We've never listed anything by SoCal psych ensemble Octagrape before, but we sure couldn't pass this one up! How cool is it, that they've made the alliterative choice to cover songs by these four quasi-obscure bands: Major Stars ("Syntoptikon"), Mayyors ("Ghost Punch"), Dymaxion ("Verfremdungseffekt"), and Marble Sheep ("Melted Moon")?! Now that's some big indie garage psych collector geek taste cred right there. Not sure which is the most surprising choice, who has covered any of those bands before? I guess we're most impressed with the choice of the Mayyors, good to be reminded of that short-lived, utterly amazing fuzz punk noise rock combo from Sacto (who played one of the SXSW showcases we did with WFMU a few years back). The Mayyors, damn.
And Octagrape do a 'grape' job on all these tracks, getting wild and woolly as necessary to live up to the originals; their cover of the Mayyors is appropriately loud and distorted (the lo-fi recording on Octagrape's "little 4-track" of course helps here), their take on Japan's Marble Sheep is perfectly plodding and howlingly spaced out, the Dymaxion one nicely quirky-jerky, and Major Stars are also done justice, their howling riff-fest bathed in hella distortion too. It's pretty freaking epic (all 15 minutes of it, outdoing the original by almost 5 minutes). Was the Major Stars' version even this good? This 12" this makes us want to check out some of Octagrape's own songs too, someday...
Around here at aQ we live for the moments of musical discovery that seem to appear out of nowhere. On a rare occasion those moments are created by an artifact dropped off in the store by the creator himself. In our age of internet buzz and blogosphere strip mining, it's exciting and refreshing to be floored by a piece of proper wax passed on in person, without us knowing a damn thing about it beforehand. This record represents one of these moments, and Laws, the brand new lp from LA's William Marshall, aka Octavius, is really blowing our minds right now, so much so that we absolutely had to jump on the chance to make it record of the week! A dizzying assemblage of fucked up outsider post witch house, damaged and deranged avant industrial and whispered, hiss-wreathed melancholic brooding downer experi-techno-pop!
Laws is a multidimensional excursion through the depths of urban isolationism. The dead dreams of metropolis living and lifelong plans falling apart seem to be woven into the sonic fabric. You're all alone in this burned out city, and it's a dark, dark time. The sound is grinding, buzzing, thumping and industrial. The beats are constructed with rusted rebar shards, rattling about the charnel house floor, like some subwoofer-shook bones long forgotten. Octavius' caustic and restrained sound world creates an intensely claustrophobic mood. On tracks like "Apartments" and "Of Mask and Money", the sounds of sharpening knives and blistering white noise blasts commingle with a tense, gasping for breath vocal delivery. As the songs flow onward, layer upon layer of noisy mechanical skree stack up against beautifully stark and forlorn melodies. Haunting, discordant synth stabs add subtle harmonic depth to the tunes, as the vocals, seemingly hacked to bits, syllables left out or cut short, writhe to the beat. The sounds are abrasive and damaged and robotic, but there is never too much going on at one time and everything sits in the mix in such a way that the songs really breathe. It's got that hypnotic sonic subtlety of Berlin era Bowie mixed with the pulsating noisy gnash of Throbbing Gristle. Speaking of Bowie, one of the raddest moments on Laws comes in the form of a "cover" of "Breaking Glass". The low slung, heroin sheen funk of the original is replaced by a fiercely mechanical drum machine stomp, some heavy as fuck JK Flesh-like digitally distorted guitar chugs bashing with the beat, while cascading doppler blips and scraping synths swirl around the stereo field. The only recognizable element are the lyrics, although delivered in the by now signature manner in which Octavius uses his voice, and that is to say fractured and corrosive, hissing hypnosis. Totally bent and completely AMAZING!
There are moments of dark meditation, such as "CCC CCC" and "331 155". Moody, drifting soundscapes of splintered metallic klang, ping-ponging singing bowls, bolstered with aphotic, creepy crawly Carpenter-like synth drones. Beautifully oscillating cinematic ambience laid over what sounds like a far off string section unfurling some somber, elegiac melody. Psychic TV's "Silver and Gold" comes to mind, except with a mechanical bass drum throb twisting beneath the surface. These hazy, murky moments of sonic darkness serve as tension builders. Haunting and anxious and mesmerizing respites from the churning corrosive elements that make up the bulk of Laws.
"Liars & Thieves" is definitely the centerpiece of Laws. Abusive electro-psychosis, uncomfortable and polluted with an industrialized cacophony, and scrap metal pounding rhythms, Octavius allows his reflections on failure and anonymity to unravel in a harrowing, stream of conscious cypher. Imagine Tricky rapping over Coil's "Fire Of The Green Dragon". Paranoid and demented, the noise and words melding to create a bleak miasma of isolation. Moody and tense and wholly original.
Laws pushes all the right buttons for us. It references the WAVES (minimal/NO/cold/synth), without getting mired in any particular sub-genre. It's noisy and abrasive and grim, reminding us of the gnarlier moments of Coil and TG, but produced in such a subtle manner that new layers of sound present themselves with each listen. It's got enough Suicide like swagger as not to get totally bogged down in its mechanized, vitriol pummel. Hypnotic and tensely mesmerizing, the album as a whole is so consistent in its vibe, we find ourselves listening to it over and over and over again, just to get lost, deeper and deeper, in its seedy sonic underbelly.
Packaged lovingly in a minimalist, silver embossed white card stock sleeve, with a beautiful 16 page book of lyrics as well as some killer collage work by Brooklyn based artist Justin Sloane. Do yourself a favor and snatch this twisted gem up quick, really some of the most mind fuckingly special and original music we've heard around here in a long time!
Expect nihilistic, misanthropic one-man-band black metal on this album, the follow-up to his brilliant, raw, and catchy Welcome To My Planet opus. Fuckhole Armageddon is fast & tinny the way it's supposed to be, as Mr. Octinomos gets a really good droning buzz
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
5" lathe cut of that skronky skree we love so much. Limited to 50 copies or something insane like that. We only got a handful.
Part II of the mighty Mithring cycle from screeching skronk and skree mongers Octis. Impossibly convoluted and gloriously obtuse. Utterly and completely fucking RULING!!!
The bad news is, of course, that this spiffy 5" lathe cut is ultra limited to only 50 copies, of which we were allotted about 5!! So fastest 5 get 'em, the rest of you will just have to struggle along through the rest of your miserable lives with that gaping Octis shaped hole in your heart...
Part III of the mighty Mithring cycle from screeching skronk and skree mongers Octis. Impossibly convoluted and gloriously obtuse. Utterly and completely fucking RULING!!!
The bad news is, of course, that this spiffy 5" lathe cut is ultra limited to only 50 copies, of which we were allotted about 5!! So fastest 5 get 'em, the rest of you will just have to struggle along through the rest of your miserable lives with that gaping Octis shaped hole in your heart...
Fretboard brainiac Mick Barr (of Orthrelm, Crom-Tech, Quix*o*tic, and Octis) is back with a new album from his solo manifestation Octis (and is also now living here in San Francisco, playing in the Flying Luttenbachers). Ocrilim is one 33 minute track of squiggly quasi-metallic guitar and drum machine. Electro-shock therapy too expensive? Try this! A tinny drone jabbed and jarred with manic outbursts of hyper spazz guitar, with which the drum machine can barely keep up. It's, in a word, maddening. And of course we love it.
Solo project of Mick Barr, formerly of DC superheroes CROM TECH! Octis is the polar opposite of Mick's other current band, Orthrelm, which wields lengthy pummeling epics. Octis is seventy two tracks of lightning fast lo-fi speed metal guitar solos
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Punishing split. One half insane technical freakout, one half chaotic noise damage. You figure out which is which...
Michael Lloyd, the creative force behind October Country, might be more familiar to some AQ customers as a member of the legendary West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. While OC is not nearly as drug addled and far out as the WCPAEB, their sunshine-y, shimmery soft pop, equal parts Beach Boys, Beatles and Byrds, is still flecked with hints of lysergic psychedelia and brief glimpses of jangly trippiness.
Lloyd was a musical prodigy: publishing deal at age thirteen, composed the soundtrack for Spielberg's first short film, played in a group called the New Dimensions as well as the WCPAEB. Through some random circumstances he began writing songs for the newly christened October Country (after a song he wrote, they were formerly the Last Two) and eventually became their primary songwriter and a sort of de facto band member.
The sound is light and breezy, sunny and care free. Think the Free Design, the Hollies, the aforementioned three B's. All bubby bouncy bass, jangly guitar, playfully honking horns, occasional sweeping strings, and lots of glorious harmonies.
Definitely not a 'weird' record at all, just a really awesome lost pop classic!
Octomutt swiftly follow up their recent Pretty Side album with this pipin' Hot Stove. When the second song (the album's title track) kicked in, we imediately noticed the vocal presence and anticipated that the album was going to be quite a lively (almost feisty) affair in comparison to its considerably more gentle instrumental predecessor. Just check out that tune's thumpin' churn! The rest of the album however settles into a more loping, folky blues pace. As usual, the SF duo's fantastic musicianship is in full bloom as they spin their latest quirky musical yarns. Nice!
Fine veteran SF musicians Ted Savarese and Ashley Adams refuse to follow flavor of the day trends, instead they continue to follow their own muse. This time their song selection weighs heavy on respectful cover versions which might involve sweet lullabies, old tyme waltzes, old movie and show tunes (for instance, the theme from the 1960's Tammy series which starred Debbie Reynolds) and/or outbreaks of jazz -- all beautifully performed with loving care. The entirely instrumental Pretty Side is much less obviously trippy and offkilter than their previous self titled album or Savarese's other project Drizzoletto, but it's no less whimsical. Their intimate arrangements of guitar, bass, accordion and trumpet might remind you of a bygone era when things moved at a much slower pace.
Another project from the folks who brought us the quirky Drizzoletto Live At KXLU disc a short time ago. Octomutt are Ted Savarese and Ashley Adams and they weave meandering guitars and slinking loops with an easygoing anchor of standup bass. There's a definite down home, earthy feel to Octomutt's music - seeming very casual and off the cuff - however an occasional detour into more trippy, eccentric territory is certainly not out of the question. They're joined on the final track "Monkey And The Dolphin" by Drizzoletto co-hort and man about town Ralph Carney (tenor saxophone, flute and bongos).
Reissue of obscure British pop-psych band from the early seventies. Sounds like a perfect mix between The Pretty Things and The Beatles, so if you dug the Aerovons, or Truck, you might want to check this out too. Contains their lone 1971 album, Restless Night, and ten bonus tracks, including a dead on cover of The Beatles "I Am The Walrus".
Whoa, the mixed bag of words that make up not only the groups' band names but also the album's title sure reflect the mixed bag that is the music! Each track is radically different from the next. It's almost as though you're listening to a compilation. A little bit of everything. if you dug Black Moth Super Rainbow all on their own with their album Dandelion Gum, then you're gonna keep the love alive with The House of Apples and Eyeballs, their collaboration with The Octopus Project.
Squiggly synth tentacles wrap their suckers around the lite funky grooviness. Clitter clatter percussive sounds both from a drum kit and a drum machine, softly strummed guitar chords, and spacey vocoded vocals are chopped up, tumbled together and baked in the summer sun. Tweaked, fluffy wooziness. If your town still has a rollerskating rink, they should have this playing non-stop!
It's on Not Not Fun, so we were sort of expecting something a bit noisier and heavier, but instead, Odd Clouds traffic in some sort of fractured stoner folk, stumbling shambolic space rock, skittery and skeletal, lysergic and lethargic, some seriously druggy weirdness.
The opening track is a rickety campfire crawl, with some almost black metal sounding vocals, growling and gurgling, beneath some scraped guitars, some simple drumming, everything detuned and melty sounding, tribal and ritualistic, almost sounds like some cool Avarus / Abruptum mashup, also sounds strangely medieval. The second track introduces horns, the guitars get more pronounced and driving, but the vibe is no less fractured and chaotic, if anything, when the horns come in, Odd Clouds begin to resemble late great Northwestern outfit Reeks And The Wrecks, whose sole record (released on tUMULt) channeled the same sort of drunken druggy sprawl.
The record dips into krautrock and space rock, but even in those moments the band tend to ramble and wander, we hear hints of No Neck and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, free and flowing and abstract, but dark and sinister, the drums usually offering up splatters of percussion instead of rhythm, everything hovering in a haze of reverb and delay, playful melodies surface here and there, often only to be swallowed whole by those creepy vox, the horns add a strange jazzy vibe once in a while, but just as often bleat and moan and just make the proceedings sound that much more haunting and otherworldly. Really really rad, a nice surprise for sure, and WAY recommended
We only got three or four of these so tape nerds and noise rock nerds will want to jump on this fast. Limited to 100 copies and packaged in a cool oversized full color two sided old school plastic tape case, like the kind that might have house some language tape or something. It's pretty bad ass looking.
Inside, it's two Michigan noisemakers, Odd Clouds and Wigwam. Odd Clouds offer up a dense cloud of tribal electronic psychnoise, thick and drifting, like some damaged collision between the Skaters and the Yellow Swans, while Wigwam present us with their own brand of noisiness, a murky Wolf Eyes-ian expanse of grinding muddy rumble and slithery black ambience, with bits of industrial clatter and electronic fuckery here and there.
Also includes a bonus 3" cd-r with a 15 minute jam from Odd Clouds, more of the same, massive roiling dreamy expanses of blown out sound and electronic weirdness. packaged in a hand painted mini sleeve, and stuck inside the plastic tape case with the cassette.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We have 4 or 5 and there will be no more once these are gone...
Reissue of the debut cassette only release from Odd Nosdam, the man responsible for the music on the amazing cLOUDEAD records. 55 short and sweet tracks of abstract hip hop sound art: unfinished rhythms, bizarre sound collages, super distorted song fragments, scratchy drum loops and tons of good stuff, all recorded on a battered set up of junky garage sale/flea market recording equipment. For fans of Anticon, cLOUDEAD, Atmosphere, Aesop Rock and the like.
- RealAudio clip: One
- RealAudio clip: Three
- RealAudio clip: Five
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A gorgeous and dreamy ten minute slab of hypnotic blissed out hip hop. Lazy loping beats, vocal snippets, fuzzed out casios, huge head nodding rhythms, some purloined horns, a little jungle skitter, all chopped and cut and sliced and diced. Limited to 1000 hand numbered copies.
Some seriously twisted WTF hip hop for fans of Sensational, the Pharcyde and the like, blending warped home brewed studio fuckery, with some classic hip hop. He's a member of Deadverse Massive, along with Dalek and Destructo Swarmbots.
Very lovely! Odessa Chen is quite a one-woman band, composing, singing and performing nearly all of the instruments for this, her debut album. Her voice soars gracefully from childlike whisper to haunting wail to crystal clear heights over the dramatic waves of guitars, keyboards, strings and percussion. Charles Denison provides backing vocals on the fifth song "Fringe" making for a nice earthy counterpoint. The atmosphere is filled with heartache and yearning. Definitely for fans of the impassioned voices of Tori Amos or Sarah McLachlan.
Oh, the tilde symbol would no doubt cause problems displaying on our antiquated website, but that squiggly symbol and not the word is the actual title of this new tape from Oakland-based electronic ambient producer odi me. As a mathematical symbol, the tilde means "approximately" and in logic it means "not", and that kind of makes sense when thinking about this music that touches on variant ideas of sound and space, but is not easily identifiable. Long alien-ish instrumentals constructed from cinematic interplanetary drones, dark new-agey soundscapes and hazy field recordings of crowds and static, that occasionally unfurl in deep techno pulses, but take their time building up from slow drawn out throbbing textural bursts. Meditative and yet rather menacing as well.
More of an installation artist, who delights in the play between the psychedelic and the clinical, Christine Odlund proves to be quite talented when it comes to her own darkened electro-acoustic composition, holding her own next to the likes of Thomas Koner, Matt Shoemaker, and BJ Nilsen. Throughout her catalogue of installations, video, and sound, Odlund has been interested in simulating synaesthesia, the neurological phenomena of the transposition of one sensorial experience with another - in other words, the ability to 'see' sound or 'hear' touch. Odlund's installations feature overblown projections of microscopic organisms displayed in dazzling hyperdelic colors and hung against jet black environments; and her sound work is a like-minded chimera, although it's much heavier, darker, and blacker. Low-end modulating tones pool around a flattened hiss to start the record, setting a suitably grim, dark-ambient vibe. Squeaking metals echo in the distance, as the morass of blackened sound builds to a shadowy crescendo of dark noise. Slow loops and theremin-like swells of tone offer an oceanic interlude that leads into a crackling collage of VLF recordings, electro-static bristlings, insect choruses, and various crunchings that sound like a massive amplification of an army of beetles. Two shortened tracks of percolating computer music sequences and electronic algorithms break up Odlund's abstracted drone, crunch, and hiss which return in fine effect by the end of the album. Very nicely done.
More rad psych rock reissue action here, courtesy of the Shadoks label. Their latest batch of cds delve into the prog rock past of a place known for interesting music (and volcanoes, and fairies), Iceland! Svanfridur, Trubrot, and this one, Odmenn, which we're reviewing first 'cause it's one we'd heard before, we already knew we loved it, and it's possibly the heaviest of the bunch. Poppy too, though, these songs are syncopated, swinging ear candy for those into what DJ Andy Votel over at Finders Keepers likes to call "hairy funk". The band formed in 1966, and after several years spent perfecting their groovy and rather heavy progressive blues rock, this record was to be their only full-length release. A double album, 15 tracks, originally released in 1970. All but one of the songs sung in their native Icelandic.
It's a joy, full of irresistibly loping grooves, fuzzy riffage, gentle folky parts, wild guitar solos, and lyrics pertinent to political protest and hippy ideals (so we're told, not understanding Icelandic), yeaaah! There's beautiful, blissed out melodies ("Kaerleikur") and sheer freaked out acid rock excess (the 20 minute, side-long album-ender "Frelsi") and lots of groovy stuff in between. Well, not in between those particular two tracks, as they follow one another, but in between those extremes, across the whole disc, we mean.
We'd recommend Odmenn to fans of other killer Scandinavian psychedelia such as Moses (another recent Shadoks reish), Baby Grandmothers, Mecki Mark Men, and, latterly, Dungen. And it comes with extensive liner notes, as well as vintage photos and graphics, in the thick cd booklet. Very cool.
The Profound Lore label begins what we hope will be an extensive reissue campaign, focusing on some of the more obscure members of the Twilight Black Circle, a tightly knit USBM scene/collective based in Southern California, similar in sound/spirit to the legendary French Black Legions (Mutiilation, Vlad Tepes, etc.), which counts bands like Dolorvotre, Volahn, Blue Hummingbird On The Left, Ashdautas, Arizmenda and others among its members. Odz Manouk, named for a character in Armenian mythology, is a one man band who like many of his Black Twilight Circle brethren, traffics in a furious, raw, almost primitive black metal, but one that takes that primitivism, and somehow manages to create something epic and massive and sonically dense. The primitivism here is not the sort of lo-fi practice space tinniness that so many legendary kvlt outfits spew, the sound here is massive, chaotic, gnarled, dense, thick, black and bristling with energy. The arrangements are twisted and droned out, repetitive riffs, blasting programmed beats that are as motorik as they are brutal, with multiple layers of guitars in constant motion, each track a weird swirling blur, the drums buried in the mix (minus the occasional strange bit of percussion that seems to surface here and there), the tracks shifting constantly from smeared frenzied white noise blowout, to old-Deathspell like churning crush, to loping Burzumic buzz, rife with plenty of surprising melody, little bits of mournful melancholia tucked within heaving slabs of buzzing blackness, a dizzying tangle of dissonance and repetition, of texture and tension, on the surface, raw and black, but closer listening reveals all manner of blackened mystery, long stretches of droney murk, atonal angular melody, weird buried clean vocal harmonies, pulsing almost electronic sounding rhythms, bleary synth shimmers, hazy washed out atmospheres, demonik vokills that growl, mewl and screech in equal measure, all woven into some seriously dense and dark and fantastically fucked up black metal savagery.
This cd reissue contains OM's 2010 demo and tacks on OM's tracks from the split with Tukaaria (whose reissue is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list)...
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, housed in a super swank oversized A5 book style digipak!
The last we heard from Loren Chasse's Of project (not to be confused with the similarly monickered duo Ov, featuring Chasse and his wife, our very own Christine) was on a cd and a cd-r released about the same time way back in the beginning of 2005. This latest disc is sort of similar to those two Of releases, in that they are a bit noisier, a bit more aggressive than Chasse's usual nature based ethereality. But on The Awful Cloud, Chasse has mixed up his darkest and heaviest and most active material to date, pushing even the boundaries of the already more belligerent Of. The opening track is like some sort of abstract free jazz being performed by black eyed demons in some fiery pit, filled with broken old drum kits and random bits of metal, a clanging, clattering, shuffling primitive percussive ritual, while all around these rhythmic freakouts hover Awful Clouds of corrosive feedback, warm whirls of fuzzy organ, a thick miasma of drones and whirs, incredibly dark and ominous and fierce. Who knew Mr. Chasse had it in him! The rest of the record is not nearly so prickly and abrasive, but the darkness and dread is equally as pervasive, just more subtly so. A dense roiling mix of organs and bells and vibrating strings and collaged found sounds, from shimmery soundscapes of keening hiss, simple melodies buzzing into reedy drones, to the cavernous dark ambience of the near 20 minute third track, some sort of slowed down guitar crumble, trudging glacially forward like some slithery black beast, surrounded by wreaths of warm pulsing chords and disembodied musicbox melodies, to the dreamlike expanse of the final track, gently picked guitar suspended in a thick gauzy lattice of muted organ and distant subterranean rumble. So lovely, but so so dark. Highly recommended!!
Packaged in a handscreened sleeve with a photocopied insert.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES. WE GOT ABOUT 30 (we ordered 50!)!!
Nowadays the words Jewelled Antler are so widely known in underground outrock circles, that all we have to do really is just mention the name and y'all know we're talking about some seriously awesome sprawling nature-y goodness. It's true, the Jewelled Antler crew have been high on the sound worship, rural psychedelic trip for over a decade, with no signs of coming down. Between the recent Porter box set and several other discs released earlier this year on Nature Strip and the Helen Scarsdale Agency, Loren Chasse has established himself as a sort of mystical elder in the Jeweled Antler community. Recording/performing with Thuja, Kyrgyz, and The Blithe Sons (to name a few) and working as a SF public school teacher, its amazing Chasse ever has time to sleep, let alone record all of these effing remarkable collections of minimal innerspatial sound!
Recorded between 2005 and 2007, Rocks Will Open is a sonic escape across coastal worlds, through secret doorways beneath tree stumps and into iridescent waves of shimmering prismatic dust. And not your average list of instruments in the liner notes either: dulcimer, gravel, sand, stones, and khaen (a Southeast Asian mouth harp!) to name a few! The opening / title track starts things off with creeping dulcimer melodies, methodical plucks and strums over earthen textures, sonic topsoil moving and shifting on its own. "Trail of Hornfel", track two, is a dark drift, a choir of possessed singing bowls howling from the bowels of a partially submerged seaside cavern. Chasse has has perfected an organically rich sound all his own, recordings that sound more like he has somehow cast spells on each instrument, conjuring sounds and textures through divination and sorcery, channeling the pulse of the natural world. "The Paper Raft" is deep and somber, the earth splits open and melancholic passages of deep bowed tones swell dramatically and narrate the fall of Western civilization, a rarely visited shadowy realm for Chasse. But actually, all of Rocks Will Open has a mysterious haunting unsettling beauty sewn into its fabric, illiciting the kinds of feeling evoked by leafless trees in snow, or a blazing campfire flickering in a suffocatingly black nightscape, or like being quietly captivated by a towering tsunami seconds before it swallows you whole. A contemplative experience that unfolds and blooms with every listen as sounds hidden in the woodwork reveal themselves, this could easily be our favorite solo record from Chasse. Rocks Will Open is totally necessary for fans of Peter Wright, Tim Hecker, Gregg Kowolsky and anything Jewelled Antler (obviously). So if you know what's good for you, do not miss out on this super incredible release.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Nowadays the words Jewelled Antler are so widely known in underground outrock circles, that all we have to do really is just mention the name and y'all know we're talking about some seriously awesome sprawling nature-y goodness. It's true, the Jewelled Antler crew have been high on the sound worship, rural psychedelic trip for over a decade, with no signs of coming down. Between the recent Porter box set and several other discs released earlier this year on Nature Strip and the Helen Scarsdale Agency, Loren Chasse has established himself as a sort of mystical elder in the Jeweled Antler community. Recording/performing with Thuja, Kyrgyz, and The Blithe Sons (to name a few) and working as a SF public school teacher, its amazing Chasse ever has time to sleep, let alone record all of these effing remarkable collections of minimal innerspatial sound!
Rocks Will Open is Chasse's latest, brought to us by Digitalis in an ultra limited arts and crafts edition of 100!! Yes we said limited! While the disc is being released in a larger pressing of 500, the first 100 copies (which we got 30 of!) come with a mind blowing exclusive tape called Morphological Echo! Yes! Basically a whole extra record!!
Recorded between 2005 and 2007, Rocks Will Open is a sonic escape across coastal worlds, through secret doorways beneath tree stumps and into iridescent waves of shimmering prismatic dust. And not your average list of instruments in the liner notes either: dulcimer, gravel, sand, stones, and khaen (a Southeast Asian mouth harp!) to name a few! The opening / title track starts things off with creeping dulcimer melodies, methodical plucks and strums over earthen textures, sonic topsoil moving and shifting on its own. "Trail of Hornfel", track two, is a dark drift, a choir of possessed singing bowls howling from the bowels of a partially submerged seaside cavern. Chasse has has perfected an organically rich sound all his own, recordings that sound more like he has somehow cast spells on each instrument, conjuring sounds and textures through divination and sorcery, channeling the pulse of the natural world. "The Paper Raft" is deep and somber, the earth splits open and melancholic passages of deep bowed tones swell dramatically and narrate the fall of Western civilization, a rarely visited shadowy realm for Chasse. But actually, all of Rocks Will Open has a mysterious haunting unsettling beauty sewn into its fabric, illiciting the kinds of feeling evoked by leafless trees in snow, or a blazing campfire flickering in a suffocatingly black nightscape, or like being quietly captivated by a towering tsunami seconds before it swallows you whole. A contemplative experience that unfolds and blooms with every listen as sounds hidden in the woodwork reveal themselves, this could easily be our favorite solo record from Chasse. Rocks Will Open is totally necessary for fans of Peter Wright, Tim Hecker, Gregg Kowolsky and anything Jewelled Antler (obviously). So if you know what's good for you, do not miss out on this super incredible release AND the special limited edition cassette that comes along with it!! Once we run out of the limited version with the tape, which will most likely be sooner rather than later, folks who order Rocks Will Open will then get the cheaper tape-less cd version.
Yeah we know, here at Aquarius Records it's always Jewelled Antler this, Jewelled Antler that. They're our friends, we're big fans, and we wax enthusastic about all the great music they make all the time (heck there's at least one other Jewelled Antler item on this very list). And we know a lot of you out there are equally enamoured of the Jewelled Antler thing. If that's you -- and like us, make sure to get EVERY Jewelled Antler related release that comes out -- then you can pretty much stop reading this right now and just buy this darn disc, you need it / want it / must buy it. But if you're more of the casual Jewelled Antler fan, or not yet familiar with their stuff but curious, then, well, we'll say pretty much the same thing, just buy it! Yep, that's because this new Of opus is one that we'll be pointing Jewelled Antler novices to as a true JA essential (and not just 'cause its in print and on cd, as opposed to being one of their many out of print cd-rs, although that helps). Of is the "instrumental" solo project of JA linchpin Loren Chasse, whom you may also know from such sonic congregates as Thuja, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Coelecanth, and Id Battery among others. He's done other solo recordings under the L.Chasse name but as Of he takes his textural, field recording approach and makes it into something more overtly, hauntingly musical, something like a one-man Thuja, his ear exploring both the wilds of the woods and the sounds he could conjure on his own with an array of instruments and objects. Allan immediately recognized (with nostalgia) the field recordings of Pennsylvanian night-time buzzings incorporated in the track "Glowing Prints". Such sounds of nature merge perfectly with Chasse's own darkened drones, percussive textures, distorted strum, shimmering tones from bells and bowls, wheezing harmonium, etc. It's music to drift off to sleep to, to dream strange dreams and then awake immersed in sound, wondering where and what you are. Utterly utterly beautiful. What a darn great second Of album! (fyi: the first, The Infant Paths, originally a cd-r, is to be reissued soon on cd as well!)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Oooh this is good. Haunting, gentle, abstract-seeming but musically very pretty stuff, in the vein of the best folk/drone from Tower Recordings and Kemialliset Ystavat, Popul Vuh and Brian Eno. Perhaps you've heard the Atrium Musicae "Musique de la Grece Antique" disc? This too sounds like imaginary ancient music, maybe made by wood-spirits before the dawn of man. An elemental, atmospheric sonic ritual. Of is the new solo project of AQ-pal Loren Chasse. You might know him from Thuja, Id Battery, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Coelacanth, numerous other "Jewelled Antler" projects... There was an Of track on Jewelled Antler's Heat & Birds compilation, and this cd-r is the debut full-length release from Of, dedicated to Loren's grandmother who passed away recently. Now maybe you're wondering, doesn't Loren already record solo as under his own name, putting out stuff like that great Hedge of Nerves cd on Anomalous, so what's with this Of moniker? Well, with Of, Loren takes the field recording / experimental sound collage ideas that he brought to Id Battery and his previous solo projects and brings it into a live-recorded, improvised *musical* context, where --this is important-- in addition to minidisc and contact mic, he's also playing more traditional sorts of musical instruments. Kinda like a one-man Thuja, or Blithe Sons or Child Readers. There's guitar, oud, bells, harp, pipes, whistles, bowed wires, harmonium, drumkit, and a 150 year old mellodion (pump organ) employed here, plus the usual assortment of rocks, sticks, and other natural debris that Loren "plays". Also to be heard is record crackle from an old Victrola, and recordings of wind and water made by his mother on her sailboat. All lovingly lo-fi home (and outdoors -- in California, Maryland, and Pennsylvania) recorded and mixed with handheld tape recorder, mindisc, and computer. Sleepy, dark, and meditative, "The Infant Paths" is a perfect example of the Jewelled Antler aesthetic, a musical methodology where lapping water sounds complement harmonium drones and carefully plucked guitar strings; tinkling bells and crackling branches accompany simple, fragile melodies found on broken organ keyboards; where nature and the environment are musical collaborators with poetic souls like Mr. Chasse.
Unlike Blithe Sons or Child Readers, this is all instrumental -- nope, you won't hear any vocals from Loren here, the only singing is done by birds. Someone else (Richard Youngs, Greg Weeks, the Blithe Sons themselves) might have been tempted to sing over these tracks, but they're plenty magical without any wispy vocals or lyrical content. Dense and detailed, suitable for your own dreams and reveries. Wow. We knew he had it in him, but still we're impressed. One of our favorite releases by Mr. Chasse yet!
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Not only did Thuja's Loren Chasse so very recently grace us with a phenomenal full-length cd from his solo project Of (reviewed last list), he has also now just brought in a handful of these Of cd-rs he originally produced to sell on Thuja's December jaunt to a festival in Scotland. Maybe 12 bucks might seem just a little pricey for a 25 minute cd-r, but Loren's made 'em look really nice (each one with an individual leaf-rubbing and handwritten credits) and more importantly, the music makes it well worth it. The first, five minute track begins with some pleasantly harsh distortion before settling into a soothing drone, Chasse weaving together both field recordings and his own instrumental improvisations into one seamless, organic whole. This is but the warm-up for the other, twenty-minute track on here that's an exquisite late-night humid dreamscape that you won't want to wake up from, which makes hypnotic use of what I think could be frog croakings but also sound a lot like a ticking clock... Needless to say, any and all Of fans need this, and as well it's recommended to all of you into nocturnal, eternal nature-boy drone!
Loren Chasse, one of the chief swamis of the collective Jewelled Antler sound through such projects as Thuja, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Franciscan Hobbies, Ov, and too many more to list (boy, they used to crank out those cd-rs!), records solo under the moniker Of (the similarly named Ov being the duo of Chasse with his wife and AQ-employee Christine, full disclosure). Simply put, we love Of (and Ov), of course... and are always happy when Chasse takes some time away from his other activities (the somewhat less musical of which being his day job as a public school teacher) to craft a new Of album, a phantom tendril from his own personal dreamworld reaching through our shared reality to caress our ears and cause imaginary crystals to glow softly somewhere within that part of our minds attuned to such blissful vibrations. Not to make this sound like any sort of New Age fluff though, as while as ethereal and meditative as this is, Chasse always incorporates some primitive grit into his work, his music full of feedback hiss, quiet distortion, ambient elemental field recordings of nature, the magnified rubbings of rocks and plants, objects close to the ground, part of the earth, illuminated (and given shadow too) by the radiation of a far-off, flaming star.
The music of The Sun and Earth Together is akin to a slowly turning mobile, as if it were giving off drones and tones as well as glinting with color and the reflections of light. As light shimmers, so does this music. As light dims, it dims too. The abstract sculptural shapes of this imagined mobile move in beautiful indeterminate patterns, much as the sounds Chasse conjures from disparate sources* as cymbalom and stones, autoharp and voice, bells and bowls, guitar and zither all drift delicately, and droningly, in phosphorescent clouds and constellations. This disc clocks in at 51 minutes, consisting of four tracks, each one longer than the last, from the three minute opener "Ignimbrites" to the 26 minute closing title track. All composed of tingling, whispered layers of lo-fi loveliness, gentle and graceful and ultimately glorious.
*we're guessing on some of these...
Two sides of home brewed minimalism. Of, aka Loren Chasse (Thuja, Coelacanth, etc) takes a slight detour into a dark mysterious world of disembodied free folk. Some sort of country music, deconstructed, just whisps and afterimages left to drift wraithlike. It's like the skeleton of a banjo, was left to wander aimlessly along some lonely seashore, the sound of the surf a shimmery hiss, the banjo's footsteps a spacious barely there twang. All under a murky grey sky, soft melodies like warm breezes.
Greg Davis counters with a swirl of zinging strings, a complex web melodies, the harps' shimmering strings intertwined and overlapping, all over the distant soft splashing of water. Almost like an orchestra made up entirely of harps, performing playfully in a giant bathtub. With the harps tangled sonics being subtly glitched up and processed, making the end result all the more dense and dreamy.
More candy-coated lo-fi Beatles-esque pop chews from Kevin Barnes and friends (some of which are fellow Elephant 6ers Julian Koster, Scott Spillane, and Eric Harris). A super earnest and tweeee theme album of sorts with some unexpected, interesting and
Kevin Barnes recorded these songs on a four track before moving to Athens, GA, to fall in with the super talented and inspiring Elephant 6 posse of popsters (Neutral Milk, Olivia Tremor, Apples etc). Much better than most musicians' four track "early" stuff I can think of, this release sports lush melodies, honest-to-gosh songs you can tell he labored over, and heartstraining sensitivity a la Neutral Milk Hotel. Luckily the charmingly lo-fi production doesn't get in the way, but adds to the light, bedroom quality of the record. Pretty, plaintive and sincere. It might be a little too sweet for some folks (in the past they've triggered definite swoons from some listeners and decisive spit from others), so listen to the sound clips first. Bonus weirdness: all songs named after Dustin Hoffman ("Dustin Hoffman Needs a Bath," "Dustin Hoffman Eats the Soap," "Dustin Hoffman's Wife Makes a Sarcastic Remark, Cuts the Head Off a Duck, Places It Where the Tub Was and Begins to Groan," etc).
If you've followed the evolution of ex-Elephant 6-ers Of Montreal it won't come as a total surprise when you hear the spazzed out sugar-pop songs that make up this new outing. Over the years they've slowly shed their Elephant 6 roots and dipped their feet into more dramatic and charismatic waters. Their last outing Sunlandic Twins was chalk full of instantly catchy dance floor gems. And with Hissing Fauna they've sort of turned into Sparks playing at a teenage dance party! And this is sure to be a hit with all the kids, and for good reason, it took a while but the indie rockers finally learned how to shake their asses and make music that demanded such movement.
Many of the Elephant 6 Collective members have been resurfacing as of late. Not only have the wonderful Olivia Tremor Control's exploratory pop albums been reissued, but many of the bands in the E6's second tier are stepping forward with new albums! Of Montreal are one of those bands. In the E6 family, Of Montreal have always been sorta like OTC's younger less adventurous, more toothsome brother. This time around on Satanic Panic In The Attic, it sounds like Kevin Barnes and co. have taken it easy on the cookie jar and explored a wider palette of musical styles (than the usual E6 folk, psychedelic and pop). Indeed, this just may be their most focused and least obtuse album to date. Fear not though dear fans of their trippy pop sound, it's still very much in bloom with moments of pure psychedeli-twee (just check out their songtitles and lyrics)!
Of Montreal sure have come a long way in the decade since their birth. While they began life as the next generation torch carriers for the Elephant 6 scene, their sound has evolved into their own very distinct, eclectic and ambitious colorful pop music that's not afraid to shake asses and lay on lots of dramatic sass in the process. Skeletal Lamping finds them continuing their Sparks like take on grandiose and multipart pop suites with all songs bleeding into each other as Kevin Barnes sings boldly about his sexual desires and curiosities. Barnes for sure sounds like someone who needs to be at the center of attention at all times and his lyrics can often sound like they should be coming from someone half his age but as long as he keeps creating such entertaining and creative pop then we can live with that. And the packaging on both the cd and vinyl is as colorful, elaborate and compelling as the sounds contained inside.
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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Nice to see that some branches of the Elephant 6 Collective are still bearing pretty blossoms and juicy pop fruit. In addition to the debut from A Hawk And A Hacksaw (the solo project from Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeremy Barnes), stalwart E6ers Of Montreal have released a new album. While those Apples In Stereo folks remain on hiatus, Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes has kept the flame aglow on their Brian Wilson torch, assuming the E6 pop helm with plentiful ability and enthusiasm. Amid the tilt-a-whirl glee of their predominantly sweet, jangle perkiness, the band doesn't shy away from funking things up (on the third and seventh songs), strange-ing things up (on the twelveth track) or diversifying in other ways. Much like on their previous album Satanic Panic In The Attic, they've continued to keep their musical scope set to 'panoramic view' with heavy doses of piano, thick synthesizer textures, dance-y beats, soaring near-operatic vocal grandeur and ultra wordy song titles. Sometimes however it can be almost too heavyhanded, threatening to topple and crush the more delicate aspects of the band. Definitely check out the two brief song samples though, but keep in mind that they can't really do the breadth of the Sunlandic Twins album justice.
