How can you resist a hyperbolically boastful black metal title like Barbaric Usurpation Of The Hypereonic Black Metal Throne? Andee's tUMULt label continues to dig deep into the Bay Area black metal underground, after introducing the rest of the world to such USBM luminaries as Weakling, Leviathan, Draugar and Crebain, now prepare yourself to bow before the mighty Mastery. Another one man band, known (not so) simply as Domignostika, who also does time as vocalist in local corpse painted horde Pale Chalice, as well as being the one man behind the only REAL one man black metal band (as in he plays guitar and sings while playing blast beats with his feet) Pandiscordian Necrogenesis, and who had previously played bass and sung for the late great Horn Of Dagoth (which also featured members of Crebain and Kerasphorus), Mastery is Domignostika's long running project, which over the last six years released 5 extremely limited cd-r demos, all of which are collected here, remastered, and widely available outside of the Bay Area for the very first time.
Barbaric Usurpation Of The Hypereonic Black Metal Throne? A serious claim of musical supremacy? A tongue in cheek poke at the constant battle for supreme grimness and kvltness, or taking the piss? Hard to tell, but considering the sheer brutality and relentless buzz of Mastery's frenzied black onslaught, we're leaning toward that title being a serious claim. After a strange, ambient intro, a sort of John Carpenter-ish bit of creeped out synthscapery, Mastery launches into the most recent demo, from 2009, the simply titled 'I' (all the tracks here a confusionally titled with Roman numerals), a frantic, frenzied freak out of swirling chaotic black buzz, a sound that at first blush sounds like some bastard hybrid of Inquisition and Vondur and Ocrilim. Six plus minutes of relentless gnarled buzzing, the vocals a sinister beastly croak, the drums a furious buried blast, but it's the guitars, insanely tangled and twisted, not so much riffs as a continuous serious of constantly mutating rapidfire runs, with much of the 'riffing' sounding more like multiple guitars maniacally soloing, spitting off pick harmonics and jagged squeals without ever looking back. Minus the drums and the vokills, this could definitely be some sort of avant experimental guitar record, but as it is, it becomes a demented slab of blurred, blown out, frenzied and fucked up black metal weirdness. The second track is way heavier on the low end, but no less flipped out, the riffing impossibly hyper, once again a swirling chaos of gnarled blackness and nearly psychedelic abstract avant shreddery. Mastery is total berzerker black metal, rooted in the tradition of true grim blackness, but filtered through Mastery's cracked perception, transforming this into something beyond true, a droned out and damaged, outsider blackness, that sounds pretty much unlike almost any other black metal.
Sure on the surface, it's blast and buzz, but as you sink into these extended black sprawls, the songs seem to unfold, and expand, buzzing blackness that blossoms into something wholly other, in such a way, that one has to fight the urge to try and figure out how these songs work, or how they're arranged, they sound almost improvised, but they're impossibly dense, and the arrangement, however esoteric, seems to be structured, but in some way that out pitiful human brains can not hope to comprehend.
Of course the newest demo is the most polished, but the older demos, for what they lack in polish, they seem to make up for in sheer whatthefuckness, demo four is another series of black blasts that twist and turn, and mutate before your ears, a glancing listen will reveal some of THEE fastest and most furious BM you may have heard, but again, the riffs seem to be constantly twisting and turning, the vocals to, hateful and harsh as befitting BM, but also completely baffling and utterly alien. But demo 3, a single 33 minute epic is something else entirely, with much of the record being made up of glitched out, harrowing black ambience, crunchy and distorted, with howled raspy vox, when the guitar do kick in, the buzz and drone, with the drums sounding almost electronic, looped way down in the mix, the sound weirdly hypnotic, before slipping into something slightly more black, and then back into some creepy ambience, before launching into a long stretch of blown out black majesty, which like much of the record, as much to offer upon deep listening, revealing all manner of hidden melody, lush textures, and most notably some strange strange riffs, this track in particular, though adding a super mesmerizing trancelike element, which is in fact present throughout all the demos, in lesser measure.
The second disc is made up of the first two demos, and thus finds Mastery at their (his?) most traditionally black metal, but again, it's all relative, so while much of this disc is spent chugging and blasting, raw and grim, all brittle buzz and brutal blast, the twisted sounds that would come to define Mastery's baffling sound begin to surface, strange gnarled riffs, some cool drum/guitar interplay, plenty of wild tangled squiggle guitar weirdness (especially on the first track of demo 2), which mixes in maniacally shredding guitars with more o that tranced/droned out atmosphere, not to mention some of the most anguished vokills yet, the whole collection finishing with the downright doomy final track from the second demo, a crumbling super distorted death march, with somehow even MORE anguished vocals, a woozy, washed out, blackened plod, that explodes in the final two minutes for one final burst of blasting, maniacal, demoniac blackness.
Killer black, red and white space / wolf / spacewolf cover art.
It's been a really long wait, but it's finally here, the debut full length from SF one man black metal horde Mastery. After a collection of demos on Andee's tUMULt label, and splits with Palace of Worms and Skullflower, we now have Valis, which, if anything, has pushed an already confusional sound further into the realms of total WTF? unreality. That tUMULt demo collection was impossibly next level, and Valis is definitely a progression, into something twisted and cosmic, less songs as much as sprawling pieces, partially (perhaps wholly?) improvised, riff after riff after riff, the 18 minute opener boasting what has to be a hundred different riffs, some buzzy and black, others atonal and Greg Ginn-ish, all wound around each other in furious tangles, croaked vokills and wild drumming only adding to the cacophony, the end result almost like multiple black metal bands playing at once, but somehow orchestrated into something strangely cohesive, brutal and punishing, but also mesmerizing and trancelike, a prismatic sonic blur, undulating wildly, occasionally coalescing into proper blast and buzz, but more often splintering into wild gouts of blacknoize or arcing sheets of black psych freakout. It definitely might be too much for the meat and potatoes metalheads out there. This is most definitely AVANT, whether it's the sudden intrusion of acoustic guitar above simple snare roll, or the swirling kosmische interludes, the blasts of head spinning squiggly shred, or the slippery melodies, that sound like multiple slide guitars run through a battery of busted distortion pedals, the lurching, lumbering doom that oozes like the instruments are melting as they're being played, wild bursts of distorted crumble or the frantic Bernard Hermann like intro to the record, or just the sheer fury and velocity of some of the black buzz here, making other black metal bands sound like they're trudging through tar... Valis is less like black metal and more like a constellation of sonic smears and brutal blurs, all layered into one of the strangest, most challenging, and definitely one of the most deliriously demented outsider/experimental/avant black metal records EVER.
Killer cover art too.
Regarding Mastodon, here at Aquarius we were fairly early adopters, being pretty into the mathy, very metal metalcore of their first ep and album, which we reviewed quite enthusiastically at the time. But, as their career continued, we got bored and began to lose interest in 'em. Unlike most folks - as of course Mastodon have since gotten quite big. We didn't even review their last album, but when this new one came in (and thence flew out, as it's been selling quite well here already) we eventually gave it a spin and opening track "Oblivion" immediately made us sit up and take notice. Hmm, Mastodon have changed. They've pretty much done away with the shouty 'brutal' death vocals in favor of a variety of more melodic vocal options, many of which are displayed in "Oblivion", from an Ozzyish wail to singing that sounds more 'grunge', like Alice In Chains maybe. When a few years ago they first dabbled with 'clean' vocals we weren't as into it, but now it works, 'cause in doing so, they've added a definite 'pop' element to what's in other respects totally technical proggy metal a la recent Opeth or Enslaved. In addition, metalcore and even emo are mixed in to Mastodon's weird (but successful) hybrid, that in that first track alone manages to makes us think of all those artists we just mentioned along with both Torche and Coheed and Cambria!
We already had Mastodon pegged as prog (they did a whole concept album based on Moby Dick, remember? And this disc's got a four-part, 11 minute track about Russian royalty or something) but being complex and epic AND pop, that's pretty neat. There's a lot going on here, lots of nifty details, as well as sheer metallic might, and it seems that Mastodon have finally arrived at a point where all the different stuff they do works in context, compositionally. We'll definitely be giving this album (and maybe their previous one too) some repeated, closer listens. Perhaps our expectations were unfairly low and shouldn't have been, but in any case we have to say that this new disc seems worthy of all the attention Mastodon had been getting lately from pretty much everyone but us.
This Atlanta-based metalcore outfit of ever-growing popularity is back with their sophomore full-length effort entitled Leviathan...can it live up to the hype? I mean, the sticker on the front quotes MTV.com to the effect that Mastodon are "the second coming of Metallica and Rush combined". Woah. Well it IS good. Heavy, complex, tuneful, dynamic, mixing all the things -- from epic post rock to retro thrash to mathcore -- that got people so excited about this band in the first place. That said, for the same reason, this album may suffer a bit from the band trying to be all things to all metalheads...the "future of metal" (sez Kerrang!), a return to metal's roots, melodic, brutual, left-field, etc... At some point you want to 'em to stop and not be so hectically eclectic. And if all that wasn't enough, this appears to be a concept album based on Melville's Moby Dick! Also, we're not convinced that the greater prevalence of clean singing on this disc is an addition they needed to make. But, it's not like we aren't impressed...and if you like the idea of a mixture of, say, Isis and The Fucking Champs, you'll probably love this.
If they get much bigger, though, (the fact that this comes in a deluxe package with a bonus DVD-audio disc ought to clue you in to the fact that Mastodon are definitely part of someone at Relapse's next-big-thing marketing plan) we'll have to start wondering about folks who buy this, did they also buy the last couple of Deceased albums (also on Relapse)? 'Cause that band NEVER got half the hype of these guys, not even close, yet other than being 100 percent metal (rather than maybe 90 percent like Mastodon) Deceased are a similar blend of Maiden, math and death metal...so check 'em out too I guess! Anyway, future of metal or not these guys are making a mark in the here and now, no need for our nitpicking really. The limited edition 2cd version we've got while it lasts, and you probably are curious as to what's on the extra disc: seven tracks of 5.1 surround sound mixes and live recordings, including one otherwise unreleased song.
"Lifesblood" is the debut from Atlanta's Mastodon, and we have to say that this 5-song ep has us eagerly awaiting their upcoming full-length! Crushing riffs and rhythms, punishing drums, and razorsharp lead guitar...they play math-rock metalcore worthy of a
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Amazing, very METAL metalcore is what Atlanta's Mastodon crank out. These guys used to be in AQ-faves Today Is The Day, which is quite obvious when you hear 'em. They're heavy, aggressive, technical, and -- most importantly -- imaginative. Already up there with the likes of Coalesce and Converge in our estimation. Mastodon seems even more metal than those metalcore worthies, though.
Maybe it's how the guitarist is partial to spitting out those Zakk Wylde-style harmonic squeals. Or maybe it's simply the crushing, crunching, complex riffs and drumming. But there's also some quite pretty melody to be found amidst Mastodon's math n' mayhem, and they have an almost 'post-rock' sense of dynamics (something most 'extreme' metal acts lack). Imagine your favorite old AmRep noise-rock act gone metal...or, Dazzling Killmen mixed with The Champs? Something like that. Also, they cut back on the movie samples that cluttered up their otherwise awesome debut ep (as per our suggestion?). Very impressive.
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Jazz power trio, Mat Maneri (electric violin), Matthew Shipp (piano) and Randy Peterson (drums) convey a dynamism, agility and spontaneity that defines improv. A lovely collection of pieces including originals and Miles Davis compositions.
Eduardo Mateo is one of the most enigmatic figures in Latin American music. Often regarded as the John Lennon of Uruguay, the mystique and confusion that surrounds him is as compelling and stunning as the beautiful music he left behind. With a tender voice that cuts right to the core, his music was like a beautiful cross between Joao Gilberto and Caetano Veloso. A romantic, as well as being heavily into mysticism, Mateo was often written off as being crazy. And sadly he did spend much of the 1970's either on the streets, in jail or in mental institutions. His poetic style, mixing of influences and creation of a world of his own were often misunderstood. His music though was filled with such beautiful longing. Folks like Milton Nascimento and Jorge Drexler have gushed about how important Mateo was to them, knowing the genius of his songs, arrangements and voice. And you can here his influence on a new generation of unique singer songwriters like Juana Molina and Lhasa. While we're not sure if they've heard him or not we're pretty sure folks like Vetiver, Eddie Marcon, Savath & Savalas and Jose Gonzalez would fall in love with his songs as well. Along with the informative liner notes comes an even more extensive and fascinating 44 page booklet which tells the complex and confusing story of one of the best kept secrets of South American music of the last quarter century. So good!
As we mentioned in the review of the MSV 7" a while back, for a genre that seems to be the NEXT BIG THING, actual physical recordings are surprisingly difficult to come by. Which is maybe the point, much of the musical output comes in the form of tracks on SoundCloud, videos on YouTube, as super limited cd-r's or downloads, and most of the bands have names that are essentially un-Googlable, all symbols and shapes, A's become little black triangles, or three stylized crosses becomes 'Ritualz', etc, hard not to become intrigued, or obsessed, and we most definitely seem to be both.
Salem was the first glimpse the mainstream world got of this strange new genre, a sound that somehow melded blown out lo-fi synths, minimal electro, twisted samples, old school goth, minimal techno, slowed down Southern style chopped and screwed hip hop, choral vox, big beats, into something distorted and murky yet weirdly epic, a sound that the creators described as Witch House, but has also been dubbed grave rave, zombie rave, cave rave and is sometimes lumped in with nu-gaze and chill wave and other outsider electronic micro genres. And Salem is the shit, hell, we made it our Record Of The Week, how could we not, it was and IS one of the coolest record of the last few years. But if Salem are the young witch house upstarts, ramshackle punks legendary for their chaotic live performances, yet who somehow managed to make what is possibly THEE defining record of the genre, and if groups like oOoOO and Balam Acab are crafters of a witch house that is more melodic and dancefloor friendly, then Mater Suspiria Vision are like some mysterious bearded witch house council, the masters of the scene, black cloaked figures that live in a cave somewhere, never glimpsed in the flesh, only via their transmissions, mostly amazing, twisted, fantastically fucked up YouTube videos, mini horror epics, always accompanied by MSV's dirgey, haunting soundtracks, often releasing 3 or 4 in a single day. No idea where these guys are from (Kabul?), if it's one person or a group, male or female, the mystery only adds to the appeal, the imagery, the videos, and the music, which even in a genre defined by it's 'witchiness' manages to be seriously dark, and grim, creepy and scary.
Originally released as a super limited cassette tape, Crack Witch has now been resurrected on vinyl, by the newly launched Living Tapes label (run by the guy from outsider black metal weirdos Yoga by the way), and is probably the best witch house document since Salem's King Night. But MSV's witch house is something else all together, something all together more EVIL sounding, not sure if it's that they're conceived to accompany videos, but they also tend to be super cinematic, just check out the opener "Call Of The Witches", thick buzzing ominous synths, strange snippets of foreign language dialogue, strange spaced out stuttery beats, a stumbling groove, terrified shrieks, sobbing and weeping, everything reverby and echoey, and then an awesome dizzying blast of strange processed melodies, backward synths, almost like Teenage Filmstars style witch house, totally tripped out and seriously sonically scary.
"Evil House Of Forbidden Fruit" offers up big echoey beats, strange heavily effected vocals, the sound super distorted and crumbly, stuttery and rhythmic, underneath mysterious melodies swell, subtle synths pulse, all building to a crunchy corrosive climax. "House Of 7 Witches" is all swirly and shimmery by comparison, until the shimmer is buried beneath an avalanche of heavily delayed beats, and buzzing synth squelch, the beats getting louder and more distorted, careening back and forth, eventually totally obscuring all the other sounds. Finally, side one finishes of with the much more subdued "Wtxchs (A Suite Of Decay), with a low slung groove, wreathed in skitter and hiss, crackle and buzz, and some ominous reverbed female vocals courtesy of someone called Shazzula, the result a sort of warped witchy Portishead, downtempo and lo-fi, a grim ghostly ballad, that quickly splinters into a noise drenched cacophony, all thick synth buzz and glitched out electronics, buried vox, swirling effects, all draped over a skeletal beat, buried in the mix, a lurching dubnoise creep.
All of side 2 is taken up by the 24 minute epic "Trip 2012", a darkly cinematic epic, cobbled together from what sounds like bits of film music, as well as snippets of dialogue, but super reverby and echoey, like a sonic fun house mirror, it's not until about 3 minutes in that the synth drops, a thick, buzzing, snarly bit of wheezing chordal crunch, the various shards of delay and echo coalescing into a sort of beat, again weirdly reminding us of the most far out Teenage Filmstars jams, a sprawling, dubbed out dronescape, every single note, every melody, every voice, transformed by malfunctioning effects into streaks of otherworldly sound, like a way more dubbed out Wolf Eyes in places, a sort of heaving, crumbling industrial crunch, but way more spaced out, and ominous, more creepy and cinematic, and WAY more witchy.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Super striking eye popping full color covers.
For all the Witch House music out there, it seems like very little of it actually gets released. Instead it's shared, and downloaded, offered on Soundcloud and various other sites, occasionally released as super limited cd-r's, but proper releases are few and far between.
As far as we know this may very well be the first proper release (definitely the first and only vinyl, there's been a cd-r and a cassette) from the mysterious collective called Mater Suspiria Vision, purveyors of witch house, or perhaps ghost drone, haunted disco trance, or even drag, depending on who you ask. The sound of witch house, for the uninitiated, is a twisted hybrid of classic goth, nineties techno, DJ Screw style slowed down sounds (hence the term drag), and all manner of spooky creepy atmospheres, horror movies, giallo soundtracks, all woven into a witchy bit of electronic psychedelic creepiness. And the various monikers tend to be heavy on the strange symbols that you get by pressing option or control on your keyboards, you know, little black triangles, tiny crosses, all those sorts of zapf dingbats style icons. Anyway, Salem is probably the most high profile witch house combo out there, but of all the other outfits we've heard, Mater Suspiria Vision is probably the only other group that comes close to conjuring up the same sort of mystery, coupled with the same sort of sonic heft.
No idea if MSV is a group or a person, it seems to be some sort of collective, or where they're located, all of their various pages list their home as Kabul, which seems suspect. In addition to music, they also create incredible tripped our psychedelic videos, that perfectly capture the same twisted vibe as their music. And they somehow manage to release a continuous stream of sights and sounds, new ones seemingly every day, which is why it's even more remarkable that this is one of only a tiny handful of actual MSV releases.
Regardless, it's a doozy, if you dug the Salem, and the oOoOO and the Balam Acab and maybe that Big Pink Tapes comp, then you are definitely gonna want this. And if you've yet to take the witch house plunge, but dig stuff like Leyland Kirby and Demdike Stare, odds are this is gonna be right up your alley.
A two parter titled provocatively "Exorcism Of The Hippies", it's all fat fuzzed out woozy warbly bass, thick low end swells, strange stuttery handclap rhythms, swooping spaced out effects, creepy dubbed out slo-mo atmospherics, strange voices, vocal snippets and samples, all blurred and smeared, a hazy, gauzy lysergic psychedelic trip out, the soundtrack to some strange foreign horror film from the seventies, coupled to some primitive old school techno 12", both spinning at 16rpm, the whole thing doused in cough syrup and left in the sun, cursed by a witch, buried in a graveyard, only to be dug up, melted down and mixed with liquid thorazine and a handful of horse tranquilizers and then pressed into this here 7". SO GOOD!
Packaged in super swank full color covers, and LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
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The flood of Bill Laswell-related material continues, and as a result it's hard for us to keep up and get even some of it on this list...so, better late than never, here's the newest disc from Bill's long-running and generally-interesting band/project Material. The title of "Intonarumori" refers to Italian Futurism, a more relevant title might have been "The Guest MC Record", featuring as it does the likes of Kool Keith, Flavor Flav, Scotty Hard, Killah Priest. Other participants include Material-alum Lori Carson, Bernie Worrell, Ted Parsons, Mr. Ken, Eddie Def, DJ Disc, DXT...a cast of thousands, actually, too many to name. Anyway, this is a pretty cool hip hop album. Fans of any of the above names, as well as Wordsound/Crooklyn Dub stuff in general, should check this out.
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This collection spans the years 1979 through '84, and featuring Bill Laswell (of course), Archie Shepp, Fred Frith, Nile Rodgers, Whitney Houston (!), and Nona Hendryx.
Power pop organ/drum, husband/wife duo Mates of State return with a short 4 song ep of emo goodness. Like their previous releases, it's still just the pair, still harmonizing like only people who spend 24/7 together can and still writing rocking tunes that you'll find yourself singing along to over your headphones if you're not careful.
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A short sweet -- ok the only word for it is quirky -- Randy Newman cover is side A of this single, but I like side B, an original, much better. Trademark boy girl razors-dipped-in-honey harmonies, pretty plinking piano and staccato drums. For fans of Rainer Maria, PEE, Death Cab for Cutie. Awesome time signature changes and amazing songwriting / lyric talents from married folks Jason and Kori. Highly recommended, as is their full length.
Up until this album Bay Area pop couple Mates Of State have pretty much stuck to their trademark approach of portraying two sweethearts gazing gooily into each others' eyes singing heart-shaped pop songs to each other. Back in 2000 their first album My Solo Project, filled with terrific bright pop tunes, was a sugary shot in the arm for the jaded stone-faced indie crowd. With their subsequent albums Our Constant Concern and Team Boo, although Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner's mutual adoration remained unquestionable, their behavior became something of a one trick pony -- y'know when your best friend won't stop fawning over his/her honeypie in your presence. You roll your eyes and think, "there they go again!" You just wanna shout, "stop being so damn cute!" Their emotive boy/girl vocals atop organ and drums instrumentation could sometimes be somewhat one dimensional. But despite some of us having a tummyache from all the buttercream frosted earnestness, we held our tongue. Heck, clearly many folks haven't had a problem with their lovey-dovey-ness. Their fans are pretty diehard. But we've just felt that they had the potential for more, and would get around to it sooner or later. On Bring It Back we hear the duo blossoming! Instead of public displays of affection (with the exception of the back cover photo and the re-creation of an old ABBA photo inside), their personal bond makes itself felt in less obvious ways -- two tunesmiths on the same wavelength, not only exploring it together but also inviting their musician friends along on their refreshing hook'n'harmony filled adventures (adding other vocalists, horns, stringed instruments, even some kazoo and didgeridoo!). Old fans, don't you fret. We're not talking any radical changes... just a bit more going on, more polish, embellishments and such. Despite both the (in our opinion) somewhat misleading grainy cover photo that makes the couple look like some '60s Serge Gainsbourg pop duo and the abovementioned '70s ABBA photo replica, today's Mates Of State are far from retro Euro-pop sounding (specifically of the French or Swedish persuasion). No, it's simply sunny California emo pop filling up this their most deliciously composed and crafted, not to mention prettiest album to date!
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"My Solo Project" is the nearly perfect debut album from the San Francisco duo of Kori Gardener and Jason Hammel. The Mates of State's super catchy arrangements for '70s organ, drums, and boy / girl vocal harmonies are a warm, almost groovy take on the bittersweet emo-pop championed by PEE, Rainer Maria, the Get Up Kids, The Anniversary, and Superchunk. Fans of those groups will be amazed at how strong and sure this record is. After only a handful of live shows, and absolutely no press support to speak of for Mates Of State, we've sold many many copies of this album -- an impressive feat in any respect! This is one of those records that customers ask about every single time we play it. You should expect more great things from Mates of State in the future!
Rejoice! For here is the second full length album from the local duo Mates of State. We've raved on and on about their debut, and are happy to report the new album is equally wonderful. This is just shiningly-great power pop that is remarkable not only for
Somewhere along their three record history, the Mates of State boy / girl team of Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner got married. For a band with emo roots singing their signature love songs with triumphant giddiness, this turn of events seems awfully adult of them, signalling that they might turn towards settling down, raising kids, and slowly growing old. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that; yet Mates of State is a project that yearns for the energy of youth and the providence of love. For better of for worse, "Team Boo" the couple's third album stays the course set by the previous outings, with the lovely boy / girl vocal harmonies belted over the cute but oh-so-clever chords from a vintage Yamaha organ and drum rhythms that meander through time changes as freely as the spirited vocal deliveries. If you've ever had the pleasure of seeing Mates of State live, their stage presence is entirely wrapped up in their mutual gaze upon each other, as if they had just fallen in love with each other all over again as they walked on stage and belted out these passionate love songs with a remarkable freshness. They've been touring almost constantly for the past several years; and this lovesick gaze remains the same. The romantic in me wants to believe that this is indicative of their love for each other; but like all emo (or in the case of Mates of State, post emo) bands, the ability to emote is crucial to success. It could all be a fairy tale for Mates of State, but it's quite a magical one.
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Hurrah! A fan-pleasin' Mates Of State documentary shot by director (and M.O.S. fan) Thadd Day and the band themselves. It follows the pop sweethearts out on the road and into the studio (for the recording of their last full length Team Boo). Live clips capture them in the Midwest, Austin, Toronto and Japan. Keep your eyes peeled, maybe you'll spot yourself in the crowd! Also included on this dvd are a photo gallery and a couple of videos for their songs "Fluke" and "Ha Ha".
We first heard these seminal French synth poppers on the awesome So Young But So Cold compilation from a while back. Their contribution, "Disco Rough" (included here), was definitely one of the highlights, dark and driving, a little bit krautrocky, driven by a pulsing synthesized bassline, the whole track peppered with all manner of glitch and squelch, and laced with tinkling chime like melodies, lots of noisiness, grit and grime, and most surprising of all, HORNS. A twisted combo, but one that sounded pretty great together.
Les Visiteurs Du Soir is the long overdue reissue of the group's classic 1981 album, originally released on Celluloid, and while the above description of their "Disco Rough" single, pretty much applies to their sound as a whole, the group were pretty inventive, and injected the new wave sound of the time with all manner of warped and twisted innovations, adding soaring strings, or xylophone, strange sonic combinations that definitely helped the band stand out. Opener "Paris, Tokyo" has a killer horn part, and is doused in clouds of descending electronic streaks, and the arrangement, as it is on many of the tracks here, is downright PROG, and with a different sonic palette, who knows, this might have been a whole different kind of record, the sound slipping into weird horn flecked chugs, blasts of baroque poppiness, angular, intricate melodic tangles, and more. And heck that's all in the first song. "TV Night" is a bit cold wavey, a little darker and dronier, with blurred swaths of keyboard shimmer, over throbbing low end synth pulse, and when the vocals come in, the synths and vocals lock into a progged out stop / start stutter, not to mention the busy drumming, and the weird distorted male vocals, oh and more horns of course! "Jungle Hurt" is another good one, with ELO like cellos draping moaning melodies over the sultry vox and the percolating synth grooves, dramatic and epic...
We could go on for sure, track by track, but needless to say, fans of previous Medical reissues (Axxess, Tony Carey, Drinking Electricity, Dalek I, Guyer's Connection, Lou Champagne System, etc) or local reissue label Dark Entries, will flip for this! As always, extravagantly packaged in a heavy full color jacket, pressed on 180 gram opaque grey vinyl, with a printed insert, with interviews and liner notes. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, each one hand numbered!
One of our very favorite electronica glitch artists here bestows another pretty display of his trademarked fluttery tones of delicately coaxed digital processing. "Die Entdeckrung Des Wetters" appears to be a collection of tracks commissioned for various art installations: "Touch" being for a glass exhibition in th Berliner Townhall (where Mathieu created a wonderous digitized vibration from what sounds like ringing glass tones and breathy rushes of air) and the title track being a permanent installation for the Cultural Heritage Voelklinger Huette, an artspace housed in a 19th Century iron foundery. For the latter installation, Mathieu was asked to design a sound installation for the old cokery, where coal was distilled into the far more potent fuelsource coke by burning coal at extreme temperatures. While the furnace invokes rather malevolent metaphors, Mathieu keeps this track within his typically airy aesthetic. Another track on this compilation is an extraction from Mathieu's Full Swing album "Edits," in particular the Yo La Tengo remix "Love."
Knowing full well that the average art observer spends less than 8 seconds with any piece of art, Mathieu composed all of these pieces as a repetitive series of loops; thus, this collection isn't as action packed as some of the other Mathieu releases, but holds some exceptional digitized tones.
One of two new Tapeworm's this week, as in limited cassette releases on UK tape label The Tapeworm, the other is a bit of Tesla coil rhythmatism from NYC audio alchemist Lary Seven, and this one, a selection of data driven sounds created by aQ fave Stephan Mathieu. And we do mean these are actually the sounds of data, with Mathieu taking pictures of his equipment in the studio and then transforming that data into music, or more specifically sound, as while this strange array of grinding static, crunchy rhythms, looped thrum, screeching sine waves and modem-malfunction crunch and stutter may be music to our ears, this is a pretty challenging chunk of abstract industrial rhythms, and Raster-Noton style beep-click-buzz, but raw and blown out and in the red, sound that seem to be pushing the speakers to their very limit, but in doing so, creating a strange sort of low fidelity primitive electronica, a jagged collage of Merzbowish grey noise and crumbling electro-glitch buzz, the sound snowballing into thick squalls of corrosive almost psychedelic sounding blur, but just as often splintering into a strange sort of caveman krautrock, rendered in shades of hum and hiss, peppered with jagged shards of electronic gristle and barbed streaks of smeared hiss.
Definitely pretty far removed from our favorite Mathieu records, but pretty curious and cool nonetheless, a noise record, but one that's dynamic, and rhythmic, surprisingly engaging and listenable in a way much noise is most definitely not.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, already sold out and out of print at the label, so these are the last copies EVER.
Just as Christian Fennesz transformed the canonical rock icons The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys into sublime electronica-glitch perfection, Stephan Mathieu has pillaged the 'public domain' archives of the 20th century to create his own
Why he records under the moniker Full Swing some of the time and his given name Stephan Mathieu on other occasions is a mystery, as the blueprint for all of his work remains a constant. Nevertheless, Mathieu is quickly becoming the most consistent electronica composer, often upstaging Christian Fennesz and Carsten Nicolai. Picking up where Mathieu left off on his exceptional Full Swing "Edits" album, "Gigue" is a live recording of his synthetic swells expanded out of digital minutae. His signature buzzing resonance drifts warmly out of digitized crackle and thick droning hiss. While such sounds had been common on the aforementioned "Edits" album, Mathieu pushes these sounds even further into a tumultuous wash of reverberant static, white noise and digital percolations, which stand out as quite intense for the typically sublime Mathieu. This crescendo of noise never strives for Merzbow, rather it presents the metaphor of the vast pressures and heat from deep sea hydrothermic vents where blackened plumes of scalding water blast upward amidst the frigid seawater at the bottom of the ocean. A short 30 minutes from this accomplished musician, but well worth every minute!
We've been huge fans of all of Mathieu's releases so far, gorgeous glitchy dronescapes, electronic ambience and all sorts of inventive rhythmic experimentations. On Tape marks the first recording on which Mathieu has left the source material un-processed. The source material in this case is recordings of his labelmates, Swedish trio Tape. Mathieu then added some drumming (he used to be a drummer before he took up the computer as his instrument of choice) and random field recordings which resulted in the subtle beauty of On Tape. Dreamy sepia toned soundscapes of electronic whir, insect like instrument buzz, keening angelic melodies stretched into upper register drones, all warm and otherworldly, sun dappled and crystalline.
The Macintosh iBooks and iMacs at Aquarius are getting old in digital years, and they're gradually showing their age. So, let's hope and prey that neither the "sad mac" icon nor the "chimes of death" start to haunt our aged computing system. For those Windows operators out there, these are the Mac equivalent of the "blue screen of death," calling attention that something quite dreadful has happened to the computer. Such anxiety producing indicators of a malfuncting computer are the subject matter for this album from German sound artist Stephan Mathieu. Despite the nail-biting angst that such dilemnas can cause, The Sad Mac is a benevolently tranquil recording in which a variety of sounds have been smeared into melancholic ambience, perhaps composed more as a balm of having to deal with those computer problems. Having established himself as one of premier digital composers with the Full Swing album Edits as well as his collaborative Heroin album with Ekkehard Ehlers, Mathieu makes a profound shift in methology as he eschews the "DSP-Magic" of his earlier albums in favor of a much simpler arrangement with a few digital programs applied as pixelated flourishes upon field recordings and minimalist compositions for violin, pump organ, and harpsicord. Even without all of the pixel pushing from his Max-MSP patches of yonder year, Mathieu still manages to construct beautifully sustained drones, seamlessly combining all of the elements as the flicker, echo, dissolve, blur, and expand with his signature fluidity.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"Wurmloch : Variationen" appears to be the first release for Stephan Mathieu who managed to land his debut on Ritornell -- the high-profile experimental subsidiary of Mille Plateaux / Force Inc. Mathieu has constructed these 5 pieces using an original 11-minute long piano piece which has been digital dissolved into ringing drones scraped with glitches. Occasionally the piano is allowed to speak with its original voice, as elegant chords somberly march through a very slow melody; but for the most part, Mathieu prefers to exploit the coldness of digital entropy as it takes over his piano composition. Quite nice.
Similar to their relationship with Dutch radio station VPRO which resulted in the Mort Aux Vaches series, Staalplaat has begun a cooperation with the Dutch arts initiative Extrapool to release work from Extrapool's artist in residency program. The goal being
What separates both Mathieu and Ehlers from the rest of the glitch electronica field is their wonderful fascination with antiquity and their maintainence of surface noise and grit within a technological setting that typically has an intrinsic aesthetic for cleanliness and sterility. The rich cracklings of surface noise and fuzzy static of an old tube-amp radio emerge throughout their "Heroin" collaboration. Mellotron organs form whimsical melodies before dissolving into warm pools of warbling timbres; a melodica offers playful tunes over a looped and glitched backing track of the same instrument. Occasionally, Mathieu and Ehlers produce something more in step with the purity of the Raster-Noton sound, but for the most part have constructed a beautiful (if mutant) remnant of pop sentimentality, sounding more like a slightly digital version of Philip Jeck.
- RealAudio clip: Herz
- RealAudio clip: Rose
NOW BACK IN PRINT! Similar to their relationship with Dutch radio station VPRO which resulted in the Mort Aux Vaches series, Staalplaat has begun a cooperation with the Dutch arts initiative Extrapool to release work from Extrapool's artist in residency program. The goal being to encourage strange and interesting combinations. In light of this program, Extrapool's choice of laptop glitch technicians Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers is almost too obvious, as both artists have developed similar styles, digitally recombining disfigured yet emotionally dynamic sounds. One of Mathieu's recent projects has been the Full Swing "Edits" 10"s of confounding remixes for Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork, and Ehlers too has been on the remix tip with his reconfigurations of Albert Aylers and Cassavettes.
What separates both Mathieu and Ehlers from the rest of the glitch electronica field is their wonderful fascination with antiquity and their maintaining of surface noise and grit within a technological setting that typically has an intrinsic aesthetic for cleanliness and sterility. The rich cracklings of surface noise and fuzzy static of an old tube-amp radio emerge throughout their "Heroin" collaboration. Mellotron organs form whimsical melodies before dissolving into warm pools of warbling timbres; a melodica offers playful tunes over a looped and glitched backing track of the same instrument. Occasionally, Mathieu and Ehlers produce something more in step with the purity of the Raster-Noton sound, but for the most part have constructed a beautiful (if mutant) remnant of pop sentimentality, sounding more like a slightly digital version of Philip Jeck.
Along with the "Heroin" album, Orthlorng Musork has commissioned a number of remixes from contemporary electronic artists Josef Suchy, Nobukazu Takemura, Kit Clayton, Frieband, Fennesz, Oren Ambarchi, Carmen Baier, and Akira Rabelais. Unfortunately, the track listing is slightly screwed up as the Frieband and Kit Clayton tracks are switched on the disc. Oops.
- RealAudio clip: Herz
- RealAudio clip: Rose
A previous Mutek release found the minimalist techno outfit Goem collaborating with a number of artists who simply stopped by Goem's hotel room during the 2001 Mutek festival. While Goem's record had all of the good natured intentions of warm comradery, it fell flat as a poor recapitulation of Goem's micro-techno. Fortunately, the second effort between artists collaborating in a hotel room during the 2002 Mutek festival is a much better offering. With none of the blunted hip-hop rhythms of Timeblind, none of Radboud Mens' fragile minimalist techno, and few slivers of Janek Schaefer's bleak sonic abstractions, the dominant aesthetic is that of Stephan Mathieu, which is totally fine by us! As a result, "Quality Hotel" is a delicate affair of fizzing digital ambience, with samples that flicker, twist, and bloom into sleepy drones cracked with miniscule glitches and glassine vibrations. It's a very subdued record, but is is just as good as any of Mathieu's previous outings.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Mathlete's indie jangle lo-fi behavior with analogue synths, and earnest / sensitive boy vocal whine recalls the Land Of The Loops and a lot of the happy-go-lucky aesthetics of Darla.
The Bay Area dreamy pop duo of Jaime Borschuk and P.F. Dumanis are back with their third full length. While the first two were delivered to our ears on cd, this one comes spinning on wonderful limited edition vinyl. Only 250 were pressed, so act fast! All These Days starts rolling in gentle fashion with "Fleeting", a lullaby tempo'd number that brings to mind the drowsy blanketing embrace of Yo La Tengo or Low. Wistful verging on downright melancholic. Then they get the toe tappin' and guitar strummin' on the considerably more upbeat second tune "Can i Love You Yet?" It's definitely more like what we recall from their previous releases. However, the bright burst of springy sunshine swiftly give way to the autumnal feel of the opening track, as the pair brings things back down again for the next tune. They stick to this slower, somber pace for the rest of the nine songs. While we certainly dig The Matinees' peppier side, on this album they prove to be just as engaging treading the more shadowier paths of pop.
The indie pop garden continues to blossom in the Bay Area! The Matinees' sophomore full length catches a ride on the fleeting warm sunbeams that visit SF around this time of year. Bask with us in some really good girl/boy sung tunes. On songs such as "Mission Beach" they're very much in the vein of Quasi, and take a more reeling whimsical spin more akin to Fiery Furnaces on "Fair Weather Friend". As for their drowsy pop rendition of David Bowie's "Modern Love"... well, we're not quite sure how we feel about that, but the rest of the album sure sounds sweet. Much more polished and composed than 2007's Sleepy Seeds. The album was recorded and co-produced by Greg Ashley, and features guests from local pals Love Is Chemical, Scrabbel, Invisible Cities, and Agent Ribbons.
If The Matinees might look and sound a bit familiar to you, it might be because you're already familiar with the individual members' other musical endeavors -- local bands Blue Period, Plan To Pink and The Bright Grey Wing. The SF duo make old style jangly indie pop, and by 'old style' we mean the girl/boy sung college radio delights of the early '90s. If you dig Unrest and the many other Mark Robinson fronted pop combos, you'll probably welcome The Matinees's debut album which made us think they were not so distant cousins of Mr. Robinson. Nice and sweet.
The Matmos back catalogue of quirky electronica features an odd litany of sound sources which sets them apart from the contemporaries trapped within the bunker mentality of laptop trickery. Whoopie cushions contextualized as surface noise, the
The album begins with the light shuffling house groove of "Lipostudio (And So On...)" which introduces an odd textural duet between human fat gurgling through a tiny vacuum and a bleating clarinet supplied by Stephen Thrower (currently of Cylobe, formerly of Coil). "Spondee" works another house groove around the rhythmic recitation of spondees -- duo-syllabic words / phrases in which neither syllable is particularly stressed -- by an audiologist testing deaf children. Strangely enough, Matmos hadn't considered this track a mockery of San Francisco's candy flippin' trance / house organization Spundae. By the end of the album, Matmos needed to address the reality of death and did so with "Momento Mori" - a 23Skidoo death-funk groove built out of sounds generated from a human skull.
Easily this is Matmos' most successful record to date, and will make fans of Coil's "Love's Secret Domain" or Doctor Rocket's "D Is For Doctor" very happy!
A teaser ep from Matmos' upcoming record "A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure" -- the medical album for San Francisco's beloved electronica duo, who of course keeps this rather sterile and grim theme lighthearted and wacky. In keeping true to the medical theme, Matmos procured remixes from Dr. Rockit and Surgeon of the title track... and did a cover of Coil's "Disco Hospital" (which features Stephen Thrower - formerly of Coil). Who said drilling through a person's nose or suctioning out all of the fat from some rich lady's ass couldn't be fun? Or sound great?!
This limited pressing 3" cd from local sound alchemists Matmos continues in the same conceptual vein as their last major release, The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of The Beast, where each track was dedicated to a musical, philosophical or literary figure (Boyd McDonald, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Larry Levan, etc.). The material for this cd was originally commissioned by members of The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and Matmos took the opportunity to create three pieces for one of their scientific heroes, Alan Turing. Who is Alan Turing, you ask? Well, Alan Turing was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer who became a pioeering figure in modern computing, and who contributed much to the debate about artificial intelligence and whether machines could ever develop consciousness and independently think (ever hear of the Turing Test?). But what makes Alan Turing an even more interesting and ultimately tragic figure for Matmos is the charges that were brought against him in the early fifties of "acts of gross indecency" for admitting to a sexual relationship with another man. After being put on probation and ordered to undergo hormone therapy, Turing ate an apple laced with cyanide. His death was ruled a suicide. Taking cues from Turing's work with cryptographic devices (otherwise known as the Enigma Machine) and his personal effects including postcards he sent to his lover before his suicide entitled Messages From The Unseen World, Matmos gained access to an actual Enigma machine and were able to use its sound for this recording. Enlisting help from David Tibet of Current 93, and Clodagh Simonds of Fovea Hex, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Matthew Curry and Mark Lightcap, Matmos have created three beautiful and touching pieces paying tribute this important and tragic figure. Limited to 1000 copies, and highly recommended!!!
