Geiger-counter-ish clicks, reveberant chords, and swooping zwooping synth blips herald the atmospheric beginning to this new disc (a considerably expanded cd edition of the limited & long gone Blackest Rainbow vinyl version from last year) from Italy's Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, an aQ-fave combo ever since we heard their release on Japan's PSF imprint back in 2009. Those sort of eerie, uncertain sonics continue throughout this disc, forming the backdrop to the haunting, echo-effected vocal rites of Ramona Ponzini, singing Japanese poetry as per Painting Petals On Planet Ghost tradition (this time, the words come from the works of Takamura Kotaro). Also in the tradition of their other recordings, this is quite lovely and mysterious! Ponzini and her two cohorts (the brothers Opalio of experimentalists My Cat Is An Alien) have conjured another gently damaged and droning psychedelic soundscape of layered prayerful vox in a mad scientist's laboratory of strange secretive sounds. Just be sure to turn it off before you go to sleep, or the "hidden" bonus track at the very end of this lengthy disc will disturb your slumbers, featuring as it does some sudden, startling loud percussion, in the form of gongs being struck and bells being rung.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The first we heard from this Chinese noise rock duo was via a self released cd-r/dvd-r sent to us by a friend who was traveling in China. And we were immediately obsessed, their sound equal parts lo-fi punked out pop, swaggery UK style new wave infused post punk, and wild noisy shitgaze indie rock radness. Rumor was these guys were a big deal over there and it's easy to see why. We sold a ton of those cd-r's and then recently, the band got in touch to let us know there was a proper full length coming out, a double lp in fact, and here it is, the awesomely titled If This Cockroach Doesn't Die, I Will, and much like the cd-r, it's another killer collection of raw, distorto garage punk indie noise crunch and jangle, that the band describes the record like this: "Some pretty good tracks. Songs about frustration, cock suckery, idiots being in positions of power and a heap of other worldly themes." The inside of the gatefold features liner notes which are essentially a casual letter to the listeners, a pretty funny conversation about the internet, and what it's like being a band now versus then, even offering you the record for free, at least offering to see what they can do, inviting other bands to come to China to tour, and finally, apologizing for the vocals, saying simply "they can be rough in parts". And yeah, they can be, but it's part of their charm, and a big part of the sound, slipping from yowl to howl to a sung/spoken thing that reminds us of the Fall or maybe Art Brut. The music this time around is similarly noisy, the drums dense and tribal, the guitar super distorted, the riffs pretty simple, but woozy and jagged, Pairs locking into some seriously tranced out passages, that almost sound like caveman This Heat.
But there's plenty of noisy, angular noise pop too, which is mainly what Pairs traffic in, and they definitely sound more and more British every time we hear them, the vocals have a lot to do with it (pretty sure the singer is a British or Aussie ex-pat), and that aforementioned sung/spoken delivery, all wrapped around raw, urgent primitive post punk pound, it's not hard to imagine these two blowing up in the world of NME and Rough Trade, cuz anyone who digs bands like Arctic Monkeys, Art Brut, Franz Ferdinand and all those groups. But Pairs are WAY more punk, their sound way more raw and DIY and noisy, the rough production, not to mention the seriously twisted experimental bent making their sound way more of an underground proposition, but that's also exactly what makes it so good. And you wouldn't hear a band like Franz Ferdinand lock into a super long stretch of noise drenched, angular, minor key, hypno rock pound, but when Pairs do, it's pretty much totally irresistible, and seems to be a good balance to their noise-poppier side.
Here's hoping these two make it over here to play shows, they're definitely one of those bands, as we mentioned in our other review, who sound like they'd be nuts live, wild, sweat soaked, bloody and bruised, the vibe emotional and passionate and seriously intense. And thus WAY recommended.
Comes packaged in a nice thick full color gatefold jacket. No download, but check the liner notes, we're sure you can email them and work something out!
A friend of aQ has been travelling / living in China, and recently sent us some records by bands he discovered and dug and thought we would dig too. Pairs is a duo from Shanghai who kick out heavy hypnotic lo-fi shit rock punk pop that kills, their sound dense and noisy and jangly and chaotic, the sound rooted in classic indie rock for sure, but here delivered in a sort of shitgaze style, definitely had us thinking of Times New Viking and Psychedelic Horseshit, the sort of band you might hear on Siltbreeze too, urgent and intense, most of the songs just one or two parts, the guitars a wild effects drenched jangle that goes from chiming and melodic to blown out and shoegazey, the drumming wild and chaotic, the vocals a howled feral yelp buried in the mix, and while most of these jams are the kind of tracks that would have a pit heaving, and inspire the same sort of sweat soaked bloody knuckled live actions as groups like The Oh Sees, amongst all this punked out energy and frantic noise pop fervor, there are hidden gems, "No Regrets" is about as perfectly poppy as these guys get, this is a lovesong indie rock mixtape jam if there ever was one, and the awesomely titled closer "My Body Is Not A Wonderland", which finds the vocalist just listing off all the things wrong with his body, over a droned out jangle and pound, the whole thing sounding like the Fall or Art Brut. In fact, the more we listen, the more all of these songs blossom from noisy kinetic energy into hook filled noise pop gems. Definitely a new favorite. And it's sort of so good we're wondering why these guys haven't been snapped up by somebody, Matador maybe, or Siltbreeze, we're guessing it's only a matter of time.
Packaged in a no-frills dvd sized cardboard sleeve printed on one side, with a glued on tracklist on the other. Comes with a dvd-r that is a hodgepodge of home movies, of various friends of the band, various places in China, what seems to be lots of other bands playing too, confusing, but surprisingly fun to watch. LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES(!), each one hand numbered. And while that may seem like a lot, not sure we can actually get more once these run out.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Attention Finnophiles!! Another missive of forest-y free folk from far away Finland. This time in the form of a super limited lp from the group Paivansade, who happen to be made up of folks from Kiila, Rauhan Orkesteri and Lauhkeat Lampat who some of you may be familiar with. The sound is everything we've come to expect and love, plucked strings, wheezing squeezebox, chimes and rattles, very spare and spacious, like a Fahey record stretched out as far as it will go, with ambient bowed strings, very haunting. Once in a while the sound erupts into squealing, clattery, whistling frivolity, with deep throaty hand drums providing a clumsy rhythmic framework for a wild tribal gypsy folk workout. Fans of Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat and Avarus will obviously find this essential. Limited to 500 copies!
This man can do (and has done) many many different things musically (Slint, Tortoise, M, Aerial M, Papa M, Early Man, Dead Child and Zwan as well as guesting with Matmos, Anomoanon, Bonnie Prince Billy, Peggy Honeywell to name just a few!). David Christian Pajo's fine self-titled album last year was his most straightforward, traditionally song structured work to date, and Pajo's 1968 follows suit. It's an intimate album of hushed, subtle gestures. He's set his soothingly smooth voice front and center. A wise decision, it draws you in close, an invitation into his trademark wistful, pastoral picked guitar landscape. Very lovely.
For the first release from the newly launched Black Tent Press, comes this legendary recording, all acoustic covers of Misfits songs by Dave Pajo, he of Slint, Papa M, Aerial M and loads more. Recorded on a crappy hand held tape recorder way back in 2004, these recordings have been circulating for years, passed around from band to band on tour, duped and dubbed over and over, until it acquired near mythical status. Well now, it's finally available, proper like, and this is no crappy dubbed cassette, nope, it's now a super fancy deluxe lp!
As we mentioned above, Dave Pajo has been a part of so many records that we hold near and dear. First as a member of all-time AQ favorite's Slint and then guesting on records like The West by Matmos and a ton of solo records under his own name and as Papa M and Aerial M, as well as some serious arena rock action as a member of Zwan with Billy Corgan and Paz Lenchantin (who also has a rad limited edition LP on Black Tent, reviewed elsewhere on this list) and right now he's even a part of the touring band for the Yeah Yeah Yeah's. Phew!
But finally we get to hear Pajo playing a handful of classic Misfits songs, in his own hushed and stripped down style. Both a testament to how great Misfits songs were and Pajo's soft delicate touch, these songs sound perfect all hushed and acoustic, like he recorded them right in your bedroom not even using a microphone, just sitting on the edge of your bed, singing right in your ear. It's pretty amazing to hear Pajo sing some of these lyrics, we're reminded how totally scandalous these Misfits lyrics were back in the day, and if you couldn't understand them then, you sure can now! A cool juxtaposition of delicate acoustic prettiness, and bloody gory nasty brutishness. Pajo is definitely not the first to give the Misfits an acoustic makeover, even the Lemonheads did a gorgeous stripped down cover of "Skulls", but somehow tackling this whole set of songs, it just works, and minus the lyrics, Scream With Me could almost sound like some lost Pajo record, or some unreleased demo.
Incredible packaging, 130 gram vinyl, housed in a thick sleeve, with a 1 color spray painted serigraph on French paper, comes with a cd featuring all the music on the lp, and is LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
Aerial M, Papa M., M and now David Christian Pajo (or if you go by the front cover even, simply 'Pajo')... Hmmm, it's a fact! Mr. Pajo by any other name still sounds as sweet. But we've just gotta ask, what's with all these artists who refuse to stick to one moniker? Will Oldham and Jason Molina are two other culprits. We'd understand it if each of their aliases' albums was drastically different from the next, but more often than not, it isn't. Such is the case with this solo self-titled album from the former member of Slint, Tortoise and Zwan, it really doesn't stray too far from where Pajo's roamed before. However, that said, there are a few notable new twists on his old self (or should we say 'selves'?), an unexpected turn into the breathily sung, achingly sensitive acoustic folk-pop domain of such artists as the late Elliott Smith or even the Moody Blues. Affecting note progressions, moving vocal performances and understated percussion are brought together with fine results. Recommended.
Palace release features some of the prettiest songs Will Oldham has ever written, as well some of his oddest lyrics (and this is one of the tame ones): > to see in me a promise of what i could give > and i to see in her a reason to live > which was past just a symbol of woman and luck > that i would never be lacking for something to fuck
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
2 songs from 1993.
Latest blast of black filth from right here in SF, from one man band Palace of Worms, aka Balan, who also does time in Elk, and in Weakling worshipping outfit Dead As Dreams. The first PoW record was a huge hit around aQ land, a killer mix of grim black buzz, and avant post rock weirdness, everything we had read about this new record talked about how all the post rock and other stuff had been ditched in favor of a sound more raw and old school, but to these ears, this is anything but, the weirdness that made The Forgotten so good, still pretty much in full effect.
The opening intro eases us back into PoW's black underworld, a sprawling smoldering melodic drift, all serpentine guitars, minimal tribal drum pound, buried vokills, which leads directly into a lumbering chunk of midtempo dirgery, laced with some serious melody, and finally some raw blasting blackness, and the rest of the tape seems like a push and pull between those two influence, the melody and intricacy, the raw blast and primitive buzz, but it's that constant tension that gives Lifting The Veil its energy, even when songs are in full on blast mode, the sound is still weirdly textured and melodic, check out the first half of "No Exit", appropriately grim and frantic, but the chords are lush, and there seems to be all sorts of melodic shading going on, not taking away from the grimnity of the sound, just adding texture and depth.
"The Scroll Of Kimiris" is similarly crafted, on the surface, a frenzied blackened buzz, but the guitars soar, the melodies epic, the sound weirdly spacious and spare. "Wounded Pride" also begins all mathy and melodic, a doomy trudge, a lurching arrangement that ends up sounding noise rocky and majestic, before eventually crumbling into buzz and blast, but it's "Hellish Journey" that's the record's focal point, easily the heaviest, most sonically dense track, and its longest at nearly 10 minutes, the melodic aspect is downplayed a bit, but still surfaces all over the place, especially in the dreamy clean voiced outro, but those parts are well balanced by the sheer black force of the surrounding sonics.
Packaged with super nice, printed, heavy-stock fold-out full color inserts, and of course, SUPER LIMITED!
For a while, San Francisco seemed like some sort of black metal mecca, record after record and shows galore, all sorts of grim and kvlt hordes, Leviathan, Draugar, Crebain, Horn Of Dagoth, Elk, Necrite and more. And while some of those bands are still active, the recordings have seemed to dry up, more a trickle than a torrent. We know there is a Crebain record in the works, there's the forthcoming Mastery 2cd on tUMULt, a rumored Leviathan, but there are lots of new bands too, Botanist, Kerasphorus, and these guys, or rather this guy, Palace Of Worms, and finally a new slab of fucked up freaked out blackness from SF to obsess over, and believe us, this is well worth obsessing over.
Anyone into any of the above mentioned bands will dig PoW for sure, a dizzying blend of troo black metal buzz, and experimental post rock, which is evident from the first few seconds of the record, beginning with haunting majestic synths, then a brittle lo-fi blast of metal, that sounds like it was played on a mandolin, or pitched up, before the song proper kicks in with a wall of frenzied super saturated black buzz, croaked vokills, and buried in the mix blast beats, switching gears multiple times throughout the song, chugging doomic sprawl, to gnarled Deathspell style blackprog, with plenty of tangly guitar lines and lurching tempo changes, clean guitar, very reminiscent of another aQ BM fave Woe, the same sort of melodic sensibility fused into a seriously harrowing chunk of grim black aggression.
The rest of the record follow suit, dipping occasionally into ultra raw, old school black metal pound, weird almost industrial shoegazey ambience (sounding a bit like Nadja or Jesu), classic midtempo Burzumy blackness, awesomely creepy Eastern tinged black ambience, almost Katatonia moody sounding melodic blackness, but always returning to that furious heaviness, all lightning speed riffage, hellish vox, dizzying complex rhythms, soaring synths, but all infused with that strange, and subtle pop element that turns grim and black into something much more interesting, and makes Palace Of Worms another band to add to SF's black pantheon.
New on local label the Flenser, two of SF's best one man black metal bands join forces, Palace of Worms offer up nearly a whole new record, while Mastery (whose insane double disc demo collection was released recently on tUMULt) kicks down an 8 plus minute sprawl of blackened metal insanity.
PoW launch straight into it, starting things off with some surprisingly classic metal riffery, loads of melody, lots of texture, and a cool woozy breakdown, before the second track blackens considerably, erupting right out of the gate with gouts of black buzz and blasting beats, but even here, the sound soon grows blurry and doomy and weirdly psychedelic, PoW's sound seeming to drift between the two, classic black riffery, and tripped out doominess, culminating in the super chuggy black psych dirgery of closer "Temple Of Failure" which weds churning riffage and black buzz, to swoonsome chordal swells, so fucking cool!
Mastery counters with something much more gnarled and frantically gnarled, "Egregorian Synapse" is a warped slab of lighting speed sci-fi blackness, that slips easily from dense blast-buzz to twisted tangles of melodies, the sound never letting up for the whole 8+ minutes, but constantly flitting between different arrangements and sounds, like some warped ADD black metal mutation, the rhythms too, blasting furiously one second, stuttering chaotically the next, the guitars wild warped squalls, the riffs slippery, slithery, warbly and blackly psychedelic, the track fading out mid frenzy, leaving us to imagine that this is only a fragment of the endless epic from which it was so clearly culled.
Some of our favorite records over the last few years have come from our customers. As in, recorded and released by, not just recommended by. I mean, it makes perfect sense, that folks into cool weird music, would be making cool weird music themselves, but nevertheless it's always a nice surprise. Whether it's the delicate dreamy folk of Ilyas Ahmed, or the crushing doom of Monument of Urns, it's always exciting to discover that the guy who buys all the weird cd-r's, or the customer who is always ordering super limited vinyl is in fact, making some strange and wondrous sounds themselves.
Such is the case with our Italian mailorder customer Francesco Paladino, who has teamed up with Opum (Paladino seems to prefer the collaboration, having joined forces with lots of folks in the past including dronesters Alio Die) for a record of epic and hauntingly cinematic low end explorations. Field recordings are deftly woven into huge sprawling drones, strangled falsetto vocals and growling grumbled voices drift ominously amidst the slowly swirling low end ambience. Chimes tinkle and random bits of percussion float restlessly above thick fuzzy synthesizers, all the while more and more strange animalistic vocalisations enter the mix. Birdsong and simple percussion are the framework of one track, while a pulsing synthesized throb another, FX swirl effortlessly over the sound of scraping stones, whispering wind, distant chanting. The vibe is strangely liturgical, one can imagine this disc as the soundtrack to some slow moving Italian giallo, Goblin handling the freaked out progged up horror parts, while Paladino and Opum handle the suspense, the dark shadowy corridors, a long walk through a moonlit park, the foreboding feeling that death lurks around every corner. Creepy and sinister and ominously beautiful.
Reissued obscurity for fans of Gang Of Four / Pop Group.
Reissued obscurity for fans of Gang Of Four / Pop Group.
Yes, this is a Jack Palance album. You know, that scary Ripley's Believe It Or Not guy. Plus he was in some movies and stuff. Of course, you know him, you love him. Back in 1969, someone at Warner Bros. though it would be a good idea for Jack to make a record. Maybe 'cause he'd been in some westerns, or maybe 'cause he dug Lee Hazlewood and Johnny Cash, or maybe 'cause the country-rock thing lends itself well to a semi-spoken word delivery when you can't really sing all that well, Jack grew a moustache, went to Nashville and, with the help of some studio pros, cut this album. Now it's been reissued on cd with a big ol' booklet of liner notes and everything. And it is pretty entertaining, totally orchestrated, with backing singers and so on, Jack Palance recognizable as himself, playing upon his sinister, tough guy screen persona with ballads like "Meanest Guy That Ever Lived" (that one he wrote himself, in fact). Now we wish somebody would reissue the Telly Savalas LP!
Some furious buzzing blasting blackened grimnity from right here in SF, the 4 song debut from Pale Chalice, a local black metal band who slay, this is not avant black metal, or post black metal, or experimental black metal, this is total, raw and furious, hateful and brutal old school classic black metal. The vocals are incredible, you might recognize that raspy demonic alien croak - those rotted pipes belong to Ephemeral Domignostika, of one man black metal band Pandiscordian Necrogenesis (who we've raved about on past lists), who's also one man black metal band Mastery (whose complete discography is coming out any day now on Andee's tUMULt label), but the rest of Pale Chalice ain't so shabby either, not sure if any of the others do time in other local outfits, but it hardly matters, this shit is fierce and frenzied and frantic, the sound huge, the guitars buzzing, the riffs gnarled, the bass a buried low end throb, the drums relentless and seriously blasting, the 4 tracks here hovering mostly in full on blast mode, but occasionally slipping into punkish pound, or woozy midtempo lope, even a little acoustic guitar drift near the end, the songs are massive and majestic, four tracks in about 30 minutes, sprawling blackened buzz drenched epics, intricate and intense, the vocals cranked WAY up in the mix, which makes the whole thing sound seriously fucked up and SICK.
Fast and furious, grim and black, one of the best new black metal records we've heard in a while� and yet another group to add to the ever expanding Bay Area black metal pantheon!
Crimson Tears? Lord Of Sorrow? Ever After? Solitude? Hmm...from song titles like those, it would seem we've got a doom metal band on our hands here, eh? Well, of course we knew that already since this is the second album from Pennsylvania power trio Pale Divine, whose first album Thunder Perfect Mind we gave a couple doomed digits up to three years ago. Now they're back, just as morose and metal as before, and still riff-rockin' hard for the air guitarists among you out there. Pale Divine's singer/guitarist belts out the lyrics to their hymns of doom with what some friends of mind would term "chain wallet" vocals, that put us in mind of Metallica's James Hetfield and, in combo with the music, Blind-era Corrosion of Conformity. Overall, the band's influences are solidly in the realm of Sabbath (natch), Pentagram, Trouble, and Candlemass (that's their "Solitude" covered here, a massive version that closes out this album with supreme downer majesty). That is, as doom bands goes, Pale Divine are definitely in the rock n' roll tradition, one foot in the '70s, akin to acts like Place Of Skulls or Abdullah, as opposed to the ugly, feedback-filled, drone-dirge style of doom of we also love as practiced by the likes of Khanate and Cavity. Heavy but relentlessly rockin', Eternity Revealed breaks no new ground in a well-trodden genre but skillfully executes their specific style with aplomb, which we would imagine was precisely their aim. If you're looking for the innovative new doom, check out Yob (for instance) but for something accessible to crank in your Camaro, Pale Divine ought to do the trick. Includes re-recordings of some of their early demo tracks, including "Serpent's Path", their contribution to the first At The Mountains of Madness compilation some years ago.
Not to be confused with the albums from Nurse With Wound and Current 93, *this* "Thunder Perfect Mind" is the full length debut from a Pennsylvanian power trio known as Pale Divine, and it's something we've been waiting for ever since we heard their cut on
Not to be confused with the heavy sludge doom of Pale Horse, local San Francisco duo of Kyle Ranson and Kimberly Pierce channel apocalyptic doom through a completely different sensibility. Using mainly just spare acoustic guitar, tambourine, and beautiful two-part vocal harmonies, The Gospels is a sermon of haunting southern gothic songs filled with death, despair and hard-living. Their sound reminds us at times like early Palace brothers, or a way stripped down Brightblack (before they added the Morning Light to their name), occasionally conjuring up dusty images in our minds of small town buskers singing for their supper and salvation. Thankfully, Pale Hoarse do not play up the vintage Americana card too heavy-handedly, instead using spare arrangements to tread on dark but universal themes. Perfect for Sunday Mornings coming down from the sins of the previous night and you just can't make it to church. Housed in a silk-screened paper bag with hand sewn leather envelope for the cd and insert with lyrics and drawings. So Beautiful and VERY LIMITED!
Follow-up to their stellar debut, The Gospels, this eponymous ep by local folk duo Pale Hoarse gives us five more gorgeous tracks of strung out sorrow. One of them a beautiful cover of Gene Clark's "With Tomorrow". This time the songs seem to be less about sin and salvation and more geared towards a nature-reverent British folk approach. Their dual male/female harmonies reminding us of a more mournful John Doe and Exene Cervenka, but on this ep exuding a more smoldering hopefulness than the dusty haunted doom of their debut. Quite lovely!
Yet another entry in the so slow, so low, ultra doom, down tuned, skin flaying musical brutality sweepstakes. And we might just have a new contender for the crown. In the past we have knelt before the corrosive kings Khanate, as well as doom ladies in waiting Bunkur, Moss, Monarch, Whithorse, Planet Aids, Marzuraan, Roanoke, and on and on and on. But where can you go when you can't get any slower, any heavier, any more distorted, any sludgier, any meaner, any more harsh? The answer to that is obviously WEIRDER. So that brings us to Pale Horse, on the same label as the first Jesu ep, but miles away sonically. As you may have gleaned from the above, Pale Horse are sloooooooow, and dooooooooomy and ultra sick and brutal. Imagine a stripped down Khanate, drums to the fore, WAY up in the mix and pretty much defining the sound. Make the bass more slithery and sludgy, and then just do whatever the fuck strikes your fancy. A whole track of just guitars leaning agains the amps, letting the madly vibrating strings do all the work? Sure. How about some Khante-y sludge and pummel, but instead of harsh shrieks, add some strange sing songy vocals that sound quite a bit like the vocals in This Heat or Camberwell Now? Okay! Let's take the slowest harshest slab of slow motion acid doom, and halfway through switch gears and finish the song off with some moody slow buliding post rock, epic and lovely and sweetly lilting with clean guitars and dreamy sad boy vocals. The whole record is like that, which is what keeps it from being JUST another sludge record. You'll be nodding off to some bulldozing riff, sliding glacially over a pounding caveman beat, when suddenly the vocals will kick in with some impossibly sweet melody (a bit like Harvey Milk at times). Or a full on rock song will peter out into a lengthy exercise in tension and release, more some sort of abstract 'piece' than a metal song. An entire track with sweetly strummed steel string guitar and slightly distorted sung/spoken vocals (a bit like Arab Strap)? It's in there, neatly squeezed between two Teutonic slabs of black hole heaviness. There's some sludgy groove that sounds a bit like the Jesus Lizard or The Cows, some stretched out ambient murmur, and even some epic Godspeed meets Isis majestic post metal. And somehow it all makes perfect (non)sense. Fans of ANY of the above mentioned should definitely check this out!
Words of Ash, Walls of Smoke, Minds of Glass is the debut solo release by the Bay Area avant-rock denizen Gregory Hagan, whose languid violin and tempestuous guitar work was prominently featured in one of our favorite local outfits Common Eider King Eider. He's also active in the Thomas Carnacki performances / recordings as well as in the post-MX-80 project Grale. But as Pale Reverse, he sets down the strings in favor of analogue electronics and a four-track to build this elegantly creepy piece of nocturnal dronemuzik. A ghostly rumble introduces the 20 minute piece which slowly morphs into radiant, shivering oscillations of guilding tones suspended with hiss, mist, and fog. Subtle melodies flicker with beautifully singing overtones echoing throughout the electronics, eventually amassing into a holy crescendo of interlaced dronescapes snapping back to the industrial pall which opened the proceedings. At loud volumes, the tape detritus from multiple overdubs and erasures become all the more obvious and lend more than a few complimentary comparisons to William Basinski. But fans of the BJ Nilsen / Stilluppsteypa collaborations, the latter day works from The Hafler Trio, and even the Caretaker would be well served to check this out. Limited to 73 copies!
Pale Sketcher finds Justin Broadrick taking his post Godflesh project Jesu in an entirely new direction. Named for Pale Sketches, a collection of early Jesu demos and song fragments, unused parts and unfinished songs, which were presented on Pale Sketches as a collection of odds and ends, but here are reworked into a mysteriously minimal electronica. And to be totally fair, the sound, while on the surface seems radically different, really doesn't sound all that far removed from the sound of Jesu proper, sure the thick metalgaze guitars are stripped away, and the beats are a bit more skeletal and overtly electronic, but the lush shoegazey drift is still what it's all about. Thick swells of melancholy minor key shimmer, spidery melodies, hushed gauzey production haze, everything sun dappled and washed out and prismatic, it's not that hard to imagine that instead of this being a one time excursion, that this is in fact the direction Jesu was, or is, headed. Every record since the debut, Heartache, has consistently gotten less heavy, more and more mellow and dreamy, drifting ever closer to a sort of M83 style retro eighties shoegaze doom pop, so it would make perfect sense for Jesu to gradually be transformed into something warm and dark and electronic.
The sound here suits the songs perfectly, dreamy and minimal, moody and hushed, a little bit dubby, the heaviest parts are the swaths of buzzing dubsteppy bass that surface here and there, but otherwise this is like some spaced out soundtrack composed by Jesu, very cinematic, haunting and lovely, stripped down and abstract, the vocals ghostly and ethereal, in fact most all of the sounds here are ghostly and ethereal, allowed to drift and shimmer, held in place by muted pulses, and streaks of soft skitter, the whole thing ends up sounding so dreamlike, so otherworldly, the perfect next step in Jesu's constant evolution.
A five song follow up to the recent Pale Sketcher full length, on which Justin Broadrick, aka Pale Sketcher, re(or de) mixed tracks by Jesu, also Broadrick, whose record Pale Sketches was a collection of, well, sonic sketches for songs that never became proper Jesu jams.
SO yeah, it was basically Broadrick covering Broadrick, and like we mentioned in the review of that first Pale Sketcher, the sound was really not all that far removed from Jesu, less heavy, a little more electronic, but for the most part still that same sort of loping M83 retro shoegaze doom pop vibe. Just less doom pop, and more electronic. But on these tracks, the distinction does definitely become more clear, this is first and foremost electronica, skittery and shuffly and dubby, the first track retains some sun dappled fuzzed out dreaminess, and still displays a distinctly Broadrick-y beat, but it's pretty great, a thick fuzzy bit of electro dub pop, which gives way to a thick cloud of whirring shimmer, only to transform into some hazy clubby dubstep. Fat wobbly basslines and disembodied reverb vocals drift overt the looped rhythm.
"Resonanz Therapie Musik" is an awesome slab of murky Chain Reaction style heroin house, wreathed in crackle, a series of warm washed out melodic swells, all driven by a murky 4 on the floor pulse, super hypnotic and darkly dreamy. The title track sounds like Jesu reimagined as an eighties roller skate rink anthem, all big beats, chopped and stuttery sampled vox, in fact it sounds a bit like a more dance floor friendly Field, the same sort of mesmerizing repetition, and vocals transformed into melodies. And finally, King Midas Sound try their hand at remixing Pale Sketcher (and thus also remixing Jesu), and it's just about as good as you'd imagine, a lurching, low slung, Portishead-y groove, all thick with grit and crackle, the female vocals distorted and echoey, drifting over thick undulating basslines, and fuzzy foghorn blasts of synth, the whole track creepy and ominous and gorgeously groove, with some buzzing dubstep bass and some cinematic strings, makes us think there should be a whole record of Broadrick / KMS collabs. If only...
Charlemagne Palestine has long been one of the pioneers of American Minimalism, tracing back to his '60s performances that rivalled Terry Riley, LaMonte Young, and Tony Conrad in duration, intensity, and transcendent potential. "Maximin" finds Palestine working with David Coulter and Jean-Marie Mathoul to re-intepret / re-mix / re-iterate (or how ever you care to catagorize it). For the most part, Palestine contributed material from his albums "Jamaica Heinekens In Brooklyn," "Schlongo!!!daLUVdrone," and "Karenina," while Coutler and Mathoul added additional drones, found sound textures, illbient breakbeats, and ethnic instrumentation.
Fifty minute single track of classic organ cycle repetitions for fans of Terry Riley, Jon Gibson, Steve Reich.
Volume 2 in Alga Marghen's "The Golden Research" series of Charlemagne recordings from the late '60s to mid '70s. The self-explanatory "Continuous Sound Forms" features two works from Palestine's archives. "Duo Strumming for Two Harpsichords" (1978) is broken into three excerpted duets between Palestine and Elisabeth Freeman who hammer out a continuous tight arpeggiation on two harpsichords. At predetermined times, the duo altered their tight rhythmic patterns to play indeterminant notes, giving a very playful feel to the piece. The title of "Piano Drone" (1972) is a little misleading as the entire piece doesn't exactly coalesce into an extended drone, rather this is a painterly composition of whimsical piano patterns that are washed out with acoustic effects using the piano's sustain pedal.
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"The Golden Research" series of previously unpublished works from the Charlemagne Palestine vaults so far comprises two cd volumes and this expensive vinyl item, which features an expanded version of what you get on half of the first cd volume (reviewed elsewhere). The 'late night electronic sonorities' of 1967's "Holy" are here presented in four subtle variations (instead of the two found on the cd version, where the piece is pared with "Alloy"). This piece was based upon creating a drone that harmonized with the din of New York's late night ambience. Using a battery of oscillators that were altered to emit varying degrees of white noise, Palestine generated an effective electric drone device which fluctuates ever so slowly across the two 20 minute variations. Palestine himself described his sound generators as "immense sacred machines humming like gargantuan Tibertan bees." Palestine presents two version of "Holy 1," one version of "Holy 2," and a sound-collage between was commissioned by Gus Solomons for a dance piece at New York University.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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"The Golden Research" series of previously unpublished works from the Charlemagne Palestine vaults begins with this volume that documents two distinct bodies of Palestine's work. The first being the 'late night electronic sonorities' of 1967's "Holy" which are presented in two subtle variations. This piece was based upon the creating a drone that harmonized with the din of New York's late night ambience. Using a battery of oscillators that were altered to emit varying degrees of white noise, Palestine generated an effective electric drone device which fluctuates ever so slowly across the two 20 minute variations. Palestine himself described his sound generators as "immense sacred machines humming like gargantuan Tibertan bees." The second half of the cd features "Alloy", which is one of those pieces that qualified Palestine as one of great minimalists from the 1960s. Working with Tony Conrad, Bob Feldman, and Deborah Glaser, Palestine accompanies the electric drones from "Holy" with extended glossalalic vocals, the clatter of various chimes, and Conrad bowing one very long amplified string. An excellent historical document.
This is one of three separate shards of electronic music history (Ashley, Neuhaus, and Palestine) recently unearthed by Italian audio archaeologists Alga Marghen.
The disc of early Charlemagne Palestine electronic works ("late night recordings" at the NYU Intermedia center on the Buchla 100 and 200 analog synths, done between 1965 and 1970) is probably the most "listenable" of these three reissues. It's also volume 3 in Alga Marghen's "The Golden Research" Palestine archive series. Listenable, yet certainly scarily dark and droney and hissy, conjuring fear and sudden violence, far from the pretty, hypnotic bliss of some of the man's later work. Inspired by everyday refrigerator hum and race car motors, but way more "late night", this material must predate his obsession with cute stuffed animals!
MPEG Download: "Tymbral For Pran Nath" [/audio/palestinetymbral.mp3]
"Begun in the spring of 1997, this work came out of the idea of traveling with an electronic drone on a ghetto blaster and re-recording it in different situations in many countries. After several months of unsuccessful experiments, I decided to record different situations or soundscapes first and then to superimpose a drone later. I made recordings in 20 different environments including Los Angeles, Paris, Nice, Berlin, New York City, Rotterdam, and Lisbon, but far and away the most impressive, expansive, and sonically interesting was the recording I made on the 5th of September 1997 on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn during the Jamaica Day Parade; the yearly tradition where more than 2 million Island people who live and around the New York City area meet to dance, sing, eat, and drink for an entire afternoon... With a small DAT player and a small stereo microphone, I walked throughout the festival very slowly for several hours to let the ambient sounds of each block naturally change in real time. The 60 minute segment on this record is played without any editing, but superimposed upon this extract I have composed three series of drone textures... All together this work creates a dialogue between pure and mixed electronics of my long continuum tradition and the real-time ambient sounds of a traditional urban ethnographic popular festival. The results have no extra-musical philosophies behind them." -- Charlemagne Palestine
When just a precocious lad of 15, Charlemagne Palestine began playing the bells in the church tower next to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He claims that he played those bells everyday for the next six years, and this physical involvement with the
What I want to know is who in their right mind would let some 15 year old kid into a church tower to hammer on some incredibly expensive bells everyday for six years!?!?
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NYC drone-pioneer Palestine takes us on a 71-minute trip of shimmering bliss, utilizing not his usual Bosendorfer piano but rather a baroque organ. First realized in 1979, recorded in 1988, and finally now released. "Schlingen-Blangen" is a sustained organ drone in which Palestine manipulates the timbre subtly throughout the piece. Very reminscent of the works of Palestine's contemporary La Monte Young. To be filed under "disembodied organ sonority"!
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"Schlongo!daLUVdrone" was a Valentine's Day performance that Palestine gave as a part of the Beyond The Pink performance festival held in LA in 1998. His contribution was a pipe organ solo concert at the Hollywood Methodist Church. While Palestine's liner notes do well to explain the process, his grammar sucks: "I began my investigation pipe by pipe creating sonorities putting small folded paper nuggets between the keys a continuous sound object starting with a fundamental then a perfect fifth then the octave above and gradually building enormous sonorities over several hours with tens then hundreds then thousands of overtones interacting with the beats creating a rhythmic fabric of overwhelming complexity." Of course our grammar often leaves something to be desired too... but what are you gonna do?
And, the title should also say, lots and lots of stuffed animals! 'Cause these three discs of "strumming music" are by eccentric, minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine, known for his love of stuffed animals, large numbers of which often adorn his grand piano in performance, as you can see in some of the photos that illustrate this release. He's even better known, though, precisely for this incredible "strumming music" of his. Lengthy, continuous, repetitious, dense note clouds, resonant with overtones, totally trance-inducing, apparently inspired by the sounds of carillon church bells. Disc one of this set, recorded in 1974, is the only one previously issued, simply as "Strumming Music". A typically hypnotic, very physical solo performance by Palestine, it's one 52 minute, 14 second track of utter Bosendorfer bliss (Bosendorfer being Palestine's preferred make of grand piano). Palestine varies the intensity over the course of the piece, subtly shifting in volume and speed throughout, rising and falling and rolling on and on; fans of such artists Steve Reich, Tony Conrad, Terry Riley, Lubomyr Melnyk and The Necks all ought to check this out, especially if you haven't already become aurally acquainted with Palestine's work. The other two discs here consist of previously unissued material, one being a 1977 recording of Palestine's Strumming Music for harpsichord, performed by Betsy Freeman (which replaces the warmer tones of the Bosendorfer with the tinnier, more brittle ones of that baroque instrument); the other being a special string arrangement of Strumming Music, also from '77, organized by John Adams at the San Francisco Conservatory, performed by a group of twelve student musicians, uncredited here.
It was rare for Palestine to allow others to perform his Strumming. He (with a little help from his stuffed animal friends) was The One to really do it, most ecstatically, at least judging from the length of the disc he plays on, which is quite a bit longer than the other two, which clock in at 35'24" and 24'26" respectively, but both of those are quite compelling as well. We like the "ringing" nature of the harpsichord one, it begins to sound almost electronic. Meanwhile, the string ensemble version features relaxing, shimmering drones, and also builds up to truly dramatic heights.
Packaged in a triple-digi, with a booklet of liner notes by Palestine's colleague Ingram Marshall.
We think the mystery suggested in the title is why this is the first ever recorded collaboration between these two giants of improvised left-field minimalist drone. Both Tony Conrad and Charlemagne Palestine, key figures in early American minimalism and the New York avant-garde of the early seventies had only performed three times together previously and since reuniting in Belgium in 2001, hadn't even seen each other in three decades. What's equally amazing is that neither one fully dominates this extended performance. Palestine's multiple crystalline organ drones graft neatly with Conrad's bowed pulsations from his modified 5 string violin, eventually intensifying with blistering shimmers and burning organic keyboard crescendos before falling into subdued space and void. There the two sweep the dust off and begin to spar with each other all over again, getting into some heated free-music territory culminating in Palestine's delayed vocal drones and Conrad's blissful undulating vibrations. Gorgeous!
Before the Pitchfork hype and before the Billboard Top 100 inclusions, there was this lone 2010 epicus doomicus demo-cus from Arkansas' lords of heartwrenching true melo-doom. Originally released as a limited cd-r and a few months later on cassette, this mournful slab is finally getting the luscious vinyl treatment it so desperately deserves. As a band, Pallbearer came out of the gate pretty fully formed, so anyone familiar with their two full lengths will know what to expect here: three tracks of monolithic doom metal, equal parts pummeling & soaring, equal parts Electric Wizard & Warning. The vocals a ghostly lament, the guitars is a perpetual state of crunchy decay, the drums a funereal plod. Of the three tracks included, two were actually re-recorded for their debut Sorrow & Extinction, and the third is a totally doomed out, ultra melancholic rendition of Billie Holiday's "Gloomy Sunday". Cool! The sound quality is perhaps a little more raw than the enveloping warmth of their more recent recordings, but is still plenty listenable, and certainly sounds more heavy & full than your average metal demo. Definitely an essential insight into the origins of this band, if only to see how confident and assured they were in their sound right from the get go!
