In addition to crafting utterly gorgeous breathtaking minimal pop ambience as Gas, Wolfgang Voigt was also responsible for some of the most influential minimal techno of the last twenty years, as Mike Ink, M:I:5 and a handful of other monickers. It's hard for us sometimes to describe techno music, and to define just what it is that makes us love one techno record and hate another, but this comp is wall to wall genius. Out of print since 2000, this comp is finally available again, collecting some of the best 12"s Voigt released in the nineties, as well as tacking on a handful of bonus tracks, every one a spare skeletal dubbed out groovescape of simple bubbly beats, minimal percussive thumps and beeps, everything tight and clipped, hypnotic and mesmerizing, futuristic dancefloor perfection, managing to swing, within fairly rigid arrangements. Pretty much every band on Kompakt, whether they know it or not, owe everything to this man, and these tracks right here.
Each track is named for a color, although it's unclear how those tracks reflect the colors they're named for, or if it's just a simple way of codifying the various grooves, either way, it does reflect the simple spare and minimal vibe of the sounds, the layout, the whole concept. It's hard to imagine people dancing to this, although we know they do, for us though, this is perfect chill out music, the beats bouncy but muted, the basslines barely there, usually just a streak or a brief thrum, the tracks hardly shift over the course of their 7-10 minutes, the timbre subtly changing, maybe another little skitter gets tossed into the mix, it hardly matters, as these songs start out pretty much perfect, and only get more perfect as they go on. Every track here could get locked into an endless loop, and we'd happily nod off, drift off, forever, letting the beats and austere ambience just wash over us.
Some of these tracks are almost 20 years old and still sound totally fresh, and even a bit futuristic, and the perfect soundtrack for some space age dinner party or some late night chill out sesh in a bad ass satellite bachelor pad slowly orbiting the Earth.
We sure do love Finland. And boy do we love slow motion sludgy doom. So it makes perfect sense that this here disc would find its way into our grubby gloomy doom loving mitts. Stumm are a glacial power trio that traffic in that sort of harsh ugly crusty death doom dirge sludge we've come to dig so heavily. We just can't seem to get enough. It's metal sure, heavy and downtuned, but a lot of the appeal, very much like the blurry buzz of black metal, is it's proximity to pure drone! As the guitars get lower, and the songs get slower (or conversely faster and blurrier) riffs become stretches of slow shifting sound, hypnotic and dare we say soothing. Not entierely like a doom metal Steve Reich or a sludge Terry Riley. Most of us would just as likely fall asleep listening to the most recent Moss record as we would a Coleclough or Chalk record. And Stumm are carrying on that fine tradition. A harsh raw nihilistic doom metal that drones and buzzes and pulses, slithers and lurches more than it rocks.
There's got to be a way to designate sheer impossible dooominess. In the past we've just added more 'o's to the word doom, 20 'o's, 40 'o's, but where does it end. Eventually there will be a band so slow and sludgy, the whole review will be a single word, doom, but with 11,342 'o's. We're tempted to give Stumm a rating based on the multiple 'o' doom scale, but this this disc is not just a single sludgy smear of sound, it's definitely doooooooooom (let's stick with 10 'o's for now), with most of the record, stumbling and staggering, all druggy and dizzy, a 16rpm creep through a thick forest of buzzing E strings and drumming that sounds like it's being dumped out of the back of a cement mixer. But here and there, the clouds part, revealing a bit of sky through the dense canopy of oppressive heaviness, be it a bit of clean guitar or some warm warbly bass... hell, who are we kidding, those moments are so brief and fleeting they're only there to lure you in and set you up for a massive pumelling, frozen like a deer in the headlights, looking skyward, eyes reflecting that tiny glimmer of sunlight, before moments later Stumm take your head clean off with a spiked and sludgy iron bar, as a million 'o's begin to rain down from the sky, like metallic black hail, burying you beneath a crushing, suffocating mound of doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.............
4 songs. 35 minutes. Mastered by James Plotkin (Khanate, Phantomsmasher / Atomsmasher, Flux, OLD, etc.)
It says right there on the sleeve: "100% Sludge". They had us at 100% sludge. Ummm, anyway, two of Finland's sludge rock heavyweights team up, each taking a side of this here 12", and each, surprisingly, doing something new and unique with their bit of sludge. Not that we wouldn't have loved another slab of slow motion dirgery, but we're even more psyched to see what weird shapes, some of this sludgedoomdrone can get twisted into.
Up first is Loinen, whose lp we totally flipped over a while back. They of the crushing doom with Scott Walker style vocals. Yep! You remember now? Well, here they try another something, also completely different, their side begins with a super distorted bass riff, spread way out, allowing for lots and lots of space, and in those spaces, there are strange chanted choral vocals, female, repeating the same pattern over and over, inexorably tangled up with the plodding riff. It's all very mysterious and hypnotic and continues on for nearly three quarters of the side, at which point the vocals finally come in, a strangled alien croon, alternately growling and sort of moaning, and it's not until nearly the end of the side when the drums finally kick in, and for the first time it begins to resemble the aforementioned 100% sludge. A lurching doom trudge with now croaking vocals all wrapped around that relentless distorted bass line. Finally, right at the very end, the track explodes in a frenzy of freaked out chaos, drums everywhere, feedback squealing and shrieking, the track dissolving in a blast of blown out brutality. Weird and quite cool.
So how do fellow countrymen, and masters of their own particular brand of sludginess, Stumm, respond? With yet another strange take on sludge, there's, at least for this lp side, is downright pretty. Thick swaths of washed out guitar rumble and soaring streaks of feedback all tangled and up like some gorgeous alien melody, not harsh at all really, more just strange sounding, and really quite beautiful, the first time we've heard feedback so skillfully sculpted, underneath, drums are simple and spare, it's more about atmosphere and mood it seems, a thick heavy dreamy drift. Right in the middle there's a brief burst where the guitars get more jagged and angular, and some howling shrieking vocals swoop in, but before you know it, they've swooped right back out, and the track is again drifting darkly, a strangely soft sludge shimmer. So great.
LIMITED TO 265 COPIES!!! These are the only copies we can get. Once they are gone, they are gone for good. Packaged like the Loinen 12", in a similar eye melting black and white high-school-binder tweeker pen and ink cover, with crazy art by Loinen member G.G., a tripped out world of strange figures and weird text and upside down crosses, and squiggles and creatures and who knows what else...
The Stumps are total NZ noise rock royalty. Antony Milton (AM, Mrtyu, Nether Dawn, etc.) James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate, With Throats As Fine As Needles) and Stephen Clover (Seht). With some special guest action from Birchville Cat Motel's Campbell Kneale. phew, what else needs to be said? Much like the 3" cd released on the Grey Daturas' label recently (and of which we have a VERY few copies left), somehow, the combined sum of the Stumps' parts is less than the what you might imagine. More minimal at least. The record opens with a ghostly keening whir, way off in the distance, murky and fuzzy... eventually drums kick in giving the proceedings a definite Dead C vibe, a laid back blown out noise rock peppered with free jazz drum splatter, that sort of careens haphazardly over thick slabs of distant distorted riffage. This goes on for a whole side, and while there are different songs, they sort of drift together into one glorious whole.
Side two is similar, in that there are three songs that all seem to be movements of the same song. But this second suite starts off with wild disembodied prog keyboards, swirly and splattery, with little bits of drum damage here and there, some sort of 'noise rock prog' which is most definitely a good thing. Eventually the track morphs into a heavy, groovy, fuggy Pink Floyd seventies fuzz jam, albeit more warbly and damaged, sounding a bit like someone was fucking with the pitch control while it was being recorded. Eventually the fuzz dissipates and the track settles into a dreamy and mellow SUNNO)))-lite fade out of crumbling distant guitars and soft focus barely there melodies, a murky low end ambience that eventually fades into nothingness.
One of three new 3" cd-r releases on the Grey Daturas' Diagnosis ... Don't! label, each super limited, and housed in cool hand made packaging.
Pretty much impossible to imagine a more star studded NZ free rock band than this. Sure Mr. Kneale's absent, as are a Russell and a Morely, but shit this trio is already bursting at the seams and ready to blow. The Stumps, the trio of which we happen to be speaking, is made up of equal parts
Antony Milton (AM, Mrtyu, Nether Dawn, etc.), James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate, With Throats As Fine As Needles) and Stephen Clover (Seht). Holy shit is right (that is what you were thinking, right?)! Three tracks, nineteen minutes. Total transcendental free noise drone rock bliss!!
The opening track is nine minutes of deeeeeeeep dreamy drone. Distant melodies smeared into fuzzy clouds, occasional bursts of distorted guitar muted and stretched apart into shimmery drones, a final build into a thick wall of white noise whir, high end peals and crumbling feedback. The second track is a full on rock jam, a stumbling Dead C like groove, lurching through a dense swirl of fuzzy synths, grinding guitars and squealing feedback. A killer slab of off kilter, drone drenched psych rock. The final track falls somewhere between the first two, droney and abstract, but with fuzzy bass, and jagged streaks of psychguitar, thick swirls of cymbal sizzle, and distant squalls of guitar freakout. Awesome.
AS ALWAYS, ULTRA SUPER LIMITED!! We only got about 30, and probably won't be able to get more...
Packaged in thick textured paper black mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. Nice.
In a dream, you've gotten yourself lost in an endless cavern... you've been curiously wandering in the darkness, down down into the earth, for a long long time. When you stop to rest, you realize that the silence that had surrounded you is different now. You think you can hear music... drifting from someplace deeper in the darkness. Drifting, droning, dark, dark, dark... that's this music, the reverberant, cavernous, quiet sounds of The Stumps. Sleepy and creepy at the same time. You move closer, and The Stumps get louder. Troglodytic thud and rumble begins to build. That's the beauty of this album, these tracks are part whale call mystery, part trashy crashy garage rock clangor. Ambient eeriness flows into plodding free rock chaos, with heavy distortion blanketing all. The twelve and a half minute untitled track number 5 (none have titles, as far as we can tell) is all about that drone-drift, whilst track 7, for instance, rouses itself to a spaced-out, slow-motion spasm of psychedelic guitar grind-gunk and percussive splatter-clatter.
The Stumps trio of drummer James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate, With Throats As Fine As Needles), bassist Stephen Clover (Seht), and guitarist Antony Milton (Mrtyu, AM, Nether Dawn, etc.) is a New Zealand underground supergroup, by the way. No wonder they're so easily so shambolic, somnolent, and sinister sounding... Outside of their own cd-r littered island realm, we couldn't compare this to much else besides, maybe, Fushitsusha.
Welcome to the cavern, welcome to the dream.
Holy crap those suicidal black metallers have nothing on Stunt Rock. At least in terms of pure self loathing misery. They talk a good game, and the music is appropriately miserable and melancholy, but their depression is so abstract, so much so that in some cases, it sounds as much like a gimmick as 'Satanism'. But this is indeed depression. Misery. REGRET. Past Stunt Rock releases didn't really give any idea that all this lurked below the surface, but this release more than hints at it, it takes his Stunt Rock heart, and pins it open, like a high school dissected frog, letting us poke and prod, and examine all the blackness inside.
It's also pretty funny too, if you think folks like Ivan Brunetti are hilarious, which we do. In fact, this is totally the record we could imagine Brunetti releasing. And it is in fact a sort of instruction manual, covering such topics as to how to choose a new mate, and to avoid the mistakes you made in past relationships. A page of little tags to place on your belongings for after you die when people dig through your stuff (for your pornography stash, for your box of old love letters, etc.), a very Brunetti like comic detailing a botched suicide attempt among other things.
The Prescreening A Potential Love Interest multiple choice form is amazing, it goes on for pages and pages, and is so gloriously black hearted. The there's the Learning To Forget & Adjusting To Living Alone section, also pages and pages, teaching you to do just as the title says, try different routes to work, repaint, get a new social circle, new wardrobe, but it's super well written, wry and bitter, fucking brutal here and there. There's also an activity section, with a form to write down all the songs you want played at your funeral (the first is filled out for you, Creed's "My Own Prison" haha), as well as a sort of last will style form, with spaces for things you want to leave for folks, as well as spaces for the people you want to make sure DON'T get anything (and the specific things you want to make sure they don't get. There's also an amazing section called Upsetting Things You Wrote When You Were Young. Poems, letters, lists of people who wronged you. But they're all blacked out CIA document style, leaving just the caustic comments by the author. All of this is gorgeously hand drawn and printed in a 10" book housed in a super nice cardstock screen printed hand numbered cover, each one hand numbered, the front a three color illustration of a blood splattered sink.
And there's a record. a 2 song 10", two parts of the same piece, titled somewhat cryptically "Dear Christian Girl (Parts One And Two)", a DJ Shadow style indie rock soundscape, lots of amazing (and amazingly depressing) samples, funny, fucked up, sad, melancholy, the song simple and hooky, but stretched out into a more electronic sort of groove, with thick buzzing synths wrapped around the Slint-y guitars, loping rock drumming, subtle hooks, no proper vocals, instead, the tale of the mysterious Christian Girl and Stunt Rock's saga of regret is told in a continuous mix of voices and sounds, of vignettes and fragments, in shuffling beats and melancholy melodies. Pretty great. And the perfect companion for the book. And as if that weren't enough, you also get a cd-r, with the same music as on the 10". All told, you get a 10" vinyl record, a 32 page book with hand silk screened covers, 3 Stickers, 1 Button, a cd-r and 1 of 4 different hand silk screened posters.
And we know all those forms are jokes, but we're really tempted to fill them out. Fun and funny, but only if you're a twisted bitter old crank, like us!
This record seems like it was made for AQ. A scientist, Bob Sturm, attaches microphones to buoys to record different oceanic events. These events translated into sound become gorgeous deep drones, and haunting alien soundscapes. Right up there with the singing telephone wires of Alan Lamb or the subtle vibrations recorded by Toshia Tsunoda. A natural phenomenon that can be studied and explored as sound. That would be enough right there, since the sounds speak for themselves. Gorgeous shimmery ripples, dark muted metallic buzz, if we didn't tell you, you'd probably believe this was some strange limited drone cd-r or a new release from Jonathan Coleclough or Andrew Chalk. But Sturm is a scientist, and these sounds are just one part of his study of the ocean, the atmosphere and their behaviors. So the booklet is packed with serious scientific data, graphs, measurements, algorithms and photos. Included is a research paper AND a Flash presentation on the "sonification of ocean buoy spectral data" originally presented at the 2002 International Conference On Auditory Display held in Kyoto, Japan. Holy crap. This is some dense stuff. But even if the science is way over your head, or all you want is some deep dark mysterious music, then dig in. The track lengths tend to be short, but they manage to blend into long stretches of drifting dreamy drone, very minimal and soft focus, many of the tracks have a strange metallic tang, that sounds more like some alien reverb, giving the drones a steel string like buzz, a few tracks are much more active, high end hiss, and prickly fuzz, but for the most part, the oceanic data translates into huge cavernous rumbles, delicate glistening murmurs, or soft billowing clouds of whirring vibration. So completely captivating. And for the drone obsessed among you, absolutely essential!
With black metal, a lot of times it's about the logo, or the band photo, or the weird woodcut that graces the front cover, sometimes all three, that gets you to listen to a band's record. There are thousands of black and white, grim and spooky looking records, so it takes a little something special to draw us in. And it seems like the bands most likely to come up with a bizarre logo, a fucked up cover and/or a weird band name, well, that aesthetic probably carries over to the music, which will in most cases also be bizarre, fucked up and WEIRD!
So thus we have Styggelse (which is Swedish for Abomination), a Swedish (duh) horde with a fucking amazing logo. Some sort of shadowy ghostly ghoul, hovering over the name of the band, the letters all scribbled and drippy, the 'S' and the 'E' at either end like mighty scythes, all in front of a similar ghostly apparition, looking like it was drawn with a marker, a sort of ghost meets the Wicker Man, with branch like hands, standing amidst tiny tufts of forest. OK, we're pretty much sold. Weird band name, killer logo, bizarre cover, great album title: Bland Andlosa Falt Av Snusk Och Hor (pretty much anything in Swedish or Norwegian does the trick, although the fact that this means "Among Endless Fields Of Filth And Adultery" doesn't hurt) so at this point there's nothing left to do but actually listen to the record...
And holy fuck, the first voice you hear is some movie snippet, but then the guitars kick in and some spoken word begins and it's all sped up like Chipmunks style, and we were (not so) secretly hoping ALL of the vocals would be like that, but oh well, the band still kick ass, huge fuzzy black riffs, a growling raspy demonic troll on lead vocals, pounding relentless drumming, no blast beats really, just crushing pulverizing pound, the weirdest thing Styggelse have got going on is the guitar sound, a thick harsh buzzing fuzz, that is surprisingly heavy and thick, no brittle buzzy riffs here, the sound is huge and super heavy, and there are all sorts of strange and unlikely cool weird atonal arpeggiated guitar bits that surface here and there, sort of Greg Ginn-ish almost, as well as some nearly groovy guitar parts that manage to give the sound a weird but subtle rock and roll vibe. That and the strange almost sing along doomy breakdowns or the occasional maniacal laughter definitely make Styggelse something special. Filthy, fuzzy old skool black metal done Swedish style. We like!!
Obscure American '80s metal band, responsible for a 4 song vinyl ep back in the day (produced by Mark "The Shark" Shelton of Manilla Road) now unleashes their previously unreleased full-length from the late '80s!
Fans of Emeralds and Oneohtrix, here's another fine slab of spacey cyclic synth throb that ought to be right up your alley - the Thrill Jockey debut from Stygian Stride, aka Jimmy SeiTang of AQ faves Rhyton and Psychic Ills. On this solo effort, SeiTang offers up seven tracks of mesmeric electronic pulsations and zoned-out 2001 space odyssey atmospherics, created via vintage analog machines, all very krauty & kosmische, a la Cluster and Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream in the '70s, and also very much beholden to Jean-Michel Jarre (whom we should probably name-check more often, really almost as much as we do John Carpenter!).
It's good stuff, definitely up there with the aforementioned Emeralds and OPN, and Steve Moore and Majeure, also reminding us a bit of Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury's rejected Judge Dredd soundtrack Drokk, the more rhythmic parts anyway, while elsewhere Stygian Stride's machine-based improv does the does the ambient drifting-in-space thing, sometimes slightly sinister soundtrack-sounding, quietly creeping but quite pleasant too. Very much recommended!!
Sounding not unlike a sinister drunken parade of circus freaks, these songs churn and chug along like a horsedrawn carriage with a broken wheel smeared with greasepaint and bourbon. Pianos have the wits bashed out of 'em, cellos are sawed to bits, guitars jut and twist. On a few songs, they're joined by clarinet, violin, tapes, bass and alto sax. All the while lead singer Mike Hudson delivers his raw, tormented tales (the lyrics/stories are included in the cd's booklet). This cd is actually from 1998 and compiles an assortment of Styrenes recordings from 1982 through to 1993 - their album A Monster And The Devil as well as a handful of compilation and singles. Full of dark madness, this music spirals downward with ample spit, slur and strangeness.
Mysteries continue to emanate from Vaald, here propagated by the completely unknowable Styrenhet. Plodding, industrial dirge rhythms and synchronized melodic miserablism accompany synth-noise shadowiness for the A-side, not too far from the primitive gasps of Nocturnal Emissions or Factrix. The B-side (both tracks garner Swedish titles, a fact that may or may not indicate the origin of this project... let's assume so) trawls the synth noise melody with a DIY, sci-fi simplicity again girded to rounded kick-drum thump. The scant 15 minute program on this cassette is matched by the tiny pressing of 24 copies.
For this new EP, Styrofoam's mainman Arne Van Petegem steps up to the microphone, introducing a vocal presence into his dreamy electronic instrumentals. This slips Styrofoam more in line with his labelmates electronic pop brethren LaliPuna or The Notwist.
Styrofoam presents A Short Album About Murder even though this isn't terribly short (7 tracks and 38 minutes) nor is it particularly murderous. Rather, this German group has produced some pleasant electronica walking between the romantic IDM sound of
We just got the new Isan / Styrofoam split album and Styrofoam's newest full length in stock which reminded us of one that slipped by us last year (although we did get the "A Heart Without A Mind" EP which was drawn from this album). I'm What's There To Show That Something's Missing is the third full length from Styrofoam (aka Arne Van Petegem). If you're not already familiar with his daydreamy music, imagine a more wispy washy Notwist, or a drowsy Postal Service. Layers of soft male vocals, delicate electronic mists, unobtrusive organ drones and gently applied acoustic guitar... get the picture?
Benjamin Gibbard fans have been tingling with anticipation for this cd for some time now and it's not even his own release! Well folks, the wait is over! We totally knew that a bunch of this Styrofoam cd were gonna fly out the door immediately simply due to the presence of Gibbard as well as some other current notable indie electronic pop darlings, but in case you're curious what the fuss is all about... here's the skinny: Consider this to be a Cinderella transformation of sorts. It's quite startling how much the spark and charm of Nothing's Lost can be so directly and audibly attributed to the talents of all the cool cats that Styrofoam (aka Arne Van Petegem) got to play on it. It's even more irksome that this release is going to be misleadingly filed under the Styrofoam name. A just-above-average electronic popster, Van Petegem gets totally gussied up by the help of many AQ faves -- the aforementioned Postal Service/Death Cab For Cutie's Gibbard, The Notwist's Markus Acher, Alias, LaliPuna's Valerie Trebeljahr, and American Analog Set's Andrew Kenny. The few tracks that are solely Styrofoam's domain are pleasant enough, but stand in stark (i.e, pale) contrast to the others. Now that's saying something right there... in almost every review I've read of Styrofoam's past releases, the word "pleasant" pops up with alarming frequency, and that's the downfall of most of his music, it never veers from the safety zone. Sorta the aural equivalent of some pretty pastel floral wallpaper. Alright, granted our expectations were somewhat raised, but overall this also pales in comparison to each of the individual artists' own work (almost seeming like their unfinished demos or cast-offs)... did they really have to put Gibbard's vocals through the Cher-style auto-tune processor?! The oddest, most jarring inclusion is the rapping by Notwist buddy Alias on the first track "Misguided". It's an eyebrow raiser, for sure. Really, the most credit that can be given to Van Petegem is for his savvy in assembling such an of-the-moment cast. We don't want to be totally down on this release, but feel the results are less (rather than more) than the sum of its parts. That said, those of you who can't stand to wait any longer for the next Postal Service, Death Cab, Lali Puna release might find just enough here to tide you over!
Styrofoam is the electronica alter-ego of Arne van Petegem, who has also made a few Krankyish space-rock records under the moniker Tin Foil Star. "The Point Misser" is another offering from Morr Records and fits perfectly within Morr's particular niche of delicate electronica favoring the more melodic aesthetics of Boards of Canada and early Autechre. Bittersweet, pleasant, and
Freshly reissued and ready to join your copy of Styrofoam's latest album Nothing's Lost in your cd library! Here's what we said the first time around:
Styrofoam is the electronica alter-ego of Arne Van Petegem, who has also made a few Krankyish space-rock records under the moniker Tin Foil Star. "The Point_Misser" is another offering from Morr Records and fits perfectly within Morr's particular niche of delicate electronica favoring the more melodic aesthetics of Boards of Canada and early Autechre. Bittersweet, pleasant and aiming to tug at those heartstrings.
Don't laugh. I didn't think I (Allan) liked Styx, either. But these four early Styx albums, now reissued as one handy double-cd, are actually pretty cool... I'm not saying they're not at all cheesy (they are) but at least these records predate the era of mega-AOR-stardom after Tommy Shaw joined the band -- this was long before "Come Sail Away". This is Styx as America's answer to British prog-rockers like Yes. There's definitely a lot of Yes-isms here, but also Styx, chamelon-like, take on aspects of all sorts of other rockers of the era too, bringing in Southern/boogie rock like Foghat, classical prog like ELP, and grandiose proto-metal like Uriah Heep. Put most basically, this early Styx was basically a blend of the James Gang and Yes, if you can imagine that! Their four albums recorded for the Wooden Nickel label (1972's Styx, 1973's Styx II, 1973's The Serpent Is Rising, and 1974's Man Of Miracles) were indeed proto-Pomp Rock, but heavy on the rock. So if you're into '70s hard rock, you should investigate, despite the Styx stigma. Of the 35 tracks here, you're gonna find some faves. Yeah, you'll find their first hit "Lady" here, and a rock version of Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" but also some kick ass, almost metal tunes like "Witch Wolf", "Southern Woman" and the bombastic "Young Man". Plus some decent prog epics (mostly from the pen of Dennis DeYoung) and even random weirdness like their frenetic cover of the Knickerbockers' 1966 garage rock nugget "Lies" and even an experimental musique concrete piece ("Street Collage") found on their first album. Packaged with detailed liner notes and original album cover art in the 16-page cd booklet, this double cd set could make a nice, if for most of us, unusual purchase... it did for me.
And in case you're a diehard Styx fan reading this, firstly we apologize for implying that there's anything wrong with liking Styx in the first place, and secondly FYI there's a bonus track on here, "Unfinished Song", the b-side to "Young Man".
Wow!!! A few years ago, we were totally blown away by a compilation put out by Smithsonian Folkways called Indonesian Guitars, which among many amazing tracks happened to feature a song called "Fajar Di Atas Awan" by Irwansyah Harahap. It was of that disc's highlights, with haunting female and male vocal harmonies, lilting acoustic guitar, sruti box drones and cymbals. What we didn't know was that Harahap and singer Rithaony Hutajulu, both ethnomusicology professors at the University of North Sumatra, were the main composers and singers for a larger group of musicians and performers called Suarasama, and that song was the title track of THIS incredibly beautiful, blissful record by Suarasama, a 1997 live recording, now released for the first time in the U.S. by the fine folks at Drag City. We are so stoked, what a wonderful surprise this is.
Formed in 1995, Suarasama's musical influences are widely diverse, creating contemporary music based on vartious aesthetic and conceptual aspects of Middle Eastern, Indian, Sufi Pakistani, Eastern European, Southeast Asian as well as North Sumatra Batak and Malay traditional music. But the results are very far from academic. Instead the music is infused with a hermetic introspective devotional quality that seduces the listener with its soft trance-like rhythms and haunting vocal mantras. Persian and Indian percussion of tablas and defs meld with deft finger-picked guitar and gambus improvisations and dueling vocal harmonies that propel circularly forward in hypnotically beautiful interweavings. Meditative and organic, full of levitation-inducing majesty. For any devotee of raga folk, Masaki Batoh, Six Organs, Daniel Higgs, L, Robbie Basho, Sandy Bull, Congregacion, The Habibiyya, Malachi, Pandit Pran Nath, The Trees Community, or Bruce Palmer, this is absolutely essential!!
For those of you who have been craving the sound of the K Records of old, this is definitely for you. Rough around the edges, feisty pop a la Crabs, Bratmobile, etc. Fun like pop rocks and sweet tarts.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Two new discs from Mason Jones' psychedelic spacerock band. One's cheaper, but the other has a nicer cover.
Back in the old days, when space rock heavies SubArachnoid Space called SF home, we sort of took them for granted, they played all the time, and opened for pretty much every cool band that came to town, so without trying, it was easy to end up seeing them play every week or two. But then two things happened. They moved away, so suddenly they weren't ever playing around town, and second, and maybe more importantly, they started to get heavier, and more fucked up, and way more metal, which made us want to see them so we could check out the new, more heavy SubSpace.
But we've been keeping tabs on them through recordings, 2005's The Red Veil was the last one we reviewed, and even back then, we were already talking about them appealing to fans of Kinski and Yeti and Tarantula Hawk, and if anything in the 3 years since, they've gotten way spacier and way heavier, and this is the proof, Eight Bells, released on weirdo heavy label Crucial Blast, and it's a pretty good fit, 5 songs, the shortest a little over 5 minutes, the longest well over 13, every one a tripped out Hawkwinded blow out, effects drenched and psychedelic, propulsive and super rocking, epic and intense, the guitars thick and distorted, the arrangements pretty complex and intricate for space rock, none of that jam at the same tempo for 10 minutes (not that there's anything wrong with that) but it definitely keeps things interesting, and in fact, if we had to classify the new SubSpace, we'd probably call it metallic space prog, which is obviously a good thing.
"Hunter Seeker" starts off all eighties Big Country style, with a cool effected stuttery guitar part, before the rest of the band launches into a woozy doomy dirge, and over the course of the next 12 minutes, flits from spaced out dreamy ambience, to chugging almost metal, to soaring Godspeed like drama, to full on noise rock. The last three tracks find the band slipping from droney drift to dense psychedelic blowout to pounding space/math rock and back again, culminating in the super frenzied explosive last couple minutes that has us imagining how good this stuff must sound live these days.
Produced by Stephen Ray Lobdell (Faust, Davis Redford Triad), who's now a SubArachoid member weirdly enough! And it boasts cool Stephen Kasner cover art...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Local guitar experimentalist and noted Japanophile Mason Jones takes another voyage with his space-rock crew Subarachnoid Space into the dark waters of some rather lovely, guitar/synth/percussion opium ecstasies. Eventually they get stoned enough to start on a reggae-meets-Hawkwind jam ("Fruity Drinks With Little Umbrellas"). Are you stoned enough to follow?
Six new tracks from these local San Francisco space-rock heavies, a band who have gradually become more aggro and metal than they used to be (hence perhaps the surprisingly gothy graphics and cover painting of this album), making more an more of a connection with the likes of Tarantula Hawk and Yeti. But fans of Kinski will be into this too. Their brand of instrumental, jammy, oft-noisy prog/psych/post -rock (the three Ps!) is just getting better and better. Recorded live with minimal overdubs, just two guitars, bass, "pulse generator" and drums working out the instrumental space-rock angst.
Another new one from effects-laden guitarist Mason Jones and his prolific SF-based space rock combo. Lots of deep, trancey grooves to sink into, with '70s haze galore. At turns murky and then shimmering, slowly oozing and then propulsive.
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Subimage has gone through quite a remarkable transformation for this third release. Following the very '80s inspired effervescent electro-poppy Etoc and Fruitpacifist, Mainman Chris Campbell has opted for more of a Brit rock approach, and expanded his lone mission into a trio with the addition of bassist Ruba and guitarist Greg. It's still got the thumpin' dancebeat, but Bernal Hill is driven more by snarly electric guitars than burbly synthesizers. That's not even mentioning the vocals. Campbell is sing-sneering up a storm. The big picture is sorta reminiscent of That Petrol Emotion and Primal Scream or the more recent sounds of Radio 4, Franz Ferdinand and The Rapture. Punchy with a lot more attitude.
Subimage mainman Chris Campbell sure loves his synthpop and it shows! This trio's debut is filled with very very '80s rubbery dance pop a la Erasure. Lots of percolating analog synth bloopiness and uncomplicated programmed beats provide the videogame-esque backdrop for the ever so slightly strained male vocals. The songs are actually from 1989 through 1992, but they were re-recorded and remastered much more recently than that (2002 to be exact). Exuberant and fun! Oh and by the way, the cd's mysterious title ETOC is simply the abbreviation of the album's sixth song "Erotic Temptation Of Creation".
Continuing their '80s revivalism, the Bay Area's Subimage issue forth their follow-up to last year's bubbly dance party album, ETOC. The title of the first song is "Dearest Mentor" and we just might guess that the individual who fits that role for Subimage's Chris Campbell is noneother than Vince Clarke, the synth wizard behind Erasure, Yaz and Depeche Mode. Fruitpacifist is filled with more buoyant synth pop in very much the same vein as those aforementioned Brit groups.
This Chicago threesome (led by Ian Adams formerly of The Ponys) are doin' their darndest to bring back the delightful, syrupy, squishy sounds of '80s twee popsters who did their best to bring back the delightful, syrupy, squishy sounds of '60s sugar pop. Lots of super jangly guitars, cute organ bits and bashful boy vocals. Psst, there's a cover of Neil Diamond's terrific pop tune "The Boat That I Row" near the end of the cd that's well worth stickin' around for. Ahoy there, perky goodness that's maybe more suited for pajama parties than submarine races! Smooch!
Not sure how we first stumbled across Submerged, but all it took was one listen and we became kind of obsessed. A dizzying mix of ethnic dubstep, old school drum and bass, classic industrial and experimental electronica, the sounds here are heavy and hypnotic, sounding a lot like stuff we were crazy about back in the nineties, but a bit supercharged and updated for the new millennium. The opener "Space Arabs" is a perfect example, a lumbering chunk of big beat dubstep, with thick undulating bass warble, but wreathed in all sorts of Eastern melodies, and fragments of classic Middle Eastern folk music, it sounds a bit like Muslimgauze if he had been raised on jungle and dubstep. The second track features Scorn and Dr. Israel (other guests on the record include Justin Broadrick of Godflesh/Jesu and Ted Parsons from the Swans/Prong, among others), and starts off with some thick buzzing bass, wrapped in clouds of hissy static, it's noisy and distorted and crumbly, when the drums kick in, it sounds almost dancehall-y, but fused to a more dubstep beat, with those staticky clouds returning throughout, adding all sorts of grit and grime to the stuttery beat and Dr. Israel's distorted flow.
Fans of the recent dubstep and dancehall collections, who lean toward dancefloor sounds that are dark and dangerous, this will definitely hit the spot, the sort of dance music, that is less about getting bodies moving, and more about evoking dread, or creating sonic mystery, building moods ominous and sinister. Then there are the jungle jams, where the beats get cranked way up, and it's like classic jungle but way more distorted and blackened, "Transport" takes a pounding two-step beat, adds some weird gnarled percussive melodies, and a layer of grinding static, while "No One", adds chugging metal guitar and howled vokills to wild spastic drill and bass, reminding us of aQ faves like Drumcorps and Aaron Spectre.
"Death Sentence" is another killer, a loping skull caving beat, clipped and distorted, over a noisy backdrop, and wrapped in some seriously cinematic ambience, the sound shifting constantly from dark and thick and layered to spare and skeletal to twisted and noise drenched. "Rorschach" too, with its strange melody constructed from processed vocals, and looped stutter beat, and wild swirling percussion, not to mention more thick bass, and one of those drops that would kill on the dancefloor if any DJ had the balls to spin something this heavy, and then finally there's "Dead", the 8+ minute closer, that starts out all blissed out and ambient, before transforming into a wildly tangled drum and bass squall, buried beneath a gauze of hazy shoegaze drift and buzzing metallic churn, the drums and production shifting constantly, a dizzyingly, insanely programmed psychedelic dubbed out junglenoise blowout. Totally ruling, some of the darkest heaviest electronica we've heard.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Submerged is a loud sludge / stoner rock band from Finland sorta like Eyehategod / Cavity with a treblier Sub Pop feel to it. Pretty cool stuff on the terminally fucked Bad Vugum label.
Submissions was first described to us as "Bobb Bruno's Godflesh project", which while now having heard it is maybe not entirely accurate it was definitely enough to get us to order a bunch. And the truth of what it sounds like is in fact even better. For those who don't know, Bobb Bruno is probably best known at this point for playing guitar in fuzzy retro pop superstars Best Coast, but he was also responsible for the ultra heavy Goliath Bird Eater, and also played in nineties indie rock outfit Polar Goldie Cats, and we recently listed his first solo record Mellowdramas. Submissions is in fact a duo, Bruno, and his partner in industrial heaviness Paul Kneejie (The Pope, Bipolar Bear), and the two do conjure up some serious sonic Godflesh, with primitive programmed rhythms, churning murky riffage, and weird processed vox that sound more Buttholes Surfers processed garble than Godflesh bellow, which is most definitely not a bad thing. Besides the nineties industrial vibe, the songs also have a sort of gloomy goth feel to them too, like if you swapped in real drums and deep crooned vox, you'd have some sort of old school deathrock, but as it is, Godflesh, or Pitchshifter, are probably the closest comparisons. But unlike the relentless pound of the 'Flesh, Submissions do let the guitars fade out sometimes, leaving long stretches of droning guitars, they also add all sorts of strange electronics, and the slower tracks get downright atmospheric, thick swirls of low end rumble and moaning monk-like vox drifting above blurred dirges and robotic plods, with some of the more propulsive jams sounding downright gothrock. Closer "A Face" might be our favorite, a super atmospheric dirge, about as balladic as this stuff can get, the guitars dialed way back, the drums skeletal, all rumbling and droning and spaced out, no vocals this time, instead a strange sample drifting above the murky machinelike minimalism, doomy and bleakly atmospheric, reminiscent of nineties noise rock too, it's a lumbering, utterly mesmerizing doomic dirge that manages to be the most ominously heavy jam on the record.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Check out the two releases we recently got from the local electronic duo known as Submodern. The first is their full length debut titled Object Oriented Mood Management and the follow-up is this six-song ep called Inner Mission. Submodern craftily construct their tracks from nice bloopy bleepy sequenced synth sounds atop dancefloor-primed programmed beats and basslines. The former are perfect for getting all tripped out to, and the latter keep things groovin' along at an easy-goin' pace.
This EP definitely shows some developments from the duo's debut. Its highlight track is definitely the third one, the moodily atmosphered "Stuck". Despite its title, it's anything but stuck! There's more layers, more textures and generally much more IDM-y action goin' on. The next track "Lurp" continues on that shadowy path. Can't wait to hear where they go from here.
Check out the two releases we recently got from the local electronic duo known as Submodern. One is an ep called Inner Mission and the other is this, their full length debut titled Object Oriented Mood Management. Submodern craftily construct their tracks from nice bloopy bleepy sequenced synth sounds atop dancefloor-primed programmed beats and basslines. The former are perfect for getting all tripped out to, and the latter keep things groovin' along at an easy-goin' pace. The most kinetic of the ten tracks is the eighth "Minimal Angst". A nice little kick amid the mostly chill atmospheres.
Why look it's a 20th cent. new music/electronica classic.
Why look it's a 20th cent. new music/electronica classic.
Collection of recordings spanning American electronic composer Morton Subotnick's career. It includes a remastered version of Touch, originally released in 1969 (his third commercially released composition) and created on the Buchla synthesizer and a four track. Also included is "A Sky of Cloudless Sulfur" (1978) also created using the Buchla, and a new piece entitled "Gestures"
Fronted by Sonny Kay (Gold Standard Laboratories Records headpin and formerly of the VSS and Angel Hair), Subpoena The Past conjure the ghosts of Joy Division and early Killing Joke. This release turns away from the more dark-industrial leanings of their 'This Year's Eclipse' cd from '98 (when they were a duo), and into more art-punk territory. Jagged guitar lines and live drums take the place of samples and programmed beats. Side A is comprised of four tightly wound, brooding songs. A beautiful etching entitled 'The Amnesiac'(no music) graces side B. Sadly this release marks the swan song for this short-lived trio as Sonny is focussing much of his energy and attention on his rapidly growing uber-cool GSL label.
On red vinyl!
