We had never even heard of this long running UK doom/death horde, who have apparently been plugging away for going on 12 years now, even though this is just their second proper full length, but kudos to Profound Lore, who definitely seem like the perfect home for Indesinence's classic British doom, a sound that seems to be channeling of course the early versions of Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, as well as other doom heavyweights like diSEMBOWELMENT, the sound lurching malevolently from churning, stumbling tarpit doom, to that strange strain of midtempo death metal, that ultimately has much more in common sonically with doom metal, but it's a sound we love, blasting double kicks, frenzied riffing, all somehow reigned into a loping, chugging, downtuned lumber. Indesinence often slip into full on funeral doom creep, letting loose soaring minor key melodies, all buried beneath a shroud of abject blackened ambience, but eventually seem to always return to that death/doom gallop. The sound is laced with clean guitar melodies, the vocals both shrieking and gurgling monstrously, the tracks drifting between mournfully melodic and blackened and brutal, at their best obviously when fusing the two.
Packaged in a super swank oversized hardcover book style digipak.
Index was a band like thousands throughout the '60s, encouraged by the birth of rock 'n' roll a decade earlier and fueled by the waves of British bands that would hit the American shores. This quartet was born in the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe in 1967, at a time when the country was beginning to experience the pangs of turmoil and Detroit itself could be seen almost as a microcosm of the social unrest that was beginning to unfold. The heritage of Index is certainly notable, as the lead guitarist of the band was one John Ford. While the liner notes penned by drummer Jim Valice never overtly state that John's family was THE Ford family which spawned the automotive empire; the implication is quite clear that it is. While the affluence of John and fellow guitarist Gary Francis certainly helped in getting some great gear and recording equipment, the sound of Index is one of adolescence entering adulthood with an awakening disbelief that so much could be wrong in the world. At least on their first album, Index played with an urgency that sounded like the end of the world was near, as an underlying horror of bleakness lies beneath Index's punchy garage-pop beats and spring-reverb overloaded distortion. Their amateurish production that stumbled upon a cavernous sound certainly helps with this assessment. Think Jandek trying to mimic the sound of Martin Hannett's classic production sound for Joy Division.
The band drew from the '60s songbook, covering the Byrds' "Eight Miles High", The Supremes' hit single "You Keep Me Hanging On", and The Bee Gees "I Can't See Nobody", and the band claims Hendrix as a huge influence on their sound, with an incendiary feedback encroaching into their beat pop tunes, at times coming across like Davie Allan and at others looking forward to Ron Asheton's work on The Stooges' first album. All of this came to fruition on what would become known as The Black Album, which was recorded with a single microphone in a large empty ballroom, whose acoustics gave the album its unusual sound. The spring reverb drips upon the overdriven guitar leads and forceful rhythmic guitar jangle, which for 1967 would have been pretty damn heavy. The vocal duties of Index rotated from song to song, occasionally finding all of the members singing these emphatic, if monochordal harmonies that oozed with bittersweet energy and late-teen angst. This is typified on one of Index's best songs "Fire Eyes" and furthered along through their cover of "Eight Miles High". Another great highlight of note is the proto MC5 oil'n'motorcycle grind found on the instrumental track "Feedback".
When Index recorded their second album in 1968 later pegged as The Red Album, they had picked up a sound-on-sound cassette recorder, which seemed to be something of precursor to a 4-track. Unfortunately, in this technological jump, Index lost the cavernous murk of that single microphone recording in that ballroom, but they still managed some great songs dominated by Ford's spring-reverb soaked guitars, including a reprise of "Eight Miles High". "Paradise Beach" is a wonderfully downer, '60s pop number, and "Break Out" is a spry instrumental with a fine backbeat lifted from Booker T & The MGs. The band stumbles with the one boogie-rock blues number, but otherwise, The Red Album makes for a great listen.
The second disc of this set is a collection of tracks from an unreleased third album in 1970, recorded mostly by Ford and Vallice. A paisley-pop jangle settles into the mix with less of the expressive feedback that drove so much of The Black Album, and the songs show a maturation in the vocal harmonies as well. But the band broke up with the various members torn by their commitments with college, girls, and work. So the world turns.
A highly recommended find!
We started our review of the last Indian record with the words "It's been a long time since we've heard from these Chicago heavies", which had we not checked first, was exactly how we were gonna start this one, cuz once again, it seems like ages since that Guiltless record, and it has actually been a little over three years. Thankfully, very little has changed since Guiltless, as From All Purity is another crushing, abject, slab of shrieking, downtuned doom sludge crush, with some of the sickest, filthiest distortion we have ever heard. The guitar tone on track two, "The Impetus Bleeds", sounds like they're playing through cabinets full of blown speakers, huge riffs that devolve into rapidly decaying crumble, while elsewhere, like on "Directional", that crumbling distortion becomes something else entirely, sounding a bit like malfunctioning electronics (which to be fair it actually could be), but it sounds killer, and it gives the track a weird sci-fi, zoner-psych vibe, which when mixed with the churning riffage, and tarpit stoner doom swagger, transforms the doomy sludge into something way more next level. A few tracks crank up the tempo, but even then, the arrangements are such, that the sound swings and lurches and lumbers more than blasts or pounds. And when the sound collapses into serious psychedelic churn, it's easy to see why these guys are so special. Check out the end of "Rhetoric Of No", sure it's dirgey and filthy and brutal, but the roiling black sludge is wreathed in swirling electronics that seem to swing wildly from speaker to speaker, in fact, it's mixed so that when you have headphones on, that weird insectoid buzz seems to be circling your head, it's totally disorienting, the group locked into some serious hypno-sludge mesmer, the vocals too a strange mush mouthed demonic incantation, fucked up and twisted avant doom genius for sure. The second to last track is all noisy, feedback drenched, shrieking, power electronics, but then the record closes with the epic doom crush of "Disambiguation", which drops in a few little black metalisms right at the end, each burst a frantic salvo of blackened riffage, shrieking vokills, and furious double kick drumming, the sound lurching back and forth, between that black buzz, and a more lugubrious creep, before a surprisingly sudden finish, the sound almost just cutting out. A twisted, unexpectedly dramatic end to a record that's definitely one of the coolest, weirdest, doom / sludge records we've heard in a while. And for a genre that can definitely sound same-y, and can so easily end up being boooooring, Indian will make your avant-doom loving head spin. Awesome!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Rarely does someone just come in off the street and drop off a record that kicks our ass as much as this record by Chicago doomsters Indian. Two tracks of fuzzed out, stoner doom, with big crunchy distorted riffs, chaotic drumming, and weird (especially for a band like this) shrieked, almost black metal vocals. Really cool. Think Melvins, Kyuss, Eyehategod, Electric Wizard and you'll definitely have a good idea of where these guys are coming from. The A side has a strange sampled voice that sounds like an agitated foreigner yelling outside your car window -- turns out it's sampled from a Tarkovsky film! Cool. We look forward to their full-length scheduled for next spring...
It's a while since we've heard from these Chicago heavies, almost three years in fact, but 4 full lengths and 8 years in, and these guys still sound as good as ever. Massive downtuned droned out doom, shrieked vox over post rock and math rock flecked doom, a sound that distinctly their own, definitely positions them alongside Isis, Neurosis, Mastodon, Conifer, Tides and the rest of the many Neur-Isis bands, but they also have a serious sludge thing happening, reminding us of groups like Khanate, Melvins, Buried At Sea, Eyehategod, their stonery sludge and epic bombastic post-doom seemingly more polished and melodic this time around, the songs mini epics, slow building sprawls of cyclical repetition, tension and releases, often blossoming into full on poppiness, but just as often collapsing into gouts of curdled black tar trudge and plod. The sound laced with strange electronics and effects, the vocals often heavily effected, give them a sort of tripped out psychedelic vibe.
Opener "No Grace" seems to meld AmRep style noise rock to epic Godspeed style majesty, all wound around murky downtuned riffage, and peppered with some surprising bits of melody, while "The Fate Before Fate" almost sounds like a more screamo style Neurosis, crumbling avalanches of grinding riffage offset by soaring tangles of high end melody and the vocals super distorted and intense. The title track slows it WAY down, a creeping blackened crawl, the guitars undulating strangely, the drums mathy, but slowed way down, and those vox, managing to transcend mere shriek and actually sound like 'singing' even though they're harsh and hellish.
After a brief bit of noise drenched low slung slithery detuned blues, the record finished off with the epic 9 minute "Banality" a heaving, hauntingly atmospheric bit of lurching lumbering heaviness, a strange mix of tranced out droniness, and extreme intensity, culminating in a weird stretch of warped metallic psychedelia, the chords and riffs seeming to bleed and ooze and melt, the vocals even more blown out, wrapped in effects, and over the top all manner of strange shimmer, and warbly psych guitar filigree, the sound getting more and more noisy and intense before blinking out in a brief blast of staticky hiss.
Way way recommended.
Sorry, we never got for y'all the limited vinyl 12"s that are now (thankfully) combined onto this 2-on-1 compact disc full-length (and then some) offering from Chicago doomcore dirgemasters Indian. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. But heck, here's all four tracks from Slights And Abuse and five tracks from The Sycophant on one handy 5" digitally encoded disc. And anyone into the HEAVY (that would be, a lot of you) damn well ought to check it out. This is the follow up to Indian's previous Seventh Rule album The Unquiet Sky, and it crushes just as much or more than that impressive debut did.
The initial attack of Slights And Abuse's first three tracks had us a bit staggered with their speedy spew... it's a vicious thrashing all right, the band ripping through some tricky riffing and unleashing the wretched vokills with frenzied ferocity. But then that record's 15 minute finale "Fatal Luck" slows things down, waaaay down, and we remember why these guys remind us so much of the Melvins. And Khanate. Buried At Sea, Boris and Cavity too!
The second half of this disc, The Sycophant half, is the weirder one, with experimental interludes like the eerie ambient piano instrumental "Allotriophagy". More distorted drone abounds on "Gloat". Yet the metallisms of part one certainly bleed through, from the doomy triumph of "The Sycophant" to the chunky chuggery of "Pigs In Your Open Wound"... truly, each song on this whole disc being pretty killer in its own weird and/or wrathful way. And you gotta like the cover paintings, 'specially the one on the back for The Sycophant, depicting a Pope doing the bloody bird-biting routine a la Ozzy.
When someone just walks in off the street and hands you a 7" and tells you to "check it out, you'll probably dig it," odds are that's not always necessarily true. But a ways back, someone did just that, and handed over an Indian 7", and we were completely blown away. Super heavy and sludge-y stonery doom from a band who we had never heard of and by all rights should have been up there rocking along side bands like Pelican and Isis and Mastodon. So we played our 7"s to bits, just biding our time for a full length, cuz let's face it, super droney stretched out druggy stoner doom doesn't really have the space on a 7" to unwind and trudge through epic 10 minute plus songs the way that music was meant to. It's almost cruel keeping that sort of band confined to a 7". Like keeping a wooly mammoth in a tiny enclosure at the zoo. Before long those steel bars will be gone and there will be plenty of blood and gore and folks trampled under foot. And we can't imagine a more apt description of the finally unveiled Indian full length. The first track is a glacial Earth / SUNNO))) like drone, thick guitars squirming and slithering in a big tangly cloud of feedback, but that's only to ease you into the mighty ass kicking you're about to receive. Massive, lumbering, feedback soaked, groove flecked stoned and drugged out space sludge of the highest order. A bit like Eyehategod mixed with Kyuss, this is bile spewing evil stuff, maybe even a bit like Khanate if they decided to 'rock' and get some girls to like their band. Then there's the vocals, instead of a Kyuss-y raspy growl or an EHG sort of bellow / howl, the vocals here are a grim icy demonic screech, each track an unholy union, equal parts stoner sludge and frosty black metal invocation. Fucking awesome. Fans of the new breed of post rock / metal hybrid (Pelican, Isis, Tides, Conifer), and the sludge-y doom of bands like EHG, Khanate, Sleep, Electric Wizard, SUNNO))) as well as ALL things drone sludge shriek buzz and blur, might as well just get the rusty razor out right now and carve INDIAN right there on your scarred and tattooed forearm along side the rest of 'em! Killer crown-of-thorned-monkey cover art too!!
While we missed their recent show here in San Francisco we kept hearing rave reviews and many of our most trusted customers felt similarly, so much so that we knew we had to hear the new record. We're very happy we listened because Free Gold grabbed a hold of us on the very first listen and we've been hooked hard ever since.
Falling somewhere between Spacemen 3 and Jesus & Mary Chain, Indian Jewelry totally hit the spot in creating sounds that are both shoegazy and dangerous sounding at the same time. If we do get to see them live in support of this record we would want it to be in a really sparse room with nothing but a shitty PA and a really intense strobe light. Free Gold is one of those records that no matter what your history with the band is, you can tell that this is a record that finds the band really hitting their stride. They tap into so many things we love but with their own slight tweak on things that makes it totally their own. Like Loop or Wooden Shjips with a dash of mascara or a more fucked up and DIY version of the latest Raveonettes record that we've been so into. And much like the two Psychic Ills records we love so much, this hits the spot big time, especially when you are looking for that up to no good, slightly drugged out and sexy late night soundtrack.
Indian Jewelry's Free Gold emerged as a minor masterpiece of off-kilter neo-psychedelia back in 2008. Synths, drum machines, a sparse use of guitars, and way tripped-out effects spiralled throughout, but it was the vocal melodies - all ghostly, sexy, slightly confused, and daydreaming - that turned the record from becoming just another interesting diversion. For the 2010 album Totaled, the Houston duo turn inward for a more sinister take on their woozy, dreamtime psychedelia, that comes across almost like a ghetto-tech reanimation of the Flaming Lips' Embryonic. Indian Jewelry's fried electronics transmit throbbing, dirge-like sequences and skeletal rhythms, augmenting the fried neurons of zombified vocals, alternately delivered by Tex Kerschen and Erika Thrasher. The vocals are less of a focus here, positioned as an undercurrent of narcoleptic bad-vibes sort of like the sounds of a transistor radio murmuring in the apartment next door. The atmospheres throughout have the feeling of getting dosed /stoned on (insert drug of choice) and then wandering around an industrial wasteland at twilight. The colors beautifully serve to highlight the more rundown parts of urban living.
While we have yet to review any Indian Jewelry records on the aQ list, most of us here are pretty big fans. Their Invasive Exotics record was an awesome chunk of tripped out droniness, that probably would have been a really good fit on the aQ list. We'll have to remedy that soon. But before they were Indian Jewelry, they were called NTX + Electric, and had a pretty dramatically different sound.
On We Are The Wild Beast, the soon to be Indian Jewelry sounded less like some wacked Texas free psych dronewave outfit, and more like some NYC no-wave skronk combo, complete with squawking saxophones, thick gristly synth, haunting new wave grooves, lots of electronic bleepery, but also some more modern sounds, some of the melodies sound like they could have been plucked from Interpol songs, there's definitely some garage-y stomp, some shoegazey droneouts, the core sound though is the simple clattery percussion, the huge thick slabs of buzzing synth, and the saxophone, which spends much of its time in the background, unfurling hypnotic snakecharmer grooves.
Buried amidst all this skronk and skree and buzz re some fantastic pop songs, and some killer hooks, but they're usually obscured by clouds of FX, or wrapped around spiky angular riffing. The opener is a killer, a modern sounding dancefloor killer, with it's sax refrain and the blown out synth buzz, a total new wave groove that would have the girljean set frugging madly. But then there's songs like "Looking At You", a dreamy krautpop jam, with that same sax refrain from the first song resurfacing, all under thick sheets of crumbling psych guitar. The nearly 14 minute "S-O-S-O-S" begins like some sort of Spacemen 3 bliss out, but soon transforms into some off kilter Unrest style jam, insistent guitar jangle, Beatles-y croon, and simple lo-fi pop hooks, all wrapped up in loads of distortion, and more amp frying FX.
It's really not that hard to hear a lot of later Indian Jewelry in the sound of NTX+Electric, but they have more of an old school electro / no-wave thing going on, which means fans of folks like Glass Candy and the like might also dig. Cool, weird, awesome stuff.
Thanks to Cheb I Sabbah, Talvin Singh, Tabla Beat Science, and other electronica fusions with traditional Indian music, several dozen customers have excitedly picked this album in hopes of a sitar 'n' tabla laced album of electronica. To glum expressions and sad resignations, we explain that these "Indian Soundscapes" are just field recordings made throughout the subcontinent. It's a damn shame that more people haven't gotten excited about this album, as the recordings of rushing trains, calming ebbings of the ocean, bustling marketplaces, and the album's highlight - the haunted cackling of peacocks. This follows Soleilmoon's previous collection of field recordings, "Indonesian Soundscapes," although I'm not sure if Loren Nerell was the recordist on this one, as he had collected that collection of field recordings.
We first heard Pat Maher's Indignant Senility project via last year's Plays Wagner, where he created haunting and murky atmospheric compositions sourced from a thrift store copy of a Wagner opera, which we loved. Maher, who also creates music under the guises of DJ Yo-Yo Dieting and Diamond Catalog, returns with his second Indignant Senility release and his source material is wider, but even more mysterious. Industrial ambiance is still the primary mode of his music making, but the sounds take on a more tweaked concrete mode of vintage avant garde composition, sometimes invoking the metallic shard like sounds of Iannis Xenakis or Harry Bertoia. Towards the end of the third track, "No One", the listener can make out the far off plaintive strands of a string quartet seeping through the foggy murk, adding a funeral tension and gloom to the proceedings. Beautifully bleak!
Now both volumes of this previously vinyl only deconstructed classical epic are available on one cd with new artwork! Here is what we recently said about 'em:
If the recent Leyland Kirby 3cd epic, Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was, left you jonesing for more washed out spectral ambience culled from classical sources, than here's the next best thing.
Indignant Senility is one of many monikers of Portland-based tape-manipulator, Pat Maherr, who also operates as DJ Yo-Yo Dieting, Sisprum Vish, and Moms Who Chop. For this project, Plays Wagner takes its obvious source material from old found thrift store records of Richard Wagner symphonies and operas. With all the dust and wear still intact, Maherr runs the source material through layers of filters and processing until they are mere specters of their original sound, stretching and distorting these inspirational masterpieces of classical music into something altogether alien and dark, but strangely familiar. Murky deep-pitched strings, ghostly choral voices slowed, and blurred into tremulously washed out and ephemeral murmurs, slow-rising intensities and tonal vibrations. These were then recorded on to cassette tape from which this recording was mastered from, adding to the slow, mournful decay of the ruined grandeur of the original source material.
It's easy to see why classical music always seems to be haunted, even without much manipulation. But their is something to be said about the grandeur and power of classical music's biggest ego deconstructed into something so unearthly and spectral and yet so beautifully sad that even at it's most reduced, one still can't remove the huge flow of powerful feeling inherent in the recording. The ghosts can be exorcised but never fully banished. Highly Recommended!!
If the recent Leyland Kirby 3cd epic, Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was, left you jonesing for more washed out spectral ambience culled from classical sources, than here's the next best thing.
Indignant Senility is one of many monikers of Portland-based tape-manipulator, Pat Maherr, who also operates as DJ Yo-Yo Dieting, Sisprum Vish, and Moms Who Chop. For this project, which will be released in two separate vinyl volumes but compiled together in one cd, takes its obvious source material from old found records of Richard Wagner symphonies. Stretching and distorting these inspirational masterpieces of classical music into something altogether alien and dark, but strangely familiar. Leaving the sounds of crackle, dirt and grime of the records intact, adding to the slow, mournful decay of the ruined grandeur of the original source material, these were then recorded on to cassette tape from which this recording was mastered from, adding another wash of sonic decay to the already distorted proceedings. So beautiful and sad!
The second volume of Pat Maherr's deconstructed classical epic culled from thrift store records of Wagner symphonies and operas. With all the dust and wear still intact, Maherr runs the source material through layers of filters and processing until they are mere specters of their original sound. Slowed, and blurred into tremulously washed out and ephemeral murmurs, slow-rising intensities and tonal vibrations, it's easy to see why classical music always seems to be haunted, even without much manipulation. But their is something to be said about the grandeur and power of classical music's biggest ego deconstructed into something so unearthly and spectral and yet so beautifully sad that even at it's most reduced, one still can't remove the huge flow of powerful feeling inherent in the recording. The ghosts can be exorcised but never fully banished. Both part one and part two will be soon released on one cd, but like all of Type's vinyl, it won't be around too long. Highly Recommended!!
Groovy collection of stuff by this great Patrick Cowley related band from back in the day.
If the White Stripes were a goth band? Perhaps. Industrial Park are the Portland duo of Emma Barnett & Nick Makanna, who produce their dour post-punk songs with only guitar, voice, and drums - and the opening number seems to be the only track with a bass (which is certainly unusual in the land of the goth). Very little production, and certainly no synths to speak of what so ever. The songs themselves brace themselves between Christian Death and the March Violets with the gloomy vocals from Barnett cast in the sparest of echo; and Industrial Park offers up a rather uptempo cover of the Sisters Of Mercy's mega-dirge "Valentine." Beautifully smeared black & white vinyl, and limited to 300 copies.
Canadian sound artist Jim Dejong has been recontextualizing all sorts of sounds into thoroughly abstracted compositions and ashen dark ambience for well over a decade as The Infant Cycle. This Zoviet-France inspired set of looping hypnosis, echoplex-riddled events, and grim sound design strategies heralds from the Drone Records series of singles, curated by Stefan Knappe of Troum / Maeror Tri. Trombone, birdcage, marimba, guitar, and chimes are some of the instruments that Dejong sites as the origins to the sounds on Secret Hidden Message, but little of those sources are made evident behind the veil of chilled atmospheres and infernal howlings, blended to a very well constructed set of electro-acoustic manipulation. Limited to 300 copies!
There's a whole series of these, split cd releases from the cult-minded metal label Stormspell, giving some of the new breed of thrash metal bands from all around the world a snazzy showcase, two bands per disc. Head to head headbanging, as it were. They're all been pretty cool, and we probably should be listing each one, but can't write reviews 24/7... however, we really wanted to at least do a write up regarding this volume in particular. It pits California's Infantry against Finland's Pyrotoxic... and if you know AQ, you won't be surprised to learn that it's Pyrotoxic that really got us all excited. FRENZIED FINNISH THRASH METAL MADNESS!!! Don't get us wrong, Infantry are good, but Pyrotoxic simply kill. Part of what gets us about these maniacs is their uber energetic off-the-rails speediness (they make Infantry sound slothful) but it's also the awesomely wretched and rabid vokill delivery of the singer. Furthermore, while their more chaotic approach is quite frazzled, and feedbacking, and frothing mad, amidst all of it they've got hooks happenin' too, really rockin' and rollin' on such tracks as "Nuclear War (Has No Rules)" and "The Secret Of Steel". This is the true NWOFHM!
Though Pyrotoxic are our faves here, Infantry bring it too, they're just in comparison much more restrained, polished and precise, but certainly slay it up with such tunes as "Desecrate The Church" and the instrumental "Inhumane". Heck, their half comes first and listening to 'em rage you wouldn't think they'd get upstaged by the Finns, no sir. Which makes Pyrotoxic all the more impressive.
Well, not much more to say, there's 6 songs here from Infantry and 5 from Pyrotoxic. songs, and we'll be definitely on the lookout for more from either band, but especially those crazy Finns!
PS to give you a further notion of what these bands are all about, we'll mention the influences they each cite in the cd booklet. Infantry give props to "Slayer, Demolition Hammer, Deicide, Cannibal Corpse, Destruction, Kreator, etc." We get the idea they like black metal too, since one song is called, "Black Metal", and we already mentioned the one about church desecration! Meanwhile, Pyrotoxic hail "Dark Angel, Bulldozer, Tankard, (early) Slayer, Destruction, Armagedom, Sadus".
It's a funny thing, a lot of times, for us at least, as black metal bands get better, and tighter and more polished, they don't necessarily get better. Or more specifically, we don't actually like them any more than we did when they were struggling to realize some musical vision well beyond their technical grasp. I suppose that's true of any music maybe, but it seems more obvious with black metal in particular. When a band finally records in a studio, and has spent the last year honing their chops, it often sounds -amazing-, but just not as weird or personal or uniquely inspired. A good example is Behemoth, who we do love, still, but who are now a super tight technical, nearly overproduced, slick, fast, sharp and super complex black metal juggernaut. But in the beginning, they were making buzzing Burzumic black metal, with basically just acoustic guitars and drums. So they would be playing these classic sounding riffs, right there alongside stumbling blast beasts, but with some janky acoustic steel string guitar. And the results were totally inspired! It's that sort of inspiration and invention that can only come from absolute necessity. Which is precisely what is so appealing about so much black metal.
But there are exceptions, one obvious one being this new record from Inferi. Previous recordings (two tapes) found the band a stumbling, chaotic, mess, a glorious mess, but a mess nonetheless, lots of buzz and blackness, but terrible recording quality and some super stumbling performances, which in that case, kept the band from expressing the sounds they were hearing in their heads. But on Shores Of Sorrow, Inferi, have done everything right. The sound is loud and heavy, thick and clear, but without losing the grim buzz that so defined them. And the playing is better too, but instead of trying to become some super technical BM band, they continued to hone their gorgeously sorrowful, midtempo blackness, and the result is totally captivating. Quite possibly one of the saddest sounding black metal records ever. Each of the four lengthy tracks is a blurry, buzzing, minor key dirge, thick swirls of distortion wrapped around totally emotional and super sad sounding melodies, all draped over loping lurching midtempo rhythms. Occasionally some awesomely unexpected double kick drumming surfaces, but all it does is up the tension factor, and make the song seem even more sad and intense. The opening track sets the tone, 12 minutes of mournful acoustic guitar, a gently lilting minor key melody, drifting beneath sheets of raw blown out black buzz, sort of seasick and dreamlike, harsh vocals howl above the melancholy blackness. The drums don't even kick in until the last few minutes, and then this black near-ballad turns into a heartbreaking dirge. The next two tracks follow a similar pattern, epic and sorrowful, gloriously miserable droning buzz. It's everything we love about Burzum and Xasthur and Nortt and Make A Change... Kill Yourself, stripped to its very essence, the simplest buzzing black representation of utter misery, so completely mesmerizing and totally soul stirring. The final track is blazing fast, at least compared to the first three, a furious not quite blast beat, over dense drifts of swirling black buzz, and like the rest of the disc, still totally minor key, utterly doleful and despondent, austere and disconsolate, and so goddamned good.
Fans of any of the above mentioned bands, and any one into buzzing beautiful sad blackness might just have a new favorite disc to drown your sorrows in...
"Satanic Holocaust Metal" featuring current and ex- "warriors" from several excellent Scandinavian metal outfits: Dark Funeral, In Aeternum, and the amazing Defleshed.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Final release from Polish horde Infernum, which is essentially as far as we can tell just a different version of Graveland. Although there seems to be some complicated backstory and two different Infernums from the same town. One made up entirely of session members (Rob Darken and Capricornus of Graveland) the other fronted by the protege of the original founder who killed himself. Weird. The liner notes are funny / disturbing, explaining that Darken and Capricornus were grateful that the other guy killed himself and that their only regret was that he died at his own hands instead of theirs. Woah.
But whatever, this is some awesome, buzzing black metal done Polish style. The Graveland sound is all over Infernum. The original version of this was released as a bootleg back in 1996 without keyboards or vocals, and after the death of Anextiomarus, Darken and Capricornus finished it and released it as you hear it now. Keyboards all over the place. Thick washes of epic grandiose synths, howled vocals, over furious midtempo black thrash, buzzing insectoid riffs, blasting drums, weird choral vocals, but the coolest part of this disc is the weird sort of post rocky breakdowns, with clean guitars and tribal rhythms, minor key and moody, they sort of jangle and lope along lazily until the blackness drops and the band explode again into freaked out grim black furor. Fans of Graveland will obviously NEED this, but folks into weird black metal will probably find this much to their liking...
Mike Ladd and company (including turntablist Mr. Len and members of Company Flow and Anti Pop Consortium) combine surrealist lyrics and deft delivery with stripped down, bass-heavy sampled loops. This is the unpredictable and fresh future of hip hop, from a guy who drops names like the Bomb Squad, Cat Power, and Bad Brains in the same breath. Give it a try. The album starts slow and then just gets better and better.
A few years back we were intrigued and amazed by a disc entitled Case Studies In Bioentropy, the debut from this very strange band. Experimental drone prog noise textural rock weirdness. We went on and on about how "strange" it was. Now Infidel?/Castro! are back, on the Crucial Blast label, with what might be an even stranger album. Maybe twice as strange in fact 'cause it's two discs instead of one! An overwhelming sprawl of chaotic geek-tech glitch abstraction, lovely melodic improvisations, and conceptual nerdy noisenik metal-riffed surreal insanity... is it serious? Is it science? Can't tell. The music is accompanied by equally hard-to-grok computer art and text. Song titles include "Temporarily Desolving Into Plasma During A Moment To One's Self" and "Bedsores (for G.W.B.)". Hmm. At least we know who G.W.B. is.
These two discs are certainly interesting, sometimes beautiful, and yes most definitely strange. Recommended to anyone who doesn't mind spinning from ambient drone to fractured prog to electronic mayhem -- like a collison of Fantomas and irr. app. (ext.), maybe. Or Isis, Merzbow, MBV, and Behold The Arctopus, perhaps. The latter of which features Colin Marston, also a member of Infidel?/Castro! by the way. So that might give you an idea...just an idea... of what this is all about. The real answer, we're still looking for. But in the meantime, we're enjoying this album!
This is a very strange record. And you know that around here, for something to strike us as strange, it's gotta be really weird. A strange 'rock' record is a much more rare creature than just a strange record. I mean, at AQ we have been known to carry elephants
My first inclination is to say O.L.D. meets Tool meets Fantomas meets Scanner meets Lustmord. But that doesn't quite capture it. There seems to be some sort of linear narrative, based on germs, or sickness or at least some sort of conspiracy. Dark rumbling drones and endlessly sustaining horror movie upper register skree underpin mumbled dialogue, panicked arguments whispered in a dark alleys, and computer voices offering plot exposition and ominous warnings. Then bursts of chugging distorted guitars, and spastic drumming (as well as computerized beats) explode through the thick curtain of gloomy drone bringing to mind the grinding rhythm of the Ruins. The record continues with monstrous slow core sludge splattered with fucked up noise and malfunctioning electronics that slowly mutates into a buzzing oversaturated electronic rhythm. And it just keeps getting weirder and weirder with dreamy gauzy nightmarescapes, huge pounding hyper distorted big beat electro, more confusing chopped and processed dialogue, repetitive and grinding almost-metal rhythms and the record ends with a totally crushing track of multi layered guitars, distorted and buzzing, squealing and pounding relentlessly as the story continues to its appropriately doomed ending. This record is so epic and intense, right down to the striking cover art: a close up painting of some sort of ocular surgery! Fans of any of the bands I mentioned above should definitely check this out as well as you 'dronologists' and even you jaded rockers. This record is definitely one of the best surprises of the year. An 'Operation Mindcrime' for the experimental set!
Just a few copies are available of this vinyl only release from Kyle Parker's Infinite Body project, from which we got a nice introduction into his soft-noise / heavy-ambient sounds on the split LP with Emaciator. He picks up where he left off there with a blissed-out distortion billowing out of a glistening cyclical drone from what sounds like a overdriven pump organ. The heavy waves of distortion gradually fade away, and a pastoral, Cluster like melody is left behind to effortlessly glide through a warm set of ambient melodies. This gives way to a crunchier version of what Oneohtrix Point Never has been offering through luminous arpeggiations that trick themselves out of anything remotely new age sounding; and here, it's the heavy patina of distortion which saves Infinite Body's mantra. Parker furthers the shimmer with some floating-in-outer-space driftscaping bristling with bleary noises just beneath the surface, only to find these collapsing into a throbbing drone that reconstitutes itself through a kaleidoscope of that same pump organ sound. At first this emerges as a eerie fog horn only to overtake the sound field in a growing mass of crunched noise. Limited to 300 copies and pressed on clear vinyl.
LA's Kyle Parker, working here under the name Infinite Body, is a tireless performer of blissed-out noise and heavily synthesized powerdrone workouts, which accompany a pretty effective light show triggered by various stepped decibel meters. So the louder Parker gets during a piece, the more kaleidoscopic light floods the stage. Simple, but very effective for what the man does. The Infinite Body sound is also simple but very effective, as we've previously enjoyed a couple of amazing (and limited) LPs and a really great split lp with like-minded beautiful malcontent Emaciator. Parker / Infinite Body is one to take off from the post-MBV practice of burying simple melodies and rudimentary structures deep beneath a hyperdelic surface of tactile white noise. The overall timbre of these sounds is a blinding sparkle of sunburst reflection jacked through rudimentary electronics. Intense for sure, and even violent at times; but there's a rarefied beauty to Infinite Body's work that combined with those elegantly violent allusions into a sound sort of like a deconstructed A.R. Kane, as if the dream-pop womb of sound is to envelop the listener and slowly suffocate him or her with cotton candy. It's not quite what David Keenan had in mind when trying to work out a definition for the American aesthetic of Hypnogogic Pop, but both hypnogogia and pop operate well within the boundaries of this Infinite Body. Very nice.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This is a really nice split LP from two up-and-comers in the ever blossoming US post-noise scene. Infinite Body is the work of Kyle Parker, who constructs sustained swarms of sun-blinding guitar noise that sparkles upon undulating surfaces from crosshatched delay patterns. Belong and White Rainbow stand as Parker's closest neighbors, yet his crystal cracked noise enjoys a knife sharpening quality to the overblown distortion that nudges the work just a little bit outside the realm of post-shoegazing psychedelics. A brief Devendra Banhart-like falsetto recorded on a crappy tape recorder emerges between two extended fuzz tracks as a teasing piece of emotional excess despite its brevity of barely 15 seconds.
It's nice to hear more from Emaciator (aka Jon Borges), who had blown us away with his Reflection 2lp not that long ago. Like Parker's Infinite Body, Emaciator transmits a constant stream of overblown noise, but sourced from analog synth and crusty filter boxes. Deftly transitioning through his distorted, shimmering drone with a dense harmonic interplay and almost subliminal melodic passages, Borges creates an entrancing and hypnotic piece that's equal parts Birchville Cat Motel and LaMonte Young. As his blizzard of electricity draws to an end, Borges picks up the guitar with a sadly elliptical chord that winds down gradually.
Excellent stuff to be sure!
Over the last few weeks, we've reviewed a bunch of 7"s, previously only available to subscribers to Not Not Fun's long running Bored Fortress Club 7" Subscription series. For whatever reason, the singles have finally been made available to non-subscribers, and feature a pretty killer line up of bands: Wet Hair, Peaking Lights, High Wolf, Gnod, Robedoor, Ducktails, Rangers, Sex Worker, Psychic Reality, and The Savage Young Taterbug. The only one we weren't able to list, UNTIL NOW, is this one, a split between two longtime aQ faves, noise poppers No Age, and psychedelic post noise dronescapers Infinite Body.
No Age unleash a squall of gnarled distorto guitar, muted drums, and buried vox, a swirling cloud of sound that finds the various elements blurred into a single heaving washed out noisepop mass, here and there shimmering guitars ring out through the murk, while near the track's end, the rhythmic pulse transforms into a metallic industrial pound, and the guitars grow hazier and more ghostlike, until the song blinks out with a short blast of grinding crunch.
Infinite Body counter with a woozy loopscape, all burnt guitar thrum, and circusy melody, a pulsing hypnotic landscape of gristly distorted smears, reminding us of Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck, a gloriously lysergic, gently blown out bit of dronefuzz ambient dreaminess.
As with the other installments in the series, killer eye popping packaging, and of course VERY LIMITED!!
It should be only a matter of time before somebody pulls the obscurant folk miserablist Terrors from the cassette netherworld, as his bleakly rendered minimalism for guitar, voice, and hell of a lot of reverb captures the spirit of the first few Smog records. But at the same time, Terrors has been sharing the same LA post-noise haunts as Pedestrian Deposit and now Infinite Body; so maybe, that's where Terrors should stay lest he / they start to suck. Terrors' cassette Inequipose was one of the best tapes that we heard in 2009, so anything new (that wasn't immediately out of print!) would certainly pique our interest. Hence, this twenty-minute cassette with one Terrors track, one Infinite Body track, and one collaborative track with guest vocals from Laena Myers-Ionita; and it's a gem!
Infinite Body opens the tape with a vocal edit of a piece that really sounds like it's all synth, following upon what he produced on the recent album Carve The Face Out Of My God. Brightly shimmering synth percolations extended through delay and reverb all of which are very sharp in attack. The Terrors solo track is a mopey cover of Billie Holiday's "God Bless The Child" with downer guitar strums and reverb drenched vocals breaking up the empty tape hiss spaces. And that collaborative track is really quite special, sort of sounding like a very lo-fi version of Mazzy Star as remixed by Wavves, with overblown synth drones softly abrading against Terrors repetitive guitar chord and Myers-Ionita maudlin vocals. Limited to a mere 100 copies, or thereabouts.
You know how we love fucked records. The more fucked the better. Well, my friends, this may be the most fucked up hip hop record ever. Infinite Livez is a UK rapper who is equal parts Ol' Dirty Bastard, De La Soul, Outkast and Ali G. The cover is all space invaders with lipstick and cigars, cyclopian teddy bear hand puppets, with Infinite's sneering mug superimposed in the corner. And the sounds inside are just as bizarre. Funky big beats, with farting synths, damaged loops, all sorts of random sounds: rain, sheep, crickets, monkeys, and everything else under the sun. And then there's the ridiculous stuff that comes out of the mouth of Mr. Infinite Livez, a mumbling barely coherent stream of conciousness rapping, in a thick Cockney drawl, at least when he's not going off is a helium soaked alien chipmunk squeak or wailing like a more damaged Biz Markee, expounding on masturbation, lactating men, space invaders, white wee wee's, cock 'n' roll and all sorts of other random silliness. Someone else described this as Three Feet High And Rising on really really bad acid, and that ain't at all far from the truth.
The last thing we would have expected from UK tape label The Tapeworm, who pretty much traffic in the unexpected, was a hip hop record, but if they were gonna release a hip hop record, it makes sense that it would be weirdo UK MC Infinite Lives, whose Bush Meat full-length we reviewed way back in 2004, and flipped over, describing him as "equal parts Ol' Dirty Bastard, De La Soul, Outkast and Ali G." And if anything this live set is even weirder. A super spacey abstract set of dubbed out, free-from electro hop, all woozy synth stabs, footwork like beats, warped loops, and more singing than rapping, Infinite's vocals a soulful croon, drenched in reverb, and all tangled up with dubby shimmer and stuttery melodies, eventually, the rapping comes in, and it's appropriately jagged and twisted and rapidfire, with the music switching gears and following along, the various beats and loops splintering into a head spinning barrage of jumbled collaged chaos before slipping right back into that twisted dubby soul, sounding more like something we might hear from Hype Williams, a fractured future funk, laced with some dubstep bass wobble, smooth synthy shimmer, relentless programmed beats, and some killer next level flow, but always returning to Infinite's whatthefuck echo drenched soul dub hip-pop. Cool.
It should be noted that this group is entirely comprised of experienced and popular pop punk musicians like Jody Bleyle (Team Dresch, Hazel), Tamala Poljak (Longstocking, Automaticans), Whitney Skillkorn (Little Deaths, Fighter D) and Scotty Walsh
Like the perenially amazing PseudoArcana and Celebrate Psi Phenonemon, the Auckland based art-noise-drone label CMR has taken to releasing super limited cd-r editions from relatively unknown New Zealand musicians. This eponymous album from Infinitesimal is the second cd-r release for CMR, following the exceptional feedback dronescraping of Nigel Wright. Of course, the Infinitesimal duo of Mark Sadgrove (from MHFS) and Paul Winstanley (from Sci Hi) has a couple of even smaller cd-r editions on even harder to find labels. Using no-input mixing board techniques and a self-triggering computer algorithms, Infinitesimal crafts a metal machine music where the machine does all the work and the technicians make sure things don't run too amok. Hence, this album bristles with fizzing blasts of white-hot electric noise sputter against leaden feedback drones. Super limited to 100 copies, of which we only have a handful!
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Over the course of three solid albums, the Bay Area's Unagi has blended traditional hip hop with the smooothest love-you-down r&b and soul. On his latest release, he's joined by Memphis based MC Infinito 2017. Combined, their sound is super loose and laidback (especially on the mildly chaotic track "On Air Takeover"), but exceedingly 'up' vibe-y. Seven tracks addin' up to 17 minutes of good times!
Armed with two analog synths and an alliance of effects pedals, this NY duo conjure forth a deep cleansing slab of grim new agey bliss. In the same droney vein as newcomers Emeralds, Infinity Window delve deep into the divine world of heavy synth wizardry to unveil two sides of all-encompassing aural blitzkrieg. To say their sound is thick would be a total understatement. These guys know how to lay it down heavy, but there is a lighter side to their heaviness, not really a dooomy type of heaviness, more a melodic and shimmering type of heavy that reminds us of the earlier Growing albums. Both sides build from wondrously minimal, video game-y bleeps and bloops to huge walls of trance inducing, glacial radiance. Like staring directly into the blaring sun, these tracks are celestial and huge but damaged and textured. Fuzz and noise subtly encapsulate the reverberating tones to swiftly steer away from any new-agey cheesiness.
Well, this is a first for the aQ list, at least as far as we remember. We're hitting list #469 so forgive us our senility if it's happened before, but we do believe this is the very first 7" we have made Record Of The Week! And it's not just any 7" but a double 7", one that hasn't seen the light of day since it was first released in 1981 right here in San Francisco by Subterranean Records, containing the sole recordings (five songs) of legendary all female art punk eccentrics, Inflatable Boy Clams. Long sought after by collectors of bizarre music and fetching indecent prices online, it's amazing to have this left-field punk artifact available again.
Featuring Carol Detweiler and Judy Gittlesohn of local new wave heroes Pink Section (whose collected recordings were just released as well and reviewed on this list), Jo Jo Planteen and saxophonist Genevieve Boutet de Monvel of Longshoreman and Club Foot Orchestra, Inflatable Boy Clams were not so much a traditional band as they were a performance art collective, rotating instruments and vocal duties for each song. Barebones arrangements with minimal musicianship of carnival organ, saxophone, angular bass riffs and incredibly oft-kilter singing put them in a kinship with bands like Monitor, Flying Lizards, The Art Bears, and The Raincoats, and later with bands like The Double U, Thinking Fellers, and Smack Dab, but the Inflatable Boy Clams were even weirder, funnier and much more cooly deranged.
The first 7" features "Skeletons", a Halloweenish children's song made by what sounds like very unhinged children, with the B-side "Snoteleks" being, you guessed it, "Skeletons" played backward making a weird surreal song even more fun-house like and disorientating.
The second 7" has three songs, starting with the satirical "Marin", a sort of send-up of richness and comfort of the affluent county north of San Francisco, sung by Gittlesohn in an arch French accent. The next track, "I'm Sorry", was perhaps the Clams most well-known song, often getting airplay on Dr. Demento's radio show. A sort of cover of Walter Donaldson's 1926 hit "What Can I Say After I've Said I'm Sorry" (Donaldson gets a writing credit), a chorus of voices sing a slow refrain of the main lyrics, while Gittlesohn and Planteen trade confessional stories of mutual bad friendship to each other (stealing boyfriends - or maybe girlfriends, electrocuting pets, ruining a dress, destroying beloved cassette tapes), with very disingenuous apology. The final song on the B-side, "Boystown" is a curious martial dirge about boys going back to Boystown with their guns and knives as the gals sing with slow sinister "good-riddance" tra-la-la glee.
But really, words and descriptions can't quite quantify what a bizarre, hermetic and wholly contained piece of DIY musical art from content to packaging this is. One whose mystery and unexplainable attraction would likely have been diluted had the group attempted to continue and make more recordings. That shirk of commercial success brand identity and skewering of gender politics is in turn what makes San Francisco punk stand apart and sound so fucking great right now. Thanks to Superior Viaduct for making this and the Pink Section recordings available again! Highly Recommended!
Information is the subdued electronica Norwegian duo of Per Henrik Svalastog and Jorgen Knudsen, sharing more than a passing resemblance to their fellow countryman Geir Jensen (aka Biosphere). "Biomekano" is Information's third album, and has found a perfect home on the exceptional Rune Grammofon label. The Biosphere references are quite obvious in the duo's construction of arctic atmospheres through an active exploration into the rich tonal colors of ambient washes; yet Information's music is far from pure ambience as they provide a greater intensity to their music through the throbbing micro-techno pulsations often associated with Vladislav Delay and Thomas Jirku. This may not be as good as the recent Biosphere album (a tough venture for any artist), but is way better than the current Mille Plateaux output of glitch happy neo-dub.
Ingenting is Swedish for 'nothing,' and this American collective (half living in California, the other in North Carolina) pays homage to all of the varied meanings that Ingmar Bergman ascribes to the state of 'nothingness.' This certainly entails all of the dark and heavy aspects of Bergman's nihilism and the long pregnant silences that are sporadically interrupted by dialogue; but they also dig into Bergman's films finding poetry in such banal phrases as "I want nothing to eat." Around this conceptual framework, Ingenting Kollektiva recorded their first album in "direct response to music recorded or released in 1969" from which they announce something akin to the Nurse With Wound list, with entries including Holger Czukay, Amon Duul, Ornette Coleman, Pentangle, King Crimson, Alan Silva, etc. None of those artists mentioned seem to offer the construction of Ingenting Kolletiva's darkly kaleidoscopic abstractions and acoustically driven drones; but the ghosts of those sounds certainly haunt the grooves of this record.
The two long-form pieces of Fragments Of Night allude to more contemporary practitioners of the avant-drone, especially Mirror, Thuja, zoviet*france, and Taj Mahal Travellers (to throw things somewhat near the 1969 year-zero mark). The instruments of the collective's choosing include harmonium, cello, guitar, flute, old 78s, psaltry, etc; and the collective deftly obscure those sources through interwoven harmonics, dense layering, and plenty of delay & reverb. The first side opens with gaping, deep thrums of low frequencies that ripples as if dialed into the reflective black ice from some distant moon around Saturn. The plucked notes from the psaltry gracefully pulls back the gloom of that opening passage and sets off a slow-motion dissolve of foghorn bellows, come across somewhere between Deathprod and Caretaker. The flipside is more acoustically sourced, or at least the guitars and horns can be heard amidst the time-delay effects and tape-decay loops, from which melodies form through rasping Tibetan bowls, guitars amass in dense vibrating chunks of space, and a rather dramatic crescendo of agitated violin scrapes builds to a crashing end of tense noise and drone. Limited pressing in a gatefold sleeve, what else could you want from this fantastic record? Oh yeah, there's a download code, too!
