Wow, such a beauty! Ms Larissa Loyva is the comely female voice of Vancouver's eclectic chamber pop band P:Ano as well as one of the dulcet songbirds in The Choir Practice. As Kellarissa, she steps out on her own, crafting an incredibly full ensemble sound all by her lonesome with the use of her voice, a Yamaha synthesizer, a loop generating processor and effects pedals. Flamingo is a sumptuous tapestry of sweet voices, whimsical piano melodies, wheezing drones, and mysterious ambient sounds. Her angelic vocals shine sparklingly bright and crystal clear like stars in the deepest indigo night sky. While many songs are surprisingly somber on tone - some even verging on ghostly vision conjuring gothic chamber pieces ("Night Wind", "Carrying On", "When Did I Become") - one of album's most delightfully delicious moments is the title track. "Flamingo" is an awesome buoyant pop song deeply inspired by '60s girl groups. Other poppier songs such as "Tiny Things" cuddle up to the sound of Stephin Merritt's Magnetic Fields. An intimate and absolutely captivating listen! If you swooned for the recent Mira Cook cassette and are seeking something in a similar vein but a bit more elaborate and composed, this may be right up your lovely alley! Recommended!
While Kellarissa's 2008 solo debut Flamingo tempered solemn chamber pop elements with a '60s girl group style sweetness, the Vancouver artist's latest album, the vinyl only Moon Of Neptune allows the shadows to fully envelop each song. Drawing inspiration from themes of outer space, ancient Egypt, and her own Scandinavian roots, it is a far more heady work than any of her other projects (P:ano, Gigi, and The Choir Practice). The opening track immediately brings to mind the darkwave synth pop of the '80s. "Passages" commences with cycling icy staccato synth melodies from her trusty Yamaha and basic programmed drums, and those sounds taken on their own can make it easy to instantly dismiss this as retro fluff, but you are urged to listen further because where the song (and the album... and her music in general) truly soars is when she sings. Some have called her voice ethereal, and while it certainly has its heavenly tones, it is far from delicate. Its range is more substantial and has more gut than that adjective allows. It's a gorgeous outpouring from her heart and soul that once doubled and tripled via her looping effects pedal is truly a force unto itself. In this way, she stands apart from many of her heavily processed reverb'n'loop laden indie contemporaries, she doesn't hide behind or let her voice be buried in the clouds of effects. Darkly bewitching, hypnotic and haunting. If you've dug the like-minded aQ fave Mira Cook and her Signs cd-r, or simply have a penchant for a truly enchanting female voice, this is for you!
Limited pressing of 500. So don't dawdle!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
As always, these Ultra Eczema lps are amazingly packaged, in gorgeously designed sleeves, pressed on nice thick vinyl, and limited to 400 copies, most of which are sold before we even realize they're out. So we only got a tiny handful of these (5-10 copies) so don't get your hopes up.
Greg Kelley, meet Alex Nielson. UK, meet USA. And the proceed to hurl shards of chaotic free noise at each other for about 40 minutes. Lots of feedback, tortured guitars, swirls of effects, random free jazz rhythmic clatter, swooping space age electronic bleep bloop and flutter, an abstract soundscape constructed from just the fade out parts of Hawkwind songs, Acid Mothers Temple with all the actual rock taken out, Sunroof! out takes and the very free-est of jazzes. Cool.
Number seven in Table Of The Elements Lanthanides series comes way out of left field. Mike Kelley has been rocking the art world for a while now with his irreverent pop art, often featuring stuffed animals and toys, but those of you less art inclined might know him from his cover/art for Sonic Youth's Dirty album (there's even a picture of a young, greasy haired, pimple faced Kelley on the inside sleeve). But some of you may remember that Kelley was a member of seventies audio terrorists Destroy All Monsters. While that band trafficked mostly in noise rock and audience confrontation, Kelley's contribution to this series is much more 'academic'. And to be honest, its appeal depends heavily on how you feel about spoken word. A thick miasma of hiss and static swirl ominously in the background, while Kelley emotionlessy spews a litany of 'Oh God...' and 'Wow....Wow....' and 'Rolling cigar shapes....' Kinda silly, would have been a whole lot better instrumental as the background is dense and intense. But cool nonetheless. And obviously you gotta buy em all! ----* ----* Two releases from grim black metal genius Xasthur : ----*
Holy shit. This is so nuts it just might be the greatest thing you'll ever see. R. Kelly has singlehandedly gotten us to sing instead of speak even the most mundane things. We love him.
This is indeed the best of both worlds. Touted as the first ever superstar, hip hop/R+B collaboration, ok maybe, but whatever. The pont is, this shit is goooood and I am digging this record like crazy. Imagine any of the last two or three Jay-Z records (and we
"Spirit Bound Flesh" is the debut solo album from Scott Kelly, guitarist / co-vocalist for the Bay Area tribal-metal outfit Neurosis, and follows the path set forth by fellow Neurosis member Steve Von Till with an album of desolate acoustic numbers. Kelly wishes himself to be to US country (in particular Hank Williams) what David Tibet is to UK folk (in particular Shirley
Soundtrack inspired by early comic strip. Wacky!
Although this came out just last year, we've been lacking this in our racks for some time now 'cause the label had sold through 'em all and needed to do a re-press. Well, now, thankfully for the legions of lovers of all this fabulous Finnish free-folk stuff, Fonal has put this gem back into circulation! So queue up if you missed it before. Here's the review we wrote on list #191 when it first came out:
The 18 tracks found here are a riotous festival of Finnish folk-psych. A pagan parade in a forest glade. Abstract, druggy, dark, delightful... We're always entranced by Kemialliset Ystavat's damaged improv folk mystery, and Alkuharka is yet another reason for us to keep saving our pennies in order to afford a trip to Finland (lucky Andee's been there once already). Anyone into anything along the lines of Tower Recordings, Thuja, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Six Organs Of Admittance, the whole Broken Face 'zine scene (to whom Kemialliset mainman Jan Anderzen used to contribute much art) will want/need this. Horns flutes guitars drones bells tapes voices feedback. Weezing buzzing bliss. With contributions from honorary Finns Dylan Nyoukis (Prick Decay) and Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel), Jan and company are the true underground krautrock heirs, making music so long haired that it's furrier than any Animal Collective. Music from the soundtrack to The Wickermoomin, perhaps?
Hallelujah! More droning, buzzing, flickering folk-psych from Finland's mysterious Kemialliset Ystavat collective. Sure, we know who's in the band -- Broken Face 'zine artist/contributor Jan Anderzen, Fonal label head Sami Sanpakkila (Es, Kiila), and a host of other Finns -- but they still SOUND mysterious. The damaged four-track folk sound of NYC's Tower Recordings filtered through the forest ambience of AQ-fave improv-psych outfit Thuja might, MIGHT be an approximation of Kemialliset's sonic space. They inhabit that territory previously explored by the likes of Amon Duul, Ghost, Kalacakra, Toho Sara, Parson Sound, International Harvester, Amps For Christ, Six Organs Of Admittance, Algarnas Tradgard, etc. If any of these names bring a warm sensation to your frontal lobes, then you're likely already a Kemialliset fan even if you haven't yet heard 'em. Each track (there's 17 of 'em, spread over 47 minutes) is a psychedelic miniature constructed of drifting, chanting vocals, gentle melodies, and primitive rhythms, contrasting distorted electric guitar wash with pretty, chiming percussion, strings and woodwinds. Freaky and far-out yet mostly mellow and warm and cosy. Fucking lovely. Ah, Finland.
Lucky for us there's not a whole lot to do in Finland other than drink, smoke and make records. It means that we will never have to worry about running out of weird and wonderful Finnish foresty psych rock jams. And by now, we're quite comfortable in admitting that we can never get enough. EVER. Circle, Avarus, Uton, Islaja, Es, Kiila, Anaksimandros, Tivol and of course Kemialliset Ystavat. They've all tapped into something special and mysterious, some gorgeously primal world of drones and simple rhythms, minimal psychedelic freakouts, deliriously primitive drumming and outer space melodies. A sort of Krautrock meets seventies pagan folk meets minimal drone meets free rock meets everything else. No wonder it all sounds so good. It's little purloined scraps of everything we love, woven haphazardly together into gorgeous rambling and meandering sonic explorations. Banjos accompany wavering falsetto vocals, shuffling seasick rhythms underpin wild songbird like melodies and fluttery flutes, buzzing distorted guitars rumble beneath full on harmony pop vocals, warped and warbly organs and woodwinds nestle up against the clattery clang of kitchen sink percussion. It all sounds so perfectly imperfect together. Dreamy and melancholy, stumbly and goofy, dark and brooding, woozy and hypnotic, innocent and playful, exuberant and festive, creepy and bizarre, pretty and darn near perfect.
And if a repress of the beloved Kellari Juniversumi wasn't enough (no it's not, and might we suggest their Suurempi Pieni Palatsi album get reissued sometime too?) there's also this "new" cd from Finland's foresty freak folksters Kemialliset Ystavat. Actually, this has been released twice before in other formats: first as a cassette on Finland's Huutomerkki label (hmm, missed that) and then again as a lathe cut double vinyl 8" on New Zealand's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label (dang, didn't get one of those either!). So thankfully Fonal has now put it out on cd for those of us who somehow inexplicably failed to get either of those previous versions when they were "available". Yay! And what of the music?
Well, imagine sitting somewhere deep in the forest... not alone with nature though. No, you're hanging out with a bunch of elves and trolls, drinking or smoking pot or something delinquent like that. Actually this isn't even that foresty really... maybe you've invited your little friends back to the city and you're hanging out in your apartment listening to weird '80s industrial experimental music and electronic krautrock records. And maybe you've got a few of these records going on several turntables at once, at 16 rpm, the volume turned down low, and some of the trolls are joining in (faintly) on vocals, and one of them's got a flute, and another one's got a broken music box, and some bells, and a shortwave radio. But the music you're hearing/making is still amazingly nice and mellow and organic 'cause you're with a bunch of elves after all. The sun's going down and the light is fading and you feel all warm and toasty and kinda sleepy-drunk.
Ok, stop imagining. You'll have your own (better) mental images to go along with this music when you hear it. But we'll say that right from the get-go this is immediately some of the rawest, most primitively-electronic Kemialliset Ystavat stuff we've heard. There's what what sounds like layers of loops, tape machine fuckery, all kinds of pleasingly distorted textures folded into a mysterious and still somewhat (abstractly) melodic sound-world, with haunting eerie vocals and tribal clink-clank. And yet, among the 15 tracks here you'll find some of the simplest and prettiest of the Kemialliset canon too. Loose, lovely and loveable stuff.
The hard to pronounce Kemialliset Ystavat play a mysterious, fucked up brand of psychedelic improv folk music -- fractured, fairytale sounds from the woods of Finland. Well, more likely a bedroom studio in Finland. But Kemialliset Ystavat seem like they
It's primarily the work of one main band member, Jan Anderzen. He's helped by, among others, our friend Sami Sanpakkila (of Es, Kiila, Velvolino and Fonal Records). Maybe the closest comparison we could make would be to NYC's Tower Recordings. But Kemialliset Ystavat's damaged psych meanderings somehow capture an even more "authentic, exotic" mood of post-krautrock wonderment than that conjured by the New Yorkers, although we love them so.
After getting all those great sixties International Harvester, Trad Gras Och Stenar etc. reissues in, it's nice to know that their spirit of psychedelic exploration is still alive and well in Scandinavia, thirty years on!
You know how we're always listing cds from the mystical, mythical Finnish free-folk crew of bands like Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus, Uton and others that consist of material long before previously released on super limited edition formats like cd-r, lathe-cut vinyl, and cassette tape? Stuff that, upon inital release, only made it out to the handful of gnomes and trolls who hang out in the Finnish forests and snap up such treasures while they're still warm. If you're a fan but don't dwell in the deeps of the Finnish woods, it's a little frustrating ain't it? Well now here's your chance to get in on the ground floor with one of these releases. No promises that it will ever be available on any other format, either. From the same folks that brought us the fabulous Maan Matoset comp reviewed elsewhere this list... Live Kemialliset Ystavat! ON CASSETTE TAPE. Yup, just like in ye olden days. Packaged with nice, colorful j-card artwork. Recorded live in Hyvinkaa, 2005. Next best thing to being there... Taju is a muttering, howling, clanking, freaked out party of a record, just as mysterious and fun as any other Kemialliset document but very live and energetic indeed. Kazoos compete with rattling percussion, electronic drones, and barnyard vocalizations... It's a preschool Amon Duul on a sugar high. Get it while you can, we won't have these for long (already some gnomes have been by to pick up their copies).
The last week or two of our so-called "summer" here in San Francisco, has been pretty darn gray. Cold, overcast, gray, a bummer. But, getting the long-awaited new album from Finland's Kemialliset Ystavat (aka Jan Anderzen and friends) has made a big difference! You know how we love love love all things Finland, and Fonal. That magic hasn't abated. Lively, lovely, colorful; woozy and wonderful, this Kemialliset is just what the doctor ordered. Have you heard 'em before? Kemialliset, and their fellow Fonal artists, have been referred to by us (and others) as "Finnish Forest Folk". Fairly accurate... as long as you're ok with folk music made using computers. From a forest that's full of brightly colored trees and plants whose pharmacological uses are probably entirely recreational and specifically hallucinatory. Populated by strange creatures like gibbering gnomes and tittering trolls. And of course, they ARE from Finland. Of course of course.
Carefully constructed by Jan in his forest laboratory, a collage of contributions from folks like Roope Eronen (Avarus, Maniacs Dream, Pylon), Kevin Regan (Fricara Pacchu, Anaksimandros, Avarus), Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Pharaoh Overlord), C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core), Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club), Markus Maki (Anaksimandros, Avarus, Kiila), Pekko Kappi (Kiila), Hitoshi Kojo (Juppala Kaapio), Joshua Stevenson (Jackie-O Motherfucker) and others, this is, as you might expect, a delirious and dense tapestry of seamlessly flowing, ever-changing, psychedelic soundz. 14 tracks total to delight the ear with such teeter-tottering elements as lilting layered female vox, bleepy glitchy background electronix (track six sounds like they've wandered into an '80s video arcade to record), wheezing harmonium drones, rattling ritual percussion, cartoon SFX, snippets of synth melody seemingly snatched from a '70s Bo Hansson record, and much much more, from krauty rhythmics to lullaby babble, and hybrids thereof. It's part Incredible String Band, part Raymond Scott or Bruce Haack. Or imagine a completely dosed and demented Black Moth Super Rainbow making a cd-r for Jewelled Antler, maybe.
Truly a phantasmagorical tour-de-force, utterly what we needed to brighten these grey days and/or make 'em cosier. The compact disc version is packaged in a tri-fold digi with a thick booklet packed with beautiful full-color photographs and some very interesting text in both Finnish and English, and the vinyl is nice too.
Finland's Kemialliset Ystavat (and Avarus, and Anaksimandros, and Uton, and Lau Nau, and Doktor Kettu, etc.) are often referred to as "forest-folk", implying some sort of quiet, gentle rustling mystery amidst the trees, and sometimes that's quite the case. But the first few tracks here, on Kemialliset's latest, would certainly scare off any friendly small animals -and- wake up the sleeping forest trolls. It's woozy woodsy cacophony unleashed. This be outsider "folk" at its most abstract and noisy and "free". But, by track four or five things have calmed down a bit, the sounds have gotten more organized. Some charismatic, long-haired, bearded guru has obviously taken charge of the previously wild music-makers, their pagan energy now channelled down paths previously trod unshod by the likes of Parson Sound and Amon Duul... more mellow and musical, still druggy and damaged. Track six, "Superhimmeli", comes off like something by cult '60s ESP tribe Cromagnon!! (Perhaps due to having the same keening horn cry as heard in Cromagnon's "Caledonia".) There's a hippy chant drone density to a lot of this that's VERY satisfying. It's like an ancient celebration underway, wooden space rock rituals, accompanied by electronic squiggles or birds atwitter, burbling and gurgling sounds in the margins... sunshiney yet strange, very strange. Fonal thinks this is one of their best yet and we wouldn't argue.
NB. There IS vinyl of this, but unfortunately the copies we got were damaged -- we're expecting replacements from Finland soon, though.
Awesome vinyl reissue of these two long out of print 3" cd-r's from one of our favorite Finnish outfits Kemialliset Ystavat, one originally released on UK noise-experimental label Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers, the other released by Finnish underground folk label Lal Lal Lal and originally packaged in a velvet sleeve designed to be used as a petting glove! Everything we love about KY is present here, gorgeously primitive / innocent / timeless Ur-folk, simple strummed guitars, outdoorsy lo fi recording, chant-like vocals, simple clattery percussion, dreamy hazy ritualistic soundscapes, delicate melancholy melodies, deliberate rhythmic stumble, subtle tape malfunction and home recorded production fuckery, loping late afternoon, staring at the sun rhythms, and occasional swirling swooping electronics. Fans of Kemialliset and all things Finnish (you know who you are) definitely need to pick this up. And all you folks who have been digging the Jewelled Antler stuff (Blithe Suns, Thuja, Ivytree, Child Readers, etc.) will find a whole new world of sonic forests and audio landscapes to explore and get lost in.
Latest in this long running series of split 12"s, each volume's number in the series denoted by the number of holes punched in the plain white cover, this volume thus being number 19! And this time number 19 is the magic number as both bands sharing the split are LONG time aQ faves, Kemialliset Ystavat from Finland, and Sunroof!, the more droned out and blissy project of Skullflower's Matthew Bower. Both groups sound amazing as usual, but display different sounds than we're used to here.
Let's start with Kemialliset, whose usual sound is a gloriously ramshackle abstract foresty folk, and it still is, sort of, but it sounds like someone in the group got a computer (or at least finally figure out how to use one), as this is easily the most polished sounding KY record yet, and the most rife with strange electronics and effects, but by no means does that mean it's less out there, in fact it's probably the weirdest and most twisted KY record yet.
Woozy twisted lullabies, warped music box melodies, haunting vocal harmonies, it's still foresty and folky, but way more fractured, with strange edits and tons of swirling effects and electronics, way more experimental and abstract, pretty and lilting for sure, but totally twisted. The final track is fantastic, a playful groove, only mildly effected, hypnotic and beautiful, but still a bit off kilter.
The flipside finds Sunroof!, one of our favorite purveyors of glistening high end ur-drone, and technically these tracks still qualify but they're a bit more abrasive and harsh, the opener is brittle and caustic, a field of shrieking feedback, and hiss drenched high end, sputtering horns(?) and all manner of NOISE. The second track is all warped radio transmissions, still droney and minimal, buried beneath a sea of pulsating buzz. And the final track explodes with sheets of corrosive buzz, all high end, grinding and fuzz drenched, a mighty ur-drone bordering on Merzbow territory, but always with a haunting melodic undercurrent that transforms what could be near white noise into something thick and layered and organic and in some strange abrasive way, quite beautiful.
A hitherto unknown to us British sound artist, Alice Kemp seems to have honed her craft of cloak-n-dagger electroacoustics through the realms of performance art, with this long-form piece being a reworking of the sound designs that were commissioned by the performance art duo Weeks & Whitford. The imagery and allusions from Weeks & Whitford are gruesome (with Rebecca Weeks holding a malformed Eraserhead-like creature molded from livers and hearts in one of the photos accompanying this album) and spooky (a human hand made of frozen wine that melts all over a wedding dress worn by Weeks), in "tracing the scars that are left as the trophies of love." Admittedly, there's only the various project descriptions and photographic evidence of those pieces, but Kemp's sound design must have been a disturbing, claustrophobic addition to those performances, as this album would easily make her an honorary member of the notorious Schimpfluch-Gruppe. In fact, she was invited to perform at the Extreme Ritual festival alongside all of the Schimpfluch artists (e.g. Rudolf Eb.Er, G*Park, Sudden Infant, Dave Phillips, Raionbashi, etc.) with the participants and audience members alike astonished / aghast at her work. The tick-tock rhythms of a clock brace empty spaces and shadowy rumblings of tactile sounds that could very well be the calving of massive icebergs or the amplifications of blood vessels hemorrhaging just underneath a trepanned skull. Taut wire snaps and VLF crackle slowly enter the fray as Kemp's overarching composition follows what Nurse With Wound's Stapleton did on Salt Marie Celeste, with a leviathan crawl of incremental psychic intensity. Lets hope this album isn't just a minor excursion for Kemp; but as it stands now, this is all we know of... and it's a pro-duplicated cd-r in a nice digipack with an edition of just 100 copies.
We've been hearing lots about the great benga music coming out of Kenya but haven't been able to get our hands on too much of it. Luckily, the group Kenge Kenge, because of their higher profile and the wider availability of the recordings, are serving as a pretty great introduction to this sound. It's a magical combination of instruments that creates this exhilarating, totally compelling and joyous sound. Unlike a lot of other African bands who have been gaining wide notoriety of late, there are no guitars here. Instead, kenge Kenge utilize a combination of flutes, horns, fiddles, percussion, sound box, gong and vocals. Totally upbeat with steady rhythms and a lush, organic delivery and such a wildly joyful and positive disposition. It's refreshing too, that while it's cleanly recorded it doesn't sound slick or overproduced at all. In fact in lots of ways it kind of reminds us of a more rootsy, less blown out and amplified version of AQ faves Konono No.1. Really good stuff!
Another fine reissue from fine reissue label Sundazed (who put this out in '99 -- so we're slow, sorry) of late sixties era psych rock. Kennelmus were from the Arizona desert and played a sunbaked style of almost surfy psychedelia, as documented on this, their sole LP release from 1971. Influenced by the Beach Boys, early Alice Cooper, and we'd have to assume some mind-expanding drugs, this is gorgeous stuff that's also weirdly unhinged as you'll discover as the album progresses. 'Indonesian instrumental '60s guitar pop band The Steps doing Morricone Western soundtrack music' (cool!) is the first thing we thought after hearing the initial three or four songs, but then as the tracks advance, more and more songs feature vocals, often silly, nasal ones...partially because of this, at times this reminds us of another strange band originally from Arizona, the Sun City Girls!
Kennelmus have their own, unique vibe, but you never know what to expect: there's the song "Mother Of My Children" with vocals that sound exactly like Lee Hazlewood, lotsa studio trickery and effects (backwards guitars galore), and then album-closer "The Raven" (yes, the famous Edgar Allen Poe poem set to music). Which explains the bird silhouette on the disc's fantastic purple cover. If you liked Sundazed more recent reissue of the Gandalf album we reviewed last list, this is way weirder but similarily lovely and obscure.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Released on Sasha Frere-Jones' (Ui) label, this album from the Kenny Process Team collects a bunch of work from 94 - 97 including an out-of-print Hemiola album. Whimisical post-rock for guitar, bass, and drums tries to replicate a Capt. Beefheart Trout Mask with punkish Firehose-esque complex stumbles.
An older single from 1996 by Mika Vainio (Pan Sonic, Tekonivel, O, etc.) on the perenially good Austrian label Cheap. Hyper-minimal phaseshifting techno constructed on a handful of one-off analogue machines like the complex sound generator. As with all Vainio productions, highly recommended.
We've been waiting for this one for ages, since we first heard rumors about a new Bay Area black metal band featuring P. Helmkamp (Angelcorpse, Revenge, Order From Chaos), J. Read (Cremation, Revenge, Axis Of Advance) and local shredder B. Wolaniuk, formerly of local black metal horde Horn Of Dagoth. And this 4 track chunk of frenzied filth definitely does not disappoint. A crushing, atmospheric, blasting occultic black metal blowout, the riffs lurching from frantic insectoid buzz to angular woozy tangle, the drums pounding and chaotic, effortlessly shifting from caveman pound to lighting fast blast, the record begins super creepy and ominous, militaristic and doomy, but explodes into a frantic black thrash, that twists and turns, stops and starts, the arrangements super dense and complex, it's easy to hear the band's pedigree, but we also hear plenty of more modern influences, like Deathspell and Katharsis. It's a churning, roiling black abyss, rife with jagged shards of black riffery, glass gargling demonic hell-vox, and the drums, holy shit is Read a monster behind the kit.
The sound of Kerasphorus is like a massive black force, enveloping everything in its path, lumbering demonic crush gives way to frenetic blur, a dizzying, exhausting, punishing brutal black cloven hoof to the soul, but it's not all blast and buzz, the melodies are serpentine, and wind their way through even the most fractured and fucked up parts, the riffs are strangely gnarled and occasionally transform into loping, almost seasick sounding slithery stretches, the drums locked in tight following right along, with Read's weird hissing high hat black waltz rhythm leading the way, the band always eventually returning to the grim black blast, furiously pounding away, a relentless, dynamic, unstoppable blackness. Fucking awesome.
One of three neat new Mississippi titles in this week, and by far our favorite (and thus a Record Of The Week!) is this collection of archival recordings from famed female Hindustani classical singer, Kesarbai Kerkar. For fans of the Ustad Abdul Karim Khan and Pandit Pran Nath lps released previously on the label, this is an essential addition. What makes this release extra special is the lovingly designed booklet (with a beautiful tantric painting on the cover and English transcriptions of all the included ragas) that chronicles Kerkar's rise from her lower caste position as a courtesan to one of the most revered women in Indian classical music.
The lp consists of seven ragas, mostly morning ragas (but also an evening, late evening and monsoon raga), accompanied by saranji or harmonium that she recorded for the British label HMV on 78's between 1944 and 1949, Kerkar's unique style and vocal range is incredible to listen to, but is made more profound by the unfathomable struggles she had to endure throughout her life. Ridiculed at her very first public singing performance while employed as a kept women at the age of 26, she angrily vowed revenge by seeking to become one of the best singers India had ever witnessed. Her dedication to this task would not only involve some clever trickery, and ultimately separate her from her lover and patron and their only daughter, but also meant that she would have to enter into slavish servitude with her guru Ustad Alladiya Khan, and pay him for ten years of rigorous vocal training. But this ultimately paid off, for her master, who like many esteemed singers of his generation did not consider recording a necessary component of artistry, and had a devotional emphasis on obscure ragas, which gave Kerkar an unrivaled repertoire when it became her time to finally record while she was in her forties and fifties. Having toured the country extensively, the recordings only increased her fame and renown in India and beyond. Here we hear a voice that is unlike others we have heard before in its intricate extended modulations, sounding completely otherworldly and ritualistic, solemn and ceremonial, but with a devoutly serious temperament that singers like Maria Callas and Diamanda Galas could surely appreciate. So beautiful!
By now, avid readers of the AQ list should be well aware of German black metal horde Ruins of Beverast, responsible for one of our favorite black metal records EVER. Then of course there's Nagelfar, the band that came before RoB, who were responsible for another of the greatest black metal records of all time, Virus West. If that weren't enough, these guys also run an amazing record label, responsible for the RoB record, the Nagelfar reissue, the deluxe double lp version of the only release from SF's very own doomlords the Gault, and two brand new releases, the super blazing blackness of Funeral Procession, and this, the very Ruins Of Beverast-like debut from fellow countrymen Kermania!
Much like RoB, Kermania, are as much about atmosphere and mood, ambience and melody, as they are about blackness and buzz. This is massive, epic, sorrowful, melodic black metal. The opening track is almost 25 minutes long, an expansive journey that touches on all sorts of moods and sounds. From the lilting midtempo intro, with swoonsome clean vocals buried way down in the mix and dark, doleful minor key melodies, to some super harsh hateful suicidal black metal buzz, to drone drenched dream folk, to strange militaristic ambience, to full on and furious black thrash, and back again, culminating in a glorious droning, dreamy chantlike blasting black soundscape. And that's just the first song. Most bands would have called it a record after that... but Ahnenwerk still has more than a half hour left to go.
The second track is brief, but just as epic and majestic sounding, a perfect blend of black buzz and mournful melancholia, this time with killer fuzzed out riffing beneath loud, clear vocals, bookended by blasts of utterly harsh grimness. The whole thing suffused with haunting mournful melodicism. The final track is a seasick waltz, a Viking style folky black metal shanty, with clean vocals and acoustic guitars beneath the black buzz.
But before we get to that, there's another 20 minute plus epic to wade through, beginning with simple strummed guitars, the sounds of horses and footsteps, an hypnotic loping drawn out melody, weird processed vocals, a midtempo trawl through dark nights and long forgotten dreams. Dark and dreary and gorgeously miserable. About halfway through the sorrowful trudge suddenly explodes into a hellishly blasting buzz, all fuzzy riffs and lightning fast blast beats, howled demonic vocals, stopping only briefly to shimmer dreamily, before bursting into black action again. Dizzyingly epic and gloriously despondent. Folks who like their metal harsh and hateful, sad and sorrowful, murky and miserable, will feel right at home...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Recordings from/for one of Kesey's infamous Acid Tests.
This isn't your typical zine. Works Cited isn't pages photocopied and stapled together, rather, each hand drawn and unique manilla envelope contains the hilarious contents of the filing cabinet of the fictional Wright Preparatory Academy. Each copy includes: a C grade essay detailing the difference between "true" and "false" metal, intercepted notes, journal entries, and lots more, mostly illustrated documents within which Kessler and Huelsing have woven a story line that deftly reveals the complexities and confusion of adolescence. When reading Works Cited, you feel almost like you could be reading the contents of your own school's filing cabinet. Thus, the authors have created a universal platitude which brings forth the resounding adult-to-youth promise: "You will look back and laugh." If you are lucky enough to snatch one of the limited-to-365 copies, we think you will laugh along...knowingly.
We NEVER see any actual documents from Opal Tapes, the cult electronica imprint run by Stephen Bishop (aka Basic House). Well, we've never seen anything until we got in a pitiful number of copies of this Ketev tape, and this one is a gem of Andy Stott / Demdike Stare / Regis inspired grimy, dirty techno seemingly composed on an overdriven 4-track whose internal gain compression creates much of the dankly phased patterns crunch along the hypnotic, sinister techno. Hopefully a preamble for another album, as this stuff is too fucking good just to exist on tiny (and currently out of print) cassette edition! Modern Love would be our bet for the label of Ketev's future.
As much as we think sometimes we have a real way with words, there's always somebody who totally puts us to shame, which is exactly why we're gonna start our review of this, the sixth and latest record from Finnish underground outsider rock weirdo one man band Keuhkot ('lungs' in Finnish), with a description written by Jussi of Circle, whose label Ektro released it:
"The sixth struggle album of Kake Puhuu. The combat noise and insect world music downpreaching book. Rawer than its precursors, this album strips it down to marrow and squeezes juice out of it. Keuhkot batters mindless attributes of humanity from insects' point of view by means of reverse pop music. The aim is towards backwoods motorism, meritocamping, real men, moose hunt madness and established global upstarts. The most bearded feminist of Finland, Keuhkot, kicks the real man's groin. Keuhkot makes its own ethnic fusion gadding from rhythmic highways to distorted sidepaths in a refreshed guitar oriented soundscape. You may call it freaky but according to Kake, pop music (including metal, of course) is a freaky industrialized illness that needs a vaccination � which is Keuhkot."
We definitely couldn't have said it better ourselves, but heck, why not give it a try? Longtime readers of the aQ list might remember Andee's harrowing and ultra personal private Keuhkot performance in an abandoned schoolhouse in the wilds of rural Finland (you can read more about it elsewhere on the aQ site, in one of the other Keuhkot reviews), and are quite possibly already fans of Kake Puhuu's twisted sonic world of primitive programmed drums, twisted percussion, weird samples, layered loops, warped and woozy synths, detuned guitars and warbled guttural vox, and how could you not be, Puhuu is like the underground electro minimal abstract noise rock Jandek of Finland, record after record of totally idiosyncratic, ultra personal, musical weirdness, that sonically is all over the map, be it twang flecked almost Western sounding folk, woozy crooned torch songs, junkyard percussion driven lo-fi dirge rock, stumbling hypno-prog, who knows how the heck to classify any of this, easiest to just say this is some sort of utterly singular, surreal Finnish psychedelia, equal parts the Residents, Tom Waits, Birthday Party, Cop Shoot Cop, and who knows what else, all filtered through that totally cracked Finnish sensibility that informs so much of the Finnish music we love. A little bit circusy, a LOT whatthefuck, droney, fuzzy, distorted, stumbly, we want to say this is the best Keuhkot yet, but we sort of love them all, cuz they're all great. We'd say it's the weirdest, but they're all pretty goddamn weird too. We will say the opening track "Kuuluisia Alkemisteja Vol 1", is one of the coolest jams we've heard in ages, all super blown out synth buzz, pulsing and undulating, laced with haunting disembodied vocals, but the sort of droned out abstract psych trip out we could listen to forever. Just check out the samples, and prepare yourself to be baffled and confused and totally transported to some seriously demented sonic otherworld, and Jussi did in fact say it best: Keuhkot kicks the real man's groin!
Yet another notable export from the weird wide world of the Finnish underground. And again, courtesy of the mighty Bad Vugum.
If you were at the AQ 30th Anniversary party you may have seen Circle mainman Jussi spporting a Keuhkot shirt, as hey/they are huge fans. Kehkot is a maniacal one man band, that leaps stylistically all over the map from record to record.
'Minun...' starts out sounding like woodblock electronica, Autechre played on sticks and logs. But with ominous Darth Vader exhalations in the background. Eventually this mutates into some sort of psychotic calypso, sounding a bit like bizarre soundtrack music, albeit laced with strange Finnish mutterings. Really weird, and really great.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Keuhkot (lungs in Finnish) is Kake Puhuu. A one man band /art installation / travelling circus / raving lunatic. Kake plays everything: basses, drums, flutes, kimbara, ud-luth (?), samples, sequences, recordings and vocals. As well as appearing multiple times in his videos and photos (which consist of wastelands and wild sculptural gardens inhabited by 4, 5 sometimes even 10 Kake Puhuus!) This is the first Keuhkot record on Jussi from Circle's Ektro label and it is pretty amazing. Some kind of wild junkyard gypsy music, equal parts Birthday Party, Pussy Galore, Cop Shoot Cop, The Three Tenors, Devo, Finnish folk, circus music, looped/sampled electronica, all with Kake's distinctive Tom Waits-ish growl over the top. Wild percussion, hypnotic rhythms, sinister bass loops, growled spoken word passages, crashing waves, rattling spray paint cans, calliope-like melodies, chanted vocals, and groovy almost-exotica, all taken in directions you would never expect. Weird and wonderful, bizarre and beautiful. Is there no end to the musical bounty Finland has to offer? We're beginning to think not.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Probably the best way to describe the mad genius that is Keuhkot (Finnish for lungs) is to describe my bizarre, up close and personal encounter with Kake Puhuu aka Keuhkot, when I was visiting Finland a couple years ago. I was picked up by Jussi from Circle and Peltsi (formerly of Circle, now in Stalwart and Lee Miller) and we proceeded to drive for nearly an hour into the woods. An hour in the car is not ideal after 10 hours on a plane, but I put myself at the mercy of my Finnish hosts. We finally pulled up to a huge red schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by dense dark forest. We rang the doorbell and waited outside until a madly barking dog leapt out of the just opened door, being barely restrained by a small quiet Finnish man. We were hustled inside, into a large gymnasium, complete with wooden benches and chalkboards on the walls. We sat for quite a while, not entirely sure what was going on, when suddenly that same small man with the dog that we met at the front door, walked into the gymnasium with no shirt on. He proceeded to crawl around on the ground, turning on all sorts of switches, plugging in lots of strange looking devices, all manner of buzzing and hums began to emanate from these various devices. The man proceeded to then strap on this huge apparatus, covered in lights and microphones all on the ends of strange metal tentacles, he stood up, behind a huge wooden podium, grabbed a giant hammer and suddenly lurched into a blasting tribal pummel, shouted Finnish vocals, crazed percussion and freakout guitar. I suddenly realized that I was in fact witnessing a personal Keuhkot performance and proceeded to sit there dumbfounded, totally blown away, not only by the ridiculous spectacle, but the totally mesmerizing music as well. After about a half hour, he dropped everything and walked out. Maybe twenty minutes later, he returned with tea and biscuits, and we all sat having tea and desperately fending off the wildly barking and biscuit crazed hound we had experienced earlier. Woah. That definitely says a lot about Finland, and for sure gives you a glimpse into the brilliantly warped mind of Keuhkot. So while this new Keuhkot record might not be quite as visceral as a harrowing personal encounter, it's most definitely still a bit harrowing, and most certainly, completely and bizarrely brilliant. Much more subdued than his previous releases, Toimin... is a dark and dizzying expanse of alien synth melodies, simple industrial percussion, mumbled insistent vocals, fuzzy far off guitars, simple rock riffs re-imagined as some muted David Lynchian garage rock, a lo-fi horror movie Krautrock with simple hypnotically repeated motifs, beneath subtle shuffling percussion, and growled Finnish spoken word. The whole record is a slowly shifting moonlit world of fairy tales gone bad, demented nursery rhymes, sweet music slightly soured, haunting and ominous, but strangely playful and mysterious. Like a late night stroll on the moon, if the moon was a Finnish Raymond Chandler novel, with strange alien creatures packing heat, lurking in doorways, looking shifty and rootless, looking for whatever trouble they can find on the seedy side of the moon. Keuhkot is exactly what that would sound like.
That's a great name for this blustery dronemuzak project from Denver, Colorado. As much as we would like for the band to operate as the ambient technicians for some mountain-man cult of doomspeakers and nay-sayers akin to Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal And Triumphant, the name was spawned as a drunken joke that belies the introspective atmospherics and smoke-n-mirror melancholy which oozes from their bank of pedals. A contemplative drone wafts from the collective's floorcore alchemy for guitars that blossoms into a dissonant crescendo of wintery noise sounding like a lo-fi version of Tim Hecker or Lawrence English. As the noise deflates back to a subtle ambient smear, one of the Pact wrangles with the mechanisms of a tape deck alongside some pixel-shifted noises that would make one think of Oval's skipping cd constructions given over to the Starving Weirdo's kitchen sink approach to stoned transcendence. On the second half the the 64 minute tape (thank you for not just settling for 15 or 20 minutes!), the Pact eschews the guitars for a freak-folk amalgam of bells and Finnish-inspired clatter that morphs into a balefully cinematic conclusion to the tape with deeply resonant loops that speaks to the expansive land in which these gentlemen live, as some sort of cracked, lugubrious reinterpretation of Arthur Honegger's early 20th Century symphonic ode to railroads and trains in Pacific 231. Another great find from Hooker Vision. Limited to 100 copies.
Yet another strange release on the increasingly difficult to pin down Handmade Birds label, run by R. Loren of Pyramids, White Moth and Sailors with Wax Wings. In a matter of months, Handmade Birds has more releases than most labels have over the course of years! But hell, we're not complaining. So far we've had Blut Aus Nord's Mort, Celestiial's Desolate North, Evan Caminiti's When California Falls Into The Sea, His Name Is Alive's King Of Sweet (reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), and about a million more on the way (Der Blutharsch, Human Quena Orchestra, The Rita, Crooked Necks, Swamp Horse, Servile Sect and more!!), but this one, this is odd even by Handmade Birds admittedly far out criteria. This is a triple 10" boxset reissue of three long out of print demo tapes from Finnish black folk weirdos Key, a duo consisting of Kaarna from drone outfit Somnivore and Rauta from outsider black metal horde Circle Of Ouroborus, and all the mentions of 'black' above could be a little misleading, as this is far from black, and not at all metal. It's more in keeping with the later Circle Of Ouroborus recordings, a sort of fractured folk, a jangly, gloomy folk pop, all clean guitars, and haunting atmospheres, the vocals plaintive and hushed one second, deep and dramatically crooned the next, the sound slipping easily from psychedelic folk, to haunting almost new wave, to creepy doomy ballads, to reverby proto punk, but all gloomy and moody and fantastically strange, sounding a lot at moments like some lost nineties New Zealand outfit, maybe a bit like the Moles, or some obscure band on Flying Nun or Xpressway, the melodies are lilting, the basslines gloomy and a little gothic, the songs minimal, but strangely catchy, and definitely haunting and otherworldly, fans of Finnish stuff like CoO and Dead Reptile Shrine will definitely dig, as will anyone into fractured freak folk, and outsider gloom pop.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, housed in a silver foil printed box, each of the three 10"s pressed on colored vinyl (white with black splatter, milky clear, ultra clear), each record in its own printed sleeve.
