photos, and press clippings.
Debut from this NYC hard rocking new wave glam pop combo, whose sound is a fantastically twisted mix of the Cars, Sparks, Cheap Trick, the Tubes, a little Devo, more Cars, even glam pop hard rockers Kix (remember them?). Just check out opener "She's Flexible", with its crunchy guitar, snarly vox, bouncy kinetic rhythm, and big hook heavy chorus. A sound that perfectly straddles the line between eighties new wave and seventies power pop. The production is massive, the guitars crunchy and fuzzy, the drums muscular and groovy (courtesy of Bill French formerly of SF indie rockers Mist And Mast!) which gives the whole thing a definite modern vibe, not to mention the occasional explosive mathy blowout, but at its core, the sound is total old school glammed out power pop, and it kills.
And while the opening one-two punch is a blast of bouncy glammy rock out bliss, the rest of the record settles down into a much more laid back glammy jangle pop, again harkening back to the classic days of MTV and eighties radio, brooding moody verses, big choruses, swirling synths, spidery melodies, still plenty of guitar crunch, there's one almost ballad, and a serious swinging anthemic stadium-worthy foot stomping glam pop closer to finish things off.
Vinyl includes a download code that comes with a bonus track not on the lp. Cool trophy cover art too!
Tim Hardin is a classic example of a great artist who should have been much bigger than he was, but who also contributed plenty to his own undoing. Releasing a string of great records on the Verve label in the mid-sixties, he largely became known for songs that were hits for other people, such as Rod Stewart ("Reason To Believe"), Nico ("Eulogy To Lenny Bruce"), The Sandpipers ("Misty Roses") and Scott Walker ("Black Sheep Boy", "Lady Came From Baltimore"). Karen Dalton also covered his "Green Rocky Road" and "While You're On Your Way". Possessed of an easy but soulful teddy bear croon, Hardin tackled jazz-inflected blues and folk motifs with a sublime melancholic pop sensibility that barely veiled a profound cynicism towards life and love. In fact, Hardin's best songs were bittersweet reality checks to the era's promise of brotherhood and love. Two of those songs, "Don't Make Promises", and "How Can We Hang On To A Dream", bookend this stellar debut record. However, the former song's inclusion of string accompaniments without Hardin's permission began an ongoing and troubling distrust with record companies, that only added to the pile of his own personal demons (including the drug abuse that finally killed him in 1980). Inversely it's these strings and vibes that add a distinctiveness to the production that he would later use on his more successful follow-up record, 2 (and must have been what made Scott Walker take notice!). But it's the rough polish of the debut where we are introduced to Hardin's range. The hints of the Greenwich Village folkie maturing into a soulful and profound songwriter, broadening his palette into open jazz and blues forms that at the time, Tim Buckley and Fred Neil were only beginning to expand on more deeply. Essential!!!!!!!
Another lost gem from an almost entirely forgotten band who existed briefly during the just-post grunge glory years of Sub Pop. A band that never would have fit all that comfortably amidst it's heavier labelmates (Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Tad, etc.), and seemd to be signed with the hopes of finding a new Nirvana, The Hardship Post (from the same poppy little province of Canada that gave us Sloan, Eric's Trip, Jale, etc.), were a full on pop band, a bit grungy maybe, with plenty of mumbly Nirvana-isms, but most decidedly not -grunge-. In fact, they sounded more like some weird twisted mix of that rainsoaked Northwestern rock sound, the repetitive riffing of Lungfish, a little Nirvana loud / quiet, and a whole lot of Elvis Costello! Crunchy, bouncy, stripped down riffy pop songs with straight ahead drumming, jangly riffs, and the vocalists's warbly Costello like wail WAY up in the mix, constantly struggling to hit the high notes, cracking and straining, making every song sound totally urgent and emotional and most of all FUN. Simple and super catchy, all of the songs on Somebody Spoke are hooky as hell, with lots of indie jangle, shakers and tambourines, handclaps, lots of oooo-ing and la-la-la-ing background vocals, big dumb riffs, all wrapped up into a perfect batch of irresistable (but somehow still dark and moody) pogo pop perfection. Except for the the two slow sort-of-ballads, that for our money are as just as good as any of the classic Nirvana brooders, dark and slowly unfolding, mumbly and rumbly expanses of downtuned strum and sweetly crooned moodiness (that found their way onto plenty of Andee's mid-nineties mixtapes!). So good!
The last we heard from Gareth Hardwick, and actually also the first we heard, was on a collaborative lp with long time aQ fave Machinefabriek (we have a few copies left, see elsewhere on the aQ site), the two made for a good combination, each offering up their own take on modern minimalism and abstract dronemusic.
But in that context, with two sonically like minded composers, it was difficult to figure out who was bringing what to the sound of that record.
So this is the first glimpse we've gotten of Hardwick solo and we're quite smitten. Two loooong tracks, both recorded live in 2007, both quite beautiful and sublime. The first is a pure, barely shifting drone, at least initially, very Niblock like, but focusing more on the purity of the tones instead of how they interact. Deep slow motion swells, the tones warm and glowing, rich and lush, but simple and streamlined. The track shifts here and there, the tones shifting subtly, some stretches sounding almost chordal, others so simple and quiet, the tones seem to be drifting through a vacuum. Near the end, streks of high end are draped over the warm languid swells, offering up a brief subtle counterpoint, adding a bit of soft tension.
The second track is similarly structured, but the tones sound more like notes coaxed from a guitar and allowed to drift lazily, ring out almost endlessly, stretched and smeared into deep soft blurs, again toward the end, the various tones seem to come together into chords and the sound becomes gently lush and sun dappled, dreamy and soft focus before fading out completely.
So so lovely. Fans of muted, minimal drone music, Coleclough, Chalk, Murray and the like, should definitely explore the sounds of Gareth Hardwick, and folks into the hazy drift of Pop Ambient style shimmer, might just dig this more minimal take on that sound as well.
Fantastic packaging too. A printed full color cd-r, housed in a plain black sleeve, with a full color textured plastic transparent insert, slightly longer than the sleeve so the transparent top edge sticks out.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Another month, and another new Machinefabriek release. This time though it's not a cd-r, instead it's a lovely lp, split with fellow dronescaper Gareth Hardwick. Each takes a side, and both come up with something sublime and gorgeous, each perfectly complimenting the other.
We were pretty sure we were gonna dig the Machinefabriek track anyway, he's yet to steer us wrong, so the real surprise here was the Hardwick track, a super slow, drawn out languorous soundscape of deep warm melodic swells. Soft and rounded, muted and dreamlike, endless and repetitive. Simple melodies, pulled apart into abstract notes, allowed to surface one at a time, like sonic detritus in an expansive sea of sound. Reminds us quite a bit of Stars Of The Lid, or maybe a Philip Glass piece slowed waaaaay down.
The Machinefabriek track is indeed also fantastic, another sidelong epic, it mirrors Hardwick's track sonically, a spare soundscape of soft swells, but of course, MF's treatment is not so tranquil and serene, instead, it sounds decayed, bits of glitch and hiss, crackle and tape drop out, add all sorts of unlikely texture and fuzzy distortion, still beautiful, but in that distinctly crumbling Machinefabriek way.
Pressed on super super thick clear vinyl, the sound is crisp and vibrant and amazing, housed in a super simple striking duotone sleeve. LIMITED TO ONLY 450 COPIES!!!
Prepare yourself to to melt! This is one of our all time favorite records. Dripping with sensual seduction and a slow burn that always whisks us away, up into the clouds in such a stunning lush and wonderful way. La Question displays a side of Francoise Hardy that is often overlooked. While she is best known for the super fun and catchy ye-ye hits she delivered in the '60s, it's records like La Question (1971) that really show off the enchanting presence and mysterious qualities that truly make her one of the most enigmatic songstresses of all time.
With very stripped down yet haunting arrangements created by the mysterious artist only known as Tuca who also plays some seriously mesmerizing guitar on the record, its of course the breathy warm and ethereal vocals of Hardy that take the songs into another dimension. This is one of those records that truly takes a hold of you from start to finish. Causing goosebumps, hair standing on end, feelings of longing, desire and seduction, all with such stunning class.
La Question is the blueprint for so many of today's warm and woozy and dazed and dreamy music makers. It's a record that foreshadows the sounds of folks like Beach House, El Perro Del Mar, Taken By Trees, Tenniscoats, Air, Sebastien Tellier, Devendra Banhart, Tara Jane O'Neil, American Analog Set, Isobel Campbell, Brightblack Morning Light, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Samara Lubelski. One of the most breathtaking and beautiful records of all time perhaps, and beyond recommended!
Two discs full to overflowing with fifty immaculate French-pop nuggets by one of our favorite chanteuses of all time, and at a really reasonable price to boot, this one is an absolute no brainer!
Compiling songs Hardy recorded during her years on the Vogue label in France in the 1960s this really shows why there is so much to love and adore about Hardy. The first disc begins with many of her most ye-ye and infectious tunes that you just can't help but feel so classy and sassy while listening to. And as the collection plays on, you see what a nice range of sound Hardy had developed, which would lead her to create her masterpiece, La Question at the onset of the '70s. Taking the influence of what folks like Phil Spector were doing with girl groups in terms of lush, warm and hypnotic production, but with such a singular and undeniably sexy voice that just stands miles ahead of the pack. From songs that make you want to get on a dance floor with a glass of champagne in your hands, to songs that are so perfect for rainy Sunday nights when all you have is time to pass, this is pretty much as perfect a collection of songs as you can get. In fact it was this very collection that made the biggest Hardy fanatics at AQ first fall in love with her, so we're so happy this is finally available for us to list. One of those records we feel safe in recommending to just about anyone who loves music!
You get five tracks, seventeen minutes of beer-fueled metal/punk aggression on this ep from Washington state hairies Harkonen, including a totally killer cover Scratch Acid's "Cannibal". Heavy but kinda arty and rockin'ly catchy. You get the idea that this band likes to have fun and party and all that, but they've got a scary, serious side to 'em and it's probably best just to get out of the way and let 'em play. It makes sense they'd be into Scratch Acid, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear 'em cover the Melvins or Black Flag or Today Is The Day someday too. We look forward to this summer's upcoming full-length on Hydrahead...
Latest slab of grizzled grungy downtuned sludge rock / metal core (heavy on the metal) from Hydra Head. Harkonen are one of the only metal bands to actually get reviewed in the Wire magazine (and a good review to boot, even though they listed the band as
Heavy Hydrahead metalcore from Tacoma, Washington's hard rockin' Harkonen. Headbanging, punked-up sludge music with an arty bent, something like Neurosis, Melvins, old Cave In, and (let's try a more obscure reference) Nonoyesno. They employ raw vocals, pounding drums, guitar feedback, and bits of droney atmosphere -- all in the service of what are, underneath, kinda catchy lil' songs. Maybe not the most groundbreaking release on Hydrahead ever, but still good recommended heaviness.
Rufus Harley will always be known as the man who brought bagpipes to jazz. Actually not many others followed his lead, but that's for the best as in any other hands that could have been a recipe for schlocky disaster. But Rufus Harley used the bagpipes to create such solid grooves and to enforce an immediacy that rang through in his playing. Bagpipe Blues was his first album, recorded in 1966, just a year after Harley bought his first set of bagpipes at a pawn shop in New York. Besides bagpipes, Harley also played flute and sax and was joined on this record by a solid group rounding out the sound on piano, bass & drums.
You can tell Harley was coming at jazz under the influence of greats like John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. There is a strong sense of emotion and imagination in his playing. While he never got the huge break or widespread attention he so deserved, there have been folks smart enough to call on his talents, as Laurie Anderson did on her best record, Big Science, as well as The Roots on Do You Want More?!!?!
We're really happy his debut is finally reissued on vinyl!
Reissue of a rare 1972 album. (All right, we're listening, tell us more...) Free jazz improv. (Ok, we're interested, except for Jim who's not into jazz.) Funky grooves. (Still sounds good... except you've lost Andee, he doesn't dig the funk.) BAGPIPES! (Woah?! Really? Maybe Andee and Jim are back in the fold. Bagpipes?)
Yep, bagpipes. And a lot of groovy, jazzy funk laid down by organ, bass and drums. And, at one point, there's a baby crying. Ok, this IS still way too jazzy fusiony funky for Andee or Jim, but Allan's digging it. Just imagine a Scottish highlander trying to fit in with a jivey '70s urban nightclub jazz scene. It works. Rufus ain't blowin' the bagpipes continuously (he also grooves on electric soprano sax), but there are certainly way more BPs than you'd normally hear on a jazz/funk album! Understandable, then, the "legendary" status of this record, now reissued on cd with a 10 minute bonus track.
And oh yeah, dude's playing AMERICAN FLAG bagpipes in the picture on the front cover.
Now available on vinyl...
Reissue of a rare 1972 album. (All right, we're listening, tell us more...) Free jazz improv. (Ok, we're interested, except for Jim who's not into jazz.) Funky grooves. (Still sounds good... except you've lost Andee, he doesn't dig the funk.) BAGPIPES! (Whoa?! Really? Maybe Andee and Jim are back in the fold. Bagpipes?)
Yep, bagpipes. And a lot of groovy, jazzy funk laid down by organ, bass and drums. And, at one point, there's a baby crying. Ok, this IS still way too jazzy fusiony funky for Andee or Jim, but Allan's digging it. Just imagine a Scottish highlander trying to fit in with a jivey '70s urban nightclub jazz scene. It works. Rufus ain't blowin' the bagpipes continuously (he also grooves on electric soprano sax), but there are certainly way more BPs than you'd normally hear on a jazz/funk album! Understandable, then, the "legendary" status of this record.
And oh yeah, dude's playing AMERICAN FLAG bagpipes in the picture on the front cover.
A few lists ago we raved about the reissue of Harmonia's first album Musik Von Harmonia and now Lilith has thankfully reissued Harmonia's follow-up release from 1975, Deluxe. Although we loved Harmonia's first album, Deluxe is, dare we say, even better!! Made up of Michael Rother from Neu! and Moebius and Rodelius from Cluster, on Deluxe they are joined on a few songs by Mani Neumeier from Guru Guru, making the line up on this record a kosmiche supergroup of epic proportions! While the first record was tipped in the balance towards the Cluster side of things in terms of sound and the improvised process in which it was made, Deluxe has more of a Neu! feel as the tracks are more composed and song oriented, and for the first time contain vocal elements. Plus the motorik grooves are more rocking, with a real drum kit used more often than the drum machines creating a pulsating drive on par with Neu! 75, recorded that same year. But that's not to say Deluxe doesn't have its Cluster moments, as the two final tracks bring us down into some beautiful pastoral territory with the sounds of a stream with ducks and frogs near the Cluster studio in Forst can be heard amongst the warm and percolating analog synths. This is beautifully packaged tri-fold digipak with liner notes by Asmus Tietchens, who still owns some of Cluster's original analog equipment, and lots of photos including the awesome back cover of the trio lounging by the river in an obvious nod to Neil Young's On the Beach. Absolutely Essential!!!!!!!!
Record covers like this one just aren't fair. Michael Rother, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius hiply dressed on a platform in an abandoned train station with their backs turned to the audience playing all manner of amazing looking analog electrical equipment: synths, farfisas, banks of tone generators, oscillators, patch bays, stacks of amps, leaning guitars, and cords everywhere, amongst racks of machines with all sorts of knobs and levels. It just makes us soooo jealous. Not only for such beautiful equipment, but also nostalgic for this period of time in Germany in the early seventies when so much thoughtful and incredibly inventive music was being produced. First Amon Duul II, Can and Faust then Kraftwerk, Cluster, and, Neu!, with Harmonia being the perfect synthesis of the latter three bands both in sound and personnel. Especially when you see the back cover and you get a closer look at the band and you can tell the trio just have this alchemical connection with each other and the sounds they make. Each member is focused but self-assuredly calm. Not exactly what you would expect from a band whom Brian Eno once called "the world's most important rock band". Not that much of the world had ever heard of them. Nor is it what most folks consider rock music to be.
So this is it! We've been reading about this for months, and it's finally here: a live document of a now legendary show on March 23rd, 1974 at Penny Station in Griessem, Germany. Not that it really matters that this is live, as their is no applause or chatter to clue you in, just bits of mumbled talking as the songs wind down at the very end. Harmonia members attribute this to there being only 50 or so people in the audience most of which were either too stoned to clap or too unsure at what points the songs begin and end. Doesn't seem to matter to the band anyway as we've already seen their backs were to the audience the entire time. But for a live document the sound quality is impeccable and what's even better all of the tracks performed weren't on any of their recordings, giving us, thirty-three years later, 5 new vintage Harmonia tracks to pore over. Most of which are over 9 minutes long.
Recorded between Harmonia's woozy debut, Musik Von Harmonia, and its more rock-leaning follow-up, Deluxe, Live 1974 is the logical conglomeration of both sounds, sort of like the merging of Terry Riley-ish repetitions with Robert Fripp's or Heldon's spacey and searing guitar extrapolations. But unlike conventional rock bands, Harmonia's music doesn't climax or necessarily change all that much, making their deceptively simple musical structures more akin to trance, electronica and slow disco. Beginning with the slow burn of "Schaumberg", an 11 minute epic of Rother's sinewy guitar lines that build and loop over gentle pulses of Moebius's programmed percussion and Roedelius' repetitive tonal keyboard patterns merging into a more sped-up and hypnotic version with bass rhythms on "Veteranissimo", an extended 17 minute meditation on "Veterano" from Musik Von Harmonia that breaks down to quiet heartbeats before slowly building again. "Arabesque", the shortest track at five minutes, does away with the percussive elements altogether, instead focussing on overlapping patterns of melodic synth and guitar before slamming into the loping quarter-hour stoner lurch of "Holta-Polta", then finally culminating in the blissful pastoralism of "Ueber Ottenstein".
It's been a stellar year or two for krautrock reissues as most of the Klaus Schulze, Cluster, Harmonia, Popol Vuh and Michael Rother catalogs have been reissued, re-introducing to the world the proto-new age realms of seventies German kosmiche music at a time when we can easily see its influence weaving through so many new bands like Arp, The Alps, White Rainbow, Lichens and Sylvain Chaveau. Always timeless, and never dated, Harmonia, like most of their German contemporaries mentioned above, were the most important rock band in the world simply because they cared about what they did, kept it simple, never indulged, and always left us wanting more.
All right! One of our favorite album covers and probably the best kosmiche supergroup ever finally see the light of day once again. Called the "world's most important rock group" by Brian Eno, Harmonia consisted of Neu founder, Michael Rother and Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius of Cluster. Michel Rother, after contributing to Cluster's breakthrough record, Zuckerzeit, which heralded a new direction in sound from their earlier dark and cavernous analog synthscapes to a more pastorally melodic and motorik driven percussive vibe, decided to take a breather from Neu. He moved into Cluster's newly built studio in the German countryside where they began collaborating on a more combined sound. While each member still continued to focus on their own main projects Harmonia was never considered a sideline affair, recording two stellar albums plus a series of recordings with Brian Eno that didn't see the light of day until twenty years later.
Connecting the aesthetics of Pop and Minimalism, the first Harmonia album is a product of their source bands but with a fresh twist on the motorik ideal. Less clinical than Kraftwerk, less funky than Can, each member's multi-instrumentalist abilities are employed in a variety of approaches at once playful and murky, steady and mechanical, using electronic beats, distorted rhythms, warm keyboard shimmers, drifting piano, and gliding electric guitars. Its no wonder Brian Eno was a fan. Fans of Boards of Canada, Susumu Yokota and electronica-heads of all types should check this out too. They even coined the term "hausmusik"! Totally Recommended!!
Well, it's about time that this artifact showed itself again, what with all the Cluster, Kluster, Michael Rother, Kraftwerk, and Fripp & Eno reissues popping up all over the place, finally we have this last piece of the Harmonia puzzle, and it's never sounded better! Tracks and Traces is one of those curious krautrock documents, mainly because it was recorded in 1976, but never released until the late nineties. Its late release was always rather inexplicable, as there were no liner notes, but with this new reissue that bookends the original release with three previously unreleased bonus tracks and poetically expository liner notes, its former relegation as an "odds and sods" collection of sketches, can with all confidence be considered now to be one of the great lost krautrock records! If you bought this when it was first released, you may need to buy it again for the extra tracks that change the whole flow and feel of the album considerably.
Harmonia as a group was always meant to be temporary. When Eno went to see them live in 1974, he ended up on stage with them and was invited to come out to Forst to experience Moebius and Roedellius's placid countryside studio first hand. But it took Eno two years to make good on that invitation, and by then Harmonia had essentially disbanded. Michael Rother was working on his first solo material (Flammende Herzen), as was Roedelius (Durch Die Wuste), while Moebius was working on the Liliental sessions. But they were all there in Forst for eleven days, experiencing the wind, river, trees and sun, casually improvising music, but really just treating the sounds they made as a meditation on process and time together without a goal to make a product. Eno was eventually called away by Bowie to work on Low, and the recordings of their time together lay dormant for two decades.
It's easy to think that without the benefit of returning to the original recordings for overdubs, that these might be shrugged off as sketches, but the starker quality of these recordings are really what set them apart from the pastoral sweetness of the Cluster & Eno collaborations, and give them a distinctive expansiveness into the more shadowy and vague corners of their sound. Lots of ideas are explored, from rockish extrapolations, and baroque dirges to sinister and angular abstractions (Eno even sings on one track) but it never feels forced or indulgent. The sound just flows naturally. Essential!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Wow! Long-lost (or neglected) tapes starring electronic krautrock luminaries Moebius and Roedelius (of Cluster) and Michael Rother (of Neu!), and Brian Eno!
On first glance you'd definitely be forgiven for thinking this was a reissue of some lost sound library recordings. The cover looks properly sixties, and the layout and song titles definitely look like those thrift store records you always dream about finding. And throwing it on doesn't do much to dissuade you from that notion, loungy exotica, shuffling jazzy bossa nova, bleeping bloopy space-y interludes, weirdly antiquated lo-fi synth funk, dreamy elevator music, ominous spy movie music, all with shimmering zithers, warm fuzzed out organs, and all the other perfectly sixties sounds you'd expect. Which is a pretty mean feat considering Harmonic 33 is all the work of one man, hip hop producer Mark Pritchard, who recorded all this just last year! Occasionally there will be some subtle studio trickery, that hints at the record's more modern genesis, but in the context of the whole disc, it just makes it sound extra weird and extra cool. We had actually listened to this record over and over for weeks, totally digging it, all the while thinking it was indeed some sixties reissue, and we were pretty amazed to find out it wasn't. Not sure how hip hop headz will react to this, as it's pretty straight up, no extra funky beats, or superfluous scratching, but fans of cocktail jazz exotica and found sounds and weird sixties lps, will definitely dig this, and can decide for themselves if they too would have fallen for it had we not spilled the beans. Falling for it or not, this is just an awesome slab of spaced out, funky, jazzy, groovy, lounge-y exotica! Dig it!
Darkly resonant and fascinating. The seventeen tracks of Brian Harnetty's American Winter album are like the slowly disintegrating pages of a stranger's scrapbook. Harnetty artfully and respectfully pieced together segments of dialogue, field recordings and radio transmissions among other things which he drew from the vast audio archives of Berea College where he is a member of the Appalachian Music Fellowship Program. Highlights such as "I'll Have To Go Off And Be Gone Tonight" feature fragments of oral histories from Appalachian folks accompanied by the gentle wheeze of what sounds like an accordion and the tinkling of a toy piano. The audio collages slowly drift in and out of focus, and the results are both engaging in the documentary sense and hauntingly spectral. Recommended!
Years back, we reviewed a strange record by a musician/soundscaper/sound artist named Brian Harnetty. That record was called American Winter, and consisted of various recordings, radio transmissions, oral histories, that Harnetty gathered from the audio archives at Berea College where he was a member of the Appalachian Music Fellowship Program, he then took those recordings and used them to create what we described as sounding 'like the slowly disintegrating pages of a stranger's scrapbook', a haunting collection of dark sonic landscapes wrapped around these voices and transmissions, to this day we still haven't heard anything like it.
A few weeks ago, Harnetty got in touch to let us know about this, his latest project, another collection of recordings, this time culled from the Sun Ra / El Saturn archives, which is a collection of rare Sun Ra rehearsal tapes, studio recordings, recitations, live recordings, as well as tons of unlabeled sonic mysteries. Harnetty and a handful of musicians (including Fred Lonberg-Holm) got together to record some accompaniment to these recordings, employing piano, celesta, saxophone, flute, cello, bass clarinet and vibraphone, all woven into a dark jazz backdrop, which when all mixed up with the original recordings, makes for a super psychedelic sonic trip, where it's often difficult to tell whether it's Harnetty and his crew or Sun Ra's band or both. One can only imagine that at times, it's the modern band playing along with those old recordings, but just as often one or the other, the songs in constant flux, voices, and studio directions, varying degrees of audio fidelity, what sound like commercials or instructional tapes, fragmented plunderphonic collages, some gorgeous stretches of jazzy bliss, paired with still more mysterious voices, awesome rehearsals, killer breakbeats, the original tapes crumbly and staticky so it sometimes sounds like Tim Hecker gone jazz, it's hard to describe, other than to say it's a pretty fantastical trip through the past via the present, a glimpse of what went on behind the curtain, as interpreted by modern day sonic archaeologists, unafraid to join in, the resulting sonic document, unendingly fascinating, and the sort of thing that should appeal to classic jazz lovers as much as outsider avant/experimental music obsessives. So cool!
The last Brian Harnetty record was a sleeper hit around here, fusing sampled bits of Appalachia and fragments of oral histories with dark brooding collaged soundscapes, the results were haunting and captivating, the two sounds working surprisingly well together, creating a sort of ghostly old world folk, the cracked and weathered voices wrapped in warm whirs and spectral ambience.
For his latest record (which has taken us a while to get in to list), Harnetty has assembled a conventional band and composed a set of gorgeous and dark chamber rock / dark jazz vignettes, utilizing piano, accordion, clarinet, trumpet, violin, drums, bells, vibes as well as vocals on a few tracks courtesy of Mr. Will Oldham aka Bonnie Prince Billy, but more on that in a second.
Harnetty hasn't abandoned his use of the strange old time samples either, they pop up throughout the record, a little burst of old timey Appalachia, a cute introduction from the bandstand of some dance, wild sawing fiddles, it sounds like a strange fit, but it weirdly sort of works. The record opens with a haunting ballad, all softly reverbed piano, and droning strings, shuffling drums, super moody and mysterious, when all of a sudden, right at the end, some old timey fiddle music fades while the song proper fades out, and the player says a few words and then we're already into the next song, another dark brooding drift. The whole record is pretty haunting and moody, a little Dirty 3, a little Max Richter, quite lovely, with the various old timey samples just adding a little bit of odd mystery.
As for the vocals, Will Oldham actually only sings on 3 of the 12 tracks, not sure it's worthy of co-credit, but his songs are in fact quite nice, his creaking about-to-break croon perfectly complimenting Harnetty's dark and dreamy arrangements. And in some ways, Oldham's songs as well as his voice manage to sound as old and dusty as the sampled songs and voices...
How could a movie so tightly integrated with music not have released a soundtrack? Well, in the case of popular cult film, Harold and Maude, whose creative usage of many of Cat Steven's most well known and widely available songs instead of a proper score, a soundtrack release at the time must have seemed like throwing money down a well. All of Steven's songs were available on his own albums, and the audience for the film at the time, which has overwhelming increased in years following, was very small. So finally, The Harold and Maude soundtrack has been made available on vinyl for the first time and it comes with a 36 page full color booklet on the making of the film and a bonus 7" of alternate versions of two songs not previously available anywhere. It's a bit pricey, but the package is deluxe and the vinyl is high quality, and any soundtrack collection of sixties and seventies film music would be remiss without it. And who doesn't love Harold & Maude??
Super tweaked out electronic lunacy from Twig, the male half of Chicago knob twiddlers Nautical Almanac. Recorded using a Commodore 64 and modified electronic equipment, which were then sent to friends for additional productions, the ten tracks
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More Roy Harper for you, folks! We've been importing the hard-to-find reissued albums of the veteran British folk-rock singer-songwriter (always a cult figure, who shoulda been huge) and reviewing our favorites one by one. The first two Harper cds we listed were from the very early '70s -- his fourth and fifth albums, Flat Baroque And Berserk and Stormcock. But now we're gonna take a foray further along into the Roy Harper discography to feature album number ten, Bullinamingvase from 1977.
'Tis a full-band affair, and one that, as with quite a few of Harper's records, features a number of famous musicians as guests -- even though he never enjoyed much in the way of chart success, he was always being a big favorite among the rock royalty of the era. Notable among 'em this time are guitarist Alvin Lee of Ten Years After, Ronnie Lane of the Faces, and both Paul and Linda McCartney of Wings. And if you're a Wings fan (we are!) you will also immediately recognize the guitar of Jimmy McCulloch. You can't miss it. There's a trademark wavery sort of lick he plays that you've definitely heard before in Wings songs. (Sadly, McCulloch died just two years after this album was released, at the ripe old age of 26, due to drugs.)
Fans of Stormcock know that Harper is one for the epic, and certainly the twenty minute opus "One Of Those Days In England Parts 2-10" is indeed "the major event on the record", as Harper's typically digressive and poetic liner notes say. Yet the other wonderful cuts here with single-digit running times shouldn't be overlooked. Fragile, emotional tracks like "These Last Days" and "The Naked Flame", (songs that show that Harper, though a romantic, had decidedly realistic views on relationships), alongside the much more rambunctious "Watford Gap", about a greasy spoon frequented by touring musicans in England, make the whole album something to savor.
The single version of "One Of Those Days...", also included here, actually became the closest thing to a pop hit that Harper ever had. And indeed Bullinamingvase was Harper's most successful album to date (ever?), reaching number 25 in the UK charts. But despite all that he had a falling out with his record label and didn't release another album for three years... He's still going strong today, though, and maybe next time 'round we'll list his brand new anti-Bush, anti-Blair single!!
Ok, we're really rolling out the Roy Harper here at AQ, as promised last time 'round in our review of his Stormcock album (which got a *great* response, thanks everyone, we hope you liked it!). And if you did, as we not only hope but pretty much expect, then we've got another one for you: Flat Baroque And Berserk from 1970, the album that immediately preceeds Stormcock in Harper's discography. Compared to Stormcock, well, it's similar in feel, but there's more songs and they're shorter (though some venture into the seven and eight minute range) and thus more variety. The strings and orchestration of Stormcock don't make an appearance, this is a pure singer-songwriter setting, Roy Harper showing what he can do with just his acoustic guitar and his impassioned voice. Just try the intense, confrontational "I Hate The White Man" on for size. Or the opening salvo of "Don't You Grieve". The outpouring of emotion, the depth of feeling, his verge-of-insanity intelligence regarding themes both personal and societal... sheer brilliance in both his poetry and his playing. As a unique talent, Harper was surely a worthy contemporary to Bob Dylan and Donovan and Syd Barrett.
Adding to the intimacy of the album, some of the tracks are interspersed with Harper talking (and laughing) about his songs, interacting with what sounds like a small audience, or just hamming it up with the recording engineer. Fascinating and sometimes quite amusing. His hippie humor lightens up music that's often delicate yet dark. So again, we urge anyone who still doesn't know why Led Zeppelin wrote a song entitled "Hats Off To Roy Harper" to check out this, and his other albums as we get them in. And, again, if you're at all enthralled by today's lauded folk troubadours -- the likes of Devendra Banhart, Ben Chasny, and Iron & Wine -- you need to hear Roy Harper.
'Bout time for some more Roy Harper on our list! This time, we've imported copies of the cult British singer-songwriter's third album, 1969's somewhat goofily titled Folkjokeopus. It's an opus all right, and folky (with lots of exquisite acoustic guitar playing from Harper) but jokey only in that, as a "folk" musician, Harper is irreverent and idiosyncratic for sure, and witty -- but no joke. The mood here is actually pretty dark and serious a lot of the time. The track "One For All" is dedicated to Albert Ayler, whom Harper knew from his days of busking in the streets of Copenhagen. According to his typically cryptic liner notes, Ayler liked to call Harper "tough guy". And as delicate and beautiful as so much of this music is, there's a definite toughness to Roy Harper, as he rails against the wrongs of society, spitting out clever couplets or crooning high and emotively over his own impassioned strum.
This record is the immediate predecessor to 1970's Flat Baroque And Berserk and 1971's Stormcock, both of which we've already listed, and if you like those two you should certainly get this one as well! The powerful, eighteen minute "McGoohan's Blues" (which grapples with some of the same themes as Patrick McGoohan's TV series The Prisoner, it seems) definitely foreshadows the epics of Stormcock, and is a crucial early composition in Harper's career. So we very much recommend this to all you '70s folk-rock fans, and/or those into the current scene inspired by such sounds (Devendra Banhart, Six Organs, Skygreen Leopards, Richard Youngs...). You need to hear Roy Harper and this is one of the classics of his discography.
To those of us who grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, Roy Harper might already be something of an implied legend, stuck in our adolescent memories as the name referenced in the Zeppelin III song, "Hats off to Roy Harper". Some of us may even have noticed in the liner notes to Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here that it was Roy Harper belting out the vocals on "Have a Cigar". Sadly, for most of us from this generation we have heard very little or none of this man's own music.
Harper's life story (as raw material for some of the best songs ever written -- seriously, just surrender your ears to "Goldfish" or "Tom Tiddler's Ground") is full of drama and obsession: joining the RAF in order to escape a Christian upbringing, Harper's "legendary" self-inflicted nervous breakdown in order to get out of his military service provided the prima materia for some of his first songs (e.g. "Committed" on his debut album Sophisticated Beggar). After escaping a mental institution in order to elope with a pregnant girlfriend, Roy headed off into London where his rebellious ways got him arrested. Serving a prison sentence, he spent most of his time in the library reading and evolving his creative spirit. Following his release in 1964 he busked around North Africa and then returned to London to join the folk club scene alongside the Incredible String Band, Donovan, Joni Mitchell, Bert Jansch and Nick Drake. During the recording of his first record he hosted the vagabonds of London in his flat and sermonized, guerilla-style, to the church-goers across the street from his flat window. So Roy's records were full of such expressions of protest against religion, politics, and the countless social forces subverting individuality and the imagination of the day. With every Roy Harper record, the listener gets extensive stream-of-consciouness rants, often surreal and often quite funny, complementing the songs with a voice that is at once confounding and endearing. The spirit in Roy's songs, one complicated by fits of great joy, sadness and absurdity, where the most banal things in life are rendered the most beautiful (such as "How could you say such terrible things with a wonderful wife like yours?") still coheres as the voice of a truly singular spirit.
So...why can't we find Roy Harper sections in most record stores? After all he has dozens of albums and is still very much alive and making music. Well, a rare and wonderful thing in light of the typical artist versus the record industry scenario is that Harper has somehow managed to own all rights to his records and now distributes his material exclusively under the name Science Friction. But doesn't distribute very widely as his is but a small operation, based in Ireland. However, we've gotten in touch with Science Friction and are now happy to offer our customers, at long last, a selection of what we consider to be some of Roy's best. Starting with Stormcock!
Recorded in 1970 at Abbey Road, Stormcock is a four-song, 41 minute opus of folk-rock genius (what has been dubbed by one critic a masterpiece of its own genre, "epic progressive acoustic"). Basically, the sort of thing that, despite the current upswing in the underground of psych-tinged folky songsmithery, you just don't get to hear much these days. A rare talent, fully on display here, and without some of the confounding eclecticism and eccentrities that may make some other Harper albums take a bit more work to get into. No, this is a definite "wow" from the very first few bars of the first song, continuing solid and stellar all the way to the end of the album. Gorgeously melodic, slow and langorous, sparkling with Roy's brillant acoustic guitar playing, otherworldly arrangements, and of course his voice, phrasing and lyrics. Roy wrote all the songs and sings and plays most of the music -- there's a few additional musicans on hand at times to help flesh out Roy's sound-world, among them one S. Flavius Mercurius (aka Jimmy Page) contributing lead guitar on "The Same Old Rock", as well as the orchestral musicians employed for the magnificent album-closer "Me And My Woman".
Anyone who digs Six Organs Of Admittance or Devendra Banhart or the like owes it to themselves to experience some Roy Harper. Likewise anyone who loves the quieter, folker sides of the aforementioned Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. Packaged with lyrics, art, and Roy's cryptic latter-day liner notes.
Harper's still at it, taking Bush and Blair to task on this new single.
Unanimous aQ favorite Daniel Higgs, he of the mighty Lungfish and more recently a prolific solo artist, returns with a collaboration featuring fellow Baltimore noisenik Twig Harper, best known for his work in Nautical Almanac. Anyone keeping up with Higgs' output is undoubtedly aware of his brilliant grasp of minimalism, and with a voice like that, few people are complaining. While his recent solo work has included instruments like banjo, a shruti box, Jew's harp, and some spacey electronics, the emphasis here is on Higgs' voice and his words. Harper's sparse electronic accompaniment works perfectly on these performances, adding subtle layers of sound that never venture too far into full on noise territory while adding some necessary dimensions to Higgs' spiritual narratives.
Comprised of seven pieces, Clairaudience Fellowship represents another evolutionary step for these two artists, utilizing spaciousness to a new effect. Higgs' voice is the one constant, mutating electronically throughout the record and sounding kind of like an alien delivering a religious sermon underwater. We're not entirely sure how Harper's sounds are made, but they often come off like field recordings of watery drips and breathy repetitions that soon change into clipped electronic noises, causing you to wonder what it is you are really hearing. Musically, one can detect similarities to the experiments of a wide range of groups like Cromagnon, the Red Krayola, Yahowha 13, and more recently, Amps For Christ. It might be misleading to call this "folk music", but then you have to wonder what such a term even means in 2010, and in a more abstract way, it seems pretty apt for this stuff. By the end of the record, Higgs' voice is warped beyond comprehension with only the occasional decipherable word popping up. Still, you know whatever it is he's saying, Higgs is speaking the truth steadily and surely. While it's hardly the feel good hit of the year, Clairaudience Fellowship is an amazing and engaging listen to anyone willing to sit down and pay attention. By now we can always count on Daniel Higgs to keep things surprising and interesting. Harper ain't no slouch either. Highest possible recommendation.
