Some time back, AQ prankster Andee thought it funny to put a empty jewel case out on the shelves with a tag stating that the audio content was so minimal that it didn't even exist. Little did we know that this high art/bad joke concept was paralleled by the very first Reynols record -- which was a 'dematerialized' cd. With that lengthy precursor, we are happy to say that this Francisco Lopez record is NOT another in the continuum of sub-audible recordings. Rather "Untitled (1993)" is a collection of live collaborations between Lopez and a handful of guests (John Hudak, Michael Gendreau, Michale Northam, Gen Ken Montgomery, Steve Peters, and Zan Hoffmann). Lopez manages to corral all of the diverse aesthetics of these artists into the more audible spectrum of his own sound of lengthy environmental drones. Like all of the records you actually can hear by Lopez, "Untitled (1993)" is pretty fantastic.
The first published work in Francisco Lopez' ongoing Untitled series was Untitled 74, released on Table Of The Elements in 1998; and in less than a decade that number of untitled compositions has bloated to well above 200. With this Russian release, Lopez collects many of the Untitled recordings, dated from 2006 and 2007, giving some credence to his numbering systems. Perhaps, he didn't just start with #74 and jump around; rather he's constantly making field recordings, composing new works, and considering raw material from various collaborators, with too much work to get everything released.
It's been a while since we had to cautiously approach the work of Francisco Lopez with the concern that he might be issuing an inaudible or near-inaudible record, and even those long periods of silence which do pop up on some of his records are completely done away with on this collection. The reason for this is that each track is a discrete composition of repurposed environmental sound, stretched, blurred, occluded into magnified hiss, aerated drone, grotesquely exaggerated texture, and industrial hum snapped against the sounds of the Amazon and the Costa Rica rainforests, whose rich bird and insect life chatter in polyphonic choruses. Source material on a couple of tracks was provided by Rapoon and Lawrence English; and there's a piece that Lopez composed for an avant-garde chamber ensemble, that certainly presents an ominous atmosphere of piano stabs against agitated strings and rumbling double bass, very Zeitkratzer. As a whole, this 2cd set is Absolute Lopez near his absolute best!
Francisco Lopez has long proposed his work under the banner of "absolute music" - a conceptual framework through which his processed field recordings shed their symbolic, metaphoric, or iconic meaning and become the raw material for compositions that push to the transcendent realms of the sublime through radical erasure, muscular amplifications, and / or slippery minimalism. There was a time some 20 years ago when Lopez released a handful of near, mostly, or wholly silent records as conceptual endgames to these theories; which left us with a bit trigger shy when it came to fully embracing the Lopez oeuvre. Fortunately, Lopez exhausted that line of thought quite a while ago, meaning that with every Francisco Lopez album, we can be assured of discovering strata of sound from the natural, the industrial, and the microcosmic. Untitled (2011) collects a eight compositions of variable strategies that opens with a placid chorus of insects buzzing pleasantly alongside the ritualized strikes of a temple gong and the distant call from some deep-throated Japanese raven. Lopez does explain the origins of the sound sources, but little else allowing the Byzantine swells, bursts, and gasps of environmental sound to stand on their own as discrete elements. The second track speaks to this with its peculiar resonance that sounds like it was entirely recorded, edited, and mixed from within an exhaust pipe attached to a slaughterhouse. Elsewhere, Lopez composes a piece entirely using the digital clipping and wind distortion that is the bane of every sound ecologist for a disturbing piece of brut-noise; and then there's the strange Luc Ferrari like whispering of an uncredited female speaker layered amidst his boiling metal drones.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
I kid you not. This is the album where Lopez goes metal. Not the recording of sheet metal resonance, not the amplified vibrations of metal molecules, not even the inactivity of two pieces of sheet metal thoughtfully sitting alone in a room with nothing to ponder but their own existential (in)audibility. The normally sedate Lopez goes metal like Emperor, Slayer, or Cradle of Filth.
If anybody has recently witnessed the cascading power of Lopez's recent live shows, then "Untitled 104" is certainly not a surprise. Of course, Lopez sets everything up with 4 minutes of his usual silence, before a tumultuous assault of sampled metal blast beats destroys any semblence of serenity. Lopez layers wave after wave of rhythmic clatter that reveals an incredible amount of textural noise. One blast beat takes the aural center stage, and you find yourself asking "Huh? Is this Cannibal Corpse? Or was that last one from Morbid Angel? I don't know." (Actually, we suspect that all the samples are from one band, but even the metal minds here at AQ haven't confidently guessed which one.) Lopez could have unwittingly devised the ultimate trivia contest for metalheads to name the sample. 35 minutes pass (35 head spinning, if not head banging minutes) and then the metal rhythms stop. Ten more minutes of silence provide the coda.
While this record is really fucking good (indeed, it's one of Jim's favorites of the year along with Reynols' "Blank Tapes"), it is also another example of the academic / art world colonization of metal. Like Matthew Barney's awe-inspiring image in "Cremaster 2" of Dave Lombardo hammering at his drum kit behind the sound of swarming bees, Lopez's "Untitled 104" effectively translates the pure masculine power of metal to an audience who may not care for the, uh, aesthetics of metal. Fortunately, it appears that Lopez and Barney do not approach metal with a snobbish irony (like Harmony Korine's reprehensible photo-enlargements of black metal album covers that sold for tens of thousands of dollars), but such appropriation nevertheless marginalizes metal as nothing more than a texture or an attitude, far from the vibrant and deviant culture that it is.
Rant aside, if this record causes one fan of Bernhard Gunter to get into Burzum, then, as far as Aquarius Records is concerned, Lopez has succeeded. Recommended.
Like almost all of the Francisco Lopez recordings, silence introduces the album, with the intention of forcing the listener into a state of mind for attentive listening. Of course, with a couple of his records being so barely audible as to render them
In 2000, [the user] undertook an daunting installation of transforming an abandoned grain silo in Montreal into a gigantic instrument that could be accessed by anyone around the world via the internet. Since anybody could play the Silophone (by sending real audio files to a computer which broadcast those sounds into the huge resonatings space of the silo, which in turn were bounced back in the form streaming digital audio), it's a little unclear if the sounds that Lopez used were his own or if they included random elements from other people using the Silophone. But it does appear that Lopez was actually recording these sounds while in the space itself, and not just pulling off the net.
Anyway, I mentioned that Lopez began this album with silence, but this is disturbed by a distant grey sound which gradually increases in volume. It is not a stationary sound, but one that whips and fluctuates as if caused by moving air, but these do not sound like wind recordings. Lopez then unexpectedly jolts his composition with a series of rhythmic static bursts that are quite unusual for the normal Lopez recording and sound somewhat like the Hafler Trio's early '90s dyptic of sexually explicit recordings, "Fuck" and "Masturbatorium." These tones abruptly stop and the process begins again with another set of grey sounds emerging from the distance; these slightly more nervous with several tightly modulating vibrations extending outward from the silence. This in turn gets louder and louder, with lots of overdubbing sounds of hurricane force blasts of white noise that has all of the transcendent energy of Keiji Haino, but with none of the chords being audible. Again, this comes to an abrupt stop and the album concludes where it started with an extended period of silence.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"Warszawa Restaurant" was one of the first albums to be released from the ultra-minimalist Francisco Lopez back in 1995, though he provides hints that he has an immense amount of work that predates this album and has yet to be released. This is mostly from his ongoing "Untitled" series which begins with "Untitled 74" (one of his most unsuccessful works which happened to be released on Table of the Elements). Anyway, "Warszawa Restaurant" fits into Lopez' ideas of manipulated any given acoustic space with the intrusion of increasingly powerful drones culled from environmental recordings. Air conditioning ducts, wind, the ambient din of a city, rainforests, run out grooves for vinyl, and of course death metal blast beats ("Untitled 108") have been some of sources for the textural recordings that Lopez has manipulated into his dynamic compositions that blur the boundaries between silence and sound. For the most part, Lopez doesn't wish his source material to be known... and "Warzawa Restaurant" delivers in the mystery department. Bleak swells of grey sounds slowly breathe and fluctuate out of periods of silence, with very little direct references to the world around us. Instead, this album forces the listener to concentrate on their auricular surroundings in an attempt to make us aware of his belief that the world itself is the most extravagant instrument known to man.
Wind [Patagonia] is the third in a series of recordings from Francisco Lopez which also included Building [New York] and the universally acclaimed La Selva, all three of which are raw field recordings in the Chris Watson vein of sleight edits rather than Lopez' typical strategies for acoustmatics. As you can imagine, Wind is a collection of wind recordings; and as you could probably also gather, Lopez captured these sounds in the southern regions of Argentina. Lopez himself describes this as "relentless environment of sonic strength;" and yeah, these field recordings do hold a dynamic abrasion heard in most noise records, yet the sounds are all of winds whipping across the Patagonian landscape.
So, Andee just asked the perennially valid question, when it comes to Lopez recordings at least, after coming up to the front of the shop and seeing this new cd on the counter, yet hearing 'nothing' coming from the speakers: "Are you actually listening to this right now?" With a sizable portion of Lopez' nearly 300 compositions being sub-audible at best, it is in fact not always a bad idea to pose that question. It should be stated that the above query was made between tracks one and two, when Lopez was enjoying some downtime; but aside from this brief moment, Lopez is much more forthright in presenting a goodly amount of immersive sound.
For Elektra Bidasoa, he and Xabier Erkizia (better known as half of the AQ-endorsed noise-rock outfit Billy Bao!) slogged down the Bidasoa River in Spain, making recordings from the various hydroelectric plants located on that waterway. Earlier in 2011, the two presented an installation of their findings intermeshing the two sets of recordings; but here, their findings are presented in parallel. While both Lopez and Erkizia were drawing from the same source material - industrial hum, hiss, drone, and klank - they arrive at considerably different compositions. For Lopez, the whorl of the turbine, the hum of the circuit board, and the hiss of the cooling unit all become sustained elements in a gradually evolving composition of dehumanized activity. Such pneumatic and automated systems can function rightly on their own, seemingly independent of the human hand; and Lopez speaks to the engineered functionality as an aestheticized language - a poetry of the sterile and antiseptic.
Erkizia is far more in awe of those machines than Lopez', presenting his recordings with considerable dynamic force. Along with the machined drones that Lopez uses, Erkizia occasionally turns his microphones to the water which drives those dams, at times sloshing at the riverbank and at times roaring through the massive concrete sluices that guide the water through the turbines themselves. This contrast from the bursts of activity from either source, poses a threat of electrocution. Coupled with the intense explosions that Erkizia uses in his concrete-styled composition, this work can be downright scary at times.
Yet another chunk of awesome audio weirdness from UK cassette label The Tapeworm (along with three other releases reviewed elsewhere on this week's list). They had us with the title, Concert For 300 Magnetic Tapes. We were maybe envisioning something more like Reynols' Blank Tapes, a composition of the hiss and noise from playing back unrecorded audio tapes, this is Francisco Lopez after all, whose compositions offer border on the absolutely inaudible. But instead, Lopez and Zan Hoffmann solicited tapes from various musicians and artists in the international home recording 4 track cassette tape underground, and embarked on a tour, during which the two would add some of their own sounds, to a glorious cacophonous collage of the various contributions. In this wall of taped sound, impossible to tell what is pre-recorded, or what is being performed live (this recording was culled from various performances in 1994), but a hazy, washed out, softly noisy swirl of voices, and sonic snippets, truncated melodies, lots of grinding and buzzing and hissing, everything layered and tangles, often a confusional mess, but just as often coalescing into something strangely composed sounding, tinkling melodies over a heaving wall of crumbling distortion, or some distant lilting dreaminess, underpinned by jagged shards of chaotic crunch, fuzzy radio broadcast like voices swathed in gritty swirls of static, bits of guitar twang surface occasionally, before slipping back into the grey wash of constantly shifting sound. Really cool. And maybe one of the coolest compositions/performances we've heard from Lopez!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Another of Zbig's many projects, this time recorded in cahoots with the equally prolific minimal (often barely audible!) composer Francisco Lopez. On "Whint" these two experimental electronic superstars collaborated in creating shared "sound materials" and
Even through his collaborations (as seen here on Belle Confusion 00 with Amy Denio), Francisco Lopez has successfully resisted procedures, craftsmanship, and semantics. What's left behind are paradoxically both ominous and serene compositions of open ended
Francisco Lopez's Belle Confusion 0247 with fellow field recording artist Michael Northam is certainly one of the strongest recordings to come from Lopez's encyclopedia of 'absolute concrete music' which in the past, has included investigations of the
Perhaps it took Scott Arford winning honorable mention at the 2005 Ars Electronica to get this split release with Francisco Lopez to come out. These two pieces were originally recorded back in 2002 and had been slated for release by a couple of different labels, until Low Impedence had the sense to finally just do it. Curiously enough, this is one of several releases to come pouring out of Arford's 7hz studios after a couple of years of silence. Electricity appears to the source material and subject matter for the two composers on Solid State Flesh & Solid State Sex. The latter is the work of Mr. Arford who has always had a penchant for hard, blistered noises and cacophonic feedback squallor; and those sounds are heavily featured here punctuating the deadened buzz of smoldering electricity. It's hard to think of this as being sexy music or even sexual music given the electrocutionist throb of Arford's sounds, thus lending to plenty of transgressive readings if you're so inclined. On the slightly more voluptuous Solid State Flesh, Lopez expands the monotone of 60 cycle hums and the hissing buzz of electrical static through his signature compositional strategy of slow-burning tumult which abruptly halt and annouce a prolonged passage of inactivity. Unlike some of his Belle Confusion pieces, Solid State Flesh adds a considerable menace to his self-professed absolute concrete, but nevertheless is very well done and an excellent companion to Arford's work.
Following their very well-received Penny Drop 5-song ep, Loquat issue forth a slightly longer 7-song cd of equally pretty pop that once again brings to mind that fine British pop combo The Sundays. Wide-eyed, wistful, girlish vocals from Ms Kylee Swenson with a subtle, hushed backing of gentle piano, guitar and drums that tip toe gracefully around her voice. Be forewarned if you already have the ep, four of those five songs make a reappearance here (the final song "Band-Aid Queen" didn't make the cut), however they do deliver a sweet rendition of The Smiths' "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out". Should tide fans over until their soon-to-be-released debut full length. FYI: this is the third in Devil In The Woods Magazine's delightfully low priced Builder series.
For those of you who gobbled up the wistful, pretty pop stylings on Loquat's recent Penny Drop cdep, here's another similarly tuneful offering. Four mellow songs in all (including an alternate version and a remix of "Swingset Chain" from the ep) that come in the form of a 10" record that's part of a Bay Area artists series from the Dreams By Degrees label. Rounding out the other three seasons are Colophon (spring), Sappington (summer), and Coastal (winter).
Jackpine Records is home to many fine Bay Area artists' releases (Kelley Stoltz's Antique Glow, Parchman Farm's self titled debut, Oranger's Shutdown The Sun, as well as the compilations paying tribute to Joe South and Kris Kristofferson). Now they welcome a new member to the family... Loquat! You might already be fondly familiar with this SF band's sweet brand of smooth pop from their two cdeps (Penny Drop and Before The Momentum) and one 10" which we've carried in the past. If so, you'll probably be quite pleased with their latest offering, and if not, then this should make for a very pleasant introduction. If you like female fronted, lilting pop bands such as The Cardigans, The Cranberries or The Sundays, Loquat might be your new crush. Lead singer Kylee Swenson's voice continue to be a deadringer for that of The Sundays' Harriet Wheeler.
Please note: some of the songs from their previous releases reappear here. The ninth song "To The Floor" was originally on their debut Penny Drop cdep and their song "Swingset Chain" has been included on every cd release thus far. Yeah it's a great song, and yeah it was on a WB TV show, and yeah this is a freshly recorded version, but c'mon Loquat don't milk it to death! We know you've got plenty more where that came from.
Okay, enough grousing, but we just thought we should alert you to all of that, in case you were expecting a completely new album. Anyways, the sun is shining brightly today, and Loquat is taking its cue, beaming out warm, wonderful, well-crafted pop songs. Dreamy!
With their sweetly lilting female vocals and pretty mid tempo pop songs, Loquat's Penny Drop EP slips very gracefully in alongside the music of the Sundays or early Cranberries. Simply put, this SF quintet make very well-executed, warm and dreamy pop music. Pretty darn polished and radio-ready! Shuffling drum beats, synthy strings, and understated piano and guitar melodies swirl around the lead vocals of Kylee Swenson and the kindly male back-ups which come to think of it, also really brought to mind the loveliness of Emma Pollock from the fabulous Scottish band the Delgados. Soft but with a little twist of wryness in it.
Portland sludge merchants Lord Dying are back to beat you up, beat you down, beat you all around with their second album for Relapse. It's doom metal clobberin' time, Lord Dying laying down the lumbering riffs, solo shred, and mean, bellowing vokills (though this time, we noticed some clean singing amidst the guttural roar, at least on "An Open Sore").
Songs like the oh so optimistic "(All Hopes Of A New Day)...Extinguished" wallow in sheer morose chuggery, this album approaching groovy death metal territory at times, sounding more 'core at others.
While wouldn't want ALL metal to always sound like Lord Dying, there is something about this that couldn't be any MORE metal. They do their thing just about perfectly, for when you really want to indulge in the simple, extreme, aggro pleasures of riffs, solos, and gruff/tuff vocals.
Again, for fans of High On Fire, that sort of doomed out, cranked up, heavy rockin' punishment - and also, once again, nice cover art, that looks like it belongs on a '70s dark fantasy paperback novel by Karl Edward Wagner or something.
First off, LOVE the cover painting, by Orion Landau, and his artwork elsewhere on this release, all of occultic subjects like skull faced spectres and winged demons, rendered in garish colors, greens and purples. It's art that looks like it's been taken from the cover to some lurid old pulp sci-fi/fantasy paperback. Then there's the music. Lordy lordy. Portland's Lord Dying sure kick out the hard-hitting sludge jams here on their debut full-length for Relapse - take heavy, and make it heavier! (The Sanford Parker production doesn't hurt.)
As attested to by the ugly, throat-ripped vokills, there's a bulldozing, brute force approach to Lord Dying's sometimes thrashing, sometimes grooving doom, but their metallic constructs have more to 'em than that, with the sheer aggression of their sinewy, sledgehammer riffage enhanced by roiling drum patterns, interesting progressions, and inspired leads, along with the artful use of feedback, distortion, and electronic effects. It's extremely satisfying "extreme music" when you're in the mood for a heavy-duty headbang. Definitely for fans of High On Fire, Red Fang, and the late great Karp (a band whom Lord Dying covered on a self-released 7" single that preceded this Relapse release), among others.
First there was the NWOBHM, back in '79... The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal: Iron Maiden, Saxon, Angel Witch, Diamond Head, etc. Then, later, there was the NWOFHM... The New Wave Of FINNISH Heavy Metal, a tongue in cheek, self-proclaimed description for the metal-obsessed, but not in fact actually really quite "metal" output of Finnish hypnorock outfit Circle and their various offshoots. Flagship acts Circle and Pharaoh Overlord occasionally dabbled in the NWOFHM, mixing metal tropes into their space rock motoriks, while certain side projects like Steel Mammoth and Krypt Axeripper went full-on NWOFHM, 24-7. But still weren't really metal bands, not exactly - too much pop, and prog, and psych, and pure WTF? going on, also.
Ok, but then there's what we'll have to call NWOFHMBSFRTT: The New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal But Seriously For Real This Time. Hesher youngsters from Finland, into ye olden metal of the '80s, not as a semi-ironic side project, but as their primary passion. And naturally, Circle & Co. have taken some of these true metal bands under their wing, putting out their stuff on their own label. Two of the best NWOFHMBSFRTT-er's we've got for you now, new releases from NWOBHM-styled throwbacks Lord Fist, and raging thrash maniacs Ranger!
Taking their cues from such classic acts as Maiden and '80s Scandinavian forebears Heavy Load, with some of the mystical, cult qualities of Manilla Road, this is underground old school inspired awesomeness all the way. The vocalist screaming to the sky, the guitarist blazing away with energetic abandon, shooting off sparkling leads, the rhythm section galloping along... It's super hooky and headbanging, fist-pumping even (as befits their name), a rollicking good time.
Lord Fist don't shy from the epic fantasy majesty stuff - the title track seems to tell a cryptic story of post apocalyptic devastation and alien revenge (???), but we're less inclined to puzzle out lyrics about a "neon exodus" than to simply revel in the album's hectic, pedal-to-the-metal rippers. Recommended to fans of other such current heavy metal revivalists as Borrowed Time and Enforcer, and of course all NWOFHM lovers who want to take it to the next (-BSFRTT) level!!
The Lord Fist is available on cd and also on gatefold vinyl, all the better to enjoy the gorgeous artwork of raven-winged, psychedelic motorcyclists speeding through a tripped-out, green-tinged, ruined landscape.
Lord Fist is a neat/dumb name that sounds pretty metal, eh? And yep, Lord Fist are metal all right, from Finland, via Jussi from Circle's Full Contact vinyl imprint. Now, Jussi's Ektro and Full Contact labels have brought us plenty of "NWOFHM" - New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal - bands before, yeah. But those quasi-joke (or are they?) bands were never quite the real deal like Lord Fist, who on this debut four song 12", actually sound authentically NWOBHM - New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, a la Angel Witch, Cloven Hoof, Satan, etc.!
And dang, they're good. The youthful foursome of Lord Fist dish out rippers like "Lord Of The Night" and "Velvet Gods", chock full of high pitched screams (for vengeance!), jaunty galloping riffage, wailing leads, catchy choruses, and epick & mystickal vibes.
Could easily be up there, someday soon, with the best of today's crop of throwback metal bands like Enforcer and Cauldron, though the 'cult' feel here surpasses those. Man, Finland is making our heads bang lately, with the Ranger 12" (also on Full Contact) and now this!
This document of raw and primitive American black metal has been resurrected and reissued on vinyl by the Dais label. An unlikely choice, considering the rest of the Dais catalog, but in its own way, this collection of outsider blackness is a pretty good fit. This Kentucky one man band recorded only two cassette demos, between 1993 and 1994, only one of which was ever released. Originally thought to be a joke, the liner notes in this new edition state explicitly that "the hatred radiating from these recordings is real!", and while the man behind these sounds was known as Roach back in the day, he now goes by the name James Brown III, and is a member of LA black metallers Harassor (and is responsible for the awesome Moon Knight tape we reviewed a while back)!
Eleven blasts of blasting, pounding blackness, primitive and raw, fierce and feral, the guitars buzz maniacally, the drums super lo-fi, boomy and rehearsal space sounding, the vokills so awesome, a sick demonic croak, all woven into short sharp bursts of true black metal grimnity, the songs slipping from mid-tempo plod to furious blast and back again, the sound fantastically lo-fi, blown out, murky and muddy, buzzy and black.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered, incredible packaging, black matte finish sleeves, with red metallic foil stamped artwork, the lp is one sided, with a cool satanic etching on the B side, inside is a huge 12"x12" booklet with lyrics, photos, and two interviews with Lord Foul from way back in 1994.
I love In The Red Records. They are one of the few labels that continues to put out great punk rock records. The Lord High Fixers were from Austin, TX and featured both Tim Kerr (of the Big Boys and Monkeywrench) and Mike Carroll (of Poison 13). 'The Beginning Of The End' just happens to be this band's swan song released posthumously. It's jam-packed with covers, many of them old blues and soul classics: Curtis Mayfield's classic "People Get Ready" with a surprise appearance of slide trombone, Booker T's "Stop And Think It Over", a suitably raunchy cover of Mudhoney's "You Got It" as well as "One Way Ticket" by the Morlocks. A wild collision of garage, blues, punk, and even some free jazz skronk! Scattered between the songs are brief spoken word clips from the likes of Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, Angela Davis and Woody Guthrie. A gorgeously raw and gritty goodbye to these garage rock heroes.
Don't know why it should be any different for this genre than for any other, but it strikes us that it's gotta take some major cojones to tackle the badass stylings of Stax! That said, L.L.A.W.M. do so, and they do it admirably well. These folks clearly have a genuine gritty love of old soul music. These days every style of music has made its way into both the indie and mainstream circuits, hasn't it? Guess it was only time before this goldmine was tapped. Good times.
Full length number two from this Chicago sludge metal supergroup, featuring folks from a whole bunch of other aQ metal faves, Nachmystium, Von, Amichi and Indian, and really if you did do some weird metal math, and combined those various bands, you'd probably come out with something like this, a furious, roiling sprawl of blackened sludge metal churn, the riffs, thick and dense and downtuned, the drumming fierce and pummeling, the vocals slipping from intense blackened rasp, to demonic screech, to monstrous death metal bellow, with those vox sometimes spiralling into clouds of psychedelic FX and blurred reverb. But this is definitely not your run of the mill sludge, it's not all creep and slither, instead the band chug and pound and blast furiously, but all of that energy seems to go towards density rather than propulsion, the songs tranced out and almost looped sounding, the actual tempos slow, but within those slow tempos, the drums flail wildly, explosive blasts of tribal frenzy, the guitars unleash dizzying tangles of riffage, and wild squiggles of melody, the sound slipping from gnarled Deathspell like blackness, to pounding grunted goat metal, and from tripped out psychedelic heaviness to death metal dirgery, and more often than not, some gloriously twisted combination of all of the above. A new favorite for sure with the metalheads around here.
Killer grim artwork courtesy of aQ pal Justin Bartlett.
Many moons ago, we gave a plethora of positive hand signals (thumbs up, devil horns, 'hang loose'...) in written review form to the debut disc by a Russian stoner doom band, this one, Lord Of Doubts, who impressed the hell out of us both -despite- and -because- of their uncanny resemblance to those aQ (and everyone's) fave stoner doom metal mongers, Electric Wizard. Nothin' original about 'em, no doubt about it, Lord Of Doubts were (and are) Electric Wizard worshippers, but sometimes that's ok. When done right. Which they did. Basically, it's about the sound AND the riffs. If you got 'em, you got 'em. We declared Lord Of Doubts "heirs to the Dopethrone" and there was high demand for that disc, which unfortunately was somewhat limited and went out of print all too soon...
But now, we've learned of a NEW opus from LoD, well an ep at least, which we just ordered direct from the Russian Federation. Ensconced in a handsome digipak, this golden disc contains a brief introduction, and then two longer, bonged-out songs, "The Gates Of Doom" and "Kali Ma - Black Mother", over 20 minutes total. Once again, damn if they don't sound just like the Electric Wizard... Crushing riff repetition. Crashing cymbals. Gnarled vocal chant. Everything slowly pulsating in a dense druggy haze. But, now it's as if Electric Wizard, in the tradition of the Beatles, travelled to India to get high with their guru... Maybe it's the cover art, and the droning chants of "Kali Ma", and the buried, distorted dialog samples from some Hindi movie... but Lord Of Doubts do seem to bring an Eastern ceremonial vibe to these lugubriously heavy, sprawling psych proceedings! Electric Wizard and The Temple Of Doom, anyone?
If not utterly impossible, it would certainly still be silly to write a review of this debut by Russian dope n' doom trio Lord Of Doubts without mentioning that they sound a heck of a lot like UK stoner doom titans Electric Wizard. In fact, those two words would easily do for a brief review of this: ELECTRIC WIZARD! You could almost leave it at that, really. Citing a few of their song titles would work well too: "Temple Of The Riff", "Satan's Magic Smoke", "Heavier Than Universe". You get the idea, eh?
Of course, this list, we're highlighting the domestic release of EW's latest slab of psychedelic sonic Satanism, Black Masses. But if you're still jonesin' for more of an Electric Wizard fix, here you go. Lord Of Doobies, whoops, we mean Lord Of Doubts, deliver the same brand of bong-smoke-shrouded, slow n' low riffage that Electric Wizard fans are hooked upon. Drugula obviously put the bite on these Russians too. Their riffs are as massive and mesmeric. The rhythm section likewise a pounding, lurching throb. And, clinching it, the vocals are similarly a ragged, wretched, wasted drawl. It's total EW worship, no doubt about it. We can't imagine they'd deny the Electric Wizard influence, but original or not (and EW themselves of course owe something to predecessors Black Sabbath), Lord Of Doubts do what they do quite well. It's not just the *sound* that they emulate, but they also prove themselves capable of writing worthy riffs, so rather than a rip-offs, we regard them as talented acolytes, and possible heirs to the Dopethrone when and if EW ever pack it in. Seriously, we were a bit skeptical about this before we first put it on, but soon found ourselves utterly hypnotized by the heaviness, and how can you argue with that?
Lordy. From the same label that brought us Lord Vicar, comes another doom metal act with Lord in the name, Lord Of The Grave! They like their Lords over there at The Church Within.
So yeah, of course this is some doomy stuff. This Swiss power trio plays raw doom metal along the lines of Sleep, Electric Wizard, and Eyehategod. Slow and low, but not quite glacially ultradoomic, though definitely on the sludgy side of Sabbath, with swinging, swaying, repetitive riffs pounding themselves pleasantly into your (possibly) stoned skull. Simple but effective! The relentless blown-out riffage sometimes segues into spacey, nod-scene atmospherics (where they really begin to sound like Om, approaching that style of psychedelic metal minimalism).
There's five tracks here, none of 'em short, most around 7-10 minutes long and the final number clocking in at 17:33 (a track long enough, and with enough tripped out guitar soloing, to draw comparisons to Earthless). Any one of 'em though seems like they could (or should, or maybe even do) go on forever, lumbering along heavily and hypnotically. Adding to the mesmeric vibe are the rhyming incantations of the singer, his voice a hoarse holler, or sometimes a spoken-sung stoned mumble, buried in the mix. Again, we're reminded of Sleep/Om.
Not much else to say, you either like this sort of stuff or you don't. And if you do, we probably don't even need to mention that the first track is entitled "Holy Vitus", do we?
Live performance and touring (especially internationally) does much to sharpen the chops, expand the scopes and get the creative juices flowing for most artists, and it certainly appears so in the case for one Mr. Dominic Cramp. It seems the many journeys on the road performing as keyboardist and sound shaper for Carla Bozulich's group Evangelista have spurred him - already a very prolific music maker for many years - to stretch his limbs a bit, and push the boundaries of his music-making comfort zone into some fresh but not altogether foreign territory.
Lord Tang is definitely the brethren of Cramp's other musical personas (particularly Borful Tang, but also Vulcanus 68, Qulfus et al), and those familiar and fond of his Bay Area indie label Gigante Sound will surely geek to this too, but what sets Lord Tang apart are the new influences and inspirations Cramp has drawn upon, and the incorporation of more conventional song foundations (at least comparably so when placed next to his alter egos' more loosely structured soundscapes). However, he does not remain within those confines. As always, his music is free roaming. His soundscapes creep along, build, dissipate, and shapeshift like the cloud formations referred to in the opener. At once, both dense and vaporous, the tracks may linger on a note sequence or beat pattern for a spell then moving on, occasionally returning to revisit a theme in cyclical fashion.
In previous works and incarnations, Cramp scavenged, sculpted and collaged together the structures and narratives from existing samples (field recordings, tapes, and such). In Lord Tang, the elements (most notably melodies and rhythmic passages) are much more composed from scratch, and the sounds are built, shaped and performed on instruments (we detect a gaggle of analog synths, drum machines and digital effects processors among them). That said, although his creative processes may have diverged somewhat from his usual path, the resulting tracks aren't too alienatingly different to the ear. As with many of his instrumental recordings, this one oozes, lurches and seeps its way into your ear canals. Moody with a dark whimsy. We envision a subterranean being clawing its way up to the Earth's surface to eavesdrop on the city dwellers. Curiosity piqued by their daily routines and mundane dialogues, the churning rhythms of traffic reverberating down into his dank sunless world.
Most recent solo record from the drummer of LA black metal grimlords Harassor, another collection of raw blackened primitivism, two side long songsuites, each one a constantly shifting soundworld, from droned out black buzz mesmer to something much more raw and minimal to straight up outsider experimentation. Droned out ambient murk transforms into a loping goat metal gallop, buzzing, droney-y churn blurs into wild noise drenched post rock lumber, a few parts get downright dreamy, the sounds coalescing into something bordering on blackened shoegaze, while others devolve into almost psychedelic ambience, swirling squalls of guitarnoise and stumbling drum damage and abstract vokills, all blurred into a strange sort of freeform dirgery. In fact, much of A Destiny Of Death is spent outside the confines of buzzing blackness, especially on side one, and while the second side has plenty of trippy ambience and weird psychedelic dronemusic moments, it's also heavier on the, well, heavy, with some seriously harrowing black buzz, raw metallic noise and hateful howling crush.
Every tape individually blood splattered. And yeah, also EXTREMELY LIMITED.
Another blast of nekro-black "morbid dead metal" filth from this aQ fave, the solo project of Andorkappen, the drummer of LA black metal trio Harassor. And like the previous tape on Universal Consciousness, this is some dark, sinister, hateful heaviness, the sound raw and primitive, filthy and crusty, the sound lo-fi, but still somehow weirdly lush and LOUD, buzzing guitars, pounding practice space drumming, and some seriously sick demonic croak vokills. The sound is all over the map, slipping from super brittle and tinny, to murky and muddy and sludgey, the songs too, dirgey ritualistic creeps, frantic lightning speed blasts, pounding punkish d-beat blowouts, the sounds not at all typical, with clean effects laden guitars and warped FX, wild tangled psychedelia, field recordings, all woven into this twisted black epic. 36 minutes, 20 brief blasts, plus a super creeped out almost 20th century sounding piano dirge outro, spare and abstract, percussive and darkly ominous. The whole track repeats on both sides. The label describes this as "primitive devotional caveman soul music" and who are we to argue.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Packaged in super deluxe, embossed, heavy textured metallic paper J-cards, each one hand numbered and sealed with a sticker, each copy marked with Mr. Lord Time's actual blood!
Latest blast of nekro morbid death metal primitivism from the drummer of LA black metallers Harassor, and like on previous tapes, Drink My Tears is a twisted, lo-fi, blackened, psychedelic freakout, a warped strain of primitivism, the recording this time around even shittier (read: genius), the guitars brittle and buzzy, but not black metal buzzy, more sort of tinny, the drums cardboard box thumps, everything super distorted and in the red, the vocals a raspy grumbly croak, heavily processed, and made super trippy, the sound surprisingly melodic, with what sounds like piano, the recording not so black metal as damaged lo-fi dirge pop with black metal elements? Maybe. Well, really, it IS black metal obviously, but seriously mutated, black metal the way Circle Of Ouroborus is black metal, as much the mood and atmosphere and intent as the sound, cuz really some of the tracks here are weirdly hypnotic slabs of lo-fi psychedelic weirdness, that out of context, we might not even classify as black metal. But then there are tracks that are raw as fuck, and black as fuck, but those are far outweighed by the trippy, the tranced out, the droney, the woozy and wonderfully weird. Swirls of distorted guitar melodies emulate carnival organs, a sort of blackened kosmische, others are lurching lumbering dirges that again seem too heavy on the chiming clean guitar to be truly black metal, but fuck it, not of that matters, this is some super rad, super twisted, outsider sonic weirdness, that whether it sounds psychedelic, or grim and black, or freaky and WTF?, to you, or hell even all of the above, this is some amazing, inspired, dementedly genius stuff that is KILLING us. So totally and absolutely recommended.
Comes in swank packaging, colored cases, stickered red tapes, heavy cardstock J-card, each one marked with real blood, and each one with two buttons.
A brief blast of grim nekro blackness from this offshoot of LA's black metal mavens Harassor, Lord Time offers up 4 tracks of punked out, super raw heaviness, with a sound that alternates between weirdly melodic bursts of frenzied black blast and churning murky d-beat crush, the vocals a bizarre alien croak, the drums buried in the mix, but the guitars, gloriously blown out and buzz drenched, managing to sound thick and heavy even with some seriously lo-fi production, the songs twisted and tangled into convoluted arrangements, lurching from frantic demonic fury to pulverizing punkish pound and back again, often fading out into tripped out psychedelic ambience or blackly droned out drift before lurching right back into it again. And while it may be on the short side, the whole program repeats on the flipside, but with significantly different mixes and arrangements, the B side sounding distinctly more distorted and lo-fi, but at the same time laced with seemingly more stretches of psychedelic black ambience�
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each tape smeared with actual blood, and housed in gorgeous letterpressed #'d J-cards (also smeared with blood!), printed on sparkly reflective gold paper.
Supergroup - or as Julian Cope would put it, stuporgroup - doom action here folks! Even before we heard it, we were chuffed about Lord Vicar's debut full length. We'd already had a taste of the Vicar via their 7" last year on I Hate Records, and so as soon as we heard there was an album out we HAD to have it... we made contact with the label in Germany directly, and now some weeks later here they are. Even if we hadn't heard that 7", this is a no-brainer for anyone (like us) into traditional doom metal, just based on the heavyweight pedigree of the band's members. From Sweden, singer Christian Lindersson aka Lord Chritus, former frontman for Count Raven, Terra Firma, and (on the album after Wino left the band) the legendary Saint Vitus! From Finland, guitarist Peter Inverted formerly Peter Vicar, of Reverend Bizarre (R.I.P.) as well as VDGGish progsters Orne. From England, drummer Gareth Milsted of Centurion's Ghost. Also from Finland, there's bassist Jussi "Iron Hammer" Myllykoski who is not from any band we know of, but makes up for it by having a cool nickname. And then, giving this even more cult cred, there's a guest guitar solo on one song by Don Angelo Tringali of Slough Feg and Cold Mourning from the USA.
If any of these names mean anything to you, you know you're gonna be well and truly doomed when you put this on. There's slo-mo, mouldering witchburning riffs played on loud, fuzzed out axes, hand in cloven hoof with the weepy, whiney, sometimes effected and always affecting vox of Lord Chritus, extremely Ozzy-esque yet utterly distinctive. Anything with these guys is gonna be steeped in Sabbath-iness. And as Peter Inverted's post-Reverend Bizarre project, this basically sounds a lot like his old band (and thus also like Sabbath, and Sleep, and Cathedral...) but with a few new wrinkles. The songs on Fear No Pain range from the super sludgy to a plodding swing to even more uptempo ("The Last Of The Templars" is in the rockin' mode of "Cromwell" by RB for sure). In addition there's some morosely folky parts that also remind us of Witchcraft, Lord Vicar certainly having supped from the same '70s folk-prog nectar-filled chalice as those Swedish retro doom sensations. Especially on this album's last track, the truly epic 14 and a half minute "The Funeral Pyre" which begins all acoustic-guitary before eventually unleashing monumental riffage (echoing Sabbath's "Lord Of This World" perhaps), all of which is graced by Chritus's most raw and lachrymose performance, almost a la Paternoster, ending this album with a heavy '70s prog vibe indeed...
For fans of all the bands abovementioned, no doubt, also the likes of Witchfinder General, Electric Wizard, Solstice... heck you get the idea. Highly recommended to all doomhounds.
Another chunk of classic old school style doom from Sweden's I Hate Records. This time from a band called Lord Vicar, whose name should give you a clue as to what they're all about. From Reverend to Vicar? That's right, Reverend Bizarre's axeman Peter Vicar has joined up with vocalist Christian Lindersson of Count Raven, Terra Firma and St. Vitus to craft some total Sabbath worshipping heavy doom. And it is pretty excellent. Killer loping tempo, druggy doomy guitar, wailed almost Ozzy-ish vocals, think Pentagram, Pagan Altar and the like� fans of that sort of classic doom will dig this big time. There is some surprising folkiness to be found here and there, but it never takes long for the band to lurch back into full on doom groove destruction. Lord Vicar also include in their ranks members of Centurions Ghost, While Heaven Wept and Revelation for extra doom cred, if any more were needed!
LIMITED TO 700 COPIES! Packaged in a thick matte sleeve, pressed on heavy vinyl, with a color insert with lyrics and liner notes.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ah, the second release from the Mimaroglu Music Sale sponsored "No Label" which probably will stick as a name, when it really was meant to be a private imprint with the absence of a label name. No matter, though as this split LP from Mark Lord (the pseudonym of Christopher Forgues) and Morgan Egg (who we know next to nothing about). Forgues has previous work under the Whitehouse inspired project Kites with blistering pierced noise surrounded by shock-horror tactics; and that sensibility has been tempered under the Mark Lord moniker. The only semblance of that former self appears in an appropriated dialogue of a '70s porn, buttressed by some fantastic retro-garde / minimal wave electronics. These looping synth modulations arppegiate and expand along linear pulsations dappled by circuit bent twiddle and scrags of cheap noise. Sort of like a more progressive take on the Units without so much of the punk overdrive. The final cut "Warpath" tops the drum machine propulsion with an almost charmingly playful melody to the counter the insistent synth bass pulse. Really great stuff!
Morgan Egg's snarled drone tempests declares their influences from the classic Italian industrial work by Maurizio Bianchi and Giancarlo Toniutti. Washes of grey static and revolving chunks of leaden distortion meld into the grim atmospheres that Egg laces with oscillating electronics and curiously languid bell tones. Quite a departure from the Mark Lord side, but just as incredible.
This small pressing is less than 300 copies, of which we have less than a dozen. Who knows if more will be in our future.
Yup, she's back, and she hasn't changed a bit -- her unmistakable achingly honeysweet voice and jangle-crunch guitar in hand. What seems to have seldom been addressed in the past is that, although she was trumpeted as an indie folksy singer/*songwriter*, what Mary Lou Lord did and still does best is sing other people's songs. Sure she got a lot of attention for writing a bunch of songs about Kurt and Courtney, but when that inkwell ran dry, her other wells proved less juicy. You may recall that many moons ago she was a busker. She clearly knew that one of the best ways to lure an ear for a dime in the streets 'n' subways is to target the familiar in the form of well-executed cover versions. She's kept that wisdom close to heart. In particular, it's when she sings the songs of Bevis Frond's Nick Salomon that she truly shines... and that's exactly what she wisely does on this album. He wrote nine of the album's fourteen songs, they collaborated on three, and the other two are covers of songs by Pink Floyd and Badfinger!
#1 lame aspect to Ms. Lord's major label debut: "Includes Internet Access" (via AOL to add insult to injury). Nice songs, the majority of which were written or co-written by the Bevis Frond's Nick Saloman...
This six-song split cd includes Mary Lou Lord performing, as she often does, a song by Nick Saloman of the Bevis Frond. Also, the other half of this cd features Sean Na Na doing Andee's new favorite Pacific Northwest indie-rock hit: "Princess and the Pony". A nice surprise.
These Spanish masters of monumental ultra doom stoner sludge return, with four new tracks. And as we mentioned last time, don't confuse these guys with the Master Musicians Of Bukkake, while both take their name from a somewhat problematical source (Google it - or maybe don't), the Lords are a much heavier proposition, as becomes pretty obvious a few minutes into the first track. Although they do start out with a wild tangle of chaotic psychedelic noisemaking, a squall of swirling skree, all set to some monster drumming, but soon, the song proper kicks in, and the band lock into some groovy stoner metal, all slithery riffage, and propulsive drumming, but this is not just rehashed riffage, the band whip out some wild squiggle guitar harmonies, and the vocals, not at all what you might expect, a sort of super processed, demonic, underwater shriek/gargle, totally changes the tone of the band, especially when they kick out some stonery wah wah guitar shred, but then it's wrapped around those crazed vokills, a dizzying mix for sure. And those guitars, that's really what halls make this something else entirely, when the guitars go careening off course, and instead of churning away, the riff splinters, leaving will blasts of psychedelic freakout, or groovy shred, or just tripped out noisiness, always to eventually somehow return to the roiling riffiness. The songs are long too, so they go through all sorts of transformations/permutations, from doomy creeps and crawls, to psychedelic blooze blowouts, super stretched out slo-mo ultradooooooom to Sabbathy swing, all pocked with spacey FX, wild guitar aktion and more of those twisted alien vox. Killer!
Not to be confused with the Master Musicians, these LORDS Of Bukkake are Spanish, and specialize in a particularly twisted, sick, sludgey, electronic flecked ultradoom. The label describes their sound as Iron Monkey meets the Swans meets Godflesh meets Esoteric meets Eyehategod, and while something like that may be too good to actually exist, this definitely comes close. The first few minutes set the stage with a squall of wild glitched out electronics, swirling squiggles of damaged effects, mewled maniacal vox, before quickly slipping into a low slung almost twangy groove,a ll super busy drumming, and spidery reverbed guitars, not to mention more swirls of weird effects, dubby reverb and whatnot, and the drums are so bizarre super chaotic and all over the place, soon some chiming guitars come in, but it still sounds more tripped out and abstract and psychedelic than specifically doomy. It's not until about 4 minutes in, when out come the big guns, and by big guns we of course mean, crushing downtuned, super distorted riffage, and then the vocals, holy shit. Like Burning Witch but even MORE fucked up and freaked out, raspy and alien and sick, like some cartoon supervillain, perfectly matched to the sort of twisted psych doom these guys lay down.
The second track is another sprawl of slo-mo doom trudgery, all downtuned glacial guitaring and octopoidal caveman drumming, this time peppered with stretches of droned out layered high end, but again, it's those vocals, seriously freaky and haunting and EVIL.
The last two tracks continue on in much the same way, lacing the sick black doom with squalls of effects, of warped wah wah drenched psych guitars, swirling spaced out atmospheres, the final track especially, starts out all total hazy psych rock before the guitars drop out completely, leaving just the drums and some insect like buzzing electronics, suddenly sounding like Geronimo or Bastard Noise, before finally launching back into some doom, this time though, the tempo is cranked up and it's almost groovy, a little stonery, a LOT Sabbathy, but corrupted by those awesomely damaged vokills, and then finally the song collapses into yet another sun baked stretch of shredding washed out psychedelia, the only thing keeping it from total druggy psych rock bliss out, those vox, turning it instead into something wholly other.
Twisted, sick, heavy, slow and low, psychedelic and totally gloriously fucked. It's almost like someone whipped this up just for the aQ weirdos out there, a seriously WAY recommended batch of what-the-fuck avant psychedelic outsider doom sludge radness!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!
This has a lot going for it. First off, they're called Lords Of Falconry, which is kinda cool. Lordly, even. And this, their debut full-length, comes to us via the also quite lordly Holy Mountain label, who have a pretty stellar track record as far as we're concerned. In fact, Holy Mountain probably has had a higher number of AQ Records Of The Week per capita than almost any other label. Furthermore, our discerning pal JW who runs Holy Mountain tells us that THIS is precisely the sort of thing he's always wanted to release on his label. So far, so good. Our appetites are whetted. And then, there's the music. ULTRA fuzzed, freaked out, high energy, heavy psychedelic guitar jams, to put it plainly. Can't complain about that, no siree. But (you knew there had to be a but), we do have one minor caveat for you potential emptors... it concerns the vocals. If this was all-instrumental, there'd be no hemming and hawing. But, some of the vocal stylings struck some of us as, well, a little bit goofy. Self-consciously "rawk" or something. You may not mind a bit, and we actually don't much either.
Anyway, it's hard to be picky about the vocals when Lords Of Falconry's guitars are blasting jet-engine like, turning the air into cottage cheese they way they used to do back in Blue Cheer's daze, the wild FX and throbbing distortion turning yr head inside out so your brain is being caressed and cudgeled by these riffs and rhythms without any help from your ears.
Recommended to folks who get off on bands like Julian Cope's Braindonor, DMBQ, Midnite Snake, The Heads, Hawkwind, High Rise, and other fuzz-laden, pedal-stomping, heavy-duty psychedelic throwbacks. And by the way, though Holy Mountain didn't tell us this, we're pretty sure that one of these Lords Of Falconry is in fact none other than guitarist Steven Wray Lobdell of Davis Redford Triad, Sufi Mind Game, and Faust fame! If true (it is), that explains a lot about this. The other dude in the band we believe to be one Sammy Adams, formerly the drummer for Fireballs Of Freedom. Talk about a power duo. So, despite a slight case of what we might call the Scissorfight syndrome, this gets a solid recommendation from us!
