Live Human's previous albums never really did it for me, so this great album is a revelation. Here the groundbreaking trio of standup bass, drums, and turntables is *live*, recorded right here in their hometown of San Francisco at the Great American Music
Live Human mixes warmly organic bass lines that are funky but not overly so, with percussion that is as breakbeat "funky drummer" style as it is carefully shuffling, staccato and delicate. The third equal element is hiphop DJ Quest's visionary turntablist style. While he does his fair share of athletic, textural scratching here (he even plays with the tense sound of a skipping cd, of all things), it isn't overdone, nor boring, nor predictable. He brings in just enough outside elements like women's voices, snippets of old hip hop classics, James Brown's "heuh!", etc., to prevent the "jazz" from imploding self-indulgently into itself, yet not so much that it becomes a sample-heavy smorgasbord. It is incredible how perfect Quest's instincts are for what is too much and/or not enough. I have to say that the turntablist skills demonstrated here are so seamlessly integrated with the bass and the drums that I can't help but think this is one of THE FINEST examples of turntablism I have ever heard -- he knows that the way to us listeners' hearts is not to showboat his virtuosic skills, but instead to bow to the demands of the music itself.
This is an awesome record that is completely worth your money. As if that wasn't enough, it is purposely being sold directly from the label to retailers for the express purpose of keeping the price down and, according to the liner notes, "cutting out many of the redundant music-industry middle-men that traditionally add nothing to the art but are happy to pocket more than their fair share of the profit (biiiiaaaatch!)."
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These popular local artists' album was previously only available as an import, now finally it's available as a domestic release! What we had to say about the import still applies: San Franciscans Kushin, Mathias, and Quest (DJ that is) come up with a kick ass 'new jazz'/turntablism/hip hop hybrid for their debut album. A couple of the tracks from their previous singles on Fat Cat pop up on the album which is loaded with wykked scratching, sikk beats, and phhat bass. Excellent!
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The second single on Fat Cat from Live Human, a San Francisco trio with turntablist DJ Quest scratching over a mellow funk of skittering jazzy percussion and stand up bass. A really good American version of Red Snapper!
The eighties noise rock scene in New York may have been all about the Swans and Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore, but Live Skull were just as potent as those bands, and most definitely carved their own sonic niche, one that maybe actually influenced those other bands. Bringing Home The Bait was the group's second record, and first full length, and found them harnessing dissonance into something lush and layered, the tribal drum pound (courtesy of James Lo, who would go on to play in Chavez!) and slithery low slung bass wove a dense churning backdrop for the tripped out almost psychedelic guitars, that would alternatingly unfurl roiling atonal riffage or chiming minor key chords, or spew gouts of hauntingly textured noise, the sound dark and moody, gloomy and gothic, often slow, lumbering, almost doomy, but just as often wildly careening noise rock blasts, the sounds oozing and melting, the guitars tangled into strange shapes, the songs almost sounding like those guitar lines gradually untangling, heady and hypnotic, an early strain of hypnorock that now almost three decades later, seems to have been predicting so much of what's going on now. The sound of Live Skull was so subversive, but weirdly musical and melodic, the band applying an almost avant sensibility to their knuckle dragging crush, the dueling boy / girl vocals, the dour gloom rock, that also made them sound less NYC noise rock, and more West Coast goth-rock, at times sounding like the sort of band that would play at the Scream, or would open for Jane's Addiction back in the day. In fact, anyone who dug the recent Red Temple Spirits reissue, will find much to dig here as well, with some of the tracks sounding like the Abecedarians or Kommunity FK! And really, for being classified as 'noise rock' much of BHTB is surprisingly not noisy, sure the guitars are dense and layered, and the band do weave thick swaths of 'noisiness', but most of the time, that noisiness is blurred and smeared into moody chordal thrum, or almost shoegazey blissouts, a sort of post punk noise rock new wave that sounds as good now as it did thirty years ago!!
This is the first time Bringing Home The Bait has ever been available on cd, and includes a bunch of rare bonus tracks, as well as a big booklet with rare photos and new liner notes!
The latest installment in this long overdue reissue campaign for eighties New York noise rockers Live Skull, this being their second full length, Cloud One, originally released in 1986, the last album before Thalia Zedek (Come, Uzi) would join and take over lead vocals, and like their debut, on Cloud One, Live Skull still sonically fit pretty perfectly alongside their NYC brethren (and sistren) in Swans, Sonic Youth (especially Sonic Youth) and the rest, but on Cloud One, the band made great leaps both sonically, and with their songwriting (and the matching more polished production), the new(ish) sound definitely hewing ever closer to the minor key melancholia infused angularity of SY, but mixing in long, droned out passages and slow dark blooze creeps, adding an element of brooding mesmer, and dark psychedelia. That darkness also represented by a sonic shift toward something gloomier and gothier, with many of the tracks here more reminiscent of the West Coast sound of the time, the Scream Club, and bands like Janes Addiction, Kommunity FK and the Abecedarians (especially on the live bonus tracks!). Hints too of outfits like the Wipers, the Gun Club, the Flesh Eaters, a sort of swaggery psych blues crossed with noisy experimental rock, there's still some junkyard percussion, a little Pussy Galore here and there, but the band definitely had their eyes on the musical prize, whether by design or not, Cloud One is a tightly wound, complex piece of noise/art rock, that even now sounds impossibly prescient of a sound that so many bands would go on to mine in their wake. It's actually a bit shocking that Live Skull's career trajectory wasn't more like Sonic Youth's, on this record for sure, but even more so on their 1988 swansong, Positraction, the band seemed poised for success, and an eventual move into the semi-mainstream, but for whatever reason, they remained firmly entrenched in the underground, and would only make it another couple years/records before calling it quits.
Fantastically curated reissued, with a whole mess of bonus tracks, unreleased, demos and live, as well as a massive booklet with tons of rare photos, old flyers, live shots, and extensive liner notes by the band, as well as extensive track by track notes on the extra songs as well!
The reissue campaign for these eighties NY noise rockers culminates with this, the final EP featuring the original lineup, released immediately after 1986�s Cloud One (the reissue of which was reviewed on the aQ list recently), and was the last record with the original lineup, after this record drummer James Lo would leave, and vocalist/guitarist Thalia Zedek would join, changing the sound of the band, and moving them in a new direction. A direction that was definitely hinted at here, originally a three song 12�, the band (according to the liner notes) were convinced that Pusherman was a vast improvement, even over Cloud One, which had just come out, and while it might be more polished, and a bit more honed, songwriting-wise, it sounds like the logical extension from Cloud One. �Swingtime� is all low slung swagger, the production, thick and noisy, multiple guitars wound into tense tangles, the groove a lumbering churn, the sound rife with spidery melodies and strange fragmented riffage, the vocals a deep bellowed croon, the whole thing a fierce gothic blooze, far removed from the early noise rock days for sure. �Raise The Manifestation� is more of the same, another bass driven dirge, slow and loping, moody and brooding, this time female vox to the fore, the guitars once again swirling in psychedelic squalls, all anchored by some muscly bass and drums, droney and tranced out, and to these ears, like much of Cloud One, still reminiscent of what was happening on the opposite coast, with the Scream Club, and groups like Kommunity FK, the Abecedarians, Janes Addiction and the like.
The big surprise though on Pusherman was the title track, a cover of the Curtis Mayfield classic, which at the time, seemed kinda crazy, and while much has been made of the track�s �funkiness�, it really doesn�t sound that much funkier than the Live Skull tracks proper, tribal drumming, and a woozy, slithery bassline, wreathed in all sorts of guitar noise, and some surprising percussion, the vocals sultry and bewitching, a little bit haunting, the guitars delivering all sorts of wild sonic filigree, a dense soulful noise rock dirge that positioned the song, and the group to an extent right alongside all those other doom and gloom outfits.
The original ep is fleshed out with a bunch of bonus tracks, most live, a few alternate versions, all of varying quality, but a good impression of the band at their peak, right before the band would reconfigure and embark on phase two of their career. Like the other reissues, fantastically put together, with a massive booklet, featuring extensive liner notes from the various band members, and lots of rare photos and flyers. Best part of the liner notes: when the band recalls returning to Madison, Wisconsin, only to discovery that their last visit had inspired their host�s toddlers to start a band, that band was Old Skull! (And did you know two of the three kids from Old Skull are now dead?! Crazy!)
We pretty much thought the well had run dry as far as great lost tropicalia gems goes. A few years back there was an explosion of amazing finds from this fertile era in Brazilian music history, with records by folks like Som Imaginario, Ronnie Von, Paulo Bagunca and Alceu Valenca & Gerardo Azevedo.
While there has been totally essential reissues of many of the biggest names of tropicalia (Jorge Ben, Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso, etc.) it was looking like we were going to have to concede that there might not be anymore totally obscure gems left. Of course time after time we're always blown away by unearthed discoveries that just sound way too damn good to have remained obscure and unheard for so long. Such is the case for Liverpool, who released this record in 1969 and of course by their name you know they were influenced by some of the paisley sounds coming out of the UK, and they incorporated that influence into their own take on breezy and driving tropicalia. With a vocal delivery and arrangements that would sound right at home on some of Caetano Veloso's best outings, Liverpool were just as potent mellow and sun baked as they were rocking and psychedelic. We're so happy this has been unearthed for us to finally appreciate, an absolute classic!
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Death Waltz is fast becoming one of our favorite reissue labels, all vinyl, all horror or suspense movie soundtracks, many of them extremely obscure, some not so much, all lavishly packaged in deluxe jackets with all new artwork, and extensive liner notes. It's almost impossible to resist the urge to collect them all, which is proving to be pretty difficult, considering how many records they're releasing, and the fact that they're a little pricey, but they're worth it, if you've seen/heard any of these, you know it's true. And while they've all been pretty stellar, this one might just be one of our faves.
The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue, aka Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, is a rad seventies hippie zombie movie about a serious of Manson like murders which are blamed on a hippie couple, when in fact the grisly crimes were committed by a horde of zombies brought back from the dead by a machine that uses radiation to kill insects!!
It's pretty crazy, and while it's been years since we've seen it, we remember being pretty blown away. But what we didn't remember, was how goddamn good, and crazy weird, the soundtrack was. A dizzying array of symphonic arrangements, funky almost disco-y grooves (with some breakbeats to DIE for), creepy operatic vocals, haunting dronescapes, and all manner of crazy 'zombie' vocals. Even separated from the film, the music here remains creepy and cool, fluttering woodwinds drift over a chorus of moans and groans, weird vocalizations meant to be zombies, countered by soaring plaintive female vox, crooning creepy laments, that at once point devolve into maniacal laughter. One of the tracks here is a wicked organ drive groove, heavy on the percussion, with a wild drum solo, the sort of thing we can't imagine hasn't been sampled like crazy. Strings soar, chaotic percussion all over the place, long layered drones, sinister black ambience, and the whole record is peppered with those strange undead vocal growlings and mewlings, the director of the film even contributes some vocals, doing his best crazed zombie. Some of the tracks even have a Perrey & Kingsley vibe, sorta playful and melodic, but the score is never far from another stretch if blackened sinister cinematic ambience. We've been listening to this like crazy, and it's making us want to see the movie again too!
As we mentioned before, super swank packaging, that immediately recognizable Death Waltz blue and black sleeve, with super striking painting on the cover. Notes from the composer on the back of the jacket, the inside sleeve featuring extensive liner notes AND a beautiful poster of the cover art.
60 composers from 18 countries commissioned to score 60 second pieces for piano (and occasionally tape). Go! Quick!! FASTER!!!
More major-label price gouging. But, not a bad LL record.
Strange that we haven't posted anything about Dale Lloyd in previous lists, but this is a man whose influence should be well known throughout the experimental and sound-art communities. Lloyd runs the And/OAR label, which specializes in environmental soundscaping with a few subsidies that push toward an electronic-pop context. Even so, the last full album from Mr. Lloyd emerged well over five years ago. This album continues in Elevator Bath's very impressive series of picture discs, which began in 2008 with releases of corroded drones from our own Jim Haynes and kosmiche brainmelting from Rick Reed. Lloyd's work is an excellent companion to these two releases. One of the two sides opens with a modulating hiss that harmonizes with a sinewy drone and gets punctured by a series bone-numbing electrical charges for something that could have some unsavory context had it been generated by John Duncan, but then again it could be a field recording of a grain-slew with minor post-production techniques. In fact, each of the pieces on Akasha For Record have this sense that they could be the results of well-situated field recordings like those of Tarab or Eric La Casa, as the smudges and grittiness of these recordings allude to such strategies. Another track shimmers like the vibration of a loose piece of metal on an industrial HVAC, with the timbres generating a surprisingly fluid and beautiful resonance like something Andrew Chalk would actively seek out. There's greater evidence of field recordings on the tracks that do feature the roar of surf and a cold wind intermingled with the softened white noise of sand getting pushed around. Lloyd had devised this album to complement the crackles that get magnified through the picture disc - a medium which notoriously wears heavier than most pressings of vinyl. The album certainly works well with its medium. Beautiful stuff, and super limited to 216 copies.
Premonicion De Guerra is the debut release from this grim black metal horde, and it's two 20+ minute tracks of glorious, haunting, hateful black metal. There isn't a ton of information to be found on this project. Hailing from either Santa Cruz or Mexico (or both), and featuring possibly only one member, Lluvia specializes in orthodox black metal performed with utmost precision, class and respect. The record opens with a lonely torrent of rain and the crack of distant thunder whispering underneath listless clean guitars. It's a very literal calm before the storm, because before too long we're met with the foreboding buzz of a single grinding guitar that seems to exist in stasis for an unnaturally long time, lulling the listener into a false sense of calm before the blasting begins. When all of the pieces finally come together it's an overwhelming wall of sound. Pummeling blast beats and mournful, oppressive guitars give way to heart-wrenching mid-paced breakdowns. The whole record is awash in tons of reverb, soaking every moment with the cavernous atmosphere of a moss specked catacomb. The vocals are distant and echoed, like some hateful unsilent spirit craving revenge from the afterlife. The drums are enormous, every fill sounding like an avalanche. On paper it would be easy to say that Lluvia are dealing in the same traditional, Transilvanian Hunger style black metal as someone like Sargeist, but in execution the scope seems to be much larger. Instead the affect isn't far off from the hypnotic transcendence of Ash Borer or Fell Voices, but with a much more orthodox approach, which makes the results all the more impressive. The end result is overpowering yet strangely distant, sorrowful yet proud - invoking a feeling ancient and sad. It's black metal that can truly be called atmospheric in the purest sense of the word, but without one iota of the hate or the fury sacrificed.
Limited to 333 copies, on 180 gram gray/black swirl vinyl, gatefold jacket w/ inserts.
First we've heard from this local outfit, released on the Brotherhood Of Light tape label (Sunchariot, Haar, Sirius, Cosmic Breath, Surt, Uruk Hai, Domus Mactibilus, Worldscape:18), and like much of the stuff on BoL, we're assuming it's the work of the same core folks, much like the Black Legions and the BM scenes in Russia and the Ukraine, it seems like a handful of folks in multiple configurations make up the multitude of groups, but we're not complaining, in fact, as BoL continues to move away from black metal, or at least push the boundaries, we're digging their releases more and more. A couple lists back we reviewed a tape by a group/person called Worldscape:18, which was some weird sort of collaged/noisescape/electronica. And this week, we have one of several new releases from Llyr, whose tape starts out with the gentle slightly sinister lilt of drifting synths, sounding like it could explode into some serious Goblin style action at any point, but instead, sprawls out, soft billows of almost new age-y shimmer, until finally, some super distorted guitars surface, and some seriously sick, anguished vox, wouldn't say it was black metal, but it's definitely blackened, and sort of metallic. More free form and abstract, the guitars churning in thick billows over those shimmery synths, the vokills howling and rasping in the murk. Tangled melodies unwind beneath the vocals, as well as strange sci-fi electronics, maybe not sonically, but most definitely spiritually, Llyr reminds us of outsider metal acts like Circle Of Ouroborus, Tomb Of, Varghkoghargasmal and Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg.
And that pretty much sets the template for Llyr's sound, long stretches of icy synth, chiming ethereal melodies, beneath sheets of blurred guitar buzz, disembodied riffs, wraithlike rasps, and even some drums, stumbling programmed drums that bring to mind Fastest weirdly enough, and when the electronics peel back, and leave just lurching drums and woozy riffage, it's like some gloriously damaged primitive black metal ritual, that soon disappears into another cloud of dense, swirling WTF weirdness.
Second release from this mysterious outfit, their second for local black metal tape label Brotherhood Of Light, and like their previous tape, Heathen, the sound maybe be blackened, but it's definitely not black metal. At least not for much of the time... Opening with some creepy hushed barely there ambience, the sound explodes into a sprawl of crumbling distorted buzz, wrapped around what sounds like a programmed beat, the result is a sort of post industrial blackened electronica? The guitar is fuzzy and minor key, the melody melancholic and mournful, a blurry cloud of drifting buzz, driven by that beat, and draped over some buried vokills that growl and occasionally shriek in the background. For being buzzy and black, it's surprisingly washed out and softly trancey, almost dreamy at times.
The sound does drift more toward a blackness that's more traditionally depressive, but it remains kinda blissed out and shoegazey. Before drifting into an almost kosmische sounding stretch of dreamy celestial glimmer, before again exploding into some much more traditional black buzz, but even then, the sound is murky and muddy and blurred into something more tranced out and hypnotic, and the sound is shot through with some strange keening melodies, that again, add a strange avant melodic vibe to the proceedings.
And then it seems like Llyr settle into something much more straight ahead, midtempo black metal, buzz and pound, dark and sinister, when all of a sudden, BLAM, another programmed beat lurches into action, churning away beneath another sprawl of swirling hazy buzzy blackness, the sound once again a weird sort of black electronica... Cool, and darkly twisted, another weird winner from Brotherhood Of Light, and like all the previous BoL tapes, SUPER LIMITED.
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As the cover art proclaims: "The group from the future is here now! Advance yourself!" And well, Von Lmo has actually been bringing the future to us for quite some time now. This CD reissue of his classic early 80s LP includes the awesome track "Leave Your Body" that certain list-recipients might be familar with from the re-recorded version on one of Lmo's 90s underappreciated (but great) "comeback" efforts. Von Lmo exists in a futureworld not of synths, robotics and electronic blips'n'bleeps. No, it is instead one of skronky saxophone, raw garage-y guitar mayhem, balsa wood spacecrafts, and raging positivity. After all, "this album is dedicated to the advancement of the United States space program". And who can resist music that comes vacuum-packed in silver suits with giant red snowboots?
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Includes a full 31 minutes of "X+Z=0." -Advance Yourself.-
The reissue of this bizarre figure's collected sonic disturbances comes by way of Munster Records in Spain - licensed from the man himself. It includes the 1981 album "Future Lenguage" (or "Future Languaje" or "Future Language" depending on which edition you're looking at, previously available on Flemish Masters) as well as "Tranceformer" which was his compilation of demos, rarities and live stuff. The electrifying packaging is chock full of slogans ("Advance Yourself!"), info tidbits (this group is "from the future" and this music was "recorded in space"), not to mention mad mad silver spacesuits and huge red moonboots! Von Lmo's impassioned singing style often brings to mind the untethered energy of Jello Biafra, Tomata Du Plenty, and Lux Interior. And when he chants "Leave your body!", look out! It's absolute frenzy. The music is just as frantic. Propulsive sax a la James Chance over raw garage punk guitar, bass and drums. There are a few songs where the group slows it down somewhat, but it seems that it's then that things get even more tense, eccentric and strange. The aforementioned packaging includes a fold-out filled with extensive, entertaining liner notes written by Von Lmo.
First solo album in the burgeoning career of guitarist and Holy Mountain hero Steven Wray Lobdell, best known for his work in the recent incarnation of seminal krautrockers Faust, as well as his bands The Davis Redford Triad and Sufi Mind Game. Oh, yeah, and he played on that weirdo Baseball Astrologer LP too. Like all those projects, this is as psychedelic as all get out, but not at all freaky, distorted and overdriven: rather, this is acoustic, folky instrumental stuff, including a beautiful cover of a tune by Chilean folkie Victor Jara as well as much cosmic improv. It's the combination of wondrous playing and studio overdubs and effects that play the tricks on your mind. Lovely & recommended.
This live show from an actual establishment called Club Doughnut, features Lobdell, sometime Faust member and head of the mighty Davis Redford Triad, all by his lonesome, with just an electric guitar but holy fuck can this man wrangle amazing sounds out of those six strings. From acid fried Eastern tinged raga, to super effected psych freakout, to massive walls of Skullflower like skree, to full on riff destroying sonic mayhem to warm rumbling ambience, all assembled from the unlikeliest guitar sounds, crumbling super distorted throb, crystalline angelic shimmer, and flat out head caving crunch. Fans of Jack Rose, Pelt, Skullflower, Total, and all things massive gorgeous guitar will be floored.
Our friend Adam who runs the super cool Crucial Blast label, has, for over 6 years now, been quietly (and not so quietly) putting out some of the coolest shit around. From crusty Finnish metal to droning electronica to sparse folk to brutal power electronics. This new series of cd-r's, limited to 100 copies and nicely packaged in oversized DVD cases will only be available via Aquarius records (unless you get them directly from Crucial Blast). So don't blow it...
Lockweld should be a familiar name to industrial fans. This noisy sampling duo has been at it for years. For their Crucial Blast recording, Karen and Makita employ a mighty arsenal of synthesizers, samplers, vocals, electronics, machinery, tools, weapons(!) and fire(!). The sound is brutal and harsh. A thick wall of sound, white noise and pink noise with looped samples creating barely audible rhythms and the occasional melody being beaten bloody amid all the ROOOOOOAAAAAAAARRRRR. And since it's called "Metal Pieces", each cd comes with a little baggie of custom cut little metal pieces. Cool.
Hooray, Japan's EM Recordings is back with two new discs! You never know what sort of stuff they're gonna dig up for reissue, only that it's probably going to be pretty far-out and interesting. The releases we're reviewing this week both fit that general description, thought they couldn't be more different. One's an amusing and strange attempt at calypso-punk (!) from 'Wild' Billy Childish, the other, this, is an anthology of early sound-experiments from New Zealand-born avant garde composer Annea Lockwood. She studied in England and Europe during the sixties and early seventies, and since 1973 has been a professor at Vassar College in New York. Her music, as heard here, is on the conceptual side, abstract but fascinating and listenable. Her 1970 album The Glass World (previously reissued on cd in 1997 by What Next? Recordings) appears here in its entirety, plus her 19 minute droning musique concrete tape piece "Tiger Balm", originally released on a 10" record in 1970 that came with issue number 9 of SOURCE: Music of the Avant Garde magazine.
Moody and mysterious, her Glass World is a weird and wonderful place, indeed. Clinking, tinkling, scraping, shimmering, humming, droning... every sound you could imagine somehow generating with pieces of glass, and more! It originated as a performance piece she developed in 1966, of "discreet sound actions" all using glass as the prime source material which has been bowed, scraped, shattered, tapped, etc. There's 23 individual tracks, each one with a straightforward title ("Glass Rod Vibrating", "Water Gong", "Wine Glass", "Bottle Tree Showered With Fragments") more or less explaining what's going on, usually with a glass object noun and sound-producing verb. It's a veritable catalog, sort of a Smithsonian Folkways approach: The Sounds Of North American Glass Objects! Meanwhile "Tiger Balm" features a woman's orgasmic sighs, tinkling bells, and of course the purring of a big cat... it's pretty trippy!
This includes two booklets, one with vintage photos, scores, and Lockwood's own liner notes. The other documents the realization of her conceptual art piece "Piano Transplants" (i.e. "Piano Burning", "Piano Garden", etc.). As with all EM releases, this is really nicely presented (and now, EM's putting things out in non-jewel case, cardboard digi-packaging).
Oh, and EM fans, look out for this summer's "EM Under Water Series" of five surfing-related reissues from '60s/'70s Australia, all really cool stuff.
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"For me, every sound has its own minute form - is composed of small flashing rhythms, shifting tones, has momentum, comes, vanishes, live out its own structure." - Annea Lockwood. 'Glass World' originated a two hour performance of discreet sound actions, using glass as the prime source material which has been bowed, scraped, shattered, tapped, etc.
Latest from these blackened doomdrone soundscapers, once again demonstrating that these guys definitely don't let any sort of genre classification define what they do, cuz what they do here is let their krautrock freak flag fly, whipping up a gorgeous chunk of hazy, rhythmic psychedelia, a reinterpretation of a classic Popol Vuh jam (from 1976), which does indeed channel the same sort of brooding, blissy mesmer, a dreamy, dark dirge, hypnotic and hazy, spidery guitar melodies over simple spare propulsive drumming, all wreathed by distant synth shimmer, the female vocals adding an ethereal angelic vibe to the proceedings. The track explodes about halfway through in a little squall of blackened psychnoise, only to slip right back into it, albeit a bit louder and heavier, some seriously mesmerizing metallic shoegaze krautrock heaviness, that had us sort of wishing these guys sounded like this all the time.
But then the B side goes ahead and reminds us why, as cool as that would be, we would most definitely miss what these guys do already. And what they do here is, lay down some frantic buzzy black metal riffing, letting the riffs unfurl into long streaks of tangled melodies and layered lush blackdronebuzz. Howled vokills come in, and the sounds drifts ever closer to pure black metal, the tension in waiting for the song to kick in, the blasting beats, the galloping crush, but instead, a sort of liquid black drone surface from below, and begins to envelop the sounds, the whole track growing darker and more dense, until finally, inexplicably, the band introduce melancholy acoustic guitar, and what sounds like piano, changing the tenor of the song completely, the buzzing riff no longer defining the sound, but instead acting as a blurred shimmery backdrop for the creeping dirgey drift that's now at the forefront, the drums minimal and spare, the sound seeming to build once again for an inevitable black metal blow out, but instead, the song shifts and fades out an soft squall of hazy shimmer and slowly dissipating psychedelia.
Maybe the best stuff we've heard from these guys, which at this point is saying a LOT.
Gorgeous packaging too, a striking black on black 4 panel sleeve, includes a sticker and a download code. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
Somehow this is exactly what we've been hankering for. A sprawling blackened songsuite, equal parts, dark ambience, dense drones, heavy electronics, buzzy lo-fi almost new wave sounding keyboards, spidery post rock guitars and soft noise. Even writing it, that seems like a pretty unworkable, or unrealistic combination, but somehow these Midwesterners make it work. Big time.
They definitely could be considered sonic brethren of bands like SUNNO))), Pussygutt, MZ412, Troum, To Blacken The Pages, Wolf Eyes, Vulture Club and the like. However, Locrian take that sound someplace all their own, creating actual SONGS, as opposed to just soundscapes or drones. And there's a definitely black metal component for sure, no matter how abstract. Guitars are everywhere, seemingly the foundation for Locrian's sound, although as often as the guitars are unfurling spidery post rocky melodies, or distant reverbed riffs, they are also smeared into warm whirling clouds, left to drift and gradually change shape, or pulled apart and allowed to crumble into jagged little shards. Noise in a big component too, often the prettiest parts are treated with a patina of grinding soft focus electronics, or groaning downtuned tones.
The record opens with a gorgeous, elegiac guitar part, simple and stripped down, like it could be a black metal intro, until the organ comes in, wheezy and warbly, giving the track a weirdly lo-fi almost industrial vibe, definitely had us wishing it was in fact more than just a two minute intro.
That is until track two, "Ghost Repeater" takes over. An epic slow motion drift, strange echoey sounds floating in a warm muted sea of buzz and drone, glitched out bits of electronics, and eventually, a very epic black metal riff, that remains off in the distance, repeated and repeated until it too simply becomes another layer of sound.
"Barren Temple Obscured By Contaminated Fogs" (another great title), begins again with some creepy spindly guitar, draped over a deep pulsing low end, before transforming into some seriously abject and WAY abstract blacknoise. Shrieked distorted vokills over that same spidery guitar, Abruptum like ambience meets warped Goblinesque synth drones, the whole track twisted and warbly, eventually the vocals dropping out, leaving the buzzing guitars and wheezing keyboards to play out a super haunting horrorscape. "Epicedium" is delicate and crystalline, noodly guitar lines looped beneath a glimmering softly throbbing drone, peppered with fragmented strums, soon the track begins to grow gradually more and more distorted, the guitars more tense and frantic, the mood so haunting and weirdly beautiful and so subtly dramatic, reminding us of a super twisted soundtrack to some lost Giallo.
The record proper ends with another awesomely titled jam: "Obsolete Elegy In Cast Concrete", tolling bells, space kraut drones, all washed out and shimmery, the bed for some seriously corrosive guitar buzz and grind, adding layer after layer of crunch and rumble, but also slipping to some seriously black chug, joined by still more harsh hellish vox, a strange combination for sure but manages to be both beautiful and brutal, until the very end, where the track shifts gears and becomes all dramatic and melodic and weirdly majestic.
The cd features a bonus track called "Greyfield Shrines", which is nearly as long as all of the other tracks combined, a sprawling slow building blackened world of sound that slithers from hushed drift, to fractured buzz, to woozy moody ambience to blown out speaker shredding crunch, absolutely epic, super cinematic, mysterious, and even at it's noisiest, still quite melodic and blackly beautiful. Most definitely a track that could have been (and we think maybe was) a record all on its own.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Cool fold over arigato-pack style sleeve, with a full color printed booklet. And for anyone going to the Matchitehew metal/noise festival in Chicago in a few weeks, you'll be able to catch these guys live.
Latest jam from these atmospheric black metal drone ambient soundscapers. Now expanded to a trio, this epic two track workout finds the band sounding better than ever. Slow burning riffs churn relentlessly over a swirl of electronics and rumbling drones, vocals drift ghostlike throughout, melodies peal amidst the crumbling low end and heaving blackness, like some epic post doom, stripped of it drums and blurred into whirling shimmering riffscapes, haunting and otherworldly, abject and post industrial, pulsing and throbbing, gradually transforming from doomdrone to dreamdrift, but remaining heavy and mysterious.
The second track begins with a buzzing black riff, but instead of exploding into a blast of black fury, the riff seems to melt into the background, the various drones and tones bleeding into the riff, all smeared into a swirling black cloud of slow burning blackness, washed out and gauzy, growing more and more abstract, the riff pulled apart, the notes left to drift amidst a vast sea of wheezing chordal shimmer and crumbling glitched out electronics. So awesome. And if that wasn't enough, the flipside features a palindromic rendering of the two songs, the whole first side played in reverse, a warped woozy, swooping bit of twisted droned out black mystery.
Super sweet packaging, silver reflective sticker on the tape, seven panel, silver ink on black matte j-card. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!
Super limited tour only 7", we got the very last handful. Unlike the blackened drones on Locrian's full length, this is way more in the realm of guitar heaviness, not quite black metal, but there is definitely some shades of black happening. A killer riff fragment, looped over and over, hypnotic and trancelike, slowly evolving in tone and timbre, getting higher and more jagged, while all around it, the ambient sounds build to a thunderous almost industrial cacophony.
The B side is a billowy bit of spaced out drift, trippy synth shimmer, another looped bit of abstract guitar, swirling effects, layered textures, erupting into a stretch of slow motion doominess right at the end. More dark heavy beauty from this Chicago duo.
All white cover, white labels, very little info, a Xeroxed insert with liner notes. 300 copies, these are the last ones ever.
The duo of Andre Foisy and Terence Hannum, aka Locrian, may have started life as purveyors of grim black ambience, and even with the addition of drummer Steven Hess, and an expanding sound that found their black buzz dronescapes blossoming into more rhythmic, and fully realized sonic sprawls, we still weren't entirely prepared for Return To Annihilation, which finds the group's crystallizing into something surprisingly melodic, what in the past might have been slow shifting fields of static rumble, and churning dark psychedelia, here has been transformed into something, dare we say poppy. Opener "Eternal Return" begins with some sinister synth buzz, darkly sci-fi and ominous, so we were prepared for more classic Locrian, but then BAM, the song explodes into some seriously prismatic, synth heavy dirge pop bliss out, think M83, Jesu, Mogwai. Minus the shrieked black metal vokills, this could be any of those groups, super melodic, dense and lush and layered, crazy melodic, epic and majestic, almost a crime it's over after less than three minutes.
But fear not, there's plenty more of this 'new' Locrian to be found. "A Visitation From The Wrath Of Heaven" begins like the opener, all crumbling, pulsing synths, woozy minor key swirls, again, seemingly setting us up for some droned out black mesmer, but instead, in come the drums, some swirly backwards melodies, and the track gradually settles into a sort of dreamy, drifting slow-core, something you might expect to be on Kranky, everything wreathed in psychedelic shimmer, but all smeared into a softly fuzzy, hypnotic rhythmic churn. Although they do drop in some harsh vox right near the end, really, again that's the only thing keeping this from being some weird minimal experimental drone pop. That and the crushing minute long doom/sludge finale, that soars majestically, the buzzing guitars wrapped around wordless vocals, and draped over some seriously crushing drum damage.
And so it goes, the record unwinding in all sorts of sonic directions. "Two Moons" is all softly tangled acoustic guitar, over a buzz drenched post rock lope, a sort of Mogwai / Tim Hecker hybrid, heavy certainly, but more heady and hypnotic than anything, then there's the title track, which begins as a brooding gloom pop, before blossoming into a freeform bit of black metal riffing, but blurred into something much more abstract, a gorgeous sprawl of minor key distorted guitar crumble, before returning to a sort of Mogwai / Godspeed style post rock slow build, albeit augmented with some extra metallic heft and more vokills. The final three tracks drift from hushed buzzy thrum, beneath soft curlicues of reverbed guitar shimmer, noisy blown out freeform guitar noise, laced with wild drum splatter, and harsh howled vox, to the final 15+ minute sprawl of "Obsolete Elegies", which begins as an acoustic guitar / piano threnody, dark, twang flecked swirls, set amidst billowing clouds of soft psychedelia, brooding and dusky, a little bit of Barn Owl maybe happening, moaned vocals, buzzing sci-fi synths, the sound transforming part way through into some strange dubbed out synth-prog, before once again launching into some epic, super distorted post rock majesty, soaring melodies, churning drum crush, all of which fades out into a field of synth swirl and disembodied sitar buzz, muted and haunting, only to eventually explode into a final blast of heaviness, of blasting black metal in fact, chugging and churning at first, before in swoops a second guitar transforming the sound into some insane and epic black prog heaviness, and suddenly we find ourselves wishing for a whole record that sounds like the last two minutes. Fingers crossed for next time.
With every single release these guys get better and better, their sound, a constantly evolving, ultra dense blend of abstract black metal and deep ambient dronemusic, the early records were more about energy and vibe than execution, still eminently listenable, heavy and atmospheric, black and brutal, but their skills as composers and arranges have definitely made leaps and bounds, arriving finally at Territories, the latest sprawling epic from this Chicago duo, here, aided and abetted by a whole bunch of guests, including Blake Judd from Nachtmystium, Andrew Scherer, drummer for black metallers Velnias, and Mark Solotroff, power electronics maestro, and man behind Bloody Minded and the BloodLust! label.
And the guests make their presence felt right away, on opener inverted ruins, a smoldering doomic plod, more power electronics than black metal, with Solotroff ranting over a sea of swirling buzz and skree, glitched out electronics, and some simple stripped down drumming. Over the course of the track, it begins to coalesce into a more ominous creep, shedding noise as it goes, before finally slipping into a deep shimmering drone, which introduces the next track, a lush, slow building cinematic dronescape, constantly shifting layers, drifting through clouds of cymbal shimmer and blackened buzzing strings. It's not until nearly the end of side one that black metal rears it's ugly head, a flurry of manic riffing, and they're off, a pounding midtempo blast of raw feral blackness, insane shrieked vocals, chaotic drums, muted riffs, all blurred into a blackened haze, lo-fi and muddy, but also epic and intense.
The flipside opens with another bout of power electronics, dueling synths unfurl undulating layers of wheeze and warble and buzz, laced with shimmering overtones and fragmented melodies, a churning black sonic sea, that eventually fades out leaving, a smoldering stretch of shadowy guitar, of blissed out ambience, a short stretch of crystalline chiming guitars laid over a warm whir, shoegazey and blissed out, which finally leads into the closing track, the weirdest of the bunch, with organ and saxophone, acoustic guitars, and pretty much all the gusts present and accounted for, a bleak buzzing driftscape, sort of post industrial, keening melodies over fractured buzz, and deep rumbles, creaks and skree and groaning low end, finally explode into full on melodic black metal, martial drumming, epic riffing, more tortured vokills, cool tangled woozy minor key melodies, a swirling druggy ambience, weirdly catchy and otherworldly, but still heavy and psychedelic, maybe our favorite track, and the perfect way to wind down this serpentine blackened outsider drone metal journey...
The Clearing is the latest from the Chicago duo of Andre Foisy and Terence Hanuum, now seemingly permanently expanded to a trio with Steven Hess on drums, and like past records, these guys effortlessly conjure up another series of haunting dronescapes and blackened ambience, opening with a creeping sprawl of funereal piano, wreathed by all manner of distant industrial clatter and metallic buzz, before finally transforming into a proper song, complete with clean vocals, loping drums, laid atop a wild squall of feedback and squealing guitars, all blurred into an undulating stretch of softly caustic mesmer, the result a sort of noise drenched slowcore, dramatic and intense, a little bit doomy, before finishing off with a sort of Sunroof!-style ur-drone.
"Augury In An Evaporating Tower" starts off all power electronics buzz, the sounds layered and shifting like some sort of deconstructed riff, which could have gone on forever as far as we're concerned, but instead the band slip into some serious buzzing and blasting blackness, the transition is fantastically abstract and creepy, but once they're in it, it's about as black metal as we've heard these guys, the black buzz rife with al manner of tangled melodies, the sound strangely muted and woozy, eventually giving way to a buzzing psychedelic second half, that sounds a bit like a more fracture blackened Barn Owl, moody and melancholy, before slipping right into "Corprolite", which begins with a gorgeous bit of decaying sound, a little Tim Hecker, a little Philip Jeck, warbly and crumbling, which is soon joined by some acoustic guitars, and some tribal drumming, until other guitars surface, adding heft and turning it into something resembling a Swans jam, albeit still minimal, instrumental, and wreathed in crumbling crackle.
The 17 minute title track finishes things off with a slow build epic, starting with some John Carpenter like pulses, overlaid by some heavier synth buzz, some spidery guitars, and lots of other layers gradually creeping into the picture, while way off in the background, vocals howl, drums pound, electronics hum and whir, the sound staying pretty abstract the whole time, but eventually building to a sort of wall of black buzz, before fading out in a squall of sine waves, throbbing synths, fractured electronics, and looped industrial noise. Seriously killer stuff. We're often skeptical when bands release so much stuff, but these guys never fail to deliver.
Packaged in super glossy jackets with some of the coolest cover photography we've seen. Includes a printed insert and a download card.
This two-fer is a strange sort of reissue, ostensibly a re-release of Locrian's 2011, previously vinyl-only The Clearing album on cd for the first time, but also including a whole disc of unreleased material called The Final Epoch. More on that disc in a second. First up, The Clearing, here's our review from when we listed the lp version last year:
The Clearing is the latest from the Chicago duo of Andre Foisy and Terence Hanuum, now seemingly permanently expanded to a trio with Steven Hess on drums, and like past records, these guys effortlessly conjure up another series of haunting dronescapes and blackened ambience, opening with a creeping sprawl of funereal piano, wreathed by all manner of distant industrial clatter and metallic buzz, before finally transforming into a proper song, complete with clean vocals, loping drums, laid atop a wild squall of feedback and squealing guitars, all blurred into an undulating stretch of softly caustic mesmer, the result a sort of noise drenched slowcore, dramatic and intense, a little bit doomy, before finishing off with a sort of Sunroof!-style ur-drone.
"Augury In An Evaporating Tower" starts off all power electronics buzz, the sounds layered and shifting like some sort of deconstructed riff, which could have gone on forever as far as we're concerned, but instead the band slip into some serious buzzing and blasting blackness, the transition is fantastically abstract and creepy, but once they're in it, it's about as black metal as we've heard these guys, the black buzz rife with al manner of tangled melodies, the sound strangely muted and woozy, eventually giving way to a buzzing psychedelic second half, that sounds a bit like a more fracture blackened Barn Owl, moody and melancholy, before slipping right into "Corprolite", which begins with a gorgeous bit of decaying sound, a little Tim Hecker, a little Philip Jeck, warbly and crumbling, which is soon joined by some acoustic guitars, and some tribal drumming, until other guitars surface, adding heft and turning it into something resembling a Swans jam, albeit still minimal, instrumental, and wreathed in crumbling crackle.
The 17 minute title track finishes things off with a slow build epic, starting with some John Carpenter like pulses, overlaid by some heavier synth buzz, some spidery guitars, and lots of other layers gradually creeping into the picture, while way off in the background, vocals howl, drums pound, electronics hum and whir, the sound staying pretty abstract the whole time, but eventually building to a sort of wall of black buzz, before fading out in a squall of sine waves, throbbing synths, fractured electronics, and looped industrial noise. Seriously killer stuff. We're often skeptical when bands release so much stuff, but these guys never fail to deliver.
So as mentioned above, included here with The Clearing is also The Final Epoch, a collection of previously released material, from various cassettes and things, on labels like Small Doses, Deathsmile, Tape Drift and Black Horizons. Five long songs that while not a proper record, definitely play out as one, and are a pretty good foil for the Clearing. The opening track is a gorgeous bit of droned out tension, all deem billowy rumbles, warm swells of melodic feedback, almost like a darker more intense and metallic Expo 70, the shrieked vox buried in the mix pushing it from meditative kosmische into abject blackened industrial, but without making it any less blissed out and mesmerizing. From there on out the disc drifts into Our Love Will Destroy The World like chaotic swirl and skree, building lush landscapes from heavily reverbed guitars and keening high end shimmer, dubbed out and droney, lush and layered, slipping into hushed minimalism here and there, but more often flitting from churning black thrum to dense tangled melodic mesmer, many of the songs laced with cool little looped guitar figures that remind us of Durutti Column, those elements woven into Locrian's blackened soundscapes makes for something tripped out and weirdly transcendental.
The final two tracks find the sound starting out as an abstract bit of spaced out subtly twangy atmospheric riffage, hints of Earth and Barn Owl, but that dark dreamy drift is soon subsumed by more thick viscous washes of crumbling blackness, before finishing things off with a gorgeous gristly noisy droned out closer, that sounds like the Dead C but more spare and spacey, lots of buzz, and crackle, tangled atonal feedback, rumbles and thrums, a churning droned out muted riffscape, that eventually blossoms into a soaring, keening noise drenched celestial ur-drone. So good.
Both discs housed in printed inner sleeves, those sleeves in a super fancy old school tip-on full color mini lp style gatefold jackets.
Full length number three from these black drone audio alchemists, offering up their latest sprawling epic, this one conceptually based on a JG Ballard novel about a leper colony, and the mysteriously crystallizing forest that threatens their existence. Heady stuff, but the sort of concept perfectly suited to Locrian's sprawling sonic mystery, epic and cinematic, haunting and harrowing, the music of Locrian already plays like a soundtrack, their sound evoking all manner of other worlds and alternate realities, lost civilizations and spiritual planes, underworlds and inner worlds and what lies between.
Normally a duo, here Locrian have been expanded to a trio, with an additional member contributing electronics and percussion, allowing the band to expand their sound even further, stretching out into lengthy explorations, drifting from deep buzzing drones to starry fields of glitched out electronics, swooping spacey black ambience to lumbering blackened doom, abstract post rock to churning crumbling low end dirges.
After what plays like a black metal power electronic intro, all corrosive black buzz, layered drones, distant buried melodies, howled anguished vox, and delicate tinkling chimes, the record shifts into a more tranquil blackness, the two tracks connected by those tinkling chimes, that melodic refrain, distant melodies drift beneath chant like vocals, processed guitar throb and thrum, eventually evolving into a stretch of gorgeously epic doomic plod, deep ominous vocals over keening high end melodies, subtle tribal drumming, and swirling ambience, a glacial groove that finally dissolves into a squall of white noise.
Gorgeous looped proggy guitars drift over electronic squelches, dizzying and hypnotic, multiple guitars layered into a mesmerizing harmony, eventually, another melody, and a thick crumbling distorted riff join in, drums too, and it's a fantastic bit of hypnotic chaos, laced with squealing guitars and bursts of free drum splatter.
The record unfurls an epic bit of hushed dronemusic minimalism, that also eventually erupts into some abstract rhythmic churn, looped and cyclical, all over grinding guitars and FX drenched squealing electronics, before slipping into some caustic blackened drones, abject and grim, the guitars rumbling and crumbling and super distorted, while voices wail and howl way off in the distance. Finally the record finishes with a long stretch of moody melodic doom, acoustic guitars, crooned wordless vox, swirls of psychedelic guitar, high end electronic streaks, which expand into another pounding dirge, this one strangely pretty, even the anguished vokills can't take way from the track's lilting loveliness, a hazy bit of metallic slowcore, wrapped in increasingly frantic psychguitar, before all of that fades out completely, leaving just acoustic guitar, strings and what sounds like harmonium or accordion, a darkly emotional outro, culminating in a wild tangle of frenzied freaked out strings.
But that's just the first disc. Disc two continues with a nearly 54 minute single track, all instrumental, an epic sprawling, ever shifting chunk of blackened dronemusic, that could have easily been its own record. Deep ominous pulses, give way to hazy washed out melodies, laid over that ominous low end creep, which slips into spaced out looped electronics and haunting stretches of chantlike chorales, blown out blasts of white noise psychguitar splinter into blurred expanses of soft focus static, all wrapped around buried melodies, and muted metallic riffage, huge pummeling sheets of blown out black rrrrooaar plunge directly into black hole shimmer, laced with woozy bass thrum, and finally a stretch of tinkling echo drenched ambience, a swirling cloud of tinkling guitar melodies wrapped in thick black rumbles, and creepy looped laughter.
Epic and gorgeous, LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES! Housed in a super swank Stoughton style cd gatefold with gorgeous grim art by aQ pal Justin Bartlett, aka Vuberkvlt.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ultra crazy limited tour only 3"cd-r from these Chicago blackened dronelords, we tried to order a ton of these, but managed to get less than a dozen. Considering it was limited to 93 copies, and most of those went on tour with the band, these are most likely the last and only copies we'll ever get.
Which is a bummer cuz this is really great. Two tracks, both the same length, the second is the exact reverse of track one - which makes this a musical palindrome. Prettier than most of the other Locrian stuff, delicate and drifty, washed out and woozy, long fuzzy layered drones, a little bit space-y, very hypnotic and trancelike, the end of the first track (and thus the beginning of the second) builds to a buzzing blown out looped sounding coda, which then follows the reverse path through the length of the second track eventually settling back down into some soft sun dappled dronebliss, before finally fading out completely. Quite lovely, even the heavy parts are more pretty than heavy. Only 10 or so of these in stock. Be quick, or be without...
LIMITED TO 93 COPIES. Housed in a mini plastic sleeve, with a cool black on black fold out insert.
Christoph Heemann (of HNAS , Mirror, and many other storied tape music/drone outfits), finds himself in yet another collaboration, this time with none other than aQ faves, Chicago's blackened doom drone duo Locrian, and the results are fruitful to say the least. Albeit a bleak and black fruit, that the shiny and happy amongst you might be hesitant to taste. But then, there's much to enjoy, even for the less adventurous, in the moody drifting darkness conjured up here.
We see Locrian dialing back the harshness in favor of a more hushed and dreary post apocalyptic soundscapery. Opener "Hecatomb" starts with a creepily stark, almost Nitschian drone, complete with what sound like a cacophony of burbling horns, with disassociated fragments of 12 string guitar floating atop a heady haze of drifting textures. Part way through a lush drift of beautiful piano harmonies intermingle with a pulsating tom tom, while scraping doom-laden electronics lie buried beneath the surface, creating a haunting whirlpool of mesmeric aphotic bliss. The proceedings take a much grimmer turn with "Loathe The Light". As the title suggests, this is a dark one. Wonderfully depressive skeletal guitars outline the overall feeling of doomed helplessness. Scraping cymbals swell and clang and hiss, tortured blacked screams reverberate inside some long forgotten cavern. The mood is tense and forlorn and beautiful. "Edgeless City" has more of a lost in the cold depths of space vibe. Writhing guitar textures seep out across a barren moonscape, buzzing and dubbed out, it builds subtly into a spacious brooding stasis. A throbbing grumbling underpins the whole thing, a moody desolate soundtrack for impending end times. The last cut "The Drowned Forest" is a deep and murky miasma of death time vocal crooning and cold twisting drone harmonics, completely enveloping and angelic, like a much bleaker depressive Tim Hecker, the track as a whole developing into a churning lush hypnotizing swirl of glacial black drone. A stunning collaboration brought to us by the always ruling Handmade Birds imprint. RECOMMENDED!
Fyi, there's a cd version too, we have a handful, waiting to get more though...
Killer collaboration from these two aQ faves, both trafficking in a similarly ominous abstract minimalism, and who together have conjured up something pretty epic. The opening track begins as if to creep abjectly through some expanse of blackened thrum, but instead blossoms into something almost more Godspeed like, minimal propulsive drum pound, spare haunting piano melodies, distant vocals drifting ethereally over clouds of distorted buzz, and peppered with little bits of backwards effects. Haunting and heavy, epic and brooding, a cinematic sprawl that has one more surprise up its sleeve, the surprisingly heavy and metallic last couple minutes, buzzing guitars over monstrous drum pummel, transforming the sound into something even more epic and heavy.
Most of the rest of the record, seems to meld Locrian's penchant for distorted blackened dirgescapes and droned out psychedelia, to Mamiffer's stately haunting abstract chamber music, the tracks unfurling dark swirls of shimmering thrum and roiling, crumbling crunch, often smoothed into blissed out ambience, but just as often blurred and blackened into something much more corrosive and caustic, over which drift various tendrils of bleak melancholic piano melody, moaning whorls of bowed-string low end, sheets of gristly electronics and industrial clatter, as well as slow shifting clouds of smeared grey shimmer.
The record closes with a nearly 19 minute three part epic, which perfectly encapsulates the two groups' symbiotic collaboration, dark dolorous piano, ghostly angelic vox, over lush swells of chordal thrum, monk-like chants, spare acoustic guitar strum, which all disappears in a cloud of feedback drenched psychedelic guitar skree, before transforming into a stretch of FX heavy power electronics black-noise crunch, and then transforms again, into some sort of black doom trudge, gnarled super distorted guitar wrapped around booming almost jazzy drum damage, and a throat shredding metallic bellow, the result a glorious sprawl of minimal blackened industrial doom that eventually fades out to just a low level hum, and a slow, funereal, martial drum plod.
Gorgeous packaging too, both the vinyl and the cd in swank sleeves, with super striking artwork, the cassette version in a cd sized box, with a hand sewn booklet, and two stickers. The tape version limited to 200 copies...
Another fantastic split, on a list jam packed with killer splits, this one featuring recent aQ Record Of The Week honorees Locrian, whose The Crystal World double disc was a big hit around here, and Century Plants, a duo we dig who are WAY under represented on the aQ site, with only a single cd-r having ever been reviewed.
Unlike the black and buzz of The Crystal World, Locrian explores a sound world more hushed and minimal, more cinematic and soundtracky, two long tracks, that flow into one another, the first beginning with streaks of shimmering buzz, over deep ominous drifts, tinkling melodies way off in the distance, soon overcome by thick swaths of swirling thrum and whir, gorgeous shards of keening high end, bits of electronics and feedback, the sounds thickening as the track progresses, sounding more like a lost John Carpenter soundtrack that some avant/post black metal thing, haunting and atmospheric and mysterious. Which leads directly into the second track, pulsing, throbbing, muted melodies, a brooding tense slow build, strangely pretty, but still dark and ominous, plenty of murky buzz and roiling blackness beneath the surface, the track never exploding into something strictly heavy, instead, drifting darkly and dreamily as a suite of mysterious cinematic dronemusic.
Century Plants dial it down even further, an ultraminimal strum and drift, whispering riffage over a cavernous low end hum, tendrils of minor key melody intertwine with smears of moaning low end, soft swoops of backwards guitars, and super subtle effects, the sound gradually becoming more insistent, the guitars subtly buzzier and blacker. The second track begins similarly, a soft hushed shimmer, but quickly blossoms into something much more sinister, a thick slab of churning black SUNNO)))-ed buzz, a glacial low end drift, that heaves and roils, but is deftly smoothed into something more tranquil and otherworldly, than heavy and harrowing.
Fantastic stuff from both bands. Definitely needing to hear more Century Plants, and of course can never get enough of Locrian.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, housed in a beautiful silkscreened blue metallic ink on matte black sleeve, with heavy printed insert.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Killer tag team from two of Chicago's finest, Locrian and Harpoon. We've long been fans of Locrian's grim dark drift, infusing their ritualistic black ambience with plenty of black metal, but here, they go full on black, spitting out a slab of dirgey, muted, murky, howled hate. After a rumbling intro, the track explodes into a swirling cloud of frenzied riffing, loping demonic pound, and shrieked anguished vokills, with the drummer from Velnias driving them in their dirgey blackened plod, grim and atmospheric and surprisingly metal. We dig. Ambient drone fanciers might be a bit... overpowered, but everyone else will definitely dig.
The flipside comes from Harpoon, who we've yet to list, which is a bummer as it features ex members of LONG time aQ faves (and tUMULt recording artists!) 7000 Dying Rats. But Harpoon is not comedy grind, no this is some serious metallic brutality, slipping from frenzied blackened thrash, to pounding downtuned doom, throat shredding vox, crushing riffage, all wound around some complex arrangements and of course some seriously brutal drum damage.
A pretty heavy seven inches for sure. And in some seriously sweet packaging. Letter pressed black on black gatefold sleeve on super thick nice cardstock, green and black swirled vinyl, a full color two sided printed insert, and a download card.
Two disc set. One of the discs is atmospheric layers of electronica of the not-quite-noisy noise flavor, as we have loved Locust for in the past. This is a cool soundin' disc, but it's meant to be played simultaneously with an accompanying CD wherein Locust's
We always wanted to like those Locust records that came out in the '90s, with their alluring 4AD-inspired visual aesthetics and matching moody atmospherics, the sound a darkly silken electronica. Even though Locust's principal technician Mark Van Hoen had worked on the best Seefeel albums (and the underappreciated side project Scala), his work in Locust never really hit the mark. The baroqueness of it all seemed a bit too contrived. The female vocals that he was so fond of seemed superfluous as well. So when Van Hoen resurrected his career last year with a record under his own name on Editions Mego, we approached it with some skepticism, but thankfully that skepticism was unfounded as he finally delivered an album of what we always hoped for. The strengths of that album - the spooky atmospheres, the hypnotic sequencing, and those breakbeats which align so nicely next to the best from Boards of Canada - are reprised here on You'll Be Safe Forever, the first Locust album in nearly 12 years.
A somber tranquility eases through You'll Be Safe Forever, with its heavily reliance on swelling ambient synths, languid samples, dark-eyed kosmische vibes, and deconstructed pop motifs. Even when Van Hoen revs up things up on a track like "Strobes," the punchiness of crunched rhythms and taut arpeggiation dissolve within the hypnotic patterning from his female vocal samples and bleary-eyed drones. "The Washer Woman" with its painterly sequencing, skittering rhythm track and tone-bent melodies has all of the tropes of a great Biosphere track. By the end of the record especially on "The Flower Lady" and "Subie", Van Hoen hits those blunted notes of low-slung basslines and slow-motion grooves that would have been right at home on Mo' Wax back in the day. One of the finest electronica records of 2013 for sure.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
How many times can you re-release the same record? Many times it seems. So here is yet another version of the Locust's ultra-brief masterpice of spazzy, keyboard-flecked new wave grind. The twist this time is that the tracks are split up over 4 colored vinyl 7"s that just happen to be shaped like puzzle pieces, that all fit together to form.....a four colored...ummm...square! Kinda hoping for some sort of picture or something, but it's still pretty cool. AND VERY COLLECTABLE of course!!!! Limited to 3000.
Finally on cd (the 7" got a headstart earlier this year) and with bonus tracks to boot! This ep also includes their songs from the puddle-shaped split 7" they did with Arab On Radar. If you're familiar with this San Diego quartet, you already know that their
