Dark Entries has done the post-punk lovin' world a huge favor in reissuing this dark wave gem from 1981. Second Layer was a side project of Adrian Borland and Graham Bailey of British post-punk group The Sound, that focused on a more detatched mechanized aesthetic driven by guitars synths and drum machines. Not too far from their main band's initial bleak anger at an increasingly militarized and dehumanized society, Second Layer seemed to be a better outlet for their darker (and starker) themes. World Of Rubber was their only full length, originally released on Cherry Red records, but this reissue is bolstered by the inclusion of their first two eps, State Of Emergency and Flesh As Property from 1979 and 1980, as well as demos from a self-titled compilation released in 1987, making this reissue a complete anthology of the project's output, and a revelation for listeners more familiar with The Sound. Essential!!!
"Soul Jazz Records release Secondo's first album of super-funky micro cut-up disco and electronic music. Secondo is Italian/Serbian producer Radovan Scasascia. Born in Zurich in 1975, his super-funky minimal discofied electronic dance music has been appearing sporadically on Soul Jazz Records since 2003 alongside Rekid (AKA Radio Slave and one half of Quiet Village), Kode9, Subway, DJ Rupture and other similarly like-minded electronic pioneers.
Secondo's love of disco and minimal European electronic music produces a unique funky-electronic cut up style that shows his close links with the micro-house sound of Germany's Kompakt label as much as that of the New York Disco labels of the late 70s and early 80s. This led to earlier releases such as his celebrated Tom Tom Club cut-up a few years back.
Secondo's music features thousands of micro-samples and on "A Matter of Scale", his first album on Soul Jazz Records, the music successfully reflects his aim of reconstructing these minute sonic fragments into new compositions that somehow maintain the atmosphere of the originals as well as creating new worlds. As much at home with his own material as other peoples, his remixes have appeared on a diverse set of European and American electronic artists � Felix da Housecat, Richie Hawtin, Harrison Crump, James Din A4, Kammerflimmer Kollektief and many more."
It's pretty impossible to not be intrigued by a record that features the legend: "This music was created with the pure power of the guitar drone." Especially when those words prove to be absolutely true.
The record begins with nearly 15 minutes of abstract drift, a wash of delicate low end flutter, soft swells of oceanic drone, ultra minimal and gorgeously languid, the opening track a barely there whisper of sound. So gentle and soothing. Track two introduces that previously mentioned 'pure power' with a coruscating dronescape all keening crumbling distortion, moaning steel strings, a dense reverberation of coruscating grind and scrape, all smeared into a surprisingly melodic sea of blown out buzz.
The final track is over half the record, clocking in at nearly half an hour, and revisits the dark tranquility of the opening track, a stark landscape of drifting bell like tones, distant streaks of muted feedback, slow motion pulses of warm low end, and stretched out partial melodies. A gorgeous bit of night sky glimmer, that toward the very end introduces some abstract distorted guitars, a slow motion wash of rumbling buzz that shifts and shimmers, a huge swaying mass of grizzled guitar growl that gradually fades into nothing...
Essential listening for fans of the drone guitar, especially Fear Falls Burning, Troum, Taiga Remains and the like...
Latest in Gears Of Sand's series of super limited, hand assembled live discs, each documenting a single performance, the first was from the always prolific aQ fave Aidan Baker (of Nadja), this one from the curiously named Seconds In Formaldehyde, whose last disc, a favorite around here, bore the legend "This music was created with the pure power of the guitar drone", and while for that disc, those words could not have been truer, for this latest one, SiF explore a world much more soft and melodic, still generating sounds exclusively with electric guitar, but here the sounds are ethereal, tranquil, the edges soft and rounded, notes and chords waver and shimmer, the guitars soaked in reverb and delay, and processed into long blurred streaks of sound, minor key melodies drift and everything is hushed and underwater. The opener is 20 minutes of almost New Age style bliss, total bottom of the sea, sun dappled sonic glimmer, looped and mesmerizing and subtly dramatic. Cinematic and expansive, yet hushed and intimate. Absolute crystal vibration bliss.
The other two track are similarly dreamy, but offer up much more varied texture, the second getting a bit raw and intense with an almost Nadja style climax, which quickly gives way to more glistening harmonic drift, while the closer, offers up some effects drenched atonal melodies, almost like underwater whale songs, laid over a deep warm shimmering swell, the result, a surprisingly dramatic bit of soft focus, deep listening ambience.
So gorgeous. Not as 'heavy' as the other SiF disc, but still might appeal to fans of the guitardrone, a la Fear Falls Burning, Aidan Baker, Troum as well as folks into pure late night dreamdronebliss. Packaged in a thick, silkscreened, cardstock origami style fold over sleeve. LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, we got about a quarter of those, so be quick...
Everything we've heard from Secret Abuse, aka one man noise making machine Jeffrey Witscher, has been pretty harsh, heavy, noisy, brutal. A certain element of washed out drone, but for the most part, some serious speaker destroying chaos.
But on this latest lp, The Immeasurable Gift, Witscher expands his palette, keeping much of the grit and brutality intact, but wrapping it around warm glowing orbs of glistening melodic shimmer, and long drawn out streaks of kaleidoscopic blur. Anyone into Tim Hecker and Nadja and Fennesz and all those other musical obfuscationists, will definitely dig this big time.
The A side is a three part epic, made up of warm swirling swells, pulsing beneath a gauzy layer of crunch and hiss and whir, everything noisy and melodic, the tracks constantly teetering between the two, the end result is a totally fantastical sun dappled soft focus noisescape, light on the noise, and heavy on the warm warped shimmer. Beneath the constantly churning layers of grit and grim and crumbling buzz, a soaring epic, throbs and glows, brooding, slow building, languorous and lustrous, visible only as streaks and fragments visible through the whirling sonic clouds all around it.
The flipside is a bit more caustic, the melodies buried WAY further down, the main element a stuttery, skittery looped crunch, like someone playing a helicopter rotor, a whirring, flickering low end that creates deep slow burning melodies and barely discernible rhythmic pulses. The sounds build to a full on rrrrooooaaar before settling back down, the noise element gradually blunted and muted, revealing tantalizing glimpses of what lurks beneath the surface, some gorgeous gauzy mysterious soundworld, intercepted radio broadcasts, lilting melodies, pop song fragments, all drifting in the shadows, but it's only moments before the noise erupts once more and swallows it whole. So good.
LIMITED TO 425 COPIES, housed in super fancy full color jackets, with a Xeroxed insert.
After releasing over a dozen tapes and 7"s, Violent Narcissus is the latest release from Jeffery Witscher, the man behind Secret Abuse, and it's a sizzling heap of buzzing electronics and blown out radiance. Heavy, damaged Iowa city drone scapes. We didn't think it was even possible, but Secret Abuse manages to conjure the perfect dose of harsh bliss. Densely layered walls of fuzz and sizzle that boil over hushed melodies, the lp is equal parts gorgeous and abrasive. Unlike past releases we've heard that don't veer too far from the harsh noise territory, Violent Narcissus adds a bit more to the formula. With some decipherable guitar passages and lush drones buried in blown-out goodness, the album is pleasantly abrasive. Talk about aural cleansing! Highly abusive. Highly recommended.
Of all the post-Mr. Bungle bands featuring its members, the instrumental Secret Chiefs 3 are carrying the torch for what I most enjoyed about Bungle -- their intense love for all kinds of music, and the irrepressible, joyful schizophrenia that results. Like
Secret Chiefs'd like to be as weird and esoteric as the SCGs, and try really hard in the purposefully obtuse liner notes, but let's face it, as great as the Secret Chiefs are, they don't possess the singular sound, feeling and mystery of the Sun City Girls -- instead they're successfully mixing up all those world music influences, Bungle, and the Boredoms.
The band is primarily Mr Bungle alumni Trey Spruance & drummer Danny Heifetz, and along with frequent Sonic Youth collaborator / percussionist William Winant, brilliant violinist Eyvind Kang (a frequent SCGs collaborator, hey) is all over this record. The instrumentation is as wide-ranging as to include dumbek, zils, contrabass, sax, electric sitar, organ, and something called a santur.
A quite satisfying, surprisingly consistent, well-executed album!
The Book Of Horizons is another sonic tome scribed by these occult chieftans, destined for the same library as outre literary works like the Principia Discordia and the sanity-blasting Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. (This just goes in the audio section of said library.) To the uninitiated, we should explain that Secret Chiefs 3 is the arcane alter ego of Mr. Bungle's Trey Spruance and others from the same axis of absurdity. Almost all instrumental, imagine some sort of technically insane Middle Eastern surf music, a collision between the Sun City Girls and Fantomas, or a John Zorn-scored soundtrack to some desert epic. Italian horror film music, black metal, and even turntables all enter the mix. In the liner notes, Trey finds it necessary to state: "What you hear is music, not samples"! As always, impressive and inscrutable, even if the mood is occasionally broken by the more incongrous elements. Fans can spend their time listening to this, also attempting to decipher the meaning of the SC3's cryptic Kabbalistic computer graphics and song titles. A five star sequel to the band's previous opus Book M.
A few weeks back, we were lucky enough to see the mighty Goblin playing live in SF. And of course, they were incredible, goofy and personable, the music mesmerizing, often accompanied by clips from the classic Argento films their songs originally accompanied (Susperia, Profondo Rosso, etc.). But the biggest surprise of the night, for some of us at least, were opening act Secret Chiefs 3, who were mind blowing. Playing a set that seemed perfectly designed for a Goblin opening slot, they were a whirling sonic dervish of genre hopping intensity, kicking out a killer Morricone cover, not to mention, maybe the best version of John Carpenter's "Halloween" we'd ever heard (a version of which is included here!). In between, their originals were dense, and intense, furious and exotic, equal parts classic Klezmer, modern film music, old soundtracks and of course a little math metal. To be honest, were were always a little put off by the Secret Chiefs, due in no small part to their Mr. Bungle roots. And yeah, we know Mr. Bungle seem to inspire slavish devotion, even all these years later, they were often a bit too purposefully goofy, the Zappa vibe often overwhelming for some of us. And the Secret Chiefs stuff we'd heard was cool, and definitely didn't display the same sort of willful wackiness, but thanks to this recent performance, we're newly obsessed, just in time for a new record, which is fantastic, and for fans of past records, essentially offers up more of the same, sweeping, soundtracky epic-ness, brooding exotica, modern avant jazz, plenty of klezmer influences, and all manner of Eastern musics, too, not to mention some metallic crunch, and for a few folks, their trip may still be a bit too over the top, the record not so much like an album proper, but a Naked City style collection of band member musical obsessions. With one track straight up horn laden cinematic majesty, the next like some long lost Beach Boys studio outtake, the next sounding weirdly like Jellyfish, the next like the score to some seventies Italian art flick, the next like some synth laden slab of modern krautrock. There's even a cover of our favorite Jacques Brel track (most famously covered by Scott Walker)... And all of it incredible, with some of THEE best playing you'll ever hear. And for all our past reservations, we've come around, and have been spinning this constantly, as well as the old records, that sound as good as ever through fresh ears. WAY recommended.
And by the way, who was the Chiefs' drummer at the Goblin show? The whole band was fantastic, but the drummer in particular was mindblowing, long hair flailing, clad in the Secret Chiefs white monk's robe, arms an octopoidal blur, adding some serious, near metallic heft to the set, and delivering what has to be one of the best performances we've seen in AGES...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Mr. Bungle Fan Alert!! Here's a live recording of this brilliant Bungle side-project, released on guitarist Trey Spruance's new label (and only available via mailorder from their Web of Mimicry website, except that we, being fans of all things Bungle, have it too). Recorded at Slim's, San Francisco by Billy Anderson. Also of note: this features the violin of Eyvind Kang, and a song by Ananda Shankar. Packaged in a cardboard sleeve as part of Web of Mimicry's "nice price" effort I guess.
Finally a reissue of the Secret Chiefs (Mr Bungle side project sans Mike Patton) too-long-out-of-print first album! Like a screwy world music, surf band version of Naked City. Contains bonus tracks not on the original version.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The Mr. Bungle guys, minus Mike Patton, are back with their second album as the Secret Chiefs 3. Guests include Eyvind Kang and Willie Winant. Weird stuff as you would expect, sorta like avant-garde surf music.
And the long-awaited reissue of the second cd by members of Mr Bungle (no Mike Patton here, sorry.) Sort of a screwy world music, surf band version of Naked City. Contains bonus tracks not on the original version.
Monumental. Majestic. Mystical. No, we aren't just launching hyperbole with reckless abandon. Those words really are the norm when describing this elusive, amorphous group. Secret Chiefs 3 are an entity whose works may be 'read' on many levels. The music may be enjoyed by those who adhere to the traditional pop/rock band book of rules... well, to some degree at least. Some may find it downright bizarre and impervious. Daunting, overwhelming even, each album is simply more than can possibly be comprehended in a couple of listens. Such is the case with their latest album Path Of Most Resistance. They refer to it as "an overview of the clandestine movements of this enigmatic group from the USA." In layman's terms it's a compilation of recordings from their four studio releases (Eyes Of Flesh, Eyes Of Flame, Second Grand Constitution And Bylaws, Book M, and Book Of Horizons) which also includes bonus tracks and videos. The eclectic elements of haunting exotica, fiery metal, frantic spaghetti westerns and other far-reaching international inspirations may ring engagingly familiar to the average listener, but master of ceremonies Trey Spruance's musical alchemy is detailed with the most intricately encrypted inscriptions that resonate with deeper, more timeless invocations. if you are an individual so inclined to delve beyond the shimmering surface in pursuit of secret teachings and esoteric knowledge you'll discover SC3 unfolds to reveal many hidden passages and levels of understanding. Interpret it how you will, we're sure each individual will draw radically differing perspectives -- a genuine case of 'what you bring to it will determine what you draw from it'. As with each SC3 album that's come before, the scope of Path Of Most Resistance is vast -- at once both easy and uneasy listening. Spruance is unquestionably one of today's great composers. His compositions are stunningly elaborate and performed with absolute mastery and conviction by his many illustrious collaborators (William Winant, Eyvind Kang, Jesse Quattro, Ches Smith, Tim Smolens, former Mr. Bungle-ists Bar McKinnon, Trevor Dunn and Danny Heifitz among others).
The bonus tracks (covers of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus", "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes And Villains") are strange to say the least. They come across as cracked'n'wonky, less than tight renditions in comparison to the precision, densely packed, composed madness that precedes them. Leaves you wondering if they are simply a chuckle or yet another clue to the SC3 puzzle... or both. Epic.
Let's state right from the outset that Trey Spruance's musical entity known as Secret Chiefs 3 is simply impossible to nail down and describe. Words really do not do SC3 justice, especially in the case of their latest work -- sprawling in scope, intricate in detail and majestically presented -- but we will make a valiant attempt here. Indeed, adjectives such as magical, mysterious and mind-blowing do apply, however they barely scratch the surface. We'd say 'spectacular' but the folks at Tzadik already beat us to the punch by using it on the cd's obi blurb. On Xaphan they've joined forces with their comrade John Zorn, performing eleven passages from his epic work, Masada Book Two. The eleven players embrace, attack, caress and devour the compositions with an otherworldly zeal. They come together as a single inimitable force, at once seeming absolutely unhinged and utterly in control. The threads of the SC3 aural tapestries are always densely knotted and woven with ace musicianship and from a myriad of disparate styles and inspirations delving into spy thriller soundtracks, exotica, metal, surf, esoteric knowledge and so much more. So it is on Xaphan, and the formidable outcomes may seem impervious to some and electrifyingly listenable to others. Breathtaking.
This is the first release on Casual Acid Tea, a new label run by Matthew Clark, the drummer for Premonition 13 (Wino from St Vitus and the Obsessed's new band), and this strangely titled record finds Clark teaming up with Colin Langenus of USAisamonster, which already seems like a strange combination, but when you realize that this group was created to cover tracks from those great Secret Museum Of Mankind compilations of historic early ethnographic field recordings, it somehow seems even stranger.
But once you get an earful, it stops sounding so strange after all. In the tradition of groups like the Sun City Girls, this Secret Museum Of Kind Men tackles two tracks, one from Greece and one from Japan, and channels the spirit of the original, while imbuing it with all the modern musical history that informs their playing, and the results are pretty fantastic.
The A side is a version of "Kaike Ena Sholio" by A. Kostis, and is a gorgeous, slithery slab of buzzing minor key gypsy folk, the spidery guitars matched perfectly by wordless female vox, the drums driving and propulsive, those guitars splintering into slashes of psychedelic skree, and near the end, dense clouds of tangled freakout, the track droney and heavy and hypnotic, and it ends way too soon after just over three minutes. Not hard to imagine it sprawling into a heady expanse of droned out psychedelic raga.
The B side is a reinterpretation of "Ise-No-Umi" by the Imperial Household Orchestra, and is much more restrained than the A side, crooned vocals over fast picked raga like guitar buzz, a simple skeletal rhythm, and then about a minute in, the songs blossoms into something a bit more epic, the drums more driving, the guitars soaring, the vocals soaring alongside, slowly building to a final squall of dirgey pound and psychedelic swirl.
So awesome. Way recommended for fans of Sun City Girls, Siamese Temple Ball, Neung Phak, Dengue Fever, Sublime Frequencies and of course all the Secret Museum Of Mankind collections.
This is the second in the Secret Museum Of Kind Men series, in which a modern band reinterprets songs from those classic Secret Museum Of Mankind compilations of early ethnographic field recordings. Released on a label run by the drummer of Premonition 13 (Wino from St. Vitus and the Obsessed's new band!), it's hard to tell if this second single is by a whole different band, it's credited to an outfit called Ramble Tamble, and does have a bit of a different vibe, but for all we know, it's the same guys just trying something different. Either way, if you loved the first one, you're gonna dig this too, and if you missed out on that one, don't blow it again, cuz this stuff is incredible. Fans of Six Organs and the Sun City Girls' Torch Of the Mystics record, this is right up your alley.
The A side is a woozy prog workout, all slithery synths and soaring strings and shuffling percussion, equal parts gypsy folk, weird synth prog and tripped out heavy psych. Exotic and mesmerizing, it's a hypnotic heady sonic sprawl culminating in a final wild freakout of tangled melodies and warped progged out bluegrass breakdown. The B side is super groove and almost Klezmer sounding, with FX drenched piano, sawed Devil-Went-Down-To-Georgia fiddles and clouds of swirling shimmer, the bluegrass vibe is still pretty present, in fact, it sounds a bit like bluegrass traditionalist Black Twig Pickers after they dosed on a particularly virulent strain of L.S.D.
Like the first volume, WAY recommended. Comes in a super swank, silkscreened metallic blue inked sleeve, with a photocopied insert.
It's been a while since we've heard from this Canadian outfit, purveyors of minimal kraut-drone drift and abstract psychedelic ambience. We Described their sound as being a bit like "Flying Saucer Attack collaborating with Andrew Chalk", which still most definitely applies, we'd also probably compare them to The Caretaker and maybe even Tim Hecker, the two tracks here longform sprawls of slowmotion chordal swells, and washed out faded dreamscapery, the sounds a hazy, crystalline shimmer, the A side drifting blissfully along, through clouds of prismatic thrum, before settling into something a bit darker, the sounds muted and woozy, buried melodies drifting lazily beneath warbly loops and barely there reverbed percussion, a minimal abstract dub, that's more a buried field of crackles and hushed pulsations that a proper rhythm, the sound slowly transforming into something sun dappled and lovely, the second half of the song playing out like some lost bit of chamber music, slowly spinning on an old Victrola, laced with strange bits of percussion, and draped in a gauzey haze. The B side is even more washed out and abstract, a dark, brooding new age drift, all slow shifting slabs of low end rumble, and moaning distant melodies, the first few minutes almost sounding like some record being played bask super slowly, but then the sound explodes into an epic, majestic drone, moving and emotional, roiling minor key melodies just below the surface, imbuing the static sound with a dark emotional heft, all before the sound seems to loop in on itself, building a final stretch of looped tension, and woozy layered mesmer.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!!
One of our favorite pastimes here at aQ is stumbling across those uncovered gems that may have otherwise remained hidden in internet obscurity. Vancouver, Canada's Secret Pyramid is the perfect example of one of these hidden gems, a humbly packaged cd-r that turned out to blow our freakin' minds. Apparently this guy is one half of Solars, another killer Vancouver psychedelic drone outfit whose tapes have sold-out of here like hotcakes. Picture those same smeared melodies washed away in fuzz, growing drones giving way to sedated vocal murmurs, strummed acoustic guitar embellished with cosmic layers of shimmering delay, all meticulously composed into something that resembles Flying Saucer Attack collaborating with Andrew Chalk.�
"Ghosts of the Sun / Oceans" opens with swirling washes of gently strummed acoustic guitar, layers of howling feedback and cosmic buzz weave themselves in and out of muffled vocal reflections, soft whispers in the dead of night that give way to deep buzzing dark ambiance. Creepy drones hover above the cavern floors like grey mist, distant feedback swells echoing like flutes or distant birds, all building up to a gorgeous fuzz drenched climax that unfolds like a warm jet stream arching across a dim coastal horizon. "Milk & Honey" begins with a deep, dooooomy wash that builds into an entrancing buzz, creepy and hushed FSA style vocals lurch in again, this time reminding us of a contemplative, more droney Suicide. Finally "Permanence" calmly lifts off with a beautifully whirling sound wall, something similar to the cryptic tones of Kevin Drumm's Imperial Horizon, but Secret Pyramid come off as less industrial, and offers up something more mystical, serene and ephemeral. Needless to say, we were really impressed by this debut release and can not recommend it more. "Ghosts" is criminally limited to an edition of 50, so act fast if you'd like to get your hands on one of these hand-assembled cd-r gems!�
Movements Of Night is the first lp (as far as we know) from these Canadian drone drifters, whose past releases (two tapes and a cd-r) we raved about in the past. As much as we loved those, this new one, released on the venerable Students Of Decay label, manages to take their sound even further. From the opening couple minutes, we were totally smitten - the sound a lush, swirling, psychedelic morass, of lush layered textures, of keening, heartwrenching melodies, buried beneath gristly fields of soft focus static, under which, a meditative pulse throbs hypnotically, so cinematic and majestic, haunting and stirring, it's the kind of part most bands spend half a record, or at least most of one long song building up to, but these guys start out, with this dense, cathartic soundscape, which really sets the tone for the whole record, aligning them sonically with Philip Jeck, William Basinski, Tim Hecker, Stars Of The Lid, a sort of darkened psychedelic take on Pop Ambience, a looped dreamscape of heady, hypnotic, blissed out dronemusic, that is so mesmerizing, it has us wishing it would never end.
And while we were prepared to explain that nothing else on the record manages to reach the same sort of sonic and emotional peak, it's actually somehow, not at all true. The next track, in fact, seems to effortlessly conjure up another deep, emotional soundworld, all slow shifting minor key swells, softly reverbed melodies, washed out strings, and lysergic chordal drift, the sound building and building, before slipping right back into a muted field of drifts and swells. And so it goes. Every track, a dark, moody, brooding, cinematic gem, some ultra minimal and abstract, wispy fields of lowercase sound, others bold and strident, emotional and expressive, some almost symphonic, majestic and epic in scope, bordering on psychedelic noise, others hushed and whispery, barely there, brief blurred smears of sonic color, but every single second, of every track on Movements Of Night, is stunning, moving, and utterly breathtaking.
Includes a download code!
Record number two from these Canadian krautdrone drifters, featuring one half of aQ faves psychedelic dronerockers Solars. We raved about SP's first release, a super limited (and now out of print) cd-r called Ghosts, describing it as sounding like "Flying Saucer Attack collaborating with Andrew Chalk" which still pretty much applies. Right out of the gate, SP launch into some thick heady dronemusic, blustery swells of heavily layered buzz, warm washes of blurry chordal bliss, that grows thicker and louder as the track progresses, easing into full on Nadja metalgaze territory, sans the propulsion, instead this dreamlike heaviness is allowed to drift and shimmer.
The label mentions Popol Vuh, and in spirit we can hear the comparison, but these guys (or this guy) are more about deep, heavy dronemusic, building layer upon layer, and letting the overtones and the shifting sonic colorations lend movement to these otherwise near static sprawls. There are rhythms, but you have to dig deep, they've buried way down in the mix, more a distant pulse, or a strangely textural shuffle, but when the rhythm locks in, like on "Still Return", it changes the feel completely, even the melodies seem to coalesce into dark abstract pop, the vibe way more shimmery and shoegazey, but just as kosmische and blissed out as the rest of the record. The rest of the record in this case playing out as a series of dronepsych drifts, slipping from warm, washed out, muted pop ambient blur, to softly strummed folky dirge, to thick blown out psychedelic squall, to lush gauzy dronescape, and finally to a hazy bit of choral thrum, laced with buried melody, and blurred into a fantastically blissed out smear of dreamy druggy drift.
Gorgeous stuff, and probably crazy limited like the cd-r, so you know what that means...
Movements Of Night, from these Canadian krautdrone drifters, was already an AQ Record Of The Week in its original vinyl incarnation when it came out last year. Now it's been issued on cd, in a specially priced two cd set with ANOTHER great Secret Pyramid album, The Silent March, that we'd previously reviewed back when it was but a cassette release, now long out of print (that one's also now been issued on vinyl, separately, by SoD, and can be found elsewhere on this list). So, this double disc is a great deal for all you cd types!! Here are our reviews of the two halves of this release, first, The Silent March:
We raved about Secret Pyramid's first release, a super limited (and now out of print) cd-r called Ghosts, describing it as sounding like "Flying Saucer Attack collaborating with Andrew Chalk" which still pretty much applies. Right out of the gate, SP launch into some thick heady dronemusic, blustery swells of heavily layered buzz, warm washes of blurry chordal bliss, that grows thicker and louder as the track progresses, easing into full on Nadja metalgaze territory, sans the propulsion, instead this dreamlike heaviness is allowed to drift and shimmer.
The label mentions Popol Vuh, and in spirit we can hear the comparison, but these guys (or this guy) are more about deep, heavy dronemusic, building layer upon layer, and letting the overtones and the shifting sonic colorations lend movement to these otherwise near static sprawls. There are rhythms, but you have to dig deep, they've buried way down in the mix, more a distant pulse, or a strangely textural shuffle, but when the rhythm locks in, like on "Still Return", it changes the feel completely, even the melodies seem to coalesce into dark abstract pop, the vibe way more shimmery and shoegazey, but just as kosmische and blissed out as the rest of the record. The rest of the record in this case playing out as a series of dronepsych drifts, slipping from warm, washed out, muted pop ambient blur, to softly strummed folky dirge, to thick blown out psychedelic squall, to lush gauzy dronescape, and finally to a hazy bit of choral thrum, laced with buried melody, and blurred into a fantastically blissed out smear of dreamy druggy drift.
Then, Movements Of Night: As much as we loved Secret Pyramid's prior releases, this new one, released on the venerable Students Of Decay label, manages to take their sound even further. From the opening couple minutes, we were totally smitten - the sound a lush, swirling, psychedelic morass, of lush layered textures, of keening, heartwrenching melodies, buried beneath gristly fields of soft focus static, under which, a meditative pulse throbs hypnotically, so cinematic and majestic, haunting and stirring, it's the kind of part most bands spend half a record, or at least most of one long song building up to, but these guys start out, with this dense, cathartic soundscape, which really sets the tone for the whole record, aligning them sonically with Philip Jeck, William Basinski, Tim Hecker, Stars Of The Lid, a sort of darkened psychedelic take on Pop Ambience, a looped dreamscape of heady, hypnotic, blissed out dronemusic, that is so mesmerizing, it has us wishing it would never end.
And while we were prepared to explain that nothing else on the record manages to reach the same sort of sonic and emotional peak, it's actually somehow, not at all true. The next track, in fact, seems to effortlessly conjure up another deep, emotional soundworld, all slow shifting minor key swells, softly reverbed melodies, washed out strings, and lysergic chordal drift, the sound building and building, before slipping right back into a muted field of drifts and swells. And so it goes. Every track, a dark, moody, brooding, cinematic gem, some ultra minimal and abstract, wispy fields of lowercase sound, others bold and strident, emotional and expressive, some almost symphonic, majestic and epic in scope, bordering on psychedelic noise, others hushed and whispery, barely there, brief blurred smears of sonic color, but every single second, of every track on Movements Of Night, is stunning, moving, and utterly breathtaking.
Secret Synthi are a trio of lo-fi synth'n'guitar pop gals from San Francisco named after an ultra rare, ultra cool synthesizer from the '70s - the Synthi AKS which came contained in its own briefcase-like carrying case. You might recognize its brethren's distinct sounds from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop or the band Yes (who purchased one of the Synthi prototypes back in the day). Anyways gear talk aside, this trio's music is super light and playful. Honey pie girl gang vocals with ample amounts of sass. Kicky, primitive rhythms. A party of keyboards, organs, electric guitar, effects pedals and vintage synths (accompanying the Synthi are a Moog Prodigy, a Sequential Circuits Multi-Trak, the amazing stylophone and of course the ever-present Roland Juno-60). Actually, I was just thinkin' that a picture perfect live extravaganza would be them along with Le Tigre, fellow SF duo the Capricorns and boyish counterparts Postal Service. An engaging album with a lot of fun song titles too... "Alright Mitten Fight"!
MPEG Download: "Kitty Fang" [/audio/secretsyntikitty.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Kitty Fang" [/audio/secretsyntikitty.m3u]
We had never heard anything from these Italian blackgrind crustmetal crushers before, but holy shit is their Southern Lord debut a seriously fierce and ferocious slab of extreme brutality, crushing post metal sludge, insanely frantic metallic hardcore, blasting black metal buzz, crusty feedback drenched filth, gnarled downtuned grind all woven into a little over 34 minutes of skull caving, spine wrenching, ear destroying heaviness.
The killer 'dripping black goat' Justin Bartlett cover art is the perfect visual accompaniment for Solve Et Coagula, although we did actually assume these guys were gonna be buzzing blasting true black metal, but the truth was better than we would have hoped for.
The record opens with a long stretch of layered guitar buzz, droned out and hypnotic, tense and intense, gradually building, howled hellish vox buried just under the surface, like a blackened Sunroof! almost, or some Neurosis intro music, and then when the band kicks in, that's just what it sounds like, a plodding doomic lumber, epic and majestic, a sort of Neur-Isis-y post metal trudge, the vocals harsh, over tangled guitars, and then the song REALLY kicks in and gets even heavier, a massive churning chunk of post metal doom sludge, which barely prepares you for the next the next 8 tracks, averaging less than 2 minutes each, of furious blasting metallic pummel, grinding frenzied crunch giving way to crushing d-beat blast, giving way to squalls of punkmetal chaos, occasionally slipping back into something more sludgey, but never for long, always exploding again into caustic bursts of throat shredding vokills, impossibly dense drumming, super distorted guitars, and gnarled mathy arrangements.
Until "Eve Of The Last Day", mirroring the opening track, with its soaring guitar buzz, its spaced out drum pound, a majestic epic, that finally slips into a seriously crushing chug heavy dirge. "War Desire" is the record's last bit of punk metal crunch, before the twisted finale, simple titled "1968", super mathy and complex, lots of lurching start stop arrangements, the guitars super tangled, before splintering into an awesomely psychedelic breakdown, all swirling FX freakout and abstract drum crush, the middle portion gets a bit melodic, and if possible, somehow even heavier, a lumbering, lurching groove, that spaces out into a tribal droney slow burn outro, eventually leaving just streaks of feedback, blurred high end drones, and a mysterious sampled voice.
So fucking awesome. Heavy music obsessives of all stripes (black, doom, post, crust) should for sure check this out...
We've dug Germany's Secrets Of The Moon for ages now, but somehow haven't ever reviewed any of their records. Privilegium will right that wrong, and will hopefully have everybody going back and digging up all their other records, cuz these guys slay. Even more now that they've added dreamboat female bass player LSK from Antaeus, oh and the drummer also plays in Antaeus, so you can bet there's a pretty serious French BM vibe going on here, which can only be a good thing. Majestic, sometimes almost elegant in the delivery, but of course, grim and evil at the same time. And like Antaeus, and much of the French scene, Secrets Of The Moon give off an almost industrial vibe at times. The drums are super heavy with a militaristic feeling, the guitars squiggle and screech out all kinds of sour, evil sounding riffs, and the vocals are a steady tortured rasp. Structurally, things are complex and at times a bit proggy, a blackened tangled web of metallic grandeur. There's all kinds of windy atmosphere also, and the interesting choice of cover art - an, um, black apple - gives Privilegium a cool negated religious feeling. What's not to love?
Beautiful packaging on this one, with the aforementioned apple presented on a super glossy digipack with a giant matte bite munched out. Tasty.
Of all of the Factory Records gloom merchants, Section 25 has never really garnered much critical success, yet they won over enough allies (notably Joy Division's Ian Curtis and Bernard Sumner) that they were able to last as a self-sustaining project well into the late-80s when they called it quits. Formed in Blackpool by brothers Larry and Vincent Cassidy in 1979, Section 25 was marked by skeletal instrumentation with various emotive patinas that began as post-punk grimness and steadily lightened to a glowing prototype of acid-house (complete with 303 percolations!). "Always Now" -- the group's debut recording released on Factory in 1981 -- falls under the latter camp of lead-colored, death-disco grooves propelled by a spry, if monochromatic rhythm section and jagged swatches of guitar drone. While many of the Factory bands (Crispy Ambulance, Names, Tunnelvision, The Wake, etc.) had been slagged as Joy Division clones, Section 25 admitted their allegiance to Public Image Limited's zenith, "Metal Box" (aka "Second Edition"), even though much of the material from their first EPs were recorded months before Lydon and crew went into the studio. The differences between PiL and SXXV (a nifty shorthand mentioned in their biography by James Nice) are of course noticeable; with Lydon still striving for Situationist revolt through great art and the Cassidy brothers attempting to emote the bleakness of Northern England by hollowing sound as a illusory shadow of music. In essence, Section 25's "Always Now" was an isolationist model for living. It was effective in its bleakness and brilliant in its poetry.
While the Soul Jazz compilation "In The Beginning, There Was Rhythm" offered a solid introduction into the groove-oriented punk of the late '70s / early '80s, its flaws were in its omissions. Fortunately, LTM has kept "Always Now" in print on CD (with tons of extra singles including the Ian Curtis-produced 'Girls Don't Count'), so history may in fact be kind to a band that deserved much better.
To mention the terms "new wave" and "80s electro" these days will undoubtedly prompt images of Fisherspooner, Adult., The Faint, I Am Spoonbender and other bands with a flashy sense of style, undercurrents of anxiety, and an effectively punishing use of roboto-rhythms. Yet, these bands have fixated upon a specific strain of retro-garde historicism, which has the unintended result of disregarding other variations of what "new wave" and "80s electro" meant back in the day. Contrary to the impression that the electronic aftermath of punk was always abrasive, intense, and angular, there were dozens of bands which softened their once bleak image (perhaps due to commercial pressure or shifting artistic temperament). One such band was Section 25, whose preceeding albums "Always Now" and "The Key of Dreams" had been spartan productions of death disco born out of urban blight. "From The Hip" -- the band's third album -- was a considerable departure towards more commercial waters with fluffy if slightly moody synth driven pop matched by proto-twee male / female vocals. It may have been the band's biggest commercial success but clearly wasn't as adventurous as their earlier records. Rather this is more on par the idea of "new wave" and "80s electro" that would draw comparisons to Human League, Thompson Twins, Bronski Beat, and Erasure.
One man with a four-track and a crappy casio keyboard. Lush and lofi (sorry!) At the same time; reminiscent of early Sebadoh in a good way. Not to be confused with Bay Area band Sea Saw, who have obligingly changed their name to Swandive.
Everyone should own these two records. If you don't already have them you should get this new reissue of both on one cd. The fucking kings of garage. The Seeds are tough and menacing with sneering vocals and a rad style. They are one of the all time great
New six-track Seefeel.
We made the cd reissue of this a Record Of The Week back on list #265... then Too Pure let it go out of print again (twice)! But now, it's been reissued on vinyl by Modern Classics, a subsidiary of Medical Records, yay. Please read on to find out why picked it as a ROTW:
God, we love this record! We've never stopped loving it. In the years since it was first released in 1993, it's never sounded tired or dated to us. Can't say that for a whole lot of other electronica records. So we are really glad to see our good old friend back in print again... We have been playing this daily since we got it, and we're surprised how many folks have never heard of Seefeel or experienced their incredible ocean of sound.
So what is all the fuss about, you say?
Well, Seefeel at their peak were one of the main players that spawned the nineties electronica genre, at a time when there were only Dance and Rock sections in most music stores. Their sound was a delirious mash-up between the shoe-gazing swirl of My Bloody Valentine, the machinic rhythm programming of Autechre, the ambient chill of Aphex Twin and the driving pulse of Stereolab, with an early hint toward the looping repetitions of William Basinski. They bridged ambient techno and indie rock by foregoing rock music's verse and chorus structures in favor of beats and loops wrapped inside icy motorik rhythms, industrial whirs, blurbs of female vocals and dubby bass lines. Like the best work of minimal composers, Seefeel's long-form compositions create a warmly hypnotic form of static movement that refused to fit neatly into music for either dance floors or chill out lounges.
Quique was their head-turning debut following two EP releases featuring remixes by Aphex Twin. That connection surely gained them a bigger following, but Seefeel was always one of those bands that should have been bigger. Of course such a potent and influential debut would lead to many of their contemporaries, bands such as Bowery Electric, Labradford, Boards Of Canada and Flying Saucer Attack, to take Seefeel's initial explorations in sound further into Post-Rock, Trip Hop, IDM and Neo-Psych territories, leaving Seefeel at a bit of a loss for a follow-up. Signing to Warp, they delved further into a dark ambient direction in the vein of groups like Main, Ice and Scorn, that was just too stark for a wider audience to appreciate. They put out two more albums before splintering off into various side projects such as Scala, Disjecta and Sneakster.
Listening to Quique now, it has lost none of its powerful splendor and warmly chilled charm. Add this to the list of favorite one really really good record bands like My Bloody Valentine and Stone Roses. So amazingly awesome!
God, we love this record! We've never stopped loving it. In its fourteen years of existence, it's never sounded tired or dated. Can't say that for a whole lot of other electronica records. So we are really glad to see our good old friend back in print again with this super nice 2cd deluxe re-issue. If you missed this the first time around, then you are in for a real treat, and if you bought this the first time around, you may just need to buy it again to get the whole extra disc of unreleased tracks and alternate mixes. We have been playing this daily since we got it, and we're surprised how many folks have never heard of Seefeel or experienced their incredible ocean of sound.
So what is all the fuss about, you say?
Well, Seefeel at their peak were one of the main players that spawned the nineties electronica genre, at a time when there were only Dance and Rock sections in most music stores. Their sound was a delirious mash-up between the shoe-gazing swirl of My Bloody Valentine, the machinic rhythm programming of Autechre, the ambient chill of Aphex Twin and the driving pulse of Stereolab, with an early hint toward the looping repetitions of William Basinski. They bridged ambient techno and indie rock by foregoing rock music's verse and chorus structures in favor of beats and loops wrapped inside icy motorik rhythms, industrial whirs, blurbs of female vocals and dubby bass lines. Like the best work of minimal composers, Seefeel's long-form compositions create a warmly hypnotic form of static movement that refused to fit neatly into music for either dance floors or chill out lounges.
Quique was their head-turning debut following two EP releases featuring remixes by Aphex Twin. That connection surely gained them a bigger following, but Seefeel was always one of those bands that should have been bigger. Of course such a potent and influential debut would lead to many of their contemporaries, bands such as Bowery Electric, Labradford, Boards Of Canada and Flying Saucer Attack, to take Seefeel's initial explorations in sound further into Post-Rock, Trip Hop, IDM and Neo-Psych territories, leaving Seefeel at a bit of a loss for a follow-up. Signing to Warp, they delved further into a dark ambient direction in the vein of groups like Main, Ice and Scorn, that was just too stark for a wider audience to appreciate. They put out two more albums before splintering off into various side projects such as Scala, Disjecta and Sneakster.
The bonus disc contains six previously unreleased tracks, and three alternate mixes from a limited white label 12" and two ambient compilations. Out of the unreleased tracks, "Clique" sounds like it just barely missed the cut from the original album line-up while "Silent Pool" is a longer version of Quique's closing track "Signals". "My Super 20" and "Is It Now?" are long beat-less swims that are a warmer hint at their future direction and the two other unreleased tracks are versions of opening track "Climatic Phase #3, and "Time to Find Me" from their first EP. It might sound like at first listen that there is some repetition between the two discs, but it's really more in line with classic ambient music's infatuation with the Dub tradition of versioning, the adding or removing of various elements in a song to give it a totally different spin. Each version really does give a different feel even if the basic structures seem similar. Seriously, the second disc is just more of what you love already, and gives us a little more of the stuff we've been missing for ages.
Listening to Quique fourteen years later, it has lost none of its powerful splendor and warmly chilled charm. Add this to the list of favorite one record bands like My Bloody Valentine and Stone Roses. So Amazingly Awesome!!!! Reissue of the year so far and so totally recommended!!!!!!!!!
It's been nearly 15 years since we last heard from seminal electronic shoegazers Seefeel, and nearly 18 years since their breathtaking debut Qique. During the nineties, few could touch Seefeel, their sound a glorious mash up of Stereolab, My Bloody Valentine, Autechre and Aphex Twin, warm and hypnotic, dubby and drifty, programmed beats, and swirling psychedelic textures, lush minimal female vox, industrial buzz, glitchy electronics, austere atmospheres, haunting and mysterious and otherworldly, a sound that today still sounds fresh and original and miles beyond most modern electronic outfits.
We had no idea what to expect, after such a long absence, and without Mark Van Hoen, who went on to do Locust (not THE Locust) after Seefeel. Obviously we would have loved another Qique, but at the same time, it would have been rather anticlimactic to wait all that time for more of the same, especially when we have a legion of groups doing their best Seefeel already. So it seems, the band have returned with a whole new sound, and while not ditching their old sound, it is a pretty drastic shift, right from the start, a thick, gristly bit of tangled glitch and spacey effects, giving way to a spare robotic beat, laced with distorted shards of melody, a strangely stuttery, crunchy, aggressive chunk of abstract, electrophunk, underpinned by a warm fluid bassline, and some softly swirling chordal swells, some ethereal vox, the sound gradually gaining cohesion, blossoming into a fantastically hypnotic, softly psychedelic bit of stuttery shoegaze glitch. After a brief bit of electronic buzz and shimmer, comes the record's single, released as a 10" a few months back, hazy female vox, over another super minimal beat, wrapped around some deep low end warble, all wreathed in a halo of electronic crackle, a strange alien groove, subtly warped and warbly, laced with sun dappled streaks of melody, the group once again creating their own sort of electronic shoegaze, something at once beholden to the sound they pioneered, and simultaneously sounding fresh and new, and very little like anything else.
Sci-fi lazer blasts drift over tinkling melodies and video game bleeps and bloops, thick washed out swirls of prismatic shimmer whirl around shuffling industrial rhythms, waves of warm guitar wash over skeletal beats, chiming glimmering melodies rain down like sunflakes glistening in winter sunlight, dubsteppy bass warbles wrap around jagged synths and breathy dreampop vox, the sounds crunchy and glitchy, warm and whirring, lush and layered, ever shifting soundscapes of fragmented pop and fractured abstract electronica, of fuzzed out psychedelic shoegaze, and downtempo dreamlike drift, a gorgeous collection of fantastically ethereal, ephemeral, buzzy electro bliss. Incredible.
Holy shit this is amazing. You might have thought that Burial and Rhythm & Sound and Pole had deconstructed dub about as far as it could go, but this mysterious outfit has conjured up some of the most tripped out, weirdly psychedelic ultra minimal digital dub we've ever heard. Those above mentioned groups are definitely good jumping off points, and if you like any/all of those, then you're gonna probably want this too, but those are just jumping off points. SeekersInternational dig way deeper, their sounds drifting unmoored to conventional rhythms, swirling and abstract and totally spaced out and druggy, the roots of the sound are definitely old school styled digi-dub, but the sounds here are stretched way out, pulled apart, until it's more like an impression of dub, than actual dub. Imagine the Bush Chemists and Pole remixed by Lesser, or something equally weird, dubbed out grooves, warped loops, layers creepily swirling, lazer synths emerging from the murk, vocals drenched in reverb, everything collaged and layered, sampled song fragments drifting in and our of focus, at times maddeningly repetitive, only to blur into blissed out ambient dub drift, the Burial vibe is huge, but imagine that sound WAY more druggy and drowsy and woozily warped.
The B side gets even more abstract, opening with a super skeletal dub, instrumental, almost straight forward if it wasn't for how ghostly and minimal and barely there much of the sound is. And if THAT one is barely there, the next one is a mind blower, constructing a full on dub jam out of nothing but sonic detritus, static, and crackle and buzz, hiss and hum, skitter, squelch, reverb and echo, all somehow sculpted into a sweet slab of spectral dub, some of the coolest shit we've ever heard.
The record finishes off with a final burst of abstract fragmented murky, druggy, dubby drift, that left us wanting more more more!! So great, and yeah, probably crazy limited too, so best grab one before they're gone!
- MPEG stream: I
- MPEG stream: III
Seen Through is the duo of Pseudoarcana head honcho Antony Milton and one half of the group Empty Mirror, whose now out of print cd-r we reviewed and raved about a while ago. Dreamy spaced out guitar scrapes and slides. Lots of plink and twang, creak and moan. Hazy melodies stretched out in fields of tape hiss and amp buzz with a wild burst of good old NZ noise rock guitar squall right at the end!
MPEG Download: "Insect Darkens" [/audio/seenthroughinsect.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Insect Darkens" [/audio/seenthroughinsect.m3u]
Year Zero was 2004 for Gerritt Wittmer and Pete Swanson, when these two titans of West Coast noise joined forces under the banner Seers for a smattering of performances and one hell of a studio session. Somebody had offered to release those studio tracks; but as can happen in the world of independent music, the label in question quietly dissolved. Ten years later with Wittmer transitioning into a method-acting debauched balladeer for his Names outfit (whilst continuing his challengingly obtuse vocal-driven sound & noise work) and Swanson departing the Yellow Swans for greener pastures as a globetrotting solo artist from a base in Portland, Oregon (where else?). The sizzlingly white-hot frequencies from the Wittmer-Swanson axis seem to originate from modular synth exploration, feedback immolation, and the volatile jitters of floorcore pedal abuse with the resultant electricity always staring at the precipice of aural violence. We might have mentioned this before, but the Bay Area noise community (think Joe Colley, Scott Arford, Michael Gendreau, R.H.Y. Yau, Antimatter, etc.) seems to tightrope the arenas of noise, electro-acoustics, theory, transgressiveness, transcendence, etc. Wittmer's solo work has often veered into this camp, and he seems to be pulling the psychedelic psychosis of Swanson's aesthetic closer to his on Seers. On the studio recordings, the blistering tones and drones are softened (slightly) through the echoing phasing salve of delay patterns at the beginning of the album; but by the last track, the pure lazerbeam frequencies caused our collective tinnitus to ring loudly with heads cocked alongside Nipper, the RCA / Victor dog.
The second disc in this set is printed up as a cd-r, which is baffling since the studio recordings were professionally replicated as a proper cd. It is a live session, clocking in around 20 minutes in length following what Swanson and Wittmer produced in the studio with seering upper register frequencies and innard-massaging rumblings. A damn shame it too so long for this to come out. Better late than never, that's for sure!
Obscure reissues like this really make our day. This disc brings to light German brothers Eckhart und Wolf-J.'s experiments in instrumental electronic music circa 1971-73, a la early Kraftwerk, Kluster, Conrad Schnitzler, and the Silver Apples... Short, freeky pieces done with home-built synths in some Dusseldorf basement. Give me weirdo D.I.Y. krautrock electronics like this over the output of today's laptop dorks any day!
This is the second singles collection from ultra prolific glam-psych garage-popper Ty Segall, a sequel to the first, which came out in 2010 and was available only on cassette. $ingle$ 2 takes up right where the first volume left off, and unlike that one, this time it's available on all the different formats, and gathers up tracks from out of print 7"s and compilations, various songs from songs from 2011-2013, and includes all sorts of killer B-sides as well as some awesome covers (GG Allin, Velvet Underground, the Groundhogs).
First up is all three tracks from 2011's Spiders 7" on Drag City. Which at first blush sounds like some crazy heavy noisy freakout, the title track opening with SUPER distorted guitar, all crunchy and in the red, which proves to be just a false start, but then the main riff comes in, and it too is totally heavy and sludgey, and when we first spun the single, we were convinced it was playing at the wrong speed, but no, this is just a dense slab of psychedelic garage pop heaviness, all murky and dirgey and almost doomy sounding, distorted echoey vox over that churning blown out riffage as well as some rad psychedelic guitar. The second track ("Hand Glams") also has a bit of a false start, and while a bit more traditionally psychedelic and garage poppy, it too is petty noisy and distorted, lots of feedback, still a killer pop song, like the first one, just slathered in noisy distortion, and it sort of suits him. "Cherry Red", the Groundhogs cover, is way more groovy and sixties garage rock sounding, fuzzy and poppy with a killer chorus that definitely reminds us of Segall pal Mikal Cronin's aQ Record Of The Week.
Up next come two different B-sides to the I Can't Feel It 7" (at the time we didn't realize there were multiple versions), "Falling Hair" a laid back psychedelic groover, a bit of a glammy dirge/ballad, a bit Beatles-esque, hazy and psychedelic, with a slow build, hard rocking second half, while "Children Of Paul" has a sun soaked and dusty quality that smolders with a slow summery sizzle. Basking in some serious '60s and '70s psych vibes, echoes of Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson, and Moby Grape abound.
Next up is a track from Segall's split with French garage pop dirge punks Feeling Of Love, which we never even got, and it's another retro-psych groover, all warm shimmery strum, and reverie jangle, reminding us of Redd Kross actually, with the same sort of paisley pop feel, but with a cool, and very weird almost mathy, and noise poppy bridge.
Then we have the B side from The Hill single on S & F, a swirly, glammy, fuzz pop gem, with a total Bowie vibe going on, hooky and heavy, fuzzy and jangly. Which leads directly into the B side from the Would You Be My Love 7", and another slab of sixties pop, but super stripped down and acoustic, some dreamy hippy psych pop, all dreamy harmony vocals, steel string strum, and even some whistling at the end. Not hard to imagine this song distorted and supercharged, and fitting perfectly on Segall's Twins full length, but in it's acoustic form, it's pretty much perfect.
Up next, Segall's track from the Group Flex II flex disc set on Castle Face, a super distorted blast of howl and pound laced with plenty of horns and sax bleat, followed by a killer cover of "Femme Fatale" from the Castle Face comp Velvet Underground & Nico by Castleface And Friends,with Segall adding lots of feedback, and some Stoogesy swagger to the original, the result noisy and chaotic and super rocking.
Then we have something more recent, Segall's track from the Famous Class split with Chad & The Meatbodies, on which he lays down a super funky drum track, swaddles it in organ, then some super distorted percussion, bongos maybe, conjuring up a wild rhythmic freak out, that gets more and more wild and distorted as it goes, bursts of psych-squall noisiness, ultra distorted leads, all somehow wound up into a dense slab of cinematic psychedelic groovery!!
And finally, Segall's GG Allin cover, from a 7" of GG Allin covers called Rated G.G., which also featured the Mountain Goats, Fucked up, Ben Gibbard and Ted Leo, and which we also never even had. And as you might imagine, it's about the punkest thing we've heard from Segall, the vocals distorted and doused in FX, the guitars blowout and in-the-red, a galloping noise punk blowout, that somehow manages to still sound like Segall, or maybe more like his hard rocking 'other' project Fuzz, heady and heavy, swaggery and snarly, and still tripped out and plenty psychedelic.
All killer stuff, and an easy way to get caught up on all the TS singles stuff you might have missed!
Another blast of fuzzy jangle rock bliss from aQ fave Ty Segall, two killer jams of stripped down warped garage pop.
The A side, taken from Ty's recent Lemons album, starts out all strummy and jangly, with some seriously fuzzy bass, the vocals a reverbed croon, shifting into a falsetto here and there, at one point getting all tangled up in effects in a twisted distorted psychedelic freakout. There's even a super rocking PIANO SOLO! But all that stuff is just icing, on what is a killer hook, and a crazy catchy jam.
The B side is a little more grimy and buzzy than the first track, sounding almost like the Stooges "Search And Destroy" slowed down to a garagey dirge, but again, Segall wraps that jangle and crunch around a hook most bands would kill for. Awesome.
It's about time someone took all these 7"s and compiled them on a single collection, cuz like all the rest, this one is limited too, and will likely be gone before you know it.
