A reissue... well, sorta. Two of these early songs from San Diego sonic assault circus The Locust (along with the peculiar 'nose removal' cover art) were formerly available on a split 5" vinyl picture disc with their pals Jenny Piccolo. It was released on Justin Locust's label Three.One.G. back in 1999. The pair o' eardrum blisters now re-emerge with one more song on an odd little roundish square cdep (those boys love their novelty shaped records and cds, don't they?!). Total running time of these three songs? Just over three minutes!
A mysterious release from the Seattle-based fanclub of San Diego sonic assault team The Locust. This lathe-cut 7" is one side sight (a screen-print of The Locust's one-winged logo), and one side sound (six uncharacteristically spartan, yet suitably
Holy shit... New Erections indeed! While in the past The Locust have been frequently typecast as just another obnoxious, bratty, fuck-you band of perpetual malcontents, they've grown to be one of the most tight, virulent units around. This album's first track alone ("Aotkpta") turns the hardcore and metal contingents on their collective ear. Old Locust fans fear not, there's still plenty of splatter and thunder, but there's also a fierce precision that sets them apart from the pack. If there was any question, New Erections confirms that the band's four members have got chops to spare. Unlike many of their contemporaries who equate the punk rock ethos with rushed and raw sloppiness, The Locust slice through your ear cartilage with speed and exacting mathematics, leaving them a bloody heap of complex tatters. Exceptional musicianship at every turn coupled with their consistently concentrated tenacious count-that-shit! fury, not to mention Joey Karam's obvious thorough knowledge of analog synthesis makes for a huge, awesome sounding end result. With regards to the latter, Karam's synthesizers are all analog which means each gnarly sound (of which there are many!) needed to be individually dialed in, honed and crafted. Furthermore, it's not an overstatement to say that at this point Gabe Serbian can go toe to toe with any of today's top drummers. Another new development that was immediately noticeable was that their multi-part vocals have been pitched down from their trademark screech-bark making the nihilistic lyrics somewhat more decipherable.
Still as short-winded as ever, The Locust are the lean mean masters of succinctness, executing all of the above in less than twenty four minutes. Fucking great!
Who would have thought that The Locust and Tom Waits would ever be on the same label? And that that label would be run by the guy from Bad Religion? Certainly not me. But it's true. San Diego's The Locust (the 'the' is mandatory) find their new home on Anti, part of the mighty punk rock label Epitaph, and have thankfully made the always daunting major label leap with their stupid/funny song titles, camoflage bug-boy costumes, and grinding new wave hyperblast pummel intact. Twenty three songs, averaging about 55 seconds each, all with song titles like "Identity Exchange Program Rectum Return Policy", "Earwax Halo Manufactured For The Champion In All Of Us", and "Late For A Double Date With A Pile Of Atoms In The Water Closet." The Locust are a crushing grindcore juggernaut, that somehow ended up with new wave keyboards, that bloop and bleep and fart over everything, turning what could have been run of the mill grind into a wild circus-y funhouse of splattery blast beats, riffs that slither from metal to no wave and back again in the span of seconds, and rumbling, fuzzed out synths that make the whole thing sound like Adult or Fischerspooner having the shit beat out of them by Agoraphobic Nosebleed. If only!!
Have those blisters on your eardrums finally healed from listening to The Locust's 2003 full length Plague Soundscapes? Good... 'cuz the boys have returned to do some more damage. Their Safety Second, Body Last EP threatens to tear right through your eardrums and get to gnawing on those cochleas. Mmmm. Each of the two tracks is remarkably lengthy (well, at least for this band whose songs usually clock in at under a minute long!). The first is just over six minutes long, while the second is just under four. Mind you, there are quiet moments in each track that sorta breaks things up into more familiar Locust-y shorter spurts. Plus to make things even more puzzling, printed on the back of the cd are not two but four (!) song titles complete with subtitles (happy to see that their song titles are still in top form, if a little uncharacteristically short-winded). Overall, this is a bit slower, more sludge-y and more grinding than usual, but it still offers up their trademark acid-spit screamo vocals, blurble-fart synths and rapidfire drumming. That said, this is by no means�simply a no-brain, messy pile of noise. No! In case, you're not familiar with�this band,�there's definitely a degree of precision and order to The Locust's music. There's rhythmic switch-ups and twisted synth melodies that�make their presence more than felt�throughout the ten minutes.
FYI: This time they come via Mike Patton's label Ipecac Recordings, home to many likeminded auditory system abusing artists.
Not to be confused with The Locust's self-titled 3"cd *album* from 1999, this self-titled 3"cd is classified as an EP... it only has eleven songs after all! It was originally released back in 1997 on 7" vinyl. So all of you that missed out the first time around, and all of you who are new to the spasmodic surging splendor and analog assault of this fierce San Diego foursome (perhaps via their considerably more widely available Plague Soundscapes album on Anti Records), strap your tourniquet around this baby!
Finally on cd! Originally released as a double 12": one record containing less than a minute's worth of the trademark sonic pummelling by San Diego's The Locust plus an ultra stunning etched b-side, and the other record filled with the same song getting all remixed and electronically fucked up by a variety of their friends, from Christoph De Babalon (a 109-second carnivorous nightmare) to Kid 606 (much more Kid than Locust) to Bastard Noise (a truncated 47-second splatter) to I Am Spoonbender (abducting us on an epic 6-minute Locust adventure), and others. The only disappointment with this cd version would have to be the packaging. Let's face it, visually the military green camo cd is no match for the twin toxic lime, etched vinyl attack, but if you need some good morning music...so much better than an alarm clock.
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We stocked up on this one, but it'll probably still go real fast 'cause, well, the word for fans of either band is "rabid". You know what I'm talking about if you're one of 'em. And it's on colored vinyl, a nice marbled orange color. The music? Extreme hardcore. 5 songs from San Diego screamo kids The Locust and 2 from Japanese spazzers Melt Banana. With disturbing cover art from Born Against's Sam McPheeters.
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Two of the leading lights in the dubstep underground team up for this killer slab of modern digital dubbed out bliss. Unlike the spastic over the top manic energy of grime, dubstep is way more laid back, spare and sparse, like a modern more junglized version of African Head Charge or Twilight Circus. The same sort of synth sounds and digital production, lots of King Tubby echo, but more sleek and space aged.
Digital Mystikz spit out a super abstract, stripped down blown out shuffle, with weird distant keening siren-like high end, and fuzzy low end squelches that sort of rumble and wobble dizzily.
Loefah counters with some super druggy modern dub, a dubstep steeped in the sounds of classic old skool dub, but given a glitchy stuttery makeover. A super minimal, ultra hypnotic rhythm, swirling synths drenched in reverb and echo-ed into oblivion. Huge loping grooves drenched in thick clouds of outer space bong smoke. Awesome.
Best known as the bass player for Sebadoh (he also joined Will and Ned Oldham on Palace Music's "Viva Last Blues"), Jason Loewenstein sets out on his own with his first solo album. In Sebadoh, it was inevitable that his songwriting skills would be overshadowed by the irrepressible works of Barlow. Nevertheless, he did contribute an increasing number of songs on later albums. Unfortunately it seems what made those songs work more often than not was the presence of Barlow. Left to his own devices, Loewenstein veers into straight-up indie rock terrain full of loose and stringy electric guitars and trundling bass ("Circles"). There's driving numbers that fit well with the current crop of Hellacopters and Hives rock'n'roll ("Codes"), and strange grungey "heavy metal" guitars ("H/M"). The songs that seem to click here (like "Upstate") are the ones you soon realise sound just like Sebadoh crossed with Sonic Youth.
Led by Michael Krassner of Boxhead Ensemble, The Lofty Pillars deliver a rich, earthy second full length. Considerably less pop than their "When We Were Lost" album but no less lovely and orchestral. If you liked their previous release or perhaps the beautiful, moving sounds of Calexico, this is for you. The Lofty Pillars also feature folks who play with Wilco, Simon Joyner, and
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Michael Krassner, known as the leader of the tangentially Tortoise/Chicago-scene-related soundtrack "supergroup" the Boxhead Ensemble, debuts his new band, also featuring songwriting partner Wil Hendricks. The Lofty Pillars don't play the doleful chamber-music stuff that Boxhead Ensemble specialized in though: this is much more of a pop thing.
Solo project from member of Doo Rag, and that's exactly how it sounds.
Released in 1976, Logan's Run remains one of the coolest and most fantastically stylized sc-fi cult classics EVER. If you haven't seen it, go rent it now, you won't be sorry. It's the tale of a future world that is all about hedonistic pleasure, free love, recreational drug use, routine plastic surgery, random sexual encounters, the only hitch is that when you turn 30, you go through a ceremonial slaughter. Each citizen has a small jewel implanted in the palm of their hand, and when 30 comes it begins to blink. Logan's Run concerns a certain guard, who gleefully hunts down runners, people who decide to try and escape their fate, and drag them back for execution, until he falls in love, and begins to question the system, even moreso when his jewel begins to blink, and thus he decides to run. Outside the city, they discover a ruined Washington D.C. overgrown with plants, a post apocalyptic wasteland, and, well, without giving more away, it's trippy and psychedelic and totally cheesy and over the top. The set design is classic seventies futurism, lots of neon, and crystals, and sparkly clothing, and the holographic entertainment is outrageous and again super cheesy, the ladies are beautiful and are dressed in wild futuristic gowns (Farrah Fawcett plays the plastic surgeon's assistant, and is appropriately seventies hott), and there's a robot that they meet in an ice cave, and okay, if you haven't decided to rent it already, we're not sure what's wrong with you! Needless to say, a tripped out psychedelic vision of the future like this needed a similarly futuristic psychedelic soundtrack, which it did indeed get, courtesy of Jerry Goldsmith, and the whole thing (and then some) is reproduced here. And what with the current craze of sonically worshipping John Carpenter and Goblin and that whole retro-futuristic thing going on, it seemed like the perfect time for people who were maybe not even born at the time to get a load of THIS, which sounds in many ways like what lots of folks know are doing.
Sure it's symphonic, it is a score after all, but there's lots of sci-fi / electronic weirdness, in fact the whole soundtrack starts with a pulsing bit of buzzing synth, before slipping into some soaring strings, but then it's right back to some creepy spaced out ambience, all bleeps and bloops, electronic squiggles and alien melodies, and the whole score sort of slips back and forth, from traditional orchestral score, to avant freaked out psychedelic electronics, often melding the two brilliantly.
"Flameout" is all analog synths, and twisted effects, super cheesy and eighties, but also ominous and mysterious, Theremin like melodies, electronic rhythms, atonal cascades of 8 bit analog crunch. "Fatal Games" begins with some sort of processed electronic rhythm, pulsing, motorik, before strange liquid ambience oozes into the picture, and suddenly it sounds like some sort of lo-fi analog alien electro. And so it goes, strings soar and shimmer, electronics buzz and warble, synths whir and thrum, some tracks are goofy and over the top, others are ominous and intense with wild Bernard Hermann like string stabs, while others are super jagged and atonal and dramatic, and still others are swoonsome and melodic.
Such a great movie, and such a great soundtrack. Released on the same label that gave us The 5000 Fingers Of Dr. T ( a recent Record Of The Week) and the killer Klute / All The Presidents Men soundtrack, which means, like those, the presentation is elaborate, with a huge booklet, rife with amazing liner notes, pictures, production stills, photos, not to mention super detailed notes on each track, describing the track itself, and then what's going on in the movie while said track plays. Wow.
Another batch of essential and long overdue ESP reissues. This one was recorded in 1965 by one Giuseppi Logan, former sideman of Archie Shepp, Pharaoh Sanders and Patty Waters! Features a pretty stellar group (including Milford Graves) of musicians who have
The strangely monikered Logh are a Swedish outfit who traffic in slightly dissonant indie post rock a la Sonic Youth. In fact they sound quite a bit like Sonic Youth at times. Not sure how they ended up on Hydra Head, but what the heck, we all have our soft side, and we know the guys at HH love more than just metal, so now they're finally opening up and showing us their secret sensitive side. But Logh are not -soft- really, just softer than their Hydra Head labelmates. A lot of the Sonic Youthisms are due to frontman Matthias Friberg's very Thurston-like laconic drawl, vocals almost spoken, in that immediately recognizable indie sing-song, but where Sonic Youth veer into atonal guitar skree, Logh sort of drift through various stages of jangle and lilt, at their most propulsive and rocking, they could be mistaken for Blonde Redhead, but they spend way more time droning dreamily along, warm washes of guitar over shuffling simple rhythms, guitars chime and ring out. At times Logh sound like an indie doom band, with lots of plodding tempos beneath blissed out guitarscapes, vocals sprawled lazily over the top. Really dark and shimmery, moody and angular. A Sunset Panorama is a haunting late night soundscape of dark indie jangle and lazy post rock guitar scrawl, sunny on the outside, but the songs reveal their ominous and creepy darksides a little bit more on each listen. Which is definitely what makes Logh so appealing and presumably what makes them feel right at home on Hydra Head, nestled firmly between Oxbow, Old Man Gloom, Pelican, Discordance Axis, Cave In and Jesu, which, the more we listen, doesn't seem like such an odd thing after all.
Cold Mission is the debut full length from UK producer Logos, who has some connection to aQ faves Dusk & Blackdown, and traffics in a similar strain of post dubstep electronica. But unlike the cinematic ambience of D&B, Logos' sound seems to fall closer to the slow-mo soul of folks like Vessel and oOoOO, equal parts jungle, dubstep and grime, but given a druggy, drowsy makeover. Logos unfurls sprawling swirls of synthscapery wrapped around fractured beats, and gouts of rib cage rattling bass, but like much of this stuff, Cold Mission doesn't sound destined for the dancefloor, instead, the vibe is abstract and avant, more of a wasted late night chill out sort of feel, skittery rhythms drift amidst softly billowing clouds of chordal thrum, peppered with muted synth pads, and reverbed vocal fragments, many of the tracks almost sound like the intros to dubstep jams, stretched way out into proper songs, slow building and tense, as if some huge drop was just around the corner, but the drop never comes, instead, the sound just billows outward, like a time lapse film of a slowly expanding universe transformed into sound. There are also lots of field recordings woven into the mix, chirping birds, chittering insects, crickets, making the music sound strangely pastoral, even at its most sinister, it's not hard to imagine chilling out on some grassy knoll, the stars glimmering in a black sky, these sounds washing over you. The third track, "Surface Area" is where it first comes all together, weird metallic percussive clatter, peppering swirling cascades of arpeggiated synths, super kosmische and ethereal, all underpinned by thick waves of bass rumble, crickets off in the distance, total blissed out ambient dub weirdness, that might be our favorite jam here, but that's a tough call, cuz throughout, Logos conjures up all sorts of abstract trippiness, his post dubstep about as 'post' as it can get, check out "Swarming", another sprawling swath of crystalline shimmer, this one laced with minor key melodies, haunting FX, thick rumbling bass, DJ style rewinds, again, all blurred into something spacey and nearly psychedelic.
Even the more beat heavy tracks are pretty out there: "Seawolf" is all rubbery synth buzz, fragmented stutter beats, there's the cock of a shotgun in there too, as well as some video game 8-bit sound FX, the first few minutes sounding like an intro, again until you realize, there is no intro, the beat lurching and lumbering through fields of glitch and squelch and buzz. The one track featuring Dusk & Blackdown is actually the most straight ahead jam here, but that's not saying much, it's still super dubbed out and abstract, this time laced with voices, strange synth blurts, more rewinds, like most of the tracks here, never fully reaching terminal velocity, every time it sounds like the beats gonna kick in proper, the song fractures and morphs into a twisted tangle, although in the case of this track, the sound suddenly shifts into something synthy and spacey and unlike almost anything else on the record. From there on out, it's more of the same, which is to say, not the same at all. A lurching stuttery synth wreathed beatscape, bleeds directly into the gorgeously cinematic title track, all gristly glitch, swoonsome synth, and crumbling distorted bass, which leads directly into a strange bit of almost tropical sounding ambience, like the Field via the Orb via James Ferraro? Trippy, dreamy stuff for sure.
The record finishes off with a killer one two punch. First, "Wut It Do", where Logos lets his jungle freak flag fly, the closest to a proper jungle jam for sure, but even then, the song is constantly shifting, the various loops and samples, maddeningly repeated, footstep style, but ultimately, has us wondering what a slightly less abstract Logos record might sound like, pretty goddamn great we're guessing. But before we can think about that too much, the sound slips right back into the Cold Mission avant-dubstep / post jungle dreaminess, sounding a bit like a dubbed out jungle new age, all swirling synths, chirping crickets, tinkling chimes, some vocals and a little bass buzz, as well as some spaced out stuttery beats, those beats eventually dropping out, leaving the last few minutes to unwind as a super trippy, super dynamic new age / dubstep mashup!
Much like his contributions to Kompakt's aptly titled compilation "Pop Ambient," Ulf Lohmann's "Because Before" teeters dangerously close to the corny aspects of electronic ambient music, but manages to infuse enough interesting and puzzling sounds
The "Before" LP is the vinyl companion disc to Ulf Lohmann's "Because Before," with the a-side of the album presenting edited versions of the filmic ambient loopings found on the CD. The b-side has a huge unrelenting Mike Ink techno stomp that is nothing like the Pop Ambient sounds from the a-side or the CD version. To quote Kompakt, this untitled piece is a
A while back someone (Adam from Spaceboy, maybe) told me about a new band called Loincloth that featured ex-members of Breadwinner (guitarist Pen Rollings) and Confessor (drummer Steve Shelton). And now it has come to pass that said band has released a 7" single bearing the Southern Lord stamp of approval (and heaviness). First off, isn't Loincloth a great name for a metal band? Secondly, Breadwinner and Confessor?!?!? Whoo-hoo! All the mathy metal chops that made those bands so great are present in this all-instrumental four piece -- two guitarists, with Pen in the left channel and another dude on the right -- that's technical and complex yet heavy and metal. With just two songs here, it's a bit more difficult to fully get into this than we feel a whole album would be, so we look forward to a full-length release at some point soon -- perhaps on the Swami label, 'cause you'll find another Loincloth track on the Swami label comp recently reviewed here (for which we made an audio sample if you want to get a further idea of their sound).
Wuz all set and excited to write a review of the eagerly anticipated (by Allan here in particular) new album by technical sci-fi thrash wunderkinds Vektor, entitled Outer Isolation, which just came out last week. Unfortunately, our suppliers dropped the ball and we couldn't get enough to list this time, but hopefully will next time - remember the name! However, totally making up for that, guess what suddenly shows up early, giving us our technical math metal mega fix? The long awaited debut full-length album from Loincloth! And by "long-awaited", we mean since 2003!!! Yep, it's been years and years since Loincloth debuted with a two-song 7" on Southern Lord, so we weren't really expecting this full-length to ever materialize, yet here it is. And we're as stoked now, as we were when that 7" came out. Why were we so stoked? 'Cuz, if you didn't know, Loincloth was formed by members of both ex-Earache tech-doomsters Confessor (drummer Steve Shelton, bassist Cary Rowells) -AND- brilliant math rock pioneers Breadwinner (guitarist Pen Rollings, also ex-Honor Role, ex-Butterglove)!
Now, Richmond, VA's Breadwinner, were only one of thee most significant bands of the '90s, for some of us anyway. According to Encyclopedia Metallum (where were were sorta surprised to find an entry for 'em), they coined the term "math rock". Dunno if that's true, but it could be. Meanwhile, Confessor, from Raleigh, NC, they're the band that The Fucking Champs ritualistically listened to a tape of in the van before every show they ever played...
And yes, Loincloth basically does sound like a hybrid of Breadwinner and Confessor. It's an all-instrumental, massively heavy prog-doom riff fest for sure. This album packs sixteen mind-jarring tracks into a little over 39 minutes, each one a chunky, chuggy, see-sawing, stop-start, on-off attack of wicked sick sludge tech. You wouldn't even know that Pen Rollings ISN'T in the band anymore (though he's thanked for "contributions" so perhaps he penned some of these riffs?). On the original 7", Pen was in one channel, with 2nd guitarist Tannon Penland in the other, now it's all Penland's show, and he takes care of the six string biznez just fine by himself.
You DO kinda have to have iron balls of steel to name your album Iron Balls Of Steel, but they pull it off, of course. Plus they're having some fun with macho manly metal tropes too, in the manner of their band name. But this ain't jokey when it comes to the music. Gloomy, grim, grindy, this is like the music of a more ordinary death or doom band that's been fractured and fragmented, pasted back together with post-rock glue... or just falling down the stairs, but with exquisite precision. We're talking jazz chops. As for vocals, who needs 'em? They'd only get in the way here. And if the interplay of the guitar riffs and intricate drumming weren't enough, there's also some quirky production shenanigans keep things interesting... Loincloth, with or without Pen Rollings, are still an underground instru-metal sensation, for fans of Confessor, Breadwinner, Gorguts, Electro Quarterstaff, Stinking Lizaveta, etc.
PS Kinda hoped they'd include the songs from the out of print 7" and Swami comp, but they didn't, oh well.
It makes sense and everything... Finland is dark and cold, with a winter that is bleak and inhospitable, forests, and huge expanses of frosty tundra, but it still seems impossible, or at least extremely unlikely, that there can be a seemingly neverending stream of gloriously depraved doom that continues to emanate from our favorite far away land. But who's complaining? Not us that's for sure. We can't get enough frozen Finnish weirdness, especially when it's of the doomy and sludgelike variety. And Loinen is most certainly both sludgelike and extremely doomy. But that's not nearly all.
Loinen (parasite in Finnish) traffic in "nihilist sludge core" and while that may be true, they do manage to add some interesting little sonic twists to what could be just another tarpit trudge through a downtuned wasteland. Which is not a bad thing, not at all, we could happily spend the rest of our days wrapped in a pair of headphones, crawling through a sonic wasteland as black as pitch, but when a band can create a bleak landscape that manages to transcend the typical, we're all the more thrilled.
The core sound is of course familiar, crumbling downtuned and ultra distorted guitars, churning riffs, pounding drums, and the glacial groove of dual bass crunch and drum pound makes up the framework of this whole disc, but Loinen, take a few liberties. One is a strange flair for the dynamic, no static slow motion riff trudgery, instead, the guitars, crunch and grind, stop and start, allowing lots of space to seep in, and building strange rhythms out of the doom. Very reminiscent of Dutch hypno-rockers Gore at times, with the churning looped vibe and the hypnotic repetitive arrangements. But the weirdest part of Loinen's doom-iverse is the vocals, a haunting croon, like some impossible mix of Scott Walker and Urfaust, sure there are howled demonic shrieks, but they spend most of the time buried way down in the mix, coming to the surface here and there, but it's those creepy soulful vocals that add an unexpected dimension to Loinen's doomy dirges. Turning some tracks into expansive epics that almost sound like some sort of doom metal Swans. Plus they even cover obscure Finnish punk legends Terveet Kadet! Awesome!
Packaged in an eye popping gatefold, all scrawled black and white madman illustrations, the sort of art you'd expect to see on the wall of a cell at an insane asylum, a tattooed figure, a toothy grimace, all sorts of crosses and clouds, little beasts and lots and lots of text. Cool.
LIMITED TO 524 COPIES!!!
If you're anything like us, all it will take is three simple words to convince you that you need this: FLUTE. FINLAND. NINETEEN SEVENTY ONE. Okay, so that last one's not really a single word, but yes, this fantastic chunk of Finnish Flute heavy jazz folk was indeed released in that musically mindblowing year, and is pretty much everything you could hope for from a seventies Finnish flautist, it's groovy, jazzy, folky, a little bit rocking and a lot bit pretty goddamn weird. Just take the opening track, after some field recordings of seagulls and lapping waves on the shore, Loiri whistles along to some simply strummed acoustic guitar, and suddenly you realize it's essentially a jazzed up cover of Blind Faith's "Can't Find My Way Home", hand drums and flutes swing in, some deep wordless "la la" vocalizing and then it's back to the waves and birds. Definitely an odd way to start a record, but these guys are Finnish after all.
The rest of the record is not so obviously strange (or is it?), the second track is some groovy flute driven folk, the flute playing is stellar, woozy stand up bass, intricate hand drumming and more steel string strum, there's some bluesy psychedelic guitar leads, and then there's a drum solo, accompanied by humming (or is that kazoo), and then it's right back into it, Loiri often singing and vocalizing through the flute (a la Roland Kirk), which makes it even more far out.
The record shifts gears constantly, the next track begins playful sing songy lullaby, suddenly transforming into some sort of gypsy folk music the next, what sounds like a drunken tavern sing along, and then it's right back to the lullaby like fluttery flute of the opening, and then a strange old field recording of a carnival or circus. All a single track. The next track is more straight ahead jazz, some incredible flute playing and amazing drumming, the next track too, sounding almost Latin Jazz, but then along comes "Mummon Kaappikello" a groovy bit of big band jazz, backing up some sped up chipmunk vocals, turning the otherwise trade jazz into something totally warped, and then it's right back into it, some seriously swinging seventies jazz funk, and still more kick ass flute.
The final three tracks are more folky jazzy grooviness, some serious strum heavy drum driven rhythmic jazz, gives way to some jazzy cabaret, with deep crooned dramatic vocals, and finally finishing off with a brief bit of folky flute and acoustic guitar that returns to the opening bit of Blind Faith. Wow. Awesome, and bizarre and amazing and easily one of the coolest things Porter has dug up. And again: FINLAND. FLUTE. 1971.
Eye popping pop art cover with a big foldout poster, both depicting Loiri in aviator's helmet and goggles, with a painted on bright yellow and red bullseye shirt and little angle's wings!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Lolita Storm as the actualization of Alec Empire's sexual fantasies? Or the DHR equivalent of Fuzzbox? Maybe. This all-girl quartet is constantly barking out pogo-punk semi-melodic recitations like "I want a meat injection" or "just give me hot lips, wet pants." Not really the most subtle of sexual innuendos, but explosive Amen / drum & bass breaks and squalid noise bursts do bury the lyrical inadequacies deep underneath the trademark electronic-punk hostility we have grown to love about DHR.
A beautiful reissue of spacey melancholic chanson from this Belgian chanteuse who notably won the Eurovision song contest in 1968 a year before this debut release. But what sets this apart from standard '60s Euro-pop are the electronic, almost avant-garde arrangements made mostly with an Ondes Martenot, a theremin-like electronic keyboard famously used in the Star Trek theme and championed at the time by French avant-classical composer Olivier Messaien. Fans of Stereolab and Broadcast as well as Linda Perhacs and Brigitte Fontaine will surely find lots to love here, and we would love this even more if the reissue retained the original cover which is more haunting and ethereal than the nineties /sixties space-age bachelor pad design featured here, but that's a very small complaint. Limited stock!
This huge ensemble of British new music/free jazz improvisers features such notable performers as Evan Parker, Kaffe Matthews, John Butcher, Steve Beresford, Lol Coxhill, Simon Fell, and many many more. Along with several dense pure improvisations from the ensemble, there's fluctuating pieces which have been 'conducted' (rather than scored) by various members of the group, exhibiting the dexterity, muscularity, and most importantly the sensitivity to subtle details of this synergetic group of musicians.
Killer new record on the resurgent Belgian electronic imprint R&S, here we have the latest from Matt Cutler, better known as Lone. "Galaxy Garden" Is a hyper-colored blast of glistening funky as hell UK two-steppin bass muzik! Some real frenetic, overly radiated glow in the dark, brain-melting recontextualized 'ardkore, ravebrained madness!!! Kinda like the sugar addicted, hyper active step brother of Burial (the one you chain up in the basement for fear that he might dance a hole into the kitchen floor).
Cutler's jams have always been very unique, and always super colorful and tripped out ("Coreshine Voodoo" is the quintessential example that comes to mind, released on the "Echolocations" ep in 2011 on R&S), but with "Galaxy Garden" the vision is complete. The songs are all meticulously layered affairs. Pristine synth sounds meld with shuffle steppin riddims, all dreamy and hypnotic, reverberated into the ether and catchy as hell. One of the elements that separates Cutler's music from other bass music makers is his intensely rhythmic and incredibly ear-wormy melodies. As heard throughout "Galaxy Garden", the melodic phrases extend and develop over the rhythmic tumult, floating above and carrying the sound further into a heavenly futuristic zone. Take for instance, the 4th cut "Lying In The Reeds", starting with a warmly analogue synthetic hypno-arpeggio outlining the progression, multilayered melodies weave into the song's fabric, building layer upon layer of blissed out texture and hooky melodies till about 1:40 in the drums drop out and a MOST beautifully enveloping pad swaddles your earholes and swirls about your mind, rippling sonic teardrops ping ponging from left to right, then the beat and bass kick back in just in time to bring you back to the groove. A space-bound jam for certain. Another standout track is "Crystal Caverns 1991", which also happens to be the lead single. Running at a frantic 140 bpm pace, this cut is an absolute brain melter! A torrent of hand percussion, aquatic synth squelch and psychotic RAVE stabs come together in a 5 minute flurry of future FUNK! All held together by Cutler's incredible melodic knack, and propelled by seriously HEAVY bass. This is the kinda music we imagine hearing piped through the subway system of some utopian city of the future! The perfect soundtrack for bullet train commuting. Or like a way more far out and bass heavy soundtrack to F-Zero, you remember? For SNES! A wondrous, glowing sound to cruise with through the twists and turns of some gleaming digital autobahn! �
The rest of "Galaxy Garden" follows suit. All the sounds melting and dripping and incredibly melodic, and the bass and drums heavy and propulsive. Lone's jams are like Oneohtrix Point Never on dancefloor steroids, or James Ferraro if it was more about function and less about concept (not that we really mind concept)... this is just beautiful, comic underworld SYNTH MAGIC! Trancey, warm and enveloping, fiercely rhythmic, and about as far out as any modern day New Ager so-and-so can claim to be. Lone just happens to aim his psychedelic, utopian-glow transcendence at the dance floor... and we love him for it! Double LP version includes a cd of the album! RECOMMENDED!!!!�
The one man band Lone Pigeon is a project of Gordon Anderson, one of the co-founders of the Beta Band (who were originally called The Pigeons, hence his current moniker) but who left in 1996 before they hit the big time. You can definitely hear the specific flavor that he imparted to the Beta Band -- the happy-go-lucky melodies, the repetitive, echoing, lonely vocals -- but this record is much more lo-fi, stripped down, and thus incredibly intimate. You really feel as if you've been offered (whether ya want it or not) entry into the guy's twisted brain, like the weirdo solo Skip Spence record, Oar, also did. I like this a lot more than the the Beta Band's later efforts made without him, and if you prefer the early Beta Band songs, sweet McCartney-penned Beatles tracks, Smiley Smile, Syd Barrett, etc, and can handle a little meandering, then you should listen to this record.
You can certainly tell that the multi-faceted man behind Lone Pigeon had a hefty hand in the formative years of Scotland's Beta Band (FYI: L.P. mainman Gordon Anderson was one of the founding members of B.B. who originally went by the moniker The Pigeons). Much like his former band, Lone Pigeon's witty crafty pop is capable of both lifting your spirits and bringing you down (in the best possible way!). It also mines the gamut of musical styles ('60s pop, psych, folk), but the actual execution of the songs can also be more shamblingly lo-fi than the much more grand endeavors of B.B. As if controlled completely by whim, songs will trail off or stop abruptly, instruments will jump in loudly and then meander. Vocals tumble into (we assume unintentional) haphazard distortion. Anderson's voice often affects a sleepy, tousled John Lennon-ish-ness, and there's definitely more evidence than of the degree of Beatles admiration that's going on here. A side note: We searched high and low for the titles to the sixteen tunes on the cd, but to no avail. Maybe they forgot?! You'll just have to go online and do a little sleuthing for yourself (as we did!). If you do, you'll discover that the name of the album's highlight (in our opinion) is the breezy, sentimental "Sallyzimmerman". You'll also find out that these songs were recorded prior to those on his last full length Concubine Rice.
Fans of samurai flicks and film soundtracks from the '70s, today we celebrate! First, we raise a cheer for Daigoro (aka the "Cub" in the title) -- undisputably the most adorable *and* badass tot to ever grace the silver screen. Yay! Then, we take this cd for a spin. It compiles musical selections from each of the six films which comprised the early '70s manga-based Baby Cart samurai movie series. The music is so eclectic that it's easy to think of composers Hideakira Sakurai and Kunihiko Murai as the Japanese counterparts to multifaceted American film score master David Shire (Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, Saturday Night Fever, The Conversation, etc.), but perhaps even more 'out-there'. Their compositions are certainly as wildly varied and unpredictable in style, and often times wildly incongruous with traditional samurai movie soundtracks. That's not all that surprising though because the series itself was truly one of a kind.
Oftentimes the proceedings are so densely packed that it seems like there are multiple (and very different) soundtracks overlapping one another. Frantic fevered measures gives way to dreamlike and hauntingly atmospheric passages. Traditional Japanese instruments such as koto, taiko drums, and shakuhachi stride serenely into a looming storm of synthesizer driven space prog-iness, unbound brassy jazz and orchestral thunder. Like the violent yet honorable swordsmanship, the music's sweeping, mighty gestures are executed with the utmost of control. This attention grabbing aural madness is strangely fitting for the films' striking imagery of too-red bloody fountains splashing across glinting swords, sand and snow covered expanses, claustrophobic tatami rooms, opulent royal courts... you get the picture? So awesome and recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Chicago's favorite (perhaps only) one man band plays an assortment of instruments (often at once) including: melodica, chord organ, chime piano, steel pan, speed up guitar, tap shoes, saw, and more. From catchy pop songs to moody soundscapes, really cool.
The lone Chicago fellow Jeremy Jacobsen might indeed be the Lonesome Organist, but he's also exceedingly adept at a number of other instruments and assorted noisemakers. He incorporates them all into his music which is just as varied in style as it is in instrumentation. With so much going on, you might think things would get a little chaotic or out of hand, but no! Jacobsen's got it all well under control with some very fine songcraft and musicianship. There's a sense of the grand and the tiny coming together on Forms And Follies. A bigtop circus! A vaudeville theater! An antique musicbox! In fact, you might even find his music stirring fond memories of the Musee Mechanique here in San Francisco, but then before you know it he's suddenly shifted gears over to a distorted trashy garage tune, then to a frantic organ mouse chase, then to some haunting barbershop-quartet-meets-Brian-Wilson-style vocal harmonizingand then... ??? Seemingly oblivious to current trends, Jacobsen follows his muse through dreams, nightmares, toyboxes, genres and decades. Won't you join him? Plus if the music ain't enough, the cd comes with a big (cd jewelcase sized) flipbook which shows some of the Lonesome Organist's hijinks. A splendid bizarre delight!
MPEG Stream: "Walking To Weston's" [/audio/lonesomeorgwalking.m3u]
Latest demo from Philly one man black metal band Lonesummer, and it's a doozy. Like on the last record, What We Were, Lonesummer's sound continues to confound and baffle, only black metal on the surface, there's way more going on that just blast and buzz. On what We Were it was sampled jazz records, female vocals, all kinds of backwards effects, a serious heaping helping of noise, not to mention some shoegazey poppiness, all wound up into a swirling tripped out chunk of psychedelic blackness. On this latest, if anything, both the poppiness AND the noisiness have been cranked way up, for yet another amazing blackened slab of heavy/pretty whatthefuck.
The record opens with a crumbling wall of feedback and buzz, before the song erupts in a total blast of in-the-red metalgaze, all pretty pop drift buried beneath an avalanche of distortion and Merzbowian buzz, which leads right into a track that is WAY at the other end of the spectrum, softly buzzing guitars, simple skeletal drum machine, a bit like a lo-fi bedroom brewed Cure, but with harsh demonic vox, and a weird almost new age sounding synth solo. Sounds weird, and it is, but if you didn't want weird, you would most definitely have bailed out of this review about ten sentences back.
From there on out, it's a series of schizophrenic sonic freakouts, from ultra lo-fi grim garage style raw primitive black buzz, to washed out woozy blackened melancholy drift, brittle guitars, trash can drums, shrieked vokills, but all drifting on a dreamy pure pop melody, to super blown out chaotic noise rock, but even then, shot through with some sort of unlikely melody, the entire sound threatening to collapse beneath the weight of so much distorted buzz and amp shredding crunch.
"Hyalophagia" is a blast of almost pure white noise, with some sort of thrashing blackness going on underneath, finishing off with a bizarre collage of foreign language samples and elevator music melodies. "9-25" is all dour spidery slowcore guitars, unfurling crystalline melodies in a wide open expanse of reverbed shimmer, peppered with sizzling cymbals, and chiming swaths of almost lush sounding harmonies. "Watch The Walls Instead" sounds like Casio black metal, a skittery programmed beat shuffles beneath sheets of warm muted buzz, as if there was a depressive black metal shoe gaze demo preset on those little keyboards. The final three tracks are variations on extreme black noisiness, flitting from raw primitive blast, to in the red pounding crunch, and finally back to loping minor key lo-fi blissed out blackened pop.
LIMITED TO 125 COPIES. Nicely packaged in printed envelopes with cardstock gatefold inserts...
Any band that stirs up tons of shit on the net, inspiring vitriolic tirades, definitely gets us interested, whether they can back it up sonically is another thing entirely.
Velvet Cacoon might be the best example, beginning life as a supposed Eco-Fascist black metal band, who created their dense drone-y buzz with a 'diesel harp', only later revealing that they were taking the piss. But it hardly mattered, cuz the music they made was totally transcendent, their sick sense of humor and antagonism toward the rest of the black metal scene only added to their appeal. So it should come as no surprise that Lonesummer, who share a label with Velvet Cacoon, are inspiring similarly heated reactions. In their case, it's not because of any bullshit mythmaking, it's because their sound is seriously fucked up, like nothing you've ever heard. Taking inspiration from the new wave of buzzy poppy shoegazey black metal, but twisting it all up into a noise drenched, chopped and looped. barrage of beats and riffs and damaged effects and bizarre vocals, and delicate melodies and strange samples, a dizzying jumble, that for some might be total torture, but for us, and we would guess most adventurous listeners out there, What We Were might just become a fast favorite.
Obviously if you dig bands like Alcest and Lifelover and Amesoeurs, you should for sure check this out, and while Lonesummer do share some of the same sonic elements, this is SO MUCH WEIRDER.
Best to probably just go song by song, it's too varied and all over the map to really boil it down to a single descriptor.
"The Ones Who Grab My Hand, The Lost Souls" is a crushing barrage of noise, there seems to be some metal underneath the noise, but it's so obfuscated it's more like a pulse, or another layer of static, like a more rhythmic Merzbow, but laced with some hysterical shrieking vokills, before the song fragments and begins to crumble, and gets all mathy and chaotic and industrial, while underneath, some super distorted vocal jazz surfaces, scatting female vox, skittery drums, piano and bass, but all tangled up with Lonesummer's frantic crumbling buzz, so fucked up and so weird, but super cool.
The second track is more traditionally buzzy and black, but it's all relative, 3 minutes of the same muted muddy riff, programmed drum skitter, occasional demonic growl, but all smeared with hazy soft focus melodies, the whole thing blurred into a woozy mesmer, a bit like a Pop Ambient Wold. Then there's "Long Winter Way" that fills the first half of the track with delicate chiming minor key guitar, softly swaddled in reverb and delay, only to get all bleary eyed and gauzy and soft poppy and shoegazey toward the end, sounding more like Ariel Pink or John Maus than any metal we've ever heard. Backwards drums sizzle beneath loopy flurries of notes, all swirling in a cloud of soft hushed shimmer. The rest of the record is equally disparate, from lurching crushing low, blackened and super distorted, to blasting brittle black metal, all repetitive and wrapped in still more layers of fuzz and buzz and whir, to the blown out in-the-red distorto noise bliss of the title track, to the psychedelic smoldering crumble of "We All Looked So Perfect", like a music box plugged into a million distortion pedals, to the closer, a loping, super melodic slow core depressive dirge, with lovely clean guitars, howled vokills, and a shimmery vacuum cleaner buzz wrapped around everything, simultaneously ultra melodic, warmly washed out and blissfully otherworldly.
Guaranteed to piss off purists, but so is about 90 percent of the stuff we dig, but for anyone into fucked up and freaky, baffling and bizarre blackness, this might be your new favorite band.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!!! Gorgeously packaged in a full color oversized 7" style sleeve.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This awesomely confusional weirdo black metal split now available on cd (cd-r actually), in a dvd case with printed insert and black and white cover art, the digital version of the tape we listed a while back (we still have a couple of those left if anybody wants one before they're gone)...
Second missive from black metal weirdo Lonesummer, whose What We Were cd-r from last list was a huge hit around here. A twisted blend of strange samples, totally blown out black metal buzz, and weird sun dappled melodic pop, all wound into a massively confusional, incredibly fucked up bit of blackened avant noise pop, or something, tough to know exactly how to describe this. We have to imagine that most black metallers would find Lonesummer just way too damaged and freaky, but for us, it's exactly the sort of weirdness we've been dying for.
The opening track sums it up pretty nicely, beginning with some sample conversations, street noise, a hushed minimal drone, which explodes into a crumbling in-the-red almost white noise blow out, the sound so saturated, it's impossible to pick out instruments, the sound just a thick cloud of swirling buzz and skree, as the track progresses, riffs seem to materialize out of the ether, but instead of taking the form of a proper BM jam, it seems more than anything to add a sense of rhythm, creating a fucked up, looped bit of buzz drenched mesmer, before, the buzz fades out, leaving some sampled African music, which eventually fades out. Phew. The next song is just s far out, beginning with some new age swoosh, some sampled wind (or is it tape hiss?), a delicate chiming melody, before a tiny bit of drum skitter leads into another explosion of impossibly distorted, but weirdly pretty and shoegaze-y blacknoise. 4 tracks total from Lonesummer, and goddamn we already want more!!!
Lonesummer are paired up here with Marsh, a one man band from Minneapolis, whose take on black metal is much more primitive and raw, a bit punky, with a definite D-beat vibe, so folks into Akitsa, Malveillance, Bone Awl, this is definitely your cup of tea, but Marsh manage to infuse their own vibe, the repetitive almost looped sounding arrangements, the cool hazy washed out production, loads of effects and like Lonesummer, a weirdly off kilter pop element too. Need to hear more from these guys as well.
We only got about 10 of these, and sadly that's all we'll ever be able to get, a new blast of twisted what-the-fuck black medal weirdness from aQ faves Lonesummer, teamed up with new-to-us Planning For Burial.
Lonesummer are in fine form, introducing their tracks with a weird sampled TV jingles before unfurling sheets of white hot, ultra brittle blasting black metal buzz, super lo-fi, and chaotic, but shot through with strange melodies, and mysterious textures, shifting from frantic frenzied blowouts, to mournful depressive doomic crawls, the vocals a buried inhuman shriek, the guitars so caustic, the sound totally high end, as if they were being played through speakers consisting of nothing but tweeters, finishing off, with a gorgeous bit of melancholy clean jangle guitar pop, the vocals sweetly sorrowful, like a more twisted lo-fi Richard Youngs, that poppiness, no doubt present in the other songs as well, just buried under avalanches of crumbling corrosive crunch. Awesome.
Planning For Burial are not nearly so abrasive, in fact, they're barely black metal at all, instead, they craft a sort of buzz drenched dreamlike slowcore, the opening track is all creepy crawly, measured emotive vox, wheezing organs, all beneath a churning layer of crumbling distortion, the result is actually quite lovely. Then the drums come in, programmed and electronic, and it gets more dramatic and majestic, and sounds almost like some twisted, 4 track, buzz doused take on Antony And The Johnsons, which is absolutely a good thing. The second track takes a woozy, depressive Cure like drift, all tinkling minor key melodies, and shuffling rhythms, and wraps it in thick buzzing bass, and swirling ethereal synths, the beats big and electronic here too, sounding not at all unlike some of the more minimal and moody Witch House jams we've heard. Finally, PFB finish off with a gorgeous softly psychedelic guitar dronescape, all washed out, blurred and bleary, the vocals buried, the guitars lustrous and thick, total hazy shoegazey dream pop drift. So killer.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES and already out of print. We have the last 10 copies, so act fast...
No, the name is not Lonely, Dear!!! Can't tell you how many times we've seen this one-man band's moniker spelled incorrectly. It irks us, and we imagine it must drive him nuts too! Anyhoo, all that business aside, we've been diggin this Swedish gent's new album plenty. It starts out far more driving and far less sweet than 2007's Loney, Noir. Last time he drew easy vocal comparisons to Arcade Fire, but his fifth album Dear John finds him slipping gracefully in line with the elaborate high tech bedroom recordings of Postal Service. Hmmm, haven't heard from them in quite a while, so it's a fine time for Loney Dear's dreamily wistful electronic pop to fill the void. Lovely, dear!
