It really is kind of remarkable the amount of direct influence Animal Collective has had on music makers in the last several years. We heard their influence on the Le Loup debut from a few years ago and this follow up finds this East Coast band still very much indebted to the sound that Animal Collective have created with their multilayered dense pop doused in reverb and bursting at the seems with harmony and melody. This time around it seems they've tapped more into the Panda Bear side of the Animal Collective equation as Family really does have a similar sound and feel to PB's masterpiece Person Pitch. Some of the instrumentation Le Loup uses does help set them a bit apart from the flock of Animal Collective followers, laying down some pretty awesome sounds with the banjo. A friend of ours recently commented that so many of today's Animal Collective soundalikes will be remembered as the modern equivalent to the Dave Clark Five in the time of The Beatles, but hell, when it comes to knock offs, Le Loup have it down pretty damn well.
Le Loup is a group of artists & musicians led by Sam Simkoff, who plays the banjo and the keyboards. Coming from D.C. it's no surprise that there is a strong collective spirit heard on this recording with all eight members contributing vocals to songs which have a really organic disposition. Imagine if the Animal Collective slowed down a bit and took some deep cleansing breaths or if Sufjan Stevens was a little more rugged and less precious. After putting out the great Arthur & Yu record that we fell in love with earlier this summer, Hardly Art is proving to be one of the best new indie rock labels around. Banjo fans (like Andee) who have a pop soft spot might really dig this...
A Polish collective playing mysterious, moody and melancholy jazz-inflected music. This is apparently their 12th or 13th release! Tapes, synth, guitars, female vocals, etc. On Obuh, the label responsible for various Atman-related releases of avant-garde hippy
The Third release from Montreal's synth-wizard Le Revelateur, aka Roger Tellier-Craig, former member of Godspeed You Black Emperor and Fly Pan Am, returns to Root Strata where we were first introduced with the Motion Glares cassette. Extreme Events has evolved from the flow-motion kosmiche of his last release Fictions and is much more dynamic, restless and ultimately alien. While we have connected Le Revelateur sonically with contemporaries like Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds and Steve Hauschildt in the past, this album takes us to a slightly different place. There is still an underlying flow of spacious energy, but it's overlaid with some fluorescent woven sonic textures and rhythms blunted with abraded digital decay and glitchery. The constant push-pull between space and movement give the album an organic intensity that sonically pokes and implores our eardrums rather than cradles and envelops, forcing us to actively engage rather than passively listen. The range of synthetic sounds and textures is jaw-dropping and though it doesn't seem that Tellier-Craig is deliberately trying to make difficult music, we can't really say this music is necessarily pretty either. But it has a searing burning beauty that like a sun-made diamond, is at once magnificent and soul-destroying.
Release number two of gorgeous kosmische synth drift from this former member of Godspeed You Black Emperor and Fly Pan Am, whose previous release, a way too limited cassette on Root Strata, had most of the folks here flipping out. Le Revelateur, aka Roger Tellier-Craig, also performed at last year's On Land Festival here in SF, and amidst a pretty incredible lineup, managed, at least as many of us were concerned, to steal the show.
This new album plays like a single track, separated into movements, which is appropriate considering in some ways it's a modern reimagining of the classic seventies synth work of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and all the rest, and of course, the sounds of Le Revelateur will most definitely appeal to fans of other modern synth retro-revisionists, like Mist, Emeralds, Innercity, Oneohtrix Point Never et all, but there's something about Le Revelateur's sound that manages to elevate it above its sonic brethren, Tellier-Craig so adept at unfurling sounds and gradually building these epic, dreamlike celestial synthscapes, and the thing is, it's not all static tones, and long layered shimmer, no, the synths here are surprisingly active, emitting flurries of notes, glimmering squalls of psychedelic swirl, but those are all woven into these epic expanses of spaced out dreamdrone drift, the A side, an 18 minute epic, spends its first half drifting ethereally, before a pulsing synth rhythm finally surface, adding a bit of propulsion to the track, and transforming new age shimmer into swirling buzzing pulsating krautdrone bliss, the sound getting downright noisy near the end, the edges sharper and slightly more abrasive, only to then quickly dissipate in a gorgeous blissed out high end raga like coda.
The B side starts off with a whirling starfield of softly swirling notes, a blurry tangle of psychedelic synths, layered and textural, offering up brief flurries of soaring melody, getting darkly proggy and droney about halfway through, only to finish off with an epic sprawl of Sunroof! like upper register spacekraut raga, before finishing off with the comparatively more muted final track, which begins sounding a bit like the music from some seventies planetarium show, only to blossom into a gorgeously rhythmic stretch of percolating retro synthscapery, a pulsing futuristic soundworld that also builds and builds to a near psychedelic climax, before finally finishing off in a hazy cloud of soft focus synth swirl.
Released on the Gneiss Things label, run by Emeralds' Steve Hauschildt.
A new batch of tapes from the always awesome Root Strata label, this one from Canadian space-drone-synth sculptor Roger Teller-Craig, aka Le Revelateur, whose sound is a gorgeous wash of kosmische haze, all gently lapping new age synths, softly propulsive space kraut rhythms, lush and layered and so hypnotic. The vibe sun dappled and shimmery, total dream drift sonic bliss. Fans of Expo 70, Pulse Emitter, and other retro krautsynth combos will flip.
The tape begins with a sprawling motorik opener, clouds of arpeggiated melodies, soft focus flurries of reverbed synth swirl, all over a looped hypnodrone kraut groove, a bit like Neu! but WAY more blissed out and ethereal, which drifts right into the much more dramatic second track, again anchored by a sci-fi synth pulse, but laced with streaks of subtly ominous melody, and thick squalls of buzz and washed out skree, very haunting and cinematic.
The second side begins with something much more hushed and ephemeral, softly smoldering loooooong tones, laced with chiming harmonics, and strangely processed melodic fragments and the occasional bit of rhythmic skitter, a gorgeous druggy drift, which all slowly builds, a sound like the sun emerging from behind the clouds, everything begins to sparkle and glisten and reflect, all bathed in a fuzzed out prismatic bleary eared softly psychedelic glow. The record closes with another stretch of cinematic synthy mystery, almost orchestral, lush and majestic, like the soundtrack to some slow drift through another galaxy, everything wreathed in alien starlight, a blurred expanse of cosmic sonic energy. Incredible.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, housed in super nice, thick offset printed covers.
Now a visually-augmented dvd-r release, this music was originally released on vinyl via the Gneiss Things label, run by Emeralds' Steve Hauschildt (whose solo Kranky debut we reviewed here recently). Fictions is release number two of gorgeous kosmische synth drift from this former member of Godspeed You Black Emperor and Fly Pan Am, whose previous release, a way too limited cassette on Root Strata, had most of the folks here flipping out. Le Revelateur, aka Roger Tellier-Craig, also performed at last year's On Land Festival here in SF, and amidst a pretty incredible lineup, managed, at least as far as many of us were concerned, to steal the show.
And those who did see the show, also got to witness the accompanying visuals, a gorgeous collection of films created by Teller-Craig's partner Sabrina Ratte, whose fantastical prismatic impressionism is the perfect visual accompaniment for Teller-Craig's futuristic kosmische. synthscapery. Let's revisit the music first, as the music here is the same as on the lp:
The three tracks on Fictions plays like a single track, separated into movements, which is appropriate considering in some ways it's a modern reimagining of the classic seventies synth work of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and all the rest, and of course, the sounds of Le Revelateur will most definitely appeal to fans of other modern synth retro-revisionists, like Mist, Emeralds, Innercity, Oneohtrix Point Never et all, but there's something about Le Revelateur's sound that manages to elevate it above its sonic brethren, Tellier-Craig so adept at unfurling sounds and gradually building these epic, dreamlike celestial synthscapes, and the thing is, it's not all static tones, and long layered shimmer, no, the synths here are surprisingly active, emitting flurries of notes, glimmering squalls of psychedelic swirl, but those are all woven into these epic expanses of spaced out dreamdrone drift, the first track, an 18 minute epic, spends its first half drifting ethereally, before a pulsing synth rhythm finally surface, adding a bit of propulsion to the mix, and transforming new age shimmer into swirling buzzing pulsating krautdrone bliss, the sound getting downright noisy near the end, the edges sharper and slightly more abrasive, only to then quickly dissipate in a gorgeous blissed out high end raga like coda.
The second track starts off with a whirling starfield of softly swirling notes, a blurry tangle of psychedelic synths, layered and textural, offering up brief flurries of soaring melody, getting darkly proggy and droney about halfway through, only to finish off with an epic sprawl of Sunroof!-like upper register spacekraut raga, before finishing off with the comparatively more muted final track, which begins sounding a bit like the music from some seventies planetarium show, only to blossom into a gorgeously rhythmic stretch of percolating retro synthscapery, a pulsing futuristic soundworld that also builds and builds to a near psychedelic climax, before finally finishing off in a hazy cloud of soft focus synth swirl.
And Ratte's visuals, as mentioned above, could almost be described in the same way, the images and colors and moving shapes, are almost musical, flickering and slowly shifting, with rainbow solar flares, and vintage video game grids, mysterious shapes and flashing colors, it's like equal parts video game and fever dream, some of it looks like a James Ferraro album cover come to life, bold and bright colors and shapes, all retro VHS / late night cable psychedelia, a head spinning, mind melting feast for the (third?) eyes. Gorgeous, sonically AND visually.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, comes in a slim dvd style case, with full color art inside and out, as well as a printed clear plastic insert.
The crazed, genre-scrambling grindcore of Germany's Le Scrawl is, as threatened, back! This new 13-song, 16-minute cdep will either bring a big smile to your face or confuse and annoy you utterly. Imagine Napalm Death teamed up with Uz Jsme Doma. That is, political punk metal all fucked up with horns and a weird sense of humor. Keyboards and flugelhorn aren't normally part of an underground grind band's arsenal, but Le Scrawl aren't normal... Metal nerds should note that this was recorded by Harris Johns, whose previous credits include numerous Sodom albums as well as Voivod, Helloween, Coroner, Tankard, Pestilence, Saint Vitus, Therion, S.A.D.O., and more. But this definitely must have been a unique session for Johns! Scrawl are one of the original wacky grind outfits, and they sure know how to mix up the gruff and the smooth. Metal riff one moment, lounge groove the next. And having just seen 'em live on a rare US tour, I have to say I was amazed at their deadpan delivery of their complex and, well, silly material. Oh yeah, if you don't like ska...well just wait 5 seconds...every five seconds.
Ignore the "Le", that's just a silly way to differentiate this Scrawl from the '90s US indie rock girl group. And they are VERY different. "Le" Scrawl is a schizoid grind band straight out of the German peace punk underground, doing the rapid-fire genre-mash thing. They belong in the same record bin with the likes of Naked City, Exit 13, People, Mexican Power Authority, Spazztic Blurr, Alboth!, Boredoms, and Anal Cunt (whose Seth Putnam guests vocalizes on one song here). If you're thinking that's a very '90s list of mostly avantgarde/novelty grind bands well, yes, this Scrawl stuff was recorded between 1990-1999. And we'd all but forgotten this band until the excellent Oakland label Life Is Abuse (purveyors of metallic weirdness like Tarantula Hawk and Ludicra) took it upon themselves to put together this cd, the complete Scrawl discography on one disc, essentially a deluxe, expanded version of Scrawl's "Q" album originally issued in 1995 by Germany's Ecocentric Records. Expanded in that you get the original disc's 24 tracks plus *another* 42 songs (!!) including their self-titled 1993 album, live stuff, singles, demos, and incongrous covers (De La Soul, The Exploited, Terrorizer, Chic, and the Mission Impossible theme!).
Their humorous, herky-jerky musical juxtapositions plus their totally grim punk political lyrix (that you can't understand anyway 'cause they're all gruff and screamy) equals weird, radical, action-oriented artcore. Imagine the quirky European chamber prog of a group like Etron Fou Leloublan colliding with the 20-second blast beat grindcore of a Napalm Death, or Mr. Bungle gone crusty punk, or, when the horn section kicks in, some sort of ADD Fishbone/Uz Jsme Doma hybrid playing in the midst of a Drop Dead practice session. The booklet -- chock full of photos, flyers, and discographical information -- has a 2002 note from main man Mario Anders, promising some new (Le) Scrawl material coming soon! Yikes!
Hmmm, I could swear that they broke up recently... a few times. Southern California's art-punk spazz-wave brats Le Shok dish up three live-on-the-radio tracks including a Screamers cover and two of their own. Recorded on KXLU in LA and WNYU in NY, and with different line-ups both of which include Joey from The Locust. Noisy, confrontational and messy. Yes, this is a 6" record on denim
A band that continues to haunt us from the grave, it's the defunct SoCal art-spazz-punk assembly known as Le Shok. The very special feature of this record? Why they've pressed an additional track right onto the sleeve - a cover of the Chosen Few's "No Fun at the Beaches". The record itself contains two suitably hyper-garage-wave short spurts from the days when Le Shok were a
Now on cd! As we said about the vinyl: More spastic noisemakers from the GSL camp. With some truly astounding cover art (and if you're one of the lucky ones, some truly cool clear pink vinyl). Live, there's a strong chance of an abbreviated set due to on and off stage volatility. On record, it's like a cacophonous cattle prod to your ears. Plug in and rock, baby.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
More spastic noisemakers from the GSL camp. With some truly astounding cover art (and if you're one of the lucky ones, some truly cool clear pink vinyl). Live, there's a strong chance of an abbreviated set due to on and off stage volatility. On record, it's like a cacophonous cattle prod to your ears. Plug in and rock, baby.
It's kind of amazing how the venerable Tokyo psych label PSF can almost entirely concentrate on releasing just that: Tokyo psych! Well it's a big city and apparently there's no shortage of long haired musicians in shades there coaxing dark drones and distorted atmospheres from their instruments, in psychedelic altered states rapture...
So here, imported via PSF we have the latest vibrations from Tokyo, in the form of the the lovely and mysterious Le Son De L'Os, whom we heard for the first time last year on the 7th installment of PSF's Tokyo Flashback compilation series, on which they had the longest track, a "delicate and haunting organic drone" in our words. And this, the debut full-length from the group, is also an abstract, all-acoustic improvised affair, five tracks that are hushed and tenuous, fragile and atmospheric, definitely a late-night listen. Calm, quiet, yet compelling, this is music that draws you in - and certainly drowns nothing out, so although they we're told that Le Son De L'Os enjoy performing outdoors, they would have to do so far from the hustle and bustle of urban Tokyo, we'd imagine... and deep in the woods or up on a mountainside, where are they going to find a piano?
That's right, there's some (prepared?) piano on here, Le Son De L'Os being a trio consisting of Masahiro Deguchi (guitar, flute, piano, bell), Yuko Hasegawa (guitar, voice), and Shizuo Uchida (bass, "one-string"). Shizuo is half of the Hasegawa-Shizuo duo (with another Hasegawa, not Yuko), who've released albums on PSF, Tiliqua, and Utech that we've stocked before, and was also in Keiji Haino's ambient Nijiumu project, as well as being a member of art noise punk crazies Kito Mizukumi Rouber. Masahiro Deguchi was in PSF's Gendai Sokkyo. Yuko Hasegawa, for her part, was in the Tokyo Flashback vol. 4 band Onna-Kodomo together with Shizuo back in the '90s as well. So, plenty of Tokyo psych cred with this bunch! Though one listen is all you'd need to realize that. And you'll keep listening, if you have an affinity for this subtle style of drifting dreamy almost Jewelled Antler-y improv, that's both out-there and barely-there, but blissful.
Comes in nice gatefold mini-lp style sleeve, with obi.
Holy Fuck! Six cassettes of Le Syndicat? Fuck! FUCK!! FUCK!!!! This is a serious head-cleaner of brutalist / bruitist / rhythmicist / industrial noise, collecting some of the best work from this seminal French outfit and recreating the original artwork of the old tapes within a super swank hand-stenciled box. Le Syndicat followed in the wake of what Throbbing Gristle had done in England, in creating a unique visual iconography to complement the churning mechanoid bursts of noise within. It seems that the divisions of labor was split between two of the principles in Le Syndicat with Ruelgo taking up the sound design and Zorin handling the graphic output. While Zorin eventually departed from Le Syndicat's sound constructions, he continued to offer his visual skills which have long placed him as a more transgressively themed Neville Brody with both adhering to a futurist / postmodern take on art deco. The rhythm and noise for Le Syndicat evolved through process mingling tape-loops, overblown drum machine programming, shortwave radio experiments, short-circuited consumer electronics, and eventually rudimentary sampler technology. Through these simple means, Le Syndicat's industrial orchestrations lead them to a sound that blurred the lines between the feral power of Whitehouse, the bombast of Laibach, and the grim rhythmic component of MB's early catalog. The six cassettes housed within this collection include Phase Segments/Boucles (1982), Tot Mortar (1983), Audiostatik Repress (1983), Vagynaestetatis (1985), Staying Alive (1985), and L'Arme De Force (1986). All of these cassettes were originally released through Le Syndicat's eponymous in house label, with the exception of Staying Alive which Masami Akita released through his ZSF Produkt. The aforementioned Maurizio Bianchi reference is most apt on the first cassette of this set - Phase Segments / Boucles with the skeletal rhythms and gain-saturated noise oscillation paralleling those early Sacher Pelz tapes by Bianchi. While these experiments are both intriguing and of archival importance as some of the first published works, Le Syndicat fully hits the mark from Tot Mortar onward with an integrated noise/rhythm/scream/shortwave/orgasm/tapemachination excess that come to define the quintessential Le Syndicat sound. All of the cassettes were remastered, bringing out even more clarity to the grime, distortion, and exhaustive noise. It is limited to 250 copies, but don't expect these to be around for long! FUCKING AWESOME!!!
YES! Here we have a MUCH needed reissue (and first time on vinyl) of some of the earliest Le Syndicat material. If you happen to be one of the sick peeps (like us) that got the six cassette box of their early material, then you already have this as part of that box, but now you can get what is perhaps the best tape in that collection on vinyl. The French duo of Ruelgo and Zorin are at their most industrial here - rudimentary and overblown sequencer rhythms provide the foundation, on top of which lies grim Maurizio Bianchi-style synth and tape manipulations, broken electronics, and vocals stripped of any human characteristics. Traces of material on here can be seen in tons of aQ favorites, from the lifeless techno thump of Carter Tutti Void, to the abject blasts of Chondritic Sound. A sound and philosophy that takes the vision of Throbbing Gristle and the early industrial pioneers to its logical conclusion. Totally essential.
The mid-'80s were very productive for Le Syndicat, the French industrial noise outfit that formed in 1982 with the noble intention to make the most noise possible. The bulk of the tracks from Timespace Losses has been culled from various cassette compilations Le Syndicat contributed to during that time period, with the final track on the album being a rare live recording. These works defined their earlier noise bruitism before iron-fisted rhythms locked down Le Syndicat's latter-day panzerbeat aesthetics. Overblown screams and garbled vocalizations dissolved amidst the acrid feedback, mottled distortion and blackened noise which seeped out of Le Syndicat's repurposed consumer electronics (e.g. shortwave radios, televisions, walkmen, etc.), inspired by the mediated chaos of SPK, Merzbow, Ramleh, Whitehouse, Controlled Bleeding, and other early practitioners of power electronics. Not surprisingly, Le Syndicat managed to land their work on tape compilations released by Broken Flag, ZSF Produkt (run by Masami Akita back in the day), Placebo, and Beast 666. This collection splatters itself as a very primitive, nasty set of recordings. Conet Project fans should take note that the Swedish Rhapsody numbers station is featured heavily in the very John Duncan like collage of shortwave transmissions from the Le Syndicat live track concluding the album. Recommended for all of you noise freaks out there!
Second full length from Le Tigre, the trio headed by ex-Bikini Kill wailer Kathleen Hanna, Johanna Fateman, and new member JD Sampson. While there's nothing here as ferociously kickass as Le Tigre's "Bang Bang" (off the From the Desk of Mr Lady ep), this
A jubilant mix of punk and new wave from Le Tigre (ex-Bikini Kill Kathleen Hanna, video artist Sadie Benning, Johanna Fateman). The band is completely aware of the music's raw, just-happened-to-press-record quality, so any nasty comments about its unprofessional sound are simply moot. That's not the point -- the point is in the lyrics and the joy in doing and making and having something really fucking worthwhile to say. Mix that with the fiery delivery of X-Ray Spex and the punk sweetness of Blondie, and you have Le Tigre. Listen to "Bang! Bang!"
Debut tape from this Colorado crew, headed up by aQ pal Mike, who runs the Sleeping Giant Glossolalia label (responsible for recent lps from Vaz, Bobb Bruno and Shit & Shine) and who also plays in aQ faves Eptileptinomicon. But where Eptileptinomicon was a weirdly rhythmic experimental noise outfit, who trafficked in murky ritualism and kraut-drone soundscaping, Leather Sky is a much more fierce and feral proposition, an ugly, unhinged, hardcore, that owes more to groups like Black Flag, Infest, Void and the like. Neglected Prayer Rug Abomination is a short sharp series of sonic violations, misanthropic musical fury channeled into brief blurry blasts, the guitars angular, the drums tribal one second, a caveman pound the next, the bass a blurred low end ooze, the vocals a howled caterwaul, all but buried in the murk and mire, the sound here super lo-fi, but still dense and heavy and MEAN, recorded in some grim grey bunker, the production perfectly suiting the sound, that sound a pounding, filthy, crusty, chaotic, angular crush like like some unholy union between eighties DC hardcore and nineties Gravity Records post punk. Fuck yeah.
If you've had trouble tracking down the latest record from Swedish dirge-jazz sludge punks Brainbombs, or just wish there were more bands who shared that aesthetic, well, your wish just came true. LA duo Leather Slave sound so much like Brainbombs, it would be criminal if we didn't love that sound so much. The band lock into loping, lumbering doom-sludge-punk anti-grooves, the guitar blown out and super distorted, a single riff, grinding away, over a simple caveman beat, the vocals distorted, and sung-spoken, and again, a dead ringer for the Brainbombs, with lyrics about cutting off your fingers and then making you try on gloves, or lots of 'stabbing's, so much so that it almost sounds like these guys are taking the piss, especially when the word 'stab' is repeated, and then sort of dubbed out (or the word 'hell' on another track). But then there's something patently absurd about stuff like this anyway, which again, is probably why we dig it so much. Every track here essential a single riff, a single rhythm, with a second guitar adding some psychedelic counterpoint, very subtle though, almost like Neanderthal leads way down in the mix, the whole thing mesmerizing and menacing, like a filthy, crusty, dirgey, serial killing version of Finnish hypno-rockers Circle. Which is probably the highest recommendation we can give.
And disregard the label marking the record as 33 1/3 rpm, unless you want it REALLY sludgy, the vocals an almost death metal gurgle, while we dig that version of Leather Slave too, 45 rpm is the speed for maximum Brain-bombing. Ridiculous over the top cover art and full color insert too.
This is a reissue of a pretty obscure late 60's garage / beat outfit from Hollywood. Leathercoated Minds offer a number of covers: Donovan, Bob Dylan, the theme to "Puff The Magic Dragon," and The Count Five (of course, it's "Psychotic Reaction"). Their own
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Remember back when Metallica didn't suck? In fact, they sort of ruled. Kill Em All, Ride The Lightning, Master Of Puppets, And Justice For All. All untouchable. STILL. And remember how they would pull out these obscure covers (at least to some of us), songs by Diamond Head and Blitzkrieg, that somehow sounded LIKE Metallica, but even better. Well Portland heavies Lebanon sound a lot like that. The whole Metallica-covering-classic-NWOBHM sound. Thrashing and heavy, but totally catchy and melodic, think Angel Witch, Diamond Head, Witchfinder General, Motorhead, Venom, but supercharged and modernized, hence the Metallica-covers thing. Born of crusty d-beaters From Ashes Rise (sonic compatriots of PDX outfits Tragedy, Warcry, etc.), Lebanon are all big riffs, and killer leads, throat shredding (but still melodic) vox, lots of pick slides and classic metal sounding licks, a little bit punkish, but more traditional eighties metal, and surprisingly good. So much so that these songs could very well be mistaken for actual jams from back in the day. Tall praise, but holy shit, we just can't stop listening to this. We need a full length SOON.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
Belgium 1982 or Brooklyn 2009? Dust On Common is one of those albums that could herald from either time and space with its dark-eyed synth-pop aesthetic complete with a wardrobe of black jackets and skinny ties. Yes, Led Er Est are New Yorkers of today, reclaiming the forgotten future with considerable aplomb and fitting in very nicely next to Cold Cave and fellow Wierd recording artists Xeno & Oaklander. The Led Er Est trio are quite deft at the synth melody, building terse and catchy, if minor key, tunes out of repetition & difference, and grafting those melodies onto uptempo mechanoid rhythm tracks. Guitars, bass, and vocals also make themselves known throughout the album, but the synths are the dominant machines at hand, marching along with icy detachment, primitive sparkplug buzzing, and occasional bursts of cinematic grandeur. Fad Gadget, Xymox, early Skinny Puppy (i.e. Bites), Dark Day, Chris & Cosey, and Cabaret Voltaire are all within the sonic vocabulary of Led Er Est. Another excellent release from Wierd. Vinyl only!
We can't blame Cold Cave for everything, but someone has to take the blame (or credit!) for the seemingly endless supply of cold wave / new wave / minimal wave that seem to be pouring out of the woodwork. Where were these bands a couple years ago, did they not exist? Or did they just exist in some radically different form? Thankfully, at least a handful of these bands, are doing more than aping their predecessors, and are taking the elements of those 'waves and turning them into something, if not wholly original, at least dark and catchy and kick ass.
The latest additions to the NU-new wave onslaught are this trio from NY called Led Er Est, we have their full length record reviewed elsewhere on this list as well, and it too is killer, but this is definitely the sort of band who sound perfect on a 7"s, two short hook filled gloom pop gems, 45 rpm, the sort of songs you play over and over and over, skittery clipped drum machines, swoonsome minor key guitars, throbbing joy division synthesized basslines, looped synth melodies, subtle guitars, a killer main riff, echoey vox, it's pretty irresistible.
The flipside is more spacey and psychedelic, with chiming guitars, crooned vocals and a woozy off kilter rhythm, like some lost eighties new wave gloom pop ballad. Led Er Est are balanced right between old school eighties new wave, and the current wave of Captured Tracks revivalists: Blank Dogs, Gary War, Girls At War, Silk Flowers, Mayfair Set, etc� which is not a bad place to be as far as we're concerned.
We were pretty into Dust On Common, the last record from these Brooklyn cold wave retro revivalists, but we're digging this new one even more. While much of the sound remains the same, some things have definitely changed, For some reason, we were utterly mesmerized by the opening track, "Animal Smear", which found the group sounding more post punk than cold wave, adding a sort of frenetic energy and dark propulsion to the icy detachment that defined much of the last record. The skittery skeletal drums and dubbed out production only adding even more of a dark psych vibe to the proceedings. One of those tracks, that we must admit, we probably listened to ten times before we made it any deeper into the record. But once we did, the rest of the record stacked up pretty well, sounding like it could have just as easily come out on Wierd as on Sacred Bones, finding common ground in the sonic vocabulary of Xeno & Oaklander and Cold Cave, but with a certain ineffable something that made this stuff resonate. The opening track is a killer of course, but so is the follow up "Housefire At Zumi's", a strange swoonsome synthy instrumental, all minor key, but slightly off kilter, lush swells beneath strange angular melodies, the beat stuttery and weirdly motorik. "Kaiyo Maru" too, weds dark synth drones, and chordal swirls to some dense programmed drumming, and some reverby vocals, and weaves all that into a gorgeous slab of dark electro pop, that manages to sound simultaneously modern, and like it was plucked right out of the eighties, and we hadn't even gotten to the weirdly angular chorus. The title track might be our second favorite jam here, sounding like a retro cold wave version of the Editors, deep crooned vocals, minor key, a little bit ballady, with some strange clattery percussion, and a main melody that is doleful and dour and totally mesmerizing. The rest of the record flits from pounding IDM, to playful electro-pop, from murky cold wave balladry to haunting skitter laced industrial, finishing off with some dreamy synth shoegaze that almost sounds like M83. Fantastic stuff, and another new favorite for sure!
We already dug Brooklyn weirdo cold wave minimalists Led Er Est, but their most recent record The Diver totally knocked our socks off. And hot on the heels of that record comes this, a super limited, gorgeously packaged one sided 10" ep with three more songs, all of which sound like they could have been plucked right off The Diver. Dark and minimal, haunting and rhythmic, the record opens with a skittery skeletal bit of droned out synth pop, that sounds like a sketch, or an unfinished rough draft at first, but soon reveals itself as a wholly formed bit of dark pop minimalism, subtly tripped out, utterly hypnotic, a little bit druggy and woozy, subtly sinister, a fantastic chunk of new/cold wave mesmer. After a brief interlude, a strange collage of spoken word and field recorded voices, the record concludes with a second track, another gorgeous sprawl of cold clinical minimal cold wave, this time much more soundtracky, a synthscape laced with softly psychedelic guitars, deep chordal swells, rumbling buzz, a total psych-synth drone pop head trip that is sinister and ominous and so so good!
The packaging is incredible, the B side of the record features a silkscreened image, visible through the inner sleeve, which is also silkscreened, both bundled with the cover, a thick printed purple cardstock insert.
Zep overload! Along with a stellar double dvd package, the gods hammer us with a triple cd dose of live audio, all completely different performances from what's found on those dvds! These discs create one virtual concert melded from two, one at the Long Beach Arena and and one at the LA Forum, both in June of 1972.
Like the dvd set, they could have come up with some better cover art. However, the music's what matters, and what you're gonna hear here is Zeppelin at their best, live and totally rippin' -- very impressive!!
Ok, first off, any real big Led Zeppelin fans don't even need to read any further -- trust us, just get this! Even if you don't have a dvd player, you should invest in one just to see this. And even if you're just a casual fan you probably should get this too. Really I'm not (or wasn't) that big of a Zeppelin fan myself, but I'm way more into 'em now after viewing this release... five and a half hours of rare vintage Zep footage, both pro shot and bootleg, all of it pretty awesome -- heck, for the clothes and hair let alone the music!
Breaking it down, disc 1 is mainly consists of a 1970 Royal Albert Hall concert, featuring a charmingly charmingly youthful Zep at an early peak, with the highlights there being Bonham's "Moby Dick" drum solo and the '50s rockers they cover towards the end of the show. With disc one you also get some other clips, including four songs in crystal-clear black and white from Danish TV (with kids sitting cross-legged on the floor, mere feet in front of the band, dangerously close to Page's amplifier -- did that kid ever hear again??)
There's lots of "Dazed And Confused" here, with their performance of that number on the British TV show "Supershow" being the best. It's the most EVIL sounding "Dazed And Confused" ever, Page's guitar *and* Plant's vocals oh-so-distorted just perfectly, due to the recording perhaps. With some crazy edits and the band becoming enveloped in a climactic fog machine miasma, this is worth $29 alone, seriously!
Disc two starts off with a brilliant "Immigrant Song" video constructed from 1972 Austrialian live video and 1972 Californian live audio. Then it's on to Madison Square Garden (1973) for some outtakes from The Song Remains The Same, the concert movie that this dvd blows out of the water. Good stuff though. Following that, you get their 1975 Earl's Court performance -- one of this dvd set's highlights, really. Just check out the blazing clavinet-and-Bonzo-driven mechanical funk workout of "Trampled Underfoot" -- damn! The dvd then moves on to Knebworth '79, their triumpant swansong UK performance where a band that has visibly aged in the four years since Earl's Court really smokes, with "Achilles Last Stand" standing out.
The non-performance footage on this set includes a young Page and Plant, very much the soft-spoken British rock aristocrats, fielding questions from reporters in NYC 1970, like what they think of the Beatles -- whom they just knocked out of the #1 chart position.
Really, about all we can complain about is the crappy dvd packaging. The so-called cover art is just lame, a Photoshopped mesa, desert plain, and Zeppelin-shaped cloud. Why didn't they just use a still from the footage on the darn dvd?? Watching it, you'll certainly see many a shot that would have make a much much better cover than what they used. However, the dvd itself is done with class, with an excellent interface -- the menus themselves feature additional looped Zep clips seen nowhere else in the dvd, so be sure not to overlook them while selecting the main features! Recommended, if you couldn't tell already!
You may not recognize the name J.C. Ledesma. But how about the name Jefre Cantu Ledesma? Ring any bells now? Okay, well how about the name the-guy-from-Tarentel? Okay, now we're getting somewhere. J.C. Ledesma is indeed on half of the core duo that drives ambient space rock experimentalists Tarentel, and on this, his first record under this name (not his first solo record however), as well as the first record on his very own label Root Strata, Ledesma takes the ambience of his main outfit and stretches it out even further, creating "Voice Sutra" a half hour long, slowly building drone piece constructed from vocals, shruti box, percussion and electronics. A dreamy and tranquil, but still think and fuzzy, slowly shifting soundscape that spends the first fifteen minutes writhing and squirming like a downed electrical wire, buzzing with electronic fuzz and spitting sonic sparks, emitting a thick wash of sonic skree not unlike Total, eventually calming down into a more tranquil ambience, shimmering and simmering and slowly fading to black. Quite nice. Droneheads obviously need this. Packaged in hand screened cardboard sleeves, and VERY LIMITED (we have the last 20 or so copies)!
Just a brief word about this one as it was limited to 50 copies, is already out of print, and we only have about 10 copies left. The second in a series, Tarentel's Jefre Cantu Ledesma joins up with filmmaker Paul Clipson, to drift dreamlike through a dense visual latticework of plants, chainlink fences, branches, leaves, stoplights, neon signs, a delirious series of slow motion visual tangles and patterns. A bug's eye view of the world mysterious and wonderful, like cutting room floor super-8 plant studies and urban landscapes woven into soft focus home movies. All set to the warm glow of Ledesma's swelling dronescapes. So gorgeous.
Packaged in a lovely folded vellum sleeve printed with images of dried leaves.
Again, we only have about 10 of these, so prepare to be disappointed.
Latest tape from Jefre Cantu Ledesma, a member of long running post rockers Tarentel, one of the head honchos of the Root Strata label, and a sublime crafter of divine dronemusic on his own, here rechristened 'Sei Getsu', Cantu utilizes "motorized electric guitar" to conjure up a lovely collection of blissful brooding evening ambience.
Like the Caboladies / Oneohtrix tape reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, Cantu's tape went through a whole pressing (albeit only 100 copies) before we got wind of it, and thankfully the label deigned to make another batch, which will no doubt disappear as quickly as the first.
Hushed and minimal, but more intense than much of what we've heard from Cantu, thick swells of rumbling low end, deep swaths of burnished buzz, glistening and glimmering, delicate sheets of shimmer draped over something much more dark and grim, a heaving roiling blackness, that swirls and pulses, its barbs muted and smoothed, but that darkness definitely infuses the proceedings with a ghostly, even ghastly vibe. Even so, the sounds manage to remain meditative and abstract, it's almost like SUNNO))) stripped down and mellowed out, still heavy, but more dense and intense than outwardly crushing. Gorgeous stuff, but sadly, crazy limited and maybe gone for good before you know it.
Finnophile alert!!! Yet another amazing post-Circle / Circle related project!! What the hell?!? Do those guys ever sleep? And if they do, have they figured out some way to record in their sleep? But who's complaining? Certainly not us. This time around, it's two Finns and one -American- doing the hypno-rock drone damage. Janne Peltomaki, former Circle drummer, current drummer for Paine and the recently reviewed Stalwart, Jyrki Laiho current guitar player for Circle and Stalwart, and Jordan Mamone, guitarist for NY artrockers Alger Hiss. While Circle continually flirt with metal, guitars always getting a little heavier, vocals that veer into serious Rob Halford territory, and of course the increasingly metallic imagery, it's this here Lee Miller outift that has finally pulled out the metal stops. Not that this is a "metal" record. It's just undeniably heavy, big jagged distorted guitars, pounding rhythms, and strange growling baritone vocals. In fact it has a bit of an industrial edge to it as well, with plenty of teutonic ponding a la Swans, Copshootcop, or fellow Finns Worms. Occasionally things do simmer down, and the result is a much more Circular sound, but a bit less krautrocky and more arty and angular, due in no small part we imagine to the presence of Mamone. But Lee Miller is all about that crush and pummel, and The Futility Of Language pounds that point home. Dark and distorted, heavy and hypnotic! This will definitely please Circle fans who have been digging their gradual shift into heavier territory, and just might tempt some metalheads into the vast and wondrous land of glorious hypnorock!!
Brooklynite Chris Lee plays a very appealing style of singer songwriter material. His style lies quite pleasantly between the grave solemnity of Tim Buckley and the light lackadaisacal delivery of the Sea and Cake (only not as "lounge", he's more '70s FM
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Dracula always wanted to be an opera singer, and he ain't bad.
From the mysterious black cover and gothic font, we initially thought that this was some new vinyl release by Amort or Striborg or any number of black metal hordes we see day in and day out. But no, this is in fact quite an awesome surprise, a beautiful early-seventies drum-centric spiritual jazz record by the unknown to us, David Lee Jr., and it's really quite killer! Right up there with the likes of Steve Reid, Rashied Ali, Roland P. Young or Khan Jamal!
Hailing from New Orleans and moving to New York where Lee played in Roy Ayer's Ubiquity for a few years, Evolution was recorded in 1974 and is Lee's only solo record originally released on his own Supernal records imprint (not to be confused with the black metal Supernal!). Centered around martial rhythms and syncopation with a left-field avant jazz sensibility and even some blazing psych rock and soul flourishes, the disc is 14 short tracks with the title track centerpiece being a 7 minute extended drum solo. There are even a couple of short vocal tracks, one of which should just be skipped over at the very end called "I Want Our Love To Always Last" (even the Soul Jazz site won't let you sample it). But other than that one misstep, this is a highly recommended album for fans of vintage beat-heavy seventies jazz from the likes of P. E. Hewitt, Lee Miller, or any of the cool cats we mentioned above!
Phil Lee is a long haired, beret-wearin' geezer who plays guitar and harmonica. Folky backwoods twang. Backed up by three members of Wilco, and also assisted on the album by Alison Moorer and Gillian Welch. On roots-music label Shanachie.
For her follow-up to her slightly lackluster Rogerio Duprat produced debut, Build Up, Rita Lee reunites with her Mutantes bretheren to create what is essentially an Os Mutantes record in all but name.
Lee's solo work in the seventies often traversed into the glam progginess of the later Mutantes catalog before veering into MOR territory in the eighties, but here on Hoje E O Primeiro Dia Do Resto Da Sua Vida from 1972, the antics and exhuberance of early Tropicalia return and rejoice! Awesome!
These mysterious funk nomads are back for round two of collaborations, after last years superb Clutch Of The Tiger. Multi-instrumentalists Shawn Lee (who has lately taken to being photographed wearing a tiger mask) and possibly imaginary character, Clutchy Hopkins, expand on the organic desert funk they are known for, but add a whole lot more to their sonic arsenal, including orchestral elements, strings, Mellotron, vibes, sitars and gongs, sounding often like a thrilling lost seventies soundtrack. Definitely a chill vibe if somewhat darker than their usually sunny jams. The track "Root Trees", features an appearance by UK soul group the Superimposers. If the schtick of their mysterious identities has long worn off, the quality of the music they make is still pretty solid!
