The return of our favorite one man Tasmanian rain forest black metal horde, the mighty Striborg, whose damaged outsider lo-fi black buzz has held us in its thrall since the very first time we heard it years ago. Even though this is only the second Striborg release we've managed to get enough of to review and list, there have actually probably been more like a dozen full lengths from Striborg so far...
And lord knows we've tried to track down enough copies of those old releases to list, but as they are all self released on Striborg mainman Sin Nanna's own label, they've been mighty tough to get a hold of. Thankfully, he's taken to tacking on old out of print records at the tail end of new records. So here we've got the brand new full length Nefaria, coupled with his '95 demo A Tragic Journey Towards The Light. And the amazing thing is that even after all that time, and all those releases, the sound is just as lo-fi, fucked up and damaged as ever. The atmosphere is creepy and gloomy, the vocals a strangled croak swathed in reverb, the drums a stumbling thrashing mess, a dank black buzz that writhes and squirms, filthy and mysterious and so fucking awesome. There are some haunting ambient tracks too, whirring warbly synths drifting wraith like, sometimes with a lurching subtle beat buried way down in the mix, but for the most part, it's all damaged buzzing blackness, wrapped around bizarre arrangements and loads of lo-fi hiss and whir. Amidst the weirdness there are some breathtaking moments, moody and emotional and strangely haunting, like the first half of closer "Black Apparitional Void" a slowcore midtemo Burzumy buzz replete with distant keyboard melody and gorgeous minor key melodies, as lovely and sorrowful as it is buzzy and black, with bizarre muddy swells that briefly swallow up the entire song before quickly receding back into the murk, before the song lurches into a dizzying squall of buzzing guitars, processed vocals, and bizarrely recorded drums, the rest of the track going from lo-fi to even more lo-fi and back again.
But then we're only scratching the surface as far as lo-fi is concerned, cuz up next is Striborg's very first recording, A Tragic Journey Towards The Light, which is so lo-fi and so liberally sprinkled with effects, that at times it stops being black metal and becomes some weird swirling morass of black sound. The drum machine is doused in reverb, doubling and blurring, almost like some hyperspeed dub, during the super dynamic start and stop parts, the vocals and the drums are so caked in FX, that they sound like some sort of children's TV show special effects sounds, and the vocals, a garbled tongue twisting whatthefuck stream of growls and guttural yelps, the guitar a squiggly distorted streak over the churning blur beneath, so completely over the top and confusing to listen to, but so completely and impossibly catchy. This is the Striborg that ensorcelled us back in the day, and it sounds just as amazingly fucked as ever!
If black metal has a "Jandek" then Striborg might be it. Certainly, an argument can be made that black metal itself is already "outsider art" and then if that's the case, where to put Striborg? Outside the outside. So much of Striborg's eccentrically intimate, idiosyncratic output (this disc holding many fine examples, for instance at one point when it sounds like he's playing the violin in the shower) is so exquisitely wrong it's right, so inadvertently avant-garde and very much trance-inducing that of course Striborg is a big AQ fave. Until recently, though, it was easier for us to get Jandek cds than those of Striborg. But at long last the gates to Striborg's lair have swung open, and the many previously hard-to-find recordings by this Tasmanian black metal savant (as you may know, Striborg is a "band" staffed solely by the mysterious Sin-Nanna) are now readily available to us... and to you, the discriminating consumer of fucked-up black metal. Among the many Striborg discs that we for so long wanted but were unable to stock, is this one. Another essential in Striborg's damaged discography for sure. This cd combines two demos from 2002 and 2003, so it's material from pretty early on in Sin-Nanna's career of evil, though his demo-days go back as far as 1997, and these are in fact the final two (4th and 5th) demos released before he started making "proper albums" instead, although production-wise we can detect no great differences! This cd compilation of those two demos was originally released in 2003 by Striborg's own Finsternis Productions in a limited edition of 500 copies, and has now been resurrected by Displeased (along with, as we said, several other desirable Striborg artifacts).
Nocturnal Emissions consists of the title track, followed by "Despondent Cries", "Son Of The Moon", and "The Freezing Northland". The latter is interesting 'cause you'd think in Striborg's case it would be "The Freezing Southland", being so nearby to Antarctica, but it turns out that this track is a tribute to another one-man black metal cult, Norway's Ildjarn. We should also note that "The Son Of The Moon" is dedicated to Sin Nanna's baby boy, Zachariah aka Sin-Nanna junior (the name Sin-Nanna that of the god of the crescent moon in ancient Sumer, btw). This might be the first and only black metal song written by a proud father to his newborn son! In welcoming his child to "this world of tragedy, magic and sorrow", he tells him, "the stars of Aquarius is [sic] on your side".
Otherwise, Striborg's lyrical themes are entirely depressive and misanthropic, all mope-tropes matched of course by his music, the ever-present droning black buzz, a fuzzed-out spray of monochrome guitar distortion, through thick fields of which wander Striborg's special, utterly non-metroymic drum-stumble and over which he rasps his despondent cries.
The four tracks of Nyctophobia are next, "Under Black Rain", "Through The Dark Fog", "Across Thornfields", and "Into Night Moor". We'll single out "Under Black Rain" for mention, as it's composed entirely of what sounds like woozy violin improv, his jittering string-scrape punctuated by a resonating gong-blows, mixed with field recordings of drizzling rain and ominous thunderclaps... we'd be happy with just a whole disc of just that! But each track here has its unique charms, "Through Dark Fog" in particular notable for Sin-Nanna's excessively distorted vocal turn. And "Into Night Moor" is a beautiful outro of isolationist electronic ambience. It seems everything he touches turns, not to gold, but to blackened weirdness. Weird enough we assure you that you'll be giving your stereo strange looks and often rewinding to hear some choice bit of bizarreness again and again, if you share our taste in outsider black metal oddity! None more sublime than Striborg.
We'll have reviews of a couple more Striborg reissues soon (Trepidation and Spiritual Catharsis) and also look forward to a new release, the Journey Of A Misanthrope DVD...
What more can we say about Tasmanian black metal one man band Striborg that we haven't already? This is the 15th or 16th record we've reviewed by the mysterious and prolific Sin-Nanna, whose tortured doomic black buzz has remained relatively unchanged for the last 12 years. But hell why fix what ain't broke right? And nothing's broke here, or maybe EVERYTHING is broke, but that's precisely why we're still so smitten with Striborg's creepy underproduced outsider black metal. Guitars that seem to buzz, without ever actually coalescing into riffs, more often a sheet of white noise, a wall of hiss, the sound of a rainstorm or a thousand showers, the near constant buzz is one of the hallmarks of Striborg's sound, and it's what turns stumbling depressive black metal into tranced out almost blissy black dronemusic. Then there's the entropic, seemingly abstract drumming, the rhythms simply skeletal frameworks around which to erect huge undulating clouds of buzz, Sin-Nanna's beastly croak, adding a certain bit of pathos to the slow motion monochromatic crawl that is most Striborg.
This stuff is most definitely an acquired taste, but once it's acquired, it takes over, you find yourself needing more, wanting more, and wanting it to be more raw, more feral, more lo-fi, and Striborg is more than happy to oblige. Every record another fragmented yet strangely beautiful black missive, that in its own way does seem to evoke the rainforest he calls home, the sound is expansive and thick, humid even, the all encompassing buzz the sonic equivalent of unceasing rainfall, the sad organs and mournful synths like thick black clouds blotting out the sky, the tangled branches of the forest an abstract skeleton huddling beneath the whirling winds, but with every record, Sin-Nanna is still capable of surprising us, of taking his sound someplace new, but equally perplexing and fascinating. Here, it's "When The Moon And The Earth Collide Into The Sun", a caustic burst of corrosive blacknoise, blown out and abrasive, which is quickly followed by one of the prettiest and most mysterious Striborg tracks ever, the 10+ minute title track, whose background is a warm hissy bed of lo-fi buss and sizzling cymbals, the guitars mere hints of melodies, the drums, loping clumsily but dramatically though the hazy soundfield, the vocals metallic, as if sung from the bottom of a well, the music weirdly warm and melodic, sans vocals, it's almost like some insanely lo-fi slab of pop ambient short wave interference, or perhaps like listening to some moody doom pop, but with the radio station between stations. Strange, but truly wonderful, as only Striborg can be.
As we mentioned before, you either already love Striborg, in which case odds are you're probably a bit obsessed and will most definitely want this, or you can't stand it, and this will in no way change your mind, or this is your very first exposure to Striborg's mad musical genius, in which case, you might just have found lo-fi outsider black buzz nirvana. We're sort of jealous too, we can remember how exciting it is to discover something this fucked up, this gloriously idiosyncratic, this gorgeously damaged for the first time. You just might have to overhaul completely your understanding of black metal. Of metal. Of music. It's magical. And mysterious. And utterly confounding. Enjoy!
Housed in a DVD case, printed covers inside and out, with a nice oversized, full color insert filled with photos and drawings of the Tasmanian rainforest.
Black metal bands come in many varieties, and we have our favorites among everything from blackened thrash drunkards to grandiose symphonic keyboard-laden festival headliners to grim trance-y one-man-band eccentrics... particularly the latter, though, especially when we're trying to find black metal to recommend to AQ customers who aren't necessarily metalheads but who like weird weird music whatever the genre. Droning fucked up stuff that's almost more experimental than it is metal. And this (one-man) band Striborg is precisely what we like to have on hand when the subject of, "if I were to buy just one weird black metal record, what should it be?" comes up.
For the longest time, it was next to impossible to find cds by this still-obscure artist from far-off Tasmania (that's right, Tasmania!). Fortunately others besides us have recognized his peculiar genius and now the releases are (somewhat) more readily available. Which brings us to this brand new album, Solitude, and it to us, hot on the heels of Striborg's other recent full-length release, Ghostwoodlands. As with that album, here Striborg has uncapped his usual aerosol spray of buzzing guitars and wretched effected vokills. The fuzzed out, bleak black metal clatter is interspersed with long stretches of what approaches D.I.Y. 20th Century Classical electronic music spookiness! The ambient, isolationist tracks that cropped up on Ghostwoodlands are again to the fore, as is an even more droney, doomy, droomy mood. There are several exclusively "black metal" tracks (two of 'em quarter hour epics!), some of them powered by blazing drum machine beats, but even so the overall vibe of Solitude is so slooooow and doooooomy.
Drum machine? Don't worry, it sounds good, and at times, we think he really IS playing the drums. Striborg's less-than-tight timekeeping and fucked up fills have always been paradoxical highlights of his albums in our perverse estimation, but Solitude finds many ways to provide those idiosyncratic so-wrong-its-right pleasures. Tracks like "Ektoplasmic Dreams", "Doppelganger" and "The Untouched Land" are purely electronic-sounding, ominous abstract dronescapes, piercing with high-end synth-shards and soothing with somnolent textures. Elsewhere, his blurred guitars do the same, reminding us of dreamy gloom dronesters Angelic Process, a hushed guitar tone... not even a tone, more like a pure wave, a solid mass.
We mentioned that Striborg hails from pretty far south -- Tasmania. The rainforests of his island are not that distant from the icy wastes of Antarctica. But this album, Solitude, is the sound of Striborg's one-man, one-way journey even further south, falling right off the edge of this world...
What more can we say about Striborg that we haven't already? The most consistently brilliant and baffling purveyor of bizarre and ultra personal depressive black metal we know of, every record is drenched in otherworldly buzz, super evocative and atmospheric, harrowing and haunting, as gorgeous and strangely beautiful as it is black and grim. This will be about the 20th Striborg record we've reviewed and that's not nearly all of them.
But everything we've heard from Sin Nanna, the man behind Striborg, has totally hit the spot, a sound that is so unique in a genre that seems to breed sameness, Striborg is as much a soundscaper, a noise maker, a sonic alchemist, as his is a corpse painted grimlord, in fact maybe even moreso. The songs are hypnotic and repetitive and mantra like, the guitars locked into cyclical loops, wreathed in layers of texture, tape hiss, guitar buzz, wheezing synths, the drums almost an afterthought, a rhythmic skeletal system to keep the tracks from drifting off like black clouds of warm buzz. The vocals raspy and demonic, probably the most black metal element of Striborg's sound, but set amidst dreary doomy loveliness, buried beneath soaring streaks of buzz, of swirling soundscapes of lo-fi keyboards and angular twisted guitar melodies, the mood and the vibe not afterthoughts, but elements that infuse every sound, ever song, with some strange Tasmanian forest magic, which is definitely part of what sets Striborg apart from the black metal pack.
If you're like us, you can never have enough Striborg. Don't believe us? Read through the tons of other gushing reviews, and you'll maybe begin to understand why we, and lots of you, are so obsessed with this mysterious one man band. And if you've yet to take the plunge, this is as good a place as any. Needless to say, even though we did and great length, some of the most special, and uniquely twisted doom drenched atmospheric and depressive black metal you'll ever hear.
Once again, we head back into the grim black rainforests of Tasmania, to unearth more of one-man-black-metal-misanthrope Striborg's amazing back catalog, a constantly evolving and devolving soundworld of washed out buzz, chaotic black blur, and haunting dreamlike ambience. If you're already a fan, and have made it this far in Displeased's reissue campaign, odds are you're probably gonna want this one too, and if you've yet to experience the gloriously grim what-the-fuck brilliance of Striborg, then this is as good a place to start as any, in fact it might be one of the best ones to begin with as it's the most varied, and thus the most freaked out and bizarre.
Beginning with a surprisingly melodic almost poppy guitar part, 2004's Spiritual Catharsis quickly unravels into the buzzing stumbling confusional blackness that's so near and dear to our withered hearts. The core of Striborg's sound, is the ever present sheet of white noise guitars, that still sounds like a microphone placed on the floor of a shower, a constant and nearly overwhelming shhhhhooooosshhh. While behind this wash of hissy sibilance, lurk creaking shrieked vocals, and simple stumbling drums, and of course thick epic washes of grandiose keyboard. The drums flipping between punk rock pound and doomic plod, while that wall of blown out buzz remains fairly static. Totally hypnotic. At it's most straight ahead, it sounds like a way more blissy Burzum, loping and midtempo, with those haunting keyboards offering up creepy minor key melodies, but where Burzum buries those keys in the mix, Striborg shoves them right to the front, where they warble and whir and threaten to swallow up the rest of the sounds around it.
But as we mentioned before, Spiritual Catharsis is all over the map. "Glorification Of Mother Nature" is a gorgeously minimal expanse of ambient creep, sci fi synths swirling and shimmering, soft focus layers of sound shifting subtly like fog in an old crumbling graveyard, but then there's the title track, thirteen minutes long, probably the harshest and most chaotic of the bunch, the guitars whipped into a nearly Merzbowian frenzy, the effects so dense it's almost like black metal dub, the vocals careening and rippling out in all directions, the drums like a landslide of snares, the whole thing enveloped in a rippling cloak of black ambience, until part way through when the track shifts into some cinematic doom, the hiss and buzz pushed back a bit, allowing low end rumbles and whirs to play out a super intense melody, while the drums lurch and stutter, other keyboards joining the fray, drifting like soft glowing orbs against the jagged buzzy backdrop, before finally building back up into the fierce fury of the track's opening. The rest of the record constantly shifts between buzz and bliss, blast and crawl, from the minimal rumbling drone of "The Haunted Gum Trees", to the relentlessly blasting black chaos of "Misanthropic Necroforest", to the echo drenched plodding doom of "Dicksonia Antarctica" (replete with more of those dubbed out FX), to the tripped out funereal dreaminess of "Eternal Blackness Surrounds The Bushland", to the full on pounding in-the-red crush of "Black Metal Is The Forest Calling...", Spiritual Catharsis, is indeed just that, a spiritually cathartic, beautifully bizarre, darkly droning musical journey through a black forest of sound, and into the even blacker musical mind of Striborg
Re-mastered, with all new artwork, including a swank metallic silver front cover, and drawings and lyrics inside.
For once being a grim cult mystery, whose records were practically impossible to find, Striborg has turned into an actual 'band', releasing a record every year, sometimes more than one, guesting on other folks' records, touring with SUNNO))).... you think the glare of the spotlight would have gone to his head, but thankfully, the music of Striborg, aka Sin-Nanna, is as bleak and twisted and fucked up as ever. So fucked up in fact that we are well aware that Striborg is not every metalhead's cup of tea, a quick look at the reviews on the Encyclopedia Metallum website reveals that a whole lot of people don't dig it, or more accurately probably, don't get it.
But as far as we're concerned, what's not to get?! Striborg create truly evocative, lo-fi black metal, that is as idiosyncratic as it is true and grim. The production has remained the same for over a decade, if anything it's gotten progressively more low fidelity and damaged sounding, the music instead of getting tighter and more polished has wandered further and further from traditional black metal tropes, which is precisely why we love it so much. For those new to Striborg, there are 15 or so other reviews on the aQ site that go into great depth, but in brief, Striborg is Sin-Nanna, who lives in the middle of a rainforest in Tasmania, and who crafts some of the most damaged and demented and freaky black metal we've ever heard. Bands like Furze, or Necrofrost, sound like Metallica next to the madness that is Striborg. Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much, and this latest, newest Striborg might even, as impossible as it might seem, manage to outweird the preceding 15 or so releases.
Some things have remained the same, the artwork is appropriately abstract, nothing but pictures and drawings of forests, pictures and drawings of Sin-Nanna himself (including a random glamour shot on the back cover where he sort of looks like a high school goth or New Romantic!), pictures of caves, rivers, the sky and the moon, and not a whole lot else, minimal liner notes, but it's the music�
Sin-Nanna implements a new arrangement this time, still leaning toward the loooong songs, but this time they are preceded by or separated by intros and intervals, most a minute or less, haunting keyboard ambience, bird calls and the sounds of the night forest, a strange sample from some film, laughing voices, male and female, melancholy marimba melodies, Bernard Hermann style strings, a child and a woman intoning some sort of incantation, reverb soaked piano, whirring shimmering cinematic drones, mournful horns, tinkling chimes, but as creepy and abstract as those are, they don't even hold a candle to the songs.
And the first proper song on The Foreboding Silence, "A Lonely Walk In A Desolate Cold Pine Forest", really might be the best (and most fucked) Striborg song EVER. Eleven minutes long, the track begins with an impossibly buzzy riff, that literally sounds like a swarm of insects, or a million kazoos, unfurling a chromatic wall of nearly static buzz, that shifts from note to note, creating a lurching jagged melody, over which totally dizzying atonal marimbas pulse and loop, sending the whole thing into a woozy sea sick spiral, the various melodies, far from complimentary, the whole thing sounding like it's gradually growing more dissonant, more out of tune, the drums stumbling in the background, the vocal a harsh shriek, it's so off kilter that with headphones on it will make your head spin. Eventually, the marimbas drop out, leaving the track to plod along doomily, the buzzing riff like the sound of a rainstorm on a tin roof, the song shifts tempos, slipping from plod to pound and back again, eventually locking into a repetitive outro, the drums simple, the guitars locked into a two note loop, punctuated by what sounds like thunder off in the distance, which gives the effect even more of the buzzing guitars becoming the sound of rainfall.
The title track is another tweaked masterpiece, the drums locked into an almost-groove, the guitar still in full insectoid buzz mode, underpinning the spewed demonic vox, and a strange gnarled almost Greg Ginn-ish guitar overdub. The drums are LOUD, way up in the mix, shifting from stumbling blast to relentless double kick, while the guitar buzz swirls and sways and slips back and forth right along with it. The biggest surprise here, besides the opener, is the closer, "Somnambulistic Nightmares Return", a lurching chunk of slow motion doom, with some serious guitar chug, and some simple drum pound, while beneath some sort of super intense reverberating low end drone surfaces and envelops the song, while over the top, some woozy clean guitar drifts in, offering up a mournful, mildly atonal counterpoint, resulting in one of the weirdest and strangely pretty Striborg songs yet.
What else needs to be said? If you have all of the other Striborg records, odds are you're a bit obsessed like us and probably need this one too, if you've yet to take the plunge, The Foreboding Silence is definitely a great place to start, and if you get hooked, or are feeling particularly daring, we have a bunch of other Striborg releases in stock, all twisted genius, all fucked and grim and fantastic, just ask...
We figured that before the brand new record Autumnal Melancholy drops from Tasmanian black metal misanthrope Striborg (just showed up today, reviewed on the next list!), we oughta finally list the last of the reissues. So here it is, Trepidation, another damaged and deliriously freaked out, fucked up and grim grim grim slab of rain forest black metal as only Striborg can do it.
Like all of the other Striborg records, this is absolutely essential for fans of outsider black metal, and actually anyone into super challenging, confusing, weird-as-fuck sounds needs to dig into some Striborg. It rarely gets more outsider than this.
Striborg is Sin Nanna, who lives in Tasmania, supposedly sans phone or internet, communing with nature, offering up his blackened soul to the spirit of the forest. In the form of impossible buzz drenched blasts of black metal. And we talk about BUZZ all the time, but Striborg takes it to a whole other level. The guitars and riffs rendered almost dronelike, suspended in a wall of shifting crumbling fuzz, in fact wall might be off the mark, the sound isn't so much a wall, nothing so massive and foreboding, instead it's like some sort of flowing black river, churning and choppy, but blurred into something almost static. The drums sound inhuman, and probably are, a monotonous relentless beat pounding away but again, pounding connotes heaviness, and the sound here isn't really heavy, it's atmospheric more than anything. Super lo-fi, a wash of keyboards draped over the blurry buzz, the vocals are the biggest disruption, howling and shrieking, a wicked maniacal cackle, but just as often they vocals fade away leaving just that droning buzz to almost lull you into a trance.
Primitive, and raw, stumbling and chaotic, a dizzyingly confusional strain of metal cloaked in blackness and doused in drone, the guitar tone like a vacuum cleaner, the drums like cardboard boxes and trashcan lids, the arrangements convoluted and complex when they're not locked into a seemingly never ending loop. Fucked up for sure, brilliant? Without a doubt.
There are plenty of other Striborg reviews on the aQuarius site, if you want to read more about the man, the band, the sound. Needless to say, the metalheads around here consider Striborg one of our all time favorites, possibly the most freaked out and fucked up, damaged, and completely and utterly baffling of the bunch. And Trepidation definitely ranks up there with Striborg's best. Fans obviously need it if they don't already have it, and if you're new to this black metal weirdness, and were looking for a good place to start, to bravely enter the dark damaged world of Striborg, Trepidation, even heeding the title, might just be the one...
Deluxe reissue (originally released in 2005), with all new artwork, tons of photos of snow and forests and trees, all printed in black and metallic silver.
As we were waiting patiently for the new Striborg full length, Southwest Passage, we discovered ANOTHER new Striborg release, a split with a band called Claustrophobia, released on Sin Nanna of Striborg's own label Finsternis Productions, so we contacted Sin Nanna directly (the reports of his reclusiveness, living in a shack with no telephone or computer, turned out to be greatly exaggerated!) and ordered a bunch, and we're happy to report that the new Striborg material is as twisted and blackly brilliant as always.
Just when you thought Striborg couldn't get any more buzzy and fuzz drenched, along comes "Psychic Visions", a 12 minute dirge, buried completely under a sheet of hiss and whir, but where this track is different is the gorgeously creepy keyboard textures laid over the top, giving the whole track a ghostly, weirdly melodic, strangely lovely quality. Sure the drums are minimal and the vocals are an indecipherable growl, and the guitars, well, if they were riffs, they've been blurred and smeared into thick streaks of warm muted buzz, but once the whole track is wreathed in that looping shimmering ghostlike keyboard ambience, it becomes this blackened beautiful thing. The drums shift gear and the keyboards follow, the entire song seems to waver in communion, before slipping back into the initial opening dirge.
After a brief instrumental drone interlude, Sin Nanna offers up another bizarre blast, the drums WAY up in the mix this time, the same sheet of hiss, and again the whirling ghostly keyboards, but this time, the sound is much more atonal, tense and jagged, an almost suspense full horror movie feel, a strange but sonically sound balance for the strange beauty of the first track.
Sin Nanna seems to have found a kindred spirit in a person called Raped Corpse, who is behind the band Claustrophobia. From China we think, regardless, the two groups definitely share sonic sensibilities, the same hiss/fuzz drenched ambience, stumbling drumming, anguished vocals, strange keyboards, the tracks play out the same almost, long song, short interlude, slightly less long song. But Claustrophobia's opener is much more rocking, with some wild chaotic drumming, and over the top keyboards, LOUD drums, the second track, the nearly nine minute closer is a doozy, almost like a grim blackened Goblin, so creepy and emotional and moody and haunting, the melodies minor key, the keyboards evoking such dread, definitely want to hear more from this guy.
If you're in the market for some mysterious and creepy, buzz drenched melancholic blackness, both Striborg and Claustrophobia should do it for you.
Now, can't wait for Southwest Passage...
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Each one hand numbered...
Outsider black metal aficionados already know they need this, a brand new single from Tasmanian BM weirdo Striborg, but the fact that it's a split with another mysterious black outfit we've never heard of, Scurshahor, and that the sound in many ways is weird enough (and not even really metal), should cause this to appeal to all regular old lovers of weird music.�
Starting with the song titles, we're not sure there's ever been a collection of songs that sounds more like they were named using the age old adjective / noun notebook, with which many of your favorite bands were probably named. Check it out: "Psychedelic Nightmare", "Syncopated Pandemonium" and "Malicious Resplendence". Could be killer band names all of them. But here, they also suit the tripped out dubby blackness found within. Dubby? Yep, you read that right. Striborg offers up two tracks, the first beginning with haunting, mournful melancholic guitars, before being swallowed whole by a blown out primitive blast of effects drenched blackness, the most noticeable thing being the vocals, doused in delay and distortion and reverb, the howls and anguished cries sent careening King Tubby style into the void. The second track ranks up there with the weirdest and most experimental stuff Striborg has ever done, a buzzing backdrop of near static drone-riffing, the guitars way off in the distance, swelling and swooping, and the vocals over the top, again, definitely dubbed out, and adding a whole 'nother chaotic tripped out layer to the already damaged black sounds.�
The flipside, from a band called Scurshahor (who we're tempted to suspect is in fact Oren Ambarchi) is like a bassier, more low end more static and drone-y Striborg, with similarly dubbed out vocals, leading us to believe that maybe both were recorded at the same time and in the same studio? Either way, Scurshahor sound like a more black metal SUNNO))) (even more than Black One), the riffing a glacial blur crafted from amp buzz and low end drone, chaotic metallic percussion here and there, and of course the vocals, a swirling distorted reverbed dubbed out wraith like rasp. Awesome.�
Incredibly thick vinyl, housed in a super striking, ultra heavy deluxe sleeve. And probably limited as all get out...
It's been a while since we've heard from Tasmanian one man black metal band Striborg. There was a time, that nary a list would go by without a new release, featuring that distinctive Striborg sound, plodding, miserable blackness doused in sheets of distortion and buzz that were so thick and hissy, they almost sounded like field recordings of rain on steel rooftops.
Ostensibly this is a split, between Striborg, and a band called Veil Of Darkness, who we had never heard before, but who in fact, just so happens to be Sin-Nanna as well, Mr. Striborg himself. Strange. Both Halves of this split were recorded a while ago, 1997-2000, and in fact the Striborg stuff predates the VoD stuff, so not sure what was going on. What we do know, is that everything we love about Striborg is in full effect here, maybe even moreso, the opening track is super distorted, the sound crumbling and blackened, the buzz so thick and blown out, that the riffs are barely discernible, after a brief bit of doomic plod, the sound lurches into a dense frenzied blast, all blurred and murky, the drums a machinelike pound, the vokills a sinister croak, and minus the vocals, the music is locked and looped into a trancelike blur that doesn't let up for the rest of the song. And so it goes, from brittle blasting blackness, to murky ambient drift, the sound super lo-fi, raw and grim, but infused with a seriously sinister vibe, especially on the droned out ambient tracks, with Sin-Nanna growling over thick churning drones, and weird bits of random electronics, hiss and static, before finishing off with a brief blast of start and stop black buzz, with maybe the weirdest production of the bunch, the vocals heavily reverbed, almost dubby, and the drums, the snare sounds like a video game bleep, and the cymbals sound like old tin buckets, but those weird sounds are woven into some blurry murky blasts and a closing blast of atonal organ buzz. Weird and so cool.
So how does Striborg's Veil Of Darkness alter ego stack up? Pretty well in fact, although now we have an idea why Sin-Nanna required a different musical vehicle, as VoD is all ambient, laced with stretches of power electronics, and black buzz. Creepy and otherwordly, darkly droney, disembodied voices, swirling effects, tinkling melodies, sheets of static and thick swirls of buzz, wheezing keyboards, chanted monklike vox, and finally on the closer "Pure Black Energy", some seriously intense pure black sonic energy, an ultra distorted buzzscape constructed from what sounds like super processed drum machines, all chopped up and doused in effects and cranked WAY into the red, for a strange crunchy, crumbling bit of rhythmic weirdness, that sounds almost like it should be on a Will Over Matter record. Killer stuff, from both 'bands'.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
Another one of those records that barely needs a review. What self respecting black metaller would see the words Xasthur and Striborg on the same record and not instinctively reach for their wallet? We can only speak for the black metal nerds here, but we have been jonesing for this disc since we first hear rumor of it's impending release ages ago. And if just the mere fact that these two mighty black metal entities are doing musical battle on separate sides of the same 7" isn't enough, the fact that both tracks are fucked and amazing should be.�
Striborg is in fine form as always, lo-fi, damaged, demented, noisy, stumbling, confusing, but oh so glorious. A plodding black dirge, vacuum cleaner guitar, practice space drums, blast beats that sound like they're being played on a cardboard box drum kit, hissy bursts of muted blackness, a bizarre black journey through the damaged musical psyche of Sin Nanna, ending in a killer, almost groovy, lurching dirgey outro.�
Xasthur seems to be rising to Striborg's 'how lo-fi-can-you-go' challenge, pushing his sound so far down in the murk, it ends up sounding like a transistor radio playing at the bottom of a mud puddle. Probably the murkiest most lo-fi recording yet from Malefic, but if anything, it only serves to make the sound more evocative, more mysterious, and more strangely pretty. Those weeping guitars, mournful melodies, drums that sound like they were recorded from a million miles away, the whole thing is very dark and dim and forlorn, the perfect sonic foil to Striborg's weirdo black damage. And if we even need to tall you how essential this is, you need to march right down here and turn in your black metal credentials.�
We're one of the only places selling this thing besides the label, and they are flying out of here, sure to be gone in no time, so grab one while you can.
Pressed on clear vinyl, LIMITED TO 800 COPIES!!!
If we take the album's title literally we'd say that Stricken City knows effervescently perky folks as well as despairing and dour ones. Perhaps a few more of the latter. While we have nothing against their more decidedly downcast numbers, we think the band should be spending more time with the former because they really shine brightest when they leap wholeheartedly into a buoyant rollicking pop romp. They most certainly do so on tunes such as "Small Things", "Five Metres Apart", "P.S." and the album's groovy second to last song "Pull The House Down" which reminded us a bit of Les Rita Mitsouko. Just try to prevent your head from bouncin' and your toe from tappin' along to these tunes. Trust us, it's pretty darn difficult! Lead singer Rebekah Raa's varied vocal delivery also draws easy comparisons to the gasping urgent swoop of Sugarcubes era Bjork as well as the girlish coo of The Sundays' Harriet Wheeler. Sweet and a bit coy, but not cloying. Stricken City's overall sound is imbued with a warm fuzzy affection for late '80s and early '90s indie pop a la Sugarcubes, Sundays, Bow Wow Wow, Velocity Girl, and Tsunami, but it just as cozily slips in nicely alongside current female forces such as Tegan And Sara and Metric. A terrific debut!
One of two new releases from the Time Released Sound label this week. This one from a woman who calls herself Strie, and who is rumored to have been a big name in European classical music, only to shun the spotlight and head for the countryside to live in isolation. True or not, it makes for a good story, and listening to Strie, it's certainly easy to imagine these haunting sounds being born of a European classical tradition. Haunting and cinematic, brooding and expansive, dark soaring strings, fluttering woodwinds, delicate piano, ethereal female vocals, all laced with strange bits of industrial clatter, little bits of mysterious glitch, the sounds here are moving and emotional and timeless, soundtracky for sure, but not just filmic, these tracks have a depth and dark energy, that seem to connect with the human spirit, a sonic representation of lost loves and forgotten memories, mournful strings, garbled electronics, only give these sounds a modern vibe that further their timelessness, and position them as modern sound, while at the same time retaining the traditions and the music that came before, the label mentions Gorecki and Arvo Part, which we definitely here as well, fans of groups like Godspeed You Black Emperor too will love this. Epic, mysterious and majestic, maybe our favorite release on Time Released Sound so far!
As with all the TRS releases, there are two different versions, the normal less limited (and less expensive) version, which comes in a handsome digipak, and the super special, ultra fancy and pricey DELUXE version, limited to just 100 copies, which in this case, takes that digipak, and houses it in a black double envelope, hand stamped, inside, two vellum sleeves, in one the digipak, the sleeve hand stamped, in the other a set of three 4"x6" prints, as well as a 4"x6" unassembled jigsaw puzzle. The limited version is already sold out at the label and OUT OF PRINT. We have about 5 copies of it and then it's gone for good.
One of two new releases from the Time Released Sound label this week. This one from a woman who calls herself Strie, and who is rumored to have been a big name in European classical music, only to shun the spotlight and head for the countryside to live in isolation. True or not, it makes for a good story, and listening to Strie, it's certainly easy to imagine these haunting sounds being born of a European classical tradition. Haunting and cinematic, brooding and expansive, dark soaring strings, fluttering woodwinds, delicate piano, ethereal female vocals, all laced with strange bits of industrial clatter, little bits of mysterious glitch, the sounds here are moving and emotional and timeless, soundtracky for sure, but not just filmic, these tracks have a depth and dark energy, that seem to connect with the human spirit, a sonic representation of lost loves and forgotten memories, mournful strings, garbled electronics, only give these sounds a modern vibe that further their timelessness, and position them as modern sound, while at the same time retaining the traditions and the music that came before, the label mentions Gorecki and Arvo Part, which we definitely here as well, fans of groups like Godspeed You Black Emperor too will love this. Epic, mysterious and majestic, maybe our favorite release on Time Released Sound so far!
As with all the TRS releases, there are two different versions, the normal less limited (and less expensive) version, which comes in a handsome digipak, and the super special, ultra fancy and pricey DELUXE version, limited to just 100 copies, which in this case, takes that digipak, and houses it in a black double envelope, hand stamped, inside, two vellum sleeves, in one the digipak, the sleeve hand stamped, in the other a set of three 4"x6" prints, as well as a 4"x6" unassembled jigsaw puzzle. The limited version is already sold out at the label and OUT OF PRINT. We have about 5 copies of it and then it's gone for good.
We first discovered these Austrian noise rock weirdos via a clip on YouTube of the band covering Klaus Nomi, and nailing it, right down to the crazy operatic vocals. And while those operatic vocals don't show up here, the band is as weird, and gleefully noisy as can be. In fact, the first thing we thought when we heard these guys, was that it must be one of Jussi from Circle's bands. It has the same sort of purity, not necessarily TRYING to be weird, but somehow ending up impossibly strange, and sounding literally like nothing else. They'd likely be right at home on the now defunct Bad Vugum label too. Shit, come to think of it, if we didn't know better we would have assumed these guys were Finnish. They're not, but they are fucked up, and amazing.
The sound is rhythmic and angular, the sound slipping easily from jagged lope, to lushly layered majesty, the vocals an almost cartoonish croon, some tracks sounding like some lost Queen track, but filtered through some broken alien technology, others like the Striggles could be some strange seventies new/no wave band, like a more fucked up Devo. Some of the track are funky too, but not regular funky, more sort of damaged funky, with sounds dissolving into tangled buzzes and glitches, wah guitars churning away behind fields of squeak and skree, sometimes the sound blossoming into some weird percussion heavy freakout. Occasionally, the sound is like UK pop geniuses the Cardiacs crossed with vintage Funkadelic, if that makes any sense. And it doesn't. But that's why it's so good.
The Striggles are one of those bands that are impossible to describe without going into specific detail on every song, cuz they seem to have no regard for style or genre, woozy Prince like falsetto over smoldering slow burn funk, becomes a druggy Ween like pop, before building into a super distorted almost doomy dirge, and that's just ONE song. There's home brewed bedroom electro, full on metallic crush, shuffling jazziness, weird sped up vocals, some skronk here and there, a bit of forest folk, hushed and fluttery, some Bill Orcutt like guitar deconstructions that sound almost like a skeletal Slint, some pulsing piano driven minimal techno, some confusing lo-fi campfire jamming, with slowed down vox, and finally, some epic space rock, that sounds like something on Rocket Records or Agitated, spacced out hypno-kraut jammage that looks to Hawkwind before one final burst of matched out jazz-prog-noise.
Holy fuck. We love this band. Andee loved them so much that he ordered every single thing he could track down (we have a few of those other releases, all totally recommended, just ask!). Odds are if you dig damaged, sonic weirdness, love labels like Ektro and Bad Vugum, enjoy dizzying experimentation, and deft mastery of all pop and metal and noise and jazz, and an unlikely way with hooks and somgsmithery, not to mention texture and arrangements, and obviously if you love other oddities on the Rock Is Hell label, then this is most likely your cup of HEAVILY spiked sonic tea!
Again, Rock Is Hell go all out, thick black vinyl, heavy full color jackets, a download code, and maybe coolest of all, this includes a little figure/figurine that comes its own box, of the strange bodiless, lion faced, arm-legged beastie on the cover!!!
Classic Slayer songs like "Dead Skin Mask", "South Of Heaven" and "War Ensemble" arranged for violins, viola, cellos and a bit of electric cello (hey is that cheating?)!!? Yep, high concept title here, pretty self-explanatory really. Apparently there's a String Quartet Tribute to just about every popular recording artist EVER -- for instance there's ones for Tori Amos, Fleetwood Mac, Nine Inch Nails, The Smiths... Andee's real partial to the String Quartet Tribute to Tool. Maybe we'll get to listing that one day, but we just couldn't help ourselves when we saw this Slayer one was released. After all, we're big fans of the Finnish all-cello band Apocalpytica, who've made their name covering Metallica and Sepultura. Byram figures that these guys doing the Slayer tribute are even better players than Apocalyptica. It's pretty cool. We thought that the violence and speed of Slayer might reduce their instruments to sawdust but they make the music their own, being metal it's quasi-classical anyway and comes off sounding nice and dark here, the speed adding a bit of Carl Stalling cartoon music hyperactivity. Neato. And there's a pretty cool bonus original done in the strings-meet-Slayer style as well, just to prove that these guys can write as well as play and arrange. Only real disappointment: "Raining Blood" doesn't get covered.
You can't help but bow to the Soft Commands of Mr. Ken Stringfellow (of the beloved AQ fave Seattle pop band Posies). This new album is so much more introspective and much less exuberant than his past Posie and solo works. Soft Commands incorporates some very obvious Beach Boys-isms (such as the high chorus of high male backing vocals) as well as some uncharacteristic Tony Bennett-esque 'belting' out of some of the vocals which were somewhat startling the first time around (check out "When U Find Someone"). But the more we listen to this, the more it hits our pop soft spot, left decidedly vacant with the demise of the Posies who while capable of rocking with the best of them, had a seriously deft hand with the moody introspective pop. Soft Commands is centered around Stringfellow's lush piano driven pop ballads and his gorgeous vocals, which obviously remind us of the Posies (and made us decide that Stringfellow was indeed our favorite voice in the Posies). Stringfellow gets help from his musical pals Bill Rieflin (drums) and vocalist Sarah Shannon (Velocity Girl) in recording what has turned out to be his best record since the good ol' Posies days!
Ex-Posies (R.I.P.) guy gets a lot weirder with this odd new solo record, but also remains true to the pop that the Posies did so well.
Ok, look. Drone records are hard to review. They're drones. Some are better than others (dronier?) but what do you say to make that case? Especially when, in trying to do so, your mind is being lulled and numbed and otherwise not wanting to think and type thoughts. You want to join with the drone, not describe and analyze it. So, if we say that this collaboration between Strings of Consciousness and Angel is a damn good drone record, then maybe you should just take our word for it, whaddya say? Or let the glowing green, desolate atmospheric artwork of Seldon Hunt, in which this is housed, convince you. Or the folks involved - Angel, who have other albums we've recommended, is in part the project of Ilpo Vaisanen of Pan Sonic, while the experimental ensemble Strings Of Consciousness includes French laptopper Philippe Petit who runs the Bip-Hop label (not to be confused with the insane tightrope walking Philippe Petit from the documentary Man On A Wire!).
But of course you want further details. Well... there's two tracks here. Long ones, of course. 22:03 and 18:41. The first track is the more spacious, slowly shimmering drone piece, featuring the cello of Iceland's Hildur Gudnadottir, along with other strings - harp, double bass, guitars... plus harmonium, accordion, and the added abstraction of electronics, effects, and oscillators. Gentle rhythms manifest, and melodies seep in. It builds into an ominous physical presence, the volume increasing, buzzing smoothly like a swarm of non-so-angry bees before the end. Quite glorious.
The second track seems as layered and organic, but more intimate. Instead of chamber strings, the "acoustic" element is limited to accordion and resonating Tibetan bowls. Along with guitars... and again plenty of electronics and effects. More "crinkly" and clanky than the first track, with mysterious rattle and rustle amidst a mix of soothing electronic washes and rather more corroded-sounding digitalized drones. But like we said, we're to busy being mesmerized by this music to really break it all down for you. We just know, we like it!
Recommended, either on cd, released domestically by Important (which allows for uninterrupted drone consumption), or on vinyl, an import on the Conspiracy label (which of course requires the listener to assist in flipping from one side to the next).
- MPEG stream: #1
- MPEG stream: #2
Oakland's own Strip Mall Seizures spew forth a thrashing, pounding, and super noisy record on excellent San Francisco imprint, True Panther Sounds. No English is a cacophonous, damaged and ultimately danceable record for the people that like their keyboards turned WAY UP! Hella good.
We first got hip to the airy and sensual soulful voice of Sylvia Striplin through the Eighties Ladies group she was a part of, masterminded by Roy Ayers. That great disco album was reissued earlier this year on Universal Sound (an offshoot of Soul Jazz) and now they hit us with her one solo outing, also arranged and produced by Roy Ayers. The album is a slab of rare groove lovers delights, as both Ayers' seamless touch at bringing a lush vibe to disco and boogie grooves and Striplin's free flowing infectious voice, make for songs that transport you into a wind in your hair, arms in the air, sultry and wholly satisfying smooth groove.
"You Can't Turn Me Away" will excite all Erykah Badu fans as Badu lifts/samples/covers the original on her latest album, a track that's also been sampled by hip-hop artists like Notorious B.I.G. And damn it's a song ahead of its time, while still totally being in its own time and magical place. Every time we get to that song we literally repeat it at least three times in a row before we move on, it's that damn good! Luckily that's not the only gem here, tracks like "Look Towards The Sky", "Give Me Your Love", and "Searchin'" will give any soulful disco lover so much to dig. Somewhere between the sassy nature of Gwen Guthrie and the soulful vibrations of Minnie Ripperton, this is an album that deserves this new fresh moment in time. So hot!
2002 will be remembered for many things, one of them being the long-awaited second coming of San Francisco Mission District rocker 'zine STROKER, last heard from, like, three years ago. All heavy, all metal, and kinda ironic but that's the way we do things here in the Mission. The first issue featured reviews of only Scorpions albums, this time all the reviews are of the Metallica back catalog, including an appreciation of "Master Of Puppets" by our own Andee Connors! Let's find a juicy quote: "...I learned to play drums by listening to MoP on headphones and desperately playing along. I drove around with feathered hair in my first car, a Mustang, blasting Master Of Puppets. I'm pretty sure my first metal girlfriend and I had sex to Master of Puppets. And if we didn't, we sure should have." Metal girlfriend? (I think Allan's just jealous cuz he never had a metal girlfriend - Andee) Anyway, you have to buy the 'zine if you want to read the rest. The other Metallica reviews are quite entertaining & informative too. Like any good music zine (and this is one) you'll also find a bunch of band interviews, generally with some of the scuzziest metal throwbacks to have tread the boards at Lucifer's Hammer shows these past few years: The Mighty Thor, Raging Slab, Bloodhag, Hammers of Misfortune, and Electric Wizard. Oh, and Stroker also gets up close and personal with genuine rock star Kirk Hammett of Metallica. There's some juicy tidbits in there too. Rad rockin' readin'.
Feels like the boys are going through the motions big time on this one.....
Much like you, we're never really concerned with what's being hyped or billed "the next big thing" or ridiculous things like the "savior of rock n roll" but we also don't write something off just because it's been churned through the hype machine...in the end if the music is good that's all that matters. The Strokes are a good rock band...nothing less nothing more. AQ'rs have often been pretty split on the band and it's easy to see why people can get upset and frustrated when a band gets so much attention and press when others often more unique and interesting do not. While the last two records pretty much stuck to a similar sound and strategy this one does find them branching out... a bit. The opening moments of the record immediately bring to mind a Ric Ocasek/Cars sensation, "Ask Me Anything" even shows them getting a little imaginative in the studio, but ultimately The Strokes are good at being a fun listen. Their lyrics will never be confused for being profound and their songs never mistaken for wholly original, but when it comes to making catchy rock songs that get stuck in your head they do the trick very well.
Still can't figure out what all the fuss and hype is about. If you haven't heard, The Strokes are the new big thing out of New York City (um, I guess this is how the hype machine operates, whoops). Famed UK label Rough Trade managed to get this on the charts in England, selling a gazillion copies of their single. The full-length comes out domestically in September, but here's a
First came the drooling adulatory reviews from music writers, then the inevitable backlash from the few freethinking music critics who were all "what's the big deal?" I'm not quite sure where we are right now in the chronology of The Strokes hype timeline. But who cares -- we all just wanna know what it sounds like, right?
The Strokes play decent, even pretty likable, indie-sounding rock with scratchy-radio-style vocals put thru a distortion pedal (a la Jon Spencer), jangly guitar similar to old REM or the Soft Boys, and a general tone that ranges from the bouncy desperation of "Lust for Life"-era Iggy Pop and the Pixies, to the perfectly-crafted pop of, say, Spoon or the Pastels. Rock critics with something to prove are falling all over themselves claiming that the Strokes sound like the Velvet Underground, but for me that only comes thru in the drummer's defiantly simple rhythms and the singer's nasal delivery, which would be commendably like Lou Reed's except for this annoying end-of-lyric breath-y thing he does far too often, like Christina Aguilera (speaking of which! see Aguilera Strokes remix here: http://www.morewebspace.fsnet.co.uk/remix.mp3, [thanks, Mark]).
So, the AQ verdict on the Strokes is *eh*, it's pretty okay, a lot of folks will find it pleasantly accessible and fun. Hey, we'd still recommend the last Spoon record over the Strokes, but you could do a lot worse. Note: we are currently stocking the import version of this album, thinking that for a couple bucks more than the domestic price you might prefer having the original cover and the song "NYC Cops" which was removed from the US version.
How do you spell 'lame'? I'll tell ya... This is The Strokes third outrageously priced cd single, yep, that's right just one song - the current HOT single which actually is a pretty catchy romp, but unfortunately has already been sooo overplayed everywhere
The Strokes, love 'em or hate 'em, that seems to be the choice. They've created some divisions here at Aquarius, that's for sure. The Strokes likers here will tell you that hey, Room On Fire is a lot like The Strokes mega debut album Is This It, that is, great. Or at least, a decent pop rock record with a totally acceptable retro flair and some killer singles. But others here disagree, so we'll let them have their say:
If you're seeking a challenging listen, you won't be finding it in the new Strokes album... but then again, who really thought they would anyways?! Fans are gonna scoop this up regardless of what is said about it, but whether or not the music on this album will win them many new fans is open to question. Very basic chord progressions are played out in very simple strumming patterns by the two guitarists while Julian Casablanca sings along in his shrug'n'slouch of a voice. The first single "12:51" feature an example of the most inane singing style... the I-am-going-to-sing-exactly-the-same-melody-as-the-guitar-and-keyboards-over-and-over-and-over kind. They've proven themselves to be a band who often sound bored, but aren't necessarily boring, however Room On Fire still comes off seeming uninspired and lackluster.
More lost '70s psychedelic pop... from Malaysia!! 1973's "Waiting Is" album by The Strollers is a blend of uptempo R&B inflected groovers and also melancholic, mellow pop-psych. "You're Gonna Make It" sounds like Blood Sweat & Tears, with a honkin' horn section... "Bus Ride" is more of an heavy organ jam... "Children" is one of the haunted ballads... "Do What You Gotta Do" is a smoking prog-funk breakdown... yep all sorts of sounds of the era are ably essayed here, though The Strollers amble in maybe a few years behind the times as you might expect from folks so far from the Western entertainment complex, so this is more '69 than '73 sounding, whatever that means to you. It's sung in English, and more commercial sounding than freaky, really. But certainly if you liked fellow Malaysian psych-popsters Truck's recent reissue you might want to check this out too.
Another fantastic, archival synth oddity rescued from the abyss by Oakland tape label Sanity Muffin, who on the last list, brought us two fantastic early eighties releases of kosmische synthscapery and darkly propulsive kraut-age psychedelia from Ron Berry, and this time around it's a lost lp from 1982 from a woman named Anna Pauline Strom, who hailed from right here in San Francisco. Blind and obese, Strom struggled greatly with her weight and sightlessness, until one day her doting husband purchased her an electric organ, with which the untrained Strom began to create incredible, beautiful, and relaxing sounds. Sounds that helped her transcend her physical form, to reach higher planes of existence, to eventually become the "Trans-Millenia Consort"!
From the original liner notes (reprinted in the cassette's J-Card: "I consider myself the "Trans-Millenia Consort", by which title I wish to be known. This to me is a personal declaration that I have been in previous lives, that I am in this life, and that I shall in future lives be a musical consort to time."
Strom goes on: "My music is a timeless entity, clothed in the mists of prehistory, beautifully sensitive to the tortured and joyous emotions of the present, rich and voluptuously full of the glory and anguish of future worlds. And so, as the "Trans-Millenia Consort", the living incarnation of this all-embracing entity of music, I endeavor through music to delve into all time spaces to tap resources of knowledge and power as ancient as the Universe and as young as unborn worlds, in the hope that I may bring a measure of peace and joy to emotional, spiritual, material and physical complexity that is humankind."
While it's unclear if her music did in fact impact humankind on such a massive scale, it most certainly did wonders for her personally, allowing her to find peace in the present, and to modern listeners, it's easy to get lost in her lush, lullaby-like synthscapes, simple lilting melodies, subtle sound effects (like the bathtub water splashes on the first track, the simulated animal sounds on the second), the arrangements often sounding like electric harps, fields of ethereal strums, dreamy and soft focus, blooping, bleeping pizzicato melodies, stretched out over the occasional weird sort-of groovy rhythm, Casio style handclap driven primitive drum machine beats, wreathed in prismatic swirls of blurred synth shimmer, all very very new age-y of course, very soundtracky and cinematic, like the music for old educational filmstrips, easy to imagine this having found it's way onto UK weirdo reissue label Trunk, had this been from some obscure British TV show. The new age blossoms into some serious kosmische drift here and there, the whole of Strom's sound though with a serious primitive, home brewed, outsider vibe. Apparently, Strom's quick mastery of that first organ, convinced her husband to create/invent/purchase new instruments and effects and gizmos for her to explore and experiment with, all of which she quickly mastered and wove into these dreamily drifty outsider new age bliss out soundscapes.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Each one hand numbered, with the original album's liner notes included inside the J-card!
Members of Norwegian jazz/electronic outfits Supersilent (keyboardist Stale Storlokken) and Food (percussionist Thomas Stronen) collaborate in this duo, making their Rune Grammofon debut with Humcrush. Being fans of both Food and Supersilent (especially!) we were interested to hear this...also most Rune Grammofon stuff is pretty good. And this is! Improvised live in the recording studio but well and truly sounding like weird, tuneful 'songs', this album reminds us a bit of the Shaking Ray Levis, or maybe even a free improv version of Sagor and Swing, if you know either of them. The ramshackle rhythmic clatter of drums, the glitchy hiss and buzz of electronics, and the quirky synth tones combine quite temptingly to our ears. Not to many other 'improv' records boast cuts like "Marked East" that we want to hit repeat on right after they're over. From bright and bouncy (like that track) to moody and mysterious, Humcrush is an enjoyable ride.
Squiggles of electronics and wine-glass clinks bubble up to tickle your ears on Pohlitz, a solo project from Norwegian fusion band Food's drummer Thomas Stronen, whom you may also know from the Humcrush disc he recorded (also for Rune Grammofon) as a duo with Supersilent's Stale Storlokken. But here it really is Stronen strictly solo, a minimalist rhythmic instrumental soundscape of percussion and electronics. Few details are given in the typically handsome and colourful Kim Hiorthoy designed digipackaging, though we are relieved to read that Stronen plays only "beatable items" and thus no NON-beatable items were so abused! From the quiet and restrained sound of most of this there probably wasn't much danger to non-beatable items, anyway. Relaxing, moody, hypnotic pinks and plonks and pulses populate Pohlitz's eight tracks, all recorded live with no overdubs or pre-programming. You have to really listen, but it's impressive, moreso than similar stuff conjured up by laptop jockeys. Very pretty, and chimingly charming.
Latest disc from these Italian gloom rockers, the long running solo project of Claudio from aQ black metal faves Frostmoon Eclipse, but unlike the black buzz of FME, Stroszek traffic in something more dramatic and epic, subtle and subdued, with a sound hewing closer to Katatonia, or late period My Dying Bride, big riffs, huge moody melodies, lush arrangements, hushed almost whispered vox.
Slow and brooding, the songs are gradual smoldering builds, often exploding into a churning crunchy chorus, only to slip right back into some dour bass driven doom pop.
Life Failures Made Music is actually a lot heavier in parts than past Stroszek releases, making the Katatonia comparison even more apt, if you can imagine the same sort of bombast, but stripped of its dramatic vocals, which makes these songs sound so much more intimate and personal, still well produced, and lush, but the strange barely there vocals make it seem somehow less commercial, less accessible. And the songs themselves are darkly gorgeous, repetitive and cyclical, with super catchy melodies, and some really nice guitar playing, and super solid drumming. Definitely not cult or grim or even all that heavy, but it certainly hits the spot if you're looking for something moody and morose and a bit metal.
Metal bands gone acoustic, tend to be pretty 'blah' affairs, especially in black metal. Simple strumming often reveals that minus the wash of buzz and the blasting drums, black metal doesn't hold up very well, especially when pared down to -just- acoustic guitar. So we were a bit wary when we heard about this 'acoustic' side project from Claudio of Frostmoon Eclipse (who we love BTW), but we were knocked for a loop, as this isn't really acoustic, and beyond that, it's a gorgeously creepy, weird and dark, grim ROCK record. Shades of Opeth for sure, but also Angels Of Light, Sixteen Horsepower, Katatonia and the like. The acoustic guitar is central to the sound, but there are huge cascading distorted stretches, the drums are massive and dense, crushing and complex, the vocals are a whispery croon, the whole thing so moody and minor key. Each track a slow build from mathy folky post rock to bombastic dramatic epic, the melodies so perfect and catchy, even in the heavier parts, the acoustic guitar surfaces in dense little tangles, over a tribal drum pattern, a complex sonic interplay that often erupts into super emotional swells, with the lead guitar pealing off gorgeous guitar lines, the whole band whipped into a frenzy before settling back down into a dark strummed meander.
The more we listen to this, the more it definitely sounds like a more post rock Katatonia. That sort of super dramatic bombast, the super catchy, strangely sad and haunting melodies, but the metal here is dialed way back, minus a few end of song blow outs, most of the record is spent darkly brooding, the sound gorgeously melancholy, a mournful drift that wouldn't be at all out of place on your shelf between Red House Painters, Woven Hand, Katatonia, Kiss The Anus, Crippled Black Phoenix, Blood And Time, Jeffrey Luck Lucas and Earth.
Volume eight in the ongoing HP Lovecraft 3"cd-r series, each a unique tribute to the writer and his works, past installments included discs from Caina, Brown Jenkins, Sapthuran, Smohalla, Frostmoon Eclipse, LVTHN and Harvist, all of them WAY out of print, since each one is limited to a mere 100 copies. Out of each batch of 100 we get 20 copies, so by now you should know exactly what that means...
Stroszek is the solo project of Claudio of Frostmoon Eclipse, and is, wait for it, ALL ACOUSTIC. Yeah, we know, we're very cautious when it comes to acoustic solo folky projects from grim black metallers, but as we discussed at length in the review of the most recent Stroszek full length, Songs For Remorse, which itself wasn't strictly acoustic, somehow even in Frostmoon, this guy has such a way with melody and arrangement, that even without distortion or blast beats or drums at all, he's able to conjure up dark spirits, evoke dreamlike memories and call forth all manner of ancient mystery. But this, this is definitely not even remotely black metal, instead, this is some gorgeous dark acoustic folk, solo acoustic guitar, and nothing else,moody and brooding, minor key and melancholic, a little bit Appalachia, but more simple and stripped down, no furious flurries of notes or slippery slide, this is all about melody and ambience, these skeletal minimal acoustic guitarscapes are delicate and dark and so lovely. There are vocals, but they are nearly whispered and only surface occasionally. leaving the guitar to unfurl crystalline notes and gently line them up into shimmery melodies, the whole thing darkly intimate, and really quite beautiful.
Metal fans may want this to round out the series, but only the most open minded metalhead will dig this, instead, we'd recommend this to fans of free folk and dark folk other delicate six stringery, Six Organs Of Admittance, Steven R. Smith, Ilyas Ahmed, James Blackshaw, Jack Rose, that sort of thing.
Again, LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES. We got only TWENTY! Packaged in a normal slimline cd case, with sepia toned covers, and a sepia printed cardstock insert with a photo and a brief biography of Lovecraft.
By now, we probably don't need to mention how much we love the turntable as instrument. And to that end, how much we love the sounds of damaged vinyl, or modified turntables, the hiss and skipping and pops and crackles and loops... Or how much we love Jeck and Tetreault and Yoshihide and Bastien and Brumit and Gum and Loop Orchestra and Marclay and anyone who ever smashed up or scraped up their records and then played them anyway, and maybe did that with two turntables or three or a hundred, creating whole new wonderful pieces of music out of misused and abused players and scratched and screwed up fragments of other folks' music. So when we discovered Strotter, aka Swiss turntablist Christoph Hess, we were already sold. Here's an older gentleman, who adds pieces of metal, and elastic bands, and extra needles and multiple tone arms to his turntables. And then uses old records and these customized turntable to create gorgeously hypnotic looped minimal soundscapes. It was only a matter of time before he decided to fuck with the actual pressing process as well. Thus we have two new vinyl only releases, an etched 12" and a super deluxe 7".
From the same label that brought us the beautifully packaged and amazing sounding Aluk Todolo 7" comes a brand new 7" from Hess and hiss Strotter project. Two tracks on each side, the outer track plays normally, outside to in, but the inside track plays backwards from inside to out, and in between, separating each track is a locked groove. Awesome.
The outside track on side A begins with thick fuzzed out low end that is quickly joined by hypnotic looped scraping that warbles and shifts in pitch. It begins to sound like the yelp of an old man and is eventually eclipsed by a simple beating pulse, thick and heavy, that almost sounds like some purloined SUNNO))) guitars. The Inside track on side A is super dense with all sorts of record crackle and rhythmic pops. Scrapes and skips and hiccuping loops. Starting off as a super spare minimal glitchy scraped vinylscape, it quickly builds in intensity, the buried music on the scratched vinyl offering up a haunting distant minor key melody. So creepy.
The outside track on side B is a totally hypnotic mechanized minimal jazzscape, a simple throbbing bass pulse over abstract rhythmic clicking like some old jazz intro chopped and looped. The inside track on side B is a dense staticky rhythm constructed from distant moans, crackling surface noise, the "bass line" getting busier and busier until it becomes a squirming tangle beneath tiny sparkling high end squiggles.
Plain black vinyl with no label, packaged in a thick clear sleeve, with white text and diagrams, printed forwards and backwards. Nice!
We are huge fans of weird turntable music, from Jeck, to Gum, to Otomo Yoshihide, to Martin Tetrault, but as much as we love all of those folks, our heart belongs to Strotter Inst., aka, Christoph Hess, an older Swiss turntable mad scientist, who creates Frankensteinian record players with multiple arms, weird obstructions forcing the needle to jump and skip, strange strings and rubber bands, that the moving parts pluck and strike, all creating gorgeous mechanical symphonies of sound, with JUST the player, when the manipulated records are added (and they often are NOT), things only get more expansive and lush and amazing.
This latest release from Hess finds his interest in fucking with lps and their players extending to even the pressing process, with the various tracks mastered at different speeds, requiring a small diagram on the label demonstrating which part of which side plays at which speed. Not that it necessarily matters, as Hess' crazy sonic concoctions sound great at any speed.
The sounds here follow on from those on the many other records of his we've reviewed, like some sort of minimal DIY krautrock, or a band like Avarus, populated exclusively by homebuilt noise making robots, all assembled from turntables, it is unbelievable to hear these sounds and know they were designed and planned by Hess, but it's the machines that are creating these gorgeous hypnotic rhythmscapes.
Hypnotic, repetitive, cyclical, but always shifting subtly, crackle, scrape, rumble, hiss, skip, all deftly arranged into propulsive grooves, the rubber bands offering up melody, strange rubbery tones, percussive, but definitely melodic, while the turntable itself, when not striking or plucking the bands, unleashes strange grinding rhythms, peppered with percussive scapes, haunting textural whirs, the rhythms almost tribal, often skeletal and sparse, but just as often dense and layered, when the records are included in the sound making, the various manipulated grooves, spit out even more strange clicks and moans and bleeps and even some strangely appropriate counter rhythms.
Absolutely fantastic stuff, we would imagine as amazing to see as to hear, lucky for us, there's a good chance, Hess will be in the US soon, and will hopefully be visiting aQ for a demonstration / performance.
We've said it a million times, but it bears repeating, we love turntables, and scratchy records, and the sounds of both, we even (especially) love the sound of both with the music removed. Or at least most of the music removed. Fuzz and crackle and buzz and pop and warble and whir. All the sounds people try desperately to remove from their listening experience is exactly what we want piled on top of ours. In fact, all the crackle and surface noise that audio nerds discard, well, they should save it all up and bequeath it to us to sprinkle, dollop, pour, douse all of our music with. So it was really a no brainer that the debut cd from Strotter Inst. would be record of the week here at AQ (as it was just a few weeks ago). Strotter is the work of one man, Swiss turntablist / sound artist Christoph Hess, who takes old turntables, augments them with various wires and elastic bands, pieces of metal and all sorts of found objects, and then creates gorgeously Spartan symphonies of rhythm and texture using just the turntable and the stylus, no records at all. No music. The turntable becomes an instrument capable of more than just playing other peoples' music, it is a sound making device, an instrument as viable as any other. Although with a truly unique palette of sounds, reminiscent of some strange minimal electronica, albeit with a much more organic feel.
This disc captures a performance recorded live to minidisc at Oblo Cinema in Lausanne, Switzerland, in April of 2005. And is a gloriously hypnotic soundscape of glitchy beats, warm textural drones and strange low end strums, all locked into hypnotic loops, that slowly shift and drift in and out of sync as more turntables join the fray, or as the speeds of the turntables change, or as various implements shift. The set begins with a lush drone, difficult to imagine how it's produced, but it is warm and deep and quite organic sounding. Soon the sound of the reverberating bands are introduced, sounding a lot like some muted guitar, playing a simple low end figure, the notes coming faster and faster until the whole thing stumbles into a shambolic rhythm, a loping lurch, with occasional bursts of needle squelch, eventually settling into a dreamy motorik groove. The set seesaws back and forth between strange machinelike rhythms and stretches of drone and rumble. Right toward the end there is a burst of super distorted NOISE which slowly gives way to the final rhythmic groove, that slowly winds down, notes drifting off until all that is left is a single mechanical pulse. So nice.
Comes packaged in a cool cardstock sleeve with a little diecut circle perfectly above the hole in the center of the cd. More nods to the record and its design. The picture of Christoph Hess on the inside of the booklet looks like some old faded textbook photo of Einstein Or Edison, hunched over his machines, modified turntables in this case, a study of a quirky inventor, Strotter as the sound of antiquated machinery, of objects reassigned to new tasks, the tireless pursuit of technology recontextualization, only adding to the whole vibe of Hess' music being some recently unearthed or discovered scratchy, crackly sonic artifact.
It's been almost 3 years since we've heard from turntable mad scientist and alchemist Strotter Inst., whose haunting mechanical record player mini-symphonies evokes mysterious worlds, populated with shadow creatures and amorphous figures operating strange turntable like machinery, everything shaded grey, with a patina of rust, or perhaps dust, the machines wheezing as turntables spin lugubriously, multiple tone arms like a child's mechanical toy octopus, everything held together by rubber bands and bits of strings, a Rube Goldberg style contraption, designed to create a new world of sound, the above mentioned shadowy kingdom, where we can wander and get lost.
Strotter Inst. is Swiss musician / tinkerer Christoph Hess, who customizes old turntables, using whatever is at hand, to create loop making machines, collages of skipping sounds, but unlike the playful melodiousness of Pierre Bastien, or the gauzy ambient drift of Philip Jeck, Strotter's sound is much more raw, and almost heavy, feral even, tons of low end, drones everywhere, hiss and buzz and rumble, in fact much of the time, the turntable sounds like it has been transformed into some sort of instrument of destruction, conjuring up some seriously abject Wolf Eyesian dirgescapes, heaving and roiling expanses of looped blackness, as if some evil genius unleashed his army of automatons, a landscape dotted with Steampunk style contraptions, all gears and ratchets, spewing steam and lurching forward in unison, in fact much of the time, if one didn't know better, one might not even realize that the music of Strotter Inst. was created with turntables. Until the sound shifts, and suddenly a staticky crackly record begins to skip, and becomes the rhythmic source for whatever might come next. Sometimes the sound will hew close to that stuttering skeletal framework, other times, the skipping record is immediately engulfed by thick slabs of sonic blackness, churning machinelike whirs, and percussive low end thrum, this is industrial music for sure, especially if the industry in question was antique turntables. Seriously though, the sounds here are occasionally pretty intense, and heavy and abrasive, which sort of shames the various noisemakers who need a table top full of pedals and a bunch of amps, and a million patch cords and cd players and mixers to make their music, especially when one old man with a handful of record players, a pocket full of rubber bands, a soldering iron and a pile of turntable parts, can kick up a rhythmic din just as hard and heavy as any of 'em. But it's definitely not all hard and heavy, those blasts are balanced by long loping stretches of motorik rhythms, looped and hypnotic, locked into totally mesmerizing grooves, a symphony of percussive thumps and twanging rubber bands woven into strange alien krautrocky dirges.
So fantastic! We often forget to include him in the aQ turntable pantheon, but he absolutely belongs: Jeck, Tetreault, Otomo, Bastien, Fun Years, and Strotter Inst.!!
Packaged in a beautiful cardstock sleeve, with a super striking fold out poster.
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The turntable has to be the greatest instrument ever invented. At least the greatest instrument that was never actually intended to -be- an instrument, or to be -played- at all. What was a revolutionary breakthrough in the playback of popular music, eventually became the ultimate plunderphonic device, with a sonic palette only as limited as your record collection, and then not even limited by that. Broken records, shards of different records glued together, discs made out of wax, or sand paper, or stone, or plastic, or even no records at all, just the sounds of the turntable and the needle. We're not talking DJ's playing records either. Sure we dig that stuff too, but we're talking about people MAKING music out of bits and pieces, scraps and shards, creating whole new worlds of sound. Hard to say what it is exactly about the sound of a needle on vinyl that moves us so, it's warm, and fuzzy, and imperfect, maybe it's the sound of our childhoods, our early musical discoveries, but whatever it is, we love that sound, the whir and hiss, the pop and crackle, for all the striving for pristine perfect digital sound, we can't help but lean in the exact opposite direction, loving our music to be rough and murky, thick with warm warble and rain like static, a hiss that is all age and character and texture.
A small group of like minded artists have been exploring the possibilities of the turntable for years, the early experiments of Milan Knizak and his broken music, the grand and gorgeous soundscapes of Phillip Jeck, the vinyl sculptures of Christian Marclay and Martin Tetreault, the rhythmic playfulness of Pierre Bastien, Otomo Yoshihide's turntable explorations in Ground Zero, the minimal compositions of Institut Fuer Feinmotorik, utilizing the runoff grooves, and between song ambience to construct their pieces, and on and on.
For over a decade Swiss sound artist Christoph Hess had been experimenting with turntables, tape loops, skipping records, before deciding to jettison any and all music made by other musicians, and instead using just the turntable itself to create sound. Thus was born Strotter Inst. Five customized turntables, each rigged up with pieces of metal, strings and wires, elastic bands, allowed to spin at different RPMs, each turntable contributing a subtle element, creating dense tangled soundscapes of rhythm and texture. Loping and hypnotic, repetitive and mesmerizing. Low rumbling reverberations, slow stuttering twangs, these modified turntables sound remarkably like some sort of long stringed instrument with strings tightened just enough to stay on, but loose enough that they sort of buzz and rumble, pulse and throb. The framework for each track is a sort of lowend turntable riff, the wires and bands and cords are struck and plucked by the revolving turntable, creating slow slithery rhythms, within each a very subtle muted melody, everything slowly morphs and shifts as the various turntables sync up and then drift apart. Imagine the sound of five bass players, all playing simple slow melodies on primitive one string basses, and imagine them playing similar parts, but at slightly different tempos. A slow moving, motorik soundscape of thump and thrum. And around these loping rhythms are soft fuzzy clouds of crackle and hiss, the sound of the needles scraping the surface of the turntables, or skidding across pieces of metal, these contrasting sounds are dense and rich, sounding almost like super distorted vocals at one moment, thick washes of feedback the next. The sound may be simple and subtle, but it's also intense and overwhelming, like Jeck spinning Skullflower, or Marclay armed with only some Mingus bass solo dubplates, or a Tiermes / Bastien soundclash. So dark and mysterious and totally pure and primal sounding. This is SOUND as much as it is music. This is the turntable as musical instrument. This is rhythm and rhythms, this is machine music, but a machine freed from it's shackles, a new instrument, born, loosed, unleashed. Amazing.
Amazingly packaged in a die cut cardstock digipak, a large circular hole cut in the front, a smaller hole in the back, so you can see straight through. The front cover has imbedded in it an actual piece of plastic with record grooves etched into it, playable on your turntable! In fact when you listen to the cd you'll notice the first track is all silence, that's because the first track is actually on the sleeve, while the final track is only downloadable from the Strotter website, managing to subtly connect our history of recorded music, a release that is only complete as a record, a cd and an mp3.
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By now, we probably don't need to mention how much we love the turntable as instrument. And to that end, how much we love the sounds of damaged vinyl, or modified turntables, the hiss and skipping and pops and crackles and loops... Or how much we love Jeck and Tetriault and Yoshihide and Bastien and Brumit and Gum and Loop Orchestra and Marclay and anyone who ever smashed up or scraped up their records and then played them anyway, and maybe did that with two turntables or three or a hundred, creating whole new wonderful pieces of music out of misused and abused players and scratched and screwed up fragments of other folks' music. So when we discovered Strotter, aka Swiss turntablist Christoph Hess, we were already sold. Here's an older gentleman, who adds pieces of metal, and elastic bands, and extra needles and multiple tone arms to his turntables. And then uses old records and these customized turntable to create gorgeously hypnotic looped minimal soundscapes. It was only a matter of time before he decided to fuck with the actual pressing process as well. Thus we have two new vinyl only releases, an etched 12" and a strangely cut and mastered 7".
The 12" consists of 4 short tracks spread out over 12 vast inches of vinyl. The A side features the grooveless outer few inches, minus one locked groove every few centimeters, instead, the name of the record and the artist have been written there in silver marker. The first track is a strange world of stuttering static and slowly growing glitches and pops that build into a mini cacophony. The second track is a clattery array of clicks over a propuslive throbbing bass thud, that also builds, but in this case to an abstract low end jazz dirge, like the upright bass breakdown of some old blue note standard, chopped up and skipped into a little stutter.
The B side has no grooves on the inside half of the lp, instead it has a super detailed etching of two rats. The first track on side B sounds almost like CIrcle, if they were rendered in the simplest possible sonic manifestation, basic lines and shapes, super stripped down tonal colors, an ultra skeletal krautrock groove assembled from nothing but clicks and glitches and rumbling bass pulses. Track two is all reverberating low end, pulses coming rapid fire until they almost become a drone, tempered by tiny distant upper register sparkles.
The disc is housed in a thick plastic sleeve, bound to a printed, embossed thick card stock panel by an elastic band, just like the ones used on the Strotter turntables. So cool.
Formed by ex-members of two late, great Arizona underground metal bands (screamo outfit Unruh and crusty doomsters Wellington), Structure Of Lies now unleash their debut ep featuring five tracks of their unrelenting metal mastery. Structure Of Lies is at heart a death metal project, one that's quite baroque and complex (hence the mathy title), with a lot of "crossover" appeal to the punkier grind/metalcore scene. Blackened, raspy, guttural vocals tear from the singers throat while melodic "true metal" guitar solos erupt from the raging thrash-fest (is the guitarist the guy pictured on their website in the Iced Earth t-shirt?). It's like a brutal death metal version of Megadeth. F'n great. Equally for fans of Death, Dissection and Converge!
David Stubbs has authored one hell of book in Future Days, on the history of Krautrock, asking the leading question: "How did Krautrock, so lightly regarded in its own day both at home and abroad, become one of the cornerstones for modern pop and rock music?" He quickly maps out the differentiation between the bloated myth-making of progressive rock, the Anglophilic tendencies of psychedelia, and the mottled spectrum that loosely is defined as Krautrock - a term that was actually despised by many of the Germans making said music back in the day (and was perhaps used ironically by Faust). John Weinzeirl of Amon Duul has some particularly harsh words for Julian Cope whose fanboy gushing in his cult-classic Krautrocksampler was instrumental in one of the many waves of Krautrock revivalism that has taken place over the years. Stubbs takes care to tread carefully in the identity politics, here, speaking to the cultural coalition of multiple forces, ideologies, and aesthetics that were at a temporal cross-section of what was seen as the past and what was seen as the future.
After a lengthy prologue digging into the post-war culture of conservative German pop music, and introductions to the various protagonists, Stubbs gets into the meat of the book with very engaging interviews with and ruminations on pretty much all of our favorites: Amon Duul, Can, Kraftwerk, Faust, Cluster / Harmonia, Ash Ra Tempel, Popul Vuh, and even Einsturzende Neubauten as the next logical step of the Krautrock ethos, through the turbulent '80s. He goes on to discuss the numerous bands influenced by Krautrock, beginning with Bowie's Berlin and moving on from there.
A totally great read!
Imagine if you could erase time and create a special Hacienda party on the beach that New Order ws playing, with special guests Robert Smith and Lindstrom, in an all night session under the stars as the waves crash on the beach under the glow of the starlit sky. Then you might get an idea of what this album by Swedish duo Studio is all about. Studio create a totally refreshing version of early '80s greatness that sets its focus on capturing a warm sensation akin to ending up at the beach after a night of dancing and some of those ecstatic drugs still in your system. The record is bookmarked by two long cosmic instrumental's filled with shimmering synths that sneak in some kraut and subtle afro-beat influences with total perfection. The songs with vocals really do sound like The Cure and New Order joining forces as they catch an endless groove under a spinning disco ball. While there is some similarities to what folks in the DFA camp have been doing there is a much more smooth and golden sensation to Studio's sound. West Coast also reminds us a lot of White Magic's Sorcerer album, one of our favorite electronic records of last year. Both demonstrate the perfect way of extracting the warmth from synthesized sounds to bring the dance party back to the waves and water. A record that grows deeper in our veins each time we listen, we have become hooked! Not sure why it took us so long to list this but better late than never...
