On the recent aQ Record Of The Week For Ostland, by mysterious NY electro-rock alchemists Nihiti, they started things off with a fantastic cover of Marisa Nadler's "Ghosts And Lovers", which ended up being one of our favorite tracks on that record, and which we described like this: "The already dark original transformed into an even darker lament, all swirling churns of mumblecore drift, heaving swells of black blurred fuzz, over skeletal rhythms, and moaned barely there vox, smeared and subtly processed, a plaintive whispery croon becomes a lush landscape of layered drones drifting dreamily and druggily, a ghostly and spectral electro-ambient threnody, that builds to a near squall of roiling riffs and tangled black melodies, the result still somehow warm and soft and utterly trancelike."
This new 12" offers up four remixes of Nihiti's Nadler cover, and all of them are pretty excellent. National Park Systems (whose Lo Bit 12" we still have in stock), add some rhythmic propulsion, and some swirling noise, processing the vox a bit, transforming the song that sounds more like some lost M83 jam, all prismatic and big beat-y, while Mark Verbos give Nihiti's version a skeletal electro makeover, with a bit of a house-y twist, drenching the vocals in reverb, and stripping away most of the rest of the song, and draping those vocals over their own beats, and giving the whole thing a sort of retro-futuristic sci-fi vibe to boot, especially the second half, that definitely reminds us a bit of Majeure or Zombi.
The flipside starts off with Hrdvrsn, who strip the song down to something very Kompakt sounding, chopping the vocals and creating a haunting stuttery melody, over a simple handclap rhythm, and wreathing the whole thing in glimmering swirls of synth, eventually letting the beat take over, before fading out and leaving just a pulsing ethereal swirl. And finally, Zebrablood adds some step sequencing and adds some robotic melodies, and transforms the song into something way more cybernetic, a super minimal electro-pulse minimal-house groover, that's both spare and skeletal, but also weirdly melodic and impossibly lush and layered. Super cool. And the perfect sonic addendum to Nihiti's amazing For Ostland...
We know pretty much nothing about these guys, other than they're from New York, their live shows are tripped out and psychedelic-light heavy, and more importantly, they make some awesome electro synth-wave abstract downer pop. Equal parts, haunting Witch House-y brood, block rockin' beats, and lo-fi home brewed electronica, Nihiti meld simple skeletal beats to pulsing fuzzy melodies, letting the tracks lock and loop, before crumbling and decaying and gradually transforming into something way more abstract.
The record opens with "Vulture Mentality", which takes minimal high end guitar strum, loops it, and lets it drift beneath a thick throbbing wave of crunchy distorted guitar, all wound around a super skittery barely there beat, which eventually drops out, leaving just that haunting guitar refrain. Perfectly setting the tone for the rest of the record, mysterious, ominous, otherworldly, claustrophobic, the sound cinematic and soundtracky. "No Angel Came" takes some Coldplay like piano, loops it, adds some chugging fuzz guitar, some post rocky drums, and layers various melodies over the top, making the whole thing wonderfully woozy and off kilter. "Mighty Neon Fragment" is all twisted minimal pop, slightly atonal and detuned, wrapped around a simple stuttery beat, and pounded piano chords. "The Ringing In (The Sun Is Rung)" is about as close as these guys get to a pop song, swoonsome vocals over rubbery bass, and muddy muted melodies, sort of funky drumming and out of tune piano, everything panned super hard so different sounds come from different speakers...
But it's "Black Cars (A Sinistra)"that might be THEE jam here, with it's minimal electro pulse, its stuttery synthy rhythms, all over a spare skeletal groove, pulsing and pounding, like a super lo-fi, way more minimal Basement Jaxx or Chemical Brothers. And the rest of the record stacks up just as well. Tripped out, groovy, abstract, druggy, rhythmic, synthy and spacey...
We weren't sure what to think when we first laid our ears on this, but it's quickly becoming a new favorite. Anyone into Balam Acab, oOoOO, How To Dress Well, Salem, Water Borders, Von Haze, Fuck Buttons, Small Black, Washed Out and all that sort of electronic weirdness, check this out...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A bizarre missive from this mysterious Texan producer of modern pop pulverizations who repurposes the likes of Britney Spears and Justin Beiber into nearly unrecognizable witchhouse-y goth dance remixes. Takes us back to the likes of Princess Tinymeat, March Violets, Danse Society and other wasted shards of our eighties gothic youth.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, we only have a few and might be awhile before we get more. On dark pink and white swirled vinyl!
Journey back once more to the land of the pyramids, the time of the pharoahs, Ancient Egypt -- where metal raged and ruled supreme! Didn't it? Nile are convinced that it did, and their archeological research as presented on records like this, their eagerly-awaited fourth full-length album, ought to convince you too. Perhaps the world's most popular death metal band (and arguably the best), Nile probably need no further introduction. If you know death metal, you know Nile. This new disc, Annihilation Of The Wicked (is that a pun? An-NILE-ation of the Wicked?) picks up where their previous efforts left off, blasting insanely into serpentine song structures with the heaviness of a fallen obelisk, the vocalist chewing his gruff, unintelligible way through lyrics of Egyptological, occult import. For the most part, song titles this time around are shorter, such as "Lashed To The Slave Stick" and "Sacrifice Unto Sebek" -- though we do get "Chapter Of Obeisance Before Giving Breath To The Inert One In The Presence Of The Cresent Shaped Horns"! I read an interview with Nile recently where they admitted having a bit of a chuckle when they come up with titles like that...
As epic as ever (there's not many short songs here, even with the shorter song titles), this does differ from past extravaganzas perhaps in scaling back a bit on the atmospheric/ethnic samples. Being the Morbid Angel of bands that aren't actually Morbid Angel, this album is laced with both twisted, tormented leads and lumbering slow sand-blasted grinds (especially on the last and longest song, the Lovecraftian crusher "Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten"). Technically impressive (not as overtly nuts as Cephalic Carnage or Meshuggah, but still, whoa), well-produced, the works -- Annihilation Of The Wicked is another success for Nile. As if there was gonna be any question of that. This is NILE we're talking about!! They're still definitely deserving of their death metal crown (Pharonic scepter?)... if you're gonna buy just one DM album this year, you couldn't go too far wrong with this one!
We've long been fans of death metallers Nile, their insane super technical avant metallic constructions, and of course their ridiculous (but kind of awesome) obsession with Egyptology, every record we go through the same process, we don't really care that much, just another Nile record, and we're already kind of burnt out on the last one, but then we throw it on, and BAM, our minds are re-blown, and we becomes obsessed once again, and listen to it like crazy, and marvel and how these guys whip up this impossibly complex metal, and incorporate yet more arcane Egyptian mythology into their sound to boot. And whattayaknow? It happened again. After sort of sleeping on this when it came out, we're now nuts for it, we've been listening to it constantly, even poring over the lyrics, and the various explanations for the lyrical inspirations, with the band's commentaries extensive and self deprecating and pretty fun to read, but really it's the music, which once again is dizzyingly complex, head spinningly intricate, the drumming furious and frantic, the riffing dense and frenzied, the arrangements super progged out, with wild squiggly tangled fully psychedelic death metal leads, much of the playing downright inhuman, total mathed out technical death metal bliss, that few other bands can touch. Like we've mentioned in past reviews, while this is most definitely death metal, the sound and the production aren't necessarily traditionally heavy, which is another thing that gives Nile a weirdly avant vibe, the sound more like some super dense, complex, tangled experimental math metal, the production making all of the various sounds crystal clear, every kick drum beat in every furious blast beat, every note in every lead, but to make it that clear and crisp, much of the buzz and distortion has to be dialed back, so the result is this strangely mesmerizing, droned out, hypnotic tangle of death metal tropes, and weird experimental textural sound, that definitely helps Nile transcend the strictures, both sonic and compositional, of traditional death metal.
If Indiana Jones was a metalhead, this would be his favorite band! State-of-the-art death metal brutality/technicality with a Great Pyramid-sized fixation on Ancient Egypt. Here are some song titles: "Invocation of the Gate of Aat-Ankh-Es-En-Amenti", "Nas Akhu Khan She En Absiu", "Masturbating The War God", "Libation Unto The Shades Who Lurk In The Shadows Of The Temple of Anhur"! The liner notes even include detailed essays giving the historical background for each song's lyrics. Our resident Egyptologist, Elisabeth, is currently studying these for accuracy (she thinks that they are relatively well-researched, if not based on the most up-to-date sources...)! The archeological aggression of Nile combines the fast and furious, yet subtly melodic approach of Morbid Angel (who also share an interest in things occult and middle-eastern) with ethnic musical trappings (not always Egyptian either: there's even some Tibetan monks chanting on here). Live, these non-metal elements are brought in via PowerBook sampling, unusual for the genre. On record, such departures are even more effective and atmospheric. This, Nile's 2nd full-length for Relapse, is a dark, sinewy, complex, demonic masterpiece!
Nile, the death metal band obsessed with the grandeur, mystery and mythology of Ancient Egypt, are one of the biggest things in the underground metal world right now (underground meaning NOT Ozzfest or MTV friendly, but with Nile you could also use "underground" in an archeological sense!). This, their third Relapse album, has been hotly anticipated by thousands and thousands of fans worldwide. And not 'cause of the popularity of Hollywood's The Mummy or The Scorpion King. No, Nile owe their following quite deservedly to their own amazing and intense musicianship and atmospheric songwriting. If you were going to buy just one 'extreme' metal album this year, you could do much worse than getting "In Their Darkened Shrines". It's an album of brutal, unrelenting heaviness, utterly insane drumming, shredding solos, and headspinning dynamics -- you'll feel like you've been through a desert sandstorm when they're done -- that's impressively technical, AND majestic, with 'exotic' middle-eastern influenced melodies and textures galore (utilizing their usual guitars, and ethnic instruments, and samples). They're one of those bands -- and this is one of those albums -- that not only belong in every self-respecting metalhead's collection, but would be a good thing for ANY adventurous music lover with an interest in the loud and difficult and imaginative to investigate. While they're not as intentionally avant-garde and 'out there' as Sigh or Enslaved or Weakling or Arcturus, they are as incredible as musicians, and certainly 'out there' when compared to most other death or black metal acts, coming up with violent ten-minute neck-breaking epics worthy of Hollywood, but not the other way around.
Nile are now totally the kings -- er, pharoahs -- of speed/death metal, occupying the throne previously occupied by giants like Morbid Angel and Slayer (both of whom have dabbled in Egyptian imagery before). Very recommended.
What more can we really say about Nile at this point? These Egyptology obssessed occultists have established themselves at THE death metal band of the millennium, rightful heirs to the septic scepters once wielded by the likes of Cannibal Corpse and (especially, in light of their subject matter) Morbid Angel. If you haven't heard 'em, we'd recommend starting with Black Seeds of Vengeance or In Their Darkened Shrines, but if you're already on board with Nile then you'll want/need this. Especially considering the strange, ummm, phallic bent of this album (evident from the title, the various erect members on statues depicted in the cd booklet, and some of the lyrical content). In interviews the band have been expressing their excitement over freaking out metalheads not prepared for such a phallus-centric death metal disc... haha....
Really, as an addition to the Nile discography, Ithyphallic can only be criticized as offering more of the same, and fans won't complain about that. There's still song titles like "Papyrus Containing The Spell To Preserve Its Possessor Against Attacks From He Who Is In The Water". There's still atmospheric, exotic 'ethnic' interludes, like the creepy "The Infinity Of Stone" ferinstance. And there's still (of course) state of the art death metal brutality in the form of grunting vox, blazing drums, guitar shred, and (one reason we really like Nile) plenty of truly heavy doom-paced riffage, slowing things down to the ancient tempos of slaves dragging huge stones from quarries to build the pyramids...
While they last, digipack version with two (instrumental) bonus tracks.
The King Tut exhibit is back, and so is Nile! Gotta hand it to 'em, not only is their uncompromisingly brutal death metal so extreme that it's practically avant-garde (the stuff of Mike Patton's sickest fantasies no doubt), they stick to their historical, Egyptological themes with such pedantic persistence it's clear that they really ARE geeks for this stuff. Which also helps the (inadvertent?) avant-garde aspect, when they throw in "exotic" touches of ethnic instrumentation, and lyrics that practically need scholarly footnotes. Who else in the world of metal or any other music for that matter would name a song "Hittite Dung Incantation"? Hmm, maybe Steven Schultz, come to think of it. Anyway, as far as we're concerned, that's pretty cool, and this review is now superfluous, either you want album with a song called "Hittite Dung Incantation" on it or you don't, right? If somehow you're still undecided, perhaps it will help you decide (either way) if we mention that, musically speaking, Nile haven't lost a step, and still appear to be the reigning kings of death metal, with the state of the art blasting beats, crushing riffs, squiggly (yet majestic) leads, and guttural growls all precisely in place. And considering how death-obsessed ancient Egypt was, with those pyramidical tombs and all, Nile have picked a perfect subject for death metal, one that doesn't get old (it's already old!), and provides a chance for the band to explore some sounds not normally heard on a death metal album. Ferinstance, take the track "Yezd Desert Ghul Ritual In The Abandoned Towers Of Silence", which we're not sure if it's an "ethnographic forgery" or appropriated field recording, but it's definitely not death metal, with its ritualistic percussion, Arabic-sounding chant, and zinging acoustic flourishes on an oud or some other non-Western string instrument. We could do with a whole album of that (see Harappian Night Recordings for something along those lines) but of course the next track, "Kem Khefa Kheshef" is back to the bulldozing brutality.
Heck, we've liked EVERY Nile album, and this is no exception. What else is there to say? If you were to just follow ONE death metal band's career, you could do a lot worse than Nile. Plus, you might learn something!
Now, the question is, when is Nile going to pay tribute to the ultimate metal/Egypt song ever (that they didn't write) and record a cover of Iron Maiden's "Powerslave"? Sure it'd be silly hearing it done death metal style, but no sillier than "Hittite Dung Incantation", eh?
This is the third John Jacob Niles reissue in as many months, and for a man who has an extensive back catalog, we are left wondering if we will be drowning in Niles reissues by the end of the year. Now that surely would be a death worthy of a Niles ballad! This is the second Tradition Label release of John Jacob Niles from 1959 (The first being the amazing, I Wonder as I Wander reviewed a few lists ago). The songs range in theme from songs of devotion and animal fables, to the fate of false-hearted lovers and gamblers. While in the past we have made comparisons of Niles high "mountain tenor" voice to neo-folkies Devendra and Anthony, that comparison really shines true here on songs like "The Cuckoo" and "The Seven Joys of Mary". Wonderful!
More beautiful and spooky "mountain tenor" from the one and only John Jacob Niles. We highlighted another great disc of his music, The Tradition Years: I Wonder As I Wander, a few lists back. Originally released in 1941, My Precarious Life in the Public Domain culls songs from The Child Ballads, a nineteenth century compendium of over 300 ballads originating in England and Scotland, collected by Francis James Childs, a Harvard University math professor. Most of these ballads had made their way into American folk traditions virtually unchanged and unaware of their European origins. Despite the name, these songs are not for children: Murder, hanging, adultery, unrequited love and suicide are the prevailing themes delivered hauntingly and simply through dulcimer and Niles astonishing voice. Incredible!
Rare American folk connoisseurs rejoice! Finally re-issued on CD are the long awaited Tradition label recordings of John Jacob Niles. If you saw the recent Dylan documentary by Martin Scorsese, you won't forget the clip of Niles singing Go Away From My Window. This is a CD of Carols and Love Songs recorded in 1957 (Rev-Ola will be re-issuing My Life in the Public Domain, ballads culled from older 78 rpm recordings later this month, which we'll list when we get it). Niles, old beyond his years, accompanied by handmade dulcimer, had an intense other-worldly fallen angel like voice that perfectly captures the hauntingly lonely and creepy hill country feel where the bulk of his catalog of songs originated. Niles, like Jean Ritchie, was a folk musicologist and performer from Kentucky who spent his time wandering through isolated American mountain communities collecting folk songs, or scraps of melodies and lyrics, embellishing them with his own inventive arrangements and often fleshing them out by writing additional verses. For example, his version of "Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Hair" has become the definitive arrangement for all versions following (from Nina Simone to Patty Waters), because while he loved the verse he disliked the original tune. This is why folk historians have had a famously difficult time classifying which songs in Niles repertoire are originals or reinventions of songs in the public domain. Some people may be turned off by Niles high-alto voice (At times he can look and sound like the evil preacher man in Poltergeist II), but don't let that hinder you from exploring the work of a true American folk original whose recordings have finally been made available to folks who cannot afford the hundreds of dollars his albums go for on eBay. Fans of Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, and Anthony & the Johnsons take note!
Three tracks. Two artists. One solo track each. One collaboration. Each 22 minutes and 22 seconds long. Benny Nilsen provides the first track, and it's a signature piece for him with a long slow ascent of skull-cracked drones. The icy sounds of this piece, its spectral, shadowy allusions are more keeping with his earlier work as Hazard, a grim, post-industrial production of steely ambience. Very nicely done. The same can be said for Z'ev's track, as he's become far more adept with digital production in recent years. His arsenal of percussive strikes is at the core of his solo track, yet Z'ev has deftly smeared much of the metallic reverb and sustained magnetic vibrations into a monstrous low end composition of slow motion explosions crossing paths with Lustmord's Heresy or The Monstrous Soul, minus the death-obsessed imagery. These two tracks are clearly worth the price of admission, but it should be noted that the third collaborative track is pretty pointless. After 17 minutes of silence, the two merely present a room mix of the two of them playing drones and percussion. Eh.
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Very limited stock on this one. Defeat looks back to Nilsen's earlier recordings as Hazard, when his frigid dronescapes engineered from field recordings of the Swedish hinterlands to articulate the desolation and cold of that region. Of course, this isn't to say that Nilsen's current collaboration with Stilluppsteypa or the new output for Touch isn't dark, cold, and barren. Defeat is an recording laced with horror-film minor-key melodies that repeat the sparse two or three notes overlapping his trademarked bleak washes of drone, hiss, and shadow. This ominous bit of sound design doesn't seem to rely all that much on the laptop trickery (unlike say Silent Night or This Invisible City), rather the sources of synth and guitars hold their own in producing these black sounds. 40 minutes long and limited to 100 copies. Already out of print from the label.
By now, most faithful aQ list readers are quite familiar with Swedish sound artist/field recordist/musician BJ Nilsen, we've heaped praise on most of his records, each a dark delicate balance of strange haunting sonic landscapes, and deftly manipulated sound, drones and textures and abstract explorations of sound, from the macroscopic to the micro, from thick sheets of rumbling low end thrum, to hushed crystalline chimes, to barely there snippets of found sound, to charged stretches of barren electronics.
This super limited cassette gathers up two live performances from back in 2008, both gorgeous examples of Nilsen's delicate and expressive soundscaping. Barely there shimmers, strange animalistic croaks and grunts, shimmering ultra delicate sine wave skree, deep whirling almost industrial sounding thrum, swoonsome stringlike melodies stretched into yet more layered drone, shards of muted glitch and crackling buzz, smeared into gauzy clouds of soft focus haze, the sounds whirling dizzily, druggy and drifty and dreamy, lush almost sci-fi cinematics, draped with softly crumbling melodies, and fragmented streaks of grinding high end, all woven into a surprisingly lush chunk of blown out dreamdoomdronemusic, a bit shoegazey, a little ethereal, but still rife with mechanical whirs and strange bits of found sound, samples and other sonic detritus, that makes it sound a little like a Philip Jeck performance, all warped and warbly. Whew! Fantastic stuff, not surprisingly, and most likely super limited, so grab one pronto!
Fancy full color covers, with some cool Savage Pencil collage/artwork inside and out!
BJ Nilsen was a precocious youth, having recorded for the acclaimed Cold Meat Industries with his project Morthound back when he was only a teenager. By the time he was 21, he began working under the name Hazard. While the first Hazard album Lech was a bit of a clumsy attempt at tape loop trickery and elliptical dark ambience, his second album North earned him a well-deserved spot on the Ash International / Touch roster with his shivering gray drones and shadowy, X-Files paranoia. After having recorded 5 albums as Hazard, Nilsen may have dropped the pseudonym for good, although his minimalist signature mastery over electricity and ether remains firmly intact. Like the bulk of his Hazard recordings, Nilsen composed Fade To White from field recordings coupled with some acoustic and electric instruments; and his edits and digital processing thoroughly abstracts all of the original sounds into gliding dronescapes that are at once imposingly monolithic yet always intriguing and welcoming. Aside from a crunchy passage of sodden leaves being mulched underfoot at the beginning of the record, most of the source material for Fade To White is thoroughly abstracted within his majestic crescendos for slow-burning tonal interplay and subtle psychoacoustics. Really fantastic!
The man we know better by his much more mysterious monicker, Hazard, steps out under his given name at this live performance, from a series curated by Fennesz in Germany in 2003. The sound though is unmistakenly Hazard. Using field recordings and found sounds, Nilsen gently blurs the edges of those recordings until they become indistinct and blurry, a drone of nature, crackly and warm, subtle and barely there. Not so much a drone record as a drone-y record. Lots of clatter and ambient detritus, footsteps, and passing vehicles, crickets and wind, but over the course of the performance, they shift and flow together until it's a warm and whirring wash of delicate low end rumbles and faraway shimmer. So beautiful.
It could be a coin toss as to who's our favorite recording artist on Touch. Christian Fennesz, Phillip Jeck, and Chris Watson are all impeccable musicians working for the legendary label; but BJ Nilsen is the one artist who may be lurking beneath the radar a bit and has NEVER failed to deliver a great record. His work has always been focused on the drone, beginning back in his earlier sample heavy orchestrations as Morthound through Cold Meat Industries and onto his recordings as Hazard through the Touch imprint Ash International. Throughout his career, he's often tapped into the psychic and physical cold of his native Swedish landscape. That was definitely the case for his North album as Hazard and the three alcoholically bent records made in collaboration with Stilluppsteypa for Helen Scarsdale; and it's certainly true for The Invisible City.
A shimmering glow from an aggregate of rasping frequencies opens the album, sounding almost like a chorus of poorly grounded street lights offering their sustained, post-Ligeti plainsong to vacant streets on some cold wintery morning in Oslo. After some exploratory field recordings of bees and sympathetic atmospherics, Nilsen snaps into a frozen blur of softened distortion (e.g. Machinefabriek, Fennesz, and Lawrence English) laced with half-melodic phrases and shortwave transmissions echoing like distant ghosts on "Virtual Resistance." It's a signature move for Nilsen, and it's one that he's masterfully executed. Another great Nilsen strategy: his phased loops with theatrically brooding ambience and tactile field recordings, reappears on that same track which morphs into a shadowy post-apocalyptic smear somewhere between Deathprod and Barn Owl. Digital errata suspended in darkened rooms, barren windswept tones, and haunted field recordings dominate The Invisible City, which stands as another monumental achievement for BJ Nilsen.
Benny Nilsen is a man perfectly content living in the northern regions of Europe, having grown up in Sweden and living no further south than Berlin. For while the long nights of winter can gnaw at one's soul, the long days of summer are something to look forward to. If his collaborative albums with Stilluppsteypa were the existentially grim albums of drunken wintry behavior, then The Short Night is his portrait of the summer time dreaminess of sunflecked, arctic nights. Having been such champions of Nilsen's work back when he was recording as Hazard for Ash International, we find it a little strange that so many people have qualified The Short Night as 'dark.' True, if you were to compare this album to the lilting work of Colleen or even to fellow label mate Biosphere, The Short Night would appear quite dark; but in the context of Nilsen's entire discography, The Short Night is a dramatically colorful piece of work. Sure, Nilsen's sustained low frequencies and a few moments of growling noise do have their devilish undertones; but throughout the album, Nilsen punctures these impressionist clouds with elegant electronic chorales of ethereal melodies that are surprisingly beautiful for BJ Nilsen. There is a melancholy to Nilsen's work, but melancholy isn't always synonymous with dark, as is the case here. In many ways, Nilsen has found himself trekking into the territories previously ventured by Fennesz and Machinefabriek, creating a transcendent sound through the tension between shoegazing / drone-based driftwork and subtle discordant agitation. This record is highly, highly recommended!
The last two outings from the Swedish drone composer BJ Nilsen have veered considerably outside of his normal modus operandi; and we certainly have to thank his Icelandic collaborators for steering him down the path of cheeky Euro-disco on the Super Great Love album recorded as Evil Madness. And then there was the masterfully hauntological outing from Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa on Big Shadow Montana. But dating back to his early recordings as Hazard, and even further back to his teenage / Cold Meat Industry days as Morthound, the cold, steel-minded drone has been central to the output of BJ Nilsen. The less than thrilling title of Vinyl returns to the sprawling, isolationist sounds that Nilsen chiselled and honed from various field recordings coupled with the more traditional instruments of guitar and piano. Ghostly tones flicker around floes of ice getting tossed in the surf and cold blasts of wind racing around what could be a forgotten WWII era bunker somewhere in the north of Sweden. Out of all of the natural elements, Nilsen extracts a variety of sustained drones, radioactive tonalities, and muted rumblings that beget metaphors of an existential emptiness. The thrumming low-end frequencies that crawl out of Nilsen's compositions are comparable to those of Thomas Koner, who hasn't made a record this good in many years! Be warned however, that the pressing of this vinyl is not terribly good, as our turntable's needle required a couple extra pennies to stay in the quiet grooves on the B-side of this album. Bafflingly limited to 250 copies.
This out of print cassette, now available on vinyl!
At the end of the 'alcohol trilogy' that BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa released via Helen Scarsdale, the dark isolationist rumble which dominated the previous two and half records was shattered by a robotic sequence of bleeping analog synth tones which spiralled deep into the void of the arctic night sky. Such a dramatic juxtaposition is not uncommon within the realm of Stilluppsteypa, but less so for Mr. Nilsen. And those Derbyshire / Dockstader / Oneohtrix like tones found on Passing Out (the finale mentioned above) is clearly the jumping off point for Space Finale - an epic 90 minute double lp of analog synthesis, captured, spliced, and cut, all on a Revox 2-channel tape machine. Amidst the vintage synth blips and sustained tones, Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa offer another narrative composition that moves from the vacant space station overrun by some unknown alien virus into the lair of the mad scientist who meanders dabbles on his Wurlizter (or some kind of organ, if it's not an actual Wurlizter) in minor key melancholy when not toiling away on an abomination that will somehow destroy the world. Shadowy ambience, fuzzed out tape hiss aggregation, weird dropouts and glitches on the tape that would make Leif Elggren proud, and much much more.
As mentioned above, Space Finale originally came out as a limited edition cassette earlier in 2010, but it was pretty clear that Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa intended this to be a 2lp, as both sides of the cassette were neatly broken into two suites a piece, perfectly suited for vinyl! This too is limited - just 500 - and highly recommend, as with all from this ongoing collaborative project.
Collaborations in the experimental scene come and go, so it's so great to see one that has some longevity. This is album number seven from BJ Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa, and the fourth released by the discerning Helen Scarsdale Agency label. Since this trio (Benny plus Sigtryggur and Helgi of Stilluppsteypa) unleashed their drunken drone trilogy through the aforementioned Agency, they've been venturing into all sorts of delirious bouts of murky psychedelic collages and imagined soundtracks. There were the weird ruminations upon a found cassette, turned into a mondo filmscore on Man From Deep River; and then the sci-fi opus of synth meanderings found on Space Finale. Now what may be the best to emerge since that earlier alcohol-inspired trilogy is this, the mercurial and hauntological album Big Shadow Montana. Two long-form pieces make up the album, with the A side standing as a hallucinatory foreshadowing of what is to come on the flip. Here, ghostly drones broadcast directly out of the haunted ballroom from The Shining, flickering with half-received transmissions, bumps in the night, and any number of other worldly sounds. Bits of structure emerge in this slow-motion churning of drone, shadow, and filigree coming across somewhere between the fucked up collages that seem to bring all of the Teenage Filmstars records to a close and the subterranean drone-rock sensibility of German Oak. When the record flips, a cosmic stream of vintage synths slump toward oblivion paralleling what has been done by Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never (both of whom have released work alongside this trio on Editions Mego), but before this can venture any further down the rabbit hole of Schnitzler and Schulze references, Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa slip into a faux-exotica guise with cheap Casiotone melodies swaying to and fro through old Les Baxter and Martin Denny records. It's a signature move for Stilluppsteypa, if anyone remembers how they mustered a similar strategy on The Best Possible Yet back in 1997. But the maudlin organ harmonies and percolating tone-bloop oscillations are much more confident here, emerging perfectly out of the drone fog like those organ-led numbers on that Deathprod boxset, only to slip into a twin engine thrum of inner-space expansion. In listening back to the second side of the album, it's clear that the first is a lengthy dub of the second, recast and recontextualized as a percussive ghost. Totally captivating through and through, and with a damn trippy cover sporting a vibrantly hypnotic, candy-colored mandala. Yup, it does have a download card. Yup, it is limited. Yup, it is highly recommended.
For a country whose entire population is only half that of San Francisco, Iceland has an exceptionally prolific arts community. One could easily look to the big Icelandic names in pop music (i.e. Bjork and Sigur Ros); but there's also slightly lesser known (but even more adventurous) music from the likes of Johann Johannson, Apparat Organ Quartet, and the entire output of the Kitchen Motors institution. But our personal favorite from Iceland remains Stilluppsteypa, whose dada drunkenness and black humor has developed arctic undercurrents to their increasingly bleak drone-based work. On Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna, the Stilluppsteypa duo of Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson have hooked up once again with the Swedish sound artist BJ Nilsen, perhaps best known for his triumphant elemental drone work as Hazard released through Touch. Sigmarsson sums up the communal idea behind this album as a "love for drones, Scandinavia, and alcohol." Of course, he then proceeds to type a polysyllabic onomatopoetic bunch of drunken text that makes our extend-o-spelling of doom seem trite by comparison.
The previous collaboration Vikinga Brennivin was an homage to the Icelandic firewater of the same name; yet it held a clarity and singlemindedness rarely attributed to alcoholic excess. Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna has that same contradictory dualism of conceptually relating to being fucked up without totally losing a grip on reality. Or perhaps these three Scandinavians have gotten so loaded that they drifted into a parallel universe of liquid physics and amorphous gravity. Needless to say, Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna is another masterful album of alchemical drone, that's even darker and more morose than its predecessor. Sonar pulses and crackles of wood break up the jet-black atmospheres of frozen electronic drones, resonant frequencies, and hallucinatory echoes rippling way out on the outer regions of the event horizon for this sonic black hole. At times falling close to the constant spiralling of Nurse With Wound's Salt Marie Celeste, and times recalling the best isolationism of Thomas Koner, and yet at others surpassing the blackened ambience of Nordvargr. Somber, magnificent, and exquisitely constructed!
The first three records from BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa were a trilogy dedicated to alcohol, and wintery drones, as semi-fictions about getting really drunk sometime in December and nearly passing out in a snowbank while gazing up at the northern lights. Goda Nott is something of an extension of these ideas, except maybe for the alcohol part. Sometime in the winter of 2011 / 2012, this trio found themselves snowed in at Stilluppsteypa's Icelandic studio with no food or water; and no way of getting out until the snow began to melt away. While they did sleep as much as they could to pass the time, they also busied themselves with recording the sounds of the snow, ice, and wind, attempting to monitor what - if any - activity may exist beyond their frozen enclave. The possibility of any existence beyond their own became uncertain, where any rustling of the snow could be a footstep or a resonant tone could be a snowplow. Through their indeterminant amount of time in that studio, they smeared these field recordings into rumbling drones and static tones that mirrored the onset of their collective madness, made audible in the crazy sounding whistling that one of them fastens to the blustery isolationism of the first side of Goda Nott. The second side is even more desolate than the first, rivaling Kevin Drumm's Imperial Distortion for the most empty, most gasping, most claustrophobic slab of audio bleakness we've ever heard. This is a radical turn away from the melancholy kosmiche electronica of their previous two albums Space Finale and Big Shadow Montana; but they are also rendering something wholly new to the bad-ass dronescaping they mastered early on. So fucking good.
Man From Deep River is another fantastic album in the ongoing Viking drone collaboration between BJ Nilsen, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, and Helgi Thorsson. Where their trilogy for Helen Scarsdale spoke the trials and tribulations of alcoholism through heavy minimalism, this one has a Mondo feel. The album is based upon a found tape from 1975, which served as the guide to their excursions; but even beyond this piece of audio verite, they frame the album as if it were the harrowing sound design for some fucked-up Italian pseudo documentary on any number of unsavory topics. The opening field recording of African mbira players and wood percussionists is tame enough, setting the stage for a narrative beyond their Scandinavian tundra. As these recordings degrade through incrementally increasing reverb, the signature Nilsen / Sigmarsson drone sound oozes forward amidst the chattering of European finches. Things quickly blacken with a Dracula haunting of carnivalesque organ chords played with heavy hands and minor keys. As all of this happens within the first 10 minutes, the album instantly has a very different feel than the alcohol trilogy's isolationism.
Deadly serious, flatlined tones emanate beyond this point, coupled with those same bird recordings which have now been deformed into mutating coos and slow-motion clucks as if refracted through a fun house mirror. Bits of spoken dialogue also creep forward presumably from that aforementioned found cassette, but swimming in deeper than deep reverberation and intermingling with warbling carnivalesque overtures spawned from the almighty drone. After a rasping collage of electrified field recordings, Man From Deep River concludes through a series of spectral arcs of modulating sound radiate the night sky like the northern lights filtered through auditory hallucinogenics. Only during these brief concluding moments do Nilsen & Stilluppstyepa allow for a sense of beauty to emerge from an otherwise terminally unsettling, if blackly psychedelic album.
Heavy.
Black.
Drone.
That's the shorthand of what happens on Passing Out, the finale to a trilogy proposed by Benny Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa on the virtues and vices of alcohol blurred into a sinister ambience. But of course, we cannot leave well enough alone; and the longhand version is necessary to position this album at the top of the heap of heavy, black, drone albums that we continue to clamor about. Yes, Passing Out is a fucking brilliant album; and if you were blown away by the previous two entries in this trilogy -- Vikinga Brennivin and Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna -- then you're pretty much obligated to pick this album up as well.
Much like Nilsen's old project Hazard and the previous two collaborative records, the album starts in shadow and stealth with an ominous drone backing windswept industrial field recordings. Ten minutes in, this desolate cold snaps with a blinding shimmer of sustained sound. These are ostensibly lighter tones, but given a malevolent twist. Another agitation of activity fires with some sort of tactile crackling that dissolves into a gaping Lustmord meets Popul Vuh passage with a soft rhythm from some slow motion maracas. Benny tells us that these stoned maracca shakes are courtesy of Oren Ambarchi. He also tells us that Leif Elggren also makes a vocal appearance somewhere on the album; but there's nothing that sounds like the sly narration on The Ghost Orchid here. Soon after, a cyclical growl of spectral guitars recall what Robert Hampson used to be able to sculpt through the guitar on his once mighty project Main; and all of this gives way to ring-modulated percolations with disembodied melodies scratched from old 78s that sound like a transistor radio slowly drowning in a giant metal tank filled with water. Deep resonant vibrations abound, with some creepy breathing in your ear whisperings that may be those Leif Elggren vocals that Benny was talking about. Gradually, all of these deep drones and shadowy overtures glide into a slumbering descent. But the Icelandic weirdoes in Stilluppsteypa couldn't just let the album drift away without their absurdism forcing through the door, as they blurt with a clinical repetition of blooping electronics smashed and grabbed from Raymond Scott circa Manhattan Research. It's an unsettling climax to the album, but one that works brilliantly through Stilluppsteypa's expert use of electro-acoustic black humor. But it's drone that dominates the album, as angelic wash and devilish rumble collude to end this magnificent album. Oblivion never sounded so good.
Passing Out is beautifully packaged with letterpressed and silkscreened artwork. Very nice.
At the end of the 'alcohol trilogy' that BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa released via Helen Scarsdale, the dark isolationist rumble which dominated the previous two and half records was shattered by a robotic sequence of bleeping analog synth tones which spiralled deep into the void of the arctic night sky. Such a dramatic juxtaposition is not uncommon within the realm of Stilluppsteypa, but less so for Mr. Nilsen. And those Derbyshire / Dockstader / Oneohtrix like tones found on Passing Out (the finale mentioned above) is clearly the jumping off point for Space Finale - an epic 90 minute cassette of analog synthesis, captured, spliced, and cut, all on a Revox 2-channel tape machine. Amidst the vintage synth blips and sustained tones, Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa offer another narrative composition that moves from the vacant space station overrun by some unknown alien virus into the lair of the mad scientist who meanders dabbles on his Wurlizter (or some kind of organ, if it's not an actual Wurlizter) in minor key melancholy when not toiling away on an abomination that will somehow destroy the world. Shadowy ambience, fuzzed out tape hiss aggregation, weird dropouts and glitches on the tape that would make Leif Elggren proud, and much much more. With so many cassette releases being issued as 10-15 minute programs, it's very welcome to come across a full 90 minute tape! Limited to 200 copies!!! We got 20 and they're going fast...
The cold winter nights stuck above the Arctic Circle have become the perfect climate for extended bouts of intoxication for many a Scandinavian. As a result, the capacity for the Icelandic duo Stilluppsteypa to consume alcohol is the stuff of legend. Alcohol has soaked into every fiber of their being; but its manifestation in their music (and their personalities for that matter) is closer to the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde allegory, as a raging alcoholic squirms just beneath the surface of a stoic Scandinavian temperment. Of course, where these two personalities come into conflict is where the art of Stilluppsteypa is realized. A schizoid tension runs throughout Stilluppsteypa's impressive catalogue of terminal drones, sputtered rhythms, and atomic fractures; and often this tension is dished out with a smug dollop of black humour and Dadaist absurdity. So, it's hardly unusual to come across Stilluppsteypa celebrating Vikinga Brennivin, the stringent Icelandic alcohol that has undoubtably killed some of their collective brain cells. Yet it was the stoic BJ Nilsen -- the Swedish electron wrangler whose best known for his work as Hazard -- who invited Stilluppsteypa to collaborate on Vikinga Brennivin. Their resultant collaboration is an existentialist allegory in which the three drunkenly stumble out in a Scandinavian winter night and spiral toward the inevitable point in which they blackout. Lest this be construed as a derelict piece of method acting, the craft that Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa brought to Vikinga Brennivin is impeccable, as the extended dronescapes breath with the majesty of distant fog horns and sparkle with the delicate light of countless stars cast down from the black heavens onto the frozen tundra below. Frightening and barren, yet hauntingly compelling, Vikinga Brennivin is an isolationist masterpiece.
We've got a handful of the first edition of Vikinga Brennivin which come housed in a jewel case with beautiful aged-copper inserts (as in actual metal, not copper ink) with white silk-screened printing. There's only 300 of the first edition, and the label has sold out of it! We'll let you know when the second edition will be released sometime in April 2005.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The cold winter nights stuck above the Arctic Circle have become the perfect climate for extended bouts of intoxication for many a Scandinavian. As a result, the capacity for the Icelandic duo Stilluppsteypa to consume alcohol is the stuff of legend. Alcohol has soaked into every fiber of their being; but its manifestation in their music (and their personalities for that matter) is closer to the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde allegory, as a raging alcoholic squirms just beneath the surface of a stoic Scandinavian temperment. Of course, where these two personalities come into conflict is where the art of Stilluppsteypa is realized. A schizoid tension runs throughout Stilluppsteypa's impressive catalogue of terminal drones, sputtered rhythms, and atomic fractures; and often this tension is dished out with a smug dollop of black humour and Dadaist absurdity. So, it's hardly unusual to come across Stilluppsteypa celebrating Vikinga Brennivin, the stringent Icelandic alcohol that has undoubtably killed some of their collective brain cells. Yet it was the stoic BJ Nilsen -- the Swedish electron wrangler whose best known for his work as Hazard -- who invited Stilluppsteypa to collaborate on Vikinga Brennivin. Their resultant collaboration is an existentialist allegory in which the three drunkenly stumble out in a Scandinavian winter night and spiral toward the inevitable point in which they blackout. Lest this be construed as a derelict piece of method acting, the craft that Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa brought to Vikinga Brennivin is impeccable, as the extended dronescapes breath with the majesty of distant fog horns and sparkle with the delicate light of countless stars cast down from the black heavens onto the frozen tundra below. Frightening and barren, yet hauntingly compelling, Vikinga Brennivin is an isolationist masterpiece.
We've got a handful of the first edition of Vikinga Brennivin which come housed in a jewel case with beautiful aged-copper inserts (as in actual metal, not copper ink) with white silk-screened printing. There's only 300 of the first edition, and the label has sold out of it! We'll let you know when the second edition will be released sometime in April 2005.
Ah, the plight of the supergroup touring the world with fits of drunkenness, wanton groupies, the drudgery of long travel days, and of course a couple of good gigs between. Such is the fictional landscape mapped out by the dada-punk sound artists BJ Nilsen, Sigtryggur Sigmarsson & Helgi Thorsson (aka Stilluppsteypa), and Anla Courtis. Nilsen & Stillupsteypa have been working together for many many years now, alternating releases between Editions Mego and The Helen Scarsdale Agency, proving to be a rare commodity in the realm of avant-electronics that a collaborative project can develop beyond the one-night stand of hedonistic improvisation followed by bouts of slumped file-sharing. No, their wintery psychedelic collages of existential madness, sheering drone, VHS horror sound design, and Haflerian confusion have developed into one hell of an expressionist vocabulary. In bringing the tireless traveller and exemplary paratactilist in his own right Anla Coutis into the fold, the notion of these four embarking on some stupid-ass world tour akin to the Travelling Wilburys seemed apt. So, they ran with it in the same lysergic madness that Leif Elggren musters in his ludicrously brilliant artforms. The languid drones of the opening number "Aurora Australis" (named for the southern hemisphere polar-light phenomenon) suspends cryptic field recordings and nocturnal creaks upon corona-glow drones that ebb and flow with a psychological tension that Lynch & Splet mastered on the Eraserhead soundtrack, but here pocked with frightening gasps for air and violent jabs of noise. Side B's title "Fish Is God" seems like the punchline to a surrealist's knock knock joke; and if that may be an apt analogy, these four take that credo of absurdity rather seriously. Rolling out oceanic swells of rippling tone that rise up its tidal crescendo only to have its motion cut out with a dramatic tug to silence before an unsettling chunk of guttural vocalizations of an one-man orgy fitted to scabs of fragmented white noise. It's hard to really tell what Courtis may be up to in these procedures, as the album is very much a continuation of those amazing records that Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa have crafted over the years. Brilliant stuff.
Holy shit! Is this fucking cool, or what? First of all, it's got a fucking piece of tile mounted to the cover. Second of all, it's limited to a mere 276 copies. Thirdly, some of the copies we got enjoy a delightful bouquet from the industrial strength adhesive used to bind the tile to cardboard sleeve, that may give an additionally psychoactive property to the album. And fourthly it's another brilliant collaboration between our favorite Scandinavian sound artists BJ Nilsen (from Sweden) and Stilluppsteypa (from Iceland), who had blown us away on their previous duets Vikinga Brennivin and Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna.
We're not really sure who Milan Sandbleistift is, but he's authored the other side of this split LP. His contribution is a teethgrinding piece of dirty drone wandering from lonely 8-bit electronic tones like a random piece of gear yanked from one of the Wolf Eyes' suitcases and allowed to growl in futility amidst a cloud of hiss and crackle pushed towards a radioactive self-immolation. It's pretty fucking cool, but even better is the glacial, grim drones from BJ Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa. They've long mastered a twisted, rumbling ambience that's dark and dense, mysterious and haunting, deep and rich, that always straddles the precision of laptop jockeys like Fennesz, Tim Hecker, Stefan Mathieu, etc. and the blackened atmospheres of Corrupted, Earth, SUNNO))), etc.; and their two sprawling tracks on this split LP are marvelous additions to their catalogues of drones that drift across the Arctic Sea on a massive rusted ship between Sweden and Iceland.
STRICTLY LIMITED to 276 copies of which we only got a handful. So once these are gone, they're gone forever.
It certainly is nice to be constantly guessing what this label is going to be putting out, as the last two releases we got in from Rune Grammofon were the bleak musique concrete from Arne Nordheim and the weird avant jazz from Supersilent. Here, Rune Grammofon presents Tove Nilsen, a Swedish chanteuse who sounds quite similar to and who gets a lot out of her backing band to create some lovely acoustic grooves (also quite similar to Bjork).
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Finally (legally) reissued.
So were you ever listening to Interpol, or Maximo Park, or Franz Ferdinand, or the Killers and just thought to yourself, "If only this band ROCKED a little bit harder. If they were just, you know, REALLY HEAVY"... well, then Nine Black Alps is for you. Sure they have the whole angular new wave guitars, the pusling groove, the killer hooks, but what they have that those other bands don't is guitars. We mean GUITARS. Big, loud, fuzzy distorted guitars. And real riffs. Er, that is RIFFS! Interpol or the Killers might make you want to dance around or bounce up and down or nod your head to the beat, but rarely do any of those sort of bands get your head banging and send you careening around your room in a wild rock frenzy of air guitar-ing or air drumming. Somebody (me maybe?) once described Nine Black Alps as a heavy metal Franz Ferdinand which isn't too far off the mark. We also hear a little Burning Brides, umm, actually the more we listen to this the more BB we hear. Which is definitely a good thing. Nine Black Alps are sort of like the perfect mix of neo darkwave electro new wave whatever-you-call-it and fuzzy grungy hard and heavy garage rock. Take all that angsty new wave and Joy Division worship, tight pants and angular haircuts, rought 'em up a bit, roll 'em in the dirt. smear the make-up a little, exchange some of that silk and sharkskin for some denim and leather, and then lock 'em in the garage with some Marshall stacks, some BIG drums, a handful of LSD and a bunch of weed! Fuck yeah!
Nine Horses is a collaboration between David Sylvian, Steve Jansen (Sylvian's longtime musical partner in Japan, Rain Crow Tree, etc.), and Burnt Friedman. In contrast to Sylvian's universally applauded Blemish album which fluttered elegantly to Christian Fennesz' arctic pixelations, Sylvian and co. adopt a cinematic jazz-pop pose for Snow Borne Sorrow, the first effort for Nine Horses. Sylvian's romantic croon takes center stage in front of Nine Horses' spare arrangements for stand-up bass, chiming vibraphones, in-the-mood-for-love atmospheres, sporadic percussive skitter, and perfunctory noirish saxophone solos that pop up wheneven Sylvain steps away from the microphone. Snow Borne Sorrow also features guest appearances from Stina Nordenstam, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Arve Henriksen. In two words, synthetically silky.
Like Radiohead before them, Nine Inch Nails decided to embrace the digital download delivery method as a preamble to the 'proper' CD release. In addition to a super cheap download price -- $5.00 for all of the material on 2 discs -- Trent Reznor also offered a hyper-commodity in the form of an overpackaged vinyl set costing something like $300.00 a pop. As novel as these forays into the brave new world of e-commerce are, it's just a shame that Nine Inch Nails made such a boring record. Sure, Trent Reznor has demonstrated some great taste in early Autechre and Coil, but his ability to manufacture an instrumental record like his influences is woefully lacking. Yes, Ghosts I-IV wants to be an ambitious double cd set of instrumentals; but the lock-step electronic loops, hackneyed sequencing circa 1991, and ambient smoke & shadow lack any real direction. At its best, Ghosts I-IV comes across like a more jet-black cyborg version of Labradford, but the languid guitar moments are few next to the tepid electronics. Maybe this is a post-modern throwback to the early '80s when post-punk and new-wave were experiments with what could be done through minimal equipment; but why not write a decent song? Considering that all of those recent compilations of French electro-punk from back in the day totally kick the ass of this sad-sack record, there's little point...
Holeeebuhgeezus! The opening of this new Nine Inch Nails album comes tearing out of your speaker like a torrent of mayhemic noise. After those few bars that effectively jar bowels, rattle nerves and reset clocks, Trent Reznor lays down some huge sounding, multilayered metallic modern rock. Despite the concept album's overriding aggressive machismo and dystopian machinations, the sixteen tracks can't escape Reznor's ever-present sensitive side and definite pop sensibilities. Sure it's all buzzing, thick and nasty, but at the same time it lays into some razor-sharp hooks. Sure to become a staple at industrial dance clubs across the nation, Year Zero is soooo much better than the last NIN album, the biteless [With_Teeth] from 2005.
Such a great title wasted on an album so lacking any bite. Groan, sorry, but how can you resist when it's served up on a platter like that?! So prepare yourself, you're probably gonna be reading a bunch of similar pun-infested NIN reviews.
Trent Reznor must've had a falling out with the old friendly wizard who guided him in the creation of his career defining brilliant album The Downward Spiral 'cause nothing he's done since has come anywhere near its stunning magic and potency. The most immediately noticeable difference on this, his first full album in five years, is the prominence of vocals. Yes, we were forewarned with prerelease interviews and press releases of this new focus, but we weren't quite prepared for Reznor actually *singing* this much. Frankly, next to his lyrics which do have a tendency to be cliche-ridden and nursery rhyme-y ("Will you bite the hand that feeds? Will you get up off your knees?"), his voice is his weakest instrument. It's great when he screams or whispers, but anything in between falls into uh-oh territory. That said, when his teeth-baring rage does surface (such as when he screams "Don't you fucking know what you are?!), it still seems somewhat forced and hollow. The fact that he says/screams/sings the word 'fuck' rather frequently offers little compensation. It's just a lazy substitute for actual fury. Furthermore, he recycles elements from Downward Spiral with far weaker results here (such as the 'stripping things down from an angry wall of guitars to a solitary piano' treatment -- even ending the album in said fashion). While Reznor has certainly crafted a great *sounding* album, he's done little to distinguish it from the rest of the pack. There's so many bands that sound like this these days. His past influence on other artists seems to have come full circle and collapsed in on itself. For instance, the thumpin' industrial dance-y fourth song "The Hand That Feeds" could easily be mistaken for something by The Faint, while at other points his delivery drips with faceless nu-metal emotiveness. Most puzzlingly though is the album's lead-off track "All The Love In The World" that veers off into a funkiness oddly resembling Fat Boy Slim's gospel-tinged "Praise You". Strange... and strangely disappointing.
Collection of deejay cuts produced by Niney the Observer between 1974 and 1978. Toasts by U-Roy, Big Youth, I-Roy, Ranking Trevor and Dillinger are featured here and each track is annotated nicely in the liner notes by Blood & Fire.
A legendary dub album never before released outside Jamaica -- and there with only a teeny run of 300 copies -- comes to us via the upstart Motion label, which is rapidly taking a place next to Blood & Fire as a reissuer of top notch Jamaican music. By the early 70's Niney The Observer had established himself as one of Jamaica's most innovative producers, but like most, had cut his teeth working behind the scenes for others. When Max Romeo's "Macabee" -- a track that the two had worked on together -- became a hit for Romeo, Niney made the decision to strike out on his own. He struck up a close working relationship with a group of young musicians calling themselves the Soul Syndicate and along with singer Dennis Brown found himself releasing numerous hit singles. Sledgehammer Dub is essentially the dub album of Dennis Brown's "Deep Down With Dennis Brown" the tracks for which were recorded as singles in 1974 (and released on LP in 1976) and is itself a bit of a rarity. Niney gave King Tubby the tapes for him to work dubs of for his sound system and the dubs that were later mixed again by King Tubby and then released in 1977 on a very limited white label pressing. A rare occurence in a dub mix that you'll notice on these tracks here is that the vocal parts were not mixed in at all, piece or parcel. On top of the 10 dubs from the original LP are added several bonus dubs (four for the CD, three for the new LP) and some excellent liner notes by David Katz (author of People Funny Boy, the biography of Lee Perry.)
Another awesome electronic oddity from the fine folks at Hospital Productions, this one the work of a duo called Ninos Du Brasil, who, true to their moniker, traffic in a strain of Brazilian music - but a warped, experimental version, the likes of which you've likely not heard before. Brazilian carnival music is definitely a reference point but so too is Southeast Asian gamelan music, as well as various strains of techno and electro, we hear shades of fellow modern experimental techno-technician Cut Hands for sure, and heck, they even have a song called "Sepultura", which is apparently in fact an homage of sorts to that Brazilian metal band, and their later records on which they did in fact incorporate traditional Brazilian percussion into their music. Weird stuff, but sonically, it all meshes into something super mesmerizing and hypnotic, and something not altogether removed from some of the other Hospital releases, like Vatican Shadow, Ron Morelli, Christian Cosmos, Silent Servant, etc.
After a brief bit of straight up Brazilian percussion over a bed of birdsong, the record quickly slips into some murky house, all deep muted pulsations, over which, wild percussion comes tumbling, and then also some synth bass, and martial snares, the result is a strange hybrid of Brazilian funk, drum corps and avant minimal house music, with the Brazilian percussion WAY up in the mix, and driving the sound. The song is also peppered with plenty of FX and subtle dub-isms, and once they lock in, barring some subtle fluctuations, it's totally looped and tranced out and endlessly mesmeric.
The more minimal tracks, like "Legios De Cupins", definitely sound right at home on Hospital, again, murky and a little bit muddy, strangely sequenced arpeggiations, the Brazilian influence much more subtle, but still groovy and darkly funky, with occasional bursts of more traditional percussion, the coolest bits are when they all blur and bleed into some fantastically heady hybrid. The "Sepultura" track, perhaps predictably, is the fiercest, the drums and percussion, blown out and super distorted, sounding very much like a Brazilian marching band, we could easily have listened to a whole album of this, but it soon slips back into something more traditional sounding, "Miragem" sounding like Brazilian street music, underpinned by some super subtle techno filigree, before blossoming into maybe the most 'party' sounding of the bunch, with distorted call and response vocals, more wild percussion, all anchored by a four on the flour techno pulse, before finally finishing off with the gorgeous sprawling "Novos Misterios", a low slung, downtempo creeper, sounding a bit like a Brazilian Tom Waits, all steep drum melodies, wreathed in record crackles and warm swaths of tape hiss, the rhythms here laid back and subtle, woozy and weary, and the perfect comedown, at least until the final few minutes, when the sound quickly builds to a noisy, psychedelic, heavy house, stutter rhythm / droned out finale!
