Holy shit is this an incredible match up. Legendary industrial/noise/power electronics/experimental guitar/drone outfit Skullflower teamed up with local gnarled avant headfuck sci-fi blast-buzz one man black metal horde Mastery for this super limited 12", with each band delivering some of their best material yet. This is extremely limited too, once we run out, it might take us a while to get more, assuming we can even get more...
Skullflower's Matthew Bower has made no secret of his love for / fascination with black metal, and it's been seeping into the SF sound for a while now, but strangely, on a record where he's paired with an actual black metal band, when you might expect Bower and Co. to deliver some kvlt black buzz grimnity, blasting and howling and hellish, this is something entirely different. While it is in fact blackened and buzzy, it's much more atmospheric and droned out, weirdly hypnotic and majestic, keening arcs of blown out distortion, buried melodies, and lush crumbling textures, atmospheric, haunting and hypnotic and yeah heavy too, with a super intense in-the-red production, that gives the sound a feral ferocity, and makes every note feel on the verge of collapse, even though it's all actually, in its own fractured and fucked up way, quite lovely.
Mastery of course is in his own gloriously demented and ultra damaged sound world, delivering the sort of lightning speed, dizzying blackened sonic fury that few others can touch, so much so, that we continue to wonder how this guy isn't utterly worshipped by the grim hordes. Could be cuz it's just too goddamn weird, cuz it really is. We're talking far out freaky WTF beyond black metal outsider genius. The sound twisted and tangled, a buzzing blur, wild sonic smears constantly colliding, the vocals rasping and croaking over squalls of blacknoise, and impossibly furious riffing, not to mention inhuman drumming. The guitar playing in particular is totally next level avant insanity, Mick Barr better be looking over his shoulder, cuz at times this sounds like multiple Ocrilim records playing at the same time, all spinning at 78rpm. Beyond that there's all kinds of weird noisiness too, industrial churn, wildly sputtering drum machines, total black metal bliss out head fuck radness. If you've yet to discover just how fucking mind blowing the music of Mastery is, here's another chance...
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES! Cool colored vinyl, and super striking sleeves, with space wolf artwork similar to the double cd on tUMULt!
As we've mentioned in our reviews of the last clutch of Skullflower releases, Matthew Bower's long running industrial/noise/power electronics/experimental guitar/drone outfit seems to be gradually growing blacker and blacker, with Bower's love of black metal transforming Skullflower's distortion drenched skree into some sort of avant black buzz. Now that blackness has manifested in a series of splits with 'actual' black metal bands, a forthcoming split with local one man band Mastery, and this one, with weirdo experimental Norwegian blackened doomlords Utarm, whose twisted Apocryphal Stories on Handmade Birds was a huge hit around here, and whose fractured and fucked up take on black buzz seems especially appropriate alongside Skullflower's own idiosyncratic noisemaking. That said, the SF tracks here might be the prettiest stuff we've heard from them/him in a while, the opener super melodic, ultra textural, distorted and crumbly, multiple layers buzz and undulate, buried melodies are looped and tangled into soft squalls of lushly textured crunch, and warped cascades of soft focus noise, even at ten minutes, it's the sort of dense, swirling psychedelia, that we could get lost in for a whole record. The second track, again, on the surface, a wild, noisy, washed out dronescape, but the crackling buzz and fractured FX seem to be draped over something much lovelier, a droned out thrum, a smoldering landscape of minor key shimmer, it's a heady concoction, a sort of pretty ambience in blacknoise clothing, but the prettiness seems to be the victor, infusing the caustic noisiness with a warm melodic glow, and again, we would have happily dug a whole record long version. So we were expecting the final track to be explosive and buzzy, but instead, it's even prettier, gentle guitar strum, pulsing electronics, a sky full of psychedelic squiggles, the pulsing building and intensifying throughout, eventually becoming the dominant presence, but even then, the sound is more moody and haunting than anything, the guitars doused in woozy effects, the overall sound almost jazzy, albeit some sort of black noise power electronics devil jazz.
Utarm keep the weird quotient pretty high with their two tracks, the first, a massive near 18 minute epic, all squiggly synths, and weird processed falsetto vocals, distorted spidery guitar melodies, almost like some sort of demonic lullaby, warped and damaged, until about 5 minutes in when an avalanche of crumblingly distorted downtuned riffage comes crashing in, the sound a black ooze, a sort of SUNNO))) like dirge, but wreathed in howled FX drenched vokills and wild squalls of high end guitar noise, super psychedelic drone-dirge weirdness that KILLS, and so it goes, for the duration of the track, a blown out, heady, heavy psychedelic noise dirge dronescape, that's weirdly hypnotic and melodic, while being darkly corrosive and caustic, some serious black beauty for sure, finally exploding into a closing burst of melody infused blacknoise howl.
The closer, clocking in at a conservative 10 minutes, starts out sounding like it could be Skullflower, noisy swirly and psychedelic, until the sound splinters into a weird sort of industrial creep, all processed vocal samples, churning dirgey basslines, anguished wails, heaving swell of crumbling low end, what sounds like dense collages samples, almost symphonic, all blurred into a wild but weirdly pretty din/skree, super tripped out, free form WTF psychedelic noisy weirdness.
Killer stuff from both groups and obviously WAY recommended!
What else do you need to know besides this: SUPER LIMITED SKULLFLOWER 7". Not much we'd imagine, but heck, just in case, it might be good to know that this chunk of Skullflower guitarnoise, veers dramatically away from the spate of recent releases, that focused on a more harsh, speaker shredding, ear wrecking intensity, and slips back to something a bit more warm and washed out, definite Sunroof! territory for sure, albeit less upper register skree and more wall of thrum low end crush. Blissed out and melodic, think Jesu, Nadja, SUNNO))), but totally and distinctly Skullflower, heavy, and harsh, dense and intense, but shot through with pretty melodies and constantly shifting layers and textures, a dizzying drift of soft focus muted Merzbowian buzz. So good. Had this been stretched out into a full length record we'd be talking serious Record Of The Week contender for sure.
The flipside comes from UK one man black metal horde White Medal, who counters with his own murky slab of downtuned distortion drenched doomic black buzz, a heaving sea of muddy low end and swirling muted chaos, the drums blasting away, but buried in the mix, the vocals a howling demonic inhuman wail, the sound so blurred and blackened, that it sounds almost static, even though beneath the surface, the drums are blasting, the riffs grinding, a glorious smear of woozy melancholic buzzing blackness, dense and ferocious, but washed out and weirdly melodic. Both sides rank up there with some of the best stuff we've heard from either outfit. But act fast, only 400 COPIES!
The Supreme Ugliness indeed! From the cover, a dizzying scribbled high school notebook scrawl of black and white shapes, tattooed musclebound cavemen (one of which is fucking a skull, natch), devils, upside down crosses, beasts of all shapes and sizes, severed heads, profanity, filthy, crusty, evil and chaotic, to the music inside.
This duo spew out a brutal brew of old school metal, super harsh and stripped down midtempo death metal filth, but since it's one of the dudes from AQ faves Ride For Revenge, there are subtle bits of weirdness here and there, some freaky leads, some squiggly guitar parts�
But for the most part, this is pure grim evil, pounding, chugging, thrashing, grinding, downtuned, distorted, doomy and ugly METAL. The drums a caveman plod, the guitar grinding and corrosive, the bass a speaker shredding throb, song titles like "Life Of Shit", "We Are The Death Cult", "100,000 Dead" and "Suicidal Rape", vocals like someone puking up barbed wire and broken glass. Occasional blasts of furious thrashing, but mostly a skull crushing midtempo pound. Don't be fooled by the sludgey crumbling distorted bass intro, which had us thinking this would be some sort of ultramega doom disc, this is foul, frightful, stumbling,murky, coarse, loathsome, odious Finnish old school death metal. And we love it!
First of all, you've got to admire a mostly unknown American swords-and-sorcery metal band that follows an album called "Kings of the Universe" with one titled "Consequences of Failure"! That definitely demonstrates a sense of realism amid the fantasy and an
We knew we were in for something special when we discovered the amazing Frequency Thirteen cd-r label (thanks to loyal AQ customer Andrew S. for turning us on to these guys). Bands with names like Ice Bound Majesty, Skultroll, Raperack, Black Vomit, Karaoke Vocal Eliminator. Each disc emblazoned with the label's mantra: TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA. Which is pretty much the perfect description of this stuff. We might have also offered, grinding corrosive blackened hypnorock, or perhaps blacknoizemetal, or something similar, perhaps blackkrautnoizerock. Whatever you call it, this stuff is dark, and distorted, blown out and heavy as fuck, hypnotic, rhythmic, and seriously genius.
This is, as far as we know, the first full length from the duo known as Skultroll, just bass and drums, but it sounds like both are being run through a blender and a dumptruck and a black hole and about a million malfunctioning distortion pedals. The sound is obviously stripped down, but the riffing is dense and intense, thick and throbbing, the drums are furious and frenzied. The band tend toward the superdistorted kraut-flecked hypno rock, settling into a groove and then just pounding it into the ground. It's easy to hear Laddio Bolocko, Lightning Bolt, Barbara, Circle and the like, albeit way heavier, way more distorted and much much blacker. At some points it even almost sounds a bit like a Black metal Terminal Cheesecake. Which, we shouldn't have to tell you, is a very very very good thing!
Even the slow jams, are super thick, and crumbling to pieces before our ears, the bass loping lazily under sheets of corrosive FX, the drums pounding out a stripped down rhythm, like an evilized Can, occasionally bursting into full on grinding blasts, but almost always returning to a lurching doomic plod.
The disc closes with a nearly twenty minute low end epic. The first half a murky muddy blown out slow build, the bass smeared into thick washes of black blur, the drums tribal and complex, the song gradually growing more and more propulsive, almost like some groovy stoner rock jam, pulled apart and reassembled all wrong, eventually the distortion overtaking the actual music, the drums becoming more and more abstract, the bass riffs turning into long drawn out drones.
Heavy and freaked out, frightening and fucking awesome.
One of two new releases on the Utech label these week, the other from mysterious dronelords Owwl, and this one from Sky Burial, aka Mike Page, who once fronted power electronics / harsh noise outfit Fire In The Head, but since that 'group's demise, his focus has been on the much more cosmic post industrial black ambience, one that owes much to the kosmische drift of groups like Tangerine Dream Popul Vuh, but filters that kraut-psych sound through something much grimier and abjectly industrial. The results are pretty fantastic, sprawling slowburn blackened space-drift epics that creep and slither, drift and hover, oozing in ominous chordal clouds over glistening barely there melodies, and lush layered thrum, sounding almost orchestral at times, grimly majestic, the noise element still present, but muted and blurred into woozy washes of ashen grey and obsidian black. Long stretches of whirring ambience peppered with industrial clatter, and the crunch and creak of mysterious machinery, there's definitely a Wolf Eyes vibe here too, not to mention some SAXOPHONE, which was a bit unexpected, coming right at the end of the 40+ first movement, but that's not just any sax, its played by the godfather of psychedelic spaciness Nik Turner of Hawkwind, that last stretch wreathing Turner's sax in swirling tendrils of spaced out glimmer, and thick swells of chordal hum.
The comparatively brief (16 minutes) second movement is a much more minimal affair, at least initially, with a sea of insectoid buzz, draped over roiling low end rumbles, both of which are soon joined by a soft cacophony of strange pulses and buzzes, as well as a dreamy wash of ethereal shimmer, soon a skeletal rhythm surfaces, before disappearing in a cloud of cosmic sci-fi FX, only to emerge a super distorted churn, the track shifting constantly, most notably when it blisses out into a hissy swirling ambience, peppered with strange processed vox, before finally finishing off in a haze of industrial rumble and psychedelic space synth drift. Sounding almost like a more industrial, more blackened Expo 70, which is not a bad thing at all.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! And like all Utech releases, gorgeously packaged, the cd in a black inner sleeve, along with a fold out full color poster, all housed in a super striking, black and white patterned oversized outer sleeve.
Sky Larkin's The Golden Spike had to be one of our favorite pop records of the last few years, crunchy propulsive noise pop of the highest order, cool complex stop start arrangements, killer choruses, incredible vocals (like PJ Harvey crossed with Bjork, sort of), mathy and occasionally dissonant, loud and rambunctious, not really super weird or twisted, just super innovative and inventive and original with hooks galore, totally rocking, and packed with a clutch of all time pop classics ("Beeline", "Fossil, I").
Record number two from this trio is turning out to be just as good, a bit darker, a bit more subdued, not nearly as wild and wooly, but the songs might end up being even better. They're the sort of songs that take a few listens, but only a few, and then you're smitten, already we find ourselves returning to record opener "Still Windmills" again and again, a gorgeously intricate and super catchy chunk of minimal pop, with a cool stripped down verse, and a soaring sing along chorus, not to mention some incredible riffing, and some great drumming, and the vocals sound better than ever.
The title track is a slow burning builder, with some weird mathy arrangements that somehow do nothing to take way from the song's catchiness. "Tiny Heist" is equal parts twee pop, and fuzzy distorted noise pop, a delicate balance that perfectly suits the song, "Guitars And Antarctica" sounds like classic nineties girl pop, big guitars, moody vocals, gorgeous melodies, while "Smarts" is a cool lo-fi pop experiment, all guitar harmonics, buried drum thump, and some of the sweetest vocals on the record. "Landlocked" sounds like it could have been a B side from The Golden Spike, fuzzy guitar and wild loose distorted crunch, "Spooktacular" does too in fact, and actually, the more we listen to Kaleide, the less far removed it actually sounds from The Golden Spike, just maybe a better balance between brooding melodic introspection and crashing punked out noisy poppiness, which is most definitely a good thing.
Super smart classic pop, that's definitely a contender for pop record of the year, and WAY recommended like The Golden Spike, for fans of K Records, Kill Rock Stars, Helium, Slant 6, Jale, Quixotic as well as Grass Widow, the Sandwitches, Brilliant Colors, Yellow Fever, Wet Dog and the like...
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This would be HANDS DOWN pop record of the year, if only it came out this year, but hey, odds are most of you are only probably hearing this for the first time now, and heck, we've been trying to get this for ages, and we're thinking it may have just gotten a domestic release this year, but we've been dying to list this since one of us got an import copy from overseas last year and immediately flipped out. And all you'll need is a few tracks to see why.
Maybe try "Beeline", which has to be the pop jam of this year, and last year, and maybe several years before, hooks galore, big crunchy guitars, big pounding drums, awesome Bjork / PJ Harvey-ish female vocals, a hook to die for, the song complex with multiple parts, super dynamic, with a total soaring thick almost psychedelic sounding second half finish, this is so much more than just simple pop music. It was recorded with the same guy who did recent records by Pavement, Sleater Kinney, Death Cab For Cutie, Los Campesinos! Which should definitely give you an idea of the sound, swirl in some K Records, some Nova Scotian power pop (Sloan, Eric's Trip, etc) and some PJ Harvey musical muscle, and plenty of punk rock jangle and crunch, with guitars slipping from howl to chime and back again, often wrapped up with the bass and drums into huge sounding instrumental squalls, but never losing touch with the pop heart that drives these songs.
All the songs on The Golden Spike are fantastic, take "Fossil, I", that opens the record with soaring harmonies and dissonant riffing, before slipping into something more simple and catchy, but the track proceeds to flit back and forth, from super melodic and almost twee to wild and mathy and super rocking. And so it goes from there on out, pretty much every song is a noise pop gem, each one prime mixtape material for sure. The magical thing about this record is that it's not weird or fucked up or anything, it's just a practically perfect pop record with verses and choruses and all the usual pop song stuff, but it's the execution, and the songs themselves, the melodies, the hooks, the way the songs are constructed, the sound of the guitar, the vocals, oh the vocals, and just consistently super unique and interesting arrangements, that make the songs as exciting as they are immediately unforgettable. Just listen to the sound samples and we're pretty sure you'll be hooked. Anyone into the new wave of female fronted pop groups a la Sandwitches, Grass Widow, Brilliant Colors, Yellow Fever, as well as the bands who were making similar sounds back in the day Quixotic, Helium, Slant 6 and the like, will definitely have found a new favorite...
Sky Pilots' self-titled debut release is packed with angstful male vocals, chunky guitars, and slabs of bass. This Bay Area trio's sound is very infused with the heavy raw Chicago Albini-isms, but with some Brooklyn hip styliness too. Cool stuff.
From the same folks who brought us the amazing Charnel House cd-r elsewhere on this week's list, comes this mysterious slab of wax, with very little in the way of liner notes, other than a cryptic list of "Implements", which include Metasonix S-1000, Drone Commander (!), Sherman Filters, Eventide Delay, Dave Smith Instruments, Keeley Electronics and Music From Outer Space (!). They had us at "Drone Commander", but sealed the deal with "Music From Outer Space"! But what exactly do you get when you mix those outer space sounds with a drone commander and all the rest? Well, some sort of abstract, fuzzy, droney cosmic weirdness that somehow melds tripped out minimal psychedelia to blackened drones and abstract experimental riffage. The record opens with a long stretch of murky guitar churn, rife with gnarled melodies, that sounds a bit like some weird hybrid of Amps For Christ and Blackwolfgoat, but from there on out, the sound gets decidedly more minimal, slipping into a sort of super abstract FX drenched kosmische drift, thick swells of low end rumble, beneath layered swirls of blurred buzz and muted high end shimmer, those deep tones surfacing throughout the tracks on side one.
The flipside starts off with a hazy metallic ur-drone, a little bit Sunroof!-y, but a bit more blissed out, hypnotic and heady, before slipping into a pulsing minimal sprawl of rib cage rattling bass creep, which soon blossoms into more of a warm whir, hushed and soft focus, gauzy and fuzzy and dreamlike, but infused with a subtly ominous sonic vibe, before finally, the record finishes off with another bit of Amps For Christ-ish pulsating electronics and what sound like processed synth, a twisted spaced out psychedelic krautwave coda, that wraps things up in a big buzzy new age psych kraut bow. Awesome!
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered, housed in a coll black and dark red fold over sleeve, with a printed clear plastic insert.
Wander again through the mystic meadows with these two lazy troubadours of the rustic psych folk revival. Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn and friends are back with another installment (11 songs, 35 minutes) of the SGL's always sunshiney and melodious mellowness. The haze hasn't lifted, these boys are still sitting crosslegged and deep in the dandelions, drifting astrally across their own inner California state of mind, a cosmos of '60s dosed song-half-writing... by that we just mean that this and other SGL artifacts could all be One, though this IS way more song-based than other Jewelled Antler related projects. They gently strum and strum and mumble and sing of Sally Orchid and the Egyptian Circus and Silvery Branches, and love, always love, and this is certainly lovely... Imagine (imagination is what the SKG's and their lyrically cryptic concepts certainly stoke) the delivery of a Dylan afflicted with the Olivia Tremors, engaged in pastoral nature worship, on a California trip.
We should also note the bumper-sticker ready song title here: "Jesus Was Californian". WWJD? Eat organic avocados!
The Skygreen Leopards is perhaps the only project from the hydra-headed Jewelled Antler collective to still exist in this day and age. Way back in the heady days of home-burnt cd-rs, we championed all things Jewelled Antler, whose rotating cast of characters took up more band names and projects than you could shake a stick at. Most of Jewelled Antler harbored a loosely structured psychedelia of freak-folk droning and method-acting sonic pharmacology, with the Skygreen Leopards being the most song-based, with summery jangle-pop duets between Jewelled Antler ringleader Glenn Donaldson (also known as Xavier Cross of Teenage Panzerkorps and Horrid Red) and Donovan Quinn. Each of the songs on Family Crimes lopes along at a jaunty pace for the duo's Byrds-ian 12-string strumming and wide-eyed wonder in effortlessly creating this wistful pop gem of mundane juvenalia and just slightly bittersweet tales of love and love lost...
Yeah, we know this came out a coupla months ago, but we think it makes a perfect late summer into autumn kind of listen. Y'know, one that's best listened to amid the soft rustle of freshly falling leaves and the cooler evening breezes. The Skygreen Leopards' latest album Gorgeous Johnny is filled with a baker's dozen willowy psych-tinged folk pop numbers. Their pretty, slightly woozy melodies drift in and out of the shadows, making for an ever so comfortingly drowsy listen. Adding a bit more sweetness to the hazy warm concoction is the presence of The Papercuts' Jason Quever on bass, drums and piano. The band continues to follow surefootedly in the distinctly west coast countrified pop Americana tradition of The Byrds, Moby Grape, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Grateful Dead. Definitely recommended if you dig contemporaries like Devendra Banhart, Fleet Foxes and Vetiver too.
The Jewelled Antler circle of influence continues to grow as various bands and groups and indviduals of the Jewelled Antler ilk leave the JA nest and find themselves releasing records for different labels. The Skygreen Leopards, who occupy the poppier side of the JA spectrum, and who recently released a record on Soft Abuse, now find themselves on Jagjaguwar, with a brand new cd coming next month. But in the meantime, Jagjaguwar has released this super limited vinyl-only 12" to tide us all over. And like past Skygreen Leopards releases, it is indeed a gem. Sparkling avant folk collides with subtly psychedelic sort-of-pop, reverbed banjo and delicately strummed acoustic guitars, gorgeous breathy vocals, field recordings and all sorts of sonic filligree. Darkly delerious, sparkling and shimmery, and perfectly beautiful. VERY LIMITED so don't delay!
Here's another six songs of glistening folk-psych wonderment from what's probably the indie-rock poppiest of Jewelled Antler aligned combos currently going, The Skygreen Leopards. The 'Leps core duo of JA bigwig Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Ivytree, Blithe Sons, Franciscan Hobbies, Buried Civilizations, etc. etc.) and Donovan Quinn (Verdure) here turn in perhaps the most electric Skygreen set yet, with much jangling, buzzing guitar, sweet sweet vocals from both boys, solidly rickety drums and just plain fine, sorta '60s psych sounding songwriting, dosed with hazy, lazy melodies and mythic imagery.
Nature has its fresh breezes and warm sunshine, the Jewelled Antler collective has the Skygreen Leopards. Lovely, so lovely.
Of the very many, very special tines of the Jewelled Antler, it's the Skygreen Leopards perhaps who are best known for airy-fairy folk songcraft. The pastoral folk duo of Donovan Quinn (Verdure, Horticultural Compass) and Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Ivytree, Blithe Sons, Buried Civilizations, Franciscan Hobbies, Horticultural Compass, etc. etc.), with the occasional help of their "Skyband", have now brought us their third or so album proper (for which the LP-only and now-out-of-print Child God In The Garden Of Idols reviewed last list was but a hazy prelude). Listen in to these boys strumming and singing and lazing about in a sunny Sunday sound-world, grooving with the birds in the trees and the flowers in the fields, into which they've introduced flute and organ and, above all, their voices. Voices that are a little bit Richard Youngs, a little bit Ariel Pink... breathy and high and delicate. As suggested by the artwork -- one of Glenn's lovely nature-fantasia collages -- this is the words and music of fragile fluttering butterflies thinking deep thoughts, mystical thoughts...not that the quasi-religious themes of the lyrics are all that easy to decipher within the raw Jewelled Antler production aesthetic.
We often wonder...can those Jewelled Antler guys do no wrong? Naw, so far, it seems not. Once you're hooked, you're hooked, and we can't help but sing the praises of pretty much all the releases to emanate from this inspired Bay Area "collective" of nature-loving, often-improvising, uber-prolific music-lovers, whether they be cd-r releases on their own Jewelled Antler imprint or one of the many spun-off to other like-minded labels. Like this one, on Soft Abuse. It's the second album from Skygreen Leopards, the duo of Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Mirza, The Birdtree, etc.) and Donovan Quinn (Verdure), and they sort of align with the other Jewelled Antler "pop/vocal" duos Blithe Sons (also with Donaldson) and Child Readers. But unlike those two, the Skygreen Leopards' songs are actually composed and rehearsed, less products of the moment than good ol' songcraft. Not that they went into any fancy studio to make this or anything, indeed the field recording that opens this disc situates the duo out in a pasture somewhere, seemingly serenading a bovine audience with their achingly lovely, loosely structured psych-folk-pop music. Gentle, whispy vocals sing songs with mythical lyrics, full of both melanchoic sadness and hope. Such song titles as "All Our Plagues Were Rainbows" and "Let Me Grow In Your Meadow" are good indications of what their music evokes. With a vast array of instrumentation (in common with most Jewelled Antler projects) including 6 & 12 string guitars, dulcimer, portable turntable, 5 string banjo, bouzouki, Hammond, chord organ, tamborines, mandolin, penny whistle, and echoplex, Glenn and Donovan conjure some quite beautiful nap-time music, sleepy and serene. Their songs should, obviously, be of great appeal to the whole Ptolemaic Terrascope/Broken Face crowd, with echoes of Elephant 6 (a little Olivia Tremor Control I'm hearing), early Tyrannosaurus Rex, Richard Youngs' folkier stuff. Resplendent in one of Glenn's crude but colourful collages, populated as always by mysterious bird-headed figures, One Thousand Bird Ceremony is an album that captures the la la las of fluffy clouds passing overhead, as the Skygreen Leopards say "Hello To All Your Rain" (track 7).
Wow! The Skygreen Leopards are yet another brilliant facet of psychedelic oddities to shine forth from San Francisco's loose Jewelled Antler collective, featuring the incredibily prolific Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Knit Separates, ex-Mirza,
As with all of the Jewelled Antler manifestations, there's a strong pull by the British psychedelic era, but here far more entranced by druggy, carefree pop songs than the mythologically charged folk scene. The Skygreen Leopards maintain the same wistful, melancholic reminiscence as many of the psychedelic revivalists from the past decade (embraced by such labels as Elephant 6, Creation, and early Spin Art), but have developed a wonderfully playful sense of songwriting. Behind rich guitar leads that have been bathed in colorful, echoplex reverb, Donaldson and Quinn march through acoustic guitar jangles contrasted with breathy vocals floating freely in the distance, sort of sounding like early Pink Floyd or Tyrannosaurus Rex. Like those VHF releases we recently listed, Jewelled Antler is one of those CD-R outlets that is certainly worth checking out, with exceptional music on the inside and nicely conceived artwork on the outside.
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Local producer and musician Dave Biegel of Bugs. This new 12" goes in an epic darkstep direction.
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Latest installment of this badass music magazine. Over the course of a few years, Skyscraper has gone from a scrappy little zine into a serious chunk of music journalism, leaning toward the indie side of the spectrum but never shying away from ANY music as long as it's cool and weird and good. This time around articles on and interviews with Mogwai, Destroyer, Jon Langford, Dungen, Some Girls, Tristeza, Parts & Labor, Test Icicles, Rah Brahs, Witch, Aids Wolf, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, John Wilkes Booze, Pearls And Brass and loads more. And of course tons and tons of reviews!
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It's weird that this is Skyscraper issue #23, and we've only ever listed two other issues of this kick ass music magazine. Well, we'll try to fix that right up, beginning with the latest and largest issue of Skyscraper, a magazine that began its life covering mostly indie rock, but is now as omnivorous as we are. This time around: The Rapture, The Blood Brothers, Ratatat, Chin Up Chin Up, Erase Errata, Daniel Johnston, The Howling Hex, NoMeansNo, Red Sparowes, Six Organs Of Admittance, Fucked Up, Wires On Fire, Jihad Jerry & The Evildoers, To Live And Shave In L.A., The Lovely Feathers, Captain Ahab, Raccoo-Oo-Oon, Endpoint as well as articles on DIY performance spaces, Lost records, and tons more. Plus all the usual music magazine stuff including LOTS AND LOTS of reviews!!
Another jam packed issue of this amazing music magazine, that somehow manages to slip through the cracks when in fact it's as good or better than any of its modern music contemporaries (The Wire, Terrorizer, Magnet, Sound Projector). With a distinctly indie rock bent, Skyscraper manage to still touch on all sorts of amazing music, reading like maybe the most AQ magazine of them all. This month: Neurosis, Jesu, Baroness, Panda Bear, Black Lips, Explosions In The Sky, Converge, An Albatross, Hot Cross, John Wiese, Die! Die! Die!, Demonstrations, Athletic Automaton, Foreign Islands, the Willowz, Graham Coxon, Ted Leo and The Pharmacists, VietNam, Unsane, a focus on Now Wave Chicago and of course tons and tons of reviews!!
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At almost 200 pages, Skyscraper will keep you occupied for a long long time. And it's worth it. Lengthy interviews with Flaming Lips, They Might be Giants, June of 44, US Maple, the Locust, Slaves, I Am Spoonbender, Songs:Ohia, the Melvins, Mr Bungle, Macha, Rachels, and about 8,000 reviews of albums, singles, and printed matter. Sooo worth the five bucks, PLUS you get a cd of previously unreleased remixes including tracks by: Tristeza, Lowercase, Cars Get Crushed, Make-Up, Les Savy Fav, Atombombpocketknife, etc, with full color artwork just ready to be slipped into a jewel case.
The Bottomley brothers (Andrew and Peter) along with graphic designer Justin Wright (aka Expo 70!) have been publishing this fine music magazine for almost a decade now. Consistently well written, insightful, creative, and chockful of interviews, reviews and articles on all the artists we love, a new Skyscraper is always a welcome sight. Issue No. 25 is no exception. It features the likes of Grails, The Locust, Psychic TV, Throbbing Gristle, Wooden Wand, Art Brut, Low, Shellac, Burning Star Core, Tim Green, Dinosaur Jr, Dungen and many more. 112 pages.
Slag Boom Van Loon is of course the collaboration between electronica maven Mike Paradinas and Dutch DJ Speedy J. And they have a lot of friends, enough to fill a full length cd with remixes: Boards of Canada, Four Tet, Pole, Matmos, Coil, Leafcutter John, mu-Ziq (wait, that IS Mike Paradinas), and others.
The 12" version comes with fewer tracks, but if you fancy yourself the DJ, then this is for you.
We've been in intrigued (and a bit obsessed) with these Norwegian black metal weirdos for a while now. Frontman Aatselgribb, always sporting a white magistrate's powdered wig, usually a hat, and some sort of old fashioned garment, big wide cuffs, flowing coats, very striking, but pretty what the fuck as well. The covers and band photos are routinely super dramatic staged shots with the band members preceding over some sort of tribunal, or standing with arms outstretched batlike in the orchestra pit at an opera. On top of all that, Aatselgribb's sidekicks in Slagmaur are called General Gribbsphilser and Lt. Warder.
There are two other proper full lengths, neither of which we've been able to track down to list, both packed with buzzing blackness, haunting industrial stomp, soaring symphonic pomp, and all manner of gothic ambience. Domfeldt is the band's demo from 2007, reissued on cd for the first time, and as most people's entree into the sick soundworld of Slagmaur, it's a pretty great one.
After a dense swirling drone intro, like a symphony of swarming insects over a tuning up orchestra, the band launch into a sound that hovers somewhere between a depressive lurching black metal dirge, a Godflesh like industrial stomp, and woozy tripped out blackened doom. The guitars buzz and soar, not way up in the mix, sort of muted and off in the distance, the drums, machinelike and motorik, everything wreathed in a haunting murky oppressive ambience, the melodies ascending and descending maniacally, the whole sound very seasick and warped sounding, in the distance, strings sing, the vocals a harsh raspy croak, atonal piano pounds somewhere down in the mix, the rhythms sounding almost martial at times, elsewhere horns moan ominously, random bits of percussive clunk and clatter drift on heaving seas of twisted muted riffage, guitars unfurl prickly detuned sort-of-leads, the sound shifts from hellish circus, to stripped down new wave-y doom, to gothic crush, to 16rpm black metal, to fucked up SST inflected doom. It's pretty tough to describe. It's too slow and fucked up to really be pure black metal, but it's too black and twisted to be doom or anything else. At times it sounds a bit like The Cure if they were raised on Abruptum and Burzum, and fed loads and loads of bad acid and PCP. Some moments sound like a more specifically metal Gnaw Their Tongues, but for the most part Slagmaur do their own thing, a fucked up, sick and twisted, and gloriously damaged and demented thing. Yet another new name to add to the ever expanding aQ canon of super fucked outsider blackness. Needless to say (but we will anyway), absolutely essential.
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**SALE***SALE***SALE**
Another one we somehow neglected to list - back in 2007 when we got 'em in, from the same label that brought us cool stuff by Rabbits, Acre, and Purple Rhinestone Eagle.
This is a split release of crusty blackened thrashing metal, Portland's Order Of The Gash all instrumental (but with gnarly songtitles), the amazingly monikered Slam Dunk (With Authority!) doing their thing with gnarly vocals too.
Pressed on translucent "periwinkle" colored vinyl. LIMITED TO 300 numbered copies, and who knows, these might be the last ones anywhere.
Attention British Horror fans! We have here, released by a new a label run by one of the guys from sampling groop Quiet Village, two previously unreleased soundtracks on one lp from New Wave of British Horror director Norman J. Warren: Terror (1979) and Prey (1978). Warren, best known for three horror movies he made in the late seventies (the first one was Satan's Slave), had a film style similar to Dario Argento, highly explicit and gory supernatural thrillers filmed on a low budget with modern day settings and using younger actors, a sharp contrast to the classic period-set hammer films earlier in the decade. Composed by Ivor Slaney, an in-house composer for the DeWolfe Library, the music is deliciously creepy.
Terror sounds like a lost soundtrack by Goblin, beginning with proggy synths and organ dirges augmented by female vocal moans that are equally wistful and uh, well, terrifying! There are a couple of groovy interludes, one of them a short blues-rock number, the others more pensive, but the final tracks are full bore high-pitched synth drones that had the hairs on the back of our neck standing up on end! Also, an interesting piece of side trivia is that Terror stars Tricia Walsh, better known as Tricia Walsh-Smith, the you-tube sensation famous for videos berating her ex-husband to the general public!
Prey feels more like classic British horror scores, offering up at first soft and pastoral themes using harpsichord, organ and piano. From what we can gather from the sounds and the tagline (A Carnal Lust That Defies Earthly Expectation!) is that this is a rather twisted love story involving birds, as bird sounds emerge here and there. The lilting music soon turns to what sounds like a terrifying merry-go-round and then we get bits of sounds from the film itself of screams and flesh being ripped apart by massive bird-like creatures. There are a couple of party numbers, one a jazzy theme sung by someone who sounds like Caroline Peyton, the other by a lounge band, before the final twisted Moog dirge comes into play with snippets of doomy dialogue. Great creepy stuff!
NOTE: A cd version is coming out in a couple of weeks or so, for the vinyl-impaired! Meanwhile this lp is limited to 1000 copies.
Fell in love with this band over 20 years ago!! Slant 6 were an all-girl indie-punk trio from DC, who made two albums for Dischord back in the early nineties. Soda Pop*Rip Off was their first, and arguably best (though Inzombia was good too, hopefully Dischord will soon be reissuing it as well). You might have noticed we mentioned Slant 6 in one of our Record Of The Week reviews last list, Rips by Ex Hex. Ex Hex being the new band of Mary Timony of Helium/Wild Flag - who long ago, before Helium, was in a band called Autoclave with Christina Billotte. Christina then went on to front Slant 6, and later, Quix*o*tic (with her sister Mira, later of White Magic), as well as the Casual Dots. We detected a hint of Slant 6 in Ex Hex's garagey pop, for sure, and as it turns out Ex Hex has even covered Slant 6's "What Kind Of Monster Are You?", so it's such good timing that this album, originally released in 1994, has just been reissued on (red) vinyl - which now also includes a download.
It's an obvious choice for Record Of The Week, when a great old fave like this happens to get the vinyl reissue treatment (or even, sometimes, if we just find a cache of original copies, like that Treepeople we made a Record Of The Week recently). After all, there's got to be lots of you out there who missed out the first time, right? So we're super happy to have this to write about this week, and fall in love with all over again. And if you liked the Ex Hex, you gotta hear this, Slant 6 still an inspiration all these years later, an exemplar of youthful, girls-that-rock energy and girls-that-take-no-shit attitude. Super catchy, super cool, more fun than Sleater-Kinney (who came along a little later), less didactic than some of their Riot Grrrl contemporaries such as Bikini Kill, just a killer band fervently kicking out the pop-punky, new wavy blasts, and often having something serious to say while they do it.
All 16 tracks here are great, some dark and angry, some moody and melodic; usually pretty tightly wound, topped off with Christina's excellent, distinctive vocals and slashing guitar. The trio also included Myra Power on bass and backing vox, and Marge Marshall on drums. We note that Marshall sports a Boredoms sticker on her kit in the back cover photo - and also plays trumpet, a la Yoshimi, on one odd instrumental jazz-march song here. Part DC hardcore, part surfy garage, part art-femme-punk, so very rollicking and choppy and hooky and right on.
We remember being so excited seeing them live back in day, and this spinning this record still gives us a thrill. Check it out!
Note: lp lacks the 3 tracks from the "What Kind Of Monster..." 7" included on the cd edition, but the mp3 download does have 'em.
The latest release on Pre-Cert, an ongoing label / project / collaboration between Demdike Stare and Andy Votel, which so far has consisted of two Anworth Kirk lps and an Applehead record, ostensible different artists, but we're fairly sure for all the smoke and mirrors, the same trio are responsible for all three. All four now counting this, the first release from Slant Azymuth, whose sound has much in common with both Anworth Kirk and Applehead (no surprise there), but seems to be the danciest of the bunch, or at least the most overtly and hypnotically rhythmic. Before we give you our take on the record, here's what the label had to say about it, apparently the music here explores "fake-loric nonlanguage/electric codes and forbidden information to create an archive of sonic and poetic commentary (evidence) concerning corruption in pre-war local industry, perverted belief systems and scientific invention. Part music concrete, part folklore, part-pulp-fictitious, part Neorealism - this indulgent patchwork of mechanical folk/pop and non-music combines essential influences of electric Smithsonian releases, sound poetry, Zden?k Liska, Ilhan Mimaroglu, basic Carnatic music, Lettrism, Pierre Henry, Oramics in Ardwick, Massiera, Lloyd M. Williams, Stella Crenshaw, Bruno Nicolai, Suzanne Ciani, Eastern European fiction, AgitProp, L.S. Lowry, J.G. Frazer, Gurdjieff, Kommune pop groups and futen theater."
Thankfully, you don't really need to know at all what the fuck they're talking about to enjoy this, a tripped out slab of ever shifting avant electronica, and hauntological psychedelia, which begins with chugging train-like rhythms, over which keening high end tones shimmer and drift, laced with disembodied female vox, all of which seems to melt into a sort of dark synthy groove, all low slung and druggily sinister. From there on out, the sound flits from BBC Radiophonic Workshop style bleeps and bloops, to chopped and looped voices, to warbly tape experiments and finally to a sprawling bit of deeeeep dubbed out minimalism, all murky and spacey, some seriously hauntological heroin house for sure, Chain Reaction but even more minimal and psychedelic.
The B side starts off with a looped heavy dirge, with blast of brass, and dense tribal percussion, swooping, swirling effects, the whole thing surprisingly droney and heavy, eventually dissipating into a mysterious field recorded percussion jam, before finishing off with another long side close, this one a similarly minimal looped groovescape, downtempo and dark, late night trip out drift off, all subtly warped and warbly. Cool weird stuff. Definitely recommended for fans of Demdike Stare and their various and sundry offshoots...
LIMITED TO 700 COPIES!!!
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Man oh man this is one of my favorite albums of all time! Acnalbasac Noom. Produced by powerhouse krautrock / Faust producer Uwe Nettelbeck in 1973, this is actually a rerecorded version of an earlier Slapp Happy album Casablanca Moon. And it's better. Dagmar Krause's singular birdlike voice (which you will either love or hate) cavorts above the clang-a-clang metallic strum of Peter Blegvad's guitar. Give it a listen, their style is completely unique.
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First album in decades from this English trio, featuring all three original members -- Peter Blegvad, Dagmar Krause, and Anthony Moore.
First time on cd for this Slapp Happy album, recorded in 1972 by Uwe Nettelbeck (Faust producer), and featuring the talents of Peter Blegvad and Anthony Moore on jangly, chiming artrock guitar, and Dagmar Krause's warbly birdlike vocals. What a voice. While "Sort Of" is not as consistent as their "Acnalbasac Noom" album (which is where you should start first if you've never heard Slapp Happy), it's got some certifiably perfect gems, including the original and far superior version of "Blue Flower," which Mazzy Star later rudely covered without giving credit, worth the price of the disc alone.
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Not sure how we managed to miss this one, with a name like that. Well, making up for last time, this one got sent to us a while back, and we finally gave it a listen and we were thoroughly blown away. And what's not to dig? The work of just one man, Christopher Ashley, aka The Slasher Film Festival Strategy, Crimson Throne is a stunner, trafficking in a sound similar to the current crop of retro synth wranglers, conjuring up lost scores to never-existed seventies horror flicks and lost art house giallos, and while that sound has been done to death recently, A) it's a sound we never get tired of, and B) this guy does it way better than most. The synth sounds are thick and gristly, the melodies sinister and ominous, the tracks laced with skeletal drum machines, and sweeping epic backdrops, as far as Carpenter / Goblin worship goes, it doesn't get much better than this. The opener sets the scene, a smoldering sprawl of gristly synth buzz, anchored by a low end bassline, a melody soon creeps in, it's not hard to imagine the credits rolling, a lonely figure walking through an abandoned town, strange shadows behind the darkened windows, is the figure a potential victim, or the person everyone fears? A pulsing throb surfaces, ominous synth swells add some emotional tension, and soon the song blossoms into a full on moody minor key synth dirge, the drums pounding, the various synths swirling, so sinister and creepy and so obviously sonic portent of impending doom!
And so it goes, every track here the potential soundtrack for some lost B movie classic, from the almost disco drums and groovy synth pulse of the title track, wreathed in sweeping swaths of keyboard shimmer, to the creeping kosmische swirl of "Weightless", which would no doubt score some 2001 A Space Odyssey type sentient computer / alien on board seventies sci-fi thriller, to the drum machine driven new wave-y grooviness of "Solar Winds", which sounds like the weirdly and creepily jaunty music that plays beneath the closing credits, over the last image freeze-framed, alternately, it also sounds like some lost cold wave gem that could be a Dark Entries reissue! And there's so much more. Rad synthscapery of every stripe, total retro, creep out, imaginary soundtrack, kosmische, new age, space drift bliss, peppered with blasts of disco-y grooviness, woozy psychedelic synth drift, and haunting woozy vocodered minimal wave (check out closer "Day Eighteen"). The whole thing dedicated to the Space Shuttle Ambition!? So good.
Essential listening for fans of Expo 70, Umberto, Blizaro, Zombi, Majeure, Xander Harris, Gatekeeper, Nightsatan, etc...
Not the MTV hair band Slaughter!!! These guys were from Canada and were actually a METAL band. Demos and stuff here, stay away poseur!!!
No, not that Slaughter. This one lives up to the name. Canadian thrash attack!!!
No, not that Slaughter. This one lives up to the name. Canadian thrash attack!!!
More from this cult Illinois '80s metal combo. We highlighted their actual album reissue of 1985's Winter Kill up above on this week's list. This disc collects the previously unreleased tracks from the sessions for their aborted second album, 1987's Free The Beast, along with some early demo material circa 1981-'84. The first, title track starts off with some Satanic backwards vocals and things just get more evil and metal from there! Crazy stuff, super long songs, screechy vocals, well you know if you've heard Winter Kill...
Get Winter Kill first, and if you want more of this band's very '80s over-the-top metal onslaught, which you will, then pick this up. This new edition also includes a bonus video clip but we haven't checked it out yet.
Yeah, yeah, another obscure '80s cult metal band reissued. I'd heard about this group and how amazing they were supposed to be for a long time, but when I first got the cd reissue of their only album, 1985's "Winter Kill", it sounded just like I expected: high pitched vox, widdly guitar solos, Maiden-esque songwriting... cool, yeah, but nothing special. BUT, then I listened to it again. Something about this, some X-factor, makes it VERY special (or maybe it's just me). Rather than sounding like they're derivative of Maiden, Priest, and a host of mid-'80s Metal Blade bands, Slauter Xstroyes somehow do what they do so perfectly that THEY sound like the Platonic ideal of '80s true heavy metal, the template for every other band, the originators rather than imitators. Of course this isn't actually the case, yet a few listens into it, "Winter Kill" was having that effect: while it's on your stereo, it's the ultimate in metal. I bow down. Fans of the likes of Omen, Cirith Ungol, Warlord, Manilla Road, Attacker, and Brocas Helm should add this to their collections for sure. Classy, slightly eccentric, skilled, and -- the kicker -- full of actual emotion. Absurd as it sounds -- and the vocalist's squeals do sometimes sound absurd -- this metal is for real and meaningful. From the heavy droney keyboard intro, through the album's intervening moments of galloping attack, doomy riffing, and acoustic bliss, to the closing anthem "Mother, Mother Fucker" these guys rule. If you can listen to Spinal Tap for more than comedic value, as I can, you'll agree.
