This is the long-awaited follow-up to the wonderful AQ-staff-and-customer-fave Milk Cult album! Since this time just 2/3 of Milk Cult participated in the making of the record, they're calling themselves Novex. But it's the very same delicious combination of
This album is also much more traditionally "pop" than the Milk Cult record, complete with real songs, choruses, Beatles-y hooks, indieboy vocals (sorta like the Apples in Stereo, sorta like Robyn Hitchcock) and a relatively sweet tone throughout, which when combined with the electronic and breakbeat stuff, makes for a keenly charming combo. Thus the record will appeal not only to fans of Milk Cult, but also Land of the Loops and other purveyors of looped fun.
(While supplies last, get a free set of three "Maxine" trading cards drawn and produced by Agent Nova / Dale Flattum of Milk Cult / Novex.)
Secret Of Secrets is the latest record from San Francisco clarinetist and composer (and long time aQ customer), Aaron Novik, and we were all ready to review it for the list, when we discovered that another friend of aQ, our pal Monte, had already picked up his copy from us, and LOVED it, and on top of that, Monte might just be the biggest fan of the Tzadik label that we know, so we figured he'd probably be able to review this way better than we ever could. So take it away Monte...
San Francisco clarinetist / composer Aaron Novik, assembles an all star cast of local Bay area musicians, among others, for his first Tzadik release. Featuring Fred Frith, William Winant, Ben Goldberg, Carla Kihlstedt, and Adam Theis, "Secrets of Secrets" is a brilliant new work exploring the Kabbalah, over the course of five long compositions that incorporate traditional klezmer song structures with contemporary classical music, as well as rock and metal, accented with brilliant improvisations, churning percussion, and passionately engaging string and brass arrangements.
"Secrets of Creation" starts things off with a soft pulsing bass line that is soon joined by violin. Slowly and methodically the song builds adding more strings and subtle brass accents. Then, a short tympani build leads to clarinets and violins playing a vibrant melody while roiling staccato processed bass hits pulsate underneath. The song then drifts into the 'experimental' world briefly before returning to that percussion heavy groove supporting the electric clarinet madness. And then, seemly out of nowhere, enters a crackling sample of old style klezmer, before returning to the preceding percussive, dense interplay of instruments.
Building on the intensity of the first song, "Secrets of the Divine World" starts off with all cylinders firing. Clarinet, bass, and percussion flirt with the rock world while firmly rooted in the Jewish tradition. When the gears shift the listener is transported to a mysterious sonic world where exotic strings and dumbek take center stage. Returning to the main theme, the players take turns participating in a series of abstract and psychedelic solos woven deftly into the piece as a whole.
Lush Jewish themed strings and clarinet in "Secrets of the Divine Chariot" remind the listener that this is on the 'Radical Jewish Culture' series and not the 'New Japan' series, respectively. Again, the balance between strings and brass is nothing short of brilliant. Leading again to dominating percussion, both acoustic and processed.
"Secrets of the Holy Name" focuses on a series of player solos. Fred Frith... shit, how do we even begin to describe this playing? Well, anyway, he starts things off with one of his most empathic and sensitive solos we can ever recall hearing (and we've been listening to him for years) over a low clarinet drone. From there violin and clarinet solos bleed together creating an improvised psychedelic world of Jewish beauty. Despite the abstract, drifty nature of this song, it's still clearly referencing the music's roots, the song is based on a 'Donia', which is a formless improvisational lament in the Jewish tradition that references Jewish prayer and other Eastern melodic modes.
Like the best Tzadik releases (and there are a lot of them), "Secrets of Secrets" is original and genre defying while respecting the past. It builds on traditions, while simultaneously tearing them down, creating a new sound world of complexity and beauty, mystery and passion.
Horns! We love 'em! Especially when they're Canadian horns! What the hell do we mean by that?! Thanks for askin'... we're particularly recalling with much fondness those fine brassy tones of ol' AQ faves Zumpano. Ah, but we digress. These Canucks are label brethren of the New Pornographers and well ... there really must be something in the water up there! From the first track Novillero mean business! There's a balance of mature urgency and youthful exuberance in their latest full length Aim Right For The Holes In Their Lives. Lead vocalist Rod Slaughter sounds positively fired up. Have to say, some new musical magic has definitely clicked into place with his new band. Whereas his former two-piece Duotang (another fine Mint Records' pop band) crafted amazingly full, '60s-influenced mod-ish tunes with just vocals, bass guitar and drums, the Novillero quartet encorporates a much broader spectrum of sounds blending organ, piano, accordion, Moog synths, the aforementioned horns and a healthy dose of tambourine into the mix. Each band member tackles an array of instruments. Theirs is pop music that packs a (still mod-tinged) punch with snappy choruses, soaring melodies and buoyant vocal harmonies that ring with the joyous highs akin to not only those of Carl Newman and co., but also Sloan or The Posies -- the latter particularly when bandmate Grant Johnson takes the mic. However, this album's lusher side also align the band with fellow current gorgeous grand popsters such as Arcade Fire, Stars and The Dears, but with a bigger tiger in their tank. Check out their wonderful "Insomnia" and "The Hypothesist". They spend eleven songs igniting their dazzling pop fireworks, and bring things to a soft, sweet finish with the duet "Let's Pull Over Here". Oooh, the song recalls classic swooning duets by the likes of Gainsbourg and Bardot. Recommended.
A split release between like-minded, combat-folk minstrels Novy Svet and Spettro Family on the local imprint Black Horizons. Novy Svet hail from the Death In June / Der Blutharsch aesthetic of an elegant and bleak romanticism bathed in the pomp of militaristic chic and a fast-n-loose use of totalitarian imagery. This track marks the first recorded material from Novy Svet in close to five years. The band's ringleader Jurgen Weber has oft proclaimed his current release as Novy Svet's final statement; and the pronouncement in 2008 looked to be conclusive. But once again, Novy Svet return even if it is a brief exegesis in the form one half of a split seven inch. Here, the band delivers a quiet, dark, and impassioned ballad through an acoustically strummed dark folk laced with polyglot lyrics. Spettro Family delivers more of a cinematic prog-horror with the heavy synth arpeggiations channelled directly from John Carpenter and Goblin. With the single cut at 45 rpm, the tracks from both acts are teasingly short. The cover features a split portrait of Jarboe and Jessica Way of Worm Ouroboros, neither of whom have anything to do with the musical content within. Limited? You bet.
Second record from this Georgia outfit fronted by Andy LeMaster from Bright Eyes. While not as patently weird as their debut, this is still a gorgeously off kilter chunk of moody, country tinged, beat driven indie jangle and swoon. Dark and minor key, with keening vocals that soar over an amazing array of harmonies, and rich sonic tapestries. Guitars are soaked in syrupy effects, drums become electronic skitters, acoustic guitars strummed over dark and mysterious sonic chasms, melodies twist and pulse, sounds drone and twang, warble and shudder, slither and wheeze. But the vocals definitely make it. LeMaster sings in a gorgeous and rich tenor, sounding effortless but tortured, commanding even at a whisper, miserable even at a roar. A sweetly perfect amalgam of Joel Phelps (ex-Silkworm), Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes and Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse. Wasn't sure we liked this as much as the first one, but the more we listen, the more we absolutely do. Features guest vocals from Conor Oberst and Michael Stipe of R.E.M.
From Athens, GA comes a nice breath of fresh air -- Now It's Overhead. The oddly-named band is two boys (the main guy is Andy LeMasters) and two girls (both of Azure Ray), all of whom have strong Bright Eyes connections, and they have made a mellow,
(Andee just did the Ladysmith Black Mambazo dance here in the office, it truly must be seen to be believed... where's Daniel Robin with the video camera whan ya need him?)
We hate to say it, or maybe we don't really hate to say it, but it seems like, well, you could pass a (rather draconian) law that no new music is allowed to be recorded or released, EVER, and even then, just by virtue of folks digging up and reissuing old obscure recordings from the '60s, '70s, etc., there'd still be enough awesome releases for Aquarius at least to still have a kick ass New Arrivals list of reviews every two weeks, right?? The cool reissues that keep on coming seem like proof of this. Here's the latest great example.
Long forgotten, private press, early '70s American psych-prog, rather pastoral (it's dedicated to the pagan Greek god Pan after all), masterminded by some earnest, bearded prog nerd doing his musicianly best to emulate his English/European heroes of the day, shades of Pink Floyd and King Crimson. That sorta sums up this all-instrumental album, recorded by composer William Nowik with a little help from his friends somewhere in upstate New York back in 1974. Except, that doesn't quite convey quite how fantastic and unusual Pan Symphony In E Minor really is! Possibly Nowik was into krautrock too, and we do know that the Master Musicians Of Joujouka had some influence on his musical vision of Pan.
Nowik's meticulously crafted, moody song-suites flow gorgeously, making precise sudden shifts as well. There'll be mellow rustic folkiness one moment, then -wham- it starts rockin' out with some fairly heavy guitar riffing, but then things wend and wind along further, and it's back to all-acoustic folk or jazzy bliss, but wyrd y'know, and then wyrder, with parts that are downright experimental, such as the passage towards the end of the disc which sounds like people climbing stairs while a church organ plays, followed by the sounds of a ticking clock, then plinking thumb piano...
There's just something ELSE to Nowik's music, an x-factor (the -actual- influence of Pan, perhaps?) that's hard to define but makes it more than just another obscure '70s prog effort. He takes things further, the music goes places other than where you'd expect, and dwells there longer, before heading off in another surprising direction (acoustic folky groove morphing into disjointed funk, ferinstance, at one point). But in all cases it really pulls you naturally there along with it. And it's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Much will appeal to fans of Six Organs of Admittance, among other acts (Citay too?), we think.
The cd booklet is filled with enthused liner notes & lots of vintage b&w photos, giving a glimpse into the album's creation and the subsequent career of its creator. Since only a mere handful of copies were originally pressed in '74, and it was barely distributed to boot, thank Pan that it's been reissued and more folks can enjoy this today.
We will note one oddity of the cd reissue: though there's 14 tracks listed, the actual disc is only indexed into 3 tracks (one very short, two quite long). Doesn't really matter though, as you should listen to the whole thing all the way through every time anyway...
Second Load release from this dark and weird instrumental band from Norway featuring our pal Kjetil Brandsdal, whom the more 'experimental' among you might know as a solo drone musician. But playing bass and baritone guitar in Noxagt he makes a much more *rock* racket. Actually Noxagt are hard to pin down, surely fitting in among the other Load label misfits while doing something unlike anyone else. That's because their sound has evolved from the short sharp 'Nor Wave' punk fuckery of their earlier releases into something...folky. But very heavy. The instrumentation is key. Along with Kjetil's bass, and the drumming of Jan Kyvik, what stands out is the viola (and violin and piano) played by Nils Erga. The Iron Point is an album his of cyclic string drones wedded to crunching, spronging bass and sometimes almost black metallish blasting drums. With sudden prog-rock changes, punk/metal urgency, and the aforementioned folkish melody...all instrumental except for the vocals of guest Hagbard Heien on traditional tune "Kling No Klokka" which is a fine surprise. Speaking of surprises, the disc concludes with Noxagt covering "Regions of May" by Tom Rapp of Pearls Before Swine! Gentle yet bomastic, it's lighter than what's come before yet totally fits in on an album that overall we think is Noxagt's best yet, wherein they've really developed into something more melodic, more 'folky' yet even heavier and more focussed than before. And, continuing a tradition begun on their last album, there's smart ass liner notes courtesy of noted British smart ass Stefan Jaworzyn (ex-Skullflower). Also, again production by noted producer Billy Anderson, who knows as much as anyone about heaviness. (Nice cover/design by the way -- you can tell Kjetil is a big record collector.)
There's a lot of weird stuff going on with this Noxagt band. First, it's maybe not the kind of band you would imagine finding experimental drone guitarist Kjetil Brandsal fronting. And playing bass no less. You might not expect it, but once you hear it, it makes perfect sense. And Noxagt has an instrumental line-up that you definitely don't see everyday: bass, drums, and...viola! But once you hear the viola, again it makes perfect sense. And you also then wouldn't necessarily expect to find this band on Rhode Island's Load records, although they fit quite nicely between the neanderthal noise rock of Pink And Brown and the spastic grind prog of Lightning Bolt. So here we are, the second record from Norway's Noxagt, a sludgy thud rock band in the finest tradition of pummelling crunch and spastic clomp. Pretty fucking heavy for just a bass and a viola. Take some Jesus Lizard, some Load rock, some Bulb rock, some eighties Homestead rock, and some modern noise rock (Laddio Bolocko maybe) and mush it all together into a stinky little rehearsal space or an even stinkier little van, and you get this brief (26 minutes) blast of burly, instrumental quasi-abstract abrasiveness. Produced by heaviness guru Billy Anderson (Sleep, High On Fire, Cathedral, etc.) with really funny liner notes by Stefan Jaworzyn (Skullflower, Whitehouse, Ascension, etc.) And the inside is one of those amazing pictures that when you stare at it long enough with your eyes blurred just the right way a hidden 3-D image pops up. So cool!
MPEG Download: "Mek It Burn" [/audio/noxagtmekitburn.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Mek It Burn" [/audio/noxagtmekitburn.m3u]
Kjetil Brandsdal may be known best for his antique, guitar-grit drones that got released on Corpus Hermeticum and Ecstatic Peace, but he's also been quite active in the "Nor Wav" scene in his native Norway. Where much of the No Wave sensibilities have been resurfacing in the US through the angular, noise-core, costume rock of Pink & Brown and Lightning Bolt, Brandsdal's Noxagt finds
Invisible Birds introduces us to another exceptional composer through their ongoing series of limited edition hand-fabricated cd-rs, where we had been previously graced by the langous tones of Arthur De Eriomem and got a brilliant full length out of Thomas Bel. Here, the imprint offers us an album from the Japanese ambient composer Tomonari Nozaki who started out in the techno scene, but grew fascinated with the purely analogue forms of tape loops and and synthesizers. A sense of rhythm and timing is definitely at play in his work, alluding to the beatless Pop Ambient sensibility that Wolfgang Voigt inspired through his classic Gas albums; but the placid, cinematic grandeur of Nozaki's sources harken more to The Caretaker and William Basinski's emotionally laden scores of forgotten dreams. The four lengthy tracks could endlessly cycle through their maudlin melodies that are stretched and swept as if carried away the currents of a cold, gray ocean. Like Basinski, Nozaki is not averse to including the dusty crackle, ferric drop-outs, and tape machined errors in with his composition. They do come across with a greater deal of randomness than on the aggregated decomposition of Basinski's Disintegration Loops; but all of the wooziness and gauzy ambience makes for a beautifully spellbinding listen. Limited to 100 copies.
This is the debut full length from Floridian experimental blacknoize / psychedelic drone technicians NRIII, it just showed up in the mail one day, we weren't sure what to expect, we did dig the strange two-headed-horse-and-sigil on the cover, but the second we threw it on, we pretty much knew that folks into the sort of abstract ambient blackness conjured up by folks like Sevile Sect, Locrian, Ural Umbo, Gog and the like, NRIII could very well have just found their favorite band.
That said, NRIII's sound definitely hews closer to the noise side of the sonic spectrum, the vibe very industrial, and at times reminding us of SF outfit Sutekh Hexen, the same sort of grim blacknoise vibe, but NRIII definitely have their own thing going on, taking weird blasts of almost metallic sounding percussion, strange sampled voices, dense blackened shimmers, super distorted blasts of psychedelic noise, or alien sounding processed vocals, and transforming them into something super atmospheric, darkly terrifying, and strangely and very abstractly rhythmic.
The sound shifts dramatically from brittle shards of hiss and skree, to churning, rumbling blackened rumble, both sides often peppered with strange jagged fragments that seem to act as vocals, but sound more like steam escaping from fractured vents, or blasts of white noise, those 'vocals' seeming to ooze into drifting clouds, or blurring into thick crumbling layers, the tracks driven by simple dubbed out machinelike rhythms, sometimes sounding like the churning chug of a train, other times the lumbering crush of ultradoom, and still others like a skipping jazz cd (which is the only track to feature some wild sax skronk). But even there, that skittery stuttery chaos is underpinned by ominous moans and bizarre demonic vocalizations.
Here and there the sounds do seem to coalesce into a sort of abstract black metal, twisted into strange and -nearly- unrecognizable shapes, but still retaining that a hellborn grim black energy and abject demonic fury. But just as often, the sound seems to collapse into strange tangles of churning speaker shredding low end and thick corrosive industrial crunch, often accompanied by those same sick vokills creating a strange sort of industrial black psych crush that KILLS.
Needless to say, WAY recommended.
First lp from these Florida experimental blacknoise / psychedelic dronelords, and like their Solus Patior cd-r we reviewed back in 2012, it's another terrifyingly grim landscape of haunting black ambiance, post industrial crush, and blackened grimnity. The band lacing hellish vokills over softly swirling drifts, burying strange fractured rhythms, beneath cascades of glitch and squelch, often all blurred into something downright dreamy, but just as often, splintering into something abjectly noisy and filthy. The opening track here sets the template, with some venomous vocalizations WAY up in the mix, over a bed of muted pulsations, moaning melodies, mysterious chordal smears, the background sound surprisingly tranquil, those vox transforming the sound into something much more harrowing and hellish.
The rest of the record tends toward the more brutal, but manages the nearly impossible task of crafting a noise record, that manages to be hypnotic and listenable, mesmerizing, and in its own way, blackly beautiful. The shorter tracks here are blasts of grinding glitch, fractured electronics, clouds of swirling static, monk like chants, and crumblingly distorted gristle, often settling into downright beauty, but before you know it, launching right back into another burst of blacknoise or churning power electronics. The longer tracks deliver some seriously stunning sound design, fields of sonar pings, woven into crystalline sonic lattices, of hushed samples tangled into strange textures, those backdrops, often perfectly offsetting the more bombastic and abrasive sonics up front, although in many cases, NRIII let it drift, creating haunting ambience, epic sprawls of mysterious minimalism, the vokills are often present there too, but are WAY off in the distance, buried in the mix, like another layer of static, while above it, barely there sounds hover and shimmer. In fact, much of the second half of the record tends towards the surprisingly serene, the noisiness dialed back, crafter into something more textural, it's as if side two was designed as a blissed out soft noise come down antidote for the beautiful brutality of the first side. Fantastic stuff, and the sort of rare noise that might even appeal to those who generally find noise music is not their thing.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered.
NSU's record taught me (Allan) a little lesson. I came across a cd reissue of the lone LP by this obscure Scottish sixties psych band a couple years ago, and picked it up for its heaviness potential (it had been described as being really heavy by an overseas dealer). At first hearing, though, the heaviness I wanted wasn't really there. I had been hoping for a proto-metal album like, say, Toad or Leaf Hound, and so was disappointed and set the NSU aside. But then, some weeks later, I gave it another chance and, as so often happens when you aren't judging something by your wishful expectations but instead taking it on its own terms, I ended up really really liking it. I realized, this was a pretty nifty album with some marvelous songs and vibe from a pretty cool band, that while not quite competition for Black Sabbath or Blue Cheer, still operates on the cusp of proto-metal heavy, sixties style, and surely provides lots of wailing guitar! So now we're quite happy to have this in stock, a new nice digipack cd reissue of what we've come to regard as a bit of a gem, if you have any sort of a soft spot for Cream-y British '60s guitar blues psychedelia! Originally released in 1969 on Stable, the same label (and year) as the record by Lemmy's old band Sam Gopal that we love so much, and that this reminds us of just a bit, especially the more mellow and laid back parts, and they also share a penchant for lyrical subject matter that tends towards the dark and/or druggy! One song is even simply titled "Stoned".
So again, a lesson, give stuff more than one listen! You never know what you might like better then second time... We're still wondering, though: N.S.U.? What's it stand for?
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY. [/cat/experimental131.html]
Early '70s jazz rock fusion from this British band, pioneers in the field, who later contributed members to Soft Machine. With an instrumental line-up that included trumpet, piano, oboe, sax, flute, bass, guitar, and drums, this never before released live 1971 radio concert recording demonstrates the funky rhythmic drive of the band, and features some of the wild acid guitar skronk of the legendary Ray Russell in his only recorded (and previously unknown) appearance with Nucleus! With him on board, this is not quite so loose and out-limits pushing as Miles' 70s rock/jazz ensembles, but gettin' there.
Featuring folks from some other Portland aQ faves like Fontanelle, Strategy, and Valet, Nudge seem to have really hit their stride and found their voice on this, their fourth outing. With the wonderfully melty and psychedelic vocal delivery of Honey Owens (Valet, Jackie O Motherfucker) swirling in the midst of subtle electronics and smoky instrumentation, As Good As Gone kind of sounds like some amazing amalgamation of Mazzy Star, Grouper, Windy & Carl and Nite Jewel, if they all joined forces for a blissed out 4AD inspired late night musical love affair. Dazed and hazy in all the right ways, with such a nice touch on the electronics that gives the record its unique slant on cloud surfing shoegaze glory. So good!
Just like the Animal Collective has their side-project Jane, Jackie-O Motherfucker has Nudge as the stoned, organic little brother, a hybrid between freeform, post-rock improvisations and the structural ideals of electronica. This Portland based trio features Honey Owens (one of the many musicians to pass through the revolving Jackie-O membership door), Brian Foote (who hails from Fontanelle), and Paul Dickow (who performs with Foote in Fontanelle and solo as Strategy). Like Gang-Gang Dance, Nudge doesn't really settle into any particular style, but rather adopt an "adventurous for the sake of being adventurous" flirtatiousness that smugly interjects electronic squiggles and bleating sax lines onto super-blunted dub bass lines and primitive drum machine phrases. Richly sloppy, or sloppily rich, you be the judge.
The Nightfeeders is the newest release from Olympia Washington's, Nudity! This group of self-proclaimed astral travellers brings us a highly limited, vinyl-only 12" of heavy kraut freak-out! Their sound is huge and galactic, bluesy and blown out, the perfect formula for some solid psychedelic jams. Music that makes you want to knock over amps and take your shirt off. Get this one before it's too late, we only have a handful... you don't want to be shirtless without it.
We first heard Cian Nugent on the recent volume of Tompkin Square's Imaginational Anthem series. For such a young newcomer (he's still a teenager!) to the ever crowded solo acoustic scene, his track was a highlight among the more seasoned performers like Steffen Basho-Jungens and R. Keenan Lawler. Childhood, Christian Lies & Slaughter documents a live performance (his fourth ever!) in Nugent's home town of Dublin, Ireland. Released on Jozef Van Wissem's Incunabulum imprint, the performance showcases the talent that has folks turning heads. Sweetly beautiful melodies that swing and swirl into complex and melancholic knots. Of course the Takoma influences are ever-present but they lean toward Leo Kottke rather than John Fahey in using early American song-form structures. Yet Nugent's playing also draws from Davy Graham's folk-blues raga style as well as Balkan gypsy rhythms that offer something slightly different than we've heard before. Something wonderously ineffable that we can't quite put our fingers on, but makes us ever curious to hear more.
We first heard from Cian Nugent on the Robbie Basho tribute We Are All One In The Sun, but hadn't heard much since, which makes sense seeing that as far as we can tell, this is the first readily available full length from this Irish guitarist. Who, as you might imagine, just from having taken part in that Basho tribute, whether you actually heard it or not, is another purveyor of modern Appalachia, carrying on the tradition of Fahey, Basho and Kottke, a la James Blackshaw, Ilyas Ahmed, Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, Marisa Anderson, and the 20 minute opening track here positions Nugent well within that pantheon, with his own take on the sound, dark, and tense, clear and crystalline, with lots of droning notes, subtle overtones, less melodic than many of his contemporaries and more textural, although as the track progresses, Nugent's fingerpicking becomes more elaborate, and a more traditional Appalachia surfaces within his dark droney tones, his sound dynamic and varied, lots of ebb and flow, and then close to the end, the sound seems to expand a hundredfold, with an out of nowhere swarm of layered drones, which add a whole other dimension to the piece.
The second track starts out similarly, albeit a bit more traditionally, until the band kicks in, yep, the band, a full band, drums, strings, horns, with Nugent taking on organ duty as well, the sound blossoming into something more than old timey Appalachia worship, the sound spare and sparse, again very dynamic, until about three minutes in, when the song seems to coalesce into a sort of Appalachia flecked chamber pop, but only for a few minutes, the song, also quite epic at 24+ minutes takes lots of twists and turns, slipping back into something more skeletal and darkly brooding, then dark and cacophonous, droney and softly psychedelic, then hushed and barely there, before a bit more chamber pop, with a slow build to something intense and slightly cacophonous, and then finally, a slow, lush, horn flecked steel string final movement. So lovely, fans of modern guitar music and classic "American primitive" (especially both) would do well to check this out.
Nuisance is an interstate power electronics / noise assault group with its members hailing from both the Bay Area and Chicago. It looks as if Blake Edwards of Vertonen and Thomas Dimuzio have something to do with this one. Opening with blistering shards of Whitehouse like high frequencies piercings, Nuisance gradually expands into the full-frequency power found in the Merzbow and
The return of our favorite faerical blasting punk rockers, France's new wave black crust dynamic duo Nuit Noire. We went nuts for this band the first time we heard them, expecting some sort of grim black buzz, seeing as they were signed to a black metal label, were distributed by black metal distros, etc., but instead we had our blocks knocked totally off, by their furious short sharp bursts of super tweaked angular riffing, flurries of chaotic drumming, and some of the most tweaked damaged whiny yelpingly brilliant vocals ever! All tangled up into a confusional blackened aggro metallic pop, part punk rock, part grim buzz, part no wave, part new wave.
In the past we described Nuit Noire as sounding like a black metal Rudimentary Peni, but we're also hearing plenty of Christian Death, Joy Division, Crass and weirdly enough, on this new one more than ever, the Toy Dolls, mostly due to vocalist Tenebras' voice which is a dead ringer for the Toy Dolls' Olga.
This new disc is half new tracks, half older classics recorded live. All of em fantastic of course. The new tracks are even shorter and poppier and more fucked up than before. Take the second track "I Am A Fairy", a crusty gloomy jam, with a killer main riff, streaks of high end new wave squiggle, and the vocals, just repeating the title over and over and over, super fast, then drawn out and crooned, while the music beneath shifts from hooky and poppy to blasting and buzzing. Or how about "I Love You", another furious eighties crust punk jam, but with some black buzz spread over the top, and a totally strange, but incredibly catchy vocal line, sung sort of like "I love yooooooooooooo, I love yooooooooooooou". The rest of the tracks range from loping eighties grooves to washed out dreamy murk to chaotic old school punk rock to full on lo-fi grim black metal, usually all in the same song.
It's really hard to describe the sound, we're pretty surprised this stuff appeals to black metallers at all, there is some buzz and some serious riffing, but it's way more punk, and way more new wave, and the vocals are so strange and high and hysterical and freaked out and over the top, they sort of define Nuit Noire's sound, and are definitely the element that will make it or break it for you.
The live tracks are awesome. And if we didn't know it would have been hard pressed to even realize they were live. Almost the exact sound quality (maybe they're just live in the studio, but then why re-record old songs?) heavy and buzzy and furious and catchy as fuck. Even a wicked version of their "Faeries Of Paper" a song we proclaimed to be one of "the best songs EVER" with one of the greatest catchiest weirdest riffs we've ever heard. A few of the other live tracks we hadn't heard before and are just as good, if not even better than the songs we already loved.
Need more reasons to love these guys? Howabout the cool pencil drawings of the band members, one depicted as a huge monster-armed drumming demon, head cloaked in shadow, the other a faerie, in tunic and cape, big eyes and pointed ears, mic cable wrapped around a broadsword stuck in the ground. Or howabout the photo on the back of the cd, a very skinny, nearly naked band member, clad in a loin cloth and a cape, holding a guitar aloft in one hand, a sword in the other, cape spread out like the wings of a bat.
C'mon!!! How much more perfect can a band be? So goddamn recommended.
We love this band so much. We were never able to get enough of their last record to list, but now that the new one is here, it's time to finally share our crazy love of this band with the loyal AQ faithful.
Ostensibly a black metal band, but sonically anything but. Imagine a super lo-fi, sort of new wave, gothy crusty punk rock band but with buzzing insectoid riffing and occasional furious blast beats. Sort of like a black metal Rudimentary Peni, with a vocalist who sounds a bit like a cross between Roz Williams of Christian Death and Mark E. Smith from the Fall. Whiney and snotty, super dramatic and over the top, even at their most buzzing and black, the vocals kick in and the band is transformed back into some crusty black new wave weirdness. And the guitar parts are super weird, strange harmonies, a little new wave, but a little NO wave as well. But the band themselves don't consider their music to be black metal anyway. A quick look at their website reveals the fact that they consider themselves "faerical blasting punk!" Just check out the note from the band on their website:
"Nuit Noire is the only faerical blasting punk band in the world. The music comes directly from the depths of the night, where the fairies stay hidden from the humans. We love them and they love us."
Woah. Just one more reason to love these guys. Weird angular guitars, fucked up arrangements, damaged new wave riffing, some black blasts, a demonic shriek here and there, all that and faeries too!!
Back in January, we reviewed the most recent record from new wave black metal crustpop forest faeiries Nuit Noire, and that record,�Infantile Espieglery, while touted as a black metal record, was anything but, a gorgeous chunk of angular gothy new wave black punk, with buzzing guitars and thrashing drums, haunting howled and wailed vocals, and some of the most amazing riffs and hooks ever.�
We had been trying to get NN's first record for ages with no luck, until now. We got what appear to be the very last copies direct from the band, so once these are gone, there's a very good chance we won't be able to get more. So quick on the trigger wins the prize. We have about 25 of these, so act fast...
Lunar Deflagration is just as amazing as�Infantile Espieglery, and if anything it might be a little bit heavier and punkier, with some super fast blasting, and some furious riffing, but the heart of both records is the weird angular new wave guitar melodies, that end up drifting solo over a sea of amp buzz, before the band inevitably stumbles into motion and wraps those angular melodies around a careening riff and explodes into an awesome thrashing frenzy. And again the vocals are a whiney new wave sneer, more Mark E. Smith or Roz Williams than any black metal mouthpiece we can think of, scrambling over the riffs and chaotic blast beats while the drums pound away and the bass throbs and slithers.�
The sound is super lo-fi as well, perfectly complimenting the sound and songs. Like we mentioned before the best comparison we can think of is like a more black metal Rudimentary Peni. Which if you really even need to ask, is about as awesome a sound as we can think of!�
Just check out "Fairies Of Paper", one of the best songs EVER. Yeah, you heard us, not just on this record, or best crust black pop song ever, but just one of the best songs EVER. With an opening and recurring riff that TOTALLY DESTROYS. And the record is packed with songs like that, the classic L.A. punk sounding "Ton Stupide Chemin", the galloping goth new wave of "Voice Of The Night", every song is a catchy should have been classic. It still boggles the mind why these guys were ever pegged as black metal, sure there's plenty of buzz, but if you ask us, punk rockers and crusties everywhere should be busy sewing Nuit Noire patches onto their vests right there alongside Rudimentary Peni, Crass and all the others...
Every once in a while, someone out there is thinking just like us. It's a little scary, sure, but we gotta love it. Of course -WE- think that the buzzing blackwave of French outfit Nuit Noire is the perfect match for the confusional acoustic depressive black metal of Finnish duo Circle Of Ouroborus. But to see it finally happen. It's the metal music nerd version of fantasy baseball, when that team that you made up but could never happen in real life does...
And so it is with our league of fantasy black metal. These two bands have very little in common, except for the fact that they are about as unconventional as black metal can get, so much so that most "true" black metallers probably wouldn't consider either to actually be black metal, or metal at all for that matter, and the fact that both bands completely and utterly rule.
It's a pricey one, this 7", due to high manufacturing costs, and the ever worsening dollar, but this is most definitely a $12 single. We've shelled out $2 for singles in the past and felt ripped off, but once we got our ears on these tracks, money was no object!
Nuit Noire return with their bizarre blackened new wave buzz, a sort of Darkthrone meets Rudimentary Peni, or Immortal covering the Toy Dolls, a killer snarling hook filled blast of whiney vocals, queer guitar melodies, furious blast beats, all swaddled in loads and loads of buzz. Recorded during the same sessions that yielded the AQ fave Infantile Espieglery, these two tracks are blinding blasts of punk rock sped up and painted black, thrashy, and blasting, simple and hypnotic, with stretches of just guitar and drums and some outrageously melodic bits nestled right there amidst the furious fuzz, all peppered with strange squiggly licks and clouds of spacey FX and those perfect wailing about-to-crack vocals. So goddamn good.
And as if that weren't enough, Finland's Circle Of Ouroborus just keep getting better and better and more musical and melodic, which would normally spell doom for most of the bands we love (and we don't mean the good kind of doom), but these guys manage to retain all the fucked up-ness that made them so special, while continuing to forge ahead. A plodding depressive buzz, moody and melancholic, loping rhythms, and super weird Joy Division-esque vocals. Swooping majestic guitar leads and spidery guitar lines sprawling everywhere. They still sound a bit like a black metal Fall, but here they sort of sound like a more lo-fi, slightly less melodic Katatonia, which is of course a very good thing.
Has us chomping at the bit for new records from both bands. But for now, repeated plays of this seven inch will have to hold us over.
Nice thick full color jacket, thick cardstock inner sleeve, printed liner notes / lyric sheet. Not sure how limited, but with stuff like this, it's usually safe to assume VERY VERY!
The return of our favorite masters of faerical blasting punk! Who else could it be but Nuit Noire? We just raved about their most recent disc, the brilliantly titled Fantomatic Plentitude, and were already hankering for more when what should show up, but MORE!
This split 7" matches up Nuit Noire with Italian noisy new wavers His Electro Blue Voice, who end up being a perfect match for the Nuit Noire.
What can we say about Nuit Noire that we haven't said before. A blackened buzz wrapped around spiky crusty new wave-d punk rock. A blackened Rudimentary Peni. The guitars kinetic and buzzy, the drums rapid fire and frenetic, the vocals a wild caterwaul. These two new tracks are awesome. Crusty and catchy, lo-fi and super rocking. The opener is mostly instrumental, an epic extended intro, leading up to what could very well be the NN theme song: "Faerie Punk", ultra catchy and with some of the best lyrics EVER:
Stardust all around the drums
Stardust all around the guitar
Stardust blown away from the high speakers
Stardust everywhere on stage
Faerie punk in the moonlight
Faerie punk in the starlight
Faerie punk far in the night
Faerie punk on stage tonight
Hell yeah! The lyrics just reaffirm what the music is already saying. Wild forest faerie freaked out black new wave crusty punk pop madness.
So who could possible share a split with these guys? His Electro Blue Voice are up to the challenge, and are a pretty good match, their moody bass heavy new wave post punk, perfectly balancing NN's high end howl. Their sound is very 45 Grave, like some band you might have seen play the Scream in LA in 1985. Murky Joy Division riffing, wrapped around lugubrious Cure rhythms, the vocals a throaty gothy croon, the first track playing out lie a more metal Smiths, the second, some sort of dark doleful surf rock, with a Dick Dale riff stretched across and expanse of moody melancholia.
KK Null, of Japan's Zeni Geva, releases upon the world another installment of his solo guitar ambient/noise art. Tracks range from "Cosmic Rape" (1:26) to "War Dance" (17:20).
Usually when the description of a band is too good to be true, it actually is. We can't even count the times we've gotten descriptions of bands to check out that read like "Nirvana, with John Bonham behind the kit, playing ELP style prog epics, but in the style of Sabbath, all remixed by the Caretaker", okay, that actually does sound amazing, but our point exactly, that's not even remotely possible, and if it is, we promise to listen to nothing else forever! But in most cases, that hyperbolic and entirely inaccurate description ends up being essentially worthless, as not a single part of the description, applies to any element of the music. So when this long lost slab of classic California post punk was described to us as Chrome's Half Machine Lip Moves meets Brian Eno's Here Come The Warm Jets, we were most definitely suspicious, and skeptical. And when we threw it on, we were even more confused, the record opening with a track called "Bach Variations", which is in fact Bach, but played in the midst of a wild thunderstorm, pelted with crashes of thunder, wreathed in the sound of rainfall, lots of tape hiss and sonic detritus, it's weird and not a little bit Caretaker-y, and then "Japanese Forest" comes in, and while we're no less confused, we're into this big time. No surprise that this had been making the blog rounds for ages. Apparently this was Null & Void's third record, and was rejected at the time for being too weird, which is tragic, cuz it's so good, but they were right, it IS weird, seriously warped and gloriously fucked up. "Japanese Forest", adds a distinctly Asian melody, to moaning slo-mo synth throbs, and a laconic laid back vocal, the result is haunting and beautiful and darkly poppy. But then as soon as "When I Fell Down" started up, that whole Chrome/Eno thing didn't seem so far fetched, we'd maybe throw in some Bowie as well. Glammy and swaggery, fractured and lo-fi, total warts and all recording, streaks of feedback, sudden stop/starts, all adding a distinctive whatthefuck factor to the proceedings.
"Einstein's Theory Of Relativity, No. 2" is another creepy industrial sci-fi glam ballad, that has a total Eno / Chrome / Bowie vibe, and is laced with awesomely weird bursts of white noise static, disrupting an otherwise sweet slab of garage glam swagger, which then slows down into a woozy washed out psychedelic echo drenched dirge, before big booming drums start things up again.
Check out "Our New Life", which might be the 'hit' here, way better produced, and with a killer pounding new wave / punk rock vibe, with swirling synths and fuzzed out bass, the song splintering into a weird sing-songy sort-of-chorus part way through, the buzzing synths mirroring the vox, before the whole thing explodes into a serious chunk of blown out Warm Jets style blissout, before a final bit of drum driven glam rock croon. So twisted, and so fucking great!
And it never lets up, the rest of the record flitting from classic glammy weirdo pop, to groovy, almost funky grooviness, to almost Suicide like drone-pop, to free form synth freakouts, to violin flecked classic rock super jams, rife with progged out organs, tangled psych guitars, and shredding leads, before finishing off with the three part songsuite "A Dream Wah!", which begins as a piano ballad, before splintering into some sort of avant glam-psych breakdown, before shifting into a garage rock shuffle, all soft focus jam band groove, which quickly devolves into a dark sprawl of ominous crooning, only to blossom into one more glamrock stomp, before fading into a weird collaged outro, sort of bookending the rainstorm outro, all tape hiss, and found sounds, murky melodies, and mysterious voices, disappearing into the background of hiss and hum.
Reissue of the year hands down!!! Absolutely essential and totally recommended!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Solo electric guitar improv noise by Zeni Geva's Null, live in Australia.
Our friend Adam who runs the super cool Crucial Blast label, has, for over 6 years now, been quietly (and not so quietly) putting out some of the coolest shit around. From crusty Finnish metal to droning electronica to sparse folk to brutal power electronics. This new series of cd-r's, limited to 100 copies and nicely packaged in oversized DVD cases will only be available via Aquarius records (unless you get them directly from Crucial Blast). So don't blow it...
KK Null, guitarist for mighty Japanese rockers Zeni Geva has been releasing solo guitar records for a while now. Ranging from noisy freakouts to dreamy lullabies to guitars played with vibrators. All of them have been stellar. 'Datacide In Year Zero' falls on the mellow dreamy side, but only just. And is one of the best we've heard. This is an effect-laden soundscape where Null's guitar is transformed into all manners of creaks and clangs, squeals and rumbles, burbling and sputtering, beeping and whirring, creating a sort of haunting and ominous futuristic soundscape, technical and electronic but organic at the same time. Kind of creepy but also fairly lovely at moments. The disc ends with a 13 minute heavy drone worthy of Troum or Organum. But as the track winds down, a Skullflowerish cloud of high end shimmer and a vaguely techno rhythm slowly encroach and overtake. Really nice.
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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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The veteran Japanese noisician (and guitarist of heavy prog act Zeni Geva) K.K. Null is back with his first solo album on the Touch label, and it's one of KK's best solo efforts we've heard to date. Perhaps inspired by labelmate Chris Watson (with whom he collaborated a few years ago, in conjunction with Z'ev), K.K. has brought some field recordings (birds, bugs, frogs, fire...) he made on a trip to a national park in Northern Australia to this project, mixing those with his own studio-conjured electronic sounds. No wonder, then, that Fertile is a spooky soundscape of nocturnal hiss and buzz, parts of it sounding like video games played by insects, others ominous with ghostlike voices buried beneath... chattering rhythmic components underlie what sound like shortwave freakouts, tracks often building to stactic-y explosiveness, droning and noisy, extremely dynamic and distorted. You could almost imagine that this is what a hybrid of a John Carpenter soundtrack and a Japanese noise record would sound like. Null calls it "cosmic noise maximal/minimalism." We don't know what to call it, exactly, but we like it!
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"Nullsonic" electronic manipulations by Japanese guitarist K.K. Null. Only slightly similar to the ambient noise whoosh of his many other solo projects, and definitely unlike the Swans-metal bludegon of his heavy rock outfit Zeni Geva. "GeV" features bleeping loops, chattering rumbles, and sharp tone-whirr. It's all very sci-fi sounding, like you're in the control room of some alien spaceship.
When Japanese guitarist Null isn't bludgeoning skulls in his heavy prog power trio Zeni Geva (which maybe he isn't, anymore -- we never know if they're disbanded or just taking a long time between albums, as we haven't heard from ZG since, like, 2001) he's been known to indulge in abstract soundscapes via solo guitar and electronics, such as what's presented here, on this new Important release, Kosmista Noisea. Our description, stream-of-consciousness style, goes something like this: Merzbow techno video game insect swarm vacuum cleaner phaser fire! Ultra distortion!! OK!!!
There's two tracks, one long (24:25) and one really long (45:15), recorded live and then further processed in the studio. The longer track has more stretches of night-time ambience, electronic chattering cricket drones and high-pitched testy tones. Definitely, though, both tracks are practically and aesthetically quite computer-y and sci-fi sounding, with moments of pulsing beauty, what sound like encrypted outer-space transmissions, and overloading space-battle SFX. Kosmista Noisea is indeed quite "noisea", but it's deftly woven noisea! If you're in need of a Japanese noise fix, don't wait (ha!) for the next Merzbow release, give ol' KK a try.
Yet another solo electronics album from Japanese guitarist and experimental musician KK Null. Again it's full of the glitchy zip and zap of his "cosmic noises", which are somewhat aggravating at first, but if you stay with it, can be enjoyable in a mad scientist's laboratory gone haywire / crash landing flying saucer sort of way, especially when you get to the more rhythmic parts. At the same time though, we'd much rather KK put his efforts back into his genius heavy rock band Zeni Geva, as we're not sure we really need another one of these solo discs that sound like he's playing video games in the recording studio...
Fans of Japanese avant-drone guitarist and electronic experimentalist (and sometimes heavy metal dirge-master, when playing in his band Zeni Geva) Kazuyuki K. Null are a happy bunch of late, as his recent "Datacide In Year Zero" cd-r on Crucial Blast (reviewed here last time) is now joined by another new K.K. title, a collaboration with Seattle musician Bill Horist. Null recorded much of the disc's source material, then gave it over to Horist to manipulate and structure (and add to as well, as Horist himself is a textural guitarist akin to Null). The results are, to go along with what Beta-lactam Ring has been saying about this release, kinda in the IDM vein: skittery, bleepy instrumental electronica with crunchy, squeaky (guitar-generated, we'll assume) noises and beats. Like Null's sci-fi sounding GeV cd on Staalplaat, this isn't nearly as "ambient" as some of his past work, though it has its mellow and mysterious moments, amidst many fairly chaotic ones. Indeed, at times this can be harsh (the heavy, grinding "Gravitation"), at other times quite lovely (the acoustic-y "Luminous Lullaby"). In general, you get pulsating, bleeping soundscapes out of which some recognizably human guitar playing will surface, which is what makes these pieces more interesting than your average IDM, I'd say. Null and Horist aren't really breaking any new ground, but they've created a varied and enjoyable disc for fans of quirky computerized electronic music and avant guitar utilization. Pretty cool.
What might you expect from a collaboration between KK Null, mastermind behind Japanese heavies Zeni Geva, and UK tuba doom duo Ore (you read that right, TUBA DOOM!)? Probably not this. Two tracks of hushed, delicate, droned out ambience. Moody, muted and morose, long tones unfurling gradually in a field of sculpted soft static, and distant keening melodies, slow shifting textures, drifting serenely, over a surprisingly tranquil sonic sprawl, a sort of blackened, nocturnal drift, deftly processed electronics, the mournful moan of the tubas, stuttery rhythmic pulses, all blurred into something downright dreamy and hypnotic. The flipside is even more minimal, the processed tubas transformed into lush, layered swells, pocked with glitch and crackle, and wreathed in field recordings of birdsong, a strange mix of ominous thrum, and pastoral ambience, the sound gorgeously lustrous and thick, the low end massive, a dark slo-mo swirl, that gradually gathers subtle momentum, beneath an increasingly dense cloud of singing birds, that begins to mutate into a tangle of psychedelic squiggles, that is soon subsumed by the churning bass tones and strange skittery fields of clipped static and glitchy electronics. Haunting and sinister and at moments harrowingly heavy, yet somehow still darkly dreamy!
Probably super limited too...
Less of a collaboration and more a solo Z'ev album with some source material provided by Chris Watson and K.K. Null, this album begins with a very heavy-handed conceptual framework, manifesting in three elements that Z'ev proposed to his contributors. The first element was to use the structure of the Noh Theater cycle as the basis for the composition; the second was to consider the initial sound development in terms of developing characters which would then interact with one another through the specific scene which is a fairly non-traditional way to work with sound elements; and the final element was to place the character interactions as the figure inside of particular sound-scapes as the ground. In executing this concept, Z'ev collected the source material -- including Null's vibrator-on-guitar-strings / faux-Frippertronics and Watson's field recordings from East Africa -- and ran them through a whole arsenal of mesmerizing DSP effects, which are very similar to those used in the Z'ev / Organum recordings. In keeping to his idea that the sounds would pose as characters interacting with each other, Z'ev repeats various snippets from the composition in a manner that may be a simulation of speech. Good ideas, they all may be; but Z'ev often stumbles under the heavy burden of his conceptual conceits. Still quite interesting.
How do you like this amazing bargain? Two jam-packed discs of Gary Numan live recordings for only $10.98, and it's by no means at the expense of quality! All three volumes of his Living Ornaments trilogy are fantastic live documents not only of Numan in his prime as a fine composer and dynamic showman, but also of analog synthesizers being performed in the rock arena. They (and the bandmembers playing them) were seriously put through a workout during these concerts. Keep in mind that analog synth sounds aren't preset, and those instruments also had a habit of drifting out of tune. So that means if the synth player required a different sound he would need to specifically dial it in each time (adjusting all the necessary parameters... often quite a complex process). Certainly makes these performances all the more awesome and a blast to hear a quarter of a decade later! Not to mention Numan's unmistakable, expressive vocals and masterly compositions. This is the real deal! It's definitely none of that lame preset arpeggiated excuse for synth music that's been plaguing our ears of late. It's unfortunate that Numan gets lumped in with the vacuous '80s new wavers 'cause music has so much more depth, both compositionally and emotionally. Seriously, if "Cars" hadn't been such a big hit (and thus thereafter unfairly condemning Numan to 'one-hit-wonder' status), his body of work would be viewed in a much different light (probably more critically lauded, and albeit probably much less widely popularized). An added bonus are all of the live photos of the spectacular stage and lighting set-up. He truly reciprocated all the love his fans bestowed upon him. Stunning! Completists will probably want all three volumes (there's some repeating of songs throughout), but if you think you only want one then this is the one to get!
