What might you expect from a band made up of one part Everlovely Lightningheart and one part These Arms Are Snakes? What if we told you some of the guys in Isis, Helms Alee and a few of the other These Arms Are Snakes fellas helped out? You still probably wouldn't imagine the sound of Mamiffer, which does share some elements with those bands, but is definitely its own unique entity.
Martial snares, grinding drones, melancholy piano, a strange sort of murky chamber ensemble, like a fucked up malevolent Rachels, that slips smoothly into some jazzy almost post rock. Moody and moving and dramatic and pretty dang cool. And that's just the first track. The rest of the tracks are all over the place, but held together by the everpresent piano, from glitchy buzzing dronemusic that swells to an incendiary Jesu / Nadja-like roar, piano laced folky slowcore, all moaning cellos, and cinematic piano, again underpinned by fuzzy buzzing drones, Godspeed style slow burn epics, Necks like slow jazz shimmer wrapped around a glowing black rumble, wrapped in a hazy shimmer, Fahey-esque Appalachian guitar strum that gradually slips into something much more distorted and heavy, laced with ethereal female vocals, and a distant whirring hiss, all woven into one epic and moving cinematic songsuite.
While this might not hit the spot for most Isis / These Arms Are Snakes / Helms Alee fans, it will almost for sure please fans of all things moody dramatic post rock, Rachels, Godspeed, Explosions, Mono, Magyar Posse and the like...
The last few months have given us a flurry of Mamiffer releases, first a split with Aaron Turner's House Of Low Culture, then another split with dark drone-noise heavies Oakeater, and now a brand new full length. With a pedigree that includes members of Everlovely Lightningheart and These Arms Are Snakes, and a crew of guests that has included folks from Isis and Helms Alee and others, you think this band would be sonically in line with their Hydrahead brethren, but instead, Mamiffer do their own thing entirely, which is not at all metal, and certainly not heavy, at least in the traditional sense. Instead, Mamiffer traffics in sprawling expanses of piano driven ambience, epic soundscapes the drift and shimmer and smolder, sometimes hushed and abstract, other times dense and dark and ominous and yeah, a little bit heavy.
This brand new one, released on Aaron Turner's new label Sige, finds the band perfecting their sound, creating a collection of songs that sounds like a more sinister Godspeed, the arrangements intricate and complex, the long songs drifting through multiple movements, all deftly assembled into these mini epics.
Take Mare Decendrii opener, "As Freedom Rings", which begins with a hazy layered bit of shimmery drone, before haunting piano joins the fray, then it's like some sort of haunted chamber music, eventually some heavy guitar comes in, but instead of launching into some crushing doom, the rest of the band switches gears and play something that sounds like the Rachel's, over which someone has laid thick swaths of crumbling distorted guitar. There are drums, and when they come in, the song gets marginally more propulsive, and a bit more proggy, in come strings as well, super cinematic and soundtracky, chantlike vocals, its like some strange Three Mile Pilot / Master Musicians Of Bukkake hybrid, brooding, and haunting, and mysterious and fantastically epic.
The rest of the record follows suit, varied for sure, but all woven into an elaborate and ever shifting tapestry, from soaring female vocal driven minimal chamber rock dirge, to shimmery hushed high end ambience, to creepy apocalyptic folk (at moments sounding like a piano-fied Woven Hand), to dark drifts of solo piano, to slow building doom flecked post rock churn, to barely there minimal low end thrum, to dreamy drifty abstract soundscapes...
Good stuff, another strange and mysterious, haunting and beautiful collection of heavy avant sonic abstraction from these audio alchemists!
Been waiting for this one now for a while now, a killer collaboration between Northwestern drone/drifters Mamiffer (aka Aaron and Faith), and Finnish hypno-rockers Circle (aka Jussi and Mika), and this foursome whip up some blissed out avant garde minimal dreaminess, utilizing an old organ, in a nineteenth century stone church in Circle's hometown of Pori. The organ's lush chordal whir may form the basis of these tracks, but they are fleshed out by all sorts of elements, some you might recognizes from the members' other bands, some seem to have been conjured from the ether. Long stretched out tones, hazy layers of sonic gauze, wild keening violin melodies (courtesy of Mr. Eyvind Kang), scrapes and creaks, murky percussion, heavily processed vokills buried way down in the mix, the tracks super dynamic and nuanced, slipping easily from hushed shimmer, to howling squall, the mellower parts, truly mesmerizing, with hints of Morricone surfacing in the twang flecked dusky drifts, while the heavier/louder/more chaotic moments seem to be channeling all manner of noisiness throughout the ages, hints of free form floorcore, Japanoise, heavy drone, black ambience, but all masterfully sculpted into brooding, dramatic swaths of majestic minimalism, that seems to be constantly slipping into maximal sonic overload. Hushed and tranquil one second, tense and intense the next, whispery and woozy transformed into caustic crunch and heart-of-the-sun psychedelia. Some tracks unfold like some lost Circle B-side, Mika's strange vocals draped over flurries of acoustic guitar, simple tribal percussion, and that ever present organ drone, while others begin life sounding like some court music from the past, before morphing into something more ominous and gothic, a blackened neo-folk that would sound right at home on Cold Spring. Elsewhere guitar rumbles blossom blackly into something almost SUNN-like, which is countered by some Circle-like dramatic hypno-prog weirdness, operatic and over the top, before finally, resolving with what might be the prettiest of the bunch, the near ten minute closer, a gorgeously hypnotic slab of rumbling, whirring, shimmering dronemusick, that's equal parts barely there modern minimalism, and rib cage rattling low end assault, the end result, both harrowingly heavy, and blissfully dreamy.
This vinyl version is LIMITED TO 800 COPIES, in deluxe two part jackets, the fancy inner sleeves housed in a deluxe slipcover.
No idea who Demian Johnston is, whether he's a person or they're a band (although weirdly enough, we think he was a member of post hardcore heavies Kiss It Goodbye!), but got two new releases from him/them on this week's list. Both collaborations. The other, a cd-r with the equally unknown to us Mink Stole (on Debacle, the same label that brought us the Slaves, Expo 70 and Megabats), and this, an elaborately packaged cassette boxset collab with aQ faves Mamiffer. Hard to tell actually, all the text is in Russian, there's a set of gorgeously printed artcards inside held together with gold string, each box is numbered with big stamped numbers on the back of the box, inside, these two outfits conjure up some seriously fantastic sounds, well worthy of the elaborate packaging.
Mamiffer, a trio this time around, Aaron Turner, Faith Coloccia and Alex Barnett of Oakeater, offer up a brand new track, post the recent full length, a sprawling doomdronescape of crumbling distorted organs and guitars, laced with voices and field recordings, a bit like SUNNO))) via William Basinski, the sounds starting out intense and heavy, but quickly becoming something much more drowsy and dramatic, a sort of hazy slowcore, underpinned by some distant decaying guitar buzz, soft and swirly, slightly ominous, but quite dreamy actually, the sound shifting continually from hushed and minimal to gauzy and dream poppy, to creepy and haunting, to layered and lush.
The Demian Johnston tracks are a bit more sinister, brooding and malevolent, still sort of ambient, but the sounds rumble and whir, grinding beneath the surface, a sort of blackened drift, soundtracky, mysterious, laced with al sorts of field recording like sounds, giving the tracks a vibe like walking through some dark decimated landscape, some crumbling post apocalyptic city, not to say it's not still lovely, it most definitely is, that loveliness is just infused with a sort of grim tension, and in fact the more we listen, the more it reminds us of a way more dismal and dark Tim Hecker, the same sort of gauzy ambience and buried melody, a sort of creepy cinematic ambience, especially on the second DJ track, where the drift of the opening track is wedded to some seriously distorted muted crunch, and lots of space, a fantastically haunted sounding sprawl of tense ambience, and harrowing droned out drift.
LIMITED TO 110 COPIES!! As mentioned above, housed in a super swank box, with printed artcards, hand numbered, we have a little handful of these, and pretty sure once they are gone we will NOT be able to get more.
Two more blasts of musical mystery from the Utech camp. Last list it was blackdrone alchemists Locrian, blissed out black metallers Gog, and the freeform psychedelic drone and drift of Japanese outfit Tetragrammaton. This time it's the sculpted noise of Daniel Menche (reviewed elsewhere on this list), and this, a split between husband and wife, Aaron Turner, he of Isis, Hydra Head, and of course his solo project House Of Low Culture, and Faith Collocia, and her Mamiffer project.
Mamiffer is up first, and is a single 12+ minute track, constructed from piano, synthesizer, organ, tapes, field recordings, percussion, bass and effects, and it's a beauty. Stately piano drifts atop a bed of smoldering shimmer and minimal low end thrum, haunting and hazy and a little ominous, soundtracky and cinematic, the piano eventually fading out, leaving a gauzy bit of layered drift, laced with muffled explosive booms, the organ gradually swelling up from the murk and mire, building into a squall of soft psychedelic noise, before fading out once again, leaving that strange reverbed boom, to ring out into empty black space.
House Of Low Culture is mostly Turner, but here he's joined by his wife on guitar, and legendary percussionist Z'EV on, well, percussion. A hushed black ambient creep, drifting beneath dramatic multitracked vocals, everything wreathed in thick undulating black buzz, the sound switching from ambient soft noise to the vocal parts, that sound downright new wave/post punky, but those two elements bleed into each other, creating something more than its constituent parts, the track smoothes out, and becomes more and more ethereal, leaving just piano, to float in a field of hushed near silence, stately and mysterious and quite lovely, it's not until the last couple minutes that the tranquility fractures, and the fissure unleashes a cloud of noxious, crumbling distortion, and heaving blacknoise, which too fractures and peels back leaving a brief bit of clean guitar riffing and then nothing at all.
Like all Utech releases, gorgeously packaged, in a oversized full color sleeve, with super striking artwork.
Another impressive release on Aaron Turner's post Hydra Head label Sige, this one a three way live tag team between Turner's House Of Low Culture, Mamiffer and Japanese noise legend Merzbow.
Spread out over three sides (the fourth is an etching), this live show displays a surprising amount of restraint, considering the multitude of cooks in the kitchen, and considering one of those cooks is the iron chef Masami Akita.
The first side is all Mamiffer, aka Faith Coloccia, with gorgeous bit of dark, droney, cinematic chamber music, what sounds at first like solo piano, until you realize the piano is suspended in a field of glimmery soft focus buzz, atop deep rumbling swells, peppered with distant industrial creaks and groans, the piano occasionally giving way to long shimmering metallic tones, or thick dark blackened swirls, but always settling back in that haunting elegiac piano driven drift. Mamiffer's side finishes off with a final eruption of grinding blackened churn, a psychedelic soft noise squall, that while still laced with melody, is still seriously ferocious.
The second side finds House Of Low Culture teaming up with Merzbow, which on the face of it has the makings of something seriously noisy, but instead, the two created a lush expanse of hushed dronemusic, delicate and haunting, all ominous low tones, and warm washed out thrum, streaked occasionally with feedback, and shards of skree, the sound grows more and more dense, still lovely, but with a sort of blackened cast, dreamily funereal, with mysterious vocals drifting in the softly roiling sonic shadows. A brief crescendo leads directly into another stretch of dark shimmer, peppered with bit crashing gongs, and thick crumbling black buzz sells, it's not until the last minute or two, that things get downright Merzbowian.
The final (playable) side, features all three, a Mamiffer / HOLC / Merzbow collab, and is easily the noisiest of the bunch, a constantly shifting sprawl of undulating low end, blasts of hissy white noise, heaving slabs of crumble and crunch, corrosive and caustic for sure, but still textural and atmospheric, and strangely melodic. By HOLC / Mamiffer standards things definitely get pretty fiery and fierce, but by Merzbow standards, the sound is still relatively tranquil. A pretty fantastic chunk of spaced out abstract noise drone for sure.
LIMITED TO 330 COPIES, each one hand numbered, housed in super swank, black on black Aaron Turner designed matte jackets, with printed inner sleeves, pressed on clear vinyl, music on three sides, a cool etching on the fourth.
Brand new split from these two experimental outfits, each taking a side, Mamiffer starting things off with a gorgeous bit of plaintive piano, drifting beneath fields of reverberant buzz, lush and layered, the sound soon expands and blossoms into a thick wall of sound, heaving and crumbling, a roiling sonic miasma that soon dissipates, leaving a landscape of looped backwards melodies, which swirl softly and sound almost new agey, driftfully dreamy. The second Mamiffer track opens up all textural and super minimal, but like the first one, it too bursts into something noisier, in this case MUCH noisier, as in full on white noise Merzbowian howling skree, it too eventually drifts off, leaving a weird stretch of grinding industrial rumble, beneath soaring echo drenched vox, which somehow manages the feat of being both noisy and lovely.
Weirdo post black metal avant soundscapers Pyramids, counter with their own bit of sonic abstraction, laying down a field of shimmering ambience, moaning horns buried in the mix, roiling looped programmed rhythms, it ends up sounding like some sort of noisy abstract electronic prog, with some seriously fucked up and freaky processed vox, all staticky and demonic. The drums are often blasting, but the production is such, that instead of sounding heavy, it sounds sort of hypnotic and trancey. The second half of Pyramids' side long track is a weird hazy psychedelic drift, backwards vox set atop a lush swirling backdrop of prismatic shimmer, creepy and cinematic, slowly building to a haunting ambient doom creep.
Housed in super nice heavy jackets, pressed on different colored vinyl, and includes a newsprint insert/poster with liner notes/lyrics.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!!
We never really ever dug Mammal that much. We wanted to, but it just never hit us. A sort of sub Wolf Eyes abject electronic brutality, not noise so much as noisy, very Midwestern, filthy, homebrewed... just typing that has us thinking, well why the fuck didn't we? That's the sort of stuff we'd write about a record we love. Well, now we are, writing that, about a record we love, and it's kind of weird that it's a Mammal record, but it definitely has us reconsidering our verdict on past Mammal releases because this one is an absolute killer. Some sort of electronic flecked nihilist loner doom. Or something. This is most definitely filthy, noisy, and homebrewed, a doomed abject outsider electronic folk record, but with crushing guitars and drum machine. If you're not sold already, there must be something very wrong with you, but what the heck, let's just keep going.
The opener "Repulsion" is utter minimal metallic brilliance. A simple, super processed rhythm, relentless and repetitive, beneath a similarly monochromatic downtuned guitar riff, that occasionally is joined by another even heavier, crumblingly distorted guitar. And that's it. It just loops endlessly, the riffs cycling through some barely there melody, it's more about texture and timbre and groove, it sounds like a super slow motion robotic instrumental My Dad Is Dead, or even a little like Big Black at 16 rpm. It's totally gorgeous in its spare simplicity, and it somehow manages to convey all sorts of emotion through a single riff and a single rhythm. And as we've said about other tracks in the past, as far as we're concerned, that track could have been an hour long and been the only track on the record.
But the record's not instrumental, in fact most of the songs have vocals, a sort of mumbled deadpan drawl, the lyrics, super personal and intimate, a sort of abstract downer folk, the guitar wrapped delicately around the vocals, except for the inevitable crumbling doom guitar that comes in to drape a little filth and misery on the proceedings.
The rest of the record is a slow sick crawl, the drum machine spitting out a simple somehow stumbling beat, over slow corrosive swells of guitar, the vocals more like shadows, some of the songs are so skeletal they almost seem like sketches, which only serves to make them seem that much more fragile and intimate. The misleadingly named "Incinerator Ballad" is a 4 minute burst of white noise wrapped around a churning industrial pulse, a wall of hiss and static and blown out distortion, followed by the whispered buzz of "Lower Depths", a stretched out soundscape of tinny distorted guitar, detuned chords, whooshing ambience, and more stoned crooning. The record closes with the 15+ minute "Cremation", a gorgeous and super intense, super creepy synthscape, the synth buzzing and warbling, minor key melodies spread out into slabs of murky buzz, while way off in the distance, bits of guitar streak and soar, a psychedelic light show, barely visible against the grey sky of dusk, the synth eventually locking into a loop, and suddenly the sound is some fucked up lo-fi Tangerine Dream, but performed on thrift store keyboards and recorded on a microcassette recorder, eventually fading out, leaving just the sounds of night, crickets, other insects, wind, distant trains, mysterious voices, and single guitar, still moaning way off in the distance...
Absolutely unexpected and totally gorgeous. Features amazing and super intense black and white pencilled artwork by the Mammal himself.
So so so utterly recommended. Definite contender for record of the year...
Wow! We were blown away when we first heard Nigerian organist Mammane Sani Abdullaye's La Musique Electronique Du Niger record reissued last year on Sahel Sounds (and now sadly out of print, it seems). Reissued from a rare cassette that originally came out in 1978, we thought that was Sani's only recording, but now Sahel Sounds has unearthed this doozy of a release, which takes Sani's minimal organ pop to a whole new Afro-futuristic level. Taken from unreleased studio sessions made in the mid-to-late eighties, when Sani began programming his own rhythms, the music here, derived from Saharan folk-ballads re-imagined for a cosmic future, is more spacious and exploratory, laid back and atmospheric, yet still loping, circular and groovy, perfect for astral-cruising across planetary deserts. For fans of the Ethiopiques series or that Personal Space electronic outsider RnB compilation we always raved about, and library music heads and minimal synth-lovers will find lots to love here too.
The Sahel Sounds label (responsible for Music From Saharan Cel Phones, Harafin So, and many more great lps of music from the Sahel region of Africa) strikes again with this amazing reissue of an uber-rare vintage cassette, the lone album circa 1978 by Nigerian "electronic music pioneer" Mammane Sani Abdullaye. We're told that if you live in West Africa, you'd likely be familiar with Mammane's instrumental music to some extent, as his tunes have apparently been used frequently in the background on radio and TV broadcasts over the past three decades. For us though, his sounds are an exciting discovery! Mammane plays the electric organ, in a fairly minimalistic and repetitive style, his music full of charming, simple melodies; it sounds very live and intimate, recorded with hardly any overdubs (it was done on a 2 track machine) and pleasingly lo-fi, with a little bit of tape hiss (just like we like it).
Some of the songs are woozy, sweetly dreamy sound paintings, others are more uptempo and percussive, with tick-tocking rhythm backing tracks, and Mammane joyously tickling the keys over top. Chiptune/skweee fans might enjoy the more video-game-y blip blip bleep of the calm yet jaunty "Bodo", while the laidback grooviness of the likes of "Tunan" should appeal to fans of the Ethiopiques series, even though this is from a completely different region of Africa.
Many of the melodies are based on traditional Nigerian folk music - as the label's notes say, "Mammane electrifies the nomadic drum of the tende, the polyphonic ballads of the Woddaabe, and the pastoral hymns of the Sahelian herders". Others are entirely original. And all are quite lovely indeed. Such a find.
Highly recommended in particular to fans of Francis Bebey and his African Electronic Music 1975-1982 collection that we also made a Record Of The Week a while back. An absolutely delightful record!
It's a limited vinyl-only edition of 500 (for now, but we can hope that they'll do a cd too).
Heavy Santa Cruz psychonauts Mammatus have always been big faves here at aQ. But good grief, has it really been six years since their previous platter The Coast Explodes?? Well we guess time flies (or, actually, doesn't) when you're way out in space like Mammatus must have been. From our perspective maybe it's been six long years, but thanks to the theory of relativity, space travellers Mammatus haven't been gone that long. What we're saying its, it's about time (apparently this lp's tracks were written in 2007/2008, recorded in 2009, and mixed in 2013). What we're also saying, is they're spacey. But, actually it's inner space they've been traversing. Judging from the album title, and the song titles here - "Brain Drain", "Main Brain", "Brainbow", and "Brain Train" - they've got brains on the brain, eh? But not the way zombies are about brains, they're not zombies, or at least, we've never seen an episode of The Walking Dead where the titular shamblers picked up instruments and churned out stoner psychedelic prog rock jams (though that'd be cool). No, it's all about inner space travels, being waaaaaay psychedelic in presumably the most druggy sense of the term.
This vinyl-only (drat say the cd lovers here) third Mammatus opus consists of those four (long) songs, two per side. Get ready for something that sounds like the shimmering droned out ritual ceremonies of OM and the Boredoms meets the martial discipline of fusion-wanked prog metal technicality. Mind blowing, yep. And that's just the first track "Brain Drain". The label brings up The Fucking Champs as a comparison, but also McLaughlin/Santana spiritual jazzrock, so less heavy metal than, uh, heady mental, yeah!
They've just played some record release shows for this one, and the band say they'll actually be recording another record next year, so thankfully it won't be a six year wait for more.
Sometimes music is more than just pure sound, or the exposing of deep personal secrets and emotions, or even an homage to one's inspirations. Sometimes it's meant to tell a story... a vessel for a message. Then again sometimes music can combine all of those facets, AND MORE! Such is the case with Mammatus' sophomore effort, The Coast Explodes. On a purely sonic level, this record is absolutely amazing (we'll get there), but it's amazing on a conceptual level as well.
This record is the second installment of Mammatus' gradually unfolding tale of the battle between Light and Darkness. Goodly Light vs. the Evil of Man. Communion with Nature and the casting out of the corrosive agents of Man's doooom. The inhalation of divinity's smoke/breath... exhaling peace from every pore of the translucent flesh. Harnessing the power of Nature in your throat and fingers... swinging the sword to the heart of darkness. Bludgeon the dragon's foul heart! Mammatus is here to bare the Blade of Truth against nature's corrupters, and to ROCK against the cowardly haters of peace! Ahem, their "blade" is of course music, so lets talk about that for a sec.
This epic journey continues right where their self-titled debut left off. The first track "Dragon of the Deep part 3 (Excellent Swordfight)" is a continuation of the Dragon saga (the first album ending with "Dragon of the Deep" parts 1 and 2), and right off the bat you can hear the development. Holy shit! PROG!!!!! Where the last record was more of a trippy blend of hypno-kraut Can-ishness with the slaying heavitude of stoner lordz Sleep, this record somehow maintains that comparison and adds an incredible dose of YES! and YES!!! it rules! So the album starts with a creeping guitar drone, almost as if directly continued from part 2, before bursting in with a driving and hypnotic groove, a la Circle or the above mentioned Can, with little time change shreds at the end of each phrase (kinda proggy) and then suddenly the tempo breaks and we hear a killer stoptime, full-band SHRED! bringing us into another mesmeric groove with beautiful guitar leads soaring perfectly over the everchanging trance. The track builds and builds, ever climbing. Just when you think it can't get more ripping, another amazing riff is unearthed, the band playing so tightly we suspect they might share one cosmically unified mind. In tune with the alignment of the planets and such. All of this is building to something, you can feel it, when suddenly the song crescendos into a freeform cacophonous skronk! Cowbells, drums, and about 500 simultaneous guitar solos! FREAKOUT!
What emerges from this undulating swell is just about all a worshipper of heavy could hope for, an earth shaking riff with the first vocals of the record. Singer Nicky Emmert enters with his first cry to battle, calling us to raise the sword! The vocals are as trippy as ever, beautiful, as if sung from the back of a deep cave. This brutally sick aural climax ends almost as soon as it begins only to plunge axe first into the second track, "Pierce the Darkness", Starting with a gong crash and woodflute solo (!) then charging directly into another trance like groove. The vocals this time start right away, floating and glistening over the motorik pulse, again seemingly a call to arms. The track eventually develops into a blasting free time psychedelic guitar jam which then decompresses into some serious blissy drone.
And what happens next is one of the highlights of the record. The sound of synthesizers enter the drone and build up to a spine tingling harmonized guitar/Moog solo! You know the euphoric feeling you get when listening to shimmery synth part in Yes's "Close to the Edge", and the triumph in the pit of your stomach when Wakeman's church organ finally enters ("I get up, I get down")? A similar energy is in operation here. After this shining moment the song takes another turn towards the HEAVY and some kick ass riffage again fills the speakers. After a bit of strange synth tweakage, the mood of the album changes. Track 3, "The Changing Wind" is an all out drum circle folk jam! Acoustic guitars, propulsive hand drum rhythms, and another lilting melody from Nicky, praising mother nature and her unknowable ways. Hypnotic and blissful for sure. Suddenly the sounds of waves crashing and sea lions barking brings us seamlessly into the final movement, and title track, "The Coast Explodes". Starting with one of the catchiest "stoner" riffs we've heard for a long time. In fact this riff gets stuck in our heads for days at a time. So groovey and catchy, it makes the trees dance. Ahem. This song is a slow builder, rising subtly, and then dipping once more till it finally becomes an almost whisper. The vocals again invoking mother earth, sung in a beautiful falsetto. After this quiet respite the amps again get cranked to 11 and we are blessed with another monolithic slab of heaviness! So satisfying and perfect, it almost makes ya weep. At the end of this journey the chanting of some mythic and mysterious wizard is heard, as if belted out from the peak of a snow covered mountain, beckoning to the children of nature to rise up and join the crusade! The song then gently winds down and the whooshing sounds of the ocean again take over the mix, leaving the listener in a state of utter peace. SHIT! This album really takes you on some sort of transcendental adventure... We got lost there for a minute.
At the most basic level, Mammatus make some of the most inventive and inspired heavy music of our day. Combining diverse inspirations and molding them into something that comes across as totally genuine and pure, and of course TOTALLY RULING! Crushing and mesmerizing and beautiful all at the same time. The story behind the music makes the album all the more powerful. The listening experience of this record is akin to reading a super epic novel, one where the payoffs happen in all the right places. So duh, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!! For fans of Sleep, Yes, UFOmammut, Can, Circle, King Crimson, and all things heavy and trippy and shredding and rocking and ruling! And by the by, if you have not yet, catch them live for one of the best live shows ever! On tour now with Acid Mothers Temple in the USA!
Whoa, heavy!! This is a whole-body vibrating, brain-melting, serious amplifier worship ceremony! The first time I (Allan) saw these guys, last year sometime at the Hemlock here in San Francisco, I was blown away... I'd been told the were a heavy 'stoner rock' outfit from Santa Cruz and worth checking out, but I didn't realize they were gonna be quite so AMAZING. Hairy backwoods hippy dudes, the drummer wearing what looked to be a home-made Whysp t-shirt, guitars turning the air to cottage cheese a la Blue Cheer while creating a trance-zone worthy of Finland's Circle!! So good that I immediately bought the live cd-r they were selling... we were gonna try to get some for the store, in fact, but then we found out that local label Holy Mountain run by our pal JW was on the case already and would be issuing Mammatus's debut studio full-length cd Stateside (with Rocket Recordings, home to the most recent UFOmammut, putting it out in Europe).
So yeah, heavy stoner rock this is, but waaay psychedelic and Hawkwindy, kinda like what maybe you thought Circle side-project Pharaoh Overlord was gonna (and sometimes does) sound like. Loud, massive and mesmerizing, swirling sludge psych! Their songs, often of epic length, are ever chugging skyward, dripping molten goo, full of feedback and fx. Their energetic riffage and warm drones are adorned by drifting vox (not unlike Dead Meadow, with whom they share certain proclivities) and fantastic, metallic, progtastic imagery. Take note of titles like "Dragon Of The Deep" (parts one and two!) and the Roger Dean-esque cover art by Arik "Moonhawk" Roper.
Further musical comparisions aren't hard to come up with -- Mammatus belong in the company of such bastions of cosmic heaviness as Sleep, Boris, YOB, UFOmammut, Earthless, old Monster Magnet, Acid Mothers Temple (at AMT's heaviest, like on Starless & Bible Black Sabbath), Tarantula Hawk, and even Amon Duul (especially on the druggy, krautrocky jam "The Outer Rim"). And of course they're now labelmates with OM, which also makes perfect sense. If you love many, or even just any, of those bands and the sounds they make, this comes highly recommended.
Time sensitive note: Mammatus are playing tomorrow, Saturday April 1st again at the Hemlock with AQ faves the Grey Daturas!
The latest (third) and greatest album from this impressive Swedish stoner rock band, one that does more than most to avoid the nu-grunge "Kyuss-clone" tag, and really comes into their own on this disc. Sure, thanks to their big sound and pop sensibility,
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Swedish band that with 70's stoner rock influences, but elements of prog and indie-rock too. They've got a great, big sound, not too far off from the Queens of the Stone Age debut, and then wind down at the end with some acoustic tracks. Well-liked around these parts.
While last year's brillant "A Single Book Of Songs" is surely this uniquely progressive Swedish stoner rock band's masterpiece to date, fans will definitely want to pick up this disc, which puts 17 tracks from Mammoth Volume's old demo(s) circa '97 on a proper cd for the first time. Unlike the majority of bands from Sweden and elsewhere who have embraced the "stoner rock" tag, Mammoth Volume aren't just another Kyuss clone (even if at times they do sound a bit like Queens of the Stone Age). No, their influences are REALLY from the '70s, and more diverse: Black Sabbath, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Yes, Deep Purple, King Crimson. They can be super heavy and riffin', then sensitive and acoustic, then jazzy and weird -- they don't limit themselves.
The Long Hair label digs up another kool krautrock obscurity for reissue here, one that Andee and Allan both happened to have heard already via a previous cd edition. It's an album that we're now glad to be able to get to list (with a bonus track!). Originally released on LP in 1971 (natch) on a tiny label with the wonderful name of Mouse Trick Track Music, this one-off rarity is a bit of a trippy gem, groovy and flutey and fuzzy. And plenty weird too, as is evidenced by the album's odd song titles, each with the word "Mammut" in them:
"Bird Mammut" (indeed featuring birds twittering, and birdsong like flute flutter, amidst propulsively grooving drumming), "Classical Mammut" (a brief interlude of whooshing wind, crying baby, placid piano), "Mammut Ecstasy" (hippy chant, fuzzed out guitar heaviness), "Footmachine Mammut" (laidback groove, what sounds like a lively dinner party in the background, with clinking percussion/wine glasses, more guitar soloing), "Short Mammut" (kinda like "Mammut Ecstacy", but shorter), "Shizoyd Mammut" (shrieking vocals, organ jamming)... and that's just side 1. Side 2 actually consists of just two songs, longer, more lyrical ones, including the 13+ minute psychedelic tour de force "Mammut Opera", that's both dramatic and rather lovely.
The whole thing, the way it combines the acid rock guitar action with Hammond organ, flute, and even field recordings (both outdoor and indoor it would seem), sorta sounds like a demented Deep Purple dosed on drugs, jazzily jamming away at some hippy party place in the Black Forest (where the were, recording in the studios of jazz label MPS). It's more groovy than heavy, but they let loose with some wild guitar riffery now and then, as well as dabbling in some (Beatles inspired?) songiness, particularly on the second half of the record. Krautrock aficionados should definitely investigate! And, especially as we know they overlap, Acid Mothers Temple fans too! There's definitely a precursor to AMT's funny freeform freakout vibe going on here. Specific krautrock comparisons could be to some of the previous Long Hair reissues like Et Cetera, Kollektiv and Wolfgang Dauner's The Oimels.
This official reissue has been digitally remastered, and comes with a thick, textually informative cd booklet, and the aforementioned 5 minute bonus track ("Da Du Da", recorded by these musicians in '69 for a compilation album, leading to the formation of the Mammut band/album project).
The fourth in Rocket Records' 'Collisions series', where the label pairs up like minded bands, and lets 'em rip. Past installments have included nothing but aQ faves: The Heads, White Hills, Oneida, Mugstar, Shit & Shine and Gnod. This volume introduces us to a couple lesser known outfits, up first Italian kraut-psych weirdos Mamuthones, who deliver a sort of motorik grooviness, at times touching on the psychedelic funkiness of Goat, at others, locking into sprawling Hawkwindy headnod heaviness, percussion peppers the proceedings, as does loads of effects, but also plenty of samples. The first track sounds like some strange eighties industrial jam given a psych makeover, while the second drifts into Moon Duo-ish hypno-rock, with distorted vox drifting atop a thick bass throb and choppy guitar crunch, all laced with some squalls of distorto noise guitar freakout. Elsewhere the band channel Devo into something much heavier and noisier, before finishing off with the funkiest jam of the bunch.
The flipside features UK post punk noiserockers Evil Blizzard, whose first track is all low slung and slithery, like a more harrowing Joy Division, reverbed vocals draped over sinewy basslines with some chunky guitars, that the label compares to both P.I.L. and Hawkwind, and we have to say that's pretty spot on. The other track is a remix of that same track by another aQ fave, Teeth Of The Sea, who give the original a sort of John Carpenter makeover, unfurling all creepy and cinematic, a lush, smoldering slow build, all atmosphere and tension, hushed and haunting, spacey and seriously tripped out, right down to the moody trumpets that surface partway through, giving it a sort of psychedelic Morricone vibe.
Packaged in an eye popping green and black die cut disco style sleeve, with a printed insert. And yeah, you guessed it, very VERY limited.
Apparently the impetus for creating this multiple drummer-ed outfit, was to create something akin to Metal Machine Music for drums, which makes sense when you realize the man behind Man Forever is Kid Millions, drummer for NY experimental rockers Oneida, and one of the drum leaders in the huge many drummer-ed Boredoms performances that happened a few years back.
What started out as something more like a mini-Boadrum situation, became something much more subtle and simple, with whole kits ditched in favor of single drums, with the drummers playing single stroke rolls, and amidst this flurry of rhythms, allowing all manner of patterns to emerge, similar in the way that dronemusic often involves various overtones from the various sounds interacting, in Man Forever, the dense drumming, stops sounding like drumming after a while, and becomes more textural, and actually becomes a sort of drone, the shifting rhythmic subtleties adding all sorts of color to the sound. But this is not just music for drum nerds (although if you are one, you WANT this), the group add guitar and bass, but much like the drums, those instruments seem less concerned with 'riffing' and more with adding still more texture to the proceedings, rumbles and drones and thrum and hum and moaning low end, barely there melodies, when the whole group is finally in full effect, like halfway through "Surface Patterns" it sounds a bit like the Boredoms jamming out with Phill Niblock, or SUNNO))) backed by a drumcorps, heady and hypnotic, the repetition and rhythmic mesmer evoking Reich and Riley.
The second track, "Ur Eternity", is another dense drumscape, a smoldering rhythmic slowbuild, that manages to be hypnotic enough sans any other instruments, but when the rest of the band join in, with strange staticky drones, and clipped looped fragmented melodies, the result is something surprisingly psychedelic, still hypnotic and minimal, but also droney and a little bit soundtracky, dense and textural, the drums sounding less like drums and more like the pounding of feet, or the churning of some machine, and until the rest of the track less about driving the music, and more about spreading out beneath it, adding a haunting heft that is more felt than heard. So good!
These days, something like this is a fairly strange occurrence, a (mostly) all drums solo record from a drummer. It wasn't rare at all back in the day for a jazz drummer to step out of his normal gig and go solo, but when was the last time you heard a solo drum record from the drummer of a modern indie rock band, and if somehow you DID, we'd guess it probably wasn't nearly as bad ass, and/or listenable as this, the debut from Man Forever, the Metal Machine Music style all drum freakout project of Kid Millions, the drummer for Oneida and White Hills among others.
A live performance of Lou Reed's Metal Machine music is precisely what inspired Millions to wonder if you could create the same sort of dense wall of sound, replete with strange harmonics and overtones, using just drums, and so Millions tuned his drums in a manner that would theoretically produce the most harmonic complexity and overtones, and went to town, recording himself over and over, layering track after track after track, one on top of the other into this flurry of octopoidal percussion, an endless percussive avalanche, chaotic and frenzied and FREE but somehow still a bit measured, and even composed at times. It does have the feel of free jazz, but it also feels like some sort of heavy noise rock experiment. The first side is a non stop fury of relentless drummage, imagine a hundred drummers all playing intensely and inventively, but not necessarily playing with each other, the sound is dizzying and far out, and in its own way psychedelic, but then as you listen, the notes and tones of the individual drums begin to interact, producing weird buzzed and rumbles and skrees, a symphony of buried overtones and strange harmonics, it suddenly ceased being just a drum solo, and becomes some gorgeous abstract composition for drums, layered and textured and lush, and in its own way weirdly mesmerizing. The only other sounds to be found are a bit of bass accompaniment, the bass itself thick and gnarled and corrosively buzzy, which at one point transforms the sound into something closer to warped grinding noise rock, almost like a more minimal avant Lightning Bolt, before finishing off with a brief squall of just buzzing distorted bass. Exhausting for sure, but also gloriously cathartic.
The flipside gets all dubby right of the bat, various beats wreathed in delay and reverb and echo and sent spinning off into the ether, the low end here is thick, the overtones and harmonics piling up until it's almost like rhythmic dronemusic, and when the bass does come in again, all thick and crunchy and buzzy, it transforms the sound once again into some sort of deep heaving drum driven dronedoom. So cool.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES! Housed in nice hand silkscreened covers.
This is the first and second volumes of the soundtrack to the popular television series "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." composed, arranged and conducted by Hugo Montenegro.
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California's comrades in power violence want you to get political with their noise. Hardcore to ambient, always heavy. The lp is an handsome picture disc, and the cd comes with poster of the picture disc graphics, you can't lose.
This flagship political power violence band broke up a while back, but those without some of their best 12" vinyl tracks will be glad of having this newly released cd compilation. Includes the songs from their split ep w/ Capitalist Casualties.
Ultra PC "kick in the balls" to indie kid complacency. Mumia, accused of killing a cop, speaks from his cell on death row. MITB add their two cents by bashing in your skull with a two-bass-and-drums hash-induced 4 song assault. PC, my ass. (Includes contributions from Allen Ginsberg, Jello Biafra, Assata Shakur, and Bob Dole. Really.)
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From the label that brought us the amazing Merzbow 'Frog' lp comes this noisy 7" artifact. One side is Man Is The Bastard Noise, more commonly known as Bastard Noise and is the free/electronic/noise offshoot of sludge rockers Man Is The Bastard. BN is Wood from MITB and AQ buddy John Weise. Their side of this single is an almost tranquil blanket of high end whir, sounding like an orchestra of mosquitoes, helicopters, kitchen appliances and madly chirping birds. Almost dreamy in that peculiar noise kind of way. The B side comes courtesy of label honcho Gerritt Wittmer and is three tracks of affected sinister vocals, looped and chopped chunks of low end distortion, very eighties industrial sounding, and I mean that in a good way. Plus Misanthropic's usual impeccable packaging!
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Super-nice lookin' new seven-song effort from these sci-fi surfers, fun as usual.
Space-surf masters' new effort, the latest in a countless line of fan-pleasing discs.
One of the hardest working, most prolific bands from the last ten years have yet another album for the eager ears of space cadets everywhere. Their last bunch of records have ventured away from their decidedly kitsch'n'garage early sounds, but this album revisits those olden days. Actually now that they've settled snugly in their deluxe space-age studios that they constructed
10,000 releases along, these futuristic surf instro-rockers still got it.
Die-hard Man Or Astro-man? devotees, it's finally time to dust off and fire up your rawkets! Pacific Northwest garage rock kingpins Estrus Records has kindly released a limited edition vinyl reissue of the 1993 debut album by these intergalactic surf brainiacs from the South!
For those unfamiliar... While the heart of their sound was driven by a deep reverence for the raw buzzing guitar licks of the legendary Link Wray, The Ventures, The Sonics among others, the journey into the MOAM? cosmos was equally injected with sci-fi kitsch spectacles and science geekery, and genuine smarts. Live shows were wildly fun and rockin', featuring full costumes and a giant working Tesla coil! Over the years, the beloved four piece evolved quite a bit. In later years, their sound drew closer to Sonic Youth than the abovementioned Wray. As well, they eventually added vocals to their instrumental sound, and formulated clone bands to tour in place of the official band members! Hearing this album again will surely bring back some awesome fan memories of this super entertaining and endearing band, and trigger some newbies to search YouTube for live footage to see what they missed. Hurrah!
Super furious, metallic hardcore (heavy on the metal) from Germany. Pummelling and complex, noisy and chaotic. For fans of Knut (last AQ list), Botch, old Cave In, Converge and stuff like that. Really Great.
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Single number two from these Oakland punk poppers, and while their first 7"s was beholden to the Replacements and the Velvet Underground, this one is definitely more on the punk side of the equation, three chords, pounding drums, rollicking and a little ramshackle, BUT, then thee's the vocals, which change everything. The vocals are not shouted or grunted or howled, instead they're delivered in a dramatic sung-spoken croon, reminding us a little of Morrisey, but a lot of the the singer from the Smoking Popes (who always reminded us of Morrissey anyway), and the effects is pretty instantaneous, turning furious punk energy into something a bit more twee poppy, even the second track, which is more furiously punky, is pushed popward by the vox, the lyrics too, goofy and silly and fun, the second track is called "Chased By Anderson Cooper" after all.
Minus those vocals, we can't imagine this being in Slumberland, but with them, it makes perfect sense. Oh did we mention this is a flexi disc? Well, it is, one sided, two songs on the one side, still housed in a proper 7" sleeve and jacket.
Y'know there are people who aren't just nice guys, but who exude such a positive vibe that it's downright contagious? Shaggy Manatee is one of them. He's the man behind the Quaketrap label (featuring hip hop and electronic artists such as Australia's Macromantics, Yoko Solo, Thug Emporium and the man himself). Since he's a neighbor of ours (psst, he's also a purveyor of yummy breakfast delights), we see him often and regardless of the time of day, he's always bursting with energy and enthusiasm. And that vibe is all over In Between.
We've had this album on vinyl for a spell, but we're pleased to report that it's now on cd too with a handful of bonus tracks! One of them ("Breathe") is a collaboration between Shaggy Manatee and Macromantics, and we've come to realize that their combined forces never fail to dish out the good stuff. As a whole, In Between is a stimulating concoction of good times, heady atmospheres, and varied beats galore... and the joint efforts of Shaggy and his many guests effectively conveys the Quake Trap crew's social conscience too. However, even when things darken in Manatee land there's a bit of levity that shines through.
This is the first we've heard from the brilliantly named Manbeard, the fucked up freak folk cabaret offshoot of old aQ faves Urdog. Here they share a cd-r with furry Finnish folk combo Avarus, originally a tour only release, and while it might not seem like it, weirdly it's kind of a good match. Manbeard are tough to explain. Very jaunty and sing songy, almost like sea shanties, big drums, dramatic WAY over the top vocals, angular riffing, a little bit gloomy and dark, gothic even, with squiggly synths, damaged percussion, and really twisted songs. And really bizarre overdubs, strange characters making announcements, speaking to the listener, adding their 2 cents to various songs. Definitely an acquired taste, but if you're into the same weird stuff we are, then acquiring it might not be that difficult. The weird thing is, this disc is jam packed with short-ish Manbeard songs, then right in the middle, tack 5 in fact, is the ONE Avarus song, a massive half hour jam, recorded live, all ramshackle rhythms, and detuned guitars, chanted vocals, fluttering woodwinds, raga like buzzing, stumbling druggy far out freaked out damaged outsider genius for sure. It sounds like a blast, like they just set up on the street in the middle of rush hour, and their merrymaking just sucked in a massive crowd, dancing and howling and whooping and wildly frolicking through the streets of Helsinki. At least that's what it sounds like.�
Then it's time again for more Manbeard weirdness, fragmented song experiments, fucked up drones, lo-fi off kilter bedroom folk, fractured dada-ist pop and whatever else crossed their twisted musical minds.�
In cool hand screened color sleeves, with printed inserts. We got these direct from The Manbeard when he was in town, and he mentioned these might be the last copies, so if we run out that might be it.
MPEG Stream: MANBEARD "Original Performance Of The Manbeard Denizens Folk Classic, Manbearde Folk Classic, Manbeard Factory" [/audio/manbeardoriginal.m3u]
Awesome film. Awesome sounds.
You know that we at aQ are big fans of Turkish psych legend Erkin Koray. We were even incredibly lucky enough to have him spend an afternoon here recently, signing autographs!! We've also recommended stuff by various of Koray's contemporaries, like Cem Karaca and Edip Akbayram. But, we haven't gotten much of a chance to talk about another Turkish psych/pop legend, Baris Manco, a man immediately recognizable by his luxuriant long hair and impressive mustache.
Now, Spain's Guerssen label has, for the first time, properly reissued on cd several classics from Manco's discography. We'll start with this one. It's Manco's first full-length album, we think, from 1975, and is considered by some to be his masterpiece. Certainly it's got its special charms - most notably, as you might guess from the title 2023, there's a futuristic vibe to it. Which means, lots of far out synthesizer sounds accompany the traditional Anadolu Pop folk elements. So it sounds just a bit like Bruce Haack goes belly dancing! Weird that may be, but Manco's smooth singing tends to accentuate the mostly laid back, mellow mood here. Though this Middle Eastern soft rock prog does of course get kinda funky/groovy too. And we definitely can call it "prog", when one track is a 12 minute plus multi-part suite that incorporates both flute and field recordings of bird twitter, right? Oh, and there's one song, we swear if Ozzy were singing instead of Baris, that would sound a lot like Sabbath's "Planet Caravan".
To sum up: pretty cool. We wish our country's "most influential pop artists" made weird sci-fi sounding concept albums like this. And if you were wondering, our guess, without looking at the copious liner notes that this comes with, is that the significance of the "2023" date has to do with how that year will be the centennial anniversary of the founding of the modern Turkish Republic.
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Turkish psych singer. [/cat/international18.html]
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