Thee Hounds of Foggy Notion may be a live cd / dvd set of this venerable SF outfit, but it also serves as a "best of" of sorts as well. Pulled mostly from the last four records, the point the band changed their name from OCS to its many incarnations of "Ohsees", "The Oh sees", or "Thee Ohsees", and the record titles went from numbers to quasi-absurdist phrases. Those who may shy away from live albums over fidelity issues should not fret here, as Dwyer and his cohorts are seasoned and energetic live players and hi-fidelity has never been a major concern on their studio records anyway; so there's really not a discernible distinction between live and studio sound quality. In fact, this may be just as good as a starting point into the band as any one of their studio records, which just keep getting better and better. Got to love a band that can move so effortlessly from southern garage to one of the best Shirley Collins interpretations ("Highland Wife's Lament") we've heard in awhile. Plus the dvd showcases the band's wild and wooly performances.
Now, two of your favorite records by Thee Oh Sees, combined on a single cassette, designed to look like one of those old school record club tapes. Pretty cool how Burger is doing this series of Oh Sees cassette tape 2-fers.
Thee Hounds Of Foggy Notion:
Originally a cd/dvd live record, this "best of" features some of our favorite tracks from some of our favorite records, beginning at the point when the band changed their name from OCS to its many incarnations of "Ohsees", "The Oh sees", or "Thee Ohsees", and the record titles went from numbers to quasi-absurdist phrases. Those who may shy away from live albums over fidelity issues should not fret here, as Dwyer and his cohorts are seasoned and energetic live players and hi-fidelity has never been a major concern on their studio records anyway; so there's really not a discernible distinction between live and studio sound quality. In fact, this may be just as good as a starting point into the band as any one of their studio records, which just keep getting better and better. Got to love a band that can move so effortlessly from southern garage to one of the best Shirley Collins interpretations ("Highland Wife's Lament") we've heard in awhile.
Dog Poison:
John Dwyer, one of the most prolific performers in recent memory, returns with yet another new record by his band Thee Oh Sees. And by "his band" we are not discounting the contributions of the other members because on Dog Poison, all the instruments are played by J.P.D. all by himself! Percussion, guitars, vocals, keyboards, even a flute on a few of the tracks. Though definitely more fuzzed out and raucous than Help, the last Oh Sees full-length, Dog Poison draws on similar veins of '60s pop and proto-punk, sculpting songs only one of which is over three minutes (and that just barely). Way more loud and rocking than other releases that were all Dwyer, it makes sense that Dog Poison is ostensibly by "Thee Oh Sees" rather than "OCS" or some other variation on that theme. It's like the old OCS is emulating what has become Thee new Oh Sees.
Those of you who think you might miss the boy/girl vocals of other Oh Sees releases, do not despair. There are multiple vocal layers on almost all of the tracks, most using "regular" singing and falsetto that echoes the perfect combination John and Brigid have found on other recordings. Sometimes, as on "The Sun Goes All Around", the lead falsetto vocals are backed up by (believe it) even higher falsetto backing vocals. Clocking in at just under 25 minutes, these 10 songs will have you on the dance floor in no time.
When you're on...you're on...and if you are The Oh Sees these days, you ARE ON FUCKING FIRE!!! Seriously we haven't seen a band hit a sizzling stride like Thee Oh Sees are currently experiencing in AGES. So we welcome the tidal wave (yes, we went there) of releases from them in the last year with totally open and eager ears. Their newest album Help, an aQ Record Of The Week recently, will most likely find it's way on to many of our year end favorites list, we can't stop listening to it! So it should come as little surprise that these two new non-album tracks are also totally perfect, ultra catchy blasts of pure garage pop genius! It's actually such a perfect time for Thee Oh Sees to be cutting singles as they seem able to continually whip up memorable, endearing and super kick ass songs, which will hopefully mean more singles to come!
Makes perfect sense that Tidal Wave was released on Woodsist and the full length came out on In The Red, as both of those labels sounds lately, perhaps owe a sonic debt to the blown out magic Jon Dwyer has been blasting out for the last decade. Get one while you can!
More awesome fuzzy distorted sixties style garage rock from Mr. John Dwyer and his Oh Sees, the first full length, full band effort after Dog Poison, the record on which Dwyer played all the instruments himself. It's easy to forget just how great Thee Oh Sees are, and what a great songwriter Dwyer really is, after all the sweaty chaotic live shows, non stop touring, record after record, but holy shit are these tracks killer. Especially the 13+ minute title track that opens up the record, beginning with two minutes of classic super catchy Oh Sees, super distorted guitars, a cool stuttery rhythm, reverb all over the place, howled echoed vox, and lots and lots of 'ooooooh's, surely plenty for a song, but "Warm Slime" has way more to offer with its next 10 or so minutes, a cool extended breakdown with a loping drum beat, some sixties girl group sounding vocals, jagged bursts of vocal / guitar crunch, super trancey and hypnotic, in the style of classic sixties funk and soul breakdowns, where live, probably the band is introduced, or there's some interaction with the crowd, but on the record, it's just a chance for the band to spread out and lock into a super minimal groove, and see just what they can do with it.
The other six tracks are mostly just what we've come to expect (and want) from Dwyer and company. Fuzzy echo drenched sweat soaked garage pop, loads of buzz and howl and crunch, kick ass drumming, lots of hooks, more oooh's and aaah's, but there are a couple surprises, most notably the fuzzed out, super distorted drone rock dirge of "Flash Bats", a hazy sprawling motorik druggy groove that finds the Oh Sees getting all Shjips style, which most definitely suits them, big time. As always awesome. And if like us, you're STILL hankering for more, it's always good to know that it probably won't be all that long before the next record drops. We'll be ready.
And fyi, for the next two weeks, we'll have the cd format of this on a special $2 off sale, so it's $11.98 instead of the regular $13.98, until 5/21/10!
It's been raining Oh Sees around here lately, culminating in their most recent record Help being an aQ Record Of The Week. And here we are a couple weeks later, and whattayaknow, another new Oh Sees, although this is not quite a new record, instead it's a collection of odds and ends, home recorded experiments and unused songs, demos and that sort of stuff. We were warned that it was harsh and noisy and it sort of is, but some of these songs RULE, in fact, the more we listen to this, the more it might begin to give Help a run for its money as our favorite Oh Sees record.
A constantly shifting swirl of super lo-fi effects, dubbed out rhythms, pounding in the red garage rock jams, falsetto vocals, everything delayed, reverbed and blown the fuck out, feedback, warped buzz, clatter and clang, processed alien vox, angular riffage, flutes, jazzy grooves, all tangled up into a constantly shifting hodge podge of sonic lo-fi garage pop detritus, but, and it is indeed a big BUT, within all that wild freaking out and experimentation, are some seriously catchy tunes, only made all the cooler by all the noise and chaos, a bit like the old Iran records, total pure pop, doused in sonic chaos. Needless to say, if you're a fan, this is another essential release. And we have the last 20 copies, though it is being repressed sometime soon, so when we run out, it won't be long before we get more.
PLUS, this lp only release comes with a cd too, a compilation of singles, songs from splits and compilations as well as some unreleased stuff as well, so all the Peanut Butter Oven songs, the songs from the split with the Intelligence and more more more!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Sounds like our buddy, Thee Ohsees mastermind and man about town Jon Dwyer, has fallen in love all over again with the sound of raw garage rock. The last Ohsees album was way more punchy and rocking than previous releases, and now this split finds Dwyer sounding almost as fierce as he did in his Coachwhips days! Yet, he's still managed to find awesome ways to add a little something extra n' arty to that Ohsees sound.
The two Ohsees songs end before you know it but they're so good and infectious that we've just been playing them over and over and over.
Meanwhile, The Intelligence make a great foil for Thee Ohsees as they know a thing or two about how much more rad garage rock sounds when it's doused in reverb, crumbling keyboards and lo-fi vocals. Lars Finberg, the mastermind of The Intelligence (and a former member of the A-Frames) has had a bunch of records on In The Red which makes perfect sense as they have become THE label for bands with true raw garage spirit. Their three songs on this split, including a Vulvettes cover are such perfect blasts of haunting and infectious lo-fi garage rock ass kickery.
Features awesome artwork by Jay Howell and Joe Roberts and is already out of print at the label so you better act fast if you want one of these.
The LAMC series of 7"s features tons of our favorite bands (Fuzz, Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees), delivering an exclusive track on the A side, while the B side features one of THAT band's favorite new artists. A pretty cool concept for sure and we're reviewing 3 of our favorites in the series.
Number 3 in the series comes from big time aQ faves and local garage pop heroes Thee Oh Sees, their track a crazy catchy, bubblegummy chunk of jangle and strum, garage fuzz dreaminess, a song so good, it's hard to believe this didn't end up on a record proper (it did end up on third Oh Sees singles collection, and was on of our faves!), but it's the perfect single track, in the old tradition of bands putting their best stuff out in a more bite size format. So good!
The up and comer Dwyer and Co. picked for the B side maybe be an unknown commodity to the rest of the world, but for aQ-ers, The Mallard are another favorite, and their track here makes it easy to see why, a dark low fidelity swirl of hazy organ, murky rhythms, swirling guitar shimmer, reverb drenched vox, and buried hooks, all whipped up into a frothy psych-garage murk-pop concoction. If you've yet to discover the joys of the Mallard, this track will definitely make you wanna hear more! Too bad they already broke up, but there are 2 full-lengths to check out.
And as you might imagine, also SUPER LIMITED!!!
This one hardly needs much of a description. SF garage pop darlings Thee Oh Sees teamed up with Aussie gloom poppers Total Control, 4 songs each, all pretty dang great! Thee Oh Sees side is appropriately rambunctious and chaotic, wild and noisy and jangly with plenty of surfy twang, dollops of reverb, John Dwyer's almost cartoonish high pitched echo drenched yelp, super melodic and catchy, and with Thee Oh Sees, you have to know that there's much more going on than what's just on the surface, sure it's sweaty and wild and invokes much shaking and bouncing, but the band are tight as fuck and weave intricate layers and strange harmonies, and the songs are surprisingly complex, slipping from frenzied avalanche of noisy sound to almost fifties sounding reverby shuffles, but just check out the last few minutes of the final track, "Blood In Your Ear", with its swirling falsetto vox and soaring melodies all suspended amidst lush swirls and shimmers, pretty goddamn divine.
Total Control counter with their own brand of gloomy garage pop, another clutch of songs that ranks up their with their best, dirgey, droney, minor key, haunting and moody, peppered with blasts of full on distorto punk garage crunch, culminating in their last track, a gorgeous minimal low slung slither of layered guitar drones, rumbling bassline, laid back weary vox, a darkly depressive broody ballad that explodes in the second half into tense angular soft cacophony, that ends way too soon.
Cool cover art. Includes a download card too.
Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall cover each other on this brand new smokin' seven inch. We really don't need to say anything more. Anyone who's been listening to the current wave of charged, blown out garage pop these days knows that these are two of the most potent forces in the game. Thee Oh Sees are coming off what we think may be one of the best records of the year, Help, and Ty Segall's debut was one of our favorites of '08. So rad to hear them tackle each other's songs. Thee Oh Sees do "The Drag" with a deep-in-the-void reverb filled flair that suits the song so well. Ty does "Maria Stacks" from The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending A Night In, a song which might just be Andee's favorite Oh Sees jam, not just cuz it's hooky and catchy, but it also immortalizes AQ pal and amazing artist/zine-maker Maria Forde. Ty finds a way to make the song a bit more lo-fi and fucked up sounding while still holding on to the great melody that makes the original stick like it does. Pretty much a no-brainer, best grab one of these while you can!
First appearance on cd, methinks, for this winsome Athens, GA quartet who made music between '81 and '84. Led by Lynda Stipe (yep, Michael's sister), Oh-OK employed singsong two-girl vocals, minimal yet interesting drumming, Lynda's rubbery, super catchy bass lines bouncing along at a cheerful pace, and a simple, off-the-cuff stripped down sound. Way ahead of their time, they should properly be mentioned in the same breath as their contemporaries The Pastels, Young Marble Giants, The Raincoats, etc. (They were quite a bit sweeter than YMG and Raincoats, mind you.) Features their entire recorded output -- a mere two EPs -- plus a whopping 13 extra live tracks of songs they never got around to recording (including Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer", which they remake in their own 'girls in the garage' style). All in all a nice, overdue package, with liner notes by Christgau, clippings 'n reviews, and produced by AQ fave customer and Perfect Sound Forever editor Jason Gross.
Although the opening track "HiLO" seems to start things out in a similar fashion, as a whole SunnyPsyOp is definitely not as Numanesque and pop-oriented as Ohgr's previous album Welt. So if you were craving more of the same, unfortunately you'll just have to keep spinning the former 'cause this takes a somewhat different path. However, it's not completely off the map of Ohgr. If you're seeking more of a bridge between Skinny Puppy (the project that Ohgr is best know for, where he recorded as Nivek Ogre) and the abovementioned album - something somewhat more somber and abstract, more skin-crawling and mind-bending - this might be for you. Whereas Welt might've made you want to get up and move about, SunnyPsyOp might make you want to settle down into brood mode with a sturdy set of headphones. Shades of Nivek Ogre's Skinny Puppy roots surface here - perhaps as a result of the recent reunion of said group (that's right, we can expect a new album from Cevin Key, Ogre and co. very shortly! - listen... are those celebratory cheers coming up from the catacombs?). Of course it sounds great. Much like his SP bandmate, sonic craftsman / mad genius Key, Ogre's gained another well-suited, producer / multi-instrumentalist in Mark Walk (Pigface, Ruby). He skillfully fills your ears with rich synthesizer textures, sharply puncturing beats and intricate details and captures Ogre's deeply emotive and affected voice in fine form. With cover art by Camille Rose Garcia. Includes a video for the track "Majik".
Throughout the '80's/90's, Vancouver surrealists Skinny Puppy were a group ahead of their time. Laced with film dialogue samples (one of the first and best, if you ask me) and seething emotion, their highly visceral and visual music seemed to reverberate from the future much like that of Throbbing Gristle, Suicide, and Cabaret Voltaire before them. Much more experimental and sonically
We first heard the Ohio Penitentiary 511 Jazz Ensemble on the first volume of the Spiritual Jazz series with their sparkling horn groover, "Psych City". Turns out that the "penitentiary" part of their name was no joke. The 511 Jazz Ensemble was made up entirely of prisoners doing time in the Ohio State Penitentiary and was formed in 1971 to give inmates with musical abilities a means to be productive and creative. One of the ensemble's key founders was Logan Rollins, nephew of Sonny Rollins, who due to his musical conservatory experience was able to form the group to perform for various functions, namely entertaining inmates during the holidays. An inspiring meeting with the Ohio State University band allowed for a record to be made and these 4 tracks of long-form jazz excursions were the result. The music is ecpansive and spiritual, as one might imagine, displaying a sense of serious sonic freedom for its many players. Privately pressed in 1971, this album is a mega-rarity among soul jazz fanatics, with not even the founding members having their own copies or receiving any money for their efforts. The group disbanded after Rollins and other founding members were released. Yet this release still continues to inspire, showcasing the beautiful articulation of freedom that can really only be expressed when one no longer has full access to it.
Dark feedback frenzies, primitive plodding drums crashing away, reverby Reynolsian vocals: this is some *intense* electric guitar heavy improv psych, a lot like Keiji Haino's Fushitsusha. It's the brainchild of Nanjo Asahito, who shares Haino's prediliction for wearing all-black clothing and sunglasses at all times (and for wrangling from his guitar loud clouds of post-Neil Young blackness). Never one of the most prolific of modern Japanese underground psychedelic bands, Nanjo's Ohkami No Jikan here present what's basically their debut album, though they've been around for quite some time, making only some rare compilation appearances previously. But, the members of the band, in particular leader Nanjo, keep busy in other projects -- in Nanjo's case, the legendary High Rise, Toho Sara, Musica Transonic, Mainliner, etc. Actually it doesn't say anywhere on here who's on this besides Nanjo, though unless he's overdubbing everthing he's got at least a drummer and another guitarist in the band. Three tracks (one of 'em over 30 minutes long) of timelost, slow-moving, heavy rock drone, brutally beautiful and moving. Of the three new Japanese releases on Fractal, this one *doesn't* necessarily feature Acid Mothers Temple's Kawabata Makoto (although maybe he is on here), but in comparison to the colorful krautrock worship of the AMT disc, or the hard driving proto-metal of the Musica Transonic one (which features both Nanjo and Kawabata), this is the deepest, most primal of the three.
More spaced out free noise racket from the amazing Last Visible Dog. OHM are a New Zealand free rock outfit treading similar territory as the Dead C, but the sound is more sparse and spread out. Sputtering drums and droning guitars, warm feedback and dreamy peals of high end squeal. Warble guitars and shuffly jazzy drums, played in the middle of a huge empty hall while sharp bolts of guitar hum and amp buzz are deflected by gentle strumming and whispery melodies and multiplied into occasional walls of bzzzzzbrrrrrghhhhh. This single 40 minute track basically documents the entire existence of the band OHM. Gorgeous and spare. Campbell Kneale (Mr. Birchville Cat Motel) guests. Features a hilarious cover spoof of the Who's maximum R+B logo!
After a self released 7", and a split single with recent Record Of The Weekers, weirdo biker metal ne'er-do-wells Satans Satyrs, Canadian noise rockers / metal punks Ohmwar deliver their first full length, and it's sonically quite surprising, super polished and all over the sonic map, taking the Maiden / Motorhead / Speedwolf sound of their 7" and infusing it with a surprising amount of poppiness, crafting a record that manages to be heavy, and punky, but also impossibly catchy, the opening track begins with some chiming Sonic Youth like guitars, and thick fuzzy bass, before eventually erupting into something more punked out, and that's not even mentioning the strange almost reggae sounding outro (!)...
The second track starts off crazy poppy too, with some almost NWOBHM sounding guitar harmonies, which blur into feedback drenched tones wrapped around some galloping punk rock crush, peppered with little blurts of tangled progginess. And it really doesn't settle into a single sound for the rest of the record, although in not settling, they seem to be defining their own super distinctive sound, a dizzying hybrid of post punk poppiness, mathy metal, and fierce punk rock stomp. Tracks like "Blithe Reaction To An Unfortunate Life", begins all slow burn majesty, and almost Godspeed like slow build, before transforming into a strange (at least for metal/punk) bloopy guitar melody, draped over another galloping rhythms and some thick, rumbling bass buzz, the guitars then splintering into atonal/angular shards of keening high end, the sort of sound that at a slower tempo, minus the gruff vox, could easily end up being some twisted avant art rock, and even in its punkier incarnation, much of that art rockiness remains, and then mid song, there's a killer little guitar lick/melody, that will stick in your head like crazy. And so it goes, most of the songs clocking in around the two minute mark, but these guys cramming as much as they can into those two minutes, with almost every song offering up some sort of unlikely sonic surprise, transforming, what could have been straight ahead metallic punk, into a way more twisted and progressive record, pop punk collides with chugging metal, nineties style math rock bleeds into pounding hard rocking, Refused sounding anthemic post-hardcore mixes with straight up heavy pop, all wound up into something pretty goddamn great.
Awesomely over the top, black and white Nick Blinko style cover art, but Blinko by way of Bosch, a twisted punk rock underworld of mouse headed hipsters, people with exposed spines, astronauts on rafts drifting across lakes of blood, insects on swings, man eating fish, alien swamp sound systems, wheelbarrows full of teddy bear skeletons, creepy cave eyes and more. Includes a massive glossy, fold out poster/lyric sheet, with more of that gloriously gruesome and garish artwork.
Debut 7" from these Canadian noise rock garage punks, whose sounds is in fact just that, a killer mix of old school punk rock, noise rock, and punk metal a la early Maiden, Motorhead, or for something more modern, maybe Speedwolf. But where Speedwolf fall squarely in the metal camp, Ohmwar are way more PUNK. These five songs kill though, wild riffing, with shredding leads here and there, fierce and furious drumming, the vocals a feral yowl, the songs pretty straight ahead, but with plenty of surprises, like the super melodic breakdown in "We Must Fly", or the opening of "Land Of Laughs" which is a dead ringer for old Iron Maiden, as is the closer "Eisentsten" with the bassline driving the whole song, and the main riff the bastard son of Maiden's "Prowler". And as much as we love punk rock, it's the more metallic moments here that seal the deal. But for anyone who digs punky metallic heaviness, this will definitely get your blood pumping, or your head banging, or whatever, just buy it.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Full on noise attack from this international "supergroup" of sorts. Featuring ex-members of To Live And Shave In LA, Fear Of God, Sudden Infant and Schimpfluch-Gruppe (who, along with Runzlestirn & Gurgelstock, collaborated with noise giant Masonna a while back on the "Arschloch-onna" disc on Japan Overseas), the group utilizes the human voice as the main source of sound, employing a multitude of electronic manipulations guaranteed to destroy eardrums as well as irritate the fuck out of your neighbors. Totally retarded and highly recommended to fans of the above or those needing a fix for what was once the consistent output of the dearly missed RRRecords of Massachussets. On the newly established Ohne label, a subsidiary of the acclaimed Viennese power electronics tastemakers Mego.
Another amazing cosmic sonic artifact from Japanese reissue label EM, this one a legendary album of galactic analog synth wizardry, originally released in 1978, created by composer / sound designer Matsuo Ohno. He's most famous for his sound design on the animated television show Astro Boy, on which he was assisted by none other than Takehisa Kosugi from seventies fluxus dronelords Taj Mahal Travellers. With the help of Kosugi, Ohno recorded this his first non soundtrack release, a sprawling collection of super abstract cosmic drift, often classified as new age, but really so much darker and mysterious. Separated into 8 parts, beginning with zero and ending with infinity, the record unfurls slowly, almost as if it were in fact the sounds of the universe, as pictured on the record's cover, with some strange all seeing eye hovering amidst the stars. The sounds rumble and whir, smeared into long stretches of deep thrum, and spaced out shimmer, there's plenty of gurgling buzz and dense rumbles, crumbling distortion, and strange little squiggles of sci-fi effects, if anything the sounds here are way more academic, and sonically seem to hew closer to experimental tape music. The swoosh and whoosh of most analog synthscapery is relegated to the background here, with Ohno coaxing all manner of strange sounds from his synths. His experience in sound design is evident throughout, as much of this plays out like some lost soundtrack, the score to some strange experimental film, or how we imagine some seventies planetarium light show would sound on LSD, streaks of melody, shards of chordal thrum, lots of reverb and echo, the vibe is definitely futuristic, but not kitschy, instead, it's ominous and haunting and fantastically otherworldly. Essential listening for analog synth obsessives, but the sort of thing that should appeal to fans of dronemusic and spaced out abstract psychedelia as well.
And as if the record proper wasn't enough, also included is a bonus 3" cd that features a rare recording originally released as a super limited flexi-disc, which was created in honor of the 1970 World Expo (as in Expo '70!), and features 6 popular songs of the time, from all over the world, America's contribution being "My Darling, Clementine", recreated using nothing but animal sounds, which had been captured on tape. A trippy bit of outsider tape music for sure, one that in some strange way foreshadows the dogs-singing-Christmas-carols and Jingle-Bell-cats kitsch that would prove to be so weirdly popular decades later. But this is not nearly so goofy, instead, it's strange and wonderful, the animal sounds wreathed in echo and delay, bizarre and beautiful, and again, recorded with the assistance of Taj Mahal Traveller's Kosugi.
Gorgeous packaging as always, a full color gatefold sleeve, with reproductions of the original artwork, a big booklet too with liner notes in Japanese and English, the 3" bonus disc, house in a miniature replica of the original World Expo flexi-disc sleeve. Wow!
Whew! Housed in a bright pink digipack, this is a seriously WEIRD reissue (or not so seriously, 'cause it's pretty silly, but weird in any case). 30 tracks, 74 minutes of pure WTF?, '70s style. A private press rarity from Baltimore, originally released in 1974, OHO's Okinawa is one of those obscure underground '70s artifacts that combine experimental prog, psych, and proto-punk into one trippy package. Deserving of whatever cult status it has, no doubt.
Some folks will be drawn to this for its garagey, manic energy and and shocking angular guitar action, but you gotta be able to deal with the gonzoid goofiness too. And unhinged vocals that even have a bit of Jello Biafra-like warble to 'em... though sometimes the singing is quite lovely, like at the outset of the song "A Frog For You", which features a chorus of voices sweetly intoning such lines as: "What's that on your face... it looks like shit... ", before some screaming begins, and someone yells, "Let's rock!", and indeed they do, (sarcastically?) channelling Chuck Berry/Jerry Lee Lewis, tossing in some Zeppish riffs too.
We'd have to assume that these musicians had some Frank Zappa and the Mothers records in their collections. But they avoid jazzy wank (though there are horns), and their hippy freak humor isn't as obnoxious as your typical Zappa fare. Less scatological, more surreal and non-sequitur. Song titles like "Ain't Life Dumb", "Brown Algae Is Attractive", "The Unfortunate Frankfurter Vendor", "Hairy Bag", "Chess Is Boring", "Fast Bananas", and "Pale Hippo" might give you some idea. Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd could be another inspiration for all this trippiness, they also kinda remind us of the Hampton Grease Band, Beefheart, and some of the wackier British prog acts of the ear.
This handsomely packaged, remastered reissue, includes a ton of bonus material recorded at the album sessions that wasn't included on the original release. We mentioned 30 tracks (some of them but brief interludes), only 16 actually appeared on the 1974 lp. But now that it's on cd, you get the entire extreme OHO Okinawa experience/overload as it was meant to be. It's acid-fried, theatrical, quite intentionally insane, and actually pretty amusing... plus prog and hard psych types will enjoy all the distorted guitar stabs and crazy changes. Fans of modern day, mathy indie pop acts like Heavy Vegetable might also dig.
Captain Trip presents Ohr's retro 60's cosmic grooves with faux mellotron samples, stoned thud rock basslines, ample wah-wah guitar phasing, and hypno-rock structures. If Circle wore paisleys.
One of THREE new Utech releases this week (plus the vinyl of the latest Locrian!), and the first we've heard from this Spanish duo, but hopefully not the last, as these guys push all our heavy spacey droney buttons. A series of long form, atmospheric space outs, draping thick pulsating guitar grit over swirling electronics, fusing Morricone-ish twang to spiraling streaks of synth shimmer, creating a sort of hazy, droney space folk, or maybe a folk flecked bit of space drone, either way, this stuff is divine, hypnotic and mesmerizing.
The opening two tracks seem to function as one single two part epic, crafted from a Tim Hecker like cascade of warm whirring chordal blur, beneath soft spacey pulsations, some twangy guitars, a bit of thick Earthy buzz, all blurred and smeared into a thick, organic, undulating dronescape, the fuzz and buzz gradually receding, leaving a sky full of crystalline guitar shimmer, that seems to pick up grit and whir as it goes, eventually it fades out completely, leaving just a lush shadowy cloud of muted crunch and swirling ambience, only to erupt into some distorted guitar crunch, laced with strangely rhythmic streaks of hiss and glitch, before finally fading out into something much more tranquil.
The rest of the record offers up variations on this twangy spacey droney sound, often resulting in something that sounds like a Tim Hecker / Barn Owl jam, ethereal and ephemeral one minute, all spidery melodies and slow shifting glimmer, pulsing and electronic the next, strange flurries of stuttering melody wrapped around gentle steel string strum, and hushed chordal background blur. There are moments when the sound transforms into something much more soundtracky and spacey, "Red Forest" for example sounds like it could be an alternate score for Logan's Run, a haunting retro-futuristic creep, all swirling minor key synths, loping basslines, and pulsing electronics, quite ominous and haunting, but which gives way to the warped squelch of "Threshold" all murky and muddy, but again, haunting and futuristic sounding, like another lost sci fi synth score, the whole record wrapping up with the hazy drone psych of "Jatavena" warm whirling buzz, murky distorted rumblings, strange bits of noisy background detritus, the tone of the track gradually shifting and getting more and more ominous, before again seeming to shrug off the sonic clouds, closing with a warm whirring bit of softly melodic droned out drift.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Packaged in super sweet Utech style mini sleeves, black ink on heavy brown paper.
While Noise Museum has predominantly been a bleak isolationist/noise label, Oil 10 may seem to be an anomalie to their catalogue with the black lung rhythms chugging along like Pan Sonic's 'complex rhythm generator'... for fans of Autechre or Matmos.
NOW AVAILABLE ON CD!!! This is one hell of a great album of wastoid electronics thumping with bad-ass techno and mired in noise fetish miserablism. Gloomy metallic synth chords ooze into leaden marches of frightening intensity thanks to the relentless drum machine pound and big-muff overdrive that crunches all of the electronics into a blinding rage. The sporadic use of throat-mulching vocal delivery is one that owes considerable debt to Godflesh, furthering along all of any and all references to crushing nihilism. Such is the case for the eponymous lead track "The Beginning" and "Dirt & Humbug" whose dark techno workouts thunder with roiling noise of obliterated surfaces compounded with teeth chattering tremolo patterns. Then there are tracks such as "Death Sieve" and "Dead Finks Don't Listen" offer a suitably ominously droned-out design for blackened ambience and industrialized abstractions that serve to augment all of this barking punk drama for Wagnerian portent. Remarkable in more ways than one.
Ojerum is one of the few artists from the informational black hole that is the Vaald label that we can say a few things about; but even then, it ain't much. Ojerum has a name and it's Paw Grabowski. That's it. On this cassette, he presents two elliptical pieces each about 10 minutes long for acoustic guitar and dulcimer, both intertwining in trancelike chimings of meditative harmonics and melodies. The timbre of these pieces allude to the oblique neofolk, minor chords of Sol Invictus, but his playing is far looser, keeping true to the vanguard minimalism of Alexander Turnquist, with these ghostly figures on acoustic instruments hypnotically cycling amidst subtle wash of windswept field recordings. So lovely, and so limited.
Italian desert-style stoner rock, produced by Michael Davis from the MC5!
Now thanks to Okay's two new albums, you can choose to take the High Road AND the Low Road... Haha! Ahem, this is the new project of Mr. Marty Anderson (also of Dilute). Both albums are filled with bright slightly eccentric folk pop songs a la Donovan, or more recently Destroyer's Dan Bejar, Devendra Banhart or Frog Eyes' Casey Mercer. Vocally this also sounds a lot like a younger sibling of Marianne Faithfull or Nico (i.e, the gravelly warble of a lifelong smoker). The backdrops to Anderson's off-kilter vocals are breezily swaying, ultra pretty arrangements. So nice and gentle! If we had to choose one to start with, it'd really be a hard choice to make -- they're pretty evenly matched -- but we'd probably go with the High Road 'cause it might just be our imagination, but it seems to be just a little bit more lush and fully realized (particularly the third and fourth songs "Have" and "Compass").
Now thanks to Okay's two new albums, you can choose to take the High Road AND the Low Road... Haha! Ahem, this is the new project of Mr. Marty Anderson (also of Dilute). Both albums are filled with bright slightly eccentric folk pop songs a la Donovan, or more recently Destroyer's Dan Bejar, Devendra Banhart or Frog Eyes' Casey Mercer. Vocally this also sounds a lot like a younger sibling of Marianne Faithfull or Nico (i.e, the gravelly warble of a lifelong smoker). The backdrops to Anderson's off-kilter vocals are breezily swaying, ultra pretty arrangements. So nice and gentle! If we had to choose one to start with, it'd really be a hard choice to make -- they're pretty evenly matched -- but we'd probably go with the High Road 'cause it might just be our imagination, but it seems to be just a little bit more lush and fully realized (particularly the third and fourth songs "Have" and "Compass").
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Hmmm, don't recall Okkervil River sounding quite like they do on a number of these new songs. Imagine an older Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) filling in as the frontman for slick alt-rock bands such as Counting Crows or Gin Blossoms. Maybe they're seeking a broader more mainstream audience? Dunno, just not sure it really works for them, at least not on Black Sheep Boy (fyi: the album is named after a Tim Hardin song which Okkevil River also chose to be the album's opening song, and a fine version it is!). Lead singer Will Sheff is known to be a empassioned, angstful vocalist, but the band's feverish performance on the more rockin' tunes still comes across a little forced. To boot, the mix seems off balance between the vocals and the too-loud bursts of electric guitar. You can get a sense of the dynamic that they were trying to capture, but again it's not quite 'there'. That said, the album's high point -- and also the point where things take a general shift for the better -- is the fifth song "Get Big" on which Sheff duets in beautiful world-weary fashion with Amy Annelle (of The Places). It's downright heartbreaking! After that the band mellows down and allows the melancholia to extinguish the rock flames in a flood of whiskey and tears. These slower, moodier numbers' arrangements are tastefully fleshed out with pump organ, mandolin, lap steel, wurlitzer, vibraphone, synthesizers, horns, strings, samples and field recordings. This is where Sheff (also the band's main songwriter) truly shines. Composing and performing songs of lush somber beauty are his forte. Indeed, since they insist on mixing their two very different personalities on each album, if you prefer one better that the other (as we do), it can make for a somewhat exasperatingly jarring listening experience. That said, the album's highlights are well worth the frustration.
Hmmmm, it might seem a bit strange to have a so-called "definitive" version of such a relatively young release, (heck, we weren't so sure of the original full length - see below) but after hearing this in its entirety, it doesn't seem odd at all. Y'see, Okkervil River's 2005 album was only one piece of their ambitious Black Sheep Boy concept puzzle. This double disc brings it all together -- the original album, the companion cdep Appendix, and the song "The Next Four Months" (previously available on their "For Real" single). Also included are videos for that song and an alternate version of "No Key, No Plan".
Here's what we said about the original 2005 version:
Hmmm, don't recall Okkervil River sounding quite like they do on a number of these new songs. Imagine an older Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) filling in as the frontman for slick alt-rock bands such as Counting Crows or Gin Blossoms. Maybe they're seeking a broader more mainstream audience? Dunno, just not sure it really works for them, at least not on Black Sheep Boy (fyi: the album is named after a Tim Hardin song which Okkervil River also chose to be the album's opening song, and a fine version it is!). Lead singer Will Sheff is known to be a impassioned, angstful vocalist, but the band's feverish performance on the more rockin' tunes still comes across a little forced. To boot, the mix seems off balance between the vocals and the too-loud bursts of electric guitar. You can get a sense of the dynamic that they were trying to capture, but again it's not quite 'there'. That said, the album's high point -- and also the point where things take a general shift for the better -- is the fifth song "Get Big" on which Sheff duets in beautiful world-weary fashion with Amy Annelle (of The Places). It's downright heartbreaking! After that the band mellows down and allows the melancholia to extinguish the rock flames in a flood of whiskey and tears. These slower, moodier numbers' arrangements are tastefully fleshed out with pump organ, mandolin, lap steel, Wurlitzer, vibraphone, synthesizers, horns, strings, samples and field recordings. This is where Sheff (also the band's main songwriter) truly shines. Composing and performing songs of lush somber beauty are his forte. Indeed, since they insist on mixing their two very different personalities on each album, if you prefer one better that the other (as we do), it can make for a somewhat exasperatingly jarring listening experience. That said, the album's highlights are well worth the frustration.
Hot on the heels of their split cd with the lovely Ms Julie Doiron, Okkervil River offer up their third full length. The title is Down The River Of Golden Dreams, but it just as well could be Down The Country Road To Downerville. This is the earthy music of despairing hearts and troubled minds. In-store play has drawn divergent vocal comparisons to Ray Davies and Jarvis Cocker, although it must be noted that neither of those two fine chanteurs would be tarnishing the tuning fork quite as much as Okkervil River do. I'm sure they're shooting for the I-can-barely contain-myself kind of expressiveness, but sometimes it drew winces. Still, when you're practically singing into the wrong end of a shotgun, who's gonna do multiple takes to get in key?
It's perfectly understandable that those dear lads in Okkervil River would need to take a bit of a breather after their densely packed 2005 album Black Sheep Boy, but their silence didn't last too long. They hit the road for a spell and then swiftly released this limited edition vinyl 12" in the waning days of 2006. The title track might be familiar to some eagle-eared fans as it also appeared on an Australian tour only release, and has been performed live in concert by the band. The flipside is an equally dark, distressed song titled "The Room I'm Hiding In". Heartrending poetic twang.
Now that Mr. Bright Eyes is all grown up, can we still describe another band's music as sounding like "an older Conor Oberst"? Well, we are and they do. The swagger of Okkervil River's latest album is also very reminiscent of Pulp and U2. That said, we stress that although it is a little odd that this Austin, TX band really does sound quite a bit like a few of their contemporaries, their music is pretty darn great in its own right. Will Sheff and Co. make fine rock'n'twang, and on this their follow-up to their monumental Black Sheep Boy album they've fortunately stepped back from the precipice of the mainstream modern rock slickness. There are a few departures from their tried and true too. On songs such as "You Can't Hold The Hand Of A Rock And Roll Man" they churn up the late night glam rock ghost of T. Rex.
This week the Kismet label brings us two rare sitar infused flower power psychsploitation oddities: The far-out mindwarping "children's" record for the hippie acid kids, Kali Bahlu Takes The Forest Children On A Journey of Cosmic Remembrance from 1967 (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and this 1971 sitar and electronics groover from Holland's Okko!
Just like the title suggests, this is Dutch musician, Okko Bekker composing original tunes and performing covers for Sitar and Electronics. Taking a less druggy and more groovy and jazzier tact than the Kahli Bahlu record, Bekker covers the Beatles and channels Hendrix, following the likes of Big Jim Sullivan (Lord Jim), Bill Plummer, and Gabor Szabo into pop sitar territory. This is probably a bit more heavy and far out than the others, but it still definitely falls more under the category of lounge exotica than into any head-expanding territory of its own. Though it come close on "Pointed Sails on Ganges" the most Eastern of any of the tracks offered here, and the one that most sounds like the cover looks. Still pretty damn groovy!
Norwegian fiddler on Rune G, nice stuff as always.
Another nice addition to the Rune Grammofon label, the music of Nils Okland is reminiscent of the soundtrack efforts of Carter Burwell (Fargo, etc.) Playing a hardanger fiddle, violin and accompanied by harmonium, piano, organ, trumpet and double bass plus occasonal vocals the music of Nils Okland sounds almost like an abstracted and drawn out Appalachian string band with Eastern European prog leanings.
The Okros Ensemble is a group (violins, double bass and viola) dedicated to the preservation of Transylvanian folk music. "I Left My Sweet Homeland" features three important guest musicians in the world of Transylvanian folk music. Most important is violinist
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This little 3" cd, a wonderfully crackling, hissing soundscape simply documenting the sound of ice melting, makes for a neat companion to another recent 3" cd we recommended, Jean-Francois Laporte's "Mantra" (a 20-minute drone piece derived from the sound of ice cooling and/or Zamboni machinery at a skating rink, you'll recall). To examine, in microscopic detail, rather the reverse of that process, recordist Collin Olan (sorry, we don't know much about him other than that he's someone with an idea and a couple of microphones) froze his waterproofed contact mics in a 10" x 10" block of ice, and submerged it in water, allowing us to listen in as the ice block slowly thaws and melts for over 17 minutes. This unprocessed recording turns out to be quite active and varied, full of sizzling, fat-frying kinds of sounds (to our ears, not unlike the atmospheric VLF radiation recordings of Stephen McGreevy) punctuated by some quite loud popping noises, ending with a stretch of near silence when the ice is, presumably, almost entirely melted away. That Olan utilized two microphones adds a lot of sonic interest to the proceedings, with different goings-on in each stereo speaker. Turn it up, and the 10" x 10" block becomes an immense glacier or berg that the listener is entombed within -- imagine yourself an unlucky prehistoric Ice Man frozen for millenia until freed and revived by modern science, like in that Timothy Hutton movie from the '80s! Certainly a sucessful experiment (we've known others with the same idea who've tried this, only to ruin their mics to little result), and quite a "carbonated" -sounding treat for the ear, especially for fans of the recordings of John Duncan, Loren Chasse, Marc Behrens, Stephen McGreevy -- and also of course for all our customers who we know are already into ice-themed 3" cds!
Meandering hazy four-track psych-folk here from a Swedish sugar-beet farmer (so we're told) by the name of Jakob Olausson, whose deep voice and acoustic guitar wooze wends through these gently-hewn tracks like a wannabe Kiss The Anus Of The Black Cat (that's a weird thing to say), but as though he's bringing his songs along to the farmer's market to offer 'em up honestly along with his equally earthy, dirt-covered root vegetables, which is to say, that this is nice and muddy sounding.
Much has been made of Jakob Olausson being a beet farmer, heck even in our review of his last record, our whole review revolves around that somewhat salient fact, and while that is indeed an odd personal fact, it shouldn't distract attention from his formidable musical talent, record number two finds this Swedish outsider psychedelic folk troubadour crafting a fantastic record of hazy, washed out, psych folk that while remaining as idiosyncratic as his debut, has managed to up the production, and add a little polish, but it's all relative, the sound is still elegantly raw and warmly home brewed, the guitars rich and lustrous, Olausson weaving a lush backdrop for his smoldering psychedelic leads and his rough raspy croon, which reminds us quite a bit of aQ pal Cayce Lindner (R.I.P.) and his group Flying Canyon, the same sort of achingly plaintive countrified folk, a sort of acoustic slowcore, that creeps and drifts, everything wreathed in tape hiss, and swaddled in billows of echo and delay, the sound minimal, and stripped down, but at the same time, still impossibly lush, the various tracks obviously recorded at different times and on different equipment, some are loud and lustrous, others are more lo-fi and brittle, but all of them are hushed and dreamy and darkly divine.
Those Old 97s have always kicked butt live -- ever on the verge of losing control of their musical pickup truck careening down those rural roads, narrowly missin' a chicken, clippin' a roadside mailbox, topplin' some jugs o' moonshine along the way (not that they nor we are condoning drinkin'n'drivin'!). And here's a great document of the band in all their unbound Texan glory! A whopping thirty songs! A rambunctious country rock delight! For fans of Uncle Tupelo, Bottle Rockets, the country moments of Mekons, and maybe even ol' Lynyrd Skynyrd too.
