You are hereby forewarned that five AQ staffers totally hate this record, while two others like it a lot. AQ fistfight!
We'd heard a lot from various customers recently about this female rapper with a disc on German indie-electronica label Kitty-Yo, so we finally had to order some in, and it's proved to be very controversial indeed.
Here's what the thumbs-downers have to say:
Yuck! Someone take that groovebox away from her, and wash her pottymouth out with soap. This is... really stupid and bad. Sheer aural annoyance. I could go on, but don't want to waste the space. File under: Chicks On Speed (no, actually it's worse than that).
And here's the other side of the coin:
Sure, Peaches is shallow ear candy, but we all need sugar sometime. With songtitles like "Fuck the Pain Away" and "Lovertits," Peaches far surpasses Li'l Kim in raunchiness, and her cool vocal delivery is equal parts coked-out ice-queen, white girl trying out hip hop a la Debbie Harry, and fierce punk yowler on the level of PJ Harvey and Kathleen Hanna. The music is super simple freeze-dried disco / wannabe electro / digital hardcore complete with stark drum programming and disembodied armies of handclaps. The whole package is slightly tongue in cheek -- Peaches has got the Sandra Bernhard-style parody / pathetic reality thing down cold. Those who would spend their money on Chicks on Speed should really check this out instead. Peaches delivers.
P.S. Interview between Le Tigre and Peaches at http://tvwww.webfreetv.com/de/de/de_national/culture_zone_de/musicrules/peach/.
Another chapter in the Suicide related 10" series from Blast First Petite. This one features Peaches, Effie Briest, and Alan Vega. The cover of this 10" is the most shocking thing about the release with its illustration of an erect cock adorned with dragon tattoos and dripping with semen. You might think that Peaches would match this image with a dirty-dirty-dirty bit of electro, but her track is a more innocent than sultry cover of "Johnny" from Suicide's first album. Effie Briest takes up an odd track to cover, "Universe" from the little-known Why Be Blue album Suicide released in 1992. Their cover eschews electronics for an atmospheric post-punk dirge certainly worthy of the acclaim they received on their Sacred Bones lp. The Alan Vega track originally came from the 1990 album Deuce Avenue, with a narcoleptic arrangement of electronics and Vega's rockabilly, lip-curled vocals.
Sweet! The 1972 solo debut from the one and only Annette Peacock has at last been properly reissued on both cd and vinyl. This has been unavailable for years and definitely deserves to be heard. Last year, we found out that Peacock had just done her own reissue on cd, but they were only available in prohibitively expensive, autographed editions, though we were quite tempted to order 'em anyway. Glad we waited, for this more affordable and widely available reish comes in both digipak cd and lavish vinyl. We've sold quite a few of these already, so we guess some peeps were waiting for it too.
How to describe this? It's jazzy, bluesy, avant pop music, an inside-outside hybrid, with acid rock and electronic experimentation alongside the likes of a cover of Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender", rendered ultra moody and dramatic. Throughout, Peacock's vocals are expressive, edgy, extreme, and electronically effected (fed through a Moog synth, in fact), but also seductive and sensual. At her best here, she comes across like a free jazz version of Betty Davis (the funkstress ex-wife of Miles). It's also likely that fans of Yoko Ono will approve. Quite a debut, from a woman who had toured with Albert Ayler, hung out with Timothy Leary, and could count David Bowie and Diamanda Galas among her fans.
The epic title track ferinstance, starts off all skittery-skree freeform freaky, then, staying freaky, turns into a funked up torch song when the vocals come in. There's parts that sound like Sly & The Family Stone or Stevie Wonder grooves, other parts that sound like spaced-out Moog madness� all in the same song! That's the opening track, too, and sets the tone for the entire album, which is full of groovy bits, sad piano ballads, and spooky electronic soundscapes, in various combinations. Some of the synth stuff is played by her (then?) husband Paul Bley, with whom Annette had made a few improvised synths/vocals albums around about the same time. The album also features Brazilian percussionist Arto Moreira.
This reissue is remastered, and comes complete with brand new liner notes and previously unpublished photos. Here's hoping this means there's also a reissue of Peacock's 1978 masterpiece X-Dreams not far behind.
The double lp version is limited to 1000 hand numbered copies and includes a poster, the cd comes in a digipak with thick booklet.
We've dug pretty much everything we've heard from this Wisconsin husband and wife duo, the lp on Night People, the split with Wet Hair, those records found the group unfurling thick slabs of murky dronepop, twisted psychedelic dub, blurred hypnotic riff heavy space drone, psychedelic space boogie, all wound into a roiling sonic stew, seriously warped and druggy and occasionally blown out and noisy, but on this new record, they've ditched much of the heaviness, a lot of the noisiness, and toned down much of the murky psychedelia and instead crafted something much poppier and dreamier. The first track is a bit misleading with this in mind, as it's a lysergic bit of distorted dubbed out riffage, with some programmed beats, buried under chiming melodies and a heaving bass buzz, kaleidoscopic and hazy and with the potential to explode into something much heavier and noisier, but instead it gives way to "All The Sun That Shines" which sort of lives up to its title, a dubby reggae flecked bit of woozy skitter, programmed beats, swirling effects, loads of reverb and delay, and hazy ethereal female vox, some spidery Morricone-esque guitar twang, and an almost calypso groove are woven into the proceedings too, the result though is indeed hazy and sunshiney and gloriously washed out.
"Amazing And Wonderful" is up next, and while featuring a similarly murky Skaters-esque rhythm, it ditches the dubbiness, and sets a sort of abstract post punk into a much more dreampoppy realm, all tinkling chimes, descending melodies, multi tracked vox, all wrapped in a gauzy patina of swirling reverby whir. "Bird Of Paradise Dub Version" is another abstract swirl of druggy space pop, the 'dub version' aspect embodied by the delayed drums and the softly swirling clouds of blurred effects and heavy heavy echo. And so it goes, the rest of the record unwinds similarly, an ever shifting collection of murky, lo-fi programmed-beat driven dub pop, muddy, and murky and warbly, plenty of buzzing low end, shimmery effects, hushed dreamlike vox, a little bit of synthy new wave here and there, some stripped down low slung trip hop every once in a while, and even some fragmented off kilter synth pop strangeness, but overall, way less damaged then their past outings, and more akin to a group like Pigeons, that same sort of downtempo electronic pop, albeit with a much more murky, warped and experimental bent. Which as far as we're concerned translates into really really cool!
Remix records are not for everybody, mainly catering to people who are already fans. Thus 936 (Remixed) is a remix record that probably every Peaking Lights fan should own, but definitely might hit the spot for fans of Demdike Stare and minimal Italo-disco as well. Peaking Lights' dubby, tripped out psych-pop almost cries out for some kind of dance treatment, and while most of the remixers have sped up or energized thier respective tracks, the undercurrent of dreamy psychedelia filters through. A lot of the remixers have kept the original vocals relatively untouched. Some of the people and groups to take on tracks are Cuticle, Xander Harris, Ital, Innergaze, and Mi Ami's Daniel Martin-McCormick. Peaking Lights' 936 was last year's perfect summertime record and 936 (Remixed) seems like the perfect record to usher in the springtime!
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With their latest record, these long time faves, psychedelic psych-kraut space-dub husband and wife duo Peaking Lights, continue in their trajectory, away from the warped drugginess and abstract noisiness that defined their early records towards something WAY more blissed out and laid back, still druggy most certainly, but less 'bad trip' druggy and more woozily wasted on some lost sun dappled tropical isle under a warm deep blue summer sky.
Like their previous record 936, which was a HUGE hit around here, Lucifer gradually unfurls as a another heady sprawl of blissy dubby psychedelia that relies heavily on looped, cyclical rhythms, cascading layers, and bleary blurry loops. The opening intro is the perfect introduction, a soft cacophony of what sounds like murky muddy marimbas and steel drums and xylophones all tangled up into a glorious swirl. But "Beautiful Son" starts off the record proper, with doleful piano under a skyful of strange glitchy electronics, and reverby swirls and swoops, bloops and trills, all beneath some lush angelic female vox, the result sounding like a more tropical, dubby and abstract take on Stereolab, droney, pulsating and percolating, a little bit sci-fi, but the sort of seventies version of sci-fi, that retro futurism filtered through sixties dub pop.
"Live Love" lays down another backdrop of loops and cascading rhythms, this time driven by what sounds like a Casio on 'calypso' setting, reminding us a bit of James Ferraro, but with the 'dub' cranked, most notably, the woozy bassline, and the vocals dubbed into soft echo drenched swirls.
"Cosmic Tides" is the first full on dub, the duo offering up their own electro-dub version of the classics, the beat, heavily reverbed, the organ, the upstroke guitar, but this is Peaking Lights, not King Tubby, so soon, the song splinters into some dreamy space pop, and over the course of the song drifts dreamily between the two.
And so it goes for the record of the record, the sound veering from reggae like grooves, to warped lo-fi reverby slo-mo eighties pop-dub that sounds like Bananarama's "Cruel Summer" slowed way down, and finally a hazy ambient coda, all dreamlike piano wreathed in reverb, strange backwards swoops and squiggles, all smeared into a strange bit of haunting psychedelia, which had us hankering for more of that sort of thing along with all the dubby dreaminess next time around.
Cool La Dusseldorf homage cover art. LP is limited to 2000 copies and includes poster and a digital download!
We got a little taste of Peaking Lights on their split with Wet Hair, as part of the Not Not Fun Bored Fortress 7" series, and we loved their murky bass heavy drone pop and were definitely hankering for more. And here it is, in the shape of a one sided clear vinyl silkscreened 12", three new tracks of murky spaced out hypnotic riffage, sprawled out over a single side, these three tracks ooze and drift, a sort of disembodied abstract psychedelic space boogie, crumbling rock riffage draped over a morass of echo and reverb and crumbling distortion, the vocals high and keening and wrapped in reverb. The sound shifts a bit and becomes more rhythmic and hypnotic, swirly and softly buzzing, blissed out and droney, laced with shamen like vocalizing over tangled muddied riffing and some skeletal robotic percussion. The final track is the prettiest of the bunch, an epic slab of blown out hypno-drone psych buzz, another machine like rhythm, tinkling pianos, wheezing chords, all held together by undulating layers of fuzz, and all blurred into a fantastically hazy ritual of washed out dreamdronedrift.
The lp is pressed on clear vinyl, one side is silkscreened, the lp is packaged with a heavy paper insert, also silkscreened, green on green, all housed in a thick PVC plastic sleeve. And of course, limited...
A flurry of releases from Mexican Summer, all limited, all gone before you know it, and all pretty dang good. Pearl Harbor offer up 4 songs of hazy, warbly girl pop, all crooned angelic vox and shimmery Cocteau Twins like guitars, dreamy and otherworldly, but plenty psychedelic and washed out, a bit reminiscent of a female Ariel Pink in some ways. Folks who dug Girls At Dawn, Dum Dum Girls, Grass Widow, Vivian Girls, will definitely feel right at home. But unlike a lot of those bands, PH channel a distinctly eighties vibe, the drums simple and machinelike, the guitars crystalline, and wreathed in soft effects, the melodies and harmonies reminding us of that era of MTV, synth pop, and new wave, with a slightly gothic tinge, woozy Joy Divisiony bass underpinning the chiming guitars, and glimmering tangled vocal lines, everything slightly blurred and indistinct, giving all the songs here a strange otherworldly feel, like you discovered some old broken radio that only picks up stations from 30 years ago, broadcasting lost synth pop from some alternate dimension. Trippy and psychedelic and really really cool.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered, each one with a download card too. Sorry tho that they're not so cheap, Mexican Summer just jacked up their prices...
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A flurry of releases from Mexican Summer, all limited, all gone before you know it, and all pretty dang good. Pearl Harbor offer up 4 songs of hazy, warbly girl pop, all crooned angelic vox and shimmery Cocteau Twins like guitars, dreamy and otherworldly, but plenty psychedelic and washed out, a bit reminiscent of a female Ariel Pink in some ways. Folks who dug Girls At Dawn, Dum Dum Girls, Grass Widow, Vivian Girls, will definitely feel right at home. But unlike a lot of those bands, PH channel a distinctly eighties vibe, the drums simple and machinelike, the guitars crystalline, and wreathed in soft effects, the melodies and harmonies reminding us of that era of MTV, synth pop, and new wave, with a slightly gothic tinge, woozy Joy Divisiony bass underpinning the chiming guitars, and glimmering tangled vocal lines, everything slightly blurred and indistinct, giving all the songs here a strange otherworldly feel, like you discovered some old broken radio that only picks up stations from 30 years ago, broadcasting lost synth pop from some alternate dimension. Trippy and psychedelic and really really cool.
Pearls and Brass are a Nazareth, PA power trio, old schoolin' it for the rockers amongst ya. Apparently they've been doing this for, like, ten years now (this is their 2nd full-length) so it's not like they're jumping on some sort of stoner/garage bandwagon. Indeed, it sounds like they've been at it since 1969! This is definitely inspired by the likes of Cream, Mountain, GFR, um, maybe the original (Gary Moore) Skid Row, classic power trios like that from way back when. Which means if you dig current retro-rock combos like Dead Meadow or SF locals Parchman Farm and Genghis Khan, you need to add Pearls and Brass to that list.
Their songs are bouncy, riff happy numbers, stuffed with Iommi-ish solos, the guitar/bass/drums interplay rolling along a bumpy road, hinting also at the influence of more modern hyperkinetic postpunk/prog constructs like Hella. Mainly 'cause there's a lot of well practiced playing goin' on. But they keep a relaxed, stoner vibe happenin' in part 'cause of the lazy, laidback vocals that, well, sound to us a lot like Michael McDonald. Huh? It all works though. Truly, this rocks, choogles, boogies... all that good stuff... never letting up... well except that they also pull a page from Zep and get all folky and acoustic too on two cuts, though they end up sounding more like Devendra on those, really, also no bad thing. So we've gotta give this the thumbs up, we'd invite these dudes to play our backyard BBQ beerbash anytime (that is, if we had such events).
Also, a note for the irony-wary: at this point, is it even worth trying to parse the possibilities of ironic (or not) intent? I mean, this was recorded here in SF at Tim Green from The Fucking Champs Louder Studios, it's on hipster indie label Drag City, and the band presents themselves as backwoods, beer swilling burnouts. So you might wonder, are they? Whatever the case is, they're doing something right, the love of classic rock on all fronts here really can't be denied.
This one's for those of you who really dug The Indian Tower release by this Pennsylvanian power trio, reviewed here last list. That record was in fact their second album, after this self-titled debut from 2003, which was never widely distributed... it took the powerful indie rock hype machine called Drag City (just kidding) to clue us in to Pearls and Brass' existence. Digging the blend of '60s psychedelic blues rock worship and nimble mathiness that these guys dished out on their Drag City release (sometimes it's like a strange but unforced meeting of Cream or Cactus with Hella or The Fucking Champs, maybe) we went to see 'em play the other night, opening for The Champs as a matter of fact. Definitely impressive live, they ripped through a bunch of The Indian Tower and also did a song or two from this album, which they had with them for sale, so naturally we asked 'em to stop by the store on their way out of town the next day and sell us a few copies. The three guys pictured on the cover all have much longer hair now (and a bigger beard in the case of the drummer) and likewise The Indian Tower was definitely built on this album's foundation -- there's melodic acoustic moves, stoner blues, and plenty of kick ass hard rockin'. So if you enjoyed The Indian Tower you may well want one of these too! (Unless you're looking for the garagey Tim Green production job, as this one's a bit more conventionally polished, to match what's perhaps a slightly more typical "stoner rock" sound here, not quite as lost in time as The Indian Tower.)
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Okay, I admit it. I blew it. I totally missed the boat on Pearls Before Swine. Hey, it happens. Not sure whether it was the whole sixties political folksinger thing, or the excessive secret-hippy adoration, or what, but I'm here to aplogise profusely, and to try to convince anyone else, who like me managed to overlook such a remarkably powerful and totally gorgeous body of work, to definitely have another look. Two records on ESP should have been the first clue that Pearls Before Swine needed some closer scrutiny to truly understand and realise how dark and fucked up and beautiful this stuff really was. The two ESP records are still available, but this 4 cd box (release a couple years ago, and yes, blew it then too!) seems like the perfect way to get (back) into it. Collecting the four pre-ESP records (These Things Too, The Use Of Ashes, City Of Gold, and ...Beautiful Lives You Could Live In), Jewels Were The Stars is an expansive, darkly sinister massive chunk of perfect acid tinged, super political psychedelic folk. Tom Rapp's sweet rich vocals, and his ever present lisp, sun dappled acoustic guitars and soaring strings, with fuzzy acid fried leads, all super lush and impeccably produced. Imagine the Zombies, dosed on acid, sent off to Vietnam, shot up a bit, brought back and forced to play in deep dark minor keys, turning little sunshine-y pop songs into deeply personal, dark and introspective, damged-psyche folk songs. The sound may be all Zombies and Byrds, but the SOUND is so much more complicated and intense and personal and important. This stuff is so essential, especially now in light of the recent folk resurgence. So everybody into Davandra Banhart, Faun Fables, Joanna Newsom and all that stuff needs to check this out. Unless you already have, and you're just all sitting there whispering to each other "I told you so." Which is fine. I can take it.
Amazing package, gorgeous box, huge booklet with liner notes by Byron Coley, Damon Krukowski (of Galaxie 500 and Damon And Naomi) and Masaki Batoh (of Ghost), Mitch Myers, as well as an extensive list of the songs and who performs on each one. Wow!
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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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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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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Italian label Get Back is producing vinyl reissues of selected titles from the legendary ESP label. The Pearls Before Swine issues may be of special interest to those folks (like myself) who heard Tom Rapp for the first time back in April 1997 at the Terrastock Festival.
Gentle lilting SF roots rock weighted by a heavyheartedness is what this full length by Mr. Danny Pearson is all about. Joining him on one tune "Be Here Now" is Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters/Sun Kil Moon), and you might say that The Oblivion Seeker is very much in the same vein as Kozelek, as well as American Music Club. In fact, Pearson covers the Mark Eitzel penned tune "Vulture And Hyena", and Sun Kil Moon/AMC's Tim Mooney recorded the album. See, it's all connected! And yet, we may also mention how akin to the lush earthy prettiness of The Czars this is too -- particularly on the songs graced by warming strings, Hammond organ, and ghostly harmonium, but even more so on the two which feature some very soft velvety female backing vocals that offer some light in Pearson's world weary atmosphere. Indeed it's this pair of songs along with the Kozelek-accompanied number mentioned above that are the highlights of this album. Very nice!
If there's one thing that has helped some of us here get over our fear of techno, it's the amazing mixes on Kompakt. Sure we're a sucker for blissed out dreamy pop ambience, or murky throbbing heroin house, or heck even big block rockin beats, but with techno, we sometimes have to be coaxed, lured in, a little pop ambient sugar to sweeten the otherwise straight up techno pot.
Of the recent Kompakt mixes, this latest from Ewan Pearson has turned out to be one of our favorites, barring one or two, most of the records he's mixing we've never hard of, and heck, we hadn't even heard of Pearson himself before this, but this mix is a killer, dark and groovy, laid back, but plenty danceable, the opener is a trippy bit of muted four on the floor and squiggly electronics, leading us right into this eclectic mix, that moves through sunshiney, hiss drenched, stuttery vocal downtempo groove, to dubby late night pulse, to rad retro futurist funk, to hazy rave-y buzz, to post Depeche Mode house flecked new wave, to cool Euro electro, to stuttery looped softly pulsing collaged dreamscapes, to smoldering total soft pop, to cool clipped, angular Daft Punk-ish indie pop laced electronica and on and on.
Kompakt fans will love this of course, but if you were waiting for a techno record to lure you to the dancefloor, this might just be it...
Second full-length from this operatic black metal outfit featuring guitarist/vocalist Ihsahn of black metal overlords Emperor and his wife Ihriel (plus her brother Lord PZ and drummer Per Eriksen)... They construct dark convoluted castles with spires of gothic female vox and electronic ambience, and foundations of labyrinthine metal rifferama. More ridiculous than sublime, to be sure, but fans of Emperor will no doubt appreciate this, perhaps even those who might not have gotten into Peccatum's debut (as this is a lot less heavy on Ihriel's vocals than past efforts). The new AND improved Peccatum, we should say.
New ep from this Emperor side-project. Ihsahn, his wife, and his brother in law, making more absurd operatic pomp metal.
Ihsahn of Emperor, his wife and her brother collaborate on this ambitious attempt at grandiose black metal opera. Rather insane, once you get past the first quasi-lame track. Classical musical training in the service of Satan!
Kind of indie grime from SF.
Pedestrian Deposit began as a full-throttle noise project back in 2000 by Jon Borges, then a high-school kid living in the Central Valley town of Tulare, California. For those of you not familiar with the geography of California, Tulare and the outlying areas do not instill the psychogeographical sense of wonder that The Starving Weirdos get from Humboldt County of that Jewelled Antler invoke from the Sonoma coastline. Nope, this is a depressed place in terms of culture, the economy, and opportunities beyond low-rent gangs and cheap drugs for the youth of Tulare. Borges had been clearly channeling much of his discomfort with his place through noise, occasionally interwoven with simple, downer melodies; and even as he's matured into his twenties and found a new home in Los Angeles, a steely fist operates behind the curtains of his relatively subdued constructs. Nowadays, Pedestrian Deposit is a duo with Borges joined by Shannon Kennedy on electronics and cello, while Borges' solo work is now expressed through the spectral drones-plus-noise of Emaciator.
Austere begins with a crackle of electrical static that bristles against a unsettled loop that collapses into a necrotic low-end hum, which seems intent on declaring that something ominous is afoot. For the next twenty minutes, Borges and Kennedy unravel lilting passages of post-Basinski loops pointing to a melancholy antiquity, hypnotic ambience full of shadow, smoke, and mirror, and gliding tones from Kennedy's cello. That sense of foreboding and dread which opened the album definitely subsides, and that's certainly by design as it only heightens the impact from the bursts of noise that crash through the mix at unexpected points through the latter half of the record. The album does explode for a blistering six or seven minutes by the end of the album in a power electronics fury, before fading into oblivion through a beguiling set of soft-focus loops. Quite nice.
Pedestrian Deposit have relentlessly toured the United States for as long as we can remember; if your hometown has some shithole warehouse space or a couple of dudes who host noise shows in their house, chances are that PD have been there. Given their constant touring in a car with a tape player, it makes perfect sense that the cassette would be the preferred media for PD; in fact, PD's Jon Borges has released a shitload of noise and drone tapes over the years through his Monorail Trespassing imprint. East Fork North Fork did in fact come out as a cassette earlier in 2010, only to disappear before anybody really got to get a hold of it; but the tape has been usurped by the cd for the reissue of this pretty fucking awesome record, with two new unreleased tracks as a nice bonus.
The days of Pedestrian Deposit abusing soundsystems with deleterious feedback and earscraping noise are pretty much gone. Nowadays, Borges is working with his partner Shannon Kennedy in constructed a frightening, haunting set of recordings for cello and electronics, thick with echoing drones and ghostly shadows that creep out of the woodwork. The amount of empty space on East Fork North Fork is notable, with Borges and Kennedy layering backish abrasions of rusted objects on contact microphones, distant pluckings of cello looped into seasick passages, heartbeat thumps coupled with subterranean scrapings, and hauntological half-melodies pushing to the foreground. Everything appears tuned as to announce the possibility of a huge surge of punishing noise, much like the atmosphere that Michael Gira built on Children Of God; and Pedestrian Deposit does allow for one such explosion on the album. But for the most part, it's the post-noise threat of audio holocaust that gives East Fork North Fork its sense of drama.
This is easily the best thing that Borges has released either through Pedestrian Deposit or through his solo Emaciator project.
Spring of 2010, the stalwart San Francisco sound arts organization 23five hosted their annual Activating The Medium festival, commissioning a handful of experimentalists, noise technicians, and field recordists to present work based on the theme of Ice. While G*Park's allegorical plunge into an ice cave and Cheryl Leonard's dripping icicles with Antarctic recordings and bowed penguin bones were thoroughly compelling, Pedestrian Deposit's performance was terrifyingly amazing. PD has transformed itself over the past decade or so from a harsh noise project into one of the most accomplished electo-acoustic outfits of our time, bringing languid cello tones and buzzing harmonics to a well-versed pedal-driven electronic arsenal of rumbles, drones, and noisy grit. A duo of Shannon Kennedy (cello, electronics) and Jon Borges (noise, electronics), Pedestrian Deposit tours constantly through the noise underground; and that time on the road has served them well in terms of delivering the goods. For their 23five commission, their set began in a familiar mode to those who've witnessed Pedestrian Deposit before, Kennedy crafting hypnotic patterns through loops on her cello while Borges hinted at something far more ominous through tectonic rumblings of feedback and black noise. Upon the dissolution of this spellbinding movement balancing noise and grace, Kennedy set her cello down and climbed into a wash basin which was positioned at the front of the stage. The basin was filled with ice water which she poured over her head in slow repetitive fashion, while a microphone captured the sounds of her chattering teeth and frigid gasps as she began a process of self-induced hypothermia. For what seemed like an eternity, Borges did nothing, allowing the raw human gasps from his partner to be the only sound they presented. Eventually, a glacial semi-melodic drone worthy of a BJ Nilsen or a Deathprod recording slowly emerged beneath Kennedy's shivering for a superb coda to such an abject piece of electro-acoustic theater. Kithless features the whole performance as the A side, and even without the physical presence of Kennedy dumping ice water on her goose-pimply skin, the recording is a powerful document and certainly stands on its own. The B side "Under A Veil Of Living Light" is a worthy companion to the live document with Borges building a crunched, tactile noise crescendo out of pools of sonorous hum and rasping buzzed cello. A magnificent accomplishment!
College rock lives on. And David Bazan, Pedro The Lion's mainman has been at it for many a year now. Mopey boy vocals and fuzzy electric guitars that bring memories burbling back of the late '80s / early '90s college radio darlings like Buffalo Tom, Dinosaur
This is a re-release of PTL's debut full length which was first released in 1998, shortly after the 'reformation' of Pedro The Lion, having started as a 5 piece, broken up, and then reformed as just David Bazan all by his lonesome. Lonesome is right. Wistful sad boy indie rock, with earnest lyrics and dreamily melancholy sentiments. Go on, revisit those sensitive, brooding indie
Eight slow, dreamy indie rock numbers by singer/songwriter David Bazan. Yes that's right, Pedro The Lion is a one-man band (after starting as a 5 piece, disbanding, and continuing on as a 1 piece!). This is a re-issue of his 2nd release originally released in
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Four songs from local favorite "grindpop" band, featuring AQ-staff member Andee Connors, who plays with his usual violent accuracy. The cover is Deco-style and gorgeous.
Full-length from one of San Francisco's best-loved but now defunct bands, Pee, the pop punk quartet who do the dueling-boy-girl vocal thing so well, and whose drummer you may have seen behind our counter. That's peripatetic Andee, full o' charm, good vibes, and impeccable taste. The vinyl is perfectly clear.
Peversely educational epithet? Peculiar entertaining emissions? Particularily egregious error? Puritianical ecstatic episode? Painful enlarged egg? Our own coworker Andee's band has released its second album of fragmented pop. AQ-friend Doug Orleans puts it best when he likens it to all the bridges (not the choruses, not the verses, the BRIDGES) from all your favorite pop songs strung together into a seamless whole. Excellent!
Ho ho ho! Just in time for the holidays, the diggers at Academy/Voodoo Funk have unearthed and reissued this rare 7" slab of Christmas cheer, Afrofunk style. Pee Pee Dynamite (what a name!) was an artist from the happenin' mid-'70s music scene in Ghana, and this single was produced by Kwado Donkoh, known to those in the know for his work with the Uhuru Dance Band and the Agoro Records label.
If you pay attention, sure the singer is talking 'bout Christmas and New Years, but unlike a lot of seasonally themed recordings we've heard, this really could be played anytime, the seriously groovy funk shuffle happenin' on the A-side will keep the party goin' right through New Years Eve and long into January... Meanwhile the slower, soulful B-side, truly lives up to the name "The SOUL of Christmas". A neat stocking stuffer for the funk lover in your life. Limited edition as well.
Debut recording by soul queen Ann Peebles. The female counterpart to Al Green. Wicked!
We had been hearing about this collaboration for a while now, definitely excited but not sure what to expect from a meeting of the warped musical minds between weirdo outsider noise jazz terrorists Talibam! and just plain weirdos Peeesseye, who would prevail, jazz or noise? Would it be unlistenable? Would it be unlistenable in a GOOD WAY? Would it rock?
So while the answers are both, both, no, yes, yes, all you need to know is this is a serious chunk of psychedelic spaced out jazz flecked heaviness. It is on Invada after all, home to both the Heads and White Hills, so in that sense, this does sort of fit. The opening track is basically a super charged jazz kraut blow out, the guitars fuzzed out, the organ warbly and wild, everything wreathed in thick clouds of buzz and hiss, loads of effects, total post Hawkwind psych drone free jazz freakout, which shifts gears at some point and becomes even more of a krautrock jam, crunchy and distorted, with some weirdo vocals buried in the mix, eventually exploding into a frenzied freakout, before finishing off with a super distorted, in-the-red churning chugging space drone dirge finale. Phew.
The next track offers some recovery time, a gorgeous raga like buzzscape, minimal percussion, weird production, some abstract twang, but the core sound a thick shimmering layered dreamlike drone. Ten minutes of pure cosmic bliss.
But c'mon, that can't last long with these guys, "Everything for Everyone" is a crumbling, fractured noisefest, weirdly melodic, but chaotic and harsh, some slice and dice weirdness, fields of feedback, and more upper register drones, "A Grey Mountain of Shit" is full on freaked out psychedelic free jazz, with some incredible drumming, wild tangled guitaring, and a weirdo stumbling whatthefuck outro, all Tom Waits like growls, warped synths, and more wild unhinged drumming.
The record closes with the 17+ minute "Year of the Moral Orgy / Grit of the Ghost", which begins life as a sprawling bit of psychedelic dronefolk, a distant buzz, little curlicues of high end melody, random percussion, a smoldering minimally tense dronescape, which grows more and more chaotic and intense, the drone threatening to swallow the song whole, never fully exploding, instead, stumbling to a confusional halt, complete with garbled vox and a slowly collapsing universe of sound.
We actually bought one of these when we were in a shop in NYC, based entirely on the cool cover art. What is surprising is that the art is courtesy of one Mr. Stephen O'Malley. It's not surprising because it's cool, just that is looks so unlike the rest of his immediately recognizable work. A sort of angular, geometric, psychedelic Pippi Longstocking. Fucked up for sure, but totally appropriate to be adroning this latest record from PeeEssEye, or PSI or whatever. We initially expected some sort of metal, maybe something sludgy or doomy, but it's really not metallic at all. it's more of an abstract, sound collage noise record. Lots of sineaves, and swoops of white noise and fuzzed out static. There is metal present, but in the form of clanking clattery percussion. Or in the shape of some weird live performance, where the band seems to be spewing metallic shrapnel through a blown speaker. Super distorted and totally fucking bizarre. The rest of the record is a series of abstract soundscapes, from twinkling shimmer, to full on harsh noise. Definitely falls sonically somewhere between the Yellow Swans, the Skaters, Wolf Eyes and the like. Fans of any of that sort of brass knuckle to the skull goodness will dig this as will strong stomached iron eared dronesters. Comes in a cool mini gatefold style sleeve with badass O'Malley artwork!
We discovered the confusionally monickered Peeesseye or PSI or whatever, on one of our many record shopping trips, bought entirely because of the crazy cover art. And while it wasn't what we expected, it was pretty fucking weird and cool. So we got a bunch of the store and everybody seriously dug PSI's druggy abstract what-the-fuck free rock weirdness. So we were super psyched to discover a brand new record. But they managed to throw us for a loop again with Commuting Between The Surface & The Underworld, on which the band take a whole new direction, less noisy and purposefully obtuse and more folky and dreamy and sort of pretty. And while we really liked the last record, we're beginning to LOVE this one.
The opening is the first sign of PSI's strange new direction. A killer sort of folky Dead C buzz and strum, with damaged FX doused vocals, thick drones all over the place, distant moans and scrapes, but at the center of it all, a simple steel string strum and a warm wheezing wash of fuzzy shimmer. Like a clattery clangy Wicker Man style forest ritual, tribal and primitive, but run through some tweaked and damaged primitive effects box. No Neck and Sunburned Hand are definite reference points, but PSI is less clattery and rhythmic and more blissed out focused on a murky buzz drenched folk. Which is a huge turn around from their old, significantly noisier incarnation.
The whole record seems to follow a similar template. Some sort of minimal steel string guitar, strummed, picked, lazy and meandering, soft melancholy melodies unfurling sleepily, while all around these stretches of folk dreaminess swirl thick washes of grimey gritty distortion, fuzzed out psych rock guitar, dense swaths of rumble and whir,
as well as drifting clouds of percussive tinkle and shimmery shuffle. Definitely for all you fans of the current crop of abstract cd-r free folk troubadours.
The last track, a massive 20+ minutes of barely there ambience, and what sounds like a straight field recording, lets the band dip back into their obtuse bag of tricks with an endless stretch of street noise, random clatter, footsteps, what sounds like either a bawling child or a billy goat, bird song, and an electric razor. Like some surreptitiously captured day-in-the-life. Strangely hypnotic in it's own way, but a suitably random coda to the rest of the record's beautiful buzz.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Fucked up far out sonic explorers Peeesseye (or PSI) return with a brand new disc that finds them sounding as weird and wacked as ever, and continuing to drift in the same direction as their last disc, Commuting Between The Surface & The Underworld. The first time we heard these guys, they were a much noisier proposition, spewing a caustic and fractured noise rock, that we liked quite a bit, but by record number two, they seemed to be exploring songs and melody more than noise and texture, their sound markedly prettier and folkier. On Mayhem In The Mansion, the band continue to drift through some strange folky forest, but being PSI, it's all glimpsed through some cracked funhouse mirror. A strummed acoustic guitar seems to root most of these songs, but that guitar is strewn upon skipping stuttering electronics, strangled yelps, random clatter and chaos, growled vocals, dense clouds of cymbal shimmer, stumbling tribal percussion, random bits of thump and rattle, distant moans and creaks, shimmering electric guitar melodies, furious squalls of static drenched psychnoise and lots and lots of effects.
It's definitely pretty and folky, but so completely out there. The prettiest parts somehow manage to get all tangled up with the obtuse angular bits, folky strum is smothered in buzz or bleep or both, but it works, it becomes some impossible artpop weirdness. A lot of this sounds like Avarus or No Neck, but more than anything it sounds sort of like Animal Collective, but with most of the hooks removed. Or better yet, like Animal Collective's deformed mutant twin brother. The one they keep locked in the basement. With just a busted up acoustic guitar, some effects with dying batteries and a 4track.
And shit, if that doesn't sound amazing, well, then we give up...
Several years in the making and the ever so prolific Mike Patton has finally finished his Peeping Tom project. A record inspired by the 60's cult thriller of the same name, complete with really cool packaging. Patton sent tracks to a bunch of big name collaborators like Kool Keith, Bebel Gilberto, Amon Tobin, and Massive Attack. As well as enlisting folks like Dan The Automater, Dale Crover from Melvins, Kid Koala, Rahzel, Odd Nosdam, Jel, and even Norah Jones. The result is some of Patton's most accessible sounding songs in quite a while. We haven't heard his acrobatic voice sound like this since back in the 90's (you know back in his Faith No More days) and much of this record carry's that early 90's funk-electronic-hip-hop-rock hybrid. Cool.
Drummer Aaron Levin and guitarist Eric Murray, both formerly of tongue-in-cheek (but over-the-top awesome) glam rockers Boyjazz, have banded together as a duo since that band's unfortunate dissolution to create another outlet for their "bow down, we're not worthy" level instrumental talents. Pegataur is the result (the name referring to a Pegasus + Centaur hybrid, a winged man-horse, of course). Their debut cd, Eternal Flight, is quite a treat for anyone who digs rippin', all-instrumental heavy metal. Technical and melodic and riffy - basically, imagine The Fucking Champs as a two-piece. If you like the Champs, you'll like this, maybe that's all we need to say!!
Any of you out there who perhaps found Boyjazz too jokey (you shoulda given them a chance anyway, what an entertaining band they were!), should have less of an issue with this, in fact, Pegataur not only shut up and play but really go off the deep end in terms of seriousness if you delve into their, um, mythology. The packaging, a large circular poster that folds up to hold the cd, inside a plastic sleeve, bears mysterious illustrations of supposed significance within the occult sciences, relating to their own research. We've gotta quote what their press release says about it: "Orbiting around the Pegataur seal are 11 sigils for the tracks and a 12th king sigil to bind and rule the album as a whole. Utilizing techniques employed by such famed Renaissance occultists as Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim and Dr. John Dee, each song title and corresponding sigil were generated by custom software (written by guitarist Eric Murray) that correlates the musical structure of each track with the many esoteric traditions in which Pegataur is initiated. It is suggested that the neophyte concentrate on each sigil as the song plays while holding the song title firmly in their mind to further their studies." (Hmm, they don't say how you're supposed to do that whilst headbanging.) So, maybe their joking has just gotten even more nerdy and obscure. Or maybe there's something to all of this. Certainly this duo seriously seem to be channeling an unnatural abundance of heavy metal chops and catchiness through each one of these 11 rockin' songs, as if they've got some direct psychic link to a dimension of metallic wonderment and the devil's music just effortlessly, endlessly flows through the Pegataur boys and their instruments like magic.
Pegataur probably could have scored bagfuls of gold pieces (or weed) from The Sword or High On Fire in exchange for some of the best of these riffs and still had plenty of good ones left over. Likewise, their hella tricky metallic mathrock moments would likely garner applause from folks like Electro Quarterstaff and Girth. We've already compared 'em to the Champs, but you could also try to imagine Zebulon Pike, stripped down to one guitar and forced to condense their usual 20+ minute epics into the 3-minute pop song format.
From the pinch harmonic frenzies and chugging changes of "Lesser Bow Of The Herdsman" and "The Weeping Quiver" to the grinding distorted stoner riffage of "Lord Solomon's Eyes" and "Human Appetite" (among the 11, we could mention 'em all) this kicks ass utterly, with no vocals to get in the way, just tons of guitar shred in an indie Van Halen mode that might make Thee Speaking Canaries jealous. No joke!
While Andrew Pekler has previously recorded albums for Scape and Staugbold don't be expecting any minimal glitch here. Cue is his homage to the great tradition of library music. When records were made with almost anonymous authorship filled with tracks perfect for different moods and moments that could be used to score films and television programs. What Pekler has done is to use library music as his springboard, each track is given a short descriptive summary ("ambiguous western atmosphere resolving into children's tune, swirling cymbals added") yet the sounds he makes come out sounding anything but clinical and calculating. Instead he gets to the heart of the sounds filling this record with so much mindfulness and rich warmth. Musically it reminds us a bit of our favorite era of Mouse on Mars (Iaora Tahiti, Instrumentals, etc) as well as the first few To Rococo Rot outings. But what also makes Cue sound so great is that you never really think of it as an electronic album. It is mood music filled with building and evolving tones, and moments of guitars, percussion and piano. There is a timeless quality to the sounds on Cue that we could see someone coming across fifty years from now and putting in a film just as easily as we could have believed this was a long lost record of late 60's/early 70's forward thinking experimentalism in the BBC Workshop tradition. It's dreamy without being too light, moody without being heavy handed and totally engaging throughout!
