Well, troo Melvins freaks are prolly gonna want this, and maybe some non-Melvins fans will get curious about it too. Imagine the Melvins minus most of the heaviness, stripped down to just voice and acoustic guitar strum. Basically, this solo album from Melvins frontman Buzz Osbourne really just sounds like it could be his acoustic demos for the next Melvins record, like before he brought the songs to the band, which is kinda cool, though we'd rather hear these songs with amplified electric guitar and the full band (which would include at least one, if not two drummers). But, still, we can dig this. The riffs, hooks, Buzz's charisma, it's all there, like a skeletal Melvins album really, though a couple tracks he's polished up and really focussed on the poppiness, and then this sorta sounds like Alice In Chains' "unplugged" Sap ep! Which we all liked, right? Remember?
Buzz does attack his acoustic with commendable ferocity, and his sometimes effects-laden voice is still in the 'heavy' style of his main band. Any coffee house where he performed like this would get complaints for sure.
So, definitely interesting to hear Buzz in this context, for the novelty of it at the very least, but as Melvins fans, we wouldn't want him leaving the Melvins to do this full time or anything.
No, not the '80s hair metal band led by drummer Carmine Appice!! This King Cobra is a brand new band formed by drummer Rachel Carns of The Need (also ex-Kicking Giant), bassist Tara Jane O'Neil (Rodan, Retsin, The Sonora Pine, and solo y'know), and a third party named Kwo on guitar. There is, however, a distinct metal element to be found here as you'd expect from The Need connection. I guarantee you that people will be headbanging and making the devil sign at their shows! This trio's sound is fat and heavy yet sinewy, additionally incorporating bombastic electric organ, some wild horns, and even wilder vocals. You'll hear how they distort metal, new wave, prog, and punk into their own supercharged sonic brew as they grind, gallop and gear-shift their way through six tracks in eighteen minutes. Short this may be but The King Cobra pack a lot of music into that span of time! We're definitely looking forward to a future full-length!
Live 1969 Crimson, the original line-up. You get a couple of versions of "20th Century Schizoid Man" but also tons of great improvisation. Packaged in a keen cardboard box, with a thick full-color booklet of reminisces.
We didn't expect that this new Crimson disc, some sort of pre-album ep of new songs, mixes, and acoustic versions, would be all that great. But you can always hope. Well, so much for hope. This includes "Larks Tongues In Aspic Part VI" but a better title would be "Larks Tongues In Aspic Part Suck". The King Crimson line-up listed here consists of Fripp, Belew, somebody, and somebody else. No Bruford or Levin (we mention, for those that care). But it seems that this must also include uncredited contributions from Stone Temple Pilots, Blues Traveler, and some vocoder vocals from a bunch of Battlestar Galactica Cylons. Yuch. Must have been touring with Tool that got Fripp & Co. thinking they needed more of a "modern rock" sound. It's not all bad, but it's a mess. There are a few moments of Frippertronics on here, but in this context they sound weak and New Agey... How 'bout they start working on "Happy With Never Making An Album Again 'Cause We've Totally Lost The Plot"? Just a suggestion. Sorry to be so harsh, but even the biggest Crim/Fripp fans we know were disappointed.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Debut from Robert Fripp & Company. Mini-LP sleeve version (with that great, disturbing cover painting).
"The King Crimson Collectors Club" (god, what's gotten into them?) presents: "Ladies of the Road", a double cd of live Crimson from 1971-72. While oddly enough it doesn't actually have their song "Ladies of the Road" on it, it's a powerful document of Crimson's unique insane math-rock jazz-prog from an underrated, underdocumented era and lineup of Crimson (circa their album "Islands" and the recently reissued live disc "Earthbound") that was definitely being influenced by American R&B and jazz, moreso than the classical elements prominent in the original Crim of 69-70.
Did we get the word jazz in there? This is VERY jazz, with lots of Mel Collins' saxophone all over the place, along with of course Robert Fripp's unmistakable guitar genius. The songs and improvs presented here are in part and together gorgeous, heavy, pretty, crazed, gentle, funky (!), psychedelic, smooth, noisy, intense, and (of course) schizophrenic. Speaking of which, the second disc in this set, entitled "Schizoid Men", is a mammoth edited-together collection of NOTHING BUT THE GUITAR AND SAX SOLOS from a whole bunch of live performances of "21st Century Schizoid Man"! Yes, fifty-some energetic minutes worth. As Fripp says in the liner notes: "King Crimson has often been accused of a capital offence in the annals of Prog Crime: the endless guitar solo. Who cares that prosecutors had not listened to the band? Schizoid Men is one approach to offering a plea of guilty, on the basis of manipulated evidence long after the events. Extended soloing by Mel Collins is not, in my book, any kind of crime at all. Rather, an instruction in performance by a young master." Not to mention, humble man he is, his own extended soloing... Pretty cool, actually, really way out there. We were playing it in the store, and one of our more avant-garde and drunken customers, who claims not to like Crimson, even felt compelled to buy it.
So, after last list's panning of the new 2002 Crimson effort, here's a nice (sad too, I suppose) reminder of how great (and different) they once were. Maybe Fripp ought to take a close listen... By the way, this has really good live sound, not like a shitty bootleg!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Mini-LP sleeve version.
Fripp & crew live in concert, 1973. Fine sound (a portion of this was overdubbed for use on Starless And Bible Black), great music, plenty of beyond-prog improvisation.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Mini-LP sleeve packaged version of this essential Crim album. A must-have, certainly, for fans of Don Cab!!
His Satanic Majesty returns with another of his trademark concept albums, this one telling a story based around an alternate version of the life of Jesus, one in which he does not die upon the cross... Good stuff, with more high King Diamond screams than ever before, and plenty of classic Andy La Rocque guitarwork.
It's certainly cheesy how Metal Blade put the current King Diamond logo on the front of this archival recording, and the title is kinda lame too, but on the other hand it turns out to be cool that they released this in the first place, as these are some
It's too bad sometimes that we don't get to really sit down with some records until right before it's time to review them for the list, cuz often, records that we were only able to hear once or twice in the shop, or briefly on the computer, reveal themselves as something super special, and in the case of this latest full length from the oddly and somewhat inappropriately monikered King Dude, a potential Record Of The Week! All the promise of past releases seems to be full realized here, in what is no longer really neo-folk, or post industrial, but is instead, some sort of alternate reality classic country music. Imagine some dark shadow version Johnny Cash, and that's King Dude, aka T.J Cowgill, a modern man in black, whose sound is equal parts classic country songsmithery, warped echo drenched rockabilly, and brooding sinister balladry. All reverbed twang, murky percussion, and Cowgill's impossibly deep croon. It's like some fantastically demonic Johnny Cash / Woven Hand / Der Blutharsch hybrid, the sound sinister, and haunting, emotionally heavy, dark and shadow, death ballads from beyond.
The opener "Holy Land" is a roiling murky twang flecked dirge, a churning rhythmic backdrop, wreathed in washed out chords, the vocals a woozy croon, everything so doused in delay and echo, that the sounds blur into one single hazy sprawl of black country shimmer. But King Dude ain't no one trick pony, "Barbara Ann" ditches pretty much all the effects, leaving just acoustic guitar and vocals, Cowgills deep voice, made even more so (almost cartoonishly), but the effect is simply harrowing and haunting, it's on tracks like these, that the classic country comparisons are so apt, albeit with a slight twist making the sound just that little bit darker.
"Im Cold" returns to the cavernous sonic underworld of the opener, with jagged twangy strumming, swaggery snarled vox, lots of percussion, again everything hazy and indistinct, the verses super dynamic, but the chorus is a druggy, drowsy sonic blur, the sound reminding us of Dirty Beaches, but a much more sinister, demonic version of them. It's a modern post industrial trip to the fabled crossroads, where the power of the blues was given to Cowgill, but stained black, with the blood all who came before. The songs here are so dark, and ominously powerful, whether it's the bluesy country dirge of "Jesus In The Courtyard" rife with muted industrial percussion, those deep growled vox, and a crooned chorus, or the soft focus twang-gaze dream drift of "My Mother Was The Moon", with fantastic female vox, over simple muted strum, everything gauzy and washed out and otherworldly, the woozy ooooooh vocal refrain utterly captivating and spellbinding, maybe the best track here, the post industrial black country analog to the Afghan Whigs' "My Curse".
The rest of the record unfurls darkly and dreamily, the weird processed vocals on "Lorraine" leading into the classic fifties style country pop of "You Can Break My Heart", all dark torch song balladry, but sprinkled with soft swirls of celestial synth, the sounds weaving from speaker to speaker, wrapped in some extra grit and noise, and laced with ghostly female backup vocals, finally finishing with "Lord I'm Coming Home", which like the title suggests, the intro a dark, shadowy spiritual, all echo drenched chorale voices, and muted smears of soft focus feedback, before the song proper kicks in, that deep dramatic croon, over urgently strummed steel string guitar, all beneath a haze of chiming ethereal melodies, the vocals blurring into the background, taking on the form of some alternate reality spiritual, drifting dreamily on a bed of warm whirring organ, before finally fading out for good.
So fantastic, and another one of those records that makes it hard to review anything else, since this is all we want to listen to. Consider this a could have / should have / would have been Record Of The Week, and thus consider it highly and extremely recommended!
As we mentioned in our review of the last King Dude record, you really couldn't come up with a less appropriate name for a group like this, a group whose sound is some sort of brooding, moody, post industrial neofolk, all haunting and apocalyptic, deep crooned vox and lush layered strum, but like all weird band names, they eventually become so familiar and so inexorably linked to the sounds, it's hard to separate the two. This latest King Dude record finds T.J. Cowgill, the one man behind this one man band, adding some classic country to his sound, a sound which already touched on classic seventies psychedelic folk, as well as the martial industrial of groups like Death In June, Blood Axis, Sol Invictus and the rest, but this hint of classic country definitely transforms the sound into something else entirely.
Opener "Don't Want Me Still" sounds like a classic country ballad, mixed with a sixties girl group production, and some Mazzy Star like shoegaze, everything slathered in effects, thick whorls of delay and echo, all hazy and druggy and so divinely dreamy, weird too, when the vox pitch down and become a strange sort of gurgling rumble. Elsewhere KD touches on the swampy apocalyptic folk of groups Like Woven Hand and Sixteen Horsepower, but with creepy deep vocals that sound more like Pete Steele, and gives the sound a distinctly gloomy gothic vibe.
A couple of the tracks here are spare and skeletal and sound distinctly slowcore, reminding us a bit of Low, with woozy guitars, and sweetly angelic female back up vox, while others seem to touch on the sort of fractured lo-fi rockabilly of Dirty Beaches, that crumbling low fidelity crooned creep, with still others sounding like classic torch songs reimagined as dark strummed dronefolk. The sound drifting drowsily from urgent and strident, to hushed and ominously menacing, to dreamy and droney and darkly warped and woozy. So great.
Some of the SWEETEST packaging we've seen, stark black and white jackets, diecut with the shapes of sigils cut out, revealing the strange full color imagery beneath. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
Don't let the inappropriate band name fool you. We had visions of dorky noise rock, or maybe fuzzy garage pop goofs, when in fact, King Dude is something much more haunting and enthralling, initially lumped in with the whole witch house scene, due in part to releases on witch house labels like Disaro and Clan Destine, the sound of King Dude, aka TJ Cowgill, who also does time in Book Of Black Earth, is more a dark brooding, neo-folk, think Death In June, Blood Axis, Cult Of Youth, Sol Invictus, urgently strummed guitars, deep dramatic sung/spoken vocals, the vibe haunting and otherworldly, minor key and melancholy, occasionally strident and majestic, but more often moody and mournful, the lyrics full of blood and sky, earth and fire, death and the beyond, a ritualistic doom folk, channeling the seventies British acid folk of groups like Comus and Incredible String Band through the more modern industrial folk sound of the above mentioned groups. Female vocals add dreamy harmonies here and there, but for the most part, this is dark stripped down twang flecked doom/neo folk that should also appeal to fans of Woven Hand, Sixteen Horsepower, Hexvessel, Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, Der Blutharsch and the like.
This record collects the out of print My Beloved Ghost ep, the out of print Black Triangle 7", and tacks on one unreleased bonus track.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
King Dude is a tough one to figure out. First there's the name which is evocative of pretty much everything KD is not, and the sound, a constant shifting mix of post industrial neo-folk, dark gothic torch songs, old time balladry, sinister apocalyptic country, and stripped down sixties girl group songsmithery, and on this latest single, a teaser for an upcoming full length, the sound shifts once again, this time, it's all acoustic guitar and vocals, wreathed in a bit of glimmery FX, the voice a deep ravaged croon, that slips occasionally into something more snarly, everything echo drenched, the 7" label bears the legend 'dungeon doo wop' which is not a bad description at all. The A side finishes off with a gorgeous lush harmony vocal-ed coda that leads directly into the even more stripped down non-album B side, a slithery, skeletal blues, nothing but voice and guitar, the voice this time an impossibly deep almost gurgly rumble, which gives the whole sound a darkly demonic vibe.
Comes lavishly packaged in a super thick jacket, and with a big fold out black and white poster. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
Fans of DJ Shadow, Boom Bip, that recent Unagi disc, QBert, Madlib, Ninjatune label, Dr Octagon and all Dan the Automator projects: you will looove this. It's my (Windy) new favorite record. Now, in another review this week I wasn't at all ashamed in admitting that I don't know the material of Peter Gabriel, but let's make it clear that I haven't heard any other MF Doom material, and now the excellence of this King Geedorah album is going to make me have to go backwards to hear Doom's Operation Doomsday and all the other stuff. Anyway, this is hip hop, some of the best I've heard in a long time. Each track has the de riguer single hook that loops throughout, which can sometimes threaten to bore, but only in lesser hands. With Doom the hooks -- often soundtrack-derived orchestral, swelling piano and string dramatics -- are delicious so sustaining them creates just the most luxurious comfortable groove. And he adds ample doses of applied audio grit -- sudden glitches, vinyl static, disjointed drums, vocal snippets interspersed with the skills of several guest MCs -- that just enhance the casually pulled together feel of the album. It's not messily done, mind you, just flows so well that it seems effortlessly catchy and kickass.
Um, ok, either you're reading this review BECAUSE the band is named King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, or you were just about to stop reading it 'cause the band is named King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. If the latter is the case, please stick with it, they're actually a better band than their name might suggest (we're making this a Record Of The Week after all!!). Or, if you do think the name is cool, then they ARE as good of a band as you're hoping for. But maybe not the sort of band you'd think they'd be. It's actually kind of hard to pin down exactly what kind of band Australia's King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are, anyway. Kind of cosmic garage psych pop?
The first disc here, Float Along - Fill Your Lungs (originally released on its own last year in their home country) starts off stonery enough with a fifteen minute spaced out extravaganza called "Head On/Pill", truly a trippy psychedelic swirl, a mind-altering mix of lilting melodies, gentle vocals, and driving motorik rhythms, with loads and loads of FX, all sorts of fuzz and distortion. It's spacey and sunshiney and somehow like a much more garage-poppy Hawkwind or Acid Mothers Temple track. Had us sold right there. But this 7-piece ensemble aren't just about the extended space rock (pop). Most of rest of the songs on Float Along are much shorter, taking elements of that first track, or not, and going to other delightful garage-pop places, variously strummy and twangy and foot-tapping and head-nodding, fuzzy and shambolic, before winding the disc up with another long, tripped out (but mellower) jam in the form of the Eastern-tinged, drone-laced title track.
THEN, there's the 2nd disc, also released separately this year Down Under, the aptly titled Oddments, which is even more varied than the 1st disc. This one starts with a Bollywood-sampling instrumental that makes us think of ol' Money Mark and the Beastie Boys, super groovy and kinda chaotic, fuzzy "hairy funk", with lots of organ and synth sizzle. The psych-groove continues on the next, vocal track, bringing in visions of early Funkadelic and Shuggie Otis. But then, as the disc spins, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard (love typing that name out!) get back into the ramshackle '60s teen garage pop inspired songwriting that also made up the bulk of the first disc, with a dash of distorted Ariel Pink-ish dementia. The wispy vocals of "Work This Time" make us think of Vincent Gallo's solo album When, "Hot Wax" is a weird, catchy jam incorporating some "Surfing Safari" quotes, "Homeless Man In Adidas" (!) is a hushed acoustic folk number... you see, all over the place. Oddments indeed.
Overall, soundwise, King Gizzard align themselves with the Ty Segall / Thee Oh Sees type of crowd, and so it's no surprise then that they're gonna be over here in the States in October touring with White Fence. Hope we get to see that. Seems like they'd be a blast live. But King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard's style of "garage rock" is waaaay more cosmic and psychedelic and randomly bizarre than a lot of their US contemporaries, that's for sure. We'll be indulging ourselves heavily in both these records for a while yet, trying to fully get our heads around 'em. Nice, nice, nice.
The band with the best/worst name that we've ever had a Record Of The Week by (next to, perhaps, that cd-r by King Kong Ding Dong) is back! When we made this cosmic garage psych rock band from Down Under's previous release (or should we say, releases, 'cause it was two albums in one package) our Record Of The Week just a few months ago, we compared 'em to Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall, said they fit in with that scene, and they do - this new album is on Castle Face, ta da! Right where they belong. But King Wizard And The Lizard Wizard (still love typing that name!) mostly defy easy categorization. Clearly they've listened to a lot of records (while smoking a lot of weed) from the '60s and '70s, blenderhybridizificating all sorts of classic psychedelic source material, so you get stuff here that's part Pink Floyd, part Captain Beefheart, part T-Rex (especially on "Empty"), part West Coast Pop Experimental Band, part Status Quo... There's blues harp and underwatery vocal FX; flashes of glam pop and krautrock rhythms; spacey boogie jams, with a dash of Eastern exoticism. Often all in the same song. One track, "Cellophane", comes across like Can meets Canned Heat! A little later on, the use of flute in "Hot Water" nods to early Kraftwerk. And always, trippy as they are, these tracks are hella catchy too, like we said, right in there with Ty Segall et.al., thinking King Tuff too when it gets more glammy. Meanwhile, the mellow groove and gentle vocals of "Slow Jam 1" remind us a bit of ol' Olivia Tremor Control. And finally we should mention the fantasy castle music of the awesomely titled "Satan Speeds Up" (well, it's a better title than "Slow Jam 1" anyway), the audio equivalent of the album's equally awesome cover art. Yeah! One more time, ladies and gentlemen: King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard!
You'd think it would be easy to write reviews of records you love, but it's not, not always anyway. This band, though, makes the task easier, 'cause maybe we can just say a few key words: JAPAN. DOOM. PSYCH. CRAZY. Uh... is that doing the trick? Tokyo trio King Goblin, who describe themselves as a "progressive space psychedelic death rock band", definitely have that "anything goes", totally WTF?! Japanese thing going for 'em, mixing up prog and punk and funk and metal and noise whatever else they want, you know what we mean if you have albums by bands like Boredoms, Melt Banana, Children Coup D'Etat, Space Streakings, Omoide Hatoba, Green Milk From The Planet Orange, and others of that ilk in your collection. Specifically, though, the Japanese bands that King Goblin most especially make us think of are CSSO, Solar Anus, and Sigh (circa Imaginary Sonicscape). Somehow melding gonzo grind and druggy doom, plodding heaviness and catchy grooves, the nine strange songs here bouncing from spaced out acid rock to lumbering funk, with rubbery bass, squiggly guitar, gruff guttural vocals, and, as it says here, "hand craps" (sorry if it's not PC to chuckle over that particular credit in the cd booklet!).
Imagine if retro-disco-doomsters Cathedral got even weirder than they already are now, turned Japanese, and went no wave... that might approximate the dizzying extreme entertainment offered up by King Goblin. Also, how can songs with titles like "Boiled Again (Born To Ride)" and "Motordead" not be entertaining?
This disc, their debut, actually dates from 2007, but we only discovered 'em recently, and got some copies directly from Japan as quick as we could. They're working on a new album, to be entitled Cryptozoology, but unfortunately the guitarist of King Goblin is currently suffering from some unspecified, serious illness, so that's delaying things. Hopefully he gets better soon!! However, a couple of the King Goblin guys are also in wicked sick grindcore band called AKBK, who have a brand new album out that smokes, so look out for us to list that, soon!
If you're cravin' retro garage rawk stylings that're a little campy, cheeky, kitschy, trashy... all of the above?! Well, the In The Red label has long been a headquarters for top notch wildly good rockin' sounds, and they just keep 'em comin' with this new album from King Khan And BBQ! The oddly named Canadian band might be the ticket! In our opinion, the second half of the album is where the band really kicks the party up a boozy notch. Includes a cover of Circle Jerks' "Operation". Super fun!
While it might not always seem like it, sometimes the thing we're craving for the most is some blazing, direct in your face on fire rock n' roll. The problem is that most groups who play that kind of stuff these days either come off as total burn outs or are way uninspired. So when we heard this for the first time we all smiled wide and started rocking out with wreckless abandon! It was exactly what we've been wanting to hear. King Khan has made some really good garage fueled rawk in the past with the BBQ Show, but this collection of songs with his soul soaked band The Shrines has caught our attention and interest BIG TIME. With a nine piece band including Rahn Streeter on percussion who has played for everyone from Curtis Mayfield to Stevie Wonder, the songs are filled with undeniable chops and King Khan's vocals have been giving us great flashbacks to primetime era Rocket From The Crypt and the Make-Up as well as folks like The Dirtbombs. These are songs that owe as much to the history of garage rock and Nuggets compilations as it does to the Stax sound and all sorts of scorching r&b. Feels so damn good to have some high octane tunes to blast throughout the summertime!
If we didn't know that this album was brand new we could say "they don't make 'em like this anymore!" We'd probably even put money down on a bet that this was a long-lost indie rock album from the late '80s / early '90s. Yup, the sounds on Buncha Beans comes straight out of the wee hours of that period's college radio dial which is when/where this band first surfaced. Although Ethan Buckler (very early Tweez era bassist for Slint) originally intended King Kong to be something of a dance band, we've gotta say, their music is quite possibly some of the most untypical, unconventional disjointed dance music around. Go on, you try to dance to it! Maybe hop around in stocking feet in the privacy of your living room. Buckler's peculiar, atonal, almost spoken vocals, a cross between Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson and Fred Schneider of the B-52s (whom Buckler apparently modeled his King Kong sound after), push the tunes even further off the dance floor. A quirkuliscious, occasionally facetious, out-in-left-field kind of listen.
Many moons ago Ethan Buckler was in a soon-to-be-genre-defining band called Slint, but very swiftly he came to the realization that his musical calling was something quite different... something more poppy and dance-y. He assembled his own band and dubbed them King Kong. Together they made totally trashy, tweaked, funky pop tunes that sound as though they were influenced equally by cop show theme songs, the B-52s, Jonathan Richman and a hen house! Fast forward about sixteen years, and well, here we are... Just in time to coincide with his former band's reunion (and the remake of the classic movie to boot!), Buckler and the kind folks at Drag City Records have rejuvenated his own King Kong with this cdep reissue of three songs originally self-released back in 1989, then reissued on 7" by Drag City in 1995.
Originally discovered by one of our pals at Root Strata, you can just imagine the emails:
"You guys gotta check out this band King Kong Ding Dong!"
"Um... really?"
"Seriously, they're so amazing, KING KONG DING DONG!"
"Ummm, okay..."
Originally we thought maybe it was all a ploy, and it was them messing with us, maybe they had recorded a bunch of stuff themselves and were trying to dupe us into heaping praises on what was essentially a joke, but we took their advice, sought out KKDD, and gave it a listen, and HOLY SHIT. All it took was about a minute of "Evil", and we were hooked. We made a sample, it's down below, we'll wait... listen, and read on...
After some woozy guitar and amp buzz and cord crackle, the band lock into a mesmerizing minimal groove, a loping melody, disembodied voices, swirls of effected buzz, simple tribal percussion, and then BAM, the main riff comes in, all languid and stoned sounding, super spaced out, just two notes, a weird sort of indie folk doom, crooned and hummed vocal harmonies underscore the warm warped riff and the stumbling drums wrapped around it. It's almost like some weird hybrid of Silvester Anfang, True Widow, Animal Collective and No Neck Blues Band or something. Raw and lo-fi, loose and shambling, but so darkly heavy and groovy and hypnotic. We listened to that track about 100 times, before we even moved on to the rest of the record, which was just chock full of sonic surprises. Nothing else on the record is quite like "Evil", the rest of the record flits all over the place from super abstract soundscapes to tuneful indie jangle, to vocal driven bliss out anti pop, to warm warped drone, but they are all somehow woven together into one organic, and constantly transforming whole.
Opener "Jample", winds a strange looped crunchy riff over a simple pounding beat, and some reverby "whooo"s, female vocals belt out an equally reverbed counterpoint, the whole thing building to a super tripped out effects heavy dream pop freakout.
Backwards guitars, lead out of that track into a gorgeous hazy acousticguitarscape, ethereal vocals definitely drifting into Animal Collective territory, but way more scrappy and lo-fi, shimmery sheets of indie jangle give way to blown out distorted drums and looped detuned melodies. Dreamy buzzy pop music gets twisted up into a strange Beach Boys dirge, all choral and chaotic, shot through with spidery high end melodies, which slips sweetly into a spare field of twinkle and twang, wrapped around distant drums and sweetly crooned falsetto vox. Then we're back to "Evil" again, which, heck, deserves yet another listen...
The final four offer up more off kilter outsider dream pop stumble, high crystalline vocals drifting over distorted drum splatter and looped guitar shimmer, soft swirls of effects drift beneath almost operatic sounding harmonies, a sort of twangy slowcore, but slowly crumbling into something much more atmospheric and abstract. After a brief fanfare, what sounds like a soft cacophony of horns, comes a strange harmonica loop, which erupts into some gorgeous, hazy, near perfect minimal space psych drone dream pop.
Shouldn't take long for the rest of the world to catch on. And wouldn't be surprised if these guys started getting hyped by Pitchfork or Matador or any other number of 'tastemakers', and heck, they deserve it, this stuff is mysterious and magical, and the fact that they're called King Kong Ding Dong, somehow only makes it that much better....
It's hard to believe that some of the coolest and soulful new music we've heard of late is coming from this lanky British mush-mouthed teenager, but it's true. We've been floored by nearly everything Archy Marshall aka King Krule has done since we first heard the self-titled ep a couple of years ago, and even before that he was releasing rap singles under the moniker of Zoo Kid. You might also remember him from his elevating guest appearances on the last Mount Kimbie record. So after a bunch of singles and an ep that we were unable to get, we're happy to be finally able to stock his full length debut. In some ways 6 Feet Beneath The Moon is a trip back to an eighties college sound that has seen a little revival of late. Sparse arrangements of Durutti Column-ish guitar and moody electronic atmospherics and rhythms create a Bill Evans / Chet Baker late-night loner jazz vibe while Marshall's distinct vocal delivery, a thick mopey brogue laced with a doleful drunken elegance, gives the songs their emotional weight... Marshall's voice comes across like a less stridently political and more introspective Billy Bragg, but his singing style is more informed by rap and jazz, blithely stepping around complex clusters of wordplay, imbuing his songs with a late-night urban melancholy like a hoodlum poet. Recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Chris Heazlewood's noisy trio kicks ass as it summons the ghost of Dick Dale. Or something. From New Zealand so. You. Know. It's. Good.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We were a little hesitant to check this out at first, even though we've loved all the tracks we've heard on various comps, because for some reason it was described as dark dubstep with "spoken word vocals". Spoken word? Ugh. Thankfully, one person's spoken word is another's woozy warbly mumbly crooning, 'spoken word' not in the crappy poetry slam sense, but as in brooding smoldering, slow motion toasting, totally reminiscent of classic Tricky, especially Nearly God, the music too, all hazy, and druggy and somnambulant, the beats, cough syrupy, gorgeous late night, rain soaked, glacial tarpit slow jam ballads. Totally dubbed out and minimal, the production hazy and gauzy and softly psychedelic. There's a new Massive Attack out this week too, and it's not bad, but listening to this, all we can think is this is how we wish Massive Attack sounded now.
Every track is a bleary eyed, druggy drift through warped, slow melting downtempo dubscapes, the rhythms, clipped and skittery, horns moaning in the background, wheezing keyboards, clouds of record crackle, the vocals, both male and female, wreathed in reverb and echo, draped over the slowly undulating grooves, sultry and sexy, so darkly languorous, murky and mysterious, the beats thick and dense and heavy, all wrapped in a laid back and lysergic, grimly psychedelic atmosphere, which makes sense considering the man behind the King Midas Sound is none other than Kevin Martin, aka The Bug!
WAY RECOMMENDED!
Now on swank ass double vinyl!
We were a little hesitant to check this out at first, even though we've loved all the tracks we've heard on various comps, because for some reason it was described as dark dubstep with "spoken word vocals". Spoken word? Ugh. Thankfully, one person's spoken word is another's woozy warbly mumbly crooning, 'spoken word' not in the crappy poetry slam sense, but as in brooding smoldering, slow motion toasting, totally reminiscent of classic Tricky, especially Nearly God, the music too, all hazy, and druggy and somnambulant, the beats, cough syrupy, gorgeous late night, rain soaked, glacial tarpit slow jam ballads. Totally dubbed out and minimal, the production hazy and gauzy and softly psychedelic. There's a new Massive Attack out this week too, and it's not bad, but listening to this, all we can think is this is how we wish Massive Attack sounded now.
Every track is a bleary eyed, druggy drift through warped, slow melting downtempo dubscapes, the rhythms, clipped and skittery, horns moaning in the background, wheezing keyboards, clouds of record crackle, the vocals, both male and female, wreathed in reverb and echo, draped over the slowly undulating grooves, sultry and sexy, so darkly languorous, murky and mysterious, the beats thick and dense and heavy, all wrapped in a laid back and lysergic, grimly psychedelic atmosphere, which makes sense considering the man behind the King Midas Sound is none other than Kevin Martin, aka The Bug!
WAY RECOMMENDED!
There was a time when Shimmy Disc could do no wrong. Hard to believe but true. Bongwater, Velvet Monkeys, Fred Lane! Equally hard to believe, is that there was a record of spoken word set to music, that was amazing, funny and fucked and not at all as annoying as the sobriquet spoken word might lead you to believe. John S. Hall was a struggling poet in New York who hooked up with the enigmatic Dogbowl (check out Tit! An Opera, one of Andee's all time favorite records) and who together started King Missile (Dog Fly Religion) -- the dog fly religion part was dropped when Dogbowl left. This disc combines the first King Missle Record and the third (the second is the also amazing They), both of which are so goddamn funny and surprisingly clever and catchy. Most of you probably remember "Jesus Was Way Cool" which was a huge hit for a while. And that pretty much is the King Missle formula. Hall reciting absurd stories over all sorts of musical backdrops. Fluting On The Hump offers up two of the best King Missile songs, "Take Stuff From Work" and "Sensitive Artist". Both funny and scathing in their own way. By record number three, Dogbowl had left and was replaced with the King Missile lineup that would basically continue until today. But nothing was lost, in fact the music became less random and strange and more focused letting Hall get even weirder. The creepy sex tale of "Gary And Melissa", the stupidly cute "Cheesecake Truck", the brilliant "Jesus Was Way Cool" and on and on and on. We hadn't listened to this record in a while, but it's just as good as we remember it. Fun and funny, weird and wonderful.
Skewed leftfield hip hoptronica from Germany, a cool hybrid of classic hip hop and tech step drum and bass. Think Ed Rush or anyone on No U-Turn stepping in for Timbaland, and turning bouncing, loping booming hip hop big beats, into skittering two step workouts with rumbling, woofer-blowing basslines. Add a couple pretty wicked MC's and you're in business. Cool stuff.
I really wanted to like this one a lot more. One thing Pressure Sounds can do really well is put together handsome album art and King Tubby's Firehouse Revolution is no exception. The vinyl especially cuts a dashing figure with its matte finish. Firehouse
Low priced double disc anthology of King Tubby, apparently a part of a series of anthologies of Jamaican artists being released by Recall. Each collection comes with a fair amount of biographical notes on the artist and generally make good starting points if
So this collection of King Tubby dubs called "Lost Treasures" was released some time ago. It's one of the few on this label that we haven't listed yet. It's not because it's a bad disc that it hasn't been listed, but because apparently the dubs on the album are suspect, ie: bogus dubs. After King Tubby was murdered in 1989, friends coming by the studio to pay their respects made off with armloads of master tapes (including a good deal of Lee Perry produced material that was in King Tubby's possession.) Apparently, according to those in the know, those tracks on that Tubby mix were not mixed on his board, and do not include the trademark effects gear that Tubby used. It's actually a nice record, with some great rhythm tracks and excellent playing all over the place, plus the fidelity is superb -- coming from the master tapes -- they just weren't mixed by King Tubby, but were more likely done posthumously. So I'm trying to sort out this mess with the Tubby dubs, because I still want to list it, and then I find out that the Lee Perry disc on Jamaican Recordings -- "Skanking With The Upsetter" -- is also chock full of bogus dubs. Boy do I feel like a sucker.
So now I'm wondering if any of the albums that Jamaican Recordings have released are legit. One of the biggest suspects in the 'theft' of Tubby's tapes is none other than Striker, a.k.a. Bunny, a.k.a. E. Lee (whose name is all over Jamaican Recordings' releases as producer and copywrite holder.) Bunny was one of King Tubby's biggest clients and through the seventies Tubby was essentially Bunny's engineer, so a lot of the sessions that make up the source material for much of Jamaican Recordings' catalog are in fact produced by him. In that case it is arguable that these tapes are legally his anyhow (except maybe the Perry tapes which make up 'Skanking With the Upsetter'). So technically these aren't even bootlegs, like the nefarious Abraham's LPs. But why bother faking it by calling them rare dub plates and yadda, yadda, yadda? If Mr Bunny Lee is the legit owner of the original master tapes, why not just release them as contemporary dub mixes of classic Aggrovators material? I think people would have more respect for that in the long run, as it is suspicion and allegations of illegitimacy that will eventually catch up with this label and hurt sales. Or maybe not; I've been surprised before. Legit-Tubby or ersatz-Tubby; this album is still fucking great. The slap-back delay on percussion never fails to float my boat and the source material is all first rate, taken primarily from mid-seventies Aggrovators productions by Bunny Lee and layed down at the best studios (Dynamic, Randy's & Channel 1.) Like all releases on Jamaican Recordings, the CD versions all have extra tracks not included on the vinyl and in the case of 'Lost Treasures' there are a few really nice ones that are only available on the aluminum disc.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Collection of all previously unreleased dubs recorded betweem 1975 and 1978. Features the usual cast of musical suspects: Sly & Robbie, Winston Wright, Scully, Tommy McCook, et al and the tracks were cut at Joe Gibb's, Randy's and King Tubby's studios. This
Frontman King Tuff, along with bandmates Magic Jake and Old Gary, are back to cast a Black Moon Spell with this new full length Sub Pop release full of their usual uber-catchy, fuzzed-out power pop rock n' roll. Yep, it's always a good day when a new King Tuff hits our ears!! Once again, it's indeed enchanting, an energetic mix of distorted garage stomp, punk velocities, and bubblegum glamminess, complete with handclaps - shimmering shades of The Sweet and T-Rex, especially the latter when it comes to Tuff's very Marc Bolan-esque vocals, his fey, 'sexy' whine certainly affected but perfect in context. Everything's just a bit over the top, the melodies always soooo earwormy, the guitar soloing often super gnarly, the lyrics sometimes kinda goofy - among others, gotta love the lyrics to the lascivious "Headbanger", with lines like: "Me and you we got a true connection / I knew it when I saw your record collection / you had Sabbath and Priest and Number Of The Beast / It was heavy metal perfection / Then you went South of Heaven and my love went to eleven"! And by the way, King Tuff's the same guy who fronts doomsters Witch, so he does have plenty of metal cred, though his eponymous band's closest metal comparsion would probably be Kix - if they made a record with Ty Segall, that is (who, also by the way, guests on one song here on drums). Anyhoo, King Tuff offer no apologies for their exuberant rockin' and rollin', and why the heck should they? These are the sort of good times its well worth paying to own and experience again and again. Bow to the King!
