Latest slab of pummeling, punishing industrial power violence from this local one man band, who also just so happens to be 1/2 of another band we love, Iron Lung, but unlike Iron Lung, BHT, aka Jon Kortland, creates twisted blurts of caustic noise, grinding, distorted power electronics, and brutal metallic churn. This latest is split into 28 tracks, each 44 seconds long, each a sonic stunner, from skull cleaving blown out crush to sculpted static over stuttering jack hammer rhythms, it's a hard sound to swallow, difficult listening for sure, and it's likely most metalheads might find this a bit too brutal, and too abrasive, and probably not metal enough, which is saying a lot, but for folks into twisted avant noise, industrial and power electronics, outfits like Ramleh and Skullflower, Whitehouse and Swans, Brighter Death Now and Bastard Noise, PHT definitely fits somewhere amongst all their equally sonically twisted brethren!
Some tracks are strangely atmospheric, others purely rhythmic, the sounds themselves blown out and in-the-red, plenty of sonic gristle, crumbling feedback, hiss and hum and skree and squalls of feedback, metallic clang and clatter, with sounds often exploding into wild gouts of white noise, but just as often evolving into murky pulsations. Heady, heavy and hypnotic, the vocals a wild bellow, the only really link to the group's punk/metal roots, otherwise, the sounds is more experimental, and avant, and even with the vocals, the vibe is more like some lost industrial outfit from the eighties or nineties. There are plenty of surprise too though, moments of unlikely melody and beauty ("1970"), gorgeous bits of grey ambient drift ("Scum"), and a bunch of tracks that almost play out more like some warped variant of minimal techno, all skeletal crunch, and stuttery throb, and yet, it all somehow works together as this bizarre, noise drenched hydra-headed, 28 part psychedelic, power electronic noise-crust epic. And it KILLS.
Awesome orange and black minimal cover art too.
What might you expect from a band called Pig Heart Transplant? With a record called Hope You Enjoy Heaven? And song titles like "Prison / Fortress", "Crawling Through Hell", "Abject. Debased. Diseased" and "I Video Tape Your Diet"? What if the band featured members of Spazz, Silentist, Iron Lung, Despise You, Artimus Pyle, Gob, Brainoil and more? What if we told you they shared some splits with dirgedoomnoise duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer? Yeah, you'd probably come up with something like THIS.
A punishing slab of slow motion power violence, crushing downtuned guitars, pounding drums, harsh hellish vokills, everything dripping with filth and murk, total Man Is The Bastard worship for sure. Low end all over the place. Some tracks the guitars are burning hot, the production way in the red, others are super creeped out murkscapes of industrial pound and processed vox, while still others are sludge-doom trawls through all manner of crusty low slung dirgemetal, and a couple are long buzzing drones, with howled vocals over the top, sounding a bit like a low end deathmetal Whitehouse. Maybe our favorite track though, is "Feeding From Your Trough", reminding us a bit of Geronimo, a fucked up mechanical sprawl of pounding crunch and hissing static, dripping with distortion and noise, locked into a stumbling lurching rhythm, with some chunks of grinding heaviness that sound like they could blow out your speakers, slipping from clipped robotic trudge, to hateful blacknoise dirge and back again. Some seriously harrowing shit for sure. Which as you probably know by now, means WAY recommended. At least for those in the mood for some murky and menacing musical punishment.
Folks went nuts for the PHT full length we reviewed a few weeks back, so here we have two new slabs of murky, muddy, downtuned sludge drenched power violence. Both tracks are gloriously crusty and filthy and so so so heavy, and would have fit perfectly on the full length.
One side features a massive lurching riff over machinelike drumming and howled vokills, pounding and relentless but strangely hypnotic almost like a sludgier Geronimo. The flip side is even doomier and more spaced out, with crushing low end, squiggly streaks of feedback, all wound into a lumbering grinding slow motion behemoth, with glass gargling vocals all beneath a thick layer of buzzy grit.
The weird part about this 7" is that both tracks, each side, features essentially an entirely different lineup! There's only one guy who plays on both sides and on one he plays drums, while on the other he plays bass. We knew they were a sort of collective and this seems to prove it. Especially considering that both sides definitely and distinctly reek of that filthy blackness that could only be Pig Heart Transplant.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES. Packaged in hand stamped plain red sleeves with a printed red bottom obi.
Latest chunk of blackened heaviness from aQ faves, Pig Heart Transplant, who we just discovered are now aQ neighbors! Not sure most folks would be all that thrilled to discover these guys were your new neighbors, not once they feasted their ears on this stuff. Downtuned pounding sludge, Godflesh style, or maybe Swans, metal laced with industrial pummel, massive grinding guitars, monstrous drumming, harsh vox that slip into deep bellowed croons, some sort of churning, chugging avant noise rock doom, like some impossible hybrid of Swans/Wolf Eyes/Godflesh/Eyehategod, or something. The track has a rad outro of abstract buzz, laced with strange bursts of metallic clatter, washed out and eerily hypnotic.
PHT are up against Juhyo, who we've never heard before, but after hearing this are way into checking out more. A glitched out electronic buzz gives way to something much more haunting and droney, deep sonic swells beneath processed reverbed samples, the vibe super cinematic, the track drifts and drifts until it's swallowed up by a wall of SuUNNO)))-like thrum, pelted with streaks of sine wave high end, before melting down into a droney creepy sample heavy drift. So good.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Housed in super swank silk screened silver on black sleeves with similarly printed and #'d inserts.
Second of two new seven inches from the Olde English Spelling Bee label (the other by Ducktails, reviewed elsewhere on this list), two new tracks from husband and wife psych folk duo Pigeons, whose sound is like a modern take on that classic seventies Wickerman acid psych folk sound, but a bit more twisted, flecked with bits of electronics, effects, not to mention fairly unorthodox arrangements, which is no doubt aided by the involvement of various guests including some No Neck Blues Band-ers.
The A side starts out all softly psychedelic and folky, sweetly strummed acoustic guitars, lush vocal harmonies, subtle slippery lap steel, but then all of sudden in swoops some weirdly almost funky bass, along with swirls of effected melodies and distorted psychedelic guitar leads making it sound almost like some strange psych folk / Portishead / no wave hybrid, but all the disparate elements woven into something dark and lovely.
The B side begins with brittle, skeletal old school style drum machine, horns and tendrils of distorted guitar, an odd assortment, but again Pigeons are able to fuse those bits and bobbles into a gorgeously off kilter hazy seventies sounding bit of lo-fi folk pop, laced with angular guitars, buried vox, and other bits of sonic weirdness, managing to sound strange and mysterious but still lush and lovely.
After a couple of fantastic full lengths, and a handful of equally impressive singles, comes the latest long player of washed out psychfolk from this East Coast duo, whose sound, as on past records, continues to slip between moody broody Portisheady lope, and fuzz drenched hazy dreamfolk, often meshing the two, adding murky drum machine pulses to swirling ethereal steel string drift.
On Liasons, Pigeons sound even more deliriously druggy and dreamy, the downtempo trip-hop elements now relegated to the occasional electronic rhythm, instead their sound moves further into much murkier sonic waters, more soft focus and fuzzy, infusing their already gauzy sound with swaths of Galaxie 500 like slowcore shimmer and blurred Bongwater-esque Shimmy Disc fug. In fact, for those of you who remember Bongwater's gorgeous cover of Roky Erickson's "You Don't Love Me Yet", much of Pigeons' Liasons plays out like variations of that lilting lo-fi, drugfolk avant pop sound, spindly steel string guitars, whirring organs, occasional bits of programmed rhythm, loads of delay and reverb, and of course those angelic echo drenched vocals.
Liasons is definitely the group's slowest and prettiest and most introspective record yet, a dark languorous drift, almost all of the way through, although the band do throw in a Serge Gainsbourg cover, and finish off with a track that's way more abstract and druggy, psychedelic and OUT, with woozy billows of soft guitar, stretched across an expanse of hum and whir, while the vocals soar and trill and keen, evoking some dark surreal late night otherworld. So nice. Psych folk(s) will dig for sure, but anyone into that Best Coast / Dum Dum Girls sound, looking for something darker and dreamier and druggier, might get into this as well...
Pigeons are a Northwestern husband and wife psych folk duo, augmented by members of No Neck Blues Band and other NNBB offshoots, and this is Pigeons full length number two, released appropriately enough on the always kick ass Olde English Spelling Bee label, and this is indeed a gorgeous chunk of psychedelic folk, dark and heavy and hypnotic, big simple motorik drumming, distorted psychedelic guitar leads, simple acoustic guitar strum and heavenly ethereal vocals, not to mention various keyboards, and bits of percussion, total Wicker Man seventies style acid folk, but definitely modernized, imagine a young hippy folksinger in the UK in the seventies, suddenly transported to now, hooking up with the new breed of lysergic bedroom folk pop alchemists, well, this is the most likely result, at its core, pure lilting dream folk, but all wrapped up in strange swooping backwards guitars, fluttering flutes, detuned doomy riffs, skittery percussion, glitchy electronics, buzzy swaths of processed effects drenched psychswirl, wild spidery melodies, tons of reverb, and strange little bits of sonic detritus, all blurred into gorgeously lush lysergic acid folk, at once timeless and classic sounding, but also weirdly modern, almost like a Karen Dalton or Vashti Bunyan for the warped lo-fi garage pop set. Which is just as good as it sounds.
Housed in super swank tip on style jackets, comes with a download coupon as well!
One of our favorite instores in recent memory was a super special appearance by East Coast psych folk outfit Pigeons, who we already loved on record, but who proved to be even more entrancing in person, performing an amazing set for a small but utterly rapt audience. Their sound over the last few records has gradually grown more and more lush, more dreamy and druggy, and more shoegazey. We thought their last record Liasons was basically the culmination of this evolution, but then along comes They Sweethearstammers, which manages to up the ante on Liasons in pretty much every way. It's weirder, trippier, the strange sort of Portishead-y downtempo electronic elements even more twisted and strangely incorporated into the group's newly expanded sound, the vocals are more powerful, confident, often heavily effected, the bass is fuzzy and driving, adding a weird sort of gloomy pop vibe, from the very first track on They Sweethearstammers we knew we were in for something special. Sounding like some strange hybrid of lost seventies acid folk, some outsider British trip hop and Mazzy Star, all blurred into a gorgeously hazy drug drenched chunk of fuzzed out folky jangle pop. That buzzing bass driving everything, even mirroring the guitar melody here and there, acoustic guitars over jangly chorus laden electrics, everything layered and sun dappled, and of course some killer super distorted psych leads, all woven into a super catchy pop song. And that's just track one. It only gets weirder, and keeps getting better from there.
"Tout Nulle Part" is all gloomy and low slung, with some strange zither like buzz, some surfy twang, a little Morricone, a little Serge Gainsbourg, that driving fuzzy bass still holding everything down, the vocals lush and sensuous, the vibe dirgey and droney, but still strangely and hauntingly poppy, the song gradually coming apart as it goes, becoming more and more abstract, eventually dissipating in a cloud of electronics and detuned melodies. "Dead Echo" opens with some reverbed drumming, some super distorted vox, and what sounds like electric piano, or at least heavily effected guitar, the drums doing a sort of slo-mo 'funky drummer' shuffle, everything hazy and washed out and dreamily druggy, sounding a bit like a folkier, more tripped out Blonde Redhead. "Chances" is a strange one, big production, sassy glamorous vocals, some wah wah guitars, plenty of dubbed out production, what started out sounding super commercial, seems to grow more and more strange and lovely, eventually transforming into a cool murky bit of droney doom pop, before slipping right back into that opening groove. "Red Friend" is some lush perfect folk pop, very Beatles-esque, but even more lovely and lysergic. "Tournoi" reminds us of Ween, which is not a bad thing, it's the strange production, and the weird guitar sounds, maybe it sounds more like Mazzy Star with Dean and Gene Ween backing them up, either way, it's some gorgeously druggy psych pop for sure. "Lauren" starts off all tripped out experimental industrial, feedback, and rhythmic thumps, detuned twang and sci-fi shimmer, before slipping smoothly into some dark folk mesmer, while "The Welcome" is a lush murky sprawl of dirge dreaminess, a sort of muddy psych ballad, laced with strange acoustic guitar tangles, and lush layered drones, maybe the most deliriously mesmerizing track on the record, which leads right into closer "Cogville", which finishes things off with a brief bit of swirling tripped out horn laden dream pop chamber psych.
So great, not that we expected anything less, we just didn't expect something so far our and so far from where they started. So utterly and whole heartedly recommended.
Latest batch of woozy, dreamlike downtempo psychedelic folk from this husband and wife duo, and like their previous efforts, they subtly hybridize Portishead style trip hop with seventies style acid folk, the results are sublime, spidery guitars, hand claps (!), thick almost synthy sounding low end, skeletal rhythms and angelic reverbed vocals. The tracks drift and hover and shimmer, but occasionally are peppered with bits of psych rock fuzz and crunch, that sounds like it could have been lifted from the Latin American installment of those Love, Peace & Poetry comps, but the fuzz is fleeting, slipping quickly back into more dreamy drift.
The B side is even more melodic and melancholy, ditching the handclaps and more overtly programmed drums, introducing subtle wah guitars, and adding even more haze to the mix, the vocals positively dripping with space-y echo, both tracks here, haunting and lovely, and way recommended.
There's lots of ways we find out about cool new bands. We finally listen to a promo that came in the mail, or a customer raves about them, or we read about 'em in a fanzine or on the internet, etc. etc. One of the best ways though, is to randomly see a band playing live that you've never heard of before, and be impressed. That's the deal with how we discovered local SF heavies Pigs.
I (Allan) just moved into a new apartment here in the Mission, that's not too far from the Potrero del Sol skatepark. On one of the days I was moving stuff, I could hear live music coming from the direction of the park, where they do sometimes have outdoor shows. Sounded like yr basic punk rock, but then a band started playing that - as best I could tell from several blocks away - sounded much more metallic and interesting, with shredding guitar leads and chunky riffage and everything. And obviously very loud. So, needing a break from my moving tasks, I wandered over to the park posthaste to check out what was going on. When I got there, the band I'd heard was still playing, and they were GREAT. Super heavy, fairly hairy power trio (boy drummer, girl bassist, bearded dude guitarist / sometime vocalist) kicking out the jams big time, sorta like a scrappier, scuzzier Melvins, in their earliest, fastest, punkiest incarnation. Like, with some more Motorhead mixed in. I had a blast watching the rest of their set, totally into it, already wondering if they had any recordings I could get my hands on for Aquarius. Also wondering, just who the heck they were. Well both questions were soon answered when the drummer held up a garish purple, very DIY looking handscreened LP emblazoned with the name Pigs, saying they'd just put this record out. Better yet, moments later a friend of mine appeared, who it turned out was friends with band as well, and told me that he'd just been telling Pigs before they played that they should bring their album down to Aquarius. And so they did, a week or so later, not just the limited vinyl but also a cd version too.
Just like their live set, the album is a blast (of distortion, among other things). Sometimes slow and sludgy, equally often full of frenzied jamming, Illuminati House Party is pure metal-punk underground awesome, with more than a few nods to classic rock catchiness. Pigs traffic in Black Sabbathy riffs (most definitely in "Lurch"), their songs furthermore having plenty of rollicking swing to 'em a la both Sabbath and Sleep. The guitarist constantly peels off tangly, widdly leads like they're coming back into style. All the tracks here (11 of 'em) rule, from the sick-o smartassery of "Hard Lovin' Van", a song with gnarly Ginnish licks and hoarse, strangled vox that could almost be an old Tad tune (some of the lyrics: "let's go the lake, and feed the ducks...get in the van, take the candy"), to the even more punk "Population Control", to the wasted doom of "Hessian's Revenge" and sheer shred of "Surf's Up". And then there's the epic instrumental 3-part rifftastic "Taser Trilogy" wherein Pigs show off their Champsy chops, not to mention stoner sense of humor (and not for the first time on this record). Yeah, great stuff!
Is it possible to imagine an unholy hybrid of, um, Electric Wizard, Breadwinner, and, er, Pissed Jeans?? Pigs might be it. Soooo glad I was within earshot of the skatepark that day!
We will be the first to admit being skeptical of records comprised of ambient tones and poetry, but the Piiptsjilling collective has produced a beguiling and beautiful record that never forces the issue either through the spoken word or through the contemplative, cinematic abstractions they produce. One of the principle soft-noise makers in Piiptsjilling (which we've been instructed to pronounce as 'peep-chilling') is Rutger Zuydervelt better known as Machinefabriek. Alongside him, the ensemble is fleshed out by Jan Kleefstra, Romke Kleefstra, and Mariska Baars, but for all of the members in Piiptsjilling, the quartet is to be noted for their restraint. Quiet loops from the various guitars slowly build over the course of each extended track, with elegant, emotionally pregnant phrases of half-melody / half-shadow worthy of a Stars Of The Lid track messed against the minimalist tension of those early Main recordings and dappled with the scrabbled guitar work that Blixa Bargeld managed on the understated Neubauten record Fuenf Auf Der Nach Oben Offenen Richterskala. The poems come by way of Jan Kleefstra, who quietly utters everything in Frisian, an obscure language spoken in the northern corner of the Netherlands, and his voice is just a hair above a whisper. So even if we could understand Frisian, the soft-spoken nature of his delivery further pushes the words as faint, ghost-like utterances. The Machinefabriek aesthetic can certainly be felt in Piipstjilling, although the compositions he helped build here are far more serene and spacious than anything he's produced before. Fans of Machinefabriek should definitely take note of this! That also goes for those keen on Oren Ambarchi and Celer.
Outside of the impressive techno-minimalism of their group Pan Sonic, Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen have been developing very distinctive styles that veer considerably from their partnered work. Where Vainio has taken to the laptop generation of fractured
If you're really interested in the Piiri sound, you might be better served by those hard to find Raster Noton 10"s...but they *are* hard to find.
Acid Mothers Temple alert!! Afrirampo alert too! Fans of either/both of those bastions of underground Japanese trippy hippy psych rock weirdness, listen up! This new Riot Season release is one of thee best Acid Mothers Temple related recordings we've heard in a while (and we've heard a lot). AMT's bearded guitar guru Kawabata Makoto teams up here with an old pal, drummer Pikacyu from the avant all-girl group Afrirampo, for a delightfully demented duo session, the two of 'em egging each other on to ever-more ecstatic extremes of cosmic chaos... Frazzled fuzz and reverbed wall of sound guitar from Kawabata accompanies multiple layers of echoing overdubbed vocalizations (chipmunk one minute, chanting monk the next) from Pikacyu, who also moves things along with energetic abandon on the drums.
The 13 tracks here vary from lovely drone-outs to noisy but poppy songs to short, sharp skronkfests - the 25 second "Oscar No Hope" being this disc's shortest and skronkiest, while the likes of "Back To Your House Over The Rainbow" and "Birth Star" are MUCH longer and more epic. The propulsive, rhythmic latter number being a good example of how this disc at its wild and playful best sounds a bit like Circle meets Melt Banana, or Yoko Ono jamming with Faust, or a nuttier, more psychedelic Deerhoof... yeah, far out! Some of the time Pikacyu-Makoto come across like a (two person) "tribe" a la ESP classic Cromagnon, and there's definitely a big krautrock influence at play (as always with Kawabata, right?).
Even if you're not a dedicated AMT fan, we'd say this is one worth checking out!
First pressing limited to 1000 copies in special gatefold sleeve packaging.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
No, not a reissue of Metal Box but rather a brutally immense four cd collection spanning Public Image Limited's career from the beginning into the early 90's as pop media saboteurs. This band still has no equal. Aside from being a sort of giant best-of, it contains BBC and Peel Sessions and some remixes (no, not drum 'n' bass versions). In a big grey jewel case embossed with silver and filled with great liner notes. Consume.
Here's some fucked-up, lo-fi collage music composed from 1968-1972 by two New Zealand artists, neither of which seem to have much in the way of a history before these recordings or even afterward. All we are left with is this head-scratching document loosely contextualized by an anonymously penned piece of academic writing that pretty much tells us this is fucked-up, lo-fi collage music amidst the five dollar wordplay. Appropriated snippets from the Apollo 11 lunar landing communications, and the Beatles' Help poster on the cover are the smallest of entry points to this album of murkily recorded potato mash of free-noise improvisation, varispeed tape manipulation, gritty vinyl abuse, and tonal smear. These primitive excursions in free-noise unhinged from various sources were contemporaries to the Canadian performance art / sound collage project Intersystems (albeit without any of the authoritarian vocal delivery from Intersystems' Blake Parker) and closer to home, looks forward to the advent many years later of New Zealand innerspace weirdos Sandoz Lab Technicians.
Doomheads rejoice (slowly and mournfully of course), because Rhode Island's most sluggish misery wizards have slithered forth once more from their crumbling Victorian mansion, suffocated and overgrown with ivy (we assume), to deliver their second crushing heap of cavernous ominous DOOM. Void Worship is an album full of oily gothic horror, adorned with creeping Vincent Price melodies that seem to creak like a haunted shadowy staircase. The songs crawl and lurch like a sick and dying leviathan - occasional lush guitar harmonies peaking through, providing momentary glimmers of sunlight, before being swallowed again by the looming grey stormclouds. The drums are a dreary inevitable plod that almost seem to slow down the more the songs progress, giving the sense that the music is buckling and collapsing under its own insurmountable weight. The vocals of The Wizard (yeah, that's his name) are dramatic and theatrical, looming like a silhouetted specter, bringing to mind some of doom metal's more expressive frontmen like Albert Witchfinder from Reverend Bizarre or Robert Lowe of Solitude Aeturnus. His voice is drenched in reverb and somewhat buried in the mix, sounding ghostly and distant yet also proud and direct, as if he were conjuring sad spirits with arcane regretful spells! The extended instrumental passages where his voice disappears entirely (four of the eight tracks on this record are entirely instrumental) only add to the fleeting mystery of his presence. There are some more uptempo moments, like the dusty graveyard boogie of "The Paladin", but for the most part this is an album of lamenting Lovecraftian bleakness in the tradition of early Warning or Pallbearer, the music moving carefully through the shadows like something from Nosferatu. Light those skull candles, draw those purple velvet curtains, and adorn yourself in your finest ceremonial robe - the time has come to give yourself over to the void!
It's a lot easier to write about metal when there's a hook. In our case, it's often that a band is super fucked up, their sound demented and damaged, but we worry sometimes that our thirst for the weird and wacky, perhaps paints to simple a picture of what we dig. Especially when it comes to metal. Cuz as much as we love the strange stuff, we have an undying love for the classics. Like many folks our age, we were lucky enough to grow up in a golden age of metal, whether it was crazy eighties hair metal, classic Bay Area thrash, speed metal, death metal, even the first and second waves of black metal. Those are sounds and musics we will never grow tired of, and we're just as excited about bands of today who are mining those sounds, and offering up their own versions of the classics, as we are of the folks actively subverting and bastardizing those sounds.
Which brings us to Rhode Island doom trio Pilgrim, who besides having some of THEE best metal names we've heard in ages (Krolg Splinterfist, Slayer of Man on drums, Count Elric the Soothsayer on bass, and of course The Wizard on guitars and vocals), sonically take their cues from the classics, Sabbath of course, Candlemass, St, Vitus, Cathedral, but also (slightly) more modern outfits like Electric Wizard and Sleep. And of course, judging by their handles, and the awesome fantasy album art, you can also probably guess what sort of lyrical focus these guys have, yup, swords and sorcery and dragons, and all that good stuff.
So yeah, sonically, it's pretty much everything you're blackened doom-loving heart could want, massive downtuned riffs, slithery Sabbathy slo-mo grooves, pounding drums, the songs epic and majestic, rife with classic doom melodies, all minor key and mournful, and the vocals, a crooned, sort-of-Ozzy-ish heavy rock caterwaul, that suits the music perfectly, maybe not distinctive enough to push these guys to the next level, but the perfect voice for pure underground true doom. Melodic, a bit raspy, passionate, a little rough around the edges, but it suits the music, which again is some seriously awesome classic sounding doom, from the swaggery atmospheric opener, complete with cool almost chanted wordless vox, to the more spaced out tarpit creep of the title track, with a handful of the tracks offering up sonic surprises, like the furious almost stoner rock groove part way through "Quest", not to mention some killer leads, the downright poppiness of "Adventurer", or the super strange midsong breakdown on "Forsaken Man" which is all slow motion post rock meander beneath what appears to be some sort of black magic ritual.
So yeah, this may not be fucked up or freaky, warped or weird, but not everything needs to be, what it IS, is heavy, and catchy, and doomy, and pretty goddamn great!
An extremely pretty, moody, mellow droney solo album from Italian electric guitarist Stefano Pilia... we neglected to list this when it came out some months ago but realized a) it's great and b) he's a member of recent AQ Record Of The Week scoring group 3/4hadbeeneliminated, so some of you just might want to know about this! Healing Memories was previously released a few years ago as a cd-r by Last Visible Dog, but now LVD have updated it with extra tracks and issued it as a real cd. As it should be, since it's quite nice indeed. Constructed mostly with tones and textures from an electric guitar, with some synth and electronics, tape loops and turntable. Slowly unfolding instrumental soundscapes that shiver with sensitive beauty. Restrained, relaxed, gorgeous. For fans of the likes of James Blackshaw, Steven R. Smith, and Giuseppe Ielasi.
First proper full length from these guys, a reissue of an out of print cassette, after appearances on the two Underwater Peoples samplers, and it's a killer. A totally tripped out chunk of tropical outsider pop damage. Acoustic guitars and simpler percussion, dreamy summery harmony vocals, all tangled up with huge swaths of fractured noise and crumbling distortion, twisted xylophone melodies, and swirling effects, long stretches of murky dirgey fuzz pop, muted drums, animal sounds (!), warped melodies... Imagine the Beach Boys, crossed with Animal Collective, crossed with lots and lots of cough syrup, smeary and blurry and dreamy. The guitars are effected and warped and pulled into glimmering streaks and jangly shard, the riffs are looped into stuttery almost synth sounding rhythms, acoustic guitars buzz and shimmer, beneath layers of feedback and percussive clatter and clang, swaths of hiss and blown out fuzz, the sound very much like the tropical lo-fi pop of Ducktails, but WAY WAY more tweaked and ramshackle and druggy and psychedelic and noisy and freaky. Which in case you couldn't tell, means we're loving this BIG TIME.
What a stunning debut! Pillars of Silence are a San Francisco band featuring members of Conspiracy of Beards and Brilliant Colors with an ensemble of talented friends who add nice touches throughout including Sean Smith, Jeffrey Luck Lucas and engineer Jesse Parsons, who worked the boards on other great San Francisco debuts by folks like Tussle, Pale Hoarse and Vetiver. But truth be told none of that matters so much, as it's the songs and music that Pillars of Silence have crafted on this debut that stand out so dramatically. These songs melt with such a satisfying and lasting warmth. Lush reverb, textured but never too busy instrumentation and such gorgeous vocals that come together to create songs that have that rare ability to feel both familiar and so totally new and refreshing. There are lots of comparisons to throw around, we hear the smoke and haziness of Mazzy Star and Opal, the crisp and truthful delivery of Smog and the lush and melancholic delivery of Moon Pix-era Cat Power. There are so many songs from this record that we already know will become staples of mixes we make for friends, crushes and true loves. Pillars Of Silence have earned themselves a place near Citay and Vetiver as another of San Francisco's finest songsmiths. Highly recommended! You best act fast on this one as they didn't press too many of them.
I seem to recall Pilote hailing from the German pseudo-collective which includes labels like Kitty-Yo, Kollaps, and Hausmusik, with Pilote keeping on the electronica side of things. This album for Certificate 18 wouldn't do anything to dissuade such a train of thought. With an atmosphere matching Boards of Canada's bedroom melancholia, Pilote fashions a precious sound of downtempo funky (sometimes jungly) breaks and bittersweet melodies.
Whereas Pilote's debut release "Antenna" leaned very heavily in the direction of Boards Of Canada-ness, the second full length from this gent (aka Stuart Cullen) launches with rhythms and sounds seemingly plucked from early 90's techno. Streamlined beats,
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
If the Dead C did an electronic album, trying to replicate via electronics their trademark humid feedback dinscapes (the kind that tentatively waver between song and squallid chaos), you'd be pretty close to what Australian electronic scavenger Paul Gough (aka Pimmon) does. This is a limited cd-r release from the Freedom Form label, and follows Pimmons outstanding work for Kraak and Meme.
Australia's Paul Gough returns with another disc of noise and glitch recorded live earlier this year. Powerful and abraisive shards of digital ruptures that cover beautiful textures and found sounds. Like sifting through dogshit to find your lost
We got a handful of this handmade, limited edtion Pimmon CD-R from Paul Gough himself, who has packaged it in two pieces of printed cardstock mounted together with two oversized circles of soft foam. An unusual design solution, but an effective one, nonetheless. Musically, "I Left My Heart" finds Pimmon deliberately contrasting elegant digital looped constructions with the ugliness of spluttering noise and sonic errata. The glitch is certainly present within Pimmon's work, but its application is more of the negation of sound rather than its textural addition as thousands of miniature drop-outs degraded Pimmon's chunked samples. Pimmon densely packs his computerized compositions with overlapping layers of sound, giving the impression that his music is a digitized kaleidoscope with harshly fractalized patterns and sublime rhythmic pulses moving in a complexly choreographed motion with each layer travelling at algorithmically variable speeds. It's possible that we might be able to get a couple more of these, but in all likelihood when these few copies are gone... they're gone!
Pimmon is the work of Australian soundsculptor Paul Gough, who released a fascinating album on Meme a while back. His sound of electronics fused with processed field recordings falls between the sterile glitch music of Noto/Roel Meelkop and the evocative drone work of Organum or Andrew Chalk. "Kinetica" swells in full pendulum swing between order and chaos, with unpredictable slabs of radar blips and granular distortions giving way to ghostly melodies and drifting ambience.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Paul Gough who records under the moniker Pimmon has been one of the more prolific exports from the Australian sound art community. His work deals specifically with sonic abstraction using the tools of the digital age to expand the practices of '60 academic composers such as Parmegiani's chaos-theory constructions or Xenakis' stochastic models. Yet Pimmon's work never comfortably sits in the space of modernist thinking towards 'art for art's sake;' there is a filmic theatricality and clever use of playful motifs that run throughout his work. This is particularly true for "XXXX" where little toy piano melodies spin in tandem with devilish air raid mantras whilst everything has been shattered under the hammer of digital signal processing. Such contradictory sounds, which run rampant through all of the Pimmon recordings, are not at all ironic, but speak of an acute understanding of metaphoric complexity. Pimmon's use of laptop trickery is quite unique, as it tends to focus on thick chunks of looping sound rather than the minutae of granular synthesis. If Autechre continues towards rhythmic antithesis, they'll probably end up where Pimmon started.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In contrast to the *O record on Meme (a record of unparalleled, um, well... soundlessness), Pimmon's "Waves and Particles" actually registers quite nicely within the noisy ambient field of Aquarius. Paul Gough has recorded two albums as Pimmon, the first being a fairly well distributed CDr (though it didn't make its way over here) which garnered immediate attention from Fat Cat, Static Caravan, and Meme. It's easy to see what those avant-electronica labels found so captivating in Pimmon's work; an unholy marriage of old-school analogue sound production and intricate digitized patterns of repetitive spaces, phasing in and out of painterly dissonance.
Pimmon is probably one of the best know artists in Celebrate Psi Phenomena (other than Birchville Cat Motel) and here offers more unique Australian 'electronica.' Rumbling and gurgling low end, haunting and atmospheric with rhythmic crackle over found sound
The entire musical aesthetic of the storied Flying Nun label can be traced back to the first two singles. On the exuberant and triumphantly cheerful side, you've got The Clean's "Tally Ho!" with its uptempo jangle and sloppily melodic power pop chords; but on the other side, there was the gloomy drone-rock of The Pin Group who actually released the very first Flying Nun single "Ambivalence" back in 1981. According to the liner notes by The Dead C's Bruce Russell, the late '70s and early '80s spawned quite a lot of bands in New Zealand trying to cop the Velvet Underground's gritty rock minimalism, including The Pin Group, a trio featuring Roy Montgomery (yes, THAT Roy Montgomery!), Ross Humphries (who later played in Bailter Space and The Terminals), and Peter Stapleton (who seemed to be the only guy in New Zealand with a drum kit, as he played with everybody). "Ambivalence" certainly had a black-leather minimalism filtered through the Velvets, but with strangled basslines and dour vocals from Montgomery, The Pin Group also shared more than a few passing glances at Joy Division. By the time The Pin Group got to their second single "Coat," (released later in 1981) the Velvets jangle had been engulfed in a black-hole of nervous gloom that hints at Montgomery's drone-rock impressionism from the early '90s onward. That single sported a clever Andy Warhol ripoff by replacing the Velvet Underground banana with a pop-art sequence of Kiwis, but the B side to that single, "Jim", situates the band at their bleakest, with a puritanically dark punk sermon that foreshadowed the emotionally draining dynamics of Slint by about a decade.
Ambivalence marks the second anthology of The Pin Group's short but hugely influential career which lasted less than 12 months. Everything from the first anthology (an eponymous cd released on Siltbreeze back in 1997) is reprised on the vinyl of Ambivalence, including the two covers - the smartly chosen "Hurricane Fighter Plane" and the unwise "Low Rider." Don't let the latter spoil the majesty of the rest of the album, which also features a bonus cd of a live show from July 1981 with a couple of tracks that had been unreleased elsewhere. Recommended? You bet your ass!
In this day of constant change and the pursuit of the new and the (unnecessarily) 'improved', it's nice to have an element of comforting constancy... like the music of Pinback. Now closing in on a decade of music making together, Rob Crow, Zach Smith and co. have built a body of music that remains true to itself and its fans, amazingly consistent without being redundant. Why mess with a good thing? Pinback haven't, instead they continue to write totally compelling songs that have the ability to simultaneously give you goosebumps and make your body move. We are always in awe of how Pinback are able to craft a sound that is so driving and punchy while also being so heartfelt and emotional. We love just about everything Rob Crow makes in his never ending side-project excursions (Goblin Cock, Other Men, Optiganally Yours, The Ladies, etc.) but when he and Zach come together to make Pinback records something so special happens, the music those two make is most definitely greater then the sum of its parts. One of the best bands around today now have another great album under their collective belt. Highly recommended!
p.s. the first batch of these come with a bonus disc with 3 extra songs not on the album.
Much anticipated new full length from Rob Crow (Heavy Vegetable / Thingy / Optiganally Yours) and Zack (Three Mile Pilot). My co-worker Jeff first thought this was the new Modest Mouse until it started sounding like the Sea & Cake. Oddly enough the last
It's been a while since Blue Screen Life (14 years!!), the debut from indie popppers Pinback, which at the time was a seriously exciting prospect as Pinback was made up of members of two of our favorite bands, Heavy Vegetable and Three Mile Pilot, and the band did somehow actually manage to create a pretty perfect hybrid of the two groups, the loping, super melodic basslines of 3MP and the crazy catchy poppiness of HV, and of course Rob Crow's dreamy croon. That record was brimming with perfect pop, warm and wistful, and really, every record since has been more of the same. And while to us, that seemed like a magical combination, we had no idea they'd become as popular as they are. And this most recent is yet another good one, heck, maybe even another great one, demonstrating both a more rocking approach to songcraft, as displayed on the last few records, and an ever more lush and luxurious production, not to mention of course the same fantastically dreamy songwriting. And sure, Pinback may not have the underground cool kid cache that the members' former bands did, but we're hard pressed not to dig these guys like crazy every time we hear them!!
A super limited, and super swankly packaged Record Store Day release from our pals at Temporary Residence, two brand new tracks from the mighty Pinback. The A side is classic Pinback, all loping basslines and lush vocal harmonies, poppy, dreamy, melodic and gorgeously minimal. The B side might be our favorite Pinback jam in a while, it sounds almost like slo-mo Heavy Vegetable, in the phrasing, and the mathy arrangement, still minimal and stripped down, but the bass and vocal interplay and the hooks make it a killer.
And the packaging is killer too, a printed paper bag designed to look like a evidence bag, sealed shut with special red Record Store Day tape, each one stamped and dated. Inside there's a full color sleeve, the inside printed to look like some sort of redacted document, and also included is a little insert with some mysterious computer code printed on it. So cool!
VERY LIMITED!! We have a handful up for grabs, but since it was a Record Store Day release, these won't be around for very long, and when we run out, that'll be it!
Another super limited, and super lovingly packaged Record Store Day release from our pals at Temporary Residence, this one for Black Friday, and the second part of a set, the first half of which was released on Record Store Day proper earlier this year.
The A side is classic Pinback, that bass driven loping pop that sounds like no one else. Super melodic and lush, there seems to be strings too, which give parts of the track a subtle E.L.O. vibe, catchy and darkly melodic, surprisingly dramatic and intense near the end, and as always the vocals sound AMAZING. The B side like one of the tracks on the first volume, sounds a lot like some sort of Heavy Vegetable / Pinback hybrid, the phrasing and complexity of the vocals is the HV element, that chiming melodic bass and dreamy melodies, the Pinback. Another killer song, and one that like the A side, we find digging almost more than anything off the last record proper.
Stick around 'til the very end too, there's a strange secret track, a glitchy high pitched buzz, brief, but very mysterious, could be some sort of secret code, related to the weird cryptic conspiracy artwork.
And like Pt. A, the packaging is super swank, a printed paper bag designed to look like a evidence bag, sealed shut with special red Record Store Day tape, each one stamped and dated. Inside there's a full color sleeve with some super haunting images of a forlorn house and some strange sort of machine, the inside printed to look like some mysterious redacted governmental document, and also included is a little insert with what appears to be a transcription of some overheard conversation. So cool!
VERY LIMITED!! We have a bunch of these, but since it was a special Black Friday / Record Store Day release, these will probably sell out quick.
Nautical Antiques is a collection of b-sides, tour only ep songs, and alternate versions from the first few years of Pinback's existence (1998-2001). Once again demonstrating just why this band deserves all the hype. The proof is in the totally well crafted perfect pop songs. There is a richness to Pinback's sound that allows their melodies to sink right into your soul. There are some serious gems here not on any of their proper releases which makes this absolutely essential. Effortlessly catchy and so fluidly flowing, hands down one of the best bands around, and you can definitely add this to the growing body of evidence proving that point!
While Three Mile Pilot and Heavy Vegetable have been long-time AQ favorites, it took us a little bit longer to fall under the spell of Pinback, the post-pop creation from Armistead Burwell Smith IV (from Three Mile Pilot) and Rob Crow (HV, Thingy). In fact, Pinback's epic second album "Blue Screen Life" almost slipped under our radar entirely. Pinback's charm can be found precisely in how understated their notions of grandiose pop can be. Perhaps the best comparisons to Pinback's sound especially in their atypical progressions of minor chords through ecstatic crescendos would be Built To Spill's "There's Nothing Wrong With Love" and "Perfect From Now On," with Pinback's additional flares found in Smith's technically-impressive skills at bass fingerpicking and the emo-tinged vocal harmonies from both Smith and Crow. "Offcell" is another excellent outing for Pinback, although like their other records the returns on this short 5 song EP grow stronger with repeated listenings. As before, Pinback does not offer the typical indie-rock songwriting fodder for chorus / bridge / verse; rather their ambitious songs present increasingly complex pop structures of catchy melodies intertwining with smoldering waves of guitar dissonance and their vocal counterpoints and harmonies. Teasingly short at 28 minutes long, "Offcell" certainly has whetted our appetite for the next full length, scheduled in 2004 through Touch and Go.
Until the boys get around to serving us another new full length, Absolutely Kosher has thankfully reissued this beautiful ep of theirs which was originally issued two years ago. Pinback, for those unfamiliar, is a duo featuring Rob Crow of Heavy Vegetable / Thingy / Optiganally Yours and Zack from Three Mile Pilot. The two are consummate performers and songwriters, the type of people who just ooze music all the time. I can remember when Rob Crow did a solo in-store here several years back. He was playing a guitar through a small battery powered amp (designed to look like a miniature Marshall amp.) He was rocking out -- had everyone in the entire store completely absorbed -- and as he was reaching the very end of the crescendo of the song he was playing, his battery powered amp fell off the used LP bin it was resting on, struck the floor and scattered batteries everywhere. Rob Crow apologetically got down on his hands and knees to retrieve the batteries. After fumbling around for a minute to get them back in and the case snapped tight, Rob immediately went back into his song to finish the last 2 seconds of the feedback cadence he had left to play. The playfullness, sincerity, and deadpan humour are evident in the music Rob and Zack write as a team. They sound like a pair that has been playing together all their lives. The type of guys who had a blast coming up with tricky rounds to sing just for the fuck of it. As Pinback, they have an innate ability to write absolutely infectious pop songs, with lilting melodies, often counterpointed with one another in effortless ways -- never sounding contrived. On top of it all, the two record all their music themselves in Zack's bedroom, which you'd never believe listening to their records. Whenever we play this in the store someone invariably purchases a copy (this goes for either of their full lengths as well.)
Heirs to the indierock throne? We certainly think there's an argument in support of it. Once again Zac and Rob don't disappoint on Summer In Abbadon, their first major-independent label release. They continue to efforlessly write songs that can take the best elements of say, Modest Mouse at their zenith -- we're talking catchy hooks -- but with a finer tuned sense of lyricism, a smoother rhythmmic flow and, well, some damn fine finger picked melodic bass lines from Zac. As on their previous releases, Zac and Rob write and record all the songs themselves. And while this might be a count against some artists, both the musicianship and recording skills of this pair is beyond reproach. In fact, their years of woodshedding together has turned them into a veritable sonic unit, effortlessly harmonizing with one another like an indiepop equivalent to the Louvin Brothers channeling the teen angst mopeyness of Tears For Fears. It's no wonder the Pinback army grows stronger with every release.
