Lots of folks have been requesting this super dreamy and soothing debut from N. Lannon, and whenever we play it in the store it's guaranteed that a handful of customers will ask what it is. On the surface Chemical Friends seems to be a fairly straightforward acoustic singer/songwriter affair however there's ever so subtle details that shift Lannon's music slightly off the beaten path. There's absolutely nothing heavy nor intrusive about the album. It's all the softest, prettiest wispy melodies and whispery singing. Very vaporous and atmospheric with hushed acoustic guitar, layered vocals and an occasional gentle programmed pulsing beat. Lannon's vocal delivery seems warmly familiar recalling the heartfelt ache of the late Elliott Smith. Some customers even mistook this to be Elliott Smith's forthcoming posthumous album (psst, it's actually set for release in November). It all makes for an overall picture that suggests a spacey folk pop distant cousin of Simon And Garfunkel (or their present-day kindred spirits Kings of Convenience for that matter), the abovementioned Smith and Pink Floyd. Very nice!
You might recognize Mr. Nyles Lannon from his time in Bay Area band Film School or as his laptoppin' folktronic alter ego n.lannon. When we'd play Chemical Friends (his 2004 debut album as a solo artist) in the store, it was frequently mistaken for a posthumous Elliott Smith release. Pressure is his second solo album. Far darker and heavier in mood, it will undoubtedly draw comparisons once again to the late singer/songwriter as well as bringing to mind the textured melodic qualities of Grizzly Bear and the sharp songwriting of fellow San Franciscan Kelly Stoltz. Pressure is a really strong album, without a dud in the batch. Subdued, withered and heartrending, but still very dreamy.
There are remix records, and then there are remix records! We got kind of burnt out on the whole remix thing. Sort of seemed like a big exercise in back patting friend rock name recognition. And 90 percent of the time the remix did NOTHING to improve on the original. And most of the time the remix record doesn't happen because two bands realize how totally perfect they are together and how amazing it would be if they collaborated, it's usually because that's just what you do, make a remix record.
With Lansing-Dreiden, it's a bit easier to understand the idea behind a remix record. They are a sort of collective after all. And they aren't just a band, they are artists and performers, as involved in painting, installations and design as they are in music. Plus for D.I. By D.D. they just handed over the whole record to a DJ pal of theirs and let him go nuts.
We're also usually wary of a rock band that gets the hip hop remix treatment. There are some serious Linkin Park "oof"-style ramifications. Especially when rapping is involved. The outcome is rarely rosy. However, the music of Lansing-Dreiden is pretty well suited to be chopped up and looped into laid back DJ Shadow style beatscapes. Their sort of new wave-y eighties art rock, is full of sweeping synths and funky rhythms, lots of weird textures and cool arrangements.
So the end result, D.I. By D.D. is actually fantastic. It's the sort of thing that should be blasting in dark hipster clubs in NYC and L.A. and San Francisco. Groovy and mysterious, sort of old skool, but with some modern flavor. A little bit of rapping, but mostly instrumental, minus the snippets of original L-D vocals. But here's the rub, listening to D.I. By D.D. you wouldn't necessarily even realize that the source material was all some cool NY new wave art rock band. It just sounds really good. It's a lot more exciting if you already dig Lansing-Dreiden and are able to pick out the bits and pieces and see how they fit into someone else's groovy vision. That said, even if you could care less about L-D, but were just looking for some super cool, dark, new wavy, Entroducing-style laid back hip hop flecked dance music, then by all means this will totally hit the spot.
So basically you can't really go wrong, open minded fans of the band will definitely dig this. Folks into stuff like DJ Shadow, Prefuse 73, UNKLE will also probably like this a lot. SO unless you hate the band, and hate any sort of dance music, check it out!!
At first we weren't sure what to make of this band, with their awkward name, their super spare black and white artwork, their well crafted mystery, a seemingly complete lack of any sort of pertinent information, no photos, no real liner notes, no mention of individual band members. All very alluring most certainly. We had heard them described as "dreamy space rock... with a psychedelic metal twist" which definitely sounds good. And as some sort of heavy metal / new wave hybrid, which as good as -that- sounds, it most definitely seems like something that would work better in theory than in practice. In actuality, Lansing-Dreiden are neither of those, and end up being way more interesting than any of that would have led us to believe.
Lansing-Dreiden are not just a band either, no, they're a sort of arts collective: musicians, sculptors, artists, writers, film makers, replete with the requisite gallery showings, Artforum writeups, film premiers and rock shows. The lines between each of these disciplines are so blurry they might as well not exist. Their vibe, both visually and sonically is warm and washed out, a gauzy soft focus shapshot of pop culture past, the sound on The Dividing Island is both dizzyingly bizarre and dreamily overwhelming, a pastiche of all sorts of disparate pop elements, loads of instantly recognizable hooks, sweet harmony vocals, squiggly synths, horns, soft whispery crooning, bi arena rock drums, jangling guitars, huge sheets of fuzzy reverb, hand claps, cheesy electronic drums, It's almost like it's 1985 and we're watching MTV in some alternate universe. This is definitely some sort of (old) new wave, no trace of metal to be found (well mostly, more on that in a minute), no space rock really either, although there is plenty of spaced out trippiness. But even with bits of spaciness, and some space rock swirl here and there, that stuff is just window dressing for L-D's passion, which seems to be cracked eighties pop. Lansing-Dreiden is some sort of weird musical time machine, skipping lazily from 1982 to 1985 to 1989 and back again. Where Ariel Pink took seventies AM radio, and turned it into his own disheveled, cracked demented pop vision, Lansing-Dreiden instead take eighties FM radio and classic eighties MTV and gives them their own warm and warped, precious and polished spin. Imagine a hip NY art rock band channeling everything you loved and loathed about ABC, Style Council, Talk Talk, Spandau Ballet, the Fixx, Kajagoogoo, Thompson Twins, Culture Club, Fun Boy Three, Naked Eyes, Psychedelic Furs, The Call, Modern English, etc. There are some moments where the band dips its toes into the more rollicking contemporary NY new wave redux sound of bands like Interpol and the Strokes, and there are stretches of moody near ambient post rock, but for the most part this is a dead ringer for some lost eighties 'classic'. Mix tapes, John Cusack, Say Anything, Breakfast Club, it's like our teenage years revisited, albeit with a slightly more twisted and sinister bent.
There may seemingly be nary a trace of any metal on The Dividing Island, but best stick around for the final track, metallically titled "Dethroning The Optimyth", quite possibly the greatest (only) song ever to mix eighties MTV pop and crushing death metal! As much as we dig the rest of the record, we almost wish the whole record sounded like "Dethroning The Optimyth", although to be totally honest, the thought of a whole album of eighties pop death metal is almost too much to bear! Pounding double bass drumming, and chugging downtuned riffs collide with soft sweetly swoony pop, soaring synthesizers, airy breathless vocals, like laying on your bed, beneath your Kiss and Slayer posters, listening to your favorite metal record while your sister is in the next room BLASTING the soundtrack to the Breakfast Club through your thin walls. SO weird but SO COOL!
Comes in a gorgeously designed black and white cardboard sleeve that opens like a gatefold, the inside a series of alternating black and white triangles, and then the gatefold opens again with two more triangular panels, one black and and one white, all very austere and mysterious looking.
One of two new releases from UK psych/space rock label Cardinal Fuzz, this one might throw you for a loop, especially if you've been faithfully nabbing whatever CF releases you could get your hands on, the Cosmic Dead, Dead Sea Apes, the Janitors, Hills, etc., all of 'em spaced out and heavy, falling somewhere in the spectrum between the Heads and White Hills, and channeling the classic sounds of Hawkwind into something new. But this record from Philly rockers Lantern, while still psychedelic, is definitely something else all together. Right from the first few minutes, you'll know what we mean, considering the song opens with just drums and horns, or guitars made to sound like horns, it's groovy and swaggery, more Stooges than anything, the beat with a sort of Go-Go groove to it, and then the female vocals deliver another curve ball, the guitars whipped up into wild squall of wah wah drenched psychedelic freakout. The label references Dead Moon, the Gibson Brothers, Billy Childish, Hasil Adkins and the Flaming Groovies, none of which are that far off. But it's definitely still spacey and psychedelic, just not so far out and tripped out. A lot of the tracks have that sort of Gary Glitter drum beat, and there are horns, all over the place. C'mon, it's got rock 'n' roll in the title, and really, if anything, this IS scuzzy, fuzzy, FX drenched rock and roll, alternately kinetic and rocking, dour and dirgey, just check out the heavy fuzz creep of "King Of The Jungle". In fact, Cardinal Fuzz nerds might want to check out all the samples before pulling the trigger, cuz it's definitely a lot different than other stuff on the label, but even so, it's still a serious slab of heavy rocking psychedelic rock, that should push all those same buttons!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! Includes a cd version of the whole record, along with FOUR bonus tracks!!
Hmmm, Desert Ocean... yes, exactly. The title of Lanterna's fifth full length hits the nail on the head for what this instrumental music evokes. If this were a film there'd be plenty of gradually panning shots of drifting dunes and undulating waves - in black and white of course and probably some in slow motion too. Sand and water as far as the eye can see. The glint of sunlight in the ripples. The haze of heat rising off in the distance. The mystery of what lurks beneath the surface of the ever-changing landscapes. Translation: Spartan guitarwork effected with long reverb, gently swaying tempos, a soft tap on a woodblock. Haunting and beautiful.
Sands is mellow driving music or faux soundtrack, instrumental, spacious, with reverby guitar. Starts off a bit like what one could expect if the Edge (of U2) were to release a solo album of "infinite guitar" and then heads straight downhill from there. I swear more and more indie-post rockers out there are cutting tracks with the hopes of having some advertising agency pick it up for commercial use. Just put on "Fields" and listen. You can almost hear the announcer touting that with the freedom of America's lowest APR financing, there's no reason for anyone to pass up on the new 2003 Dodge Durango.
Record number three from these German post black metallers, the first we've reviewed on the aQ list, although they did merit mentions in our reviews of records by Alcest and Amesoeurs, which makes sense since that's usually who they get lumped in with (along with Farsot, whose new record is reviewed elsewhere on this weeks list), which to a certain degree makes sense, like those groups, Lantlos have more in common with the new strains of black metal, but unlike the sort of shimmery ethereal pop of those groups, Lantlos is simultaneously much heavier, and even LESS black metal. To our ears, Lantlos at this point sounds like a post rock band, albeit a very heavy one, and one with a distinctly black metal pedigree, but there are very few instances of blasting or buzzing, the vocals are definitely one the vokills side of the spectrum, but the music, is quite removed from black metal, slipping easily from abstract doomy plod, to dreamy, droney drift, from Neurosisy churn to soaring Godspeed like majesty, from moody, melodic almost Katatonia like doom pop, to skittery almost jazziness and back again. There's also the fact, that many of those sounds coexist in the same song, the lengthy tracks shifting constantly. And while here and there a bit of blasting buzz does pop up, in most cases it's in conjunction with some other sound that is distinctly NOT black metal, which if anything only makes it that much cooler.
These guys definitely get pegged as 'post black metal' but it might be more accurate to describe them as blackened post rock, or simple post metal, cuz they definitely sound like the sort of band that would find themselves sonically more at home alongside groups like Angel Eyes, the Ocean, Snowblood, Baroness, and all the other brooding slow build epic heavy post metal combos we dig so much. And hell, mixing in a little vokill rasp and some extra buzz, maybe a little bit of blast, can't hurt either.
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.
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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When one of our friends told us about this little cd containing an experimental piece using the sounds of a Zamboni, we got very very excited. A Zamboni! (That's that unusual machine that resurfaces the ice in hockey rinks.) Upon hearing it, we were even more thrilled, 'cause it's an amazing 20 minute drone work! And practically everyone who works here has bought one by now...
This cute 3" cd, released through Metamkine's esteemed 'Cinema Pour L'Oreille' series of electro-acoustics and musique concrete, contains one track, "Mantra", which opens with a trio of motors starting up and emitting a gentle purr. As these engines warm up and shift through various perfunctory cycles, a wide spectrum of metallic vibrations slowly spins through the stereo field. While it would be nice to believe that these movements coincide with a Zamboni circling a really nice binaural microphone, it's more likely that Laporte exercised his artistic license with a judicious use of crossfading and stereo panning upon his field recordings. As the disc draws near its end, it sounds as if a screw or bolt is loosened by the vibrations and two pieces of metal begin a clamorous bell-ringing arrhythmia. When these motors finally are shut down, those pieces of metal still resonate for a beautifully sustained coda.
Back to the Zamboni issue: we'd been told by 'reliable' informants (Loren Chasse who heard about it from Ferarra Pan who heard it on Scot Jenerik's radio show) that the source material for Jean-Francois Laporte's "Mantra" was a Zamboni. As the liner-notes (all in French mind you) indicate that Laporte incorporated the sound of an air compressor from an ice-skating rink, it didn't rule out the possibility that indeed that air compressor could belong to a Zamboni, but it didn't actually say anything about Zambonis. (Are they even called Zambonis in France, anyway?) As you can tell, we Aquarians like the Zamboni and would really like to believe that the Zamboni was responsible for this album. Thus, we contacted the label, who merely sent us an English translation of the original liner notes, which again stated the source material to be an air compressor. Thus, we are left to ponder the quandary: is it or is it not a Zamboni?
Putting this grand existential question aside and the true origin of the source material out of sight for the moment, what's true is that Laporte has indeed sculpted one of the most compelling drone compositions that we've encountered in quite some time. For loyal readers of these lists, that's no idle comment as artists like Oragnum, Jonathan Coleclough, Mirror, John Duncan, and Francisco Lopez still rank highly for us in the pantheon of dronescapers. Not only as working model but also as a something of belief system, Jean-Francoise Laporte applies the ideals of the mantra to the urban landscape. To him, the hypnotic audio elements of refrigerators, motorcycle engines, and in this case the Zamboni / air compressor rise above their mundane properties to become something that can be meditated upon and hold transcendent properties.
A very, very nice recording, Zamboni or not. Even if you don't normally buy all the weird, droney experimental stuff we recommend, you might want to take a chance and try this out. After all, it's only 20 minutes out of your day and eight bucks. And, maybe it's a Zamboni!
Those artists, musicians, misanthropes, and just plain weirdos who not only exist musically on the fringes but have planted their entire existence on the edge have long been the greatest inspirations of Aquarius Records. For proof, you could scroll through oddball recordings that have earned the honor of Aquarius Record Of The Week. There was the Finnish sound artist Terje Isungset who crafted not just one album, but two from untreated percussive instruments entirely made of ice. Hans Edler thrilled us with his 1970s transformation from teen idol into short-circuited electronic composer. The protracted ululations of the profoundly cracked Elizabeth Clare Prophet and the Church Universal and Triumphant were as transcendent as anything that Lamonte Young had to offer, yet also had that creepy cult of personality vibe to boot. And who could forget Kathy McGinty? But one of the earliest recordings that truly made our collective jaw drop was the 3" cd from French-Canadian composer Jean-Francois Laporte called Mantra. Here was a mighty fine 20 minute composition of delicious vibrations, rattles, mechanical hum, and industrial drones that came with a particularly alluring back story: the source material to Mantra was a Zamboni -- the unusual machine only found at hockey rinks responsible for resurfacing its ice.
The one catch to Laporte's Zamboni sourced masterpiece was that we could never verify that a Zamboni was the actual source material. We heard from 'reliable sources' that Mantra is the sound of a Zamboni; and we wanted so desperately to believe that this was the case, just because the Zamboni is such an amazing and eccentric beast of industrial engineering. Before this turns into a dialectic on epistemology, we here at Aquarius discovered that we had been duped by a couple of mischievous DJs on KPFA without the knowledge or consent of Jean-Francois Laporte. It turns out that Laporte used nothing but a common air-compressor in composing Mantra. This factual unveiling should not in any way take away from the splendor of that piece. Here's what we had to say about Mantra many moons ago:
"Mantra opens with a trio of motors starting up and emitting a gentle purr. As these engines warm up and shift through various perfunctory cycles, a wide spectrum of metallic vibrations slowly spins through the stereo field. After a marvelous set of transitions between drones, there is the rattling sound as if a screw or bolt had been loosened by the vibrations, with two pieces of metal beginning a clamorous bell-ringing arrhythmia. When these motors finally are shut down, those pieces of metal still resonate for a beautifully sustained coda."
That 3" cd came out almost a decade ago, became a classic, and went out of print. Thankfully, 23five Incorporated has rescued Mantra from the dustbin by issuing the first major compendium of Laporte's work in the form of Soundmatters. While we've already sung the praises of Mantra, the remainder of Soundmatters is well worth investigating on its own. The opening track "Electro-Prana" is a pristine set of field recordings of a wind that ripped through Montreal, when the city was silenced by a winter time blackout. It's a pure, chilling sound of whistling wind overtaking the urban landscape. The next piece is the only digitally rendered composition on Soundmatters, yet Laporte brings his intuitive expressionism to a series of spiraling drones that easily rival those of your favorite minimalist (e.g. Niblock, Chalk, Hafler Trio, Xenakis, etc.). For those of you who have had the pleasure of experiencing Laporte's live concerts, the third piece will certainly be familiar. He's built an instrument with a series of car horns and elongated trumpet bells attached to an air compressor with each of the valves controlled by foot pedals. This instrument can generate infinitely sustainable, blaring drones from each of the horns; and Laporte craftily layers these sounds for incredible, dynamic results. Well, for this recording, Laporte lugged this instrument into the hull of a giant cargo ship and recorded this composition using the massive reverb of that space and the results are simply jaw-dropping. Imagine the most Nordic bellow from a Wagner symphony stretched out into its melancholic, raw sound and allowed to decay in space and time. Wow!
Following this is the aforementioned Mantra; and then Soundmatters' final piece which explores a quiet, yet thoroughly rich harmonic tapestry produced by a quartet of saxophones that could be Laporte's imagined summit between Evan Parker and Morton Feldman with rasping breaths of sound breaking across a silent event horizon with the ghostly energy of subatomic particles flickering and dissolving in a cloud chamber before amassing into a delirious swarm of Tony Conrad-esque acoustic dissonance. It's all utterly magnificent and one of finest collections of 'serious' composition that we've come across.
Before the Libretto is like some sort of neo-futuristic pseudo-Pagan ritual in which these four women from four countries (Elaine Radigue (France), Kaffe Matthews (UK), Ryoko Kuwajima (Japan), and AGF (Germany) hold hands (or connect laptops) and invoke the forces of nature....but instead of the earth and wind and sea answering the call, a bunch of little aliens show up and start dancing a jig. No one knows what the hell is going on, but it's pretty awesome all the same. Part operatic play, part experimental poetry, glistening, organic, feminine, and weird. Ryoko Kuwajima sounds a bit like Tujiko Noriko....wafting in and out with spoken bits and scraps of private song. Whenever it strikes her fancy, while the others weave a playful prickly and peculiar musical bed for all of the strange vocalisations. Very hard to describe what's going on, totally alien sounding but at the same time, so inviting you just want to touch and fold and feel and try to figure out what the heck is going on. The sounds are gentle, but not soft, crunchy, but not hard, like diving into a swiming pool full of autumn leaves, then running through the forest naked. The separate parts sound a little like puzzle pieces forced into the wrong places, a curious hodgepodge of ill fitting pieces, but together thay have some strange poetry, it's what makes this all sound so charming. The parts and pieces and sonic fragments don't mesh, but somehow....that's what makes it work. The cover is quite striking as well, a creepy fleshy tongue flower that inspires lot of "hmms" and "eeews" from customers when it's in the 'Now Playing' slot on our counter. Highly recommended, a curious and curiously appealing record.
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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Three projects fronted by Chris Leo on one limited cd. His solo work features sonic guitars, bizarre samples, and loops. As The Lapse, Chris joins former Blonde Redhead member Toko, and closes this four track cd by hooking up with hip hop beatmeister Dalek as Octalapse.
Angular yet catchy arrangements attempt to capture the loose, schizophrenic nature of this rock duo, composed of Chris from the Van Pelt and Toko, ex-Blonde Redhead. Kind of like Sonic Youth at practice when all of a sudden the electricity goes out. Simple, urgent, and intense but without the wall of feedback. It's good.
Attention New Age Heads! Just click add to cart now because these will be gone before you know it. The first pressing is already out of print and we have just a handful of these, so don't sleep! This is a deluxe 3 cassette reissue of master zither excursionist Laraaji's seminal cassette releases made between 1978 and 1983: Lotus Collage (1978), Unicorns In Paradise (1981), and Connecting With The Inner Healer Through Music (1983). Originally hand made and distributed by Laraaji himself, the cassette form was perfect for immersive meditative listening. Indeed this is the first time these recordings have been reissued in their original form, as only excerpts have been included on compilations previously. Recorded before Brian Eno's "discovery" and release of Laraaji's Ambient 3: Days of Radiance, these pieces are blissfully extraordinary and come highly recommended. Packed in orange embossed cardstock sleeve around the 3 hardshell cassettes replicating the original tapes' j-card artwork. Uber-limited! Unicorns In Paradise!!
Ambient 3 (Days of Radiance) was the 1980 Brian Eno-produced album that introduced the majestic electric zither ambiance of Edward Larry Gordan (aka Laraaji, to use his preferred, more new-agey name) to a wider audience. Discovered busking in Washington Square Park after years of self-releasing tapes, studying eastern mysticism, and developing a practice of laughter therapy, Laraaji was soon after enlisted by Eno to release a work in his Ambient series, much as Eno did with Harold Budd previously. Comprised of two suites of music, "The Dance" and "Meditation", Laraaji employs gamelan-like rhythms on an electronically treated hammer dulcimer in the first suite, while the slowed down zither is featured in the second suite. Eno as usual keeps a restrained but guiding role in delicately layering and treating the tracks with a beautifully soft-focus feel. An essential release!
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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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.
This is the first we've heard from this Midwestern outfit, whose sound is a dark, psychedelic shoegaze stoner pop, rife with heavy guitars, clean crooned vocals, and warm whirring organs, the songs simple and heartfelt, but disarmingly so, the A side offering up some washed out woozy jangle and warm muted crunch, and some seriously anthemic choruses, before suddenly exploding into a furious frenzied squall of wild psychguitar heaviness, and blissed out shoegaze heaviness. The flipside is more of a dark brooder, reminding us of a poppier, less slowcore True Widow, the instrumental passages are heavy and heady, tranced out and hypnotic, and the B side spends plenty of time chugging and churning hypnotically, the drum heavy, guitar swirled outro is a gorgeous chunk of spacey heaviness that we would have liked to see stretch out another ten or 15 minutes. We also have LT's split lp with another Midwestern outfit called Men Of Fortune, which we'll review next time, or check the 'in stock not yet reviewed' if you can't wait...
We reviewed the first 7" from Midwestern slowcore rockers Lark's Tongue last list, and at the time mentioned we also got a copy of their split with another Midwestern outfit, which is this right here, and like that 7" LT display a sort of laidback dark jangle minimalism that had us comparing them to another aQ fave, True Widow, but as we mentioned in that review, they're not nearly so dour and dark and a good bit more rocking, with a distinctly nineties vibe, the three tracks here letting the band stretch out, which definitely suits their sound, which is lush, and expansive, a little bit brooding, hauntingly psychedelic, this time with cool swoonsome background vocals, some seriously crunchy guitars, and world weary vocals, the songs laced with long stretches of droned out psych jam smolder, reminding us of Dead Meadow, sort of burnt out, sun dappled, hazy heaviness, which is even more evident on "Black Sue", which sounds like stoner rock slowed down to a moody crawl, again the song wreathed in smoldering guitars, and dreamy reverby effects. The final track slows things down even further, and the band builds up to an explosive, but still slo-mo finale, all dirgey drumming, and swirling clouds of guitarnoise, and dreamy laconic vocals that give the sound a Red Red Meat vibe too, which is most definitely not a bad thing.
We had never heard of Men Of Fortune before, but immediately out of the gate their sound is heavier, and dirgier, still psychedelic, a Midwestern noise rock, stop and start guitar churn, super dynamic, but soon, the sound blisses out, and in come super dramatic vocals, changing the tenor of the song big time, the vibe suddenly sort of gloomy and gothic, but when fused to the noise rock heft, makes for something pretty excellent. The other three songs also fuse noisy, stoner rock heaviness, and big riff crunch, even some weird electronics, to crooned dramatic gloominess, and sprawling gothic psychedelia.
Includes a download coupon!
HMKE is a brief 4 track EP from the Italian post-rock collective Larsen, who earned a considerable amount of notoriety for their stunt in flying Michael Gira over to Italy to produce their record, all the while remaining hidden behind a curtain...supposedly. Last year, Larsen continued to be enigmatic with Play, an album of audio alchemy transforming Autechre's electronic melodies into hypnotic, drone-rock epics to amazing effect. Thanks to a poorly worded press-release from the label, it's sort of hard to tell if this is a precursor to an upcoming Lustmord / Larsen collaborative project; or if that collaboration is merely a one-off to appear sometime in the future. We'll shrug our shoulders and simply enjoy this fractured gem of dark, dark, dark drone-rock hypnosis, augmented by some choice remixes. The first track is a remix from the Norwegian audio-virologist Deathprod, who drags the already turgid sounds of Larsen into grim hum of blackened ice. Next up is a new track, which may or may not have something to do with that aforementioned Lustmord collaboration; it's a buzzing dirge of circling bass, guitar, and electronics caught in a downward spiral, much like their material on their earlier recordings. For the last two tracks, Larsen enlisted the remixing talents of dark ambient noodler Oragami Galaktika.
Gone are the days when Larsen would hire Michael Gira to produce one of their claustrophobic albums under suspiciously odd circumstances. After 13 years in existence, the Italian post-rock collective has emerged as a champion of cinematic pop on La Fever Lit, sharing a sound that has more in common now a days with Sigur Ros than with the Swans. Sure, the band's sound on La Fever Lit persists in their hypnotizing arrangements for cyclical rhythms buttressing slow-burning crescendos of guitars and electronics, but the moodiness and abject urgency which marked their earlier recordings have been supplanted with an opulence, majesty, and a celebratory nature with occasional detours back into the bittersweet. On a handful of the tracks, Larsen's usually instrumental pieces have been augmented with vocals by Annie Anxiety, the one time member of Crass and contributor to Current 93, who presents herself as a detached diva singing torch songs of urban decay, which is well suited for Larsen's sweeping overtures.
The first album from Italy's Larsen was shrouded in mystery, literally they would have had us believe, as it (Rever) came accompanied by the unlikely story that it was recorded with the band concealed behind a screen, producer Michael Gira never actually ever laying eyes on the bandmembers, as they played in concealment and he twiddled the knobs in the studio on his side of the screen. Probably not a true story, but a good one! This new disc comes with a (somewhat) more plausible narrative: apparently Larsen, in preparing for their next record, decided to improvise, just as an exercise, around a bunch of their favorite melodies from tracks by British glitchtronica masters Autechre. In doing so, they eventually came up with their own material, tracks that weren't literally "covers" or in any way direct interpretations of Autechre songs, but were nonetheless heavily influenced and inspired by Autechre's songwriting -- again, in terms of melodies, not the glitchy science of the Autechre duo's stuttering beats. But along with Autechre, their label also cites Einsturzende Neubauten, Six Organs of Admittance, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Godspeed You Black Emperor and Gira's Swans as possible influences, and those references seem equally likely to our ears, especially since Larsen's ritualistic, repetitive post-rock doesn't sound remotely like Autechre. Well wait a sec...it does...remotely. By casting such gentle "Autechre-ish" melodies in the context of such completely different instrumentation (guitar, drums, bass, harmonium, xylophone, accordion, keyboards, cello, violin...) and arrangement, Larsen's Play highlights just how melodic Autechre are, something perhaps obscured by the skittering electronic component of their own music. Autechre issues aside, Larsen sure do still sound mysterious. And Play perhaps surpasses what we thought was a pretty brilliant debut (an AQ record of the week, almost exactly three years ago). As with Rever, Play is a largely instrumental, slowly unfolding, mesmerizing, multi-part epic of both tranquility and power, anchored in hypnotic drum-grooves and bathed in delicate instrumental textures. However inspired, it's Larsen that has done the hard work here of constructing such a moody monument.
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The story of how this record came to be is almost impossible to believe, yet Michael Gira (Angels of Light / Swans) seems like a reliable enough source that it could in fact be true. Beginning sometime last year, Gira started receiving a series of arcane
The one qualm with the album is on how the record ends. It has been a longstanding belief of mine that Sonic Youth's "Daydream Nation" should have ended with the graceful haze of "Hyperstation" and done away with the unnecessary exclamation of "Eliminator, Jr." Similarly, Larsen ends "Rever" badly, as a beautifully repetitive groove simply cuts out, making you wonder if California is returning to the days of rolling blackouts. If only every record had one thing wrong with it instead of eighty-eleven problems, and in spite of that one misgiving, this is one of the best records we have heard in quite a while.
Larsen is an enigmatic post-rock ensemble who have been responsible for some interesting conceptual projects all of which have been immaculately executed. For their highly acclaimed album Rever, the ensemble hired Michael Gira (Swans, Angels of Light) as the producer, but never allowed him to actually see the band as they played behind a curtain. Larsen followed this album with a breathtaking record reconstructing the melodic phrasing of Autechre through their own repetitive patterns for guitar, bass, vibraphone, accordion, and drums. Seies doesn't enjoy any of the conceptual agendas of the previous record; or rather if there are any concepts to the record, Larsen has shrouded them from their audience. The hymnal post-rock hypnosis from the previous records is certainly present, conjuring a spaghetti western swagger heard in the more bad-ass Morricone soundtracks. In these looping dirges, Larsen also call to mind the desolate soundtracks composed by Calla and some of the late period work of Swans; this is especially true for the tracks in which former Swans singer Jarboe appears! There's guest appearances a plenty on Seies as Current 93's cellist Julia Kent appears on some early tracks, and the dark ambient overlord Lustmord conjures his own black clouds on some of the later cuts.
There's actually a third entity who makes an appearance on this collaborative record, certainly at the behest of Steven Stapleton. That would be Eberhard Kranemann (aka Fritz Muller) who had been an early member of both Neu! and Kraftwerk way back when, but had taken much more of a damaged freeform experimental approach during the next three decades. Nurse With Wound is represented by the longstanding coupling of Stapleton and Colin Potter, spinning a psychotropic cloud of disfigured tones and mangled rhythms. Larsen is the Italian occultish-leaning post-rock outfit with quite an interesting history behind them of Autechre covers and an odd and hardly believable story of once working with Michael Gira. That said, it's hard to really qualify this as a collaborative album, since the tracks at the front-end of the record really sound like Nurse With Wound and those in the latter half like Larsen.
The album opens with a Kranemann penned song of guitar scribbling very much on par with the NWW classic Chance Meeting On An Operating Table with an almost 23 Skidoo / Hula groove of electronic-bhangra with all of the distant screams and weirdo sounds you would expect from a wacked NWW tune. A more introspective, but kaleidoscopically dark ambient track follows. Again, this is a signature NWW production, harkening to A Sadness Of Things or Thunder Perfect Mind. As the tables turn towards Larsen's end of the spectrum, elliptical basslines, melodic bells, and propulsive drums move to the foreground, proceeding toward their trademarked layered builds and soaring crescendos.
The Italian darkly-bent post-rock ensemble Larsen gathered a handful of equally darkly clad eccentrics to join them in a live tribute to the work of the Czech vanguard artist Karel Teige, who had been noted for introducing the works of the major Surrealists to Prague in the early 1920s. One of Teige's projects was Abeceda (which translates as alphabet from the Czech), the multi-media collaboration with the poet Vitezslav Nezval that sought a poetic abstraction between cabaret and typography. It was this project in particular that had piqued the interest of Larsen. Being not all that familiar with the original work, it's hard to say how well Larsen's homage reflects the original, or if this follows in the footsteps of their Autechre covers album, which alchemized the IDM melodies of Autechre into their own interlocked port-rock hypnosis. But in many ways, Abeceda is often dominated by the presence of their most well-known guest, David Tibet of Current 93. When his inimitable voice joins the languid melodies and swelling crescendos of instrumental arpeggiations, it's hard not to consider this a Current 93 album especially given the unique phrasing and metaphors about sin, relational collapse, and death that are so common to Tibet's themes in Current 93. In addition to Tibet, Larsen have also invited Johann Johannsson, Julia Kent, and Baby Dee onto the stage to add their instrumental panache to the beautifully rendered mix.
This sort of rarefied minimalism is not entirely expected from the likes of Monorail Trespassing, although the Larval Hairs project does live up to the high caliber releases which the label has been steadily releasing. Ades Flashback is a double cassette intended to be played at the same time on separate systems. While similarly minded excursions have been demonstrated throughout the sound-art world with multi-channel transmissions, there's something wholly unpretentious about Larval Hairs' production. Little more than two boom boxes are required, although we'd suggest taking those two boom boxes to one of those huge resonant concrete bunkers in the Headlands and seeing how everything bounces. Side A aggregates sinewaves, small swells from rapidly splashing saw-tooth waves, a soft extension of pink noise, and other synthesized oscillations that suggests the longform feedback works of Jason Kahn or a rougher version of Eliane Radigue's early minimalism. The corresponding Side C (which we're assuming is what's to go with Side A, although you could probably switch it all around and it would still sound really cool), contains similarly-minded elements tuned to slight different pitches. Side B broadcasts another series of synthesized tones which hit some skull-drilling harmonic convergences through ever slight oscillations and phase shifts. Side D takes a grittier approach to the synth pulse drone with grinding saw-tooth patterns situated just below the surface of rumbling vibrational tones. Both tapes are 45 minutes in length and are housed in a really nice double tape case, something we've not seen in ages. Limited to 100 copies and certainly recommended.
Wow! To be able to make music that is both charming and soulful is a feat few can meet. This collective from Bogota, Columbia have done just that. Crafting really colorful minimalist pop that totally hits its mark. Eighteen short 4-track recorded songs that all feel like tiny treasures you want to keep in your pocket for good luck. Their ability to keep intact the most satisfying elements of primitive song writing while allowing themselves to explore all kinds of different sounds and styles. Think tropicalia meets The Residents meets Young Marble Giants meets a Smithsonian Folkways record of the future. Excellent!
A couple years ago we were swept off our feet by Jardin Interior, the debut full length by a collective of artists and musicians from Bogota, Columbia known as Las Malas Amistades. We've been hungry for more of their colorful DIY pop, which reminded many of us of some strange blend of Young Marble Giants and a great lost Smithsonian Folkways record. Their follow up does not disappoint one bit. While it's a little less eclectic and quirky than Jardin Interior it's still brimming with a unique charm that is all their own. This time the sounds had us thinking of early Devendra Banhart playing Congregation covers in a friend's bedroom. Channeling the best South American psych-pop of the past with a crafty and playful disposition and a great timeless quality, you could totally imagine this coming out in 1982 as easy as today, the sounds are classic and timeless. Unfortunately their current label the great Honest Jon's (home to everyone from Tony Allen to Moondog) has lost their U.S. distribution making this a pricey import affair, but luckily the great music and beautiful packaging complete with English translated lyrics make this one well worth splurging on!
We've been meaning to review something from this SF duo for a while now, the mysteriously monickered Z.V.H. and V.J.C, who make up the equally mysterious Lascoviec (formerly Angkor Vat). But their demos disappeared before we had the chance, and we've yet to receive the forthcoming split with Hungarian black metal masters Marblebog, but thankfully, Dark Hidden Productions has compiled their first two demos, Gesamkunstwerk and Gunshots Ring Out Over Vinland Streets, both originally released in 2006, onto one cd, and added a few bonus tracks to sweeten the deal.
Lascoviec traffic in droning, hypnotic, trance like black metal buzz, the guitars long washed out streaks, the vocals a distorted croak, often sounding like another layer of static, the melodies are melancholy and sorrowful, some tracks have programmed drums, pounding away machine like under a buzzy blurry blanket of epic majestic chordal whir, others are harsh and chaotic, with the drums lost int he mix, leaving just a thick undulating sheet of acid riffing and tortured vokills. There are plenty of clean guitars, and tranquil folky interludes, but just as many grinding ultra raw blackened dirges, the guitars thick and viscous, the vocals more of a animalistic hiss, the drums a buried throb, here and there dreamy washes of synth surface, but far from being tranquil, they're fuzzy and distorted, and slightly ominous, with a definite Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck vibe. Elsewhere the band craft weird sort of new wave sounding reverbed guitar jam, but still subtly creepy and haunting. Swirls of strings build ominous tension before exploding into super sharp jagged shards of weirdly blown out clean guitar riffing over relentless blastbeats.
And that's sort of what's so amazing about these guys, their sound varies so dramatically, from record to record, but even from song to song, sort of like the EEE stuff, the texture and the production are as critical as the songs and the riff, some are muted and murky and bassy and lo fi, others are sharp and angular, the guitars sonically are all over the place, sometimes soft and subtle, sometimes downtuned and sludgy, sometimes buzzy and brittle, the drums more often than not are buried WAY down in the mix, but that just makes the songs sound freer, as if they could fall apart or drift away at any moment.
Grim and gorgeous, twisted and intense, dramatic and a bit fucked up, long sheets of buzzed out bliss butted up against short sharp raw blasts of true blurred blackness, often getting all tangled up within the same song. What's not to like, this is some seriously amazing shit. Buzzy and black enough for the grimmest of warriors, but tripped out enough for folks into freaky outsider blackness.
Fair warning: Lasoviec are on Dark Hidden Productions, a label with dubious political leanings, and with definite ties to the Pagan Front, the hub for all things NSBM, aka National Socialist Black Metal. Although the band seem to be more concerned with themes cosmic and spiritual, nature and mythology, there are definite racist implications, the link is undeniable, so regardless of the band's stance, the label's is clear, and thus, another instance where the listener has to decide if the music trumps the possible unpleasant politics.
Frostwinds Of The Apocalypse is the latest full length from SF black metal duo Lascowiec, and is introduced by a strangely martial bit of medieval sounding synth and drum machine driven fanfare, which sounds more like it should be the beginning of some power metal record, but instead ushers in another blast of frenzied grim black buzz from these aQ faves, the sound lo-fi, warm and washed out, the guitars a dense insectoid swirl, the drums buried in the mix, more a pulse than a blast, and the vocals a deep demonic rasp. The sound furious, epic, majestic, melodic. Minus the vocals, the sound is super tranced out and mesmerizing, almost shoegazey in places, as is the second track, the vocals here echo-drenched and weirdly psychedelic, the tempo slowed down, making the sound even more trancey, the blown out buzz utterly mesmerizing, the overall effect less headbanging and more hypnotic. And while most of the record is spent it black buzz mode, there are of course random bits of non metallic sound, the most interesting being the epic 6+ minute sort of title track closer, which essentially sounds like a black metal song proper, but played on a clean guitar with no distortion, wreathed in echo and reverb, the result surprisingly lovely, still totally recognizable as black metal, but in a wholly different form, one that's darkly dreamlike, and has us hankering for a whole record of stuff like this! As always, essential Bay Area USBM!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've been trying to get our hands on enough of these to list for ages, a killer 3 way split of obscure strangely melodic blackness, released on Hungarian label Turanian Honour, featuring long time aQ faves Marblebog, Bay Area depressive black metal duo Lascowiec and Verzivatar, another Hungarian horde we had never heard until now.
Lascowiec, whose killer demo compilation we raved about a while back (which we still have a small handful left), returns with four more tracks of washed out black beauty, darkly depressive and beautifully buzzy, the music of Lascowiec is a blurred and smeared minor key mystery, remove the distorted vokill croak, and you'd be left with a deep swirling shoegazey bit of soft focus buzz. The riffs are muted and muddy, lo-fi but still lush, locked into trancelike loops, woozy and warbly and hypnotic, about as pretty as black metal can sound without ceasing to be black or metal. Spidery tangled little melodies, wreathed in otherworldly effects, distorted but not harsh or jagged, more smoothed out and blissy, the vocals the grimmest element, but for the most part, it's the music that carries Lascowiec, gorgeously mournful, and hauntingly lovely buzzy blackness.
Marblebog offer up two songs, epic and majestic, melodic too, but with some super twisted way UP in the mix vocals, that transform an otherwise loping mysterious minor key dirge into something creeped out and harrowing. The main melody is gorgeous, almost power metal sounding, albeit slowed down and draped over a monotonous doomy drum plod, but those vocals, the perfect blend of harsh and hellish, brooding and pretty. Their second track is another strange blend, this time the guitars and drums are buried beneath thick swirling keyboards, and some fucked up demonic gurgled croaking vocals. Again, the effect is the same, a sort of woozy softly buzzing prettiness transformed into a fractured, Burzumic, off kilter depressive black dirge.
Finally Verzivatar deliver two tracks of fierce and frantic blasting blackness, but like the other two bands on the split, their sound is marked by an unlikely melodiousness, the riffs, frenetic and buzzy are also soaring and majestic, the vocals here too are weird, but less black metal, or really metal at all, more like a raspy punkish howl, or a strangled mewl. Gives Verzivatar a sort of crusty punkish vibe, reminding us a bit of French faerical black metal punks Nuit Noire. Definitely need to hear more from these guys.
All three bands offer up some seriously gorgeous melodic grimness, some surprisingly blissed out black metal buzz, unfortunately this is LIMITED TO 666 COPIES, and has been out for a while, so not sure we can get more. Each one is hand numbered, with a big full color booklet, liner notes, lyrics and the works.
Pierpaolo Zoppo was one of the legends of Italian noise and power electronics, exploring the transgressive themes of death, disease, power, sexual extremes, etc. through the shock-inducing moniker Mauthausen Orchestra. Much of the work was released on cassette in Italy through Aquilifer Sodality from 1982-1986 after which time he went into hibernation for a decade or so. In the pre-internet means of physical mail communications, Zoppo also had strong connections to Broken Flag which released the Mauthausen Orchestra album Conflict in 1983 and advanced his work through various compilations here and there. Over the years, Zoppo shied away from collaborations, with Lasik Surgery being one of the few that he entertained before he died in 2012 from an undisclosed illness. Gianluca Favaron was his partner in Lasik Surgery - a strangely non-descriptive / demonstrative title from an artist whose boorish M.O. titles included Necrofellatio, Murderfuck, and Anal Perversions, leaving little to the imagination as to the brutality of noise found within. That said, Lasik Surgery is restrained by comparison to M.O. with the only full-throttled assault of noise coming at the very end of the album as a bloodyminded vulcanization of viscous distortion. Throughout the rest of the album, Zoppo and Favaron favor throbbing electrical systems held in check through a clinical detachment and cold-core cyclonic network of interconnected loops, drones, and medically induced pulses. While we did mention this album was (relatively) restrained, that's not to say that Lasik Surgery eschews the dark, the dank, and the grim. Hardly! Recommended for fans of the more aggressive forms of dark ambient (e.g. Theologian, Inade, Lustmord, etc.).
This Dutch grind band boast one of the sickest singers EVER, in terms of lower-than-low guttural grunting ability. He's inhuman. And hilarious. So we love 'em for his "singing" (which in our review of the Dutch Assault comp they appeared on some years back, we said was a "rumbling drone instrument unto itself"), but the music is equally demented and distorted.
Here's a vinyl reissue of this band's debut cd from 1998. Definitely for fans of early goregrind style Carcass - which these guys definitely were! Twenty-six tracks here, with titles like "Entangled In Septic Gore", "Malignant Haemorrhage" and "Disembowlment Of Scattered Gastric Pieces" (just to cite some of the nicer ones!), you ought to know what you're getting into. Recommended wax for all perverted goregrind freaks. Don't worry we won't tell.
