The good news is that there's a new Pulse Emitter, another collection of dreamy analog drift, softly serene meditative new age synthscapes, laced with muted rhythms and softly swirling abstract melodies. The kind of stuff we, and you, can't get enough of. The bad news, is that we COULDN'T get enough of it, literally. This is out of print already, and we only have 4 or 5 copies, after selling half of the batch we got, which was already less than half the number we ordered. So apologies, we tried our best, we figured we might as well list the copies we had so that way, at least a tiny handful of folks will get a copy.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES (why?!?!), nice, thick offset printed covers, and again, already OUT OF PRINT.
First vinyl release from this one man sci-fi synth slinger. Two epic sides of blown out, FX drenched synthesizer spacescapes, drones, and rippling fields of alien bleep and bloop. All produced from a handful of homemade synth modules. The first side is wild and playful, total b-movie sound effects, tripped out and bizarre, atmospheric, buzzy and squelchy, like some long lost recording from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Lots of these sounds would be right at home on an episode of Dr. Who! The flip side is much less playful, more dark and moody, dreamy stretches of fuzzed out drones, very cinematic and Goblin-like at times, a constantly shifting soundscape of rumbling atmospheric murk, peppered with little bits of damaged synth noise. Awesome stuff.
Gorgeous psychedelic cover art, full color paste on black sleeve, with a full color insert.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
After the darker, more cinematic buzz and whir of Pulse Emitter's recent The Palace Of Love cd-r, Spiritual Vistas, the latest from Daryl Groetsch, aka Pulse Emitter, finds his sound, as the title might suggest, returning to a zone much more dreamy and washed out, ethereal and kosmische. Four looooong tracks, all variations on that dreamy PE space-synth krautdrone shimmer, the sonic element linking the various tracks together this time around seems to be a super melodic almost new wave sounding synth bassline, that pulses right below the surface, offering a sort of anchor to the otherwise light and airy sounds above, the opening track is a sort of kosmische kraut lope, which gives way to full on Tangerine Dream style ethereal new age swirl, but still held together by that low end pulse.
The flipside starts off with lush string like swells, all majestic and warm, lush and layered, minimal melodies hovering over constantly shifting backdrops, rife with overtones and subtle sonic colorations, the sound so dreamlike, meditative and tranquil, like new wave, blurred and smeared into a sun dappled shadowy impression, before slipping into the final track, which revisits the ominous, more darkly cinematic vibe of the above mentioned cd-r, adding some buzz and crunch to the hazy whirl of prismatic thrum and droned out lysergic shimmer. So nice.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
One of our favorite Portland Modgular synth wizards is back to business with another deeply dreamy dose of synthisizer bliss. Per usual, Sunset Into Night is limited to an edition of 100, a down-right shame considering how much we dig this spaced out new outing. Falling somewhere between his Meditation series and a loosly knit Goblin, Sunset Into Night shimmers, sails and dissipates into the cool evening air, all the while inviting the listener on a cinematic journey through analog dream zones and icey modualr drips. Deep, glacial drones lift off into infinity, gorgeous notes and sounds flutter and errupt through buzzing filters and ambient wash, so nice.
But not all is sunny and blissful in Pulse Emitter's world, the dreamworlds give way to moments of somber reflection, quiet sonic shrines to dusk and the setting sun. Moments of tension dissipate into the sinking tide, darkened tones pulse and hover in blackened ambiance, all oozing into a pool of nu new age grime. We dig Pulse Emitter's tendency to walk the line between light and dark, borrowing equaly from new age soundscaping and dark ambient synth magik, so rad and so recomended!
Latest batch of swirly swooshy, psychedelic sci-fi synth new age drift from Pulse Emitter, aka Daryl Groetsch, and since we've raved on and on about PE over the course of close to 15 releases (and those are just the ones we were able to get enough of to list) we most definitely risk repeating ourselves, which is probably okay, as this is another perfect installment in Groetsch's ever expanding catalogue of otherworldly synthscapes.
This one is crazy limited too, we only have about 15 copies, and it's already out of print so odds are these will be gone in a flash, fans, you already know what you're instore for, and probably want to grab one of these quick. Newbies, prepare to be transported to some strange futureworld, but one as envisioned by our 1980 selves, rocket cars, and space probes, cities in orbit around dying planets, whole worlds buried beneath the ruined surface. We can't help but envision Logan's Run, especially on the first track here, a percolating arpeggiating synthscape laced with laser beam effects and deep buzzing ominous basslines, super soundtracky, and evocative of some low budget sci-fi future.
The second track is a bit more sun dappled and new agey, but is cut from the same cloth, so in some ways it almost sounds like the love scene from that imaginary future, but it too is laced with weird swooping low end buzz, and strange streaks of blooping and bleeping FX, which transform the tranquility of the main synth lines into something a bit more dramatic.
After a short-ish, music box like synth ballad, thick swells beneath tinkling melodies, comes the 10+ minute closer, a sprawling expanse of sci-fi space kraut synth drone bliss, super spare and abstract, dreamy and woozy and mediative, hazy and hypnotic, and the perfect soundtrack to drifting off, and floating weightless into space. So good.
And again, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Already sold out at the label so these are indeed the last copies we'll be able to get...
Killer match up between Pete Swanson of the Yellow Swans (and also overlord of the mighty Jyrk Collective label) and Pulse Emitter, a one-man synth outfit from Portland who not only whips up a serious wall of analog sound, he also builds his own gear, and has been making his own synths for years. Eat your hearts out Wolf Eyes. Actually, Wolf Eyes would not be a bad reference, although this collaboration is not nearly as caustic or abrasive as Wolf Eyes. In fact, it's downright soothing in a way. The opening track is a swirl of thick warm fuzzy washes of analog synth, like floating weightless in a sea of buzzing whir, neither soft nor sweet, but more a sort of roughly smooth. The second track is a bit more noisy, lots of high end, definitely testing your aural stamina, but in there somewhere is some melody, although it would take a suit of armor and some shock proof pliers to find it. The final track is a gorgeously creepy drone, almost like someone took the least structured Goblin track, and sort of smeared it into a single slow shifting tone, still rife with creepy tension and all sorts of haunting goodness, eventually letting the track explode in a frenzy of thick fuzz and some serious Merzbowian rrroooaaaar!
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES. WE GOT 30 COPIES, ONCE THESE ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD, IT'S ALREADY OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL!
- MPEG stream: One
- MPEG stream: Two
Originally scheduled to be released earlier this year on Record Store Day, this was easily one of the most anticipated RSD releases, which now, just a few months late, is finally here! Avid aQ list readers probably don't need to know much more. After all, it's four different aQ faves spread out over two lps: Pulse Emitter, Peaking Lights, Date Palms and Faceplant (Aaron Coyne of Peaking Lights), each offering up a whole side of unreleased material.
But in case you do need a little more to go on� Pulse Emitter, aka Darryl Groetsch delivers two length drifts of celestial synthscapery, all new age raga shimmer, soft swirling swells, dreamy melodic cascades, all woozy and washed out, ethereal and abstract, laced with playful melodies and lush ever shifting textures. Date Palms deliver a sidelong slab of smoldering psychedelic minimalism, one that starts out deep and droney, but soon blossoms into something much more rhythmic, a super skeletal sprawl of krautrock like mesmer, driving by a spare programmed rhythm and a thick buzzing bassline, wreathed in sitar like buzz, the vibe laid back and swoonsome, with just a hint of sinister malevolence, the perfect soundtrack for endless highways through darkened deserts, with the various elements gradually growing more and more dubbed out before slipping into a final stretch of hushed mesmer.
Expo 70 starts their side off with some Sabbath like riffage, low slung and swaggery, and then the drums kick in, and we're in full on metal territory, classic old school doom, who knew they had it in them? Sure they flirted with it in the past, but here they go for it. The heavy riffing and caveman drum pound is laced with some more psychedelic breakdowns with killer sorta shredding leads, the sort of spaced out stoner rock jam that could go on forever, but here eventually winds down into an oozing sprawl of muted black buzz. The second track is more what we're used to from Expo 70, at least at first, a sort of brooding cosmic shimmer, thick layers of synth and guitar whirring and swirling beneath a cloud of shimmering soft focus FX, but soon the drums come in, the track ominously and malevolently krautrocky, before blossoming into full on psychedelic space rock blowout, a sky full of tangled leads, the drums pounding and propulsive, the bassline woozy and fuzzy and darkly driving. Another mega jam that needs no terminus, but before it's cut off by running out of vinyl, the drums drift off, leaving just the guitar again to slowly fade out.
Faceplant's side opens with a cosmic disco version of Coynes' Peaking Lights, all dubbed out and psychedelic, but seriously groovy, and darkly funky, squelchy synths, spacey shimmer, plenty of reverb and echo, squiggly synth melodies everywhere, total retro-futuristic dubfunk grooviness. The second track is much more murky and laid back, sounding like a way more psychedelic and tripped out Muslimgauze, lurching rhythms, beneath a sky full of effects heavy swirl, more synth pulsations and an almost housey throb buried underneath, before finishing things off with a track that finds Coynes doing his best Carpenter / Goblin style synthscaping, a warped VHS soundtrack dipped in dub and sent spaceward, heady and hypnotic.
Killer stuff from all four groups. And as you might have imagined, LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Includes a download coupon as well.
On the same label that brought us the beautiful, minimal postrock of Icebreaker comes this disc of free-floating ambience and fragments of melody. A amniotic/cosmic record that will appeal to fans of Eno, and would fit perfectly in the Kranky-label's stable of drone artists...
Paralleling the meticulously abused vinyl collages of Philip Jeck and the post-Fluxus artfulness of Eyvind Kang, Pulsinger & Tunakan's "Schwanesee Remixed" is an incredible piece of electroglitchmusik that could very easily hold its sampled origins in Zorn's sublime chamber ensemble, Masada.
From jaunty opener "Eye Bath" onward, this album is one that surprises and delights and offers so much interesting DIY recorded avant-drone *texture* along with its actually quite catchy indie-pop song-iness! We always knew we liked the music of New Zealander Stephan Neville, aka one-man-band Pumice (also a member of The Futurians), he's definitely been in there amongst all the cool, home-taped dronological sounds appearing on obscure cds, cd-rs, cassettes, lathe-cut vinyl and so forth from his entrancing island home that we've been geeking out about over the years. But all the releases tend to overwhelm. Not just Pumice's, but Birchville Cat Motel and Omit and Peter Wright and Antony Milton all the rest. We can't always devote our full attention. And actually, Pumice's previous album, Yeahnahvienna, released a year or so ago on Soft Abuse was a bit ho-hum we thought, we didn't even ever get around to reviewing it. A lot of it was too stripped down and acoustic, revealing too much of the vocals which aren't really Mr. Neville's strong suit. But we're glad we didn't miss this new album! It's different, dense, infectiously fuzzed, and really really good (one of those albums that gets all the AQers coming up to the counter to see what's playing when it's on). Actually our interest in Pumice was rekindled by the recent underground NZ comp on Xeric, Need For A Crossing. Neville, along with Pseudoarcana's Antony Milton, curated it, and it featured several cuts by Pumice and other projects of his, which were quite striking. So suddenly were were like, hmm, Pumice, hey let's be sure to check out this new disc Pebbles. And lo and behold, it's a winner.
Like we said, Pumice makes lo-fi indie rock, the Dead C and the Velvet U are both likely influences, also all the rich history of NZ indie awesomeness from labels like Xpressway and Flying Nun, artists like The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, and Alastair Galbraith. The music here is damaged, reverbed, distorted, as much about sound as song. Regarding Pebbles, Pumice claims Moondog and Simply Saucer as inspirations -- while we might not have thought of those disparate outsider references, they're not so outlandish when we think about it. And although Neville has a reputation for gloominess, the sheer pop umph buried beneath the lo-fi grit and noise of these tracks can't be denied, and tends to balance the depressive effects of the doleful droniness also much in evidence. Yeah, there's moments of rollickin' destroyed rock as well as an experimental folkiness that Richard Youngs fans will dig... and again if you like ye olde Xpressway style NZ indie stuff this is gonna be a blast. Another reminder for us here at AQ that we need to make a New Zealand section in the store again, like we used to back in the day!
Another great album from NZ's Pumice! Sorry we didn't write a review, but if we had, it would be a good one.
For the last 14 years, New Zealander Stefan Neville has been issuing a steady stream of cassettes, lathe-cuts, cd-rs, 7"s and other assorted slabs of mysterious small-run skronk under the Pumice moniker. Somehow through it all Neville has managed to find a comfortable spot nestled in between two very distinct strains of NZ music-making. At their heart, the songs he writes are pop songs obviously indebted to the legacy of Flying Nun, The Tall Dwarves and The Clean; that said, his willful disregard for fidelity, his love of tape hiss, wow and flutter, garbled vocals and blasts of harsh drone are a tip o' the hat to kiwi noiseniks like Birchville Cat Motel, Dead C, and Antony Milton. It's a compelling combination, as it allows his records to be both densely textural and supremely melodic - for every piece of blown out headphone candy, there's a memorable vocal or frighteningly catchy guitar riff. It's this incredible tug-of-war between (as we put it in our review) "doleful drone" and "sheer pop umph" that made us flip out over the last Pumice full-length, Pebbles, and we're happy to report that Neville's latest, Quo, finds him refining the Pumice formula in all the best possible ways to create a record full of impish charms, slack anthems, rambling bedrooms hiss, and speaker fried drone assaults!
Quo opens with "Pumice Quo," a song that hints at what is to come on the rest of the album: fuzzed-out, atonal guitars klang and skree like some sort of netherworldly faux-sitar over a ragged, swinging stomp that effortlessly mutates back and forth with a breezy, expansive, half-time swagger. Rhythmically and structurally it's all angular and math-y but it never sounds cold or analytical - it's like some incredible mix of Doc At The Radar Station and Celebrate The New Dark Age where you can't tell if it's Beefheart covering Polvo or vice versa, but everything sounds perfectly fucked up and damaged but so inexplicably catchy at the same time. Likewise, "World with Worms," a creeping, rumbling, blown-out, billowing sea shanty that mixes Neville's signature, mannered (almost goth, really) vocals with a teetering melody pounded out on some sort of half-broken chord organ or accordion.
The first half of the record continues to cast a few different lines - "Fort" sounds like some sort of classic mid-'90s B-side pop anthem you'd expect from GBV or Boyracer buried under 10 feet of shrieking keyboard noise; "Thermos in the Studio" is a winsome bedroom pop instrumental that would sound right at home buried amongst the ruins of Pavement's Westing (By Musket and Sextant) with lyrical slide guitar melodies that are simple, gorgeous and over in an instant; "Pebbles" is 2 minutes of rambling, shuffling, ramshackle pop. However, everything starts to come together with the second half of the record, as "Whole Hoof" looks back to the Polvo/Beefheart battle royale of the album opener but this time ads layers of distorted howling vocals. It starts out like Simply Saucer plowing through some freaked out rockabilly jam but mutates into something completely creepy and sinister at the end.
The album's second half is incredibly strong and manages to focus the scattershot elements of the first half without sacrificing any of those songs' chimpy playfulness. There's a darker element that emerges, but it never overwhelms the whole proceedings. "Sick Bay Duvet" starts out like a lost Fahey side being played back on a broken down gramophone, all rumbling, twanging, echoing, and slightly out of tune. When drums, melodica and a low, throbbing drone finally kick in at the end, it changes into something completely different - a kind of dour, anti-anthem that leads perfectly next track, "Dogwater," whose warbling, garbled take on Blackheart Procession's western goth vibe manages to come as both tongue-in-cheek and gracefully mannered. Things get stronger still with the last three songs: "Heavy Punter" is a solemn funeral shuffle built around a fractured Beefheart/Polvo riff filled out by ghostly keyboards that woosh and drone in and out of the background and fantastic, layered, pseudo-goth vocal stylings; "Battersby" is almost like Pumice's stab at punk rock with Casio tweeters battling against four on the floor drums and stumbling, disaffected vocals that wouldn't sound out of place on a Fall record (the whole thing comes across like some weird mashup of a NZ cd-r salvo and something off of a Messthetics comp - bizarrely catchy and certainly one of our favorites!); and album ender "Beak Remedy" is 7 minutes of blissed out, see-saw chord organ drone, ghostly tape loops, fluttering, stuttering ambient flickers of feedback, hum and hiss with percussive clomps that sneak in toward the end until the whole thing trickles out with choppy puffs of feedback and static.
All this adds up to a brilliant mix of pop songwriting and freaked out fuzzmongering that has been perking the ears of both customers and staff since it first arrived. We're confident that Quo is going to show up on many of our year end best-of lists, and we think you'll feel the same way about this blissed-out, smashed to pieces, melodic, thoughtful, mannered, playful and thoroughly recommended record!
Another slice of prime lo-fi New Zealand "pop" music. But pop only in the absolutely loosest sense of the world. Pumice, AKA Stephan Neville, crafts a haunting, murky, off kilter, otherworldly sort-of-pop music. Lots of warble, both instrument and malfunctioning tape, big ol' reverbed guitar, super distorted heavily affected melodies that sound like high pitched alien transmissions, mumbling marbles in the mouth vocals, clattery percussion, damaged motorik rhythms, not exactly in tune guitars, angular riffing, all cobbled together into one big beautiful chaotic pop mess that sounds a bit like a battle of the bands between the Dead C and the Velvet Underground, after all had partaken of the complimentary pot brownies, the secretly spiked punch, the PCP popsicles, oh and all that horse tranquilizer..
Damaged and druggy and darkly delirious, truly bizarre but strangely beautiful
Re-release of two out of print cassettes from 1998-2202. Indie rock, but of the fuzzed out, buzzy and drone-y, ramshackle EXTREMELY LO-FI variety. Jangly at moments, sparse and damaged at others, noisy and spastic at others. Cool and weird and pretty fucked up. Includes a handful of extra live tracks!
MPEG Download: "The Lady Of The Pitch" [/audio/pumicelady.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "The Lady Of The Pitch" [/audio/pumicelady.m3u]
Underground NZ drone pop from Stephan Neville, veteran of many a cassette and cd-r release. Some really nice moments, particularily in its second half. But we'd wouldn't put it in the front rank of Pumice releases 'cause it suffers a bit from being too acoustic-y in parts (we like the thick, distorted stuff instead) which tends to put too much stress on his singing, which isn't perhaps his strong suit. Fans certainly should check it out though.
We won't go into too much detail with these as we only got a tiny handful of each. Latest batch of ultra limited lathe cuts from New Zealand label CMR. Each one packaged in a super striking, simple cardstock jacket, most with printed inner sleeves, Limited to 60 copies, of which we got the remaining stock. Once these are gone, they are gone forever.
Two brief blasts from AQ fave Pumice, aka Stephan Neville. One side delicate and ephemeral, gorgeous disembodied guitar melodies, drifting in a wide open field of static and distortion, drifty and spacy and so lovely. The other side clattery free noise jam, with junkyard percussion, atonal melodic buzz, bits of low end growl, everything angular and abstract, stumbling and chaotic and strangely catchy.
Super limited tour only split featuring a serious arsenal of awesome underground noise makers. The names alone should have loads of you diving for that click-to-buy button, but on the off chance some of you are unfamiliar with any of these outfits, here's a quick breakdown.
Pumice is NZ musician Stephan Neville, who often crafts delicate outsider folk, Jandekian guitars, keening sadboy vocals, all bathed in lo-fi 4-track ambiance, but can also kick up a serious skree. Both sides are represented here. A soft folk opener, followed by a blast of serious Dead C-like clatter, immediately followed by another delicate drift, this time, a haunting guitarscape wrapped in some strange strange buzzing crackle, finishing up with a brief nylon string lullaby that sounds like a lo-fi Hawaiian folk song interpreted by Jandek.
Next up is Ghosting, who have gotten AQ customers into quite a lather with their massive ghostly dronescapes. This track adds some tribal percussion to their bag of tricks, resulting in a sound like a much more blissed out laid back No Neck Blues Band!
GMS is Gabe from Yellow Swans, who offers up a strangely minimal solo guitar piece, that drift dreamily along for almost 10 minutes before the hammer falls and a distorted guitar gets locked into a super hypnotic ultra blown out loop before drifting back into gentle tangles of acoustic guitar. Really nice.
Finally it's Bonus, another band that folks around here have been loving BIG TIME. 17 minutes of ultra ultra minimal drone. This is definitely headphone music. A low level sonic event, spread out over a vast expanse of open space. Like the sounds of your home or office, isolated from the world around them, the air conditioner, the refrigerator, placed in a vacuum, allowing us to hear the microscopic music that is all around us. Wow!
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES! Packaged in cool hand screened cover, includes a photocopied insert, and housed in a thick vinyl sleeve.
Seems like there have been a surprising number of vocal oriented releases lately, Lichens, Grouper, it makes sense though, the most intimate and personal music making device there is. This most recent exploration of the human voice comes from the strangely monickered Pump Kinn, a vocalist named Michelle who channels the spirit of Diamanda Galas, but adds a heaping dose of effects and stereo panning to send our heads spinning and our ears into a confusional tizzy. The first track sounds like water running, a shower, the soothing white noise slowly shifting from the right speaker to the left speaker and back again, a soothing, slightly dizzy sensation, before the vocals appear on track two, a soft faraway cooing, swinging from right to left along with the fuzz of the running water sound. Track three is a strange world of creaks and cackles, screams and shrieks, lots of reverb and delay, a world of alien bird calls, and cooing alien infants. Track four finds the voice turned into rhythm, careening from speaker to speaker, truly haunting and disorienting. The next five tracks drift from haunting ethereal ambiance, to swirls of high end shriek to dreamy drifts of distant harmony, like a feral Joan LaBarbara or an outer space Fursaxa scampering wildly between your speakers. Truly far out. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Packaged in a super striking custom, full-color, 6-panel fold-out slowly undeveloping faux-Polaroid cover. Really cool.
The Pump was the first project of Nigel Ayers, Daniel Ayers, and Caroline K, which morphed into the Nocturnal Emissions around 1981. Nigel Ayers hand-dubbed all of the tiny editions of The Pump's cassettes on the shittiest tapes he could find in a local market; and when he learned that Rough Trade in London quickly sold through a run of 30 copies, he made a point to find even worse grade tapes for The Pump's recordings. Crap tape, cheap electronics, stop/start editing techniques, and overdriven distortion run throughout The Pump's recordings, which have more of an art-damaged aesthetic in keeping with the likes of the Storm Bugs or the Homosexuals, but don't you worry, there's plenty of Throbbing Gristle to be heard within The Pump's anti-songs. Ayers claims that he released four or five cassettes as The Pump, before shifting into Nocturnal Emissions; and this disc collects various tracks from various cassettes, although nothing is annotated as to where anything originated. It probably doesn't matter, as those cassettes had probably all disintegrated from their structural shittiness. Anyway, The Pump loosely splattered electronic noise and distortion upon cheap drum machine programs, slapped on asynchronous basslines which lurch through the treble crashing production, and even displayed a surprisingly sophisticated use of dub collage techniques to provide some ghostly flourishes of voice, media samples, and scratchy guitar noise amidst the dishevelled sound. This is Industrial Music in the way the Industrial Records released Industrial Music, by way of Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA, and Cabaret Voltaire all circa 1979; but they also seemed to run parallel to the fucked-up, heroin-splattered noise of Destroy All Monsters as well. It should be noted that there's way more material from The Pump on this disc than found on the Nocturnal Emissions 4lp boxset Lest We Forget from Vinyl On Demand. A gritty free for all from way down deep in the British underground.
Not sure how we managed to miss these guys up until now. They're from right here in SF, and this is their third full length (we've heard exactly ONE of their 7"s), they totally kill, and they have maybe the fiercest female vocalist we've ever heard. All this talk about Perfect Pussy, fuck that, Meghan from Punch might have the greatest punk rock voice we've heard in forever, a serious paint peeling caterwaul, and the band back her up with a potent mix of classic hardcore, old school punk rock, furious grind and some seriously metallic heft. A relentless chaotic frenzy that occasionally slips into straight forward punk rock pound, but just as often explodes into grinding metallic fury that is seriously some of the fiercest and most furious shit EVER. The production by Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Joyce Manor, Whirr, etc.) only makes it that much meaner and HUGE sounding. It's 15 songs in about 18 minutes, the longest is 2:33, the shortest (the title track) a mere :05, but every track, even that brief sonic blip totally destroys, and the crazy thing, is it's catchy as fuck, with super melodic basslines, some seriously killer riffs, and some goddamn great songs. And when they slow it down, it's SO heavy, which is only further magnified when they explode into a part as fast and furious as the previous part was slow. Holy shit. We're gonna make it a point to track down all the other Punch records, and not miss a single show, cuz as good as these songs sound on record, we can only imagine how brutal and badass this stuff sounds live.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
J-Church's and Valencia Street regular Lance Hahn, several features on aspects of Crime & Justice in the year 2000, postcard designer Stella Mars, DIY winemaking, Sonny from Bottlenekk Distribution. As usual, an essential, finger-on-the-pulse read.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
J. Lesser, Boys Sets Fire, Unwound, Les Savy Fav, Hydrahead Records, Joe Preston of the Thrones, Soft Skull Press (publisher of Bomb the Suburbs), lots of stuff on the upsurge of politics and protest by the left in America (with usual suspects Noam Chomsky and Jello Biafra putting their two cents in), exactly why WalMart is super evil, and how to make yr own paper. You cannot go wrong with Punk Planet. This magazine cares about how you live your life.
The Chicago issue. Mekons, underground hip hop crew Molemen, Homocore Chicago, Venus magazine, deathrow inmate Aaron Patterson, Tortoise, punk rock hot dog merchant Doug Sohn, low-income neighborhood organizer James Mumm, Bloodshot Records, The Dishes, DIY book your own big show.
We haven't really been consistent about listing this magazine on our website (it's more of an in-store purchase thing anyways) but thought we'd mention this one just to remind y'all that we carry it. And this ish might be of special interest 'cause it's Punk Planet's third ever special Art & Design issue, so in addition to the usual band interviews and music reviews and columns and ads and political stuff, you'll find features on a bunch of underground artists in the fields of fine arts, graphic design, fashion, tattoos, and even cartography. If you've ever wondered about, for instance, who did the cool art for Converge's Jane Doe album (that'd be band member Jacob Bannon), he's in here...along with others whose names you also might not recognize but whose art and design work chances are you've seen gracing some of your favorite punk/indie releases. Some names, nonetheless: Cat Chow, Andy Mueller, Tara McPherson, Crista Donner, Paul Booth, Joe Rush, and others. 160 artsy, attractive pages.
What kind of an album would feature on its back cover a still from "The Big Lebowski" with Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi, and John Goodman sitting at a bar in a bowling alley -- all wearing black metal corpse paint??!? And feature music that kinda actually *sounds* like that picture might sound?? One by the notorious Steven Schultz (of The History Of Vats, Stalin Claus Superstar!, Busuchan, and I Forgot To Get A Rap Name! infamy) and fellow musical mastermind/masturbator Jason Kocol, of course! "No One Will Ever Understand Our Genious" is a more than apt album title for this duo's output. Genious [sic] put to questionable use. Embarrassing but stoopid funny music nerd indulgence, with the boys' sick chops in metal, jazz, dance music and whatever else they choose to abuse making the likes of Mr. Bungle and Estradasphere and Frank Zappa seem like mere puppies next to these Puny Humans. A silly genre-shift every 1.5 seconds or so, with blasting metal giving way to kazoo blues interrupted by circus music then back to the metal but with tinkling bells and sampled interjections from Flava Flav and house beats and skits and the quiet storm etc. etc. etc. Good grief! The mind reels, the throat chortles. This is really over the top. There's skits (y'know, the producers talking like on a rap record) and they even stoop so low as to sample the Benny Hill Theme at one point. Yes, the dumb humor driving this is SO dumb and relentless that it might even be brilliant. I mean, can you argue with songs that actually live up to song titles like "Deicide At Their Mom's House", "Sweep-Picking The Flugelhorns", and "Wouldja Look At The Ass On That Mummy?". Nope, or at least you wouldn't want to waste your time. Of course, without the dumb humor this mighta been the best ridiculous meta-metal ever, like if they were Japanese or something and we didn't "get" the jokes. But with the humor, it still shows Mr. Bungle where to get off. We really can't help but like it despite ourselves. Trying too hard to be insane -- and succeeding!!
MPEG Download: "Thorax, Ho!" [/audio/punythorax.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Thorax, Ho!" [/audio/punythorax.m3u]
We've always been a huge fan of the band Lungfish. Practitioners of an uncompromising, and unrelenting sort of melodic and rhythmic minimalism. Each song a single groove, a riff, loping and repetitive, winding and swerving under vocalist Dan Higgs' distinctive wail. So it comes as no surprise that the Pupils are completely amazing as well, once you realise that the two Pupils are actually Higgs and Lungfish guitarist Asa Osborne. And the sound of this duo is appropriately intimate, like a stripped down, skeletal version of Lungfish, with Osborne's bulldozing riffs turned into delicate spidery, latticeworks of chiming notes and melodies, while simple drum machine rhythms plot out a steady course. Occasionally squalls of guitar feedback and squealing theremin whip things into a frenzy, but order is quickly restored as the relentless riffing and persistent rhythms march on resolutely. Higgs' vocals are keening and rich, sometimes dry as a bone, sometimes wrapped in layers of reverb or distortion, sometimes soaring, sometimes whispery and urgent, but always intense and super emotional, perfectly complemeting the insistent, unrelenting musical backdrop. Not a new release, but something we've been meaning to list for a while!
Thanks goes to Drew of Matmos for bringing this to our attention, a 1996 release of Miami Bass style raps by a pair of pre-teens. Several nursery rhymes and children's songs get the treatment, including showstopper "Hokey Pokey". Our favorite "novelty" record of the moment.
Having also adopted the pseudonym Ilse Gold for excursions into Rotterdam 'ardcore techno, the anomymous Austrian (?) individual (or maybe group?) behind Pure offers a debut album of experimental electronics that recapitulates a number of the abrasive strategies previously employed in '60s electro-acoustics, '80s industrial culture, and the current strain of electronica. Using such strategies as ring modulation, DSP timeshifting, FM synthesis, and occasional digital fragmentation, Pure strives for a mannerist ornamentation of layered sounds. Within "Noonbugs," Pure builds multiple layers of malleable looped samples which are mostly electronic in origin, but occasionally strident orchestral sounds emerge. These layers often overlap each others rhythms and textures without too much concern for the greater compositional context. However, such disconnections within the stereo field lend themselves to sci-fi paranoiac metaphors, common within the history of computer music. "Noonbugs" ends up sounding more antiquated than fellow Mego artists, especially when compared to the arrogant sonic overload of Pita of the brazen digital-pop smearing of Fennesz. Rather its citations are found in Pimmon, Alan Splet (the "Eraserhead" sound designer), Bernard Parmegiani, and Premature Ejaculations (the underappreciated mechanized dada-drone project for the late Rozz Williams of Christian Death). A fine album.
- RealAudio clip: Lit
- RealAudio clip: Duck
Pure has also recorded for Disko B and Tension as Ilsa Gold, and does not make any proclamation for the death of the 12" in favor of digital media. Actually the title refers to the source material of this album being the runout grooves on vinyl, being amplified and processed into digital clicks and ominous drones reminiscent of Ryoji Ikeda or possibly Nurse With Wound's Thunder Perfect Mind.
Sorry if you missed the recent instore with Austin's Silver Pines and Pure Ecstasy, because both bands were really amazing! We were especially impressed with Pure Ecstacy, of whom we only heard their first 7" (recently repressed!), which was really a grower for us. Cool and curious at first, but the more we listened to it, the more hooked in we got to it's lo-fi and dreamy vibe. Live, they really brought it, their songs a bit more uptempo than the recordings, but still spacious and reverbed out, like a mix of Beach Boys retro harmonies with the more pop jangle meets Crazy Horse side of those Tokyo Flashbackish bands like Doodles, Miminokoto or even LSD-March. And what a full sound they get from such an economic set-up, just three guys: a singer/guitar player, and a rhythm section pulled from two members of Silver Pines. Their new 7" contains two brand new tracks: "Easy", a slow and heavy-lidded ballad and "Baby", a more uptempo garage-pop number, and like the first 7" contains almost a third track, a breezy and dreamy refrain that we could listen to for much longer than it lasts.
Woodsist, Captured Tracks, Sacred Bones and/or Mexican Summer, get on this band quick!
Pure Ecstacy comes from the same home-grown Austin scene as Yellow Fever, Silent Land Time Machine and Smokey Emery, and includes members of Silver Pines. This is their first self-released 7" of lackadaisical lo-fi stoner rock, taking its time to unfurl through hypnotic washes of wah'd and delayed guitar and low-key vocals that slowly build, reminding us a bit of Ducktails on a breezy roadtrip through the American heartland. Only 50 copies of this 7" were made with hand assembled spraypainted covers. We only have a handful, may not get more, so you know the drill!
Along with the Sleep Over split, we managed to pick up a few copies of Pure Ecstasy's latest tape which shows off the bands more experimental side, a side we haven't seen as much on their pop singles. The bands slow motion grooves are in tact, but the overall effect is more collage-like, chopped in a blender style. Sometimes veering into hazy dub experimentations a la Sun Araw, or lo-fi distortion squalls, murmured voices, and pretty ambiance. Two ten minute sides. Super limited!
Just as the last two Pure Ecstasy 7"s (Easy and Future Nostalgia) went sadly out of print, we are fortunately blessed with this brand new single on the new-to-us Acephale label. "Voices" is the perfect lo-fi chillwave jam of the summer. Equally laidback and exuberant, a catchy love song that has a sort of eighties /sixties walking-with-my-girl-on-the-beach vibe to it, but covered in a fine layer of distorted wah'd guitar. The B-side, "Alexandria", is not so much of a song but an extended slow-jam, with loping bass, and strummed guitar accents with falsetto background vocals before the proper song meanders in, in typical dream pop fashion. We like how with so many bands trying to fit in fast pop and tight hooks to their garage-y sound, these guys just take their time and let the dreaminess and noise coalesce gradually like hazy smoke rings drifting across a shaft of light in a darkened room. Limited!
Welcome to dream pop heaven! The boys of Austin, TX trio Pure Ecstasy come together with their all-female equivalent Sleep Over (featuring Stephanie from Silver Pines) on this exquisite split single. We managed to get some of the last copies while they were both here on tour, so don't miss out on this one as once they're gone, they're gone!
The Pure Ecstasy track "Dream Over" is like Galaxie 500 on cough syrup, a super slow and hazy lament, waking up to the painful realization that your love is gone for good. The rhythm plods along with melancholic Beach Boys harmonies and distorted guitar swells panging with heartbreak and regret. These guys nail that sound so perfectly.
This is the first time we've heard all female trio, Sleep Over and hopefully it won't be the last. Two girl harmonies with organ, guitar, bass and drum machine, their track "Your World Is Night" is a blurry wash of woozy organ pop, hazy and pretty like Kate Bush on downers. So gooood!
We don't want to talk it up too much, because we only have a few of these. Amazing!
We missed out on Pure X's second album Crawling Up the Stairs, but the band has taken on some major shifts in sound since 2011's Pleasure. Angel finds the band less brooding and more summery, really delving into the sounds that made seventies soft-rock such a guilty pleasure, but at least Pure X has the musicianship and production to really deliver the goods. Opener, "Starlight", could easily have been a lost track by America or even, Seals and Croft, but Pure X redeems the sound by really focusing on the breezy effervescent pop hooks and falsetto vocal harmonies and steering clear of the cokey yacht rock indulgence. The songs continue in this infectious vein, crafting beautiful pop confections from the nostalgic ashes of Fleetwood Mac and the Beach Boys in their best moments, putting their own unique atmospheric ambiance and song craft on them. Summer Breeze indeed!
After a long string of now out of print 7" singles, cassettes, 12" eps, and a name change from what was Pure Ecstasy, The Austin, TX trio Pure X finally deliver their debut full length, aptly titled Pleasure. In previous reviews we recommended all the hip boutique labels such as Woodsist, Captured Tracks, Sacred Bones, Mexican Summer that were signing all the real good lo-fi murk-pop bands to sign these guys quick. But true to their nature, the band stayed loyal and stuck with the local Austin labels Light Lodge and Acephale who released their previous singles as well as releases by connected bands in their circle, Silver Pines, Sleep Over and Survive. That was a smart move, because instead of feeling pressure to polish their songs with better recording equipment or add more complicated arrangements, the band was really able to stretch out their already established dreamy and hazy pop sound. Pleasure does see some of the songs from their 7"s, such as "Dream Over", "Voices", and "Easy", re-recorded, but not necessarily all that different, perhaps with a new layer of hazy feedback and slo-mo guitar fuzz, as these songs were all recorded live with no overdubs. A bold move for sure, but Pure X has long nailed their economic sound into something so wonderfully self-sufficient and unique. And besides those 7"s are so far out of print, that most folks are lucky to get any versions of these songs at all. Imagine Friends-era Beach Boys way slowed down to a molasses pace with crashing lo-fi waves of shoe-gaze guitar strums, buttery rhythms and space walking basslines with sleepy but impassioned vocals. Pleasure is a beautifully dirty dream-pop heaven! Highly Recommended! Vinyl to follow next month, fyi.
If you happened to miss out on their super limited tour tape, from a few months back, Pure Ecstasy have returned with a beautifully remastered vinyl version (the tape split into two ten minute tracks, one on each side), and with it a new name: Pure X. Guess there was already another group that shared the name and so they took the high road and modified theirs. Reminds a little bit of the detergent though...
Anyway, Chain Reflection shows off the bands more experimental side, a side we haven't seen as much on their pop singles. The bands slow motion grooves are intact, but the overall effect is more collage-like, chopped in a blender style. Sometimes veering into foggy dub experimentations a la Sun Araw, or lo-fi distortion squalls, murmured voices, and pretty ambiance. It reminds us of all the reprises they put at the end of their singles, that sublime moment that fades out too soon. Here though, those moments are stretched way out and turn in on themselves into something much more tripped out and elusive, but still allowing us to laze in their bright and sunny haze.
These come on translucent smokey vinyl in a layered hand-drawn mylar package.
Super beautiful and super limited! Don't sleep on this one this time around!
In the not so distant future, there will be classes at Evergreen State (perhaps sponsored in part by K Records) such as 'Indie Songwriting 101: Malkamus and Barlow.' The Northwestern outfit Puritan (who may have some association with AQ favs Death Cab For Cutie) have seen the future and matriculated from this class with honors, by demonstrating a working knowledge of not only Pavement and Sebadoh, but also their respective influences Capt. Beefheart and Neil Young.
The demise of legendary doomlords Reverend Bizarre had two strange but positive after effects, first, there seemed to be a flood of posthumous RB releases, more we think than when they were actually a band, a from-beyond-the-grave release schedule to rival Biggie or Tupac, as is further demonstrated by yet another new Reverend Bizarre release reviewed elsewhere on this week's list! The second outcome was the more inevitable one, a whole slew of new projects from RB mainman S.A.Hynninen (aka Albert Witchfinder), whose voracious need to rock would obviously need a new outlet, and thus we have The Puritan and Opium Warlords. Both born of Hynninen's newfound obsession with ultra doom, with sludge, especially of the Japanese variety, Boris, Corrupted, Solar Anus, Hynninen set forth on a mission to create some serious Japanese style ultra doom sludge. We'll have the Opium Warlords disc for next list, but for now, we shall celebrate The Puritan, and Lithium Gates, which compiles two previously released, now out of print vinyl lps, one of which we never had, the other which we had in extremely limited numbers.
We've become convinced, that Hynninen must be somehow related to Circle's Jussi Lehtisalo. They're both Finnish, they both front or fronted kick ass heavy rock bands, and both have totally twisted senses of humor, which finds its way, however subtly (or not) into their music. So while the Puritan was originally inspired by Japanese doom and sludge, by the time it worked its way through Hynninen's cracked Finnish filter, it had been transformed into something else entirely. Something heavy and brutal, but warped and far out and brilliant.
This is no ordinary doom. And is far removed from the doom of Reverend Bizarre. Although on first listen, maybe not so far removed after all, beginning with the first Puritan lp, The Untitled, the sound is ultra heavy, downtuned, spaced out, melodic, with a distinctly classic strain of classic doom running through it, the opening intro could indeed be the opening salvo from some doom classic, and the follow up too does not sound that far our, awesomely epic and troo vocals over a lumbering slow motion dirge, but then the record shifts gears, and "The Sulphur - Coloured Clouds Are Hurrying Through the Lithium Gates" explodes like some nineties noise rock juggernaut, loping bass, crumbling guitars, jagged riffing, only to gradually slow to a nearly complete halt, before slipping back into slow motion ultra doom dirgery. "The Sepulchral God Holding a Speech for the Moribund" sounds almost like some extra heavy slowcore, with some dramatically crooned Slough Feg like vox, before a strangely haunting outro, with clean guitars, whirling ambience, mysterious sampled voices, including a classic Charles Manson rant, all hovering beneath thick washed out guitars and lilting sweetly sorrowful melodies. Then it begins to get even weirder.
The second half of Lithium Gates contains the entirety of The Black Law, the second Puritan lp, which begins with some old timey organ, wheezy and lo-fi, some lost in time parlor music, lilting and melancholy, until everything is flattened by a massive wall of downtuned guitars, exploding into a plodding doomic dirge, which is not really funereal, or even all that slow, a plodding lurching doom that reminds us of Midwestern pigfuckers Killdozer more than anything, which as far as we're concerned is good news for sure. The chuggy midtempo crunch pounds and churns while the vocals howl and bellow, there's a distinctly AmRep / Touch And Go vibe to the doom on display, the main riff locked into a loop that seems to go on and on and on, giving the proceedings a sort of Gore vibe as well. The riff eventually gives up the ghost leaving a tranquil, almost ambient fade out, all soft streaks of feedback, delicate melodies, distant slabs of slow moving sludge, all smeared into a weirdly dreamy drift.
From there on out, the record continues to devolve gloriously with some bizarre gnarled super distorted guitar weirdness, completely panned so it careens from speaker to speaker, ear to ear, until the riff finally kicks in, a big ol' filthy doomy dirgey riff, the drums and guitar locked tight, while in the background, the WHOLE time, the moans and groans of a lady seemingly in the throes of violent passion(!), the whole track endlessly looped and cyclical, the only variation being the woman's voice, here the Gore vibe is undeniable, a killer riff, just pounding away, over and over, very hypnotic and strangely minimal, but that's only the first track. The second revolves around a muted chug, spread out over a layer of seemingly constant buzz, with more deep crooned dramatic vocals, the production reverby and very new wave sounding, a little like Joy Division or the Cure but way heavier and dripping with doooooom, the wind-down at the end laced with bursts of super epic and melodic drama, turning the outro into some sort of doomic Godspeed.
Needless to say, fucking awesome! And essential listening for any one into sounds slow and low, doomy and heavy, fucked up and far out.
The Reverend Bizarre may be dead. But The Puritan lives on in his place. The Puritan being the new group founded and fronted by RB's S.A.Hynninen (aka Albert Witchfinder), this being their second missive, the first, another quite limited 12", that managed to go out of print before we could nab any. For part two though, we did manage to grab a bunch, but be warned, it too is crazy limited and there's a good chance these will be the only copies we can get. So doom obsessives, dig in...
But, this is no ordinary doom. And it's quite far removed from the doom of Reverend Bizarre as well. The record begins with some old timey organ, wheezy and lo-fi, some lost in time parlour music, lilting and melancholy, until everything is flattened by a massive wall of downtuned guitars, exploding into a plodding doomic dirge, which is not really funereal, or even all that slow, a plodding lurching doom that reminds us more of Midwestern thud rockers Killdozer more than anything, which as far as we're concerned is good news for sure. The chuggy midtempo crunch pounds and churns while the vocals howl and bellow, there's a distinctly Amrep / Touch And Go vibe to the doom on display, the main riff locked into a loop that seems to go on and on and on, giving the proceedings a sort of Gore vibe as well. The riff eventually gives up the ghost leaving a tranquil, almost ambient fade out, all soft streaks of feedback, delicate melodies, distant slabs of slow moving sludge, all smeared into a weirdly dreamy drift.
The B side begins with some bizarre gnarled super distorted guitar weirdness, completely panned so it careens from speaker to speaker, ear to ear, until the riff finally kicks in, a big ol' filthy doomy dirgey riff, the drums and guitar locked tight, while in the background, the WHOLE time, the moans and groans of a lady seemingly in the throes of violent passion(!), the whole track endlessly looped and cyclical, the only variation being the woman's voice, here the Gore vibe is undeniable, a killer riff, just pounding away, over and over, very hypnotic and strangely minimal, but that's only the first track. The second revolves around a muted chug, spread out over a layer of seemingly constant buzz, with deep crooned dramatic vocals, the production reverby and very new wave sounding, a little like Joy Division or the Cure but way heavier and dripping with doooooom, the wind-down at the end laced with bursts of super epic and melodic drama, turning the outro into some sort of doomic Godspeed.
Needless to say, fucking awesome! (btw, those new to The Puritan, or doom in general, might want to pick up the last Reverend Bizarre double cd too while you're at it, So Long Suckers, that band's mighty doom swansong).
We're kicking ourselves for missing the first 12", as this, our first experience in the strange doomy world of The Puritan most definitely has us wanting more...
With equal parts Don Caballero, Breadwinner, Shellac, and Turing Machine, The Purkinje Shift flexes their muscular heaviosity as an instrumental math-rock / power trio who has all the complexities down to a science and is a force to be reckoned with. Recommended.
The return of bedroom psych rockers Purling Hiss, who we've long been sorta obsessed with, in fact we made PH's Public Service Announcement lp our Record Of the Week back in 2010. And really it's not so much a return, since this is not a new record, but is in fact a vinyl reissue of a super limited cd-r, released in an edition of 50 copies way back in 2006 (and reissued on tape in 2011 with some extra tracks). The interesting thing is that for some reason, we thought the other Purling Hiss records, including our favorite, Public Service Announcement, were more recent, but Public Service Announcement was recorded just a year after this one, so if you dug that record or any of the Purling Hiss records, as much as us, then you're gonna want this one too.
It's the same mix of 4-track home brewed loner psych folk, and fuzzed out psychedelic power pop, with most of the tracks landing somewhere right in between. "She Don't Mind" is all hushed strummy loner pop, but then the sound blossoms into the hard rocking psych fuzz of "Icelator", which barring the low fidelity, sounds like it could be some lost seventies power pop lost classic, replete with groovy leads, aching vocals, and a killer main hook and bad ass chorus. From there on out, the sound shifts constantly, from the blown out noise drenched lilting dirge pop of "Digh High" to the strummy, lo-fi Yellow Pills fuzz and crunch of "Sifting Through My Hands". And so it goes, the B side is chockablock with buzz and jangle, warped noisiness, soaring melodies, lilting psych folk ballads, groovy garage rock, and some seriously and impossibly classic sounding songsmithery.
Sadly, no download code, and thus, no sound samples. But trust us, if you dig any/all of the other Purling Hiss records, you're gonna LOVE this one too!
Purling Hiss's Public Service Announcement was our Record of The Week a while back, a fantastic and unexpected collection of lo-fi eighties style power pop, super catchy bedroom brewed folk, and lazy, lysergic psychedelic drug rock drift, all sounds that were apparently at odds with their 'normal' sound, which was a heavy blown out super in-the-red psychedelia, which was on full display on their s/t lp on Permanent, which indeed was white hot and freaked out and heavy, and awesome, just WAY different then PSA.
So we really didn't know what to expect with this 4 song ep, and we were surprised to discover, that while it definitely leaned sonically more toward their heavy psych, they also managed to infuse plenty of pop into these jams, the result being a sound that is essentially a mix of the two. The guitars are heavy, the vocals buried in the mix, the drums pounding, the sound looped and repetitive and hypnotic, but within this Stooges-y / White Heaven rocking out lurk all the little things that made PSA so killer, hooks, melodies, the opening track "Passenger Queen" is pretty heavy and swaggery, but then the sound shifts and the band whip out a brief bit of total tangled pop, only to slip right back into it. Obviously folks who are looking for more of the introspection and hushed strum and folkiness, or even the lo-fi psychedelic space jams, might be overwhelmed by the rock, but we're digging this big time.
Check out the second track "Whipple Dam" with an absolutely killer, super stonery main riff, accompanied by ooooooh-ing vocals, another glimpse of the hidden poppiness, before the moaning reverby vocals and mathy almost tech riffing take over. "Space Roots / Limerence" is more of the same, heavy, psychedelic, subtly poppy. The record finishes off with the slithery blues boogie of "Down On The Delaware River" which sounds like s super blown out, lo-fi, in-the-red take on classic Bowie, a little bit glammy, with more oooooh's and some seriously bad ass leads. Awesome! Maybe not immediately as catchy as PSA, but way heavier, and crazy hooky in its own way.
Thus, RECOMMENDED!
We made Public Service Announcement by Purling Hiss our Record Of The Week back in October of 2010, and for good reason, it was a fantastic collection of classic old school power pop, dreamy tripped out psychedelia and lo-fi bedroom 4 trackery, all woven into a blurred murky bliss out, a gorgeously confusional record that fused tape hiss and weird sonic dropouts to some of THEE catchiest classic rock sounding pop music EVER, all peppered with long stretches of hazy bongsmoke psych guitar trip outs. And while the records since have been great as well, they seemed to focus more on the heavy psych side of PH's sound, a blown out white noise psychedelia that had more in common with Fushitsusha or White Heaven or Liquorball, that the oddball power pop and home brewed bedroom folk that PSA referenced, but even then, PH couldn't seem to shrug off that keen pop sense entirely, which is what made those records so goddamn good as well.
But we're happy to report, on this new ep, PH have returned to that murky washed out classic pop that had us so smitten in the first place. Just give opener "Voices" a listen, all hazy humid guitar buzz, tangled psychedelia, muted and smeared into hazy swirls, the vocals lazy and laid back, a woozy drawl, the melodies impossibly lilting and catchy, a practically perfect slab of slo-mo psychedelic power pop dirgery, complete with lots of "ooooooh"s and plenty of wah wah'd guitar leads, same with track number two "The Hoodoo", a gorgeous heady collision of squiggly distorted guitar leads, warm washed out riffage, simple pounding rhythms, and those laid back vox, the vibe here a bit more Stooges-y but still distinctly classic poppy, especially with the crazy catchy chorus and more "oooooh" falsetto back up vocals.
And so it goes, the whole record unfurls in a hazy, blurry, druggy power pop haze, almost like an ACTUAL power pop record, only playing slightly too slowly, on a busted up old turntable, woozy and warped, the lo-fi murk and sonic warble only adding more warmth and druggy dreaminess to Purling Hiss's already blissed out power pop psychedelia, and sort of the perfect sonic addendum to their (his) beloved Public Service Announcement record!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Includes a download coupon!
WOW, did this record pretty much immediately blow us away! We had never actually heard these guys (this guy actually, he also plays in Birds Of Maya), but had always thought Purling Hiss was a pretty awesome name, so not expecting too much, we threw this on and then BAM, we were sold, smitten, obsessed even, finding ourselves playing this to death, getting these songs stuck in our heads, and not just the songs proper, but even the weird little recording anomalies and random bits of musical glitchery. For a record that sounds, and is maybe meant to sound, so lo-fi and tossed off and just sort of half assed, a druggy murky muddy home brewed pop record, it's impossibly catchy and well crafted and AMAZING.
A heady mix of classic pop songsmithery, blown out psychedelic drift, abstract tape experiment fuckery and fragmented bedroom 4 track alchemy, Public Service Announcement plays at times like some classic rock record that's been dubbed a million times and then played back in your crappy car stereo, the one with only one speaker and no bass knob, and at other times like some inspired Guided By Voices mini pop epic, and occasionally like some super baked, basement psych jam blowout, wasted and lazy and drifty and divine.
The record opens with "Run From The City", which within 5 seconds establishes itself as some impossible instant classic, with a totally killer guitar lick that IS the song's hook, the track sounding like some lost punky pop gem from the seventies or eighties that somehow got left off of every compilation since, the verses crunchy and muddy and melodic, those guitar leads just sealing the deal. In fact, we could barely get to the rest of the record cuz we just wanted to keep playing the first track.
"Porch Dude/Slight Return" offers up our first glimpse of Purling Hiss as wasted and stoned psych jam drifters, shuffling drums, swirling flanged guitars, everything hazy and wreathed in pot smoke, little spidery leads surfacing here and there, bit otherwise a blurred and bleary drift, the slight return of the title being the revisited melody from the album opener.
And then there's "Don't Even Try It", the other song we can't seem to keep from just playing on repeat, with it's folky guitar and vocal intro, the tape speed constantly shifting, the sound warped and warbly, like someone with their finger on the record as it spins, and then the chorus comes in, with it's "woo ooo ooo" refrain, and the song suddenly reveals itself as some pretty perfect pop. Lo-fi yet lush, vocal harmonies, guitar melodies, a hook to die for, all hazy and sun dappled and catchy as all get out.
After a brief (but AWESOME) minute long Van Halen loop, that manages to be totally twisted yet totally catchy, the record slips right back into fuzzy lo-fi pop, more oooh's and aaah's, summery steel string strum, dreamy harmonies, and sweet pop hooks, before unfurling some serious psychedelia in the form of "Gypsy", a sprawling droned out chunk of druggy spaciness, and at that point if you're not already under the record's spell, you bliss out and drift off and let the record carry you wherever it will, whether it be to "Zor" a thick buzzing, swirling, yet still dreamily melodic bit of dark drone, or to "Beautiful Earth Creature" which is another perfect chunk of jangly pop, replete with those warped speed fluctuations that end up becoming irrevocably part of the song, or to the heady spacepsychjam freakout of "Malice In Wonderland" or to the twisted Ariel Pink-ish warbly fuzzy FM radio pop of album close "1976".
Warped and wonderful and definitely one of our new favorite records.
Holy shit, these guys just keep getting better! Since we first laid ears on Purling Hiss, we were totally and utterly smitten, whether they were kicking up squalls of wild noisy psychedelic freakout, or crafting impossibly perfect Yellow Pills style seventies era power pop. But nothing could have prepared us for this, easily their catchiest, most overtly poppy, and somehow rockingest record yet. All vestiges of their lo-fi past have been completely shed, their sound is now massive, the production HUGE, the guitars thick and crunchy and fuzzy, the vocals way up in the mix, it's dare we say, downright commercial sounding, but only in that it sounds like it SHOULD be all over the radio, the sound equal parts fuzz guitar freakouts, psychedelic wah wah riffage, blasts of feedback, cool harmonized guitar licks, cool falsetto vox, killer choruses, hooks galore, what started out as a super lo-fi power pop/psych rock hybrid, has blossomed into a full on hook heavy, indie jangle classic rock radness, that will no doubt bum out lots of folks who freaked out over those other records, but as far as we're concerned, this was pretty much the way they were headed anyway, but we definitely could not have predicted how kick ass the final destination would be.
There are definitely still nods to their noisier earlier incarnation, take the angular, post hardcore, angular guitar jam "Face Down", which starts off sounding like some lost SST rarity, but quickly, as if the band can no longer help themselves, the song blossoms into something crazy poppy, and then from there on out, it's a sort of push and pull between the serpentine punk rock swagger, and fuzzed out hook heavy pop, replete with rad shredding leads, and some Zeppelin-y vocal wails. That's a weird one for sure, maybe the weirdest jam here, but then there's the title track, which definitely dips back into a more lo-fi sound, the whole track sort of muted and muffled, a driving classic rock jam looped and locked, beneath wild squalls of super distorted blown out psych guitar freakout, swaths of squealing feedback, a fantastically fractured psychedelic noise jam, but like the rest of those sorts of moments here, it's bookended by two crazy catchy fuzzy jangly jams, the Dinosaur Jr like fuzzed out indie psych pop of "The Harrowing Wind" and the garagey jangle of closer "Mary Bumble Bee", all the songs here just a wee bit druggy, with just a bit of that droned out Velvetsy druggy buzz, but when that gets peeled back, it's total jangle pop nirvana. And while plenty of PH's classic rockisms abound still, the sound this time around here is pretty much pure pop, albeit a pop that's tweaked and twisted in places, but the songs are so great, and while those old records still rank among our all time faves, this new one is definitely making a seriously strong case for best Purling Hiss record yet!
