For the latest PlusTapes release, the mysteriously monikered Shadow Drifter (aka James Probiega, aka Little Howlin' Wolf) offers three versions of this long form slomo folk-blues epic , "Ol White" recorded at various times between 1968 and 2002. The longest version clocks in at 17 minutes while the shortest hovers around 12. Recorded with just guitar and harmonica and the Drifter's deep slow free associating drawl, he draws upon Greek myths, life on the fringes and other odd bits of tall tale and surreal wordplay. Also included are two versions of "Wooly of The Wild" recorded at different times and one other beautifully haunting track titled "Rose of Silence". Weirdo Americana indeed!
LIMITED AS ALWAYS TO 100 COPIES!!
Not sure what it is about the Shadow Huntaz that made them a likely addition to the Skam roster, who have been known pretty much exclusively for techno and IDM, but here we have their first proper hip hop record, and it's actually pretty fucking great. It's maybe not the IDM/hip hop hybrid you might expect, no drum and bass or ambient glitch or any of that business, just fierce dark classic hip hop. They do have a super high teck sheen, a paranoid vibe that definitely references their Skam labelmates, but overall this is just crunchy, gritty wicked hip hop, with occasional electronic flourishes and a whiny flow somewhere between Anticon whine and Cannibal Ox growl.
One of our favorite modern electronic hip hop outfits offer up a super limited double disc instrumental version of both their previous albums.
Shadow Huntaz are the ultimate crazy crew of brain melting tongue twisting outer space hip hop visionaries. Disconnected rhymes, sputtering, glitched out beats, total mind melting confusional free funk freakouts. For a while there, Antipop Consortium were pushing the envelope, Anticon definitely had their own avant angle. But we had been hankering for someone like Kool Keith. Paging Dr. Octagon. We wanted some damaged stuttery beats, warped warbly synths and fuzzy glitched out grzzzzt. Most importantly, some maddening slurred, drug drenched, space age, conspiracy theory WHATTHEFUCK flows. Maybe that's why we've been leaning toward Grime so much lately. It just feels so much more dangerous and fucked up and unconcerned with hip hop convention. But now we've got the Shadowhuntaz. A rogue band of futuristic hip hop explorers, who mix the perplexing sci fi / high as fuck mush mouthed ramblings of Dr. Octagon with the glitched out hip hopped electronic squelch and thud, skitter and skid, slowed down IDM beatscapes of Antipop (they are on Skam after all) into a fucking killer trip hop skittery groove. On this double disc instrumental collection, the vocal tracks are stripped away allowing us to focus on the truly visionary sounds and HOLY FUCK, we didn't think we could dig this stuff any more but we do!!! The beats, hiccup and slither, bounce and bump, the music is a claustrophobic swirl of haunting loops, weird industrial clatter, moaning drones, and all sorts of production fuckery, effects swirl and shift, little vocal snippets are chopped and looped, skipping samples, warm washes of ambient whir. Phew! Plus there's some totally fucked up scratching, little snatches of DJ freakout, but those scratchfests are run through the Shadowhuntaz supercomputer and spit out the other side a careening chaotic crush of chopped up, impossibly complex textural collages of scratch detritus, like they dropped 3 or 4 DJ's, wildly scratching and tearing shit up, into a huge blender, and then sprayed the resulting funk flecked gore funk all over these tracks.
Funky, fucked up, freaked out, cool and creepy and quite possibly contender for INSTRUMENTAL hip hop record of the year!
Packaged Skam style in a clear jewel case with no artwork and a Braille sticker along the spine!
A scatological display of detuned guitar, broken piano, and arrhythmic percussion. To call this an acoustic Nurse With Wound may not do it justice, but sheds some light on the psychosis of these Brits. Recommended for the abject!
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As with each Shadow Ring record, the sound (it's questionable to call them songs) presents itself with a smug difficulty. Piercing feedback, detuned guitars, and sputtering percussive elements strive to meet their free noise counterparts of the Dead C or Skullflower, but are drawn b
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New Zealand import of this strange, delicate, noisy English band's debut cd.
The Shadow Ring were a deliberately odd British trio, beginning in 1993, releasing a handful of improbably compelling records for Corpus Hermeticum, Siltbreeze, Swill Radio and their own Dry Leaf Discs, and then terminating the project a decade later for reasons unknown. So much of what The Shadow Ring offer just should not work: comedically sloppy lullabies played on toy instruments, atonal squeals from cheap electronics, and rhythms banged on tin cans and xylophones. Yet, their persistence at methodically fucking up the simplest of melodies not only became an instant signature sound, it also became a metaphor for a dour, anti-social discomfort which also featured heavily in the lyrics from alternating vocalists Graham Lambkin and Darren Harris. Lambkin's voice is somewhat musical in nature, wrapping around the tinny stringed melodies as a counterpoint; but Harris, on the other hand, employs a commanding bellow which he wields with the urgent rhetorical flourish of a BBC announcer reading off obituaries, but with a snide delivery as if he loathed each person who had died. While Lambkin may have been more of the musical anti-genius of the two, Harris has the voice that reaches out to grab you by the ears. Lyrically, the Shadow Ring coupled the abject and the mundane, with rats, bottom-feeding shrimp, lice, and wasps all playing heavily into the convoluted poetics of their very English dourness. Life Review is a retrospective culled from their eight albums, handful of singles, and archive of unreleased material, including one mighty odd re-interpretation of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive." Revisting The Shadow Ring has been a very worthwhile experience for all of us here at Aquarius, conjuring thoughts of Jandek and The Shaggs working together through the Current 93 back catalogue. Brilliantly fucked up.
Remains Unchanged is a sort of alternate history of UK minimalist outsider rock weirdos The Shadow Ring, gathering up 20 never before heard tracks, spanning a decade, culled from recording sessions for pretty much every Shadow Ring record, from 1993's City Lights to 2003's I'm Some Songs, with stops at Lindus, Lighthouse, Hold Onto I.D., Wax-Work Echoes and more in-between. The first record starts off with the late great John Peel, opining on The Shadow Ring, explaining that he doesn't really love them that much, but for some reason, can't stop listening to them, which definitely gets to the heart of the 'Ring's mysterious music, although most of the folks we know, do in fact LOVE pretty much everything about these guys. And those fans will NEED this for sure, and even though it's essentially a collection of unreleased outtakes, it's not a bad intro to the group either.
The first record starts off with a long stretch of detuned acoustic guitar and sporadic percussion, Graham Lambkin doing his weird spoken word croon thing, but then all of a sudden, the song devolves into something else entirely, the music drifting abstractly along, while Lambkin talks about seafood, and some friend whose a vegetarian, a weird bit of casual conversation, that somehow sound perfect in the context of the song.
And so it goes, the first record is mostly acoustic, super lo-fi, lots of primitive weirdness, barely there rhythms, occasional bursts of super distorted drumming, the sound super abstract and dirgey, billows of angular guitar shimmer, towards the end there's some wobbly synth squelch and primitive electronics, that hint at the new direction of the group.
Which is fully explored on the second lp, covering the later years, unfurling woozy electronic melodies over dreamy slowed down samples, pitch shifted vox, abstract droned out drifts, minimal rhythmic noise accompanied by strange intoned vocals, sounding a bit like a more spare Will Over Matter, finishing off with a long stretch of warbly dreaminess that might be the prettiest thing we've heard from these guys.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, housed in a heavy full color gatefold, and includes a massive poster, with an awesome early shot of the 'Ring performing / recording in what looks like somebody's apartment.
A nice reminder of why we love DJ Shadow comes in the form of this best of Mo' Wax Singles compilation that culls together all of his groundbreaking early sides and remixes that put the London-based label on the map. Spanning the years 1993-2000, some of the tracks are alternative versions of material from Endtroducing, and Pre-emptive Strike but also included are the Dark Days Soundtrack single and a handful of remixes, among them Depeche Mode, Folk Implosion, Massive Attack, and Blackalicious. It's cool to have all these tracks compiled together, sort of like a beloved old friend we haven't seen in ages.
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Short (and cheap) single with two versions of a piece composed for the documentary Dark Days (about subway dwellers in NYC). Shadow wisely keeps turntablist showboating out of it, as this is, after all, soundtrack music. Downbeat and mellow with lazy blues guitar. Quietly impressive scratching, and on the second track are some vocal snippets presumably from one of the homeless subjects of the film. Nice, if brief!
ATTENTION SHADOW FANS! You know you need this! Two massive mixes (2+ hours) and a brand new track! Not sure how long we'll have these so act fast. Disc one is a massive 80 minute mix that was originally aired on BBC Radio-1 on March 29th 2003 and is a seemles, fun and funky mix of obscure old school (and old school sounding) hip hop. So good. Summer-time-top-down-booming-system mix of the year! Disc two has a 40 minute mix that is more sort of soul and R+B and croon-y weirdness, and features the brand new Shadow track 'War Is Hell', that sounds like an Endtroducing outtake, but with chugging metal riffs!!! Like we said, not sure how long these will be available so first come first serve.
One of our fave albums and all-time best sellers, Josh "DJ Shadow" Davis' seminal Endtroducing debut, finally in stock on vinyl!! For a long time, our website's listing of it had just a single word review, but that word was "amazing". A while later, when a deluxe cd reissue came out, we took the opportunity to write a few hundred more words, pretty much amounting to saying the same thing, "amazing". Here they are:
Shadow's masterpiece is a brilliant example of hip hop DJ-as-composer, sample-based songwriting, a mostly instrumental suite of songs built entirely from sounds, hooks and grooves sourced from the depths of Shadow's extensive record collection. He didn't invent the idea, of course, but he did do it better than almost anyone before (or after!) him, garnering for himself worldwide fame and heaps of deserved critical praise.
And even if you scratch (heh) your head when we talk about turntablists and sampling, rest assured that, process aside, this is a great album that transcends genre tags and easy categorization. It's dark, dramatic, bright, hip-hop, soul, and jazz. It is very accessible. Shadow picked cool samples (like the Pugh Rogefeldt bit that helped us sell a ton of reissued cds by that particular Swedish '60s psych-folkster) AND also turned these samples utterly into his own, new music. Music that's groovy and moody and challenging, never all that easy to figure out, and not at all about turntablist hi-jinx or trickery, just about careful listening and the love of all kinds of old LPs!! Cut Chemist, in the liner notes, is quoted as calling DJ Shadow "The King Of Digging" and vinyl collecting/crate digging for sure is celebrated by Endtroducing, from the famous cover shot of the racks in the vast Sacramento shop simply called Records to the grooves reborn within. As Shadow himself put it: "this album reflects a lifetime of vinyl culture". He never topped it and probably never will. Not that anyone else has either! So if you don't have it already - or even if you do, but not on wax - what the heck are you waiting for?
Believe it or not, one of our fave albums and all-time best sellers, Josh "DJ Shadow" Davis' seminal Endtroducing debut, currently only has a one-word review on our website. Certainly it deserves more than that. Although, at least the word we chose is "amazing". The album's original release on MoWax in 1996 (almost ten years ago!!) more or less predated our obsessive reviewing schedule, so like quite a few other classics it never got its multi-paragraph due on our new arrivals list. And chances are, we figured that listing it our our site with the simple "amazing" recommendation was enough, 'cause it's hard to imagine that everyone hadn't heard of/heard/bought a copy by now. But since, after all, we still sell it steadily, clearly there must be those as yet to discover it. Now, with the release of a double disc digipack "deluxe" edition in a plastic slipcase (a treatment afforded by the same label to the likes of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, by the way, making this something of an honor for DJ Shadow!), we have the perfect excuse to basically take a few hundred words to say "amazing" again! Shadow's masterpiece (disc one, "The Album") is a brillant example of hip hop DJ-as-composer, sample-based songwriting, a mostly instrumental suite of songs built entirely from sounds, hooks and grooves sourced from the depths of Shadow's extensive record collection. He didn't invent the idea, of course, but he did do it better than almost anyone before (or after!) him, garnering for himself worldwide fame and heaps of deserved critical praise.
And even if you scratch (heh) your head when we talk about turntablists and sampling, rest assured that, process aside, this is a great album that transcends genre tags and easy categorization. It's dark, dramatic, bright, hip-hop, soul, and jazz. It is very accessible. Shadow picked cool samples (like the Pugh Rogefeldt bit that helped us sell a ton of reissued cds by that particular Swedish '60s psych-folkster so recently) AND also turned these samples utterly into his own, new music. Music that's groovy and moody and challenging, never all that easy to figure out, and not at all about turntablist hi-jinx or trickery, just about careful listening and the love of all kinds of old LPs!! Cut Chemist, in the liner notes, is quoted as calling DJ Shadow "The King Of Digging" and vinyl collecting/crate digging for sure is celebrated by Endtroducing, from the famous cover shot of the racks in the vast Sacramento shop simply called Records to the grooves reborn within. As Shadow himself put it: "this album reflects a lifetime of vinyl culture". He never topped it (opinions here were mixed about his many-years-later follow-up The Private Press in 2002) and probably never will. Not that anyone else has either! So if you don't have it already, what the heck are you waiting for? And to further underscore the point that this a great and important album, we're told that there's a book in the 33 1/3 Series coming out about it soon too!
Then there's disc two, what (aside from the packaging, which includes a booket of photos, essays, and track notes from Shadow himself) makes this a "deluxe" reissue. Disc two, entitled "Excessive Ephemera", features a slew of Endtroducing-era cuts -- alternate takes, demos, remixes, and a live radio performance. In addition to a few tracks that made it out on now-out-of-print MoWax singles, a bunch of these are unheard-before, work-in-progress versions of tracks from the album, so as bonus material this is more about providing insight into the creation of Endtroducing and less about any long-lost tracks that shoulda been on the album. It is kind of a way to listen to Endtroducing again with new ears. And it's nice to have the "extended overhaul" of the all-too-brief album track "Organ Donor", a mix that Shadow created expressly for James Lavelle's DJ use. So, a lot of added value for all Shadow fans who want to pick this up again and re-enter the world of Entroducing.
Amazing.
Isn't it astounding that DJ Shadow is still milking the accolades of his stellar, career-highpoint debut from six years ago? And we don't mean to belabour the subject but... how's this for obnoxious? On the introduction to this new live cd/dvd, DJ Shadow gives a thorough 'shout-out' NOT to his fans and homies, but instead to all of his releases... including eps and comp tracks! Ack, unbelievable! Aah, 'tis such a love/hate relationship!
Alright, now that we've got that out of our system... In Tune And On Time is comprised of a 20-track cd documenting his 2002 performance at the London Brixton Academy and a dvd with that very same performance (expanded to include a couple extra tracks) as well as an additional invigorating performance in L.A. (which also stars his pals Cut Chemist and DJ Nu-Mark of Jurassic 5), an interview and other candid footage. Good stuff. It always is. But how many times do you really need to hear the same old songs, especially live? They're not ever all that different, after all he's not a band, he's a DJ, playing records. But if you want more Shadow, this will have to suffice, at least until he gets around to making another record as good as Endtroducing.
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5 pieces, 3 of which are non-album. "The Number Song" is given a kickass remix by the Bay Area's own turntablist maestro the Cut Chemist. And if "Midnight in a Perfect World" is one of your favorite songs from the record, you'll want to hear the version here which includes more of Baraka's rousing sermon...
Collects Shadow's old singles (the great "What Does Your Soul Look Like" included) plus his recent import-only "High Noon" track.
Not our favorite outing by DJ Shadow. Though we do suspect there's a Magma sample in there somewhere, so that's cool! But also, maybe, Rage Against The Machine??
Not sure if the title of DJ Shadow's new production refers to himself or the listener, but there's no doubt there is something schizophrenically off-kilter here, and the jury is still out on whether this is a successful quality or merely a string of increasingly bad ideas. Chock full of guest appearances (mostly guest rappers-never a good sign!) including
local hyphy hip hop stars, Keak da Sneak and Turf Talk, Christina Carter from Charalambides and Chris James from Stateless doing his most earnest Chris Martin/Bono/Thom Yorke imitations. While the consensus from most of us here is that The Outsider as a whole is better than Shadow's last outing, The Private Press, what's missing here is that killer single track that makes the whole worthwhile. That said, we'll give Josh Davis the benefit of the doubt that The Outsider is definitely a grower with patient listeners reaping the most rewards from his erratic multiple personae.
DJ Shadow's second full length is finally here, and I do believe I (Windy) am the only AQ-er who likes it. Well, Jim thinks it's ok, but the general consensus 'twixt my colleagues is that the rest of the field has caught up to him, and he hasn't hitched up his britches to keep ahead of the herd. Hmm. I disagree. Certainly The Private Press is no Endtroducing (his acclaimed debut full length), but neither should it be. It's a lot more accessible and crowdpleasing than the debut, the layers aren't as impenetrably mysterious, and yeah, it requires less work to like it (i.e. not as challenging). But there's nuthin' wrong with that. He's keeping it interesting for himself. The Private Press is a likable, listenable (might we even say, at times lighthearted?) trip. It's got everything from the moody arpeggiated piano lines that're DJ Shadow's signature, soul divas, sad minor key laments, funny Cut Chemist / Kid Koala-style spoken bits, super epic percussive climaxes, and an all over hip hop flavor. And the heartbreakingly sincere audio letters that bracket the album are incredibly well chosen, framing the songs as an emotional musical narrative. *Very* well done.
And now for my co-workers to have their say:
We have to wonder, though, why he used that old "pure energy" sample. Why don't ya just throw in "I got the power!" too? Not to mention the overused tired, sad android voice (y'know just like the one Radiohead used).
Cup sez: We had a DJ Shadow 12" here a little while ago, and I thought one of its tracks sounded as if he'd just plugged in his Playstation 2 system and recorded the sounds of someone playing the game REZ. If you're at all familiar with the game you'll undoubtedly find the Shadow track ringing familiar too. REZ is basically a shooter game, but with an astounding combination of rave-ready sounds and gorgeously trippy visuals - both of which are manipulated by your performance. Oh yeah, and the level bosses are pretty spectacular. Stunningly beautiful and deluxe fun! Really, you could just project the game action on a wall, pump the sounds through a bad-ass sound system, and *POOF!* instant party. Anyways, that track is included here too. And it sticks out like a sore thumb which makes the REZ theory all the more plausible!
Not sure how much needs to be said about this. An awesome live film of Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow performing their legendary all-45 Brainfreeze set. Really fun and crazy and just a total blast. Also included are excerpts of the opening sets by Marvski, Dante, Nu-Mark and a really funny, amazingly dexterous set from Z-Trip. Extras include rehearsals, photo galleries and discographies. Not sure how long we're gonna have these so act fast! And for our international customers, it's all region!
By now you may be familiar with the all-45's sets performed worldwide by famed DJs Cut Chemist (Ozomatli) and DJ Shadow and their accompanying cd recordings (when we have them, which isn't often as they are quasi-legal!). Here's another installment of their funk-fueled, sweet soul hipswayin', rare groove-y, hip hop spirited sessions. While the first three tracks are underwhelming yet but welcome opening sets by NuMark (doing his cute "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" bit) and rockwrangler Z-Trip, on the body of the disc is where Shadow and Cut Chemist really shine. Consists of 6 practice tidbits and 10 lengthy live performance clips. Lots of happy "oh shit!"'s and frenzied speedracer scratching showstoppers. High energy and a ton (80 minutes!) of nonstop fun. If you've already got all the other Brainfreeze discs, you could *maybe* skip this one, but then again one always needs another play-it-all-night party disc...
It's been so long since we had some crazy crew of brain meelting tongue twisting outer space hip hop visionaries. Disconnected rhymes, sputtering, glitched out beats, total mind melting confusional free funk freakouts. For a while Antipop Consortium were pushing the envelope, Anticon definitely have their own avant angle. But we've been hankering for someone like Kool Keith. Paging Dr. Octagon. We want some damaged stuttery beats, warped warbly synths and fuzzy glitched out grzzzzt. Most importantly, some maddening slurred, drug drenched, space age, conspiracy theory WHATTHEFUCK flows. Maybe that's why we've been leaning toward Grime so much lately. It just feels so much more dangerous and fucked up and unconcerned with hip hop convention. But now we've got the Shadowhuntaz. A rogue band of futuristic hip hop explorers, who mix the perplexing sci fi / high as fuck mush mouthed ramblings of Dr. Octagon with the glitched out hip hopped electronic squelch and thud, skitter and skid, slowed down IDM beatscapes of Antipop (they are on Skam after all) into a fucking killer trip hop skittery groove. The beats, hiccup and slither, bounce and bump, the music is a claustrophobic swirl of haunting loops, weird industrial clatter, moaning drones, and all sorts of production fuckery, effects swirl and shift, vocals are chopped and looped, skipping samples, warm washes of ambient whir, and then there's the vocals, all different and distinct, some laid back and stoned as fuck, some amped up and rapid fire, all dense with incredible tales of this or that, all sort of druggy and tripped out. Plus there's some totally fucked up scratching, little snatches of DJ freakout, but those scratchfests are run through the Shadowhuntaz supercomputer and spit out the other side a careening chaotic crush of chopped up, impossibly complex textural collages of scratch detritus, like they dropped 3 or 4 DJ's, wildly scratching and tearing shit up, into a huge blender, and then sprayed the resulting funk flecked gore funk all over these tracks.
Funky, fucked up, freaked out, cool and creepy and quite possibly contender for hip hop record of the year!
'60s instrumental rock sensations. If you like the echoey guitar sound of Joe Meek (esp. as heard on "I Hear a New World") then you'll cream all over this record. Includes the "Thunderbirds Theme."
We've always had a certain fascination with Eastern European black metal. Sure, there are some similarities to the hordes of Scandinavia, but there is just something about bands from places like Russia, Romania, and the Ukraine, home of Shadows Ground. At this point in black metal's long history, things are usually a little more raw, more bleak, and just a little more mysterious with bands from these places. Shadows Ground are very reminiscent, both sonically and lyrically of Old Wainds, who you might recognize as one of our favorite black metal bands of all time. Like Old Wainds, and to a similar degree OW-related project Nav, these guys give you a first hand glimpse into the cold wintry realms of their homeland. Depressing insectoid melodies buzz relentlessly over the non-stop blasts, and the vocals are a harsh demon croak spitting out classic black metal truths of darkness and despair. There are some nice pics of the band being irresponsible with knives and fire, and this certainly harkens back to the days when black metal still seemed like a threat, or at least something you would want to avoid in a graveyard. Even though there are plenty of other bands who may be doing things more unique in the way of instrumentation and presentation, sometimes you just don't want to fuck with classic formulas, and anyone who yearns for some Transylvanian Hunger styled madness will find plenty of reasons to rejoice with this.
Not only is Mazhar Shagan a modern master of Hindustani classical music, he is also fairly non-traditional in the fact that he perfoms these gorgeously drone-y, age-old ragas on the very Western mandolin! Like much classical Indian music, these are epic and shimmering, long form drones, steel strings buzzing, weaving a lush nest of sonic overtones, underpinning emotionally rich melodies, weaving hypnotically through the thick sonic miasma. The sound of the mandolin is distinctly non-Eastern, and gives the proceedings an almost country feel, making Ragas Au Penjab sound like early twentieth century Appalachian folk music filtered through Indian classical music. So, so nice. Definitely for fans of modern practitioners of the (American Primitive) raga like Jack Rose, Pelt, Fahey etc, as well of course, as fans of Indian classical music.
I really love this album.
Championed by Lester Bangs, Terry Allen of NRBQ, and Frank Zappa, who famously claimed the Wiggins sisters to be "better than the Beatles."
Perhaps the ultimate "outsider music" album, there's the obvious element of "so-bad-it's-good" or, for some, "so-bad-it's-excruciating," but deeper listens to the Shaggs yield rewards beyond surface novelty. No, they couldn't play well- the girls felt they really needed more practice before recording an album- but the resulting sounds, existing in realms apart from any usual notions of tempo, rythm or melody- are bafflingly compelling in their expressiveness.
Another collection of '69/'70 material by Steve "Peregrine" Took's post-Tyrannosaurus Rex acid-folk-rock outfit, mined from the bottomless vaults of Shagrat drummer/co-conspirator Twink. Includes demo versions of songs previously released on the recent
Last time, we listed a cool comp on the Pharaway Sounds label, good groovy fun stuff from the Persian hit parade circa the seventies, before the Islamic Revolution in '79 anyway. Little did we know that Pharaway Sounds had THIS up their sleeves next, something just a bit more rockin' and freaky from the same scene, and even more to our liking, naturally. A 'best of' collection from Iranian singer/songwriter/producer Shahram Shabpareh, twelve tracks total, each of 'em a treat. It's a wild ride, this disc packed with swirling Eastern melodies, rampaging rhythms, and fantastical mirror ball funk, plus some strange surprises. It's sort of thing that gets you staring at your stereo once in a while, like when the Moog synths get really goofy, or it seems like the conga player has forgotten when he's supposed to come in. Also, Sharhram was the drummer in one of Tehran's top (only?) garage rock bands in the sixties, The Rebels, which helps explain why you'll hear some garagey fuzz guitar here - including, on the track "Woman", an excellent repurposing of the "You Really Got Me" riff by The Kinks.
Shahram's music is all about the exotic bombast of his totally over the top arrangements, with horns, hand percussion, vocals and keyboards all vying for supremacy. There's moments that sound like Gershon Kingsley gone Bollywood, and some, like the stomping, storming "Hel Yo Sar", or the surefire hit "1975", that are a sort of psychedelic disco music to the max.
Comes with extensive liner notes, complete with vintage color pics, that tell the whole Shahram story (he lives in LA now, still makes music, and has a teenage daughter who's a cheerleader).
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Yet another conceptual series, this time it's heavy, metalcore bands covering the godfathers of Bay Area thrash. The first installment is Boy Sets Fire and Shai Hulud doing 'Fade To Black' and 'Damage Inc.' respectively.
But man, the packaging. I'm not sure how to explain it. it's very minimal, die cut so it's like a jagged sash, just barely covering the 7", and unfolded it's like a big fish hook/lightning bolt. weird and cool
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At last, the SRLs release a follow-up to their great '92 debut on Derek Bailey's Incus label. Bob Stagner and Denis Palmer are Tennessee's (and the world's) most phenomenal "hillbilly" improv duo, utilizing primitive synthesizers, homemade percussion, and Dennis' glossalalic vocalizations. Very weird but catchy and fun, unlike a lot of the free improv scene. Kind of like as if outsider art magazine "Raw Vision" had a soundtrack. Guests include Steve Beresford, Davey Williams and Frank Pahl. Get this, and go see them live if you ever get the chance, they'll amaze you!
The Shaky Hands' romping indie pop debut grazes on the fresh pastures of current darlings Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade and Hidden Cameras. The influence of earlier college rock peculiarities Violent Femmes, Adrian Belew, Talking Heads is audible at every turn, along with the loosely woven, folksy, open-hearted emotiveness of Jeff Mangum. Catchy, bright and quirky.
Supposedly the Shalabi Effect were slated to do a split with Godspeed You Black Emperor (some of who's members appear here as guest musicians), but the project became so involved that they ended up passing the deadline and instead forged ahead to produce this double cd tour de force. The brainchild of Sam Shalabi, the Shalabi Effect can and have been compared to the likes of Acid Mother's Temple, No Neck Blues Band, Faust and even early "Umma Gumma" era Pink Floyd with their long, hypnotic songs which develop in and out of sparce psychedelic soundscapes and powerful droning jams (even breaking out and playing straight up Sudanese music!). The instrumentation is suitably varied: from standard rock guitar, bass, drums, to electronics, oud, tabla, flute, violin, you name it, it's probably on here. Definitely for fans of the "Constellation-label sound".
Textural improv psychedelia, what we might term some kind of modern "international krautrock" (our new invented genre), from this group of Montreal outer-limits explorers lead by Sam Shalabi (Molasses, Detention, solo, etc.). This is a fine follow up to their
Montreal musician Shalabi (of his namesake Effect, Molasses and AQ-faves Silver Mt. Zion) tries his hand at (studio-aided) composition, getting a dozen local improv-oriented musicians to play with the tape rolling and then later assembling these pieces
It seems like maybe we're becoming a little predictable sometimes, letting the name of a band, or some insane cover art get us all gaga over a record before we even hear the music. But while it's only a theory, it seems like in most cases, the music is just as good as the artwork. Or the band name. For years, we've applied that theory to our record shopping and have rarely been disappointed.
So here we are again. You obviously know where this is heading since we ARE reviewing this record, AND highlighting it, but a while back, it was just a name, Fantastikol Hole. How could we not be curious, if not utterly smitten. A band called Fantastikol Hole? C'mon. SO we tracked down every shred of recorded music from these guys and got just a little bit obsessed. But this is the first one we could track down enough of to list. Four bands, all amazing, all totally different, all French we think, a record so heavy and weird it took TEN labels to release it. And after all that talk of Fantastikol Hole, they only have three tracks here, but it's enough to get you as obsessed as we are.
So what exactly are Fantastikol Hole all about? Super aggro, mathy, convoulted experimental heavy rock weirdness. Stop start stuttery arrangements, huge slabs of Neurosis-y sludge, bits of shimmer and drone-y ambience, wild tangled squiggly leads, angular atonal riffage, howled distorted vocals, long stretches of crumbling doomy buzz, and that's just the first song of three. The second is even more manic, a sort of proggy grind, with tons of space, and weird stops, jagged riffing, swirling dizzying bursts of buzzing fury, programmed drums, explosions of impossibly convoluted synth swathed hypergrind, shortwave radio interference. The third track is only two minutes, but they spend it plodding along doomily, a huge downtuned riff, wrapped around a simple percussive thud, the vocals processed and super distorted, so genius. Complex and confusional and mathy and heavy as fuck. We need to carry more Fantastikol Hole. We will remedy that as soon as humanly possible.
But what about the other fantastikol bands here? Well, there's Shall Not Kill, who offer up three tracks of their own brand of heaviness, a groovy stoned, heavy as fuck plodding midtempo post punk sludgy doom, rife with harmonized lead guitars, yowled vocals, super psychedelic squalls of twisted tangled leads, busts of furious octopoidal drumming, some super fast Maiden style jams, some blissed out droney dirges, but always returning to some sort of cracked classic doom sound.
Up next is Tekken, who are fast and fucked up and furious, a white hot metallic hardcore, bordering on grind, with weird samples, blasts of incendiary buzz, pounding chaotic drumming and snarling punk as fuck howled vocals. The last track finds their grinding punk chopped up and flipped backwards, slathered in static, turning it into some weird fuzzed out, stuttering soundscape of skipping punk rock cds and shortwave interference.
And finally, comes the band Moon, whose three long tracks fall somewhere between ultra minimal dronemusic, and the slow motion sludge riffery of Old Earth or SUNNO))), nearly ambient the slow low rumbles eventually build into a lugubrious downtuned crawl, the buzz occasionally receding, and revealing a glimmering glistening shimmer beneath the rumble.
A pretty weird combination, but a tough one to beat. We've found ourselves digging for more stuff from all four of these bands, although our heart still belongs to Fantastikol Hole.
WAY recommended.
Gooey crunchy sludge from the Great White North.
67 minutes of what sounds like the sonic equivalent of your head dunked in Robitussin�
Gorgeous packaging: a double LP on nice thick vinyl, an ULTRA LIMITED edition of 300, all hand-screened (inside and out) printed on brown heavy cardstock that folds like a big envelope.
Which is perfect, you need a cover this thick to contain the downtuned blobs of almost unbearable heaviness that these guys ooze.
And we mean that in a good way� Mob Wheel is a delightfully skull caving mix of Dopethrone-era Electric Wizard and some Floor or later Cavity. Maybe even some early Unsane. All that with a giant dose of Bullhead-era Melvins crush and just a smidge of early Eyehategod. Tuneful? A bit. Melodic? A bit. Heavy? Let's see, imagine a dumptruck full of gold bricks, dipped in tar and dropped from a plane. That's sort of heavy. Now imagine that dumptruck MADE out of solid gold and filled with black holes, and fired from a cannon, in space, directly at your earhole. Now you're getting closer.
Yeah, you definitely need this: the gooey, sticky, sludgy, icky stuff we can't get enough of! Like someone took the record, threw it in a pot to boil, then dumped it over your head.
Fans of the "new sludge" (Boris, Corrupted, SUNNO))), Earth) will be in heaven (or hell I guess depending on your preference)!
Featuring a former member of doom-dirge lords Sons of Otis and a current member or metalcore heros Cursed, Shallow N.D. has been a mainstay in the Ontario scene since 1992.
Unfortunately the band have recently hung up their touring boots and put the van up on blocks, so we'll just have to imagine what it would be like see these guys conjure up this dissonant crunch and thud on stage!
After the last batch of releases on Hospital, you'd likely be expecting some sort of grim electronica, or downcast techno murk from this UK outfit, but the punky cover art is your first hint that this might just be a bit different. Which it most certainly is. Sure it's grim and murky, but instead of minimal beats and bleak atmospheres, this is classic old school death punk / crust, a la Amebix, Rudimentary Peni, Christian Death, etc. Filthy, fuzzy guitars, simple drum pound, total nihilistic leather jacketed, spikes and denim, backpatch crusty punk, gloomy and atmospheric, with some dark woozy passages, but otherwise a fierce blast of knuckle dragging smash-the-state ferocity, the sprawling B-side spending much of its time in a downtuned crust punk death march ballad, all echo drenched vocals, weird spluttery drumming, down tuned guitar-noise, streaks of feedback, all anchored by a simple, caveman beat, and eventually disappearing in a clouds of primitive electronics.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
More WTF sonic weirdness from our pals at Ormolycka, this one from the previously unknown to us Shams, whose sound is a strange fusion of gothy new wavery, high energy techno and spaced out, synth soaked house music. Like the soundtrack to some alternate dimension Studio 54, or some grimy seventies sex club, Romantic Choking is a coke fueled, dance floor destroying, retro-disco time warp, all moody, mutant grooves, and dimly lit club-at-the-end-of-the-world waste-age. Pressed on bright orange vinyl.
Newest volume in legendary label Cold Chillin's "best-of" series. This focuses on MC Shan of the Juice Crew who put the Queensbridge Projects on the map with his incredibly deft vocal stylings backed up the spare booming production of Marley Marl. So old school, so dependably great. Recommended.
At last, a readily available cd collection of ultra kitschy, exotic grooviness from the late great Ananda Shankar, nephew of '60s counter-cultural phenom, sitar master Ravi Shankar. Ananda Shankar, a sitar player himself (he gave lessons to Jimi Hendrix, in fact) had his own, rather more cult recording career, beginning with a self-titled album released in the USA in 1970 that featured sitar and Moog laden instrumental versions of such contemporary rock n' roll tunes as "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and "Light My Fire". He went on to record many more albums in India, all of 'em featuring the funky, futuristic East-meets-West fusion of which he was a pioneer. Such tracks as "Dancing Drums" and "Streets Of Calcutta" (both included here) eventually became DJ staples with the rise of the "Asian Underground" club scene in the '90s (Talvin Singh, et. al.).
Subtitled "the best of the EMI years", this 22-track, double cd anthology draws from seven different albums by Shankar, recorded for the EMI-owned Gramaphone Company Of India between 1975 and 1999, when Shankar unfortunately died of a heart attack at the age of 53. There's many gems here to tickle the fancy of anyone into Bollywood-style music. (And if you want to hear that 1970 debut album, it's at last been reissued domestically on cd by Collector's Choice, and is also in stock here at AQ.)
