Jurassic 5 have cut a nice niche for themselves over the last decade or so for being a reliable source of feel good school yard sounding old skool hat tipping hip-hop. While they still haven't outdone their great debut 12" they've managed to put out some pretty good records each time out. Along with like-minded friends like Blackalicious Jurassic 5 helped launch an alternative to the gangsta-rap that so dominated most of mainstream rap in the mid-late 90's. Feedback finds J-5 doing what they've been doing (they aren't ones for big reinvention) over the years. PARTY!
Highly anticipated new album from SoCal's powerful hip hop crew -- Akil, Chali 2na, Zaakir(Soup), Marc 7, DJ Nu-Mark and Cut Chemist, with guests Nelly Furtado, Kool Keith, and more -- who've grooved SF's Future Primitive Soundsessions many times, and man, are they good live. Righteousness is the name of J5's game, with uplifting verses and a general good time, standing-on-the-corner-rhyming-in-turn vibe. Same smooth groove, nothing hard about 'em. Super clearly enunciated vocals (almost disconcertingly so), FLUTE!, some rather predictable space-the-final-frontier style movie samples, head-knodding hooks. Not challenging in terms of instrumental complexity, nor adventurously creepy -- but they're not trying for that anyway. When Cut Chemist and Nu-Mark cut loose without the vocalists, they come up with a track like "Acetate Prophets", which incorporates motor sounds, scratching, Asian-sounding percussion, jazz guitar -- so good but it's a pity the track is left til last!
The second disc is for your computer or DVD player, and contains live performance footage, but the best material is of Chali 2na visiting his grandma for breakfast, or Cut Chemist showing off his word-for-word reenactment of a segment of Star Wars Episode 1, showing off his Star Wars action figures, and some incredible footage of Nu-Mark tapping out all sorts of percussive goodness on drumpads and the backstage food containers. Must be seen to be believed.
Los Angeles' best-loved old school singalong hip hop outfit breaks out with a new album on a major label. (let's hope they get paid, not screwed, what with the major label deal and the crazy low price) Jurassic 5 blend righteous, funny rhymes with Cut Chemist's bright turntablist tricks. Not heavy, not gangsta, not fronting... these are down home guys keeping a positive outlook for the future. You've seen them play the Future Primitive Soundsession shows so many times, now here's your chance to hear them while taking a shower or something.
Two new songs plus various acapella and instrumental versions. Jurassic 5 signs themselves over to major labels and what do those creative boys do? They make music about it -- the WOE in the title stands for World Of Entertainment. Same sunny, vocals-led, sing-along hip hop that they've perfected.
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Friedrich Jurgensen's efforts in what he deemed Audioscopic Research is compiled here as the exquisite follow-up to AQ's Halloween fave "The Ghost Orchid." Both are collections of (alleged) recordings of examples of Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), which is a broad catagory of unusual interruptions by unknown voices onto magnetic tape or the radiowaves. Parapsychologists like Jurgensen, Raymond Cass, and Konstatine Raudive (the latter two were featured on the aforementioned "Ghost Orchid") claim that these voices may be from beyond the grave or may even have an extraterrestrial origin! While other researchers have devised intricate methods to focus these voices, Jurgensen claimed that his own telepathic tendencies could harness these voices, causing them to appear on radio or tape. All of Jurgensen's recordings feature voices speaking in German, Italian, Swedish, and (if that wasn't enough) polyglot--the intermingling of languages.
One of the criticisms of EVP investigation is that the listener/researcher may be forcing the syllabic utterances into the recognizable patterns of his/her own native tongue or within the confines of a narrative context. While no one is questioning the actual presence of these vocal sounds, the interpretations (of origin and/or translation) that accompany the recordings are far from solid. As I have no real working knowledge of any of the languages featured, an utterance from one of the tracks which was supposed to be in Italian or German came out as clear as day to me in English as "we have to leave." Does this debunk the possibility that these recordings are of alien/ghostly origins? No. Could it be an interesting anomaly within the context of analytical thought on the subject? Maybe. Could I be wrong? Quite possibly. Anyway, listened to purely as sound artifacts, Jurgensen's recordings are downright creepy, and highly recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Not sure what it is exactly, but just recently there seems to be a sudden onslaught of classic old school hip hop reissues, mind you we're not complaining, but it is a strange selection of 'classics' (Whodini, Sparky D, Kool Moe Dee, Unique & Dashan). One of our favorite of the bunch though is this, originally released in 1990, record number four from old school hardcore MC Just-Ice, one of the first hardcore rap MC's (whose hyphenated name always made us think of metal band Vio-lence), who has a pretty bad ass delivery, very reminiscent of Big Daddy Kane actually, and really seems like he must have been an influence for the character Charlie Murphy plays in CB4 (still some of the best hip hop parody ever, alongside Fear Of A Black Hat). And while Just-Ice definitely cut an imposing figure, buff and tattooed, with a gold grill and some serious attitude, much of this record's success is due to the music, which of course is provided by legendary DJ Grandmaster Flash, whose sound is absolute classic hip hop, minimal scratching, layered soul loops, snippets of horns, killer grooves, creepy ominous basslines, simple shuffling beats, a super distinctive sound that pretty much defined hip hop of that era, but few did it better that Grandmaster Flash, and when combined with Just-Ice's badass flow, it's pretty tough to beat.
Holy waters of Nazareth! There's still a faint ringing in our ears after listening to this debut disco-metal machine of an album, whose title is simply a cross, by the much talked about French duo, Justice, on the French electro imprint, Ed Banger Records. No electronic group has received as much hype and hysteria (mainly via internet music blogs and much remixed material by big name producers and DJs) in so little time as Justice, and Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay, the men of Justice, more than meet expectations with all barrels blazing dishing out 48 minutes of a near-perfect, sinister beats 'n' synths face-off. We must admit, with all the long drawn out hype and remixing of their first few singles within the last two years, "Waters of Nazareth" (more or less the jump start for Ed Banger Records all together), their smash collaboraton with Simian, "We Are Your Friends" (which you probably would have heard everywhere in Europe in 2006), and their more recent single "D.A.N.C.E.", the two slowly began to drift out of our interest, especially with the 18+ months it's taken "Waters of Nazareth" to make it from French 12" to worldwide CD. But of course after hearing the debut, we were sucked right back in.
The opener, "Genesis", takes the electro cake, with a super theatrical intro building up to mysteriously cranky synth lines, slicing, over-compressed drums, and frazzled disco trills, reminiscent of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" but with a sonic twist. "Let There Be Light" is dirty disco pop with hints of Daft Punk-esque melodies and bass riffs. Justice thrill most when using old sputtering analogue synth sounds over momentous rhythms as in "Waters of Nazareth" and "Phantom" parts 1 and 2. "Stress" is a heavy beast of a track with it's chaotic string arrangements, backing sirens, and random abrasive sweeping glitch effects throughout the drums and bass. We ran like four red lights on our bike listening to this one (dangerous, kids don't try this at home). But there's an apparent balance within the album with sweeter numbers like "Valentine" with it's melodic electric piano, the popular recent single "D.A.N.C.E." voiced by the London Children's Choir, and the mashed-up funk of "New Jack" in which human voices are cut up and recycled into new arrangements.
As a whole, this album is filled with squelchy sound textures and wild arrogant dance patterns and rhythms.
In the last year everyone has been basically hoping Justice would release the equivalent to any of Daft Punk's epics, "Homework" or "Discovery", assuming Justice would emerge as the next big French electronic leaders. Though the comparisons to Daft Punk are inevitable, the album proves that Justice can stand on their own just fine without borrowing too much from their predecessor. Overall... a full on aural assault. A pulsing and shimmering piece of electronic music standing at the forefront of the current rock'n'rave collision.
Hot damn! No sophomore slump here, Justice return with a fucking cool follow up to their awesome debut from four years ago. Audio, Video, Disco finds the group pushing in a much proggier / poppier direction, in fact everytime we listen to this it sounds more and more like an amazing combination of Daft Punk and Rush, in the best possible way. A little less four on the floor and in your face than the debut, but with much better actual songwriting. In fact there are parts of this record that rival the ecstatic pop of folks we love like Cut Copy and Hot Chip, but instead of pulling from '80s pop bands for inspiration we get the feeling Justice has been listening to as much Emerson Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, and Queen as they have dance bangers since they released their debut. It serves them so well, as their sound now seems to have a more expansive reach, without losing the immediacy and intensity that made us first fall in love with them. There's even an awesome reference to the great CSNY song "Ohio" on here. But don't worry the record still packs a dynamite dance floor punch!
Super exciting to see a group who got tons of attention and popularity, not play it safe and make the same record twice but instead push themselves and come out with something different yet still totally rewarding.
This may be only the second release from one man band Jute Gyte that we've reviewed, but it's at least his TWENTIETH in about 6 or 7 years, and thankfully it seems that his prolific nature has done nothing to dull his creativity, or the power of his sound, a dense, dizzying microtonal black metal, that spends much of it's time locked in spiraling, frenzied swirls of frenetic buzz, the sounds slippery, slithery and shimmery, those moments the closest any modern black metal band has come to creating something truly transcendental, the fact that those blasts of epic ur-drone black-buzz majesty are surrounded by all manner of woozy, warped, atonal black-prog, and lumbering almost doomic grim churn, only serves to make those moments that much more intense. And the strange sound, that microtonal tuning, gives the music a serious bent quality, everything just slightly off, and a little twisted. The sound at first seems almost out of tune, but the more you listen, the more those strange intervals begin to make sense, and wow does it add a definite alien tension to the proceedings, the vocals too, a hysterical shriek, and when all of the various twisted elements come together, it's some sort of demonic black musical magic, that is tough to beat, and honestly even tougher to describe. Those transcendental moments almost sound like a symphony of super distorted fretless guitars, the sound slipping fluidly between the chords and notes making everything super tripped out and most definitely psychedelic, and that tuning and the tension it produces, makes every song super dramatic, ratcheting up the tension, with no release, and no resolve, just building and building, the intensity of Jute Gyte's black energy of the charts. Then there's the whole avant/experimental angle, that gives the music to non-fans of black metal, check out the opener to "Night Is The Collaborator Of Torturers", it's so twisted, the notes so weird, and the arrangements so fucked, it almost makes your eyes water, and the drums too follow suit, abstract and stumbling, the vocals come in, and voila, it's some sort of avant prog, no distortion, no manic riffing, just spidery melty melodies, tangled off kilter drumming, the whole thing seemingly on the verge of total collapse. But then "Romanticism Is Ultimately Fatal", launches directly into another one of those flurries of majestic black buzz and warped detuned melody, and then somehow, even though the sound is fully cranked, they somehow push it even further, and it's the sort of sound that could make your head explode.
This stuff is incredible, and we're guessing if you're like us, you'll get an earful of this, and then have to track down the other 19 releases. Fans of Mick Barr's mutant strain of black metal will be in heaven, as will anyone into warped, outsider blackness. Packaged in a dvd case, with full color cover and color printed insert with (amazing) lyrics.
We should all be very grateful to the mailmen who serve aQ. Without them, the aQ list would be a very different beast. They come by almost every day, through sleet and rain if necessary. Usually bearing gifts of strange sounds transported from all corners of the globe. And often, some mysterious unmarked package will contain something special, a gorgeous ambient lp, or some obscure otherworldly folk record, or in many cases, some bizarre twisted chunk of black metal. And often those records will go on to be big time aQ faves, which is bound to be the case with this strange disc from a mysterious black metal horde called Jute Gyte, that just showed up one day in the mail.
The package we got was jammed with records by bands with names like Night Troll, Tremor Of The Black Manx, Pumpkin Buzzard, Testikill, but we were strangely drawn to this Jute Gyte record, weird name, cool oversized dvd style packaging, and once we threw it on we understood why. The description on the label's website introduces us to Jute Gyte with these words:
"A bipedal humanoid rat releases a sandpaper-throated screech as most of its internal organs exit through a huge hole in its furry back. Large and small intestines launch forth in whip-like arcs, briefly straightening into perfectly even ropy lines. A massive snail-demon explodes into fragments of confetti: red, green, blue."
And as weird as that reads, once you immerse yourself in the blown out crumbling ultra raw industrial tinged synth laden black metal of JG, maybe it'll make more sense. Then again, maybe not.
The guitar sound is so fierce and fucked up. Ultra distorted, super saturated and fuzz drenched, not so much chuggy or abrasive as massive and blown out, as if a tiny bit more of anything and the riffs would just crumble to pieces, the drums mechanical and machinelike, the vocals a demonic shriek, howling and anguished, everything wreathed in washed out synths and what sounds like a million layers of distortion. The melodies are super catchy, the sound is impossibly warm and lush, even though in every other way it seems harsh and heavy.
Things slow down here and there, the music transformed into a lurching industrial stomp, all gnarled guitars and new wave synths, almost like some crazy blackened Six Finger Satellite jam. There's a cool abstract mandolin interlude (apparently there's mandolin throughout the whole record too!), that's all super spare and skeletal, before a thick warped and warble synth comes in and obliterates the mandolin, leading directly into the second half of the record, the guitar comes back in and is again sop distorted and heavy, that it almost sounds like a synth, the chords ringing out crumble and distort and cause the speakers to nearly implode. Locked into a churning low end psychedelic blow out, the track just throbs and pulses, not so much metal or industrial as some sort of drone music unleashed, the various tones and notes expanding like miniature supernovas.
After a bout of woozy twisted detuned-guitar post rock drift with harsh vokills, burbling underwater synths, and tangled atonal melodies, like Khanate heard through a funhouse mirror, the record closes with another massive and epic dose of in-the-red blackdrone buzz, like Nadja, if they decided to throw in with the dark lord, another heaving wall of crumbling blackness, wrapped around a surprisingly catchy melody, the drums buried in the mix, just a distant throb, with a lurching stop start arrangement, like some sort of slowed down black metal math rock, but dripping with distortion and effects, infused with spaced out synths, and again on the verge of total implosion. And like the rest of the record, impossibly warm and fuzzy and melodic, while simultaneously being one of the most distorted and blown out things we've ever heard.
This isn't brand new, it's maybe a year old, but we only just discovered it, and figured it was something we had to share with the loyal aQ. Quickly becoming a new black metal favorite, just in time for our year end lists...
The latest from microtonal black metal master Jute Gyte, aka Adam Kalmbach, the third and final installment of a trilogy, but fear not, even if you missed the first two, you won't be too lost. But you will be sort of confused, cuz by it's very nature, the music of Jute Gyte is pretty dizzyingly demented, most folks likely don't have much experience with microtonal tuning, it's certainly rarely (read NEVER) used in popular music, and hell, even Unpopular music like black metal, but just give a listen to the first track below, and you'll understand why. Why most folks don't use it, and why Jute Gyte DOES. It's maddeningly off kilter, to untrained ears (and likely some trained ones too), it sounds out of tune, or more accurately, like it's constantly changing tuning, the first flurry finds the band seemingly slowing down, when in reality, the pitch/melody are in flux, making the whole thing sound like it's melting, it's woozy and warped and seriously WTF, but in a way, the microtonality reminds us of drum and dulcimer weirdos Botanist, who also use a tuning system well beyond the usual guitar and bass. It's even more notable during the less heavy parts, where it really sounds angular and atonal and totally UN-tuned, the whole thing a dizzying concoction of tangled melodies and impossibly obtuse harmonies. Eye watering, ear boggling, next level avant blackness for sure.
It definitely takes some getting used to, but for folks into damaged outsider heaviness, this will totally push all your WTF buttons. Otherwise, JG deliver some seriously orthodox black buzz, it's just that the black buzz here is so bizarrely tuned it sometimes makes stuff like Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord sound like AC/DC. That said, Jute Gyte still deliver some of the fiercest fucking black buzz we've heard, due in no small part to the strange overtones, furious squalls of dizzying insectoid buzz and relentless blast beats, which only make it that more dramatic when it devolves into some loped, lurching, WTF wooziness.
Heavy and damaged, tripped out, fucked up, psychedelic and extremely experimental black metal that will likely have you scratching your head while banging it like crazy. Awesome!
Housed in a dvd style case, with full color artwork and a printed insert/lyric sheet.
Another blast of twisted microtonal black metal from this long time aQ fave, and as we mentioned in our review of the last JG, this might be his 20th record, of which we've only managed to review a handful. But like that last one, Vast Chains, takes all the tropes of black metal, and transforms them into something super psychedelic and avant, the tunings, the arrangements, the melodies, fans of groups like Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord, who traffic in woozy, slippery riffage, and blurred blackness, Jute Gyte takes that experimentalism a step further, black metal fragmented, split into jagged shards, and somehow reconstituted into something at once heavy and harsh, but also weirdly melodic and mesmerizing, but also, totally batshit WTF, Ocrilim / Orthrelm worthy avant-shred, but that shred here is more about texture, as the guitar parts and riffs are so odd, so damaged and atonal, sometimes they conjure utter beauty, lush lovely sonic swells, other times, they're so warped they almost make your eyes water. Opener "Semen Dried Into The Silence Of Rock And Mineral", lays it all out, sounding a bit like a slow motion Mesuhuggah, or a super spare, 20th century Deathspell, the sound chugging and churning, creeping and slithering, the vibe more doomy really than black, the arrangement confoundingly mathy, intricate and constantly shifting, and the guitars, holy shit, even when the heaviness is peeled back, leaving just some haunting clean guitar shimmer, those parts somehow sound even MORE strange and alien.
There is definitely plenty of black buzz, the dizzying Voivod meets Deathspell fury of "Endless Moths Swarming", is so dense and droned out, it almost seems to smear into something beyond black metal, a sort of avant drone-buzz blackness. There's also weird poppiness, like the clean chiming guitar melodies woven into "The Inexpressible Loneliness Of Thinking", that at times almost sounds like some sort of blackened cold wave / gloom pop, but is laced with some impossibly catchy melodies, that seem to slip out of the microtonal tuning, just for a second, before collapsing back into a swirling black hole of avant sonics.
Holy shit this stuff is amazing and bafflingly brilliant. We're kind of shocked that this guy is still self-releasing it. It's really about time a label like Relapse, or Season Of Mist, or Profound Lore, finally step up and expose Jute Gyte's twisted blackness to the masses.
Packaged in a DVD style case with a full color cover, and a printed insert/lyric sheet.
Seems like local label Black Horizons must have put this split together just for us. Two of our noisy outsider black metal faves together on one tape, up first, microtonal black metal one man band Jute Gyte, whose sound is a strange sonic brew, the microtonality, sounding just out of tune at first blush, but lending the sound a super twisted, off kilter, psychedelic vibe, the first track here is a dizzying, clean guitar sprawl, all woozy overtones and eye watering melodies, but then when the metal kicks in, it's crushing, and tripped out and impossibly heavy, almost industrial sounding, the churning black buzz riffage, peppered with weird atonal psychedelic squiggles, and fracture melodic shards, and the vocals, a sick, hellish gargle, mathy and progged out, with some super dense tranced out breakdowns, where it sounds like the riffs are melting or slowing down, before erupting into another blast of twisted buzz, that somehow gets impossibly more and more chaotic and sonically off kilter as it goes. The second JG track begins as a loping, lumbering dirge, with weirdly placed pauses, the sound lurching, weirdly detuned and fucked up sounding, warped and woozy, and after a long stretch of cool, softnoise ambience, explodes into a metallic noise rock blowout, all grinding and pounding and howling, before fracturing and devolving into that original atonal avant detuned creep. So weird, but SO cool.
The other side is a single, 27+ minute epic from USBM noiseniks Venowl, who drape pizzicato plucks and scraped strings, over a bed of dense, downtuned rumble, and sporadic caveman drumming, some inhuman shrieking vokills too give this a sort of Khanate vibe, but even more sick and sinister, abstract and lo-fi. It's like black doom musique concrete. The rumbles and whirs to coalesce into a sort-of-riff at times, a churning, crumbling, brittle beast of a riff, which seems to be haphazardly looped, giving everything a super off kilter feel, structureless almost, the sound not metal so much as a sort of avant experimental minimal 20th century doom, riffs become grinding scrapes, drums come in blurts and blats, and those vocals, like insane backwards demonic pig squeal shrieks, that raise the hair on the back of your neck, as does the music really, abject avant blackened horror doom of the highest order, recommended for fans of things grim, and twisted, hateful, harsh and harrowing.
Like all Black Horizons release, the packaging is over the top, the J-card this time, all silver and gold metallic ink on a fold out black matte cardstock, gorgeous design too, the tapes themselves as well, and as always, EXTREMELY LIMITED.
Dark, distorted solo guitar and voice from Tokyo psychedelic-scene veteran Kaneko Jutok (of Kousokuya), with bass and drums help on two tracks. It's blackness, sheer blackness. One for fans of Keiji Haino, no doubt (and his vocals are much easier to take than
The Miasmah label has been on fire lately! Without a doubt they have become one of the most consistently dependable labels releasing layered, dark, haunting, droned out mysterious sounds. This time around the label has gone back to the '90s to unearth some amazing sounds that somehow never managed to get a proper widespread release. It makes sense that this Norwegian band's moniker means 'abyss'. The music makes the listener feel like they are floating around the charred remains of a civilization that has been doomed, yet there is still something so paralyzing and beautiful about the void and desolation.
It's so impressive that this was recorded between 1996-1998, a decade before the outburst of so many drone based recordings that we have constantly freaked out over. With a sound that is so haunted, nuanced, layered, and so perfectly executed, taking in the more ambient and creepy side of black metal and doom drone luminaries like Burzum, SUNNO))) and Paysage D'Hiver, the soundscape imagination of Philip Jeck, and the minimalist intensity of Tony Conrad and Deathprod.
Like the soundtrack to a horror movie that isn't as much about shock and awe as it is about casting a very real spell that shimmers with isolation and a beautiful kind of despair. As with most things on Miasmah, so very recommended.
The reigning king of the Cash Money family returns. Some of you may remeber Juvenile from the puerile, but ridiculously catchy 'Back That Azz Up' from a year or two back. On first listen, 'Project English' is a little less obviously Cash Money unlike most
