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Super limited split between two new (to us) bands, Snake Apartment and Work / Death.
The Snake Apartment side is a side long track, a murky Brainbombs-y dirge, blown out and gunky, thick and corrosive. A plodding slab of sticky syrupy sludge rock, mixed with haunting disembodied lounge singer vocals, the whole thing a sort of moaning sea sick stumble.
Work / Death offer up their own druggy dirge, theirs is a noisy abstract drone, crowd sounds, room ambience, footsteps and muffled conversations are eventually sucked up into a vortex of thick rumble, peppered by blasts of fuzzy murk, the whole thing sounding like a damaged recording of a roomful of amps with guitars leaned up against them. Intense and abstract and pretty fucking cool.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Six different covers, by six different artists: Will Schaff, Ben Barnett, Mike Taylor, Merdith Stern, Scott Reber and Mat Brinkman!
What more can we say about Snake Flower 2's Mr. Matthew Melton, the man not only behind SF2 but the sonically similar Bare Wires, not to mention some killer solo records. The Oh Sees' John Dwyer is convinced Melton is the best songwriter in the underground garage rock scene, and perhaps beyond, and well, we're inclined to agreed. SF2's Renegade Daydream, still ranks as one of our all time faves, and the last Bare Wires is like the best chunk of classic sixties mod pop that the old Who never made. The sound here, like on other SF2 records, it total classic old school Yellow Pills style power pop. None of that lysergic weirdness, hypnogogic trippiness, lo-fi murk, or faux girl group reverby shimmer, instead, Melton and his crew just write some of the catchiest jangle pop songs around, and play them in a style, and with a sound, that manages to sound totally timeless.
Hooky, jangly, crunchy, short, sharp, urgent, some killer leads, simple drumming, jangly guitars, just total classic fuzzy garagey power pop. Lots of bands out there can make the SOUND, but few have the songs to back it up. SF2 most definitely does, and like all great singles, these 4 tracks just leave you wanting more more more...
Not sure why, but it's been SO impossible to get enough of these to list, which is a huge bummer, cuz it's definitely turned into one of our favorite records of the year (and yeah, we know it didn't come out this year, but so what!). Our distros never have it, emails to the label never get returned, so fuck it, we decided to just list it with the 10 or so copies we have. So at least a few of you can check this out.
The weird thing is we were expecting something much more generic and garagey and run of the mill, but from the first song (a definite contender for jam of the year) we knew this was something WAY more. Fuzzy, and buzzy, and stoney and groovy and spaced out, crunchy guitars busy burbling basslines, some bad ass drumming, and some super wicked scowly vox, somewhere between the Lyres, Monster Magnet and the White Stripes.
"Flight Of The Navigator", the aforementioned jam, encapsulates pretty much everything we love about these guys and gal. A sharp jagged jangly main riff, with a killer stop start descending verse, a woozy soaring chorus, and then a total Monster Magnet bridge with weird processed vocals, and the guitars all space-y and stretched out. Some wild leads here and there, and HOOKS THAT KILL. We literally listened to this first track so many times, that it was weeks before we got any further into the record, but when we did, we discovered that the rest of the record was pretty much just as bad ass. The Lyres vibe can't be underestimated, but Monster Magnet is all over these tracks, as is Hawkwind, plenty of fuzzy poppiness too, classic garage infuses everything here, but it's way more poppy, and space-y and heavy and hooky. We could go on and on and on and on, but since the availability of this record is a bit up in the air, we'll just sum it up by saying this kicks ass big time, and if favorite records were indeed judged entirely and soley on how many times and how often it gets listened to, then we're pretty sure there's no other record this year that would even come close (if you ask Andee).
Snackpit, the magazine of tasty treats! No, wait, that's not it. SNAKEpit. Also a magazine of tasty treats - that is, if you consider obscure, old school '80s metal a treat!! Dunno why we've never listed an issue of Snakepit before, this "Heavy Metal Magazine" has long been a must read for the most metal of us here. Each issue, like this one, featuring a plethora of ultra in depth interviews with (mostly) long-defunct, cult '80s metal bands, or rather, the former members thereof, many of whom probably haven't done an interview in decades. The interviewer's questions are loaded with such obsessive minutiae, it makes most magazines, with the exception of Ugly Things, look vague and cursory in comparison. Usually the Snakepit writers seem to know more about the history of band in question than the ex-band members could possibly even remember! (They'll throw questions at 'em like, "On April 9th 1982, ACID played live at the Beurshalle in your hometown, Bruges, with SOGGY. What do you remember from that occasion?", stuff like that.)
So, which denim 'n leather clad cults get the Snakepit treatment this time 'round? A bunch of our faves: Acid, Raven, Griffin, Watchtower, Obsession, and (early, Neil Turbin era) Anthrax, among others. And then lots more we maybe, barely had even ever heard of before, such as Blackkout, Voor, Sexist, Excalibur, Existance, Messiaxx, Witch Cross, Baron Steele... All gripping stuff for us metal geeks!
Not everything is '80s, it just sounds '80s. One of the more recent bands interviewed is the late, potentially great Powervice. We'd been wondering what happened to them, they had a great, Iron Maiden circa Killers sounding cut on the Earache comp Heavy Metal Killers a few years ago, then (we learn here) broke up, bummer.
Plus, this issue's densely packed 116 pages are also graced with a section of reviews (reissues, new stuff, demos) which are, interestingly, often quite harsh and negative. And there's plenty of ads for stuff we're gonna want to hunt down as well. Oddly, though, 'cause Snakepit, while its editorial offices are over in France, is published Stateside by the Nuclear War Now label, there's ads for current black metal stuff that they'd never ever cover in the magazine. The closest they'd come are things like early thrash / death metal crossover, like the feature on Chuck Schuldiner's pre-Death demo band Mantas in this ish.
And, as a bonus, this comes packaged with the limited edition vinyl 7" with rare tracks by the Bay Area's own awesome Griffin, live in '82, including their classic "Flight Of The Griffin" and a cover of The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again".
We've been getting so much cool weird Chinese music in recently. We made the tripped out Neu! meets Yellow Magic Orchestra of White+ our Record Of The Week, we reviewed the blissed out shoegaze pop of Boyz & Girl, our Chinese section is overflowing with stuff that we'll try to to get reviewed and posted on the site (even as we wait to get more of the aforementioned back in), but figured we'd start with this one, which we got on lp, and have a limited number of, and not super sure if we can get more and if we can, how long it'll take.
Didn't know much about these guys, other than the fact that they're apparently super popular in China, and have been honing a sound rooted in early industrial music, from the seventies and eighties, with nods to the Cure and Joy Division, a dark pulsing electronic minimalism, dark and psychedelic.
Check out the opener here, a softly pulsing synth, monotone vocals, swirling effects and slow shifting textures, dirgey and almost robotic, darkly hypnotic and dreamily tranced out, hearing this it's not hard to see why ex P.I.L. drummer Martin Atkins became obsessed with the group and insisted on producing their debut. The second track finds the sound splintering into something more jagged and new wavey, sounding a bit more like Joy Division by way of the Residents, or a much murkier, glooming goth pop Suicide, jagged melodies, blurts of noise, dense drones and throbbing programed pulses. Dramatic and noisy and woozily off kilter. The Residents vibe is huge throughout, a warped alien cabaret, kept in check by the low slung basslines, the programmed rhythms, murky and motorik, the layered loops, and the almost vaudevillian vocals.
Every track here is dark and woozy, rhythmic and minimal, some krautrocky and propulsive, others super abstract and avant, and still others gloomy and brooding, often the sound fusing the three, into some heady Chinese experimental electronic gloom pop weirdness, that we're digging more and more with every listen.
For fans of warped outsider pop, early electronic industrial, gloomy and gothy electro pop, and whatever surreal sonic stops might lurk in between.
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One of the Record Store Day releases we were most psyched on getting this year was this Flying Nun/Captured Tracks reissue of the first ep by NZ cult legends, Snapper. But they didn't show up in time for RSD like they were supposed to, thanks to a shipping snafu. Finally, however, our Snapper 12"s (along with The Bats' first ep, also reissued by Flying Nun via Captured Tracks for RSD) finally showed and we're so glad it's here now and we're able to share it with you, as we probably wouldn't have been able to write about it earlier, because we're sure they would have been all snatched up on RSD proper. So we only have about 7 of these left, and we're pretty sure they're gone for good, so act fast if you want one!
Released in 1989, Snapper was formed by Peter Gutterdige (The Clean, Chills and Great Unwashed) and featured Christina Voice on organ and vocals. The band would go through several lines-up but it is this ep that defined their sound for bands to come, a mixture of Suicide, Jesus and Mary Chain and a less campy B-52's with a farfisa driven hypno-psych vibe that predated Stereolab. Their drug-psych influence can be easily sensed in bands like Moon Duo and Psychic Ills today. Includes poster and original press release. So so good! Four songs. All killer!
It's pretty impossible to argue with a dubstep version of Black Sabbath, especially when it sounds this good. Who would have thought that Sabbath would sound so right all dubbed out and slowed down? Venetian Snares, that's who. And on this super limited 10", there's no skitter or drill and bass, nope, just pure, simple bass heavy dubstep, wrapped around two classic Sabbath tracks. It sounds so goddamn good it's another one of those records that just makes us wonder why there aren't any bands who actually sound like this?!?
The A side is all slithery echoey beats, dubbed out and laid back, huge low end throbs, buzzing bass lines, Ozzy's reverbed wail draped over the top, a strangely stoned and FX doused version of "Black Sabbath", the guitars looped and stretched out, that tolling church bell all chopped up and sent spinning into the darkness, like a dubby snare, the whole thing just so dark and moody and groovy and amazing sounding.
The flip side starts off sounding like some straight up dubstep, blissed out and druggy, fuzzy and distorted, skeletal and bass heavy until the vocals kick in, and suddenly it's some fucked up and dubbed out take on "Electric Funeral". An absolute and total dancefloor destroyer for sure. Even the metal head wallflowers are tapping their feet and subtly banging their heads...
Pressed on marbled green vinyl, housed in a plain black sleeve, and pretty ridiculously limited.
Boasts songs by The Specials, Herbaliser, Oasis, The Stranglers, Massive Attack, 10CC, and Madonna, but also includes a few dialogue clips from the movie. So you can hear Brad Pitt go "kaifnegjuavnnh" whenever you like. 20 tracks in all.
"To the technically semi-literate, post-Techno soundart can present a confusing spectacle, but with this beguiling recording such considerations are irrelevant. Snawklor is Dylan Krasevac and Nathan Gray, both playing laptops with sampler/loop programs live, and this is their second full length CD - Rushes appeared earlier on another small local label Marsupial Sounds. Snawklor's compositions process and layer samplings of field recordings, creating a rich acoustic ecology incorporating miked-up metallic percussion and tape debris. They recognisably draw on contemporary electronica while genuflecting to musique concrete tradition. There's a sense of involvement in live performance, and unusually for sampler-based acts, most sources are from their own field recordings. Snawklor reject the easy presentation of drone-like streams of sound, and the negativism of subdued minimal approaches, in favour of a more dramatic language. It's music of rich density � soundart but a clearly musical soundart.
Some tracks, like the first, "doublivores back", have a discernible pulse, but it's always varied, sometimes polyrhythmically, avoiding electronic music's frequent rhythmic banality. "Doublivores" combines inner city field recordings with R+B influenced rhythms and glimpses of the cassette's underlying recording, a residue of Grandmaster Flash. "War In The Trees" might remind the inattentive listener of Windham Hill, but even here there are hidden depths, and it's an isolated episode; the insect-like scurryings and avian twitterings of "Nocturgical" share the inspiration of Bartok's pieces of night music. This enormously varied but consistently beautiful
disc testifies to the vibrancy of contemporary Antipodean soundart." - Andy Hamilton, The Wire
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The second release from this new electronica label from Sheffield (home of Warp Records) is minimal yet warm technology music. Like a Prozac laced Basic Channel / Chain Reaction, SND produces sparse melodies, spacious ambience, and sufficient clicks and pops. Limited to 600 copies.
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SND applies a heavy dose of what must be a factory preset handed out to all of the graduates of Force Inc's Institute of Auricular Fragmentation and Recombination. This is a silken yet firmly digital sound, sort of like a ring modulator fused with a hammond organ. SND encodes this signature sound to hyper-minimal shuffling house rhythms that could have been constructed out of the glitch rhythms found on Oval's "Diskont 94." The tonalities and phase patterns are so cool and detacted that it's hardly a shadow of a groove. They call this click house. How does this differ from glitch funk?
Don't expect anything new from SND's third record despite Mille Plateaux's claims of "their influential progressions in electronic experimentations." As before, this Sheffied duo offer pleasant, but detatched bitstreams of muted house grooves, synthetic organ
Two new releases from this mysterious two man remote collaboration (actually not so mysterious, half the duo is in fact aQ pal Howard Ryan who also helps run the amazing local co-op bakery Arizmendi, the other being Minneapolis-based Sam Sharp), and while we thought about reviewing them separately, they really are the perfect pair, and odds are if you get one, you're gonna want the other. The music on both releases is super lo-fi, an avant, abstract, minimal murk pop, that to these ears sounds a bit like Mercury Rev crossed with The Caretaker, wistful psychedelia, all swoonsome melodies and earnest vox, but wreathed in TONS of FX, swaths of blurred reverb, a soft focus haze that renders the whole thing washed out and fantastically faded. Gorgeous indie pop hooks are stretched to their breaking point, and caked in crackle and crunch and hiss. It's a druggy, woozy, downer melancholia with nods to Sparklehorse, Sentridoh, the Supreme Dicks, and other home brewed pop oddities, a crystalline collection of warble and waver that we're digging a whole lot. Both are great, so while either are worth it on their own, if you're not beholden to a specific format, we highly recommend just grabbing both.
Two new releases from this mysterious two man remote collaboration (actually not so mysterious, half the duo is in fact aQ pal Howard Ryan who also helps run the amazing local co-op bakery Arizmendi, the other being Minneapolis-based Sam Sharp), and while we thought about reviewing them separately, they really are the perfect pair, and odds are if you get one, you're gonna want the other. The music on both releases is super lo-fi, an avant, abstract, minimal murk pop, that to these ears sounds a bit like Mercury Rev crossed with The Caretaker, wistful psychedelia, all swoonsome melodies and earnest vox, but wreathed in TONS of FX, swaths of blurred reverb, a soft focus haze that renders the whole thing washed out and fantastically faded. Gorgeous indie pop hooks are stretched to their breaking point, and caked in crackle and crunch and hiss. It's a druggy, woozy, downer melancholia with nods to Sparklehorse, Sentridoh, the Supreme Dicks, and other home brewed pop oddities, a crystalline collection of warble and waver that we're digging a whole lot. Both are great, so while either are worth it on their own, if you're not beholden to a specific format, we highly recommend just grabbing both.
First full length from this Bay Area guitarist, who we first heard on the Berkeley Guitar compilation back in 2006, which also featured Matt Baldwin (whose Psychic Arts label released this!) and Sean Smith. And like his tracks on the comp, Snider displays quite a knack for sweetly melodic, pastoral Appalachia, conjuring up warm chordal swells, wrapped in delicate fingerpicked melodies, the tracks peppered with some subtle slippery slide guitar. Snider's style is generally not super flashy, and isn't about cascades of rapid fire notes, or dizzying melodic flurries, instead he tends to gently coax a hushed melancholia from his guitar, obviously the shadows of Fahey and Kottke and the rest loom large, but Snider definitely sounds right at home amongst such esteemed company. Most of the tracks here are dreamy and wistful, but a few (like "Val Verde Nights"), do display a more shadowy side, giving those tracks a moody minor key vibe. Good stuff.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, and packaged in an origiami style folded jacket, with pasted on cover art and a photocopied insert.
This one came out of nowhere and kicked our asses. And to be totally honest, as is often the case, we ordered it almost entirely because the band had an awesome name, heck, they're called the Snivelling Shits. Fingers crossed we threw it on, and what do you know? The sound was as snotty and snarly and snarky and catchy and punk as fuck as the name implied.
The 'Shits were a joke band, formed by music journalist Giovanni Dadamo in 1977, designed to take the piss, but they ended up whipping up a batch of songs as good as if not better than any other groups at the time. Some impossible blend of the Buzzcocks, the Undertones, the Modern Lovers, The Sex Pistols, the Damned and the Velvets. Propulsive drumming, looped hypnotic riffing, and Dadamo's high pitched invective over the top. Take "I Can't Come", a bawdy sex tale about bedroom misadventure, with an insanely long list of other luminaries who couldn't come, culminating in the classic "Jesus Of Nazareth, heeeeeee can't come!" delivered in a snotty nasal whine. The rest of the tracks are just as funny: "Only 13", "Terminal Stupid", "I Wanna Be Your Biro", the all in French "Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi" and the impossibly catchy "Bring Me The Head Of Yukio Mishima". Every song here is a stone cold classic. Why these guys weren't huge it's hard to say. Might be because they didn't take it all that seriously, or the fact that they only ever recorded EIGHT tracks in their whole brief career, all collected here, along with some demos as well as the holiday chestnut "There Ain't No Sanity Claus" with the Damned (Dadamo also wrote a couple songs for those guys) and the previously released "isgodaman?" which was included on a comp under the pseudonym Arthur Comix because the record label didn't want the word Shits on their record cover.
Bottom line is this stuff is amazing. Hooky and haughty, frenetic and so bad ass. If you dig ANY of the above mentioned bands or have been digging on the current crop of snotty punk rock: the Catheters, the Thermals, Times New Viking, and the like, this will DESTROY YOU!!
Just watch the video.
On their follow-up to 2004's Final Straw, these Scots do a remarkable job not only of distinguishing themselves from the rest of their Scottish brethren buddies (Belle & Sebastian, Arab Strap et al), but also of replicating the good ol' American college / alternative rock sound of the '90s a la Gin Blossoms, Goo Goo Dolls, etc. Seriously, it's uncanny. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing, is it? Many of you are well aware that a few of us here at AQ harbor a soft spot for this musical style -- which is also inextricably bound to a crush-like attachment to John Hughes teen movies -- and that soft spot has gradually transferred itself to this band. There's even a duet with Martha Wainwright ("Set The Fire To The Third Bar") which sounds eerily like one of the duets that Kate Bush did back then with Midge Ure or Peter Gabriel! Aw geez.
As the first few guitar strains of Final Straw took shape, I thought I was listening to the Weakerthans' Left And Leaving album. It sounded just like them! But then the vocals came in and it immediately became clear that I was mistaken. This is Snow Patrol! You might be more familiar with them being close collaboratin' buddies with fellow UK folks Arab Strap, Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai et al in The Reindeer Section. Of this musical gang, Snow Patrol are the most American 'indie rock' sounding. Seriously, many of these songs could easily be mistaken for Sebadoh or Pernice Brothers except that they're much more sleek. So, if you have a soft spot for the aching melancholia that flows from the songwriting pens of Lou Barlow or Joe Pernice but also dig the sweeping grandeur of bands such as Coldplay or Starsailor, Snow Patrol is for you!
Yet another fantastic release from country reissue label Omni, this one is immediately striking for the cover image, which is just a hangman's noose, on a field of red, beneath the record title Songs Of Tragedy. Doesn't get more country than that. But that's just what these two records are. Tales of sorrow and misery, the stories of murderers, drunks, prisoners, and as the liner notes helpfully point out "bereaved parents and pet owners".
Snow's fascination with tragedy could very well stem from his abusive childhood, which resulted in him running away from home at the age of 12 to get away from his violent grandmother, ending up a cabin boy on a fishing trawler, which is where he discovered country music, hearing Jimmie Rodgers on the ship radio.
The rest of Snow's life is equally as fascinating, there's the fact that he was managed by Colonel Tom Parker, and was instrumental in getting a certain Elvis Aaron Presley signed. It's also reputed that the character Haven Hamilton in Robert Altman's Nashville was based on Snow. But for all the success, Snow's career was definitely full of hard luck, which is perhaps why these songs resonate so strongly, these heartbreaking tales of death and destruction, loss and loneliness, delivered in a darkly dramatic, stately baritone, over lush instrumentation, gorgeous harmony vocals, even subtle sonic colorations like vibes make their way into the mix. The song selection, drawn from the tragedy songbook of the '20s and '30s, is pretty impeccable as well.
"Walking The Last Mile", is a mournful lament about that walk to the gallows, "Old Rover" is the xylophone laced tribute to the loss of a man's best friend, "The Letter Edged In Black" is a gorgeous country dirge wrapped around a wheezing organ and some sweetly sawed fiddle, and of course, it's all about the postman delivering that titular letter. There's the strangely spoken word "The Runt", a tale of a tragic bullying, super melodramatic, we could go on. More tales of tragedy, a surprising number about pets, but plenty about the plight of the condemned man, whether condemned to death, or to a life of loneliness.
As with all Omni releases, this comes with a massive booklet, loaded with pictures and lp sleeve reproductions and well as extensive liner notes, detailing Snow's life and career, as well as the creation of the songs collected here.
We've been hearing about this band for ages, but until recently had never actually -heard- them. Word was they were a more metal Mogwai. Can't really argue with that. They're Scottish too, so they've obviously been slurping from the same slow build explosive climax fountain as their more moody, less heavy countrymen. But where Mogwai get bigger, and louder, and more expansive, Snowblood get HEAVIER, exploding into a doomy grind like Neurosis or Eyehategod or Corrupted. Which is most definitely a good thing. The sound of Snowblood is one we love, that epic post rock, moody and mathy, equal parts Godspeed, Mogwai, Mono, Isis and the like, but with the added bonus of constantly stumbling into massive downtuned slow motion sludge dirge mode, crusty and lumbering, huge tarpit riffs and howled almost black metal vocals. It's like some sort of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, where Mogwai or Mono let's say, get all wound up, more and more, louder and louder, until they turn away, and then lunge at you suddenly, fangs bared, claws out, eyes blood red, where they then proceed to tear you limb from limb, only later coming to, soaked in blood and entrails, in some sort of post blood letting daze, easily slipping back into dreamy indie swoon, as if nothing ever happened, only to do it all over again in the next song. Fuck! It's so awesome. Exactly what we always thought, when a band would get all loud and heavy, we would always think, "why not just go for it, go all the way and just be metal for fuck's sake!" and here Snowblood have done just that. Some tracks stay soft, drifting dreamlike, swathed in jangle and twang, but some songs get heavy right away and don't let up. Varied and dynamic and fucking killer! Stretches of blissy, soft focus post rock, delicate guitar figures, simple barely there rhythms, swirls of cymbal shimmer, the sound of wind and water, groovy almost jazzy shuffle, strange fuzzy almost funky Three Mile Pilot style basslines, crunchy angular riffing, a strange haunting croon (sounding strangely like Unrest's Marc Robinson), these elements shift and swirl, painting a dreamy post rock soundscape, but when the hammer falls, it falls hard, sometimes erupting into full on metalic grind, sometimes a lurching sludge rock behemoth that would give AQ faves like Whitehorse, Bunkur or Moss a run for their sludgerock money. An absolute perfect mix of the soft and moody, Godspeed. Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, and the hard and heavy, Boris, Monarch, Khanate, Eyehategod. Absolutely essential. We also have Snowblood's previous disc, The Human Tragedy, in stock, and that one is just as good!
Snowblink is the brainchild of onetime San Francisco transient Daniela Gesundheit, alongside a rich amalgam of collaborators throughout North America, and incorporating a bevy of unique influences. While of course owing some debt to those that came before, the sound of Snowblink is far removed from the canonized female folk royalty unwitting critics will try to compare it to.
Long Live is by far Gesundheit's most mature musical statement to date, boasting rich and complex arrangements, a sensitive and singular approach to lyrics, and as always, her effortlessly fluid and sonorous vocals. To boot, the record was brought to life by the expert engineering of Jay Pelluci and the mixing of Thom Monohan, of Deerhoof and Brightblack Morning Light fame, respectively. Perhaps its greatest feat in the midst of diverse instrumentation boasting bowed glockenspiels and thrummed thumb pianos, is its almost severe intimacy. Given Gesundheit's inevitably serene vocals, she is at her best when her lyrics serve as a kind of gentle lance to the tension around her tales of archetypal traumas. However, not all is Bergmanesque psycho-drama, as several songs also exhibit a more playful and whimsical approach to storytelling. From start to finish, Long Live is a sturdy new plateau, from a promising young voice.
We've been hearing about this band for ages, but until recently had never actually -heard- them. Word was they were a more metal Mogwai. Can't really argue with that. They're Scottish too, so they've obviously been slurping from the same slow build explosive climax fountain as their more moody, less heavy countrymen. But where Mogwai get bigger, and louder, and more expansive, Snowblood get HEAVIER, exploding into a doomy grind like Neurosis or Eyehategod or Corrupted. Which is most definitely a good thing. The sound of Snowblood is one we love, that epic post rock, moody and mathy, equal parts Godspeed, Mogwai, Mono, Isis and the like, but with the added bonus of constantly stumbling into massive downtuned slow motion sludge dirge mode, crusty and lumbering, huge tarpit riffs and howled almost black metal vocals. It's like some sort of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, where Mogwai or Mono let's say, get all wound up, more and more, louder and louder, until they turn away, and then lunge at you suddenly, fangs bared, claws out, eyes blood red, where they then proceed to tear you limb from limb, only later coming to, soaked in blood and entrails, in some sort of post blood letting daze, easily slipping back into dreamy indie swoon, as if nothing ever happened, only to do it all over again in the next song. Fuck! It's so awesome. Exactly what we always thought, when a band would get all loud and heavy, we would always think, "why not just go for it, go all the way and just be metal for fuck's sake!" and here Snowblood have done just that. Some tracks stay soft, drifting dreamlike, swathed in jangle and twang, but some songs get heavy right away and don't let up. Varied and dynamic and fucking killer! Stretches of blissy, soft focus post rock, delicate guitar figures, simple barely there rhythms, swirls of cymbal shimmer, the sound of wind and water, groovy almost jazzy shuffle, strange fuzzy almost funky Three Mile Pilot style basslines, crunchy angular riffing, a strange haunting croon (sounding strangely like Unrest's Marc Robinson), these elements shift and swirl, painting a dreamy post rock soundscape, but when the hammer falls, it falls hard, sometimes erupting into full on metalic grind, sometimes a lurching sludge rock behemoth that would give AQ faves like Whitehorse, Bunkur or Moss a run for their sludgerock money. An absolute perfect mix of the soft and moody, Godspeed. Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, and the hard and heavy, Boris, Monarch, Khanate, Eyehategod. Absolutely essential. We also have Snowblood's previous disc, The Human Tragedy, in stock, and that one is just as good!
We had heard about this group for ages, 'the metal Mogwai' people would tell us. And obviously we were intrigued. We finally got copies of their latest full length, "Being And Becoming" and listed it a few months back, and it was indeed a lot like a metal Mogwai. We dug it a lot. As did you judging from how difficult it's been to keep it in stock. So we figured we oughta track down their previous record, the equally pretty, and most definitely heavier "The Human Tragedy" and it's a killer.
The same dizzying mix of dreamy post rock, super dynamic epic cinematic soundscapes, and grinding pounding sludge.
The record begins with a thick whirring drone, mumbled melodies are strewn amidst thick swaths of low end, and simple fingerpicked guitar. That serenity doesn't last, as the second track kicks in, a weirdly grungy bass riff, simple tribal drumming, and a creepy snake charmer like melody that suddenly twists itself into a mathy metallic juggernaut, chugging riffs, venomous vocals, lurching and loping, with bursts of staccato metal fury. A bit like Today Is The Day crossed with Melvins. The next track is similar, a pounding angular crush, howled vocals and low end chug, peppered with stretches of swirling ambience. The rest of the record falls mainly somewhere between the heaviness of Neurosis, Eyehategod and Khanate and the meandering moodiness of Tortoise, Mogwai and the Timeout Drawer, but even with liberal and lengthy doses of moody math rock, drifting epic slowburn slowcore, and soft shimmery dreampop, Snowblood, always seem to return to the crush, every soft shimmer or melancholy melody is only a breath away from being laid flat by a wall of grinding guitars and pummelling drums. So great.
It's been almost 3 years since we last heard from Snowblood, who at the time were super hyped to us as being a "metal Mogwai", which makes sense as they are Scottish, they write epic slow burning metallic post rock jams, and they manages to fuse extreme heaviness with super melodic rock, but unlike Mogwai, these guys get very VERY metal, as in ULTRA heavy, sometimes sludgey and crushing, other times frenzied and thrashy, incorporating howling black metal vokills, even blast beats.
This long in the works new album, finds the band refining their sound, the prettier melodic parts are a bit crunchier, a little more krautrocky, loping and hypnotic, and the heavy parts, well, the band have really outdone themselves, kicking out the metallic jams big time, exploding into bursts of Coalesce / Converge chaotic fury before stumbling into lurching epic metallic doom sludge, the vocals even more harsh and hellish than before, the band sometime slowing it way down and dipping into full on Eyehategod territory.
Four long tracks, none shorter than 10 minutes, the longest a sprawling 18:31, each one a meandering journey from drift and strum and jangle to pummel and crush and crumble. The second track is all washed out and shoegazey with what sounds like accordions or strings, adding a layer of woozy buzz, until the band explodes into another bout of brutality, at which point those accordions or strings get all super distorted and sound almost like a metal kazoo, the effect is not as goofy as it sounds, especially considering the band lock into a seriously intense minor key mournful doom metal dirge. The third trajectory is the mathiest of the bunch, and never quite gets full metallized, although the vocals get pretty harsh, but the music gets more loud / epic Mogwai style, a Godspeed like flourish before settling back into a drifty post rocky fade out.
The final track mixes it up and starts out all metal, a huge churning chug, with a soaring main melody, those killer vox, before breaking down into a cool abstract drift, with jagged shards of droneguitar, fractured fragmented riffs, a downtuned crumbling chug way off in the distance, all woven around a woozy minor key melody, before exploding into another stretch of churning riffage and intense drum pound, finally finishing off with a thick wall of guitar hum and hiss. Awesome stuff. Seems like these guys should be massive, touring with Isis and Neurosis and Baroness and all those sorts of heavy hitters, maybe they do on the other side of the ocean, but it seems like over here they're way more under the radar, metalheads and post rockers over here need to get hip to these guys, lots of folks just might find themselves with a new favorite band.
Killer packaging, housed in a gorgeous silkscreened cardstock sleeve, with a fancy fold out printed insert.
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Lots of you are probably pretty obsessed by now with UK label Paradigms and pick up pretty much everything they release. Always interesting, gorgeously packaged, and Snowdrift is no exception.
Veering dramatically from their drone/metal direction, Paradigms surprised us a while back with the recent full length from Plants, a dark, psychfolk duo from Portland who reference everything from Comus to Incredible String Band to M83 to Charlemagne Palestine.
And now, Paradigms have dug up another dark treasure from the Northwest, this time from Seattle, Snowdrift are a dark brooding ensemble, who aren't nearly as far out as the rest of their labelmates. The label mentions Low and Mazzy Star and Amber Asylum and those are pretty good starting points. Imagine a moody shuffling post rock, with moaning cellos, shimmering guitars, sort of laid back and smoky, with occasional squalls of subtly blown out psych, but for the most part sort of drifting and slithering dreamily. The focal point is definitely the vocals, female, dark and throaty, a rich velvety croon, perfectly matched to the warm shimmery musical backdrops. And while the band does explore and experiment here and there, this is nothing so much as moody minor key mope rock. A sort of post rock slowcore pop... On a different label, one could definitely imagine these guys and gal on the radio, maybe even MTV, the dark moodiness just accessible enough for regular folks, but dreamy and dramatic enough to keep it interesting. The songs are fairly conventional, but they are often wrapped in decidedly unconventional layers, be it a thick swaths of shimmering strings, a fuzzy rumbling drone, some clattery abstract ambience. Cool stuff for sure. But might be a bit tame and middle of the road for the truly experimental among you. And if you were hoping for something a little more Hjarnidaudi or Angelic Process, then see elsewhere on this list for the other new Paradigms release from the decidedly more fucked Wraiths.
Limited to 750 copies, packaged in a colorful mini lp style sleeve wrapped in a hand stamped brown paper outer sleeve.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Featuring longtime local favorite Cole Marquis, beloved AQ-customer Mike Erhardt, producer extraordinaire Greg Freeman. Miss Murgatroid says this is the best album she has heard all year.
Snowpony plays atmospheric electronic-pop. This British supergroup is made up of vocalist/ keyboardist Katharine Gifford -- a former member of Stereolab and Moonshake -- as well as onetime My Bloody Valentine bassist Debbie Googe and
If you enjoyed the recent Mirah album Advisory Committee, you might wanna give this new SF artist a listen too. Snowy is primarily the work of Ms Bonni Evensen, although she's got some glowingly good company in tow, namely Tim Mooney (ex-American Music Club), Steve Roback (ex-Rain Parade) and Leigh Gregory (of Mellow Drunk). Her songs struck me as sort of a cross between Mirah and Aimee Mann. That means well-crafted and lush, intelligent and intimate. Not to mention the fact that her voice is quite often a deadringer for the latter. Darkly lilting and so enchanting. Each time I listen to this, another shadowy, lulling track jumps out and captures my heart. Very very nice!
Woah! We've got the return of a way, way, way, WAY OUT electric guitar and drums duo document here, an improv maelstrom of uber DISTORTION freakout action that proves there's nothing new under the sun, 'cause this was cranked out by two long haired American hippies back in the early Seventies. In the annals of underground noise, they deserve a special place. This is proto everything! Mick Barr, No Wave, Ascension, Rhys Chatham, Glen Branca, Sonic Youth, High Rise, The Blue Humans, Dead C, Harry Pussy, Lightning Bolt, D!O!D!O!D!, even the Rangda we listed a couple weeks ago... heck, we're hearing all of that here. Wow. A total feedback and bashing attack, but not negative in attitude or anti-musical at all. In fact, it's presented with a lot of positive hippy-dippy charm ("listen for the time when the drums play themselves - when the spirits in the drums themselves are dancing" - that's a quote from drummer Bob Thompson found on the '98 release, and the title Daily Dance comes from the writings of Ken Kesey of Merry Prankster/Acid Test fame). Yet, it makes one of their own influences - The Stooges - seem square in comparison. These two go further in channeling spiritual free jazz a la Coltrane and Sanders into a stripped down, amped up primal "psych rock" context, it's hard to think of many earlier examples of such out-rock exploration. And it was also totally DIY punk too - of course, no label back then, or now for that matter, would have seen much commercial potential in this volume-dealing duo's pioneering skronk fest!
Daily Dance was recorded in 1972, and subsequently released as a private press lp in '73 via Carla Bley's New Music Distribution Service. It was reviewed favorably by Creem magazine in '77 (you can see, this didn't get all that much attention when it first came out, but has grown in cult status over the years), with Doug Snyder's guitar squall indeed compared to James Williamson of The Stooges. Snyder also cited the Velvet Underground and Sonny Sharrock as his guitar influences... Japan's Masayuki Takayangi was probably unknown to Snyder at the time but we bet he'd have been into him too, though the Daily Dance duo definitely are more ROCK than they are jazz. Or at least, they manage to combine rock and jazz without coming close to "fusion", not that there's anything wrong with fusion, good fusion anyway, but there's lots of bad fusion and this ain't either.
Now it's been reissued on cd for the second time (the previous edition, from '98, is long out of print) and on vinyl as well, making it available to a new generation of improv noise rock freaks. [Vinyl? Yes, unfortunately we're out of stock on the vinyl right at the moment, but will get it back in soon, so please let us know if you want a copy in that format.] Pretty neat to hear music "like this" being made for what might have been the very first time, certainly Snyder and Thompson were "pushing the envelope" as they knew it then, advancing into territory not entirely mapped out by things they'd already heard. And even if it wasn't from '72, anyone who likes loud, full-on freakout, rhythmic skree, and droney noisy textures will be variously entertained, whether it be by the moody, mystic feedback and percussive shimmer that closes out the epic title track, or the dense rumble of "Teenage Emergency" at the end of the disc that makes us think of Sharrock playing some sort of static surf music...
Lion Productions, in association with Cantor Records (responsible for the vinyl reissue mentioned above), has done this up nicely, in a fancy Japanese-looking miniature lp style paste-on sleeve, complete with obi. Remastered from the original tapes, and packaged with a 20 page booklet with liner notes and photos. Nice! FYI, this compact disc edition also includes a previously unreleased two-minute bonus track, "Unseen, Unheard", that was left off the both the original and reissued vinyl for reasons of space (and it's not on the previous cd version either).
A few years ago, Markus Popp, in the guise of Oval, gave us something completely new and different, original and stunning. A gorgeous, fluid soundscape that betrayed its source material: scratched and skipping cds. A dreamy, droney, slippery, stuttery chunk of shimmery, underwater electronica. This was well before the laptop replaced the guitar as the instrument du jour with the now all too regrettable "anyone can play..." mantra that supposedly so liberated music. Just like with the glut of shitty punk rock bands years ago, so too came an endless series of kids with more sound programs than good ideas. But that Oval record, Diskont, remains to this day a milestone in experimental electronic music. So it was a little bit disappointing that Popp began to tread water creatively, re-hashing the sounds and ideas that on Diskont sounded so inspired, but that on subsequent releases just sounded, sort of familiar. And now, eight years later, Popp finally moves on, progresses and offers up a whole new side of his Oval sound. The key difference, and probably the most appealing new element is the addition of vocalist Eriko Toyada, whose vocals are all whispery and breathless and intimate, recorded so closely that you can hear every breath, every lip smack, every nuance. All adding to Popp's gritty, fuzzy, glitchy backdrop. Think: your favorite Bjork record dropped in the shredder, and then left to soak in a warm, tranquil pool , before being reassembled, all smeary and indistinct. So completely mesmerisingly beautiful!
We had been hearing the name So Percussion being thrown around a lot lately, but we actually hadn't actually heard their music until now. Based on their name and the fact that they are made up of young percussionists we were worried that maybe it was going to be like the audio equivalent of seeing Stomp. And while we do actually love going to see Stomp with our Mom's (ahem), we are happy to report that the music that So Percussion makes is not merely a "look at us we're making drum sounds out of everything." In fact, Amid The Noise actually pushes the percussion to a much more subtle and ambient level, having more in common with Eno and Reich as it does street musicians drumming on garbage cans or Blue Man Group. Meditative playing that recalls Tortoise at their zenith, and the most delicate and intricate moments of Aphex Twin's Druqk's. Disciplined and perfectly played yet not sterile. The second disc is a DVD of beautiful films by Jenise Treuting of Japanese street scenes set to the music of So Percussion. We're definitely happy to finally know what So Percussion are all about.
Like the best of improv musicians, Matmos have proven to be such mindful and masterful collaborators over the years. Teaming up with everyone from The Kronos Quarter to J Lesser, David Pajo to Marshal Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Wobbly to Rachel's, Terry Riley to Bjork, the list goes on and on! What's always exciting about these collaborations is that Matmos really do shed their skin and mutate into something totally different as they play off the blueprints of the folks they are collaborating with, and help bring that sound to entirely new places, stretching the bounds of outer sound possibilities. This time they're working with So Percussion, the percussive based collective whose sound exists somewhere between Steve Reich and Tortoise, but with Matmos thrown into the mix the sound becomes much more stretched out with unexpected twists, turns and nuanced vibrations. From a Penguin Cafe Orchestra vibe to postmodern gamelan rhythms, this is a record that really encapsulates what it means to be sound artists feeding off of each other. These are all musicians who you can tell are stretching way out, using their imaginations and having fun while they create something together that they wouldn't have come up with on their own. Highly recommended!
Besides having one of the best band names ever (Google it!), this Seattle trio kick up a serious din, equal parts classic grunge, angular new wave, and aggro post punk. Neo is a chaotic sonic free-for-all, with most of the songs seemingly on the verge of total collapse, delicately balancing melody and mayhem, drawing everything in FX and feedback, the guitar sounding like they're continually going in and out of tune, the vocals a wild, dramatic yarl, some songs frantic and frenetic, sounding like some lost eighties whatever-wave, while others trudge all hairy-knuckled through Flipper like muck, and still others creep and slither despondently (and at least one of those has some kind of weird robot vocals!). There's some gothiness, some gloominess, at least one track (if not more), sounds like an even more pissed off, and maybe slightly more wasted Nirvana, while most of the rest sound like some virulent strain of noisy, murky gloom pop, albeit one with stadium rock aspirations, resulting in some crazy catchiness, doused in all manner of sonic grit and grime.
This is one of those records where we loove looove love the cover and picture disc artwork... a lot more than the recording. SSMWWT are damaged sounding. So So so distorted guitar, drums and vocals -- vocals that conjure a Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O on speedballs, or dying cats screaming for their lives as they're put through a meat grinder. (No animals were harmed in this review.)
In its wall of fuzzed-out screaming distortion, the album's 11 quick tracks are either uppers or downers -- slow hungover sludge or hyper speedy meth timing. You might not be able to deal with this. If you can deal with it, you are/were probably into Wolf Eyes, Lightning Bolt, Six Finger Satellite and the like. But just look at that pretty kitty picture disc. Mmmmm...
More experimental hip hop from the Anticon collective, this time under the monicker So Called Artists. We have loved almost everything Anticon has come up with, unfortunately, So Called Artists is probably the weakest project so far. The bizarre samples
Don't know too much about these guys (this guy?) other than the fact that they create the sort of hazy mechanical looped soundscape we can't seem to get enough of. Imagine the music of Philip Jeck, Wolf Eyes, Tim Hecker, Starving Weirdos and This Heat but all stripped down and reassembled into some abstract collage of post industrial loops, gritty lo-fi dronemusic and abstract motorik krautrock abstraction.
Hard to say what exactly these guys are using as sound sources, there is some sort of metallic percussion, super processed vocals, tons of FX, layer upon layer of fuzzy grit, grimy blurs and deeprumbles, there's a drumkit in there too, lurking below the woozy fug above, but occasionally exploding in a little burst of sizzling cymbals. There's a definite grim gothic vibe too, when the noise occasionally peels back, it reveals a moody meandering sort of doom drift, cold wave, gloom pop, all tribal and haunting and hypnotic. With warm warbly organ, weird swirling production, before the record explodes again in a sprawl of clank and clatter and crunch.
The record shifts and transforms constantly, but often finds a gorgeous washed out hypnotic sound and settles in, sticking with it for long stretches, lulling the listener into an altered state, and then yanking them out and hurling them into an avalanche of crumbling distortion and fractured truncated beats, streaks of feedback and heaving swells of muted distortion.
Even at its noisiest, Born Into It manages to be weirdly pretty and super mesmerizing, but more often than not, the noise is tamped down by thick swaths of thick whirring dreamdronedrift, and wrapped around abstract skeletal rhythms.
Super cool stuff.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
For their second full-length album this San Francisco-based quintet have developed into a more sophisticated indie-pop outfit than what we heard on their earlier releases. A dreamy introspection replaces the youthful wide-eyed innocence and up beat tempos of 2010's Wind Up Wooden Hearts. As she reaches for her lower range, singer Natalia Rogovin exudes a greater maturity, and her distinctive way of drawing out each syllable only heightens the pensive mood. Part of what separates Social Studies from being some kind of Feist rip-off is they don't insult the listener's intelligence by beating them over the head with the same crescendo build-up that peaks and then just keeps pounding through to the end. Songs like "Still Life" do build in intensity, but you have to follow along through a lot of pretty melodic twists and turns before you get there. Much of this is due to the way the vocals operate as one instrument instead of a star vocalist put out in front of the other players. Rogovin's interplay with bassist Jesse Hudson and guitarist Tom Smith create an interesting call and response. The sum of the parts here definitely make a greater whole, which is why we always look forward to spending some time on Social Studies.
