These occult Italian sonic shamans have returned from another extensive druggy doomy dreamtime journey into the realms of heaviness/trippiness unknown to most modern mortals, who aren't 'experienced' like these guys, and here's the recorded result to edify us all. Their 2013 debut Caosgon first turned us on to their strange ceremonial sound, improvised esoteric stoner sludge for fans of UFOmammut, OM, Orthodox, Gnod, Bong, Acid Mothers Temple, etc. Now a year or so later they're back with even longer hair, longer beards, longer songs... probably, at any rate it's a longer album, two whole sprawling discs this time, filled to the brim with freeform Moog mantras, lumbering heavy riffs, hypnotic slomo rhythms, freaky FX, and drug gobbling/gargling vocal invocations. It's a Paul Chain getting high in Nepal thing you wouldn't understand.
The music of these Mogadon monks often takes the form of buzzing droning distortion, waves of it, interwoven with weird samples and those howling electronically treated vocals - moans akin to drones themselves - with the guitars chugging away behind the synths, intensive drums and percussion too, plodding and pounding, all part of Nibiru's truly otherworldly, seemingly never-ending throb. These tracks are tumbling, pulsating things that twist and turn in slow spirals, mutating more than anything else, as new components unexpectedly appear in the sound field: some Barn Owlish twang here, some primal vocal outbursts there; squiggling shortwave electronics, wavering guitar lines, 'liturgical organ', 'mini-digeridoo', feedback tangles, and occasional oddly relaxing melodies meandering about amidst the thicker sonic sludge.
We can't always guarantee these results - but under certain circumstances, at the right volume, if you play this at home, your rooms will fill with aromatic smoke, your walls will grow ropy green vines, and the sky outside will darken, swirling with alien colors, revealing hitherto unseen and confusingly arranged constellations of stars, dimly glowing through the mists... in your imagination at least, if not in reality... but what is reality? By the time you're onto the 2nd disc here you might not be sure...
So... Paging Julian Cope, we've got your new favorite album right here! Heck, the druid-dude probably know about this already, if he knows ANYTHING about psychonautic fantasias. However, we haven't read or heard much at all about this band anywhere, really, but if they keep it up we predict they'll develop quite a cult following for themselves, this is the sort of spaced out, improv-damaged, heavier-than-thou ritual we know you all love, we do!!
Limited to 300 copies only.
Phill Niblock is the god of drones! All these other experimental musicians and "dronologists" are like little kids with kazoos when put up against Niblock and his amazing compositions. It's only in the last few years that his works have found their way onto recordings so his reputation is finally, albeit slowly catching up with other more prolific modern composers. And here's a new disc to illustrate our point. The first track is a gorgeous thrum, performed by a 60 piece orchestra reading a traditional score, with no post-recording manipulations. The sound is very haunting and a bit Gregorian sounding. Absolutely mesmerising. The second track features contrabass flute, contrabass saxophone, contrabass tuba all pre-recorded, with the samples later re-assembled with ProTools. The sounds weren't altered but the assembly of the different pieces changed the sound. Consequently, this piece is sonically less organic and more electronic / clinical sounding, even though the source sounds are traditional instruments. The final piece is another traditionally composed and performed piece for viola, cello, bass clarinet, soprano sax, flute and trombone and is an unwavering multi-tonal thrum, rich and layered, slowly shifting as the microtones try to settle into position, sounding quite a bit at times like modern dronesters Sunroof! and Vibracathedral Orchestra.
One of flute-drone master Niblock's best, in fan Andee's opinion.
Seems like Jim O'Rourke keeps sticking his grubby little paws where they're not needed. Tortoise? Stereolab? Mirror? Sonic Youth? Phill Niblock?!?!?!? Good thing he doesn't think Aquarius is cool enough otherwise that bunny-suited dork would be ringing you up at the cash register!! Maybe that's a little mean, but it does seem, where hipness goes, O'Rourke will follow. And in this case, at least, we can't really complain since it means we are treated to one more amazing Phill Niblock record. Niblock who has been active for 20+ years, but had never recorded due to his distaste for the process and the resulting less-than-adequate and timeless document, has recently seen more and more of his work seeing the light of day thanks to better recording and a medium (cds) with more room for longer duration pieces. Niblock also runs the XL label that has been focusing on twentieth century composers specialising in extended drones. On G2, 44+/X2, Niblock has composed an extended piece for multi-tracked guitar. The first version features guitar samples from Rafael Toral, Robert Poss, Susan Stenger and David First. The second version features the same 24 track mix as the first version, but with Kevin Drumm, Lee Ranaldo, Robert Poss, Alan Licht and Thurston Moore adding 2 live parts each. The results are stunning. Version one warm and ALIVE, a swelling, throbbing, beating wall of thick guitars, feedback and chords, all layered into one massive otherworldy drone. The second version is quite similar, but even more dense, with the extra guitars adding more low end rumble and a dizzying array of ultra-subtle harmonics. When the record ends, it's like a vacuum in your skull. It almost physically hurts when the music stops, as if you were floating on a rich, thick bed of sound and suddenly it was yanked out from under you and you find yourself laying on the cold hard ground. Nothing to do but push play again, sit back and let the guitars lift you toward the sky. SO GOOD!!
We just can't figure out Superior Viaduct. They're quickly becoming one of our favorite reissue labels, but they're so all over the map. From Devo to 100 Flowers, from the Solaris soundtrack to Factrix, from Heldon to Sensations' Fix, it's like a label version of someone's crazy record collection, which is exactly how it SHOULD be, and probably why we dig it so much! The latest reissue from SV is the 1982 debut lp from legendary modern minimalist / dronelord Phill Niblock. Nothin To Look At Just A Record consists of two sidelong pieces, extended instrumental tones, recordings of both Richard Lainhart and Richard Kelly at SUNY in the mid-seventies, edited to tape and accompanied by trombone, the result is dense and layered and intense, thick swaths of sound, multiple iterations of the same note, in constant motion, fluid textures and rhythmic beating, drifting overtones, all blurred and smeared into organic fields of rich lustrous sound. It's the sort of sound, that when it ceases, creates a sensation like the air is being sucked out of your ears, it's a sound that's almost physical, its energy palpable. If there was ever any question as to the power of the drone, the answer is right here.
Folks into more modern drone music who have yet to delve into the roots of those sounds (Riley, Reich, Young, Conrad and yeah, Niblock) might just discover a whole new world of sound to get lost in.
Super heavy old school tip on style sleeves, with a printed insert that includes both liner notes and the musical score!
We've been a huge fan of Phill Niblock for ages, the elder statesman of minimal drone, who while having composed and performed numerous pieces, only began releasing his recordings quite recently (in the overall scheme of things), choosing to wait for technology and storage / playback media to catch up, allowing Niblock to record his lengthy compositions without breaking them up into pieces. But Niblock was also a photographer and an experimental film maker. The Magic Sun, from 1966, is an amazing example of not only Niblock's unique film making, but also an abstract and appropriately off kilter look into the weird and wonderful world of Sun Ra And His Solar Arkestra. This short fifteen minute film uses a unique negative process and was composed entirely of ultra tight shots of Sun Ra and his band performing, faces, fingers, strings, sticks, a confusing but compelling visual accompaniment to Sun Ra's joyous musical cacophony. A gorgeously tripped out psychedelic abstract free-for-all in grayscale. White shapes hover and twist, eyes and fingers become comets and eclipsed suns, faces become subtle white smears across a vast expanse of black, cymbals are the rings around a black planet, the fretboard a mysterious nighttime highway, the piano keys, fence posts or streaks of chalk on a blackboard. So intense and alien and perfect. The bonus feature here is amazing as well, a slide show of rare sixties photos, accompanied by unreleaed recordings, music as well as never heard before philosophical proclamations from Sun Ra, tripped out and bizarre discussing Sun Ra himself, mythology, jazz, the band, the United States, Russia and all sorts of other spaced out wisdom. So cool! ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just cut and paste the info into the comments area on the order form, or just email mailorder@aquariusrecords.org. A CERTAIN RATIO "Live - America 1985" (Melodic) cd 14.98 AC/DC "Family Jewels" (Epic Music Video) dvd 21.00 AFRIRAMPO "Kore Ga Mayaku Da" (Tzadik) cd 15.98 AKSAK MABOUL "Onze Danses Pour Combattre La Migraine" (Crammed) cd 24.00 ALIO DIE & FRANCESCO PALADINO "Angel's Fly Souvenir" (Hic Sunt Leones) cd 14.98 ARCHETTI, LUIGI / BO WIGET "Low Tide Digitals II" (Rune Grammofon) cd 16.98 BERNOCCHI, ERALDO & HAROLD BUDD "Music For 'Fragments From The Inside'" (Sub Rosa) cd 14.98 BIRDS, THE "Birds Birds Birds In The World" (Important) cd 14.98 BIZARRE "Hannicap Circus" (Sanctuary Urban) cd 16.98 BLACK DAHLIA MURDER "Miasma" (Metal Blade) cd 13.98 BLIR "s/t" (Raster-Noton) cd 15.98 BLUT AUS NORD "Memoria Vetusta I" (Candlelight) cd 13.98 BLUT AUS NORD "Ultima Thulee" (Candlelight) cd 13.98 BRETSCHNEIDER + STEINBRUCHEL "Status" (12k) cd 14.98 BRIGMAN, GEORGE AND SPLIT "I Can Hear The Ants Dancin'" (Solid) cd 16.98 BURNING STAR CORE "Let's Play Wild Like" (RRR) cd 11.98 CAESARS "Paper Tigers" (EMI) cd 13.98 CAN "Future Days (Remastered)" (Spoon) cd 16.98 CHARM "Original Soundtrack + The Movie" (5RC) cd + dvd 14.98 CHINESE STARS "T.V. Grows Arms / The Drowning" (Kitty Play) lp 11.98 COOPER, DON "Howlin' At the Moon" (Delay 68) cd 17.98 COUP, THE "The Best Coup DVD Ever!" dvd 14.98 DANGER: DIABOLIK (Paramount) dvd 14.98 DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE "Drive Well, Sleep Carefully" (Plexifilm) dvd 24.00 DEMONS & WIZARDS "Touched By The Crimson King" (SPV) cd 16.98 DRUNK HORSE "In Tongues" (Tee Pee) cd 15.98 EYEHATEGOD "Preaching The "End-Time" Message" (Emetic) cd 14.98 FALL, THE "The Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004" (Sanctuary) 6cd 67.00 FAY, BILL "s/t" (Eclectic Discs) cd 21.00 FAY, BILL "Time of the Last Persecution" (Eclectic Discs) cd 21.00 FEDERATION X "Rally Day" (Estrus) cd 14.98 FORENSICS "Hogback Mountain Sessions Vol.1" (Magic Bullet) cd 8.98 FURSAXA "Lepidoptera" (ATP) cd 15.98 GORILLA "Gimme Some..." (Beard Of Stars) cd 14.98 HAL "s/t" (Rough Trade) cd 15.98 ICKY BOYFRIENDS "A Love Obscene" (Menlo Park) 2cd 15.98 ILK "Canticle" (VHF) cd 13.98 IRON MAIDEN "The Essential Iron Maiden" (Sony) 2cd 21.00 KAWABATA, MAKOTO "Jellyfish Rising" (Funfundvierzig) cd 14.98 KELLY, R. "TP.3 Reloaded" (Jive) cd + dvd 17.98 KEUHKOT "Toiminatatapoja Olioille" (Ektro) cd 14.98 KIRCHIN, BASIL "Abstractions of the Industrial North" (Trunk) cd 17.98 LAST EXIT "Koln" (Atavistic) cd 14.98 LEE, RITA "Build Up" (Cherry Red) cd 17.98 LIPPOK, ROBERT & BARBARA MORGENSTERN "Tesri" (Monika) cd 15.98 MCGUIRE, DAN "Jamnation" (Prestidigitation) cd 14.98 MILK FROM CHELTENHAM "Triptych of Poisoners" (Alga Marghen) cd 17.98 MONOS "Generators" (Die Stadt) cd 27.00 NETHER DAWN, THE "Whiskey Mute-Down" (Last Visible Dog) cd 11.98 POSIES "Every Kind Of Light" (Ryko) cd 15.98 PREFUSE 73 "Reads The Books E.P." (Warp) cd/12" /10.98 RAMESSES "The Tomb" (Invada) cd 15.98 RILEY, TERRY & STEFANO SCODANIBBIO "Diamond Fiddle Language" (Wergo) cd 24.00 RINALDI, RENATO "Hoarse Frenzy" (Last Visible Dog) cd 11.98 SCHMIDT, CHARLIE "Xanthe Terra" (Strange Attractors Audio House) cd 13.98 SON VOLT "Okemah And The Melody Of Riot" (Transmit Sound) dual cd/dvd 19.98 SPIRES THAT IN THE SUNSET RISE "Four Winds the Walker" (Secret Eye) cd 13.98 SUZUKITON "Service - Repair Handbook" (Crucial Blast) cd 14.98 TAMBURO, MIKE "Beating of the Rewound Son" (Music Fellowship) cd 14.98 THEMSELVES "Live II" (Purple Guerilla) cd 13.98 THOR "An-Thor-Logy" dvd 22.00 TODD "Purity Pledge" (Southern) cd 14.98 TRAFFIC SOUND "Yellow Sea Years" (Vampisoul) cd 21.00 TRALALA "s/t" (Audika) cd 14.98 ULTRALYD "Chromosome Gun" (Load) cd 14.98 V/A "Ikon Records Story" (Frantic) 2cd 26.00 V/A "Studio One Lovers" (Soul Jazz) cd/2lp 21.00/24.00 VIRUS SYNDICATE "The Work Related Illness" (Planet Mu) cd 14.98 WHITE MICE "ASSPhIXXXEATATESHUN" (Load) cd 13.98 WINGDALE COMMUNITY SINGERS "s/t" (Plain) cd 14.98 WOODEN WAND "Harem Of The Sundrum & The Witness Figg" (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98 WRIGHT, FRANK "The Complete ESP-Disk' Recordings" (ESP-Disk') 2cd 24.00 XIU XIU "La Foret" (5RC) cd 14.98 ZION I "True & Livin" (LiveUp) cd 15.98
We were joking a couple days ago about Phill Niblock, or it could of been Tony Conrad (Or Angus Maclise or any of those folks) about how great it must be having over the course of your entire 30 or 40 year career to have played only 4 or 5 notes. Obviously it's not as simple as that. Niblock is one of the few modern composers that can hold your attention for an hour or more with the judicious use of a single note. Like Reich and Riley, Niblock harnesses the natural properties of sound letting the sound do much of the work, shifting slowly, beating intermittantly, always shimmering and occasionally throbbing as notes nestle close to each other, sometimes sliding into place perfectly, other times finding a strange resistance and audibly working to fit in, resulting in all these subtle shifts. This is glacial and static, warm and thick and totally mesmerising. Touch Food also seems, to me at least, to be Niblock's most melodically complex set of pieces. The melodies here manage to be fairly prominent, even though they are stretched to their limit and obfuscated by the thick wash of sound. This is heady, heavy stuff. Heavy enough in fact that all you dirge-istsâ who are into Earth and Sunn 0))) and stuff like that may find that Niblock is your gateway drug, opening up the door to Maclise, Flynt, Cale and beyond. And of course, fans of modern drone, Sunroof!, Birchville Cat Motel, Skullflower, Vibracathedral Orchestra should definitely pick this up! His best record since Four Full Flutes!
MPEG Download: "Sweet Potato" [/audio/niblocksweetpotato.mp3]
Awesome. Simply, awesome. Phill Niblock is an artist that every musician should aspire to be. He's tirelessly composing, performing, and hosting this seminal series at his own Experimental Intermedia loft, all well into his late '70s! If you were to think of so many artists who had started to suck when they hit 30 or 40, the fact that Niblock is continuing to amaze as the elder statesman of NY Minimalism is all the more impressive. Never one to be effusive in his titles, Niblock's Touch Strings is a double disc of compositions for stringed instruments. The first disc is a 60 minute piece for electric guitar and bass, performed by Susan Stenger and Robert Poss (both from Band Of Susans) each restricted to only a few notes (E, F, and F#, to be specific) to coax sounds through their respective instruments with ebows. The resulting composition is an unhurried set of majestic drones, whose microtonal shifts delicately unfold over the course of the hour. Changes are definitely noticeable but only after they've happened, as Niblock's compositional genius is thoroughly hypnotizing. The second disc is broken into two pieces, both sourced from acoustic strings. The microtones from a single cello are ripped apart and layered back as a densely packed, monumental drone that buzzes, blurs, and bends for 25 minutes. The next piece applies the same strategy but to a four piece ensemble, all of whom are building harmonic intervals along a single drone arc that Niblock then reconfigured digitally after the fact. So fucking good!
"No rhythm. No melody. No bullshit."
Thus read the caption in Niblock's recent feature in the UK's Wire magazine. And we couldn't have summed it up better ourselves.
Three is Niblock's third release on Touch and most definitely his most ambitious. Three discs, every piece 20 to thirty minutes in length, each composed using the recordings of a single instrument. Be it sax, or cello, or viola, Niblock has the performer play extended notes, 15 to 30 seconds, he later removes extraneous sounds, breathing, etc. and then subtly shifts the sounds to create microtones, and microtones are exactly what is so magical about Niblock's work. Small subtle shifts, glacial movements that over the course of a twenty minute piece cause nearly imperceptible alterations, an ultra minimal flux that reveal all sorts of gorgeous subtleties. These pieces are massive, monolithic, grand explorations of sound, that require close listening, and close listening results in untold rewards, the beauty is secretive, revealing itself slowly and in tiny tiny increments, but it allows these pieces to grow and hover dreamlike, wrapping your head in a sound that feels alive, filling your ears with a thick, practically viscous drone, so intense, that when it finally stops, it feels like you've been yanked suddenly back from the abyss. This is truly powerful minimalism, at once simple and spare, but also dense with microscopic color and incredibly subtle shadings.
Niblock has been composing and subtly influencing many of his more well known peers since the late sixties, lurking on the fringes of academia and underground avant composition for years, having only started to document and release his compositions relatively recently, with the advent of the compact disc, a medium much more well suited to long from pieces, and he has rapidly and rightfully take his place amongst the minimalist hierarchy. With every new Niblock release, especially one as epic as like Touch Three, we find ourselves longing for Niblock to take his drones even further, exploring DVD audio and hours long live performances. These are the kinds of pieces, the sorts of sounds, that given enough time and space, could continue to grown and expand and blossom, revealing completely new worlds of sound. And we can't wait!
Phill Niblock is a minimalist contemporary of LaMonte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, and Tony Conrad, yet has been seemingly overlooked, minus a few avant rock footnotes from the likes of Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, and Band of Susans. In the liner notes,
The first piece "Hurdy Hurry" is an extended drone, based on samples of Jim O'Rourke and his hurdy gurdy. Niblock begins the piece simply enough with a single sustained whir of the wooden machine, but thickens the mix with multi-tracked layers of more hurdy gurdy drones tuned to specific pitches. The result is a glistening audio kaleidoscope of rich ambers, oranges, and blood reds.
The two versions of "A Y U (aka As Yet Untitled)" are based upon a similar multi-tracked technique as before, but based upon recordings of baritone vocalist Thomas Buckner. These two tracks have a nasally warble to them, sounding similar to the circular breathing of Tuvan throat singers. While sonically similar, the first version is open and diffuse, and the second is lumbering and forceful.
As with all Touch releases, Jon Wozencroft offers his usual amazing design sensibility to an amazing piece of minimalist composition.
A perfect fit for Raster-Noton, Nibo is the moniker of a Japanese audio-visual artist who has been articulating sound through mathematically tight digital-click repetitions and pure sinewave tones, that end up sounding virtually identical to the post-techno rhythmic tendencies of Alva Noto, Ryoji Ikeda, and to a lesser extent Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio.
Record number two from these creepy synthpop postpunks, and as much as we dug their last one, Immer Etwas, this one is giving their debut a run for its money. From the super haunted house-y psychedelic synth intro, all monklike chants and squiggly melodies over minor key synth pulsations, the sort of thing that could have been stretched out for another 3 or 4 minutes (heck 15 or 20!), but before you know it, the song proper kicks in, murky basement beats, crunchy guitars, angular melodies, yelped reverbed vox, all wreathed in plenty of synth buzz and echo drenched effects. Weirdly enough, the first thing we thought was that it sort of sounded like a way more lo-fi punk version of eighties big haired electroglam weirdos Sigue Sigue Sputnik, which is not a bad thing at all. The second track though changes gears dramatically, unfurling a sort of reverby drum machine driven psych-blooz dirge, all sinister swagger and twisted dark creep, sounding like some lost jam from some obscure eighties Aussie outfit. The rest of the record continues on in an appropriately unpredictable manner, flitting from garagey fuzz-rock pound, to gothy electro-punk weirdness, and from woozy psychedelic synth heavy gloom pop, to ultra lo-fi bedroom brewed almost glam sounding punk pop crunch. There's also shades of eighties new wave, stoner rock grooves, outsider industrial pound, and shuffling fifties style pop songsmithery, somehow all tangled up in NF's already tangled and twisted soundworld.
Seems like Sacred Bones can do no wrong. The last year they've given us records from Gary War, Blank Dogs, Zola Jesus, Cultural Decay, 13th Chime, Moon Duo, Carl Simmons, and Vermillion Sands, and now Nice Face, aka Ian Magee, who definitely fits right in with the current movement of lo-fi garage pop weirdness, a la Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Blank Dogs, etc, but Nice Face is a much more twisted affair. Not sure how we missed out on this guy until now, this is in fact a collection of previously released jams, originally released on three different labels, including two on Sacred Bones, hardly matters, what matters is we have em now, and they have been totally kicking our asses.
Falling somewhere between former aQ Record Of The Weekers Night Control AND former aQ Record Of The Weekers Blank Dogs, it seemed sort of inevitable that we would fall in love with Nice Face as well, short sharp blasts of crunchy, synth laced, home brewed, cold wave flecked garage pop, super catchy, but plenty twisted, and beyond the more contemporary influences, we hear plenty of classic power pop, old new wave, old school punk rock, all tweaked and twisted into this right here. We could go song by song and describe every one, they all rule, but we'll just pick out a few of our favorites which should definitely give you a feel for the weirdo damaged pop world of Nice Face.
"Decipher" is a haunting synth heavy instrumental, with a KILLER hook, the whole track swirly and subtly warped, that sounds like one of the best songs Blank Dogs never released. "I Want Your Damage" is a spacey pop gem, with super delayed vocals, and a Tesltars main melody, lots of effects, weird synth melodies, imagine if Joe Meek were alive today, this is the sort of thing he'd be whipping up in his apartment home studio. "A Minor Altercation" is classic eighties power pop and sounds like it was yanked right off one of those Yellow Pills comps, "A Gaping Gash" is like a lo-fi reimagining of that Depeche Mode / Gary Numan collaboration that never really happened. "Beater" is a blasting garage rock blow out, that does Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall one better, with fuzzy synths, another killer hook, gothy and new wave-y, not to mention the retarded, freaked out synth solo WAY up in the mix. "Had To Let You Know" is another total eighties new wave jam, minor key and mysterious, super reverbed and groovy, sounds almost like the Stooges filtered through Joy Division and Gary Numan. And on and on it goes. How does this guy do it. Every song is insanely catchy, but totally different than the one that came before it, and even though the songs are all over the map, and this is a collection of tracks from different releases, it totally flows, and plays perfectly, like somehow, it was meant to be what it is, a single perfect fucked up outsider pop record. So rad.
We had never heard of Nick Nicely before, but thanks to Captured Tracks we have a new psychedelic electro-pop obsession (did we have an old one?). Hard to explain exactly what NN sounds like, but there's definitely a sort of Gary Numan vibe, but wedded to a sort of classic pop, a la the Zombies or early Bee Gees, a sort of baroque classical pop futurism? The sound are lush, drum machine driven, with soaring strings, subtly processed vox, and gorgeous hooks, just check out the sound samples and you'll be hooked. Hard to imagine folks like Ariel Pink and John Maus wouldn't be totally obsessed with NN (in fact, we're tempted to think they were both heavily influenced).. It makes sense that this would end up on Captured Tracks, cuz it actually sounds like it could be some weird new retro popwave combo from Brooklyn, except for the fact, that this stuff is so genuine, and so genuinely quirky, whereas most modern bands can get the sound right, they can rarely back it up with songs. But NN is a master of both, total crazy catchy electro-pop / post-punk / minimal disco / psychedelic synth rock that sounds more and more like the bastard pop child of Gary Numan every time we listen to it. We even hear a little XTC, but NN manages to take all these disparate influences and sounds and creates his own perfect electro-psych-pop. Fuzzy, groovy, synthy, quirky, druggy, tripped out, hooky as hell and totally twisted, and just about the coolest thing we've heard in ages. A new (old) favorite!
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Captured Tracks recently released an lp collection called Elegant Gaze, from mysterious psychedelic electro-popper Nick Nicely, and after doing a little research, we discovered that most of those tracks were in fact culled from a cd compilation called Psychotropia, this compilation right here in fact. So for the digitially inclined, here's your chance to dig into Mr. Nick Nicely's strange and wondrous soundworld...
It's hard to explain exactly what NN sounds like, but there's definitely a sort of Gary Numan vibe, but wedded to a sort of classic pop, a la the Zombies or early Bee Gees, a sort of baroque classical pop futurism? The sound are lush, drum machine driven, with soaring strings, subtly processed vox, and gorgeous hooks, just check out the sound samples and you'll be hooked. Hard to imagine folks like Ariel Pink and John Maus wouldn't be totally obsessed with NN (in fact, we're tempted to think they were both heavily influenced).. It makes sense that this would end up on Captured Tracks, cuz it actually sounds like it could be some weird new retro popwave combo from Brooklyn, except for the fact, that this stuff is so genuine, and so genuinely quirky, whereas most modern bands can get the sound right, they can rarely back it up with songs. But NN is a master of both, total crazy catchy electro-pop / post-punk / minimal disco / psychedelic synth rock that sounds more and more like the bastard pop child of Gary Numan every time we listen to it. We even hear a little XTC, but NN manages to take all these disparate influences and sounds and creates his own perfect electro-psych-pop. Fuzzy, groovy, synthy, quirky, druggy, tripped out, hooky as hell and totally twisted, and just about the coolest thing we've heard in ages. A new (old) favorite!
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As much as we love progress, and new fangled gadgets, and the web and MP3's and YouTube and Netflix and downloads and iPods and all the various things that make life easy and exciting and make us feel like we're already living in a sci-fi future, we definitely dread the day where physical media ceases to exist. We like to think that could never happen, cuz who wants to live in a world without record stores, and movie theaters, and magazines, and newspapers, and lps and cassette tapes. And of course ZINES!!! Sure zines may seem like they're already dead and gone, but there are a few folks keeping zines alive, heck, there's a vintage zine store right down the street from aQ! And there's still loads of modern zines that rule: Salt, As Loud As Possible, Savage Damage Digest, Rape & Honey, and now Niche Homo, who are currently on issue number 4, and whose features should have most aQ-ers all in a tizzy. Ramleh, Sic Alps, Homosexuals, Thee Oh Sees, c'mon! There's also plenty of cool random stuff, articles, columns, illustrations, comics, all super well written and fun to read, and all laid out old school photocopy style and stapled in the middle. WAY recommended. Long live the zine!!!!
A highly obscure Afro-beat document from the seventies, this is a little heard recording by Fela Kuti sideman, Nicholas Addo Nettey. Recorded in Lagos at the same Ginger Baker-run studio that Kuti cut many of his famous albums, this feels like a rawer more stripped down Fela Kuti album just without Fela Kuti, with more chicken scratch organ than funk horns. Four songs, 2 long-form politically charged call and response hypnotic jams with 2 shorter soul grooving instrumentals. Daptone does quite a service uncovering this beast! No Afro-beat collection should be without it!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
4 selections from their 1960 improvised performances on Broadway. The comic duo would often ask the audience for an opening line or a topic to maintain the integrity toward their improvisation. Often quite funny, often scathing, always entertaining.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Examine Doctors is an outgrowth of their weekly comic appearances on the NBC radio's Monitor show in 1962. This is an unedited tape of a Monitor work session, with all of the ideas and situations occuring spontaneously and the dialogue entirely improvised. The NBC producer at that time suggested that the pair do a spot on doctors, to which Mike responded "you can't do anything funny about doctors." Black humor and ironic situations that have an engaging intelligence not at all dissimilar to Woody Allen.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A third reissue of Mike & Elaine's improvisational skills finds them in cahoots with pianist Marty Rubenstein, who created a variety of music to suggest different moods. Mike & Elaine would spontaneously create scenes to fit each musical interlude. No scripts... no rehearsals...
Let's Play is the first recording by a drummer / vocalist / noisemaker from the Northwest named Cameron Michael Nichols-Rage, on which he collaborates with Alvarius B, Stuart Dahlquist (Asva, Burning Witch), Masami Kawaguchi (LSD-March), Irr. App. (Ext.), Mason Jones (Numinous Eye), Robert Millis (Climax Golden Twins), John Olsen (Wolf Eyes), Andrew Liles, At Jennie Richie, and a bunch more notable noise folks. Sounds pretty much MADE for aQ. Even moreso when you discover that Cameron is in fact, a 20 month old little boy, who just happens to be the spawn of 1/2 of blacknoize duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer!
The proud papa captured Cameron's wild free jazz drumming, and adorable vocal mewlings and yelps (like a toddler Keiji Haino?) and let the above horde of noiseniks jam along with young Cameron, and the results are pretty spectacular and ALL over the map. Lots of the stuff here has a sort of free jazz / avant rock vibe, Cameron's wild skittery loose drumming 'style' perfectly suited for that sort of thing, but then out of nowhere, the sound will coalesce into a weird churning almost industrial sounding post punk, like on the opening track, Cameron and crew locked into an angular, noise-punk groove. Elsewhere, Appalachian guitars (Cameron's?) are wound around boom-crash drum splatter, and accompanied by Cameron's free form vocal stylings. Some tracks sound like some alien avant-prog, all woozy and warped. others are surprisingly lovely, chiming gamelan like tones drifting above a bed of restless skitter, and still others are dense sprawls of warped detuned blues-murk. The most intense track is probably the Andrew Liles collaboration, that pairs Cameron's drums with moody, haunting piano, bizarre samples, and super distorted agonized screams. Harrowing stuff. But surrounding that blast of sonic intensity, are deep surrealistic dronescapes woven from Cameron's chopped and processed drumming, buzzing kosmische psychedelia, replete with soaring sitar-buzz guitars and crooned vox, and dreamy, organ drenched drifts, again, anchored by Cameron's abstract drum skitter.
There's lots more as well, all stripes of free-noise, and dark drone, and black ambience and twisted post industrial weirdness, it's all pretty great too. And really, had we not mentioned it, you'd probably never guess that this was (mostly) the work of a 20 month old little boy!!! So obviously WAY recommended!
San Francisco sound-n-noise technician Brandon Nickell had been recording under the moniker Aemae for a number of years, but he's recently dropped that to go with his given name. It's been a couple years since Nickell / Aemae released a full album (well, there was a pretty awesome cassette on Black Horizon in 2009). But, he's been performing out quite a bit up and down the West Coast and working through his experiential research into auditory hallucinations. If these sounds are any clue as to what kind of hallucinations Nickell was having, they must have been unsettling to say the least. Analog synths, voice, and a hell of a lot of digital synthesis went into pierced electronic tones that Nickell generates, each honed to have a razor sharp edge to sheer your ears straight off. Digitally forged drones stream in every direct at the onset of the album, sharpened for skull scraping results. Even as these dissolve into creepy-as-hell vocal gasps detuned to low-end rumblings, Nickell quickly cuts to an unstable collage of slashing cacophony. Transitioning into a tempered set of recordings of mechanoid grinds, post-Oval digital splutter, and spatialized clank, the pierced rasping tones return to bring the album to a conclusion. There's definitely a connection to the eardrum rattling psychoacoustics that The Hafler Trio could generate, augmented with the aesthetics of Florian Hecker, CM von Hausswolff, and John Wiese.
One of two new releases on the Ge-stell label, run by aQ pal Cameron, who was also the man behind the Merzbild and Merz Tapes labels, the other is the latest from Chris Douglas, aka Dalglish, and then this one, a new 12" from another aQ pal, Brandon Nickell, who previously recorded as Aemae, and runs the Isounderscore label. On Skyline, Nickell explores a moody netherworld of pulsing industrial beatscapery, fractured avant hip hop deconstruction, post rave grooves and acid drenched rhythms, laying down fields of deftly programmed beats, and swaddling them in hazy swirls of melancholy shimmer, a series of strangely reflective backdrops for a constantly transformational rhythmic palette, churning and robotic one second, skittery and stuttery the next, the surrounding sounds though, strangely human, darkly melodic and almost cinematic, the beats less of a driving force oddly, and more a framework for Nickell's moody broodscapes, whether it's the lonesome raga like buzz of "Norvig Trajectory", the keening high end shimmer of "Quartz", or the pulsating retro-cold wave kosmiche of the title track. And even within these various permutations, Nickell manages to evolve and sculpt, transforming the opening droned out skree of the aforementioned "Quartz", into a gorgeously serene, hushed lowercase drift, or the beautifully blissful beats of closer "Tessellate" which lays out a slow motion rhythmic crawl over a background of rapidfire pulse, a darkly propulsive core, to what is otherwise languorous and strangely tranquil, a gorgeous, hypnotic closer, that leaves us wanting more more more.
Pressed on 150 gram transparent vinyl, mastered by Rashad Becker, housed in a silkscreened PVC plastic cover, with die cut slit, along with a printed transparent insert.
Over the course of a handful of releases, San Francisco electronic artist Brandon Nickell has revealed to us a number of facets to his sound, typically landing on the psychonautical side of digital abstraction and bitcracked noisemongering. The Art Of Memory finds Nickell eschewing much of the DSP-systems and laptop codeslinging in favor of modular synthesizers that reflected his infatuation with the rhythmic / IDM-inspired electronic music from the late '90s and early '00s. Tundra Dubs had approached Nickell on the strength of a tape he released concurrently with Holly Herndon's Car cassette on Third Sex a couple years back; and whether intentional or not, there are some parallels to the atonality, precision, sci-fi dystopian vibes, and compositional complexity between Herndon's acclaimed album Movement and Nickell's The Art Of Memory. The title track to this long ep bangs through a shuffled techno rhythm alternating taut step sequencing with glacially dark drones falling between Sandwell District's industrial reclamation project and early Alec Empire rhythm explorations. The 8 minute long workout "Progenitor" laces a skittering Coh / Thomas Brinkmann rhythm with witchy vocal elongations and bellowing drones, punctured with dry, whipcrack snares. The closing track "Sutro" takes after the monophunk of Reinhardt Voigt reprising the spiralling step sequences and arpeggiations from the title track as fractal patterns that splinter, dissolve, and blossom into infinity. Limited to 150 copies!
Classic and most essential Nico Record.
This is a send-shivers-up-your-spine record, and I mean that in a couple ways -- it all depends on where you stand opinion wise in regards to Nico's talent, in or out of the context of the Velvet Underground. I personally beleive that Nico is an artist of some great depth, as evidenced by this immeasurably cold and beautiful record from the ultimate ice queen. On "Desertshore," originally released in 1970 and now repressed on vinyl by the good people at 4 Men With Beards, the primary instrumentation is Nico's harmonium, with additional backing from John Cale. The harmonium, Cale's viola, and Nico's distinctive voice blend to create multiple layers of incredibly dark, extended, buzzing drones. The overall picture is mysterious and bleak; it's not only my favorite Nico record, but also one of the best post-Velvets records by any former members.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
More of that classic porn-funk soundtrack music people just can't get enough of. Pictures, too.
We all love Morricone's western soundtracks. Fistful Of Dollars, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, For A Few Dollars More. They are all so evocative and gorgeous, able to stand comfortably on their own removed from the films they are so inexorably linked to, which can't be said for most soundtracks. Don't know a whole lot about Bruno Nicolai, but either he owes a huge debt to Morricone, or Morricone has a secret influence....100,000 Dollari Per Ringo has all the sights and sounds and smells (well the sounds at least) we've come to expect from an Italian western soundtrack, soaring strings, lonely harmonica, whistles and gently strummed guitars, bellowing almost-operatic male vocals. But there's just something about this particular collection that moves me in a way no other Italian soundtrack has, Morricone or otherwise. I don't know about you, but I rarely listen to a whole soundtrack all the way through there are usually specific parts or songs that I want to hear. But with 100,00 Dollari, it flows so perfectly I end up listening to the whole thing all the time, sometimes forgetting what I'm listening to, and having to check, because it doesn't always sound like an 'Italian Western'. Which is part of what makes it so great. Vocal tracks, sleepy, dusky instrumentals, and roaring, bombastic epics all balanced and sequenced erfectly. It helps that the opening track, Ringo Come To Fight, is one of the greatest 'cowboy vocal songs' EVER with gorgeous sorrowful vocals and a gorgeous arrangement. And track two, Sfida Eroica, is THE most kick ass song ever. Seriously. Makes me want to leap out the window and join the shootout in progress across the street in the saloon, rescue my lady from the jail, leap on my horse and ride into the desert, not before I retrieve the sack of gold, my trusty sidekick and my dog Ringo. It's like the soundtrack equivalent of a song that makes you HAVE TO air guitar or air drum. And the rest of the soundtrack kicks holy ass as well. Morricone fans obviously need this, but there's stuff on here that would appeal to fans of Godspeed, Calexico, Lanterna and dreamy, twangy rock in general. Give it a try.
Nicole 12 is the sicko-noise project of Finland's Mikko Aspa who happens to be the same Mikko Aspa behind one of our favorite black metal hordes Clandestine Blaze AND serves as the current vocalist for Deathspell Omega. Along with running Northern Heritage (black metal label) and Freak Animal (for the power electronics and noise stuff), he happily toils in any number areas of deviant publications that involve considerable levels of filth and degradation. He's claimed that he has no moral dilemmas whatsoever with the work that he publishes, and Nicole 12 is one such project that exists by design at a uneasy end of the libertine spectrum. It's a thin line that Whitehouse walked between entering a dialogue about sexual exploitation and glorifying the negative politics of perversion; and Nicole 12 marches through a similarly uncomfortable minefield of the taboos surrounding the sexualization of youth and the commodification of the body. The politics of Nicole 12 require a strong stomach, and the power electronics are equally blunt in their cold, dispassionate constructions of squalid frequencies, body-shock rumble, and panoptic blurts of vocal command. It's very clear that Nicole 12 (and the whole Mikko Aspa oeuvre) was a HUGE influence on the early work of Prurient, right up to the point when Dom shifted his work towards the rhymthicist productions of Bermuda Drain. This album represents something of a conclusion of one chapter for Nicole 12's catalog, collecting all of the non-album tracks that Aspa recorded since the project's inception in 1999. Upon the completion of this album, Nicole 12 will only be releasing full albums through Freak Animal, or so it seems. Dare we recommend this? It is a pretty amazing piece of filthy-filthy noise, but seriously don't even entertain the notion of checking this out, if you don't know what you are getting yourself into.
While not new, we only just discovered NID, and our discovery came about in a very random manner, considering various related works were right under our nose. We listed a killer 4 way split 12" a while back called One Man Drone, and our favorite track from the spit was a piece by a group called B(degree)Tong. We later discovered that the man behind B(degree)Tong was previously a member of German experimental sound-collective NID. But what we did not know was that NID was sometimes also known as Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim, a group who had various releases on the Drone Records label, one of which is included on the recent tUMULt collection of out of print Drone singles.
So now it's sort of come full circle and we have this, the only proper full length recording (as far as we know) from the group NID, aka Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim and it's pretty amazing. Pretty bizarre too, but then with a (sometime) name like Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim, what else would you expect?
Three looooooooong tracks. Each an epic, incredibly varied soundworld, blending found sounds and field recordings with drones and intense blasts of layered sound. The opener begins with a muted cacophony of birds and crickets, before disappearing into a roiling black cloud of rumbling low end and distant droning guitar buzz. It almost sounds like sticking your head out of a speeding car, the wind whipping by and causing all sorts of distortions, but blurred into an impressively massive wall of sound. Within all this whipping sonic wind and rumbling whirs, are strange bits of percussion, the clang and bang of metal on metal, shakers and simple rhythms, they drift briefly in the eye of the storm, before the drone drops again, even more furious than before, until it fades out amidst the dreamy shimmer of female vocals and haunting minor key melodic buzz. Really intense and strangely beautiful.
The second track is another deep cavernous roar. A bit smoother than the previous number, but not for long, bit of metallic buzz surface amidst the undulating rumbles, with some serious dynamic spikes, some of which sound like brief bursts of SUNNO 0))), and others are even lower and more aggressive bits of low end exploration. There are bits of static and random buzz here and there, but mostly it's black and dark, a massive growling beast, slowly uncoiling into a monster that blocks out the sun. Near the end of the track, the darkness abates and in its place is a strange skipping stuttering snippet of music, wrapped in hazy distortion and looped into a mesmerizing rhythm, repeated over and over and over, gradually crumbling and becoming more and more distorted before erupting into a final burst of chest rattling low end, finally slowing down and sputtering to a halt.
The final track is over twenty minutes and is the most melodic of the bunch. Beginning with a looped cycle of xylophone melody, over a throbbing low end pulse and streaks of keening distant guitar and bits of operatic female vocals. Very ominous and mysterious sounding. When suddenly everything stops, and there's a guy with a British accent ranting over someone ransacking a kitchen, breaking glass, clanging cutlery, and suddenly it's gone, and we're back in some new dronescape, a mumbled voice looped into a haunting mantra, beneath distant thunder like rumbles, and little blurs of high end melody, indistinct, but gradually building in intensity. The drones drift away leaving birds and voices, and some strange bits of hiss and skree, before transforming into a plodding doomdrone beast. A simple stretched out rhythm over cavernous thrums and the sound of subway cars, everything pulsing and throbbing, a bizarre bit of dark collage, that manages to be strangely musical and completely hypnotic.
An amazingly weird record, and absolutely essential listening for the drone obsessed, which we would assume should be most of you...
Another long out of print warehouse find, this one released on Seedy-R, an offshoot of Antony Milton's Pseudo Arcana label, and again featuring avant guitarist Anthony Guerra, here teamed up with drummer Matthew Nidek, for a 23 minute abstract drone/free-noise/psychedelic workout. Hard to say which is the focal point here, so we'll go with both, the guitar is fiery and fierce, alternatingly unfurling thick sheets of SUNNO))) like drone or white hot streaks of Haino-esque howl, slipping from spare and minimal to blurred and burly and almost blackened, the drums locked in tight every step of the way, skittering intricately, occasionally offering up bursts of rhythmic crunch, but always slipping right back into the skree, the sound is heavy and intense, and manages to get louder and louder and more blown out as the record progresses, until finally exploding in a cloud of near white noise skree, which eventually splinters into a stumbling abstract detuned outro, that manages to retain much of the preceding ferocity, recasting as something more warped and brooding.
ULTRA LIMITED, and way out of print. We have 4 or 5 of these and then THAT'S IT!
A book that happens to be all about many of the Chinese indie rock bands we carry!!
Another warehouse find, this one from the nearly impossible to pronounce Niellerade Fallibilisthorstar, who we in the past had sort of assumed were some obscure experimental black metal band, but who in fact are something much more esoteric, a mysterious group trafficking in a dark, skeletal, haunting and abstract industrial / electro-acoustic ambience.
These Swedes unfurl sprawling atmospheres of distant buzz, of lush layered shimmer, of rhythmic clank and clatter, a grey malevolence seems to settle over these blurred glimpses of some barren otherworld, the sound shifting from heaving downtuned distorted crumble, to hushed soft focus melodic smear, laced with buried foghorn melodies, what sound like field recordings from some old decrepit dock, streaks of sine wave like high end, machine-like creaks and groans, softly set in fields of reverb, and natural ambience, Halrum often plays out like an actual recording of the listener exploring some strange burnt out factory, discovering a part of the floor, where the concrete seems to crumbled revealing a firelit cave underneath, the walls seemingly alive with shadow motion, these are the sounds of exploration, into the deepest, darkest recesses of whatever blackness lurks below. So awesome. And we really only have a tiny handful of these, and we're not sure we can get more...
Another warehouse find, this one from the nearly impossible to pronounce Niellerade Fallibilisthorstar, who we in the past had sort of assumed were some obscure experimental black metal band, but who in fact are something much more esoteric, a mysterious group trafficking in a dark, skeletal, haunting and abstract industrial / electro-acoustic ambience.
These Swedes unfurl sprawling atmospheres of distant buzz, of lush layered shimmer, of rhythmic clank and clatter, a grey malevolence seems to settle over these blurred glimpses of some barren otherworld, the sound shifting from heaving downtuned distorted crumble, to hushed soft focus melodic smear, laced with buried foghorn melodies, what sound like field recordings from some old decrepit dock, streaks of sine wave like high end, machine-like creaks and groans, softly set in fields of reverb, and natural ambience, Halrum often plays out like an actual recording of the listener exploring some strange burnt out factory, discovering a part of the floor, where the concrete seems to crumbled revealing a firelit cave underneath, the walls seemingly alive with shadow motion, these are the sounds of exploration, into the deepest, darkest recesses of whatever blackness lurks below. So awesome. And we really only have a tiny handful of these, and we're not sure we can get more...
Sepulchral is turning out to be one of our new favorite black metal labels, bringing us the blackened noise from the new grim frostbitten North, Canada that is, with the folk flecked�Metal Noir Quebecois of Forteresse, the grim depressive buzz of Sombres Forets, and now this, the latest from doombuzz merchants Niflheim, whose latest is a sorrowful trawl through the dourest of human emotions, rendered in shades of black and grey, minor key melodies and miserablist plod, anguished wails and bleak buzz.�
Neurasthenie, which means "a�mental deviance which causes intense grief", in French, is a pretty apt title for Niflheim's latest, a slow burning, plodding, meandering chunk of harsh melancholia. The opening tracks is quite lovely, a simple slowcore drift, all clean guitar, sorrowful melodies, with some buzz draped over the top here and there merely as an afterthought, and a classical sort of outro, which leads into "The Cold Wind Of My Breath Is Always Blowing" (great title!) a gorgeous doomic plod, simple and sad, drenched in blown out crumbling distortion, strangely pretty as well as being harsh and hateful, think Nortt and Xasthur and the like, and these guys sound right at home in those hallowed halls of musical misery.�
But the next track is something completely different, a haunting abstract slice of cinematic ambience, chunks of distorted guitar drifting in an expanse of shimmer and buzz, vocals super distorted sprawled out over the top like some black storm cloud, simple sad melodies, glistening guitar harmonics, eventually transforming into more depressive doom.�
The rest of the record drifts back and forth between the two: spare, abstract guitar ambience, spacey swirling somber slowcore, dreamy instrumental minimalism, and buzz drenched blackness, crushing slow motion plod, depressive dirge, sometimes blending the two into something truly chilling and creepy, heavy and beautifully depressing.�
The band have changed their name to Gris, since we got first got this in, so there's a slight chance that when we run out, the restocked version will be under the name Gris, but fear not, it will be the same miserably brilliant blackness inside....
Nig Heist was punk rock band fronted by Black Flag roadie and SST employee Mugger, a joke band formed specifically to open for Black Flag, with the sole intention of pissing people off, and by all reports, mission accomplished. Big time. Infamous live shows, ridiculous costumes, super antagonistic audience baiting stage banter, stupid songs, over the top sexist and misogynistic lyrics, basically everything Mugger and company could think of to rankle the punk rockers. That crew, typically drawn from members of Black Flag and various bands who happened to be opening for Black Flag, over the years included: Bill Stevenson, Dez Cadena, Chuck Biscuits, Greg Ginn, D. Boon, Tom Trocolli, Spot, and maybe hardest to believe, Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat/Fugazi.
The key to the group's 'sound' being that the members were called on to join Nig-Heist, and play whatever instrument they didn't actually normally play, which is part of why the songs sound a bit warped and warbly. Sonically, NH slip easily from jangly garage pop, sounding uncannily like the Leaving Trains, to Black Flag style gnarled punk rock, to skronky atonal jazz, to dirgey, downtuned heaviness, reminding us a bit of SST metalheads Saint Vitus, they also dabble in Misfits like sing along punk pop, and jokey cock rock that in places definitely sounds like aQ faves Bad News. Black Flagisms abound of course since the core of the band was in fact primarily members of Black Flag, but to dig this, you definitely have to be prepared for songs like "Hot Muff", "Tight Little Pussy", "Surfbroad", "Whore Pleaser" and the like. And yeah, it's silly and stupid and goofy, and the lyrics are cringeworthy (although they are of course meant to be), but fans of punk rock of that era, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Fear and all that, will find it tough not to love this stuff, and knowing how how nuts the crowds must have gotten back in the day, not knowing these guys were taking the piss, only makes it that much better.
Now reissued on vinyl, also includes a bonus live cd from Henry Rollins' private collection (ahem) and features artwork by Raymond Pettibon (of course).
This silly local metal band, featuring members or ex-members of Fuckface, Dystopia and other Bay Area punk and grind outfits, shows us the way with their debut. Notorious for their (ironic?) usage of 1970's homoerotic imagery in flyers and now, on this release -- though that really doesn't relate to the music in particular. They call it sci-fi sex rock, and I guess that's a good (as any) description for their music. The guitars and drums are definitely in a hardcore or metal style, as are the screamy vox (with lotsa "fuck" and "whore" in the lyrics), but the pomp keyboards are as new wave as they are black metal. The songs are about things like drugs, robot girlfriends, and even "OJ's Wild Ride" (some topical humor kinda past its sell by date, there). Several are intended as parodies of various underground punk genres. Definitely kinda stupid, but lots of people like stupid stuff like this. Fun for fans of the Dwarves, the Accused, Antiseen, Crom, uh, and of course Rick the Desert Dick! (The star of several of the photos you'll find and enjoy in this cd package.)
Sublime Frequencies videographer Hisham Mayet strikes again! This time Hisham takes to the Sahel region of Niger to witness for ourselves a culture in resistance to environmental hazards (severe droughts) and extreme poverty, and a country that's at the cultural crossroads of Subsaharan Africa and the Middle East. Like all of Mayet's films there is no authoritative narrator to disrupt the flow, or otherwise direct our interests. Which isn't to say Mayet leaves us completely in the dark as concerns his motivations and whereabouts in shooting this footage. For that we are given ample liner notes detailing the film's unfolding in chronological order of events. The video begins in rural Dogondoutchi where Hisham documents the music of the Mawri people. Several performances are caught here of musicians playing a banjo like instrument which is simultaneously struck across the drum as it is strummed and plucked, turning the performer into a veritable one-man-band. Also taped are some amazing fiddle players using an array of instruments, each seemingly unique to its possessor. Across the river Niger, Mayet takes us to the village of Boubon to a cowry shell divination, a spirit posession ceremony, and a truly strange performance of sexual coming of age by the young girls of the village in which they taunt the boys with... Ahem! Rather "randy" dance moves. As the film progresses it moves further from acoustic / rural / animist Niger to urban / Christian / electric Niger. We're witnesses to a gospel revival meeting at a Pentacostal church combining both traditional instruments and percussion with electric bass and keyboards. Almost directly from there Mayet takes us to a dive bar to hear a beautiful pick-up band of electric guitar, bass, drums and percussion. The sound is almost like that of a punk rock Ali Farka Toure, if you can imagine that. And in the end we are taken to the compound of Bibi Ahmed to hear some very Nubian sounding trance rock, like a dronier version of Ali Hassan Kuban. Excellent!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A few months ago, a mysterious disc showed up in the mail. Or more accurately, discs. Four cd-r albums of fucked up fractured outsider pop. No information anywhere on the discs, or the packaging, other than the words Crystal Shards. Which seemed pretty perfect. That's exactly what that stuff sounded like. Jagged and fragmented and crystalline and shimmery and totally bizarre and beautiful. So of course, as is our way, we become a little obsessed, and decided we had to track more down, so we could share these sounds with the aQ faithful�
But searches for Crystal Shards revealed almost nothing, and the label was sold out, and there were at that time no plans to make more Crystal Shards. SO we hd all but given up, until the label got in touch, and mentioned plans to release a proper cd, collecting various tracks from the Crystal Shards cd-r's, and we were thrilled, anxiously waiting its arrival, knowing that it would have to be a Record Of The Week.
And so here it is, but strangely enough, the band is no longer called Crystal Shards. In fact, there is no mention anywhere of Crystal Shards, instead, the band (actually, the man) is now called Night Control, and this disc, Death Control, collects some of our favorite Shards from those previous discs, and weaves them into a perfectly imperfect album of minimal murkiness, moody shimmer and lo-fi pop, generously dappled with effects and feedback and distortion, hooks and jangle buried in buzz and hiss. Woozy, dizzy, druggy, tripped out, and catchy as fuck. Think Ariel Pink, Gary War, John Maus, Ty Segall, Wavves, Blank Dogs, Kurt Vile, Night Control definitely fits pretty comfortably amongst those lo-fi fractured pop denizens, but definitely brings his own vibe to the party, offering up something folkier and prettier, more classically poppy, even Beatles-esque at times, but still plenty murky and freaked out and fucked up, and deliriously off kilter. We also hear some Grifters in there as well, which is never a bad thing.
Where as a lot of those other bands seem willfully obscure, the weirdness in Night Control's music seems more like a natural byproduct. As if the creation of these hauntingly perfect little pop fragments, invariably resulted in the sonic cast offs that litter the record, be they sheets of gauzy buzz, or jagged slivers of feedback, the songs at their very core, are pure pop, but that core is protected by layer after layer of noise and hiss and shimmer. Yet unlike many artists who make their pop 'weird' by adding random crap on top, or record on the shittiest equipment possible, the two sides of Night Control's sound, the jangly pop, and the lo-fi buzz, seem to meld into something totally new, a sound that couldn't exist with both those elements. The guitars jangle and strum, but often explode into blow out leads, or super crunchy textures, the bas burbles below the surface, but it too can sometimes crumble into a cloud of swirling buzz, the drums are simple and spare, but hold the whole thing together, along with the lilting vocals, always wreathed in reverb and delay. Every song here is a gem. And every song manages to reference classic pop, while filtering it through the new fractured noisepop style. Sebadoh covering Tom Petty, Cheap Trick as envisioned by Strapping Fieldhands, or imagine the Beatles or Kinks, if they were growing up today, and released handmade cd-r's. There may be noise and distortion and grit and buzz and hiss, but this stuff is way too poppy to really appeal to the noiseniks, instead this takes the sort of lo-fi pop of early Pavement records and Shrimper cassettes, and re-imagines it as some sort of alternate reality top 40, not like the bizarre alien FM radio of Ariel Pink, but something much more earnest and heartfelt. Total sad boy, late night mix tape nirvana for sure.
Hard to pick favorites, as this is a sort of greatest hits, culled from a catalog that as far as we're concerned is ALL hits, but two of our favorites are "Two Hard", with its lilting jangle, rubbery underwater bass, and some incendiary lead guitars, weaving lush sun dappled textures over a sort of repetitive post rocky drift, and "No Making", a woozy, drifty torch song, the bass driving the song, the whole thing warped and warbly, the tape speed subtly shifting throughout, causing the whole song to subtly shift and twist and making it feel like your speakers are melting, and as if that weren't enough, then there's an awesome soaring bridge / chorus, with some incredible lush guitar harmonies that could go on forever (and you'll wish they would).
Hopefully some of the other Crystal Shards stuff will surface in one form or another, but for now, there's plenty here to get lost in, a fantastic and phantasmagorical document of blissed out hallucinatory outsider noise pop. ESSENTIAL!
The origin myth of Night Control is almost as fascinating as their music, it was explained in great detail in our review of the first Night Control record from a while back, but in a nutshell, Night Control was at one time called Crystal Shards, and that band released a whole mess of super limited cd-r's, all amazing and tripped out and weirdly poppy, but before we could get our hands on any of those cd-r's, the band resurfaced with a new name, Night Control, and a new record, Death Control, which cherry picked all the best songs from those impossible to find cd-r's and voila, and all time aQ favorite, twisted, fractured outsider lo-fi pop, that managed to infuse hook filled classic sounding pop music, with all manner of rhythmic aberrations and sonic inconsistencies, transforming NC's music into something truly original and transcendent.
So here we have what could be considered to be the first proper NEW Night Control record, and thankfully, all of the weirdness is fully intact, and the songwriting has seemingly grown by leaps and bounds, without sacrificing a bit of fuckedupness. So, just like Death Control was, it's gotta be a Record Of The Week! Night Control's sound is still firmly positioned amongst the current crop of warped lysergic lo-fi popsters: Ariel Pink, Gary War, John Maus, Ty Segall, Wavves, Blank Dogs, Kurt Vile, etc., but there's just something about Night Control, that makes this music different. And special. Not better necessarily, although in some ways it definitely is, but just special, the songs are ramshackly, but fully formed, catchy as all get out, but laced with all manner of clatter, and squealing feedback, the vocals are generally buried, so sometimes the melody is more suggested than anything, but somehow all the woozy warped parts fall (im)perfectly into place, and yet again, Night Control has created a songsuite, that is at once warm and familiar, but also alien and abstract.
There's no denying the fact that these songs are tighter, and more rocking, and it definitely sounds more like a real band, than a bedroom project, the opener "CS" is heartbreakingly good, warm and woozy and lush, drum machine, loping piano driven melody, big rich guitars, and a main vocal line that is so dreamy and melancholic and definitely harkens back to classic sixties pop a la The Zombies, but the record immediately changes gears, and "There's A Chance" begins as a stumbling chaotic lurching kitchen sink pop workout, very New Zealand sounding actually, the drums are distorted and tangled, the vocals are processed and all wrapped up with streaks of high end and feedback, all under a blown out haze, making the song's poppiness all the more subtle. "Take Apart" is super rocking, with actual burly guitar riffing, pounding drums, even some squirrely almost-leads, but it's interspersed with some wheezing atonal organ, some detuned guitar squiggle, some surprisingly active rubbery basslines, and the whole thing is wrapped in a cloud of hiss and crumbling distortion. It's like a Joe Meek track gone haywire.
And so it goes, the whole record veers from perfect pop to deconstructed lo-fi pop flecked weirdness, drums get blown out, vocals slip way up in the mix in a reverbed Lou Reed like sung spoken croon, guitars warble, chords jangle, rhythms are flipped backwards, fragments of songs are looped and layered, some tracks skip and skitter, you can hear someone push the stop button on the tape player, the 'ka-chunk' becoming part of the song, vocals pile on top of one another creating big lush, dense harmonies, long stretches of barely there sound drift and shimmer, like a pop song muted and melted into shimmery sonic strings, new wave collides with new age, classic rock stumbles into power pop, drum machine driven skitter explodes into druggy garage rock, hazy riffs coalesce into crystalline space rock, and on and on and on. The final track might just be the most beautiful, a nearly 8 minute stretch of processed guitars, all delicately intertwined, looped and layered, melodies and overtones surfacing and then fading into the background, notes pulse and throb, creating sort-of-rhythms, a little pop ambience, a little abstract Appalachia, warm and lush, the perfect rainy day dreamdrift, and a fitting way to finish off this perfectly imperfect record. One of our new favorites for sure.
Last list, in our review of the ep by Aussie retro metallers Outcast, we also mentioned this band, from Los Angeles. Like Outcast, Night Demon are hugely influenced by the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (which flourished circa 1979-'83, so it's not so New anymore). Curse Of The Damned is Night Demon's full-length debut, after an ep on Shadow Kingdom the never got around to reviewing (but should have). On the ep, Night Demon sounded a lot like NWOBHM greats Diamond Head, not a bad thing of course - a young band today could do a lot worse when picking a mentor. Now on the full-length, the comparison to Diamond Head (and other NWOBHM faves like Angel Witch and Iron Maiden) is still quite apt, but they give a nod to another inspiration with the bonus track on this cd, a cover of "Road Racin'" by American metal legends Riot. That they pull that song off so well speaks to one of Night Demon's major strengths - their vocalist (who also plays bass), Jarvis Leatherby. Now that's a metal name. He's got the pipes - a great melodic but not too polished voice, totally in the classic tradition. Plus Night Demon are heavy, speedy, catchy, and very, very old school metal in all other respects. Naturally, nothing groundbreaking, but still impressive and a good time for any true headbanger - especially fans of the both the NWOBHM and its modern-day worshippers like Outcast, Zuul, High Spirits, Space Vacation, and Blade Killer (members of which provide some backing vocals here).
Now (in an alternate timestream) Night Demon just has to wait for Metallica to come along and cover one of these songs (and do for them what they did for Diamond Head...)!
FYI, there's also a vinyl version, we'll get that in soon too, hopefully.
First release from this groop of kosmische synth-float dream-space drifters, who normally spend their time kicking up more of a sonic ruckus in local space rock combo Carlton Melton, but in Night Flights, all of that rock is ejected through the airlock, and left to drift weightlessly amongst the stars! This new 12" perhaps the soundtrack to that transition. Equal parts Cluster, Eno, Tangerine Dream, this is all abstract, ambient bliss out. Psychedelic new age for the new age, long tones float and shimmer, melodies unfurl lazily, expanding and then drifting apart, textures shift in slow motion, thick billowing clouds of sound roil softly over a hushed backdrop of barely there thrum, it's chilled out and gloriously laid back, the music from some long ago planetarium show, a show presented in slow motion, the various planets and stars swirling slowly, the contrails making all manner of prismatic patters that ebb and flow, pulse and fade. Imagine the trippiest parts of Carlton Melton (of which there are plenty), but then slow them down, and stretch them way out, let them drift skyward, spreading out across the stars like some weird sonic filter, channeling the strange broadcasts from the furthest reaches into chiming guitar shimmer and swoonsome chordal whooshes, moody murky synthiness and tripped out atmospheric dronemusic, everything blurred and smeared into a fantastically mesmerizing slab of gloriously free form minimal space music, that should hit the spot for both psych nerds and drone lovers alike.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, on clear yellow vinyl. Includes download code too.
Germany's answer to the "new wave of Swedish melodic death metal" (bands like In Flames, Dark Tranquility, Soilwork, etc.) is the oddly named Night In Gales, and this is their third album. Razorsharp and ripping, good stuff indeed in that vein. And they venture into Carnival In Coal territory with an almost unrecognizable cover of Alannah Myles' early '90s MTV hit "Black Velvet"!
