About a couple of years ago, a cd-r was dropped off here at Aquarius for consignment consideration. We liked what we heard and swiftly emailed the mysterious Pascal to bring us a bunch. Alas, there was no response. But just the other day, who should walk though our door? Pascal... with a completed cd in hand! Seems he wanted to make sure everything was just right. So at long last, we now have the elusive album in stock with a full digipak. The music is just as we recall - raw acoustic folk songs with reverb-y highly emotive vocals, ramshackle percussion, and strummy guitars. At times his top-of-his-lungs delivery is strikingly similar to that of AQ fave Jeff Mangum. To be frank, some customers and staffers even found the resemblance a bit unsettling. Nevertheless, Pascal has his own stories to tell/sing. Check out the lovely "You'll Pick My Name". Lend him your ear!
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The kids are going crazy for this band. Check it out and see if you believe the hype...
A big sticker on the shrinkwrap announces that this cd was produced by Kelley Stoltz! But keep in mind though that doesn't mean The Passionistas' music is gonna sound like Kelley's. Nope, their debut album God's Boat falls into the quirky indie rock barrel of monkeys that recalls late '80s early 90s college rock. Y'know, the kind that wore dress ties with t-shirts. We might even guess that the vocals were being sung by Brak (y'know, of Space Ghost Coast To Coast)! Is that a good or bad thing? You decide! The Passionistas' loopy, light-hearted playfulness also finds its way into the album artwork which features American flag killer whales and a kimono wearing band member (the other two members opted for the more traditional indie rock hoodie and torn jeans ensemble). Loose, laidback and chock full of nuts. 15 songs in all.
The Passionistas have been gaining some well deserved attention here in SF with their super catchy and colorful pop hooks, dipping their musical toes into both power pop and glam, providing the missing link between Big Star and Sparks. Speaking of Sparks, Hard Place open their side of this split with a very Sparks influenced and triumphant sounding pop nugget. There's a very early '80s larger-than-life, arena-ready aesthetic to their sound, yet it's delivered with such earnest spirit. We suspect there is some Van Halen, Andrew W.K. and maybe even a Jefferson Starship record in their collections. We lean a little towards The Passionistas on this split, but pop enthusiasts will find lots to like on both sides of this little piece of wax.
The beloved Scottish pop band gets the star remix treatment from My Bloody Valentine (who contribute 2 tracks), Stereolab, Mouse on Mars, Kid Loco, Cornelius, Third Eye Foundation, Make*Up, Jim O'Rourke, To Rococo Rot, John McEntire of Tortoise, etc. It's an uneven collection that's much more mellow and minimalist than we had anticipated for a tribute to such a rockin' twee group, but still good listening.
This is indeed a new Pastels album, but it's almost unrecognizably so! That might be due to the fact that it is a soundtrack for the film The Last Great Wilderness. Truly, most of the music here more closely resemble that of any number of jazzy post-rock, and yes, soundtrack-composing combos from Chicago. muted horns, delicate chimes, vocal sighs, subdued bass, plucked guitar notes. This is the case up until the sixth song. That's because the song in question is these earnest, lo-fi Scots' previously released cover of Sly And The Family Stone's "Everybody Is A Star" with dear Katrina singing ever so sweetly. The only other vocal song is the saucy closing number "I Picked A Flower" by The Nu Forest who are in fact the Pastels fronted by the fabulous Jarvis Cocker of Pulp in his ultra-swank croon mode. Film unseen, this does make for a lovely bliss-out listening experience though not necessarily a distinctly Pastels' one.
Scottish pop simply doesn't get much softer and twee. On this lil' EP they cover Some Velvet Sidewalk's "Boardwalkin", offer two versions of "Yoga" (one is the album version from Mobile Safari) and and additional track called "Winter Olympic Glory" which I found to be the highlight of this release. Dreamy!
If you're looking to get to dreamboat island there really is no better way than to go with the Pastels & Tenniscoats as your dreamy and breezy ship captains. We're not sure how Glasgow legends Pastels and Tokyo's Tenniscoats linked up but it makes complete perfect sense as they each have perfected soft and soothing twee escapades like no one else. Pastels have been around the block, beginning in the 1980's where they helped usher in a new refreshing sound that would influence folks across the globe and plant the seeds for labels like K records. Tenniscoats have been around for the last few years and ever since we heard their pastoral and blissful take on hushed pop we became big fans. Our love of them only increased when their singer Saya performed at an instore here at AQ with Satomi of Deerhoof in their side project OneOne. This is truly a collaborative effort with members from both bands playing on every track and vocals trade off quite nicely and equally between each group, but all together the sounds of each band mesh with each other so well and with such ease that nothing feels forced about the combination of these two groups. So perfect that the artwork inside features a picture of the groups together sitting on such lush green grass, as we always want to be laying in some scenic peaceful park starring into the sky when we hear the dreamy sounds these groups create. Dreamboat island, we have arrived!
First full length from these jangle pop Scots in a decade, and it's almost like not a single day has passed. Softly fuzzy and summery, all hushed, earnest, heartfelt, jangle pop, the sounds shimmery, and sun dappled, the tracks flute flecked and gorgeously soft focus, laced with the occasional horns, little bits of synth filigree here and there.
those futuristic synths seemingly the bands only concession to the modern musical world, maybe in part cuz this was recorded by Tortoise's John McEntire, which also probably accounts for the music sounding more lush and produced, the sonic palette much more varied, with the Pastels lo-fi twee pop now existing somewhere closer to the sound of Belle & Sebastien or the High Llamas, but the songs themselves are pure Pastels, as the the sweetly innocent boy / girl vocals, the rough hewn harmonies of old tightened up a bit, but still sweetly melancholy, and while fans who still have the group's untouchable Truckload Of Trouble compilation on heavy rotation, might be a bit put off by the group's bigger sound and all the horns and flutes and synths, the rest of you popkids can revel in the Pastels warm jangle pop dreaminess!
Time for Pastels fans to rejoice 'cause this wonderful compilation has been freshly repressed! Originally released back in 2007, Truckload Of Trouble collects a heap of these beloved Scottish popsters' singles which were released on Fire Records circa 1986 through 1993. Following on the heels of The Vaselines' Enter The Vaselines reissue, this is indeed a welcome resurfacing of another immensely influential UK indie twee band's music (as a matter of fact, The Vaselines' Eugene Kelly even joined The Pastels fold for a spell!). Sure, the playing chops and singing pitch of these early purveyors of lo-fi might've been somewhat rough-hewn and wobbly through the years, but their melodic hooks were consistently engaging, and their bittersweet lyrics utterly heartfelt. There was a delightful immediacy, an earnest yet wry humor and an abundance of puppy dog exuberance that always shone through. Theirs were the songs of cardigans and crushes which when strung together fashioned the sweetest, ramshackle, jingle-jangle twee pop daydreams! Their cover of Michael Nesmith's "Different Drum" is still one of Cup's favoritest songs for a rainy day. Other blithe standouts include the supremely singalong-able "Nothing To Be Done" and Daniel Johnston's "Speeding Motorcycle" later covered again by their early tourmates Yo La Tengo. You really can trace the sound of so many of our favorite bands back to the inspiration of The Pastels. From Belle & Sebastian, Henry's Dress, Black Tambourine, Camera Obscura, The Concretes, Sebadoh, Pavement, Seam, Jesus & Mary Chain, Dean Wareham (Luna, Galaxie 500, et al), Amelia Fletcher (Heavenly, Talulah Gosh, Marine Research, Tender Trap, et al) and on and on. Beyond the legendary impact their music has had, these songs still sound so damn great all these years later.
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Some heavy, mostly instrumental French prog-rock from '78, newly reissued. A generally spooky atmosphere with moments of prettiness, with influences ranging from jazz to classical to (of course!) fellow French jazz-classical progsters Magma... This reissue includes over thirty minutes of live material. Not up there with Magma, Heldon, or Shub Niggurath, but still some second-tier stuff worth checking out for fans of that genre/scene.
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"After last year's Synaesthesia release Coagulate with Robin Fox, and several tracks on his Tzadik debut Mutant Theatre, pianist Anthony Pateras reveals further evidence of his improvising skills on Ataxia, more dazzling proof that the New Music scene in Australia - especially Melbourne - is going from strength to strength. he's joined by percussionist Sean Baxter(Bucketrider, Lazy, Western Grey), one of a growing band of hands-on junk percussionists, and guitarist David Brown, aka Candlesnuffer, in six riotously colourful tracks ranging from the delictae sonic haiku of "Maladroit" to stochastic freakout - Xenakis would have loved the end of "St/chi". While improvising pianists since Burton Greene have been delving inside the instrument in search of new sonarities, very few have explored the prepared piano with much rigour - john tilbury being one - but Paters's piano, as the album photography makes abundantly clear, is stuffed to the limit with rubber, cardboard, screws, coins and crocodile clips, making him sound like a veritable one-man gamelan. It's a truism to say that Bali and Java are as accessible to Aussies today as Blackpool was to Manchester cotton workers 100 years ago.
Should Globalisation one day go beyond exporting Big Mac's, and the indigenous populations of those islands ever move into free improv, it might just sound something like this. The spicy stir-fry of New Complexity and exotic percussion clatter bears more relation to Richard Barrett's "Negatives" - recorded, as it happens, in melbourne ten years ago - than it does to any other recent trend in improv. Coming at this music from directions as diverse as extreme noise meltdown and post-Darmdtadt composition, Brown, Pateras and Baxter have served up one of the year's crunchiest and tastiest dishes so far." - Dan Warburton, The Wire
One of the saddest records ever made. Prime krautrock (from Austria), circa 1972, what goths would have listened too had there been goths back then. Complete with full-blown psychedelic guitar freakouts, coupled with somber church-like organ and a vocalist
Hew it strew it do it too/Say it slay it just to do/Try to call yourself on the phone/Surely you are not at home/Sweep the swept floor once again/Stab yourself and feel the pain/Then stand and watch the speed/Clean your eyeballs wash your feet/Listen and repeat'. Or from "Stop These Lines": 'Morning peace dusty air/Clean your teeth comb your hair/Dressed in clothes you always wear/Go to work I won't be there/Lunchtime snackbar eating chips/Ketchup's running down your lips/Deadeyed waiters selling bibs/Which you have to fix with clips/Sitting waiting find an end/Meaningless with no comment/Is this life in your own hand/People are like grains of sand/Pick up streets and pull down skylines/Ravish women blast the mines/Burn the whiskies spill the wines/Find beginnings stop these lines'.
A most melancholic, wonderful record, and it's too bad that it's the sort of thing usually relegated to the prog/psych collectors corner (y'know, because of the distribution and press that this sort of reissue gets). More people (people without ponytails and huge record collections) should get to hear this. So, even though it's not a really new reissue at all, we ordered a bunch to turn people on to. It's an odd, but excellent, hidden treasure!
More rare '70s folk from the folks at Sunbeam who brought us the great Roger Rodier (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and Fresh Maggots reissues. Mary-Anne Patterson's sole album is claimed to be one of the rarest records of its time, and after reading her story, it's no wonder. Patterson, daughter and granddaughter of famous Scottish painters, was a drama teacher (and hobbyist guitar player), who had a dream of opening an art centre for children. After a friend with music connections suggested that she cut a record to raise funds to build it, she quickly got a record deal and put together this album using local street musicians as her backing group. But reluctant to play the star and promote the record, the album sank without a trace, along with her dream. The songs here, mostly traditional, are very pretty, with a nice echo-y quality on the voice, guitar and flute accompaniments running through the entire production. The standout track is her version of "Black Girl", a Leadbelly standard, that devolves into a hippie tribal voice and flute freak out. This is a beautiful and overdue peek into the Scottish end of the '60s Folk Revival. For fans of Sandy Denny, Pentangle, and Josephine Foster.
Trashy retro-rock guitars back up former PeeChees vocalist and Lookout! Records' wheeler'n'dealer Chris Applegren's trademark bratty boy nasal howling. Live, they're a lively flailing rock'n'roll party, but on record they've yet to capture that energy.
In the year of the Strokes and the Vines and the Hives, here is our own local 'where the hell did they come from' wonders. They played the Reading festival, are huge in Europe and are on the lips of all in the hipster retro know. They have that 70's New York / Detroit sleaze rock sound, with the snotty vocals and the relatively rad guitar sound. Apparently influenced by Richard Hell, The Stooges etc. but with a soul flare. All veterans of rock, coming from the likes of The Peechees (vocalist Christopher), Talk Is Poison (drummer Jim), Saint James Infirmary (guitarist Jason), Nuisance (guitarist Andy) and The Cuts. Cool.
This, my friends, is a not a book, but a tome. Over 700 pages, collecting together almost every important piece of writing that appeared in Archie Patterson's Eurock 'zine during its existence from 1973 to 1990, and more. Eurock magazine was all about prog / psych / krautrock / space rock / electronic stuff (in later years, entering into New Age territory to be sure), not just from Europe actually but from around the world. The earlier material is particularily cool 'cause Eurock's coverage of bands like Amon Duul and Can is like reading a current magazine's stuff about Godspeed You Black Emperor! or Acid Mothers Temple...it puts things then and now into perspective. There's tons of obscure lore in here to uncover -- paging through at random I found articles about Ash Ra Tempel and Area, a piece on '70s Yugoslavian rock, a recent interview with Magma's Christian Vander, a review of a 1980 Rock In Opposition festival, and even an interview with our favorite '70s Italian prog band Osanna! In addition, as a special bonus, this book includes a seven-page appreciation of Amon Duul written in 1971 (for Creem magazine) by famous rock crit Lester Bangs, that I for one have always wanted to read. Basically, this book, I mean, tome, is highly recommended to all weird kraut / psych / prog music fiends!
NB: All of this and more (excepting some new pieces and the Bangs article), I believe, is also to be found on the still-available Eurock cd-rom production "Golden Age" that we reviewed on AQ list #105 -- but we have to say that the book format is far superior for reading and browsing, though of course it lacks the multi-media content etc. I'd pick this up a lot more often than I'd pop the cd-rom into my Mac.
Cool psych soul/hip-hop project from the prolific and talented Georgia Anne Muldrow.
We got another amazing batch of vintage blues reissues from the wonderful Monk label. Look elsewhere on the list for reviews of a two lp set by Blind Willie McTell and an lp by Blind Willie Johnson!
One of two new volumes of Charley Patton's vintage recordings from 1929 on Paramount from the undisputed King of the Delta Blues. This one featuring the two-part "High Water Everywhere", widely considered to be one of the best blues songs ever, and 14 other amazing tracks. With his loud gravelly whiskey soaked and cigarette coated voice, he could pound the fury out of a song and deeply influenced much of the later urban blues that came out of Chicago. Incredible!
We got another amazing batch of vintage blues reissues from the wonderful Monk label. Look elsewhere on the list for reviews of a two lp set by Blind Willie McTell and an lp by Blind Willie Johnson!
One of two new volumes of Charley Patton's vintage recordings from 1929 on Paramount from the undisputed King of the Delta Blues. This one featuring his more spiritual sides including the devastating "You're Gonna Need Somebody When You Die". With his loud gravelly whiskey soaked and cigarette coated voice, he could pound the fury out of a song, and here sin and salvation were just two means to get around to the core of some of the most ferocious music ever made!
Anyone who has checked out the aQ lists within the last year will no doubt have noticed the flood of essential blues reissues that have come out on the Italian label Monk. We're sure everyone has their favorites, but you would be hard pressed to find anyone here who hasn't had their minds sufficiently blown by the Charley Patton releases in particular. While all four of the "Electrically Recorded" Patton lps were collected in an awesome and elaborate (and expensive!) boxset limited to 275 copies worldwide, we were waiting for a bit to get a hold of this final set of tunes, and now that wait is up. Moon Going Down collects four separate recording sessions, one from 1930 in Grafton, Wisconsin and three from New York in early 1934, making them the last songs recorded before Patton's death a few months later. It's strange listening to those final songs after familiarizing ourselves with everything that came before. It's sad to think what we are hearing on this lp is the end of the line for Charley Patton, but he sounds just as forceful and self-aware as always, and in death he would become recognized as one of the most legendary American musicians ever to walk the earth. Listening to these songs confirms why things turned out that way. This is it, the source, and if you are even casually interested in blues music, you should do yourself a favor and grab this right away.
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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We're pretty excited about this new vintage reissue label, Monk, that's releasing these nice deluxe vinyl versions of early recorded music that are hard to come by these days: blues, folk, country, bluegrass, Western swing and early jazz. Sure there's Mississippi records, but these have nicer packaging, are well researched, and compiled, and just a bit more, well, deluxe. Plus Monk also seems to be focusing on the veritable stars of these genres like Charley Patton, Charlie Poole, Dock Boggs and Django Reinhardt, providing a fine selection of their best early recordings.
Of course everyone should know by now that pretty much everything about the Mississippi Delta Blues tradition began with Charley Patton. From his gravelly voice, his mean bottleneck slide work and his rock-star style stage antics (playing his guitar down on his knees, or behind his back), he influenced plenty of the stars of the next generation including Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, and John Lee Hooker as well as John Fahey, who wrote a book about him. Plus Patton's off-stage womanizing, hard-drinking and death at a young age pretty much established the template for rock and blues idols to come. Fourteen of his best tracks are included here on Prayer of Death including his first bonafide hit, "Pony Blues". You can hear the devil calling in each exquisite note!
This is seriously one of the most amazing packages we've ever seen. And lucky for us the music easily lives up to the breathtaking packaging. This is the ultimate Charley Patton collection, finally giving props to the man who was tearing it up when Robert
Those who own the Charley Patton "Screamin' And Hollerin' The Blues" box set on Revenant can probably skip this, as you got all these tracks already... But maybe you should read along anyway. For this collection producer Richard Nevins searched far & wee for the best extant copies of Patton 78's and made an esthetic decision not to gouge away at the original recordings so much with the audio restoration software that's been all the rage with reissues of early recordings of late (as in for the last ten or so years.) For those of you who couldn't shovel out the dough for Revenant's definitive collection, Primeval Rags... is a great substitution writ small. Almost any 23 tracks by Patton would have been a fine anthology, as there's hardly a track ever recorded of him was anything less than stellar. This is the man after all that the legendary Robert Johnson -- along with myriad other blues and bluegrass musicians alike -- could name as the biggest influence on his playing. They just don't make singing voices like this anymore. Both soft and subtle and powerful enough to knock the doors off your barn and bottleneck guitar playing that will have you sobbing out of pure respect.
Like chilling in the greyhound station listening to Aphex Twin through a shitty boombox... Only it's some guy sitting in a hotel room at 4 in the morning screaming into a 4-track.
We could go on and on and on about our undying love for the first Crank movie, easily THE most deliriously over the top action movie EVER. Filmed super stylistically as well, so the high (low) concept is reflected by the film stock and speed and angles. For those living under a rock, the movie revolves around a hitman, who is drugged and left for dead, the drug slows down his heart, eventually causing his death, but hellbent on revenge, our 'hero' manages to finds unique and inventive ways of keeping his adrenaline up and thus stay alive, in order to exact his revenge. He does lots of drugs, risks life and limb, fucks with cops, picks fights with gangs, fucks his girlfriend in the middle of Chinatown, but eventually SPOILER WARNING! He falls from a helicopter calling his girlfriend on the way down.
Fast forward to Crank High Voltage, only to discover, somehow he did not die, instead, he was spirited off by Asian gangsters, who remove his heart, replacing it with an artificial heart hooked up to a battery, with an hour's worth of charge. The hook this time around is, he needs to continually charge himself up, while he tries to track down his heart and have it put back in. Far fetched? For sure. But that's the joy of these movies. And who better to score a movie like this than Mr. Mike Patton. But instead of doing crazy voices, and wild shrieking weirdness, Patton has crafted a super weird, ultra varied, practically perfect soundtrack, alternately heavy, freaky, skittery, metallic, jazzy, it is a soundtrack after all, so removed from the images, a little is lost, but this soundtrack stands up pretty well. In fact, besides being blown away by the movie, the first thing we all thought afterwards was "we need to get this soundtrack". So here it is.
The best part is our hero's theme, a simple 6 note melody, that resurfaces throughout the movie in different forms, it's catchy as all get out, appropriately ominous and minor key, and definitely suits the spirit of the character. Beyond that, Patton has cooked up a wild imaginative hodge podge of sonic cues, mini jams, micro epics, dark mood music, and everything in between. Which is important since in the film, the action is all over the place, flitting from extreme violence, to dying-heart stupor, beaten to a pulp wooziness, to recently recharged hyperactivity, and Patton comes whips up the perfect killer jams to accompany the various moods and scenes.
Skittery industrial weirdness wrapped around that main theme, and peppered with circusy synths and spacey effects giving way to pounding punk rock, a creeping moody crawl, chugging muted guitar, chiming melodies, interrupted by bursts of pounding drums, string swells, and thick metallic guitars, groovy sunshine-y almost jungle beneath twangy Summertime guitar and crooned female vox and handclaps, moody Morricone-ish twang and drift, funky retro porno grooves, mysterious Old West style flute flecked accordion weirdness that transforms into a creepy polka, grinding digital metal, with lots of stops and starts, warped and warbly sound effects draped over super haunting vocals whirs and whoops, Jew's harp jams and glitchy electronics, plenty of glitchy stuttery abstract hip hop, tolling bells over distant rumbles and on and on and on. Fans of Fantomas, especially the soundtrackier stuff will probably dig, and folks who are sometimes put off by Patton's wild vocalizing, might just dig this big time.
Needless to say, you should definitely buy this, but you should also see both movies, they're puerile, over the top, hyper violent, and funny as fuck. And they look AMAZING. Be warned though, the first film is much more 'cute', it definitely has a heart of (tarnished) gold, while the second one is much more meanspirited and harsh, but hell, as far as outrageous super stylized ridiculously impossible and hilariously brutal action movies go, you can't beat Crank. And Patton's soundtrack is pretty much the aural equivalent. Which means, ABSOLUTELY recommended.
As with most projects endowed with Mike Patton's presence (both past and present: Fantomas, Peeping Tom, Tomahawk, Lovage, Mr. Bungle, Faith No More, etc), the production on his latest solo release is absolutely stellar, but also unexpectedly playful and fun! Mondo Cane is a delirious romp through Italian pop music of decades long past. Of course, Patton's vocal acrobatics need no introduction - his ability to leap from silken dinner jacket croon to belching guttural aggression to high pitched histrionic extremities is well documented and arguably unrivalled by any contemporary artist. Here his pipes are in top form. Fluent in Italian, Patton effortlessly and gleefully leaps head first into Italo-pop of the '40s, '50s and '60s, making stops in suave lounge, bold operatics, orchestral opulence, and beyond. Our ears were particularly tickled pink by his rendition of "Deep Down" from Mario Bava's campy psychedelic thriller Danger Diabolik. Debonair, audacious, and wildly entertaining!
Mr. Bungle/Faith No More vocalist Patton's debut as composer, following his previous solo Tzadik noise-fest. On this record, he is joined by John Zorn, Eric Friedlander, Marc Ribot and William Winant, for a Naked City-esque bash!
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After a couple of Trance Syndicate releases, Paul Newman (the band whose bassist's name is also Paul Newman) follows the humid instrumental post-rock done Texas style from Winsdor For The Derby or Bedhead.
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DJ Paul Nice's battle breaks for fearless turntablist DJs.
