In our reviews of the last couple records from transcendental black metallers Liturgy, we found ourselves focusing a lot on the non-black elements of their sound. Sure they had the whole tranced out insectoid riffing, the blasting beats, the shrieked vox, all the usual black metal tropes, albeit definitely done quite well, and with their own unique spin on the sound, but part of that spin was some serious noise rock / math rock elements woven into the group's black buzz, and while we may have never come right out and explicitly said it, we always kind of fantasized what a non black metal liturgy might sound like. As in a whole record made from just those noise rock and black metal parts/songs/elements. And then all of a sudden, along comes Survival, the new project from Liturgy mastermind Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, which is pretty much just that. Some seriously kick ass super mathed out post rock heaviness, definitely beholden to all the math/post/noise rock greats that came before, but in this case, some of the tranced out mesmer of Liturgy seems to have found its way into Survival. The tracks are dense and lushly layered, intricate and almost proggy, but they also sound almost looped, with the band locking into riffs, and melodic motifs, and just hammering away, and getting super tranced out, the vocals too, almost a sort of monkish chant, a mysterious crooned chorale way down in the mix (which to these ears sounds a little like Alice In Chains, which is NOT at all a bad thing, in fact check out the acoustic brooder "Since Sun Revised", awesome!). And there does seem to be some grungy grooviness to the proceedings, the band unfurling slithery, swaggery tangles of mathy churn, or loping rhythmic crunch, the best moments here though are still when they do lock into a loop, and keep it going forever, total math rock bliss out for sure.
Fans of that classic nineties math/post rock sound will definitely dig, Don Cab, Rodan, AMF, etc, but Liturgy-isms abound, as if a bunch of these tracks could in fact be stripped down Liturgy tracks, but ultimately, Survival ply a twisted strain of heady, tangled, trancey, psychedelic mathiness that we're almost digging more than Liturgy!
We'd been hearing rumors about this band for ages, a new group featuring ex-members of late great nineties post/noise rockers Unwound, who were easily one of our favorite bands EVER. And while we were were prepared to be disappointed, we were actually super pleasantly surprised. The sound definitely has some Unwound too it, but it's WAY popper, and to these ears actually sounds a bit like the Melvins in places, certainly the vocals. But the music itself is some weird nineties beholden post punk / noise rock, with a serious Black Flag vibe throughout, plenty of Greg Ginn-ish guitars, the sound dynamic, and intricate, certainly some post/math rock going on, but then in the middle of a tense post punk jam, the song will blossom into impossible poppiness. Just check out opener "Divine Mob", which is super Melvins-y in the beginning, and unfurls some tense droned out guitar melodies, and some motorik drum pound, before the chorus delivers s hook that KILLS, and then that chorus gets all pulled apart, the vocals wrapped around angular guitar noise and more drum pound.
Frontman Justin Trosper of Unwound is reunited with the original drummer from Unwound (now on guitar), so there's bound to be some Unwoundisms, but Survival Knife is a whole different beast, they actually sound like the kind of band that 15 years ago major labels would be losing their shit over, scrappy, but still pretty polished, noisy and heavy, but also plenty catchy and poppy, lots of broody minor key churn, even some shimmery acoustic guitar strum in the mix. Ultimately, this is just a killer slab of nineties beholden post punk / noise pop, that fans of Unwound will definitely love, but really, anyone who grew up on groups like Sonic Youth, The Swirlies, Sebadoh, and all that Homestead / Touch And Go / Dutch East stuff, this will definitely hit the spot.
The Survival were a Mexican psychedelic rock band circa 1970, who played morbid, melancholy acid-blues and warped beat music, with an oddly apocalyptic sense of freak-humor, reflected in song titles like "The World Is A Bomb", "Electric Chair", "Nothings
One of five new tapes from the awesome Austin based experimental tape label, Holodeck. Largely documenting the growing and diverse Texas underground scene of synth conjurers, drone lords, psych meditators, and classical folk devotionalists, each tape conceived as a unique listening experience with beautifully designed minimalist packaging. We listed tapes by Lumens, Smokey Emery and Thousand Foot Whale Claw awhile back, and this time around we have another tape from Thousand Foot Whale Claw as well as tapes by M. Geddes Gengra, Silent Land Time Machine, Amasa Gana and this one from mysterious synth quartet Survive.
Two side long tracks, the first a pulsating cavernous modular synth exploration, an extended version of a track from their self-titled debut 10" which we had a handful of but are now gone (though if we can get more we'll surely list it). That track is otherworldly, sci-fi and dark, like early Cluster, Klaus Schulze and Alpha Centauri-era Tangerine Dream.
The other side is more spacious and primordial, and begins like a still night on some toxic planet. Gaseous rumbles, eerie night whistles and percolating textural bloops, far off some humming phased mechanoid vocals building up to what sounds like it could be the foley for the final hellish scene in the movie The Black Hole. Stripped of John Barry's ominous orchestrations, what we're left with is cold robo-futurist doom, laid to rest by an extended funereal space dirge. Limited to 100 copies!
One of six new tapes from the always awesome Holodeck label out of Austin, Texas is the full length debut (and second Holodeck release) from Texas Synth worshippers, Survive. We've previously listed a self titled tape and a self titled 10" (all of their records are basically self-titled and only distinguished by their catalog names) and we had the vinyl version that came out on Mannequin records for a little bit, but never had enough to list and now that's gone too, but at least we have this new tape to enjoy.
The 10" debut had an airy feel to the synth formations that gave the compositions lots of space, but their sound now has darkened into a molten early Klaus Schulze-like aesthetic. There's a more alien and perhaps passively menacing vibe at play that creeps into an eighties sci-fi soundtrack trajectory like you might hear in Judge Dredd, The Black Hole, or Tron. The moods are somber, cold and anxiety ridden, but not in a human emotional sense, more like the unrealized dreams of robots but with an occasional ray of hope in an otherwise darkened universe. Limited!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Here's a second collection of cover tunes by songstress Susanna Wallumrod (also of .... And The Magical Orchestra fame)! With her hushed lilting melancholic interpretation of a remarkably diverse selection of songs such as Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak", ABBA's "Lay All Your Love On Me" (we'd have hoped for "Dancing Queen" or "Mamma Mia", but it wasn't to be!), Prince's "Dance On", Black Sabbath's "Changes", Roy Harper's "Forever", Will Oldham's "Joy And Jubilee", Sandy Denny's "Who Knows Where The Time Goes", Nico's "Janitor Of Lunacy", and Tom Petty's "Don't Come Around Here No More", it's easy to think of her as a Norwegian equivalent to Cat Power, but with perhaps a bit of a broader appeal a la Lilith Fair or Tori Amos! Quite lovely.
One of three recent releases from this Bay Area black metal / black ambient horde, that make up a part of a loose trilogy, which included the recent Monument Of Decay 12" on Black Horizons (reviewed on the last list, and still available) and continues / culminates with the Become lp, which was originally released in an insanely limited edition on aQ beloved label Auris Apothecary, in the form of a lavishly packaged reel to reel tape. Two sprawling fifteen minutes tracks, maybe SH's most abstract work to date, where other records displayed a distinct delineation between the atmospheric movements, and the buzzing black sections, no such separation exists here, with each track/side, existing as a single sonic ritual, the group's black buzz, smeared into blurred squalls of washed out noise, heaving swells of abject industrial thrum, buried vocals, oozing riffage, buried rhythms, according to the band Become was specifically created to inspire madness through repetition, a tranced out minimal/maximal cloud of roiling black sound. Playable at 45 or 33, both deliver a similar experience, although we are of course partial to the slower speed, which causes the sounds to grow even more indistinct and blurred out, a heaving, tarpit doom-drone that oozes from the speakers. But even at 45, this is more noise than black metal, a near psychedelic blacknoise, the A side featuring some seriously rib cage rattling low end, and when the noisiness abates, the sonic clouds part revealing some haunting beauty, tangled melodies and almost shoegazey textures, lurking just below the surface, eventually building back up to a dense death march crawl, more of a ghostly drift actually, the sound shedding low end, gradually growing more and more brittle, until at the finish its nearly Merzbowian white noise. The B side delivers more of the same, shadowed beauty, beneath cloud of demon breath vokills, of keening ur-drone shimmer, crumbling Caretaker-like atmospheres, occasional gouts of face melting howl and crush, but those moments are balanced by brief passages of sublime sonically tarnished beauty, that drifts darkly through the ether, before being obliterated by one final blast of speaker shredding blacknoise crush.
LIMITED TO 351 COPIES!! Packaged in swank Stoughton style tip-on jackets with super striking metallic gold offset printed cover art.
Latest black sonic ritual from this SF trio (formerly duo), and like the last record, Larvae, which came out on Handmade Birds, Behind The Throne continues the group's evolution away from the blacknoise that defined their earlier sound. As we mentioned in our review of Larvae, the band seemed to spend a surprising amount of their time lately not blasting or buzzing, instead, conjuring up some surprisingly lovely ambience, and that's true here too, although the ambience here is less shimmery and abstract, and more like some sort of blackened dronescapery, thick swaths of guitar buzz, and dense swells of processed vocals, creating something that's both haunting and hypnotic, dense and intense, it's not really until about 7 minutes into the first track (which fills up the whole first side of the vinyl), that the band finally do unleash some black metal, but when they do, it's a dense blurred buzz, so blurred and blown out it almost sounds more droney and washed out than grim and heavy, but the crazy thing is, the band haven't even started, as a couple minutes later, they somehow explode again, the sound splintering into a weird almost industrial sounding black chug, a grinding, howling maelstrom of black buzz and churning psychedelia, that quickly fades out leaving just a long stretch of crumbling noise, distant vocals, tolling bells, and crackling staticky ambience.
The second track / B side is another sprawling epic, this time bookended by some creepy industrial ambience, what sounds like jangling chains, plenty of rumbles and creaking high end, all smeared into a blackened ur-drone, soon guitars drift in, but not riffs, more like black chordal clouds, that hover darkly, before finally coalescing into proper riffs, but like the first track, the riffs are so distorted and blown out, the 'black metal' here is more of a blackdrone blur, that even with headphones reveals very little of what's going on in Sutekh's roiling black soundworld, the guitars murky and muddy one second, harsh and caustic the next, the vocals a buried bellow, and if there are drums, they're buried so low they just add to the general cacophony. The track churns and chugs, and at one point sounds almost like a sonic approximation of a locomotive, clattery and industrial, but still wreathed in a swirling blackbuzz fog, before the blackness dissipates, leaving just the strange ritualistic ambience that opened the track.
Super swank packaging, full color photos of some sort of altar ritual, candles and chalices and knives, all wreathed in shadow, with all the texted printed in a clear reflective spot varnish.
Latest blast of blurred blacknoise brutality from this SF duo, whose records seem to disappear in a heartbeat, every one a ridiculously limited microedition, this new 7" no different, already sold out and out of print, we got 20 copies, and will most likely not be able to get more.
Which is a shame, cuz this is maybe SH's most melodic and distinctly black metal record yet. Frantic riffing beneath super distorted vox, a blurred tranced out almost blacknoisedrone, until the drums kick in, but when they do, it's less like a blastbeat, and more like another layer of blurred low end buzz, the guitars churning relentlessly within a cloud of black/white noise, super repetitive and cyclical, but the melodies continue to seep through, mournful and minor key, buried beneath thick swaths of roiling blackness, the sound murky and muddy and surprisingly warm for being as intense and blackened as it is.
The flipside is another surprise, all echoey and industrial, more processed vokills, this time though draped over clean guitar strum and a clattery machine like rhythm, the overall vibe brooding and downright doomy, a sort of creepy black ambient industrial maybe? There's an even more surprising second half, laced with clean, post rock-ish guitars, some death march ultradoom plod and creepy, cinematic piano-like melodies, the oozes and drifts darkly before disappearing in a haze of Merzbow worthy buzz, a thick swirling cloud of roiling blackness.
LIMITED TO 253 COPIES!! We have less than 20, so grab one before they're gone...
Now with an expanded lineup, and several tours under their collective belts, this Bay Area black metal / noise outfit offer up their latest missive, their sound continuing to evolve, their mix of blurred noise drenched black buzz and haunting atmospheric ambience skewing toward the former big time.
The opening track introduces Sutekh Hexen at their noisiest, the initial stretch of washed out buzzing blackness giving way to pure face melting black noise, unrelenting and devastating. Which is a bit of foreshadowing, as this might be the group's noisiest record as a whole, at least since their earliest recordings, which is surprising as the last few records found the band growing more and more melodic.
The rest of the side unwinds in blasts of corrosive noise, this time underpinned by low drones and chant like vox, adding some melody and color, however subtle, to the proceedings, everything burred into a Tim Hecker-ish haze. Side one closes with a blast of extremely harsh black metal, the buzz and any semblance of riffage, nearly buried beneath an avalanche of grinding psychedelic noise.
The B side lets Sutekh Hexen flex those soundscaping muscles, at least briefly, opening with a stretch of droned out thrum, a soft black swirl, drifting ominously, only to disappear in a squall of torrential blackness, a wild roiling black hole of sound, that eventually dissipates, allowing the harsh vokills to slip to the fore, then the buried rhythms, but again, it all bleeds into an extended sprawl of black metal murk, woozy and blown out, blurry and dense, trailing off into a cloud of grim black energy.
Killer cd reissue of the recent singles collection, Empyraisch, from local blacknoise/black metal outfit Sutek Hexen, which includes a bonus 3"cd-r with an exclusive unreleased 20 minute track! More on that in a second, first, here's what we had to say about Empyraisch when we reviewed the lp version:
Empyraisch is a compilation of sorts, gathering up all the tracks from Sutekh Hexen's super insanely limited and long out of print 7"s from the last couple years, as well as a rare compilation track or two. We'd imagine most of you were like us, and were unable to snag any of those rare 7"s, or perhaps only managed to track down one or two, so this should still be of interest to even the most obsessive SH fans, but fair warning to the folks who did manage to get em all. For the rest of is though, this is a godsend (devilsend?)...
This Bay Area black metal / noise outfit dig deep into the crypt for these grim blacknoize rarities, a gloriously dizzying mix of blurred noise drenched black buzz and haunting atmospheric ambience... The opening track introduces Sutekh Hexen at their noisiest, the initial stretch of washed out buzzing blackness giving way to pure face melting black noise, unrelenting and devastating. Which is a bit of foreshadowing, since this collection obviously represents the group at their noisiest and grimmest. The record continues to unwind with blasts of corrosive noise, this time underpinned by low drones and chant like vox, adding some melody and color, however subtle, to the proceedings, everything blurred into a Tim Hecker-ish haze. The first half closes with a blast of extremely harsh black metal, the buzz and any semblance of riffage, nearly buried beneath an avalanche of grinding psychedelic noise.
After that, Sutekh Hexen flex those soundscaping muscles, at least briefly, opening with a stretch of droned out thrum, a soft black swirl, drifting ominously, only to disappear in a squall of torrential blackness, a wild roiling black hole of sound, that eventually dissipates, allowing the harsh vokills to slip to the fore, then the buried rhythms, but again, it all bleeds into an extended sprawl of black metal murk, woozy and blown out, blurry and dense, trailing off into a cloud of grim black energy.
This reissue tacks on the 20 minute "The Power To Condemn", which opens with some seriously ominous abject ambience, swirling winds, some creepy scraping (bones dragged on stone?), creaking, rumbles, all laced with strange sonic shimmer, soon voices drift in, demonic whispers, in the distance keening feedback, we were steeling ourselves for the band to launch into some caustic black buzz, but it never happens, this is all ambient, although about halfway through, some deep low end thrum surfaces, pocked with strange pulsations, and eventually, some proper buzz swoops in, but it's way low in the mix, sounding off in the distance, not black buzz so much as glacial tar pit ooze, downtuned rumbles, slo-mo riffage bleeding into black blurs, a SUNNO)))-like dirge, which soon blossoms into something blacker and noisier, a swirling squall of harrowing, hellish howls and churning blackness, darkly psychedelic and hauntingly harsh, the sounds seem to melt and fade before our ears, gradually settling into a low level feedback drenched thrum, before finally fading out completely.
Swank packaging too, housed in an oversized black matte envelope, sealed with a printed sticker, inside, two printed inserts, and two printed clear plastic transparencies, probably SUPER LIMITED too, so don't dawdle...
The sound of this Bay Area blackmetal / blacknoise duo-turned-trio continues to evolve, and in surprising directions on this, their latest in a flurry of extremely limited releases over the last year. Beginning life as purveyors of dense speaker shredding noise, informed by, but not necessarily sounding much like, black metal, it seemed more a case of black metal riffs buried beneath sheets of white noise and crumbling industrial detritus, and blast beats recorded on a crappy cassette tape and played back through a Walkman, and again, buried beneath a punishing wall of sound. But with every record, the sounds seem more composed, perhaps less antagonizingly harsh, with more time spent creating atmospheres and ambience, than actually buzzing and blasting, which again is the case on Larvae. The opening track, begins with 3+ minutes of shimmery ominous ambience, laced with strange insectoid clicks, the guitars, when they do surface, unfurl soft strummed streaks of chordal whir, beneath which lush swells undulate drowsily, it's at about the 4 minute mark, that the song splinters, and explodes in a dense blurred barrage of furious murky black buzz, that while heavy, is also soft focus enough that it nearly has more in common with Tim Hecker or folks like that, until the group crank up the sound once again, and it becomes full on black metal, that lasts less than a minute, and the band return to the haunting drift that opened the record, before one final time, blasting through the last two minutes, the guitars a black blur, the vocals a fierce monstrous bellow, the drums, if there are any, buried in the mix, a heaving wash of noise drenched heaviness, that manages to be massive, but still weirdly textural.
The relatively brief second track applies the group's corrosive crunch and black atmospheres to something much more dirgey and dismal, a churning industrial tinged creep, the sounds blown out and in-the-red, a tangle of black noise / white noise and industrial crush somehow sculpted into a lumbering black doom, peppered with squalls of blaring FX drenched ear shredding skree, but also underpinned by all manner of layered drones and disembodied voices.
The final track, clocks in at a whopping 15 minutes, and again, finds the band easing into it, unfurling a hushed bit of blackened dronescaping, again flecked with strange clicks and skitterings, the guitars drift in, this time sounding like some sort of Appalachia, draped over streaks of muted crumbling crunch, the song sprawling out into an epic chunk of black folk drift, tangled voices, swirls of hiss and thrum, all wreathing the steel string buzz of the acoustic guitar, until at about the ten minute mark, everything is swallowed up by an avalanche of frenzied black buzz and frantic riffing, so dense and tangled that again, sans headphones the riffs all bleed into one thick roiling cloud of sound, eventually coalescing into an almost classic metal sounding chug, a murky hypnotic dirge that churns malevolently to the record's end.
Both the cd and the lp come in super swank, and gorgeously designed packaging, the artwork abstract in all blacks and greys, with the text printed in clear spot varnish ink, designed by Sutekh Hexen member Kevin Gan Yuen and Dwid Hellion from hardcore legends Integrity. The cd is limited to 500 copies, the lp is already sold out and out of print, so these are the last vinyl copies we'll be able to get...
Finally, the debut full length from this Bay Area black metal / blacknoise duo, who in recent months have garnered a whole lot of hype, based on a flurry of killer (albeit insanely limited) releases, and a recent West Coast tour, which found the duo playing outside of the Bay Area for the first time ever. And while we've raved about everything we could get our hands on from these guys, this is definitely the band's finest moment, albeit, weirdly their least noisy. But noisiness is all relative. Cuz this is still plenty noisy, it's just compared to some of their previous releases, and their blistering liver performances, this stuff is far removed from that black metal Merzbow sonic attack that defined their early days.
Here, the noise takes a backseat to the black metal, which is actually a good thing, the riffing, and prerecorded blast beats, weaving a woozy washed out buzzscape, which on their own, would make the sound a sort of soft focus Wold, all washed out and blackly buzzy, but over this blackened foundation, the duo add heapings of noise, the vocals, processed to oblivion, sound like gouts of white hot buzz, more guitars, extra layers of blackness, it's as if the black metal core is at the center of a swirling cloud of jagged, caustic blacknoise, the two seeming to function independently for the most part, but the band create dramatic dynamics with the twisted mix, which finds, various elements dropping out, only to erupt and explode back into action moments later, or the black metal riffing getting fused to the blacknoise creating a harsh wall of sound, which just as quickly separates leaving the blast and buzz to pound furiously, shadowed by streaks of hiss and hum, the sounds dramatically stereo panned too for further twisted effect.
The stretches of ambience are darkly effective, as are the weirdly mournful clean guitar parts, the band obviously capable of creating mood and mystery, and when the buzz kicks in, none of that mood or mystery is lost, instead, it's absorbed into the frenzied black chaos which transforms the sound into something more than noise, more than black metal, it's a darkly epic, strangely textured assemblage of buzz and blast, howl and pound, the sound a living black entity, sonic chaos given form, this is the real transcendental black metal, all should be worshipping before the altar of the priests of Sutekh Hexen.
LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!!!
The latest from this local black metal / black ambient outfit is part three in an unofficial trilogy of releases, and captures the band in their brief tenure as a four piece, complete with live drummer (they're back to a trio, now drum machine driven), although even live drummer-ed, they group's overall M.O. remains the same, crafting gorgeously lush expanses of grim psychedelic black ambience, and face melting blasts of noise drenched black buzz, that black buzz given a bit more heft here with the live drums. But unlike on past record, where the atmospheric intro would lead to an explosive blast of blackness, the four songs here are each self contained, and display some of the most experimental work from the band yet. Opener "Lastness", is a creepy, organ driven swirl of blackened shimmer and strange demonic vocalizations, the main melody looped maniacally and played on what sounds like an old children's organ, that melody buried under layers of grit and grime, and a chorus of ghostly voices, the whole thing gradually blissing out into a strange bit of abstract drift, processed vox and minimal percussion. Which leads directly into "Of Emanation", which finds SH making a noisy black mess, the live drums blown out, the vocals even more blown out, everything wrapped in thick sheets of in-the-red guitar buzz, the whole track laced with some twisted/warped production, the whole sound becoming muted and murky for a few seconds only to explode again moments later, stretches of almost white noise static, the various instruments drifting in and out, just drums and noise one second, just guitar the next, everything cranked to almost Merzbow-ic proportions the next.
"Dhumavatis Hunger" is all power electronics gristle, underpinned by deep Teutonic rumbles, and wreathed in clouds of swirling static, and blasts of distorted crunch, extremely noisy, with some surprising melodies surfacing beneath all that chaotic noise, the sounds coalescing into something weirdly songlike, albeit still doused in blown out distorted crumble, an epic and majestic slab of blacknoise, that eventually reveals some insectoid guitar buzz lurking beneath the surface, everything gradually getting lost in one final squall of speaker shredding sonic howl. And finally, "Dakhma", begins as a hushed drift, gradually gaining momentum (and volume), but instead of bursting into black metal buzz, the sounds seem to soar, a slow build to something ominously epic, a sort of grim black Godspeed, darkly and harrowingly lovely, building to a seriously noisy coda, before once again fading out, leaving a sky full of blackened sonic contrails.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! Packaged in super swank full color jackets, printed in metallic ink, and including a full color printed insert.
This local black metal / drone-noise duo have been cranking out recordings like crazy, not that you would ever know it, as all of them were released as lavishly packaged, outrageously limited cassettes (and all in batches of something like 50 copies). Finally, the band seem to be making waves beyond the WAY underground, and a comprehensive reissue campaign is under way, as well as a whole spate of about-to-drop new releases. But THIS, this is the first recording we've been able to get from these guys to list, and fans of noise drenched blackness, and super distorted psychedelic heaviness will be in heaven (hell?). A blasting, blown out, ultraviolent blend of raw, primitive black metal buzz, dense drones, lysergic psychedelic atmosphere and caustic abrasive blacknoise, these two tracks require iron ears, a black soul and preferably some headphones to get lost in SH's bizarre black cacophony.
"Bled Thy Likeness" is a blurred and muted expanse of crackly, staticky black thrum, murky and muddy, a writhing, swirling sprawl of hazy washed out minor key riffage, laced with streaks of soaring guitars woven into a background of distorted black ambience, eventually exploding into a whitenoise drenched blast of heaving, crumbling, ultra distorted blackdrone crush, hellish shrieked vokills smeared into undulating sheets of Merzbowian buzz, all underpinned by a haunting monkish chantlike melody, adding a strange bit of melancholy mystery to the harsh hellish buzz.
"Murmur" is just as intense, a wild frenzied blown out assault of fierce and fucked up blacknoise chaos, the shrieked vox distorted and processed into another layer of furious buzz, tangled up in the frenzied berserker riffing, the whole sound a twisted, gnarled tangle of face melting, ear shredding, soul shearing fury, the song somehow blossoming part way through into something subtly more melodic, the blacknoisebuzz and grim black-blast infused with a strangely lush and warm melodic undercurrent, a deep sonic swell, rife with epic black metal majesty, but nearly suffocated by the caustic clouds of brittle buzz and in-the-red roar overhead.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES. Super striking, thick black and white jackets, and printed on nice heavy vinyl...
This latest batch of tapes from local label Merz Tapes finds the label expanding and rebranding, now known as Merzbild, and no longer limiting themselves to cassettes. It is however this most recent batch of cassettes we're here to discuss. In this case, it's this collaboration between SF black metal / blacknoise outfit Sutekh Hexen, and long time Nurse With Wound collaborator Andrew Liles.
There would be a time when Liles remixing a black metal band would seem crazy, but the fact is that at this point, SH are really only tangentially black metal, as they spend much of their time weaving dense dronescapes, or sculpting bursts of feral ear splitting noise into tense and intense walls of blown out sound, granted, there's still plenty of blast and buzz, but it's often obfuscated and recontextualized. Each side of this tape seems to offer up both the original track, and then Liles' reworking. On the A side, SH unfurl a dense blurred rumble, peppered with muted bombastic thuds, and subterranean pulses, buried voices, and a tranced out sprawl of undulating layers, blacks and greys, haunting and harrowing, a sound that's bleak and abject, the perfect launching point for Liles, who takes that track and stretches it from a little under 6 minutes, to almost 18, making the focal point a haunting, reverbed piano, drifting in soft billowing clouds of what we take to be the original track, letting the occasional drum blat leap out, or spidery tendrils of industrial buzz, gnarled tangles of voices speaking in tongues, and then suddenly, at about 10 minutes in, the song is transformed into what sounds like a sort of industrial rock? Chugging metallic guitars, big drums, all over that churning Sutekh brood, there's even some psychedelic guitar leads, unclear if somehow those sounds were buried in the original track, or if Liles just went nuts and essentially turned SH, at least briefly, into a weird industrial metal band, but then suddenly, it all fades away, leaving the track to slither ominously to the end, trailing a cloud of buzzing detritus in its wake. Wow.
The flipside finds SH exploding right out of the gate with a blurred blast of black buzz, murky and swirling and dizzyingly dense, before settling into another long sprawl of black ambient drift, much more haunting, abstract and serene. And again Liles takes SH's 5 minutes and more than doubles it, the whole thing, a brooding blackened driftscape, the tones oozing and rife with what sounds like some sort of demonic chorale, a blurred black raga, laced with sheets of harsh noise, jagged shards of processed vocal hiss, building to an impossibly dense and noisy, speaker destroying crescendo, that sounds like multiple Herman Nitsch compositions playing at once, atonal, droned out, and weirdly mesmerizing, underpinned by what sounds like organ or calliope, the vibe very cinematic, the sound collapses into a cacophony of smashing bottles, before beginning the slow build again, this time to a blown out, smeary drone, seemingly constructed from the blast and buzz of the original, but here recast as something more Tim Hecker like, massive crumbling distorted swells, and granular sheets of sound rife with melodic murk, gradually collapsing into a strange stuttering digital freakout, and one final burst of smashing glass.
Super sweet packaging, printed silver-on-smoky-clear tapes, reflective silver on swirly green and black J-cards.
Sutures is the rare musical beast that appeals to both freaks who like to get weird on the dance floor late at night, in dingy basements and sketchy clubs, as well as those who would rather hole up at home alone, and enter different dimensions while blasting these murky and hypnotic sounds.
We hear elements of Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voiltaire and Coil filtered through a dark techno lens in these nocturnal, narcotic sounding tracks. Listening to Sutures makes us want to be in a pitch dark space filled with smoke machines, fucked up projections and piercing strobe lights.
This cassette is an awesome blast of crunchy, industrial-techno left-field dance music. It's the kind of music that punkers and weirdos would call dance music, but most people who go to traditional dance parties would find way too alien or dark to get down to. As if we even needed to tell you, it's pretty clear where aQ stands on that spectrum. If we're gonna let loose and let the music move us, we want our soundtrack to be as haunting, propelling, warped and dizzyingly tripped out as the sounds Sutures conjure up here!
The name of this 'group' might not be familiar to you, it wasn't to us, even though this is Suum Cuique's second album. SC is in fact Miles Whittaker, whose name you also might not recognize, but he is in fact one half of aQ faves, the hauntological electronic duo Demdike Stare, but Suum Cuique, while sharing some sonic similarities with Demdike, is very much its own beast, with Whittaker recording straight from the mixing board, using only analog equipment and almost no edits or overdubs. You wouldn't necessarily be able to tell, but it does lend the sounds of Suum Cuique a sort of raw urgency and an old school primitivism that is definitely missing from Demdike records.
The record begins with a wild squall of spacey synths before slipping into a long sprawl of skittery primitive drum machine driven space kraut, wreathed in metallic shimmers. The record gradually drifts towards a more reverbed soft noise collage, peppered with rhythmic pulsations, the sounds oozing into blackened drones, abstract percussive workouts, and finally, finishing up the A side with a looped sounding stretch of hypnotic murk, al buried sine tones and rumbling crumbling whirs, sounding quite a bit like Philip Jeck.
The flipside is equally all over the map, starting off with a churning doomy electronic dirge, that gradually dissipates into an ominous ambience before transforming into some hazy hauntological dronescapery, only to splinter into a serious blast of super distorted blown out Our Love Will Destroy The World style rhythmic noisiness, all looped and layered, gnarled and tangled, only to finally fade out in a cloud of cosmic FX shimmer.
LIMITED TO 700 COPIES!!
First album we're reviewed from either artist in this collaboration, somehow, but we may have to go back and check them both out more thoroughly now..
Sunns is indie rock band of Canadian shoegazers, not to be confused with SUNNO))), and Jerusalem In My Heart is one guy, also Canadian, of Lebanese descent, named Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, who does more experimental sort of stuff, with a release on Constellation. On this self-titled release, they create a pulsing, pumping backbone to their music together, that's maybe like a combination of Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians and the trippy new Follakzoid record we reviewed on the last list.
Synth-heavy, driving rhythms that are part krautrock, and part Drive soundtrack. Swirled throughout you get sort of Rhyton or Muslimgauze-esque Middle Eastern guitar riffage that gives the record a strong psych vibe. As the tracks build and settle into a groove, you get the feeling that this collaboration was meant to happen. On "Metal", you get a dark groove with layers of percussion that alternate between syncopated and a techno-like drive. "Self" is a straight Middle Eastern sounding groove and one of the few times you'll hear discernable vocals, a track that stands out among the others.
Perhaps the only downside to this record is how quickly it seems they give up on a good idea. "In Touch", for example, seems to end suddenly right when it feels like it should be building even more. So while not perfect, it's damn promising - we'll be stoked to hear more from this collab if they keep at it!
Two new Utech's this list, and that's something to be stoked about, 'cause the label rarely disappoints, if ever. This one's from Japanese guitarist Suzuki Junzo, who's played in Tokyo flashbacking psych rock bands like Overhang Party, Miminokoto, and Astral Travelling Unity, though here he's solo, just him and his guitar and the black void. Yes, it can be bleak and ominous... but pretty, calm, mesmeric, too. There's four long tracks, beginning with the 20-minute title track, inspired by bluesman Lonnie Johnson's "Blue Ghost Blues"... though again, this isn't blues. Something far darker. For the first half, it could be a folky James Blackshaw on luudes kind of thing... then it enters eerie ambient suspense soundtrack territory... before around the 12 minute mark when Junzo puts the pedal to the metal and his amp begins to howl and fry Keiji Haino style. For reals, for Rallizes. Track two, "Beyond The Yellow Clouds", is 11 minutes of dark shimmering drone bliss, segueing smoothly into the disc's shortest (8:33) but most badass track, its title a tribute to the Pink Fairies, "Shivering Larry's Last Freakout", totally monomaniacal, distortodelic, repetitive riffarma that comes across like one of Tetuzi Akiyama's brilliant/dumb "Don't Forget To Boogie" cuts mixed maybe with some NWOFHM (Circle) stuff, frantic primitive minimalist ZZ Haino in a wind tunnel action - damn! Then as a comedown, chillout, final piece, there's 13 more minutes of ghostly guitar grind, a la Ulaan Khol or Li Jianhong, "Studies For Three Broken Canes Of Dr. Dream", that lives up to its fantastic title, whatever that means. We like, but we'll be queuing up ol' Shivering Larry again in a second, that's the jam!
Utech wins again with this one - grab a copy and put on your shades and enjoy. Limited to 300 copies only. And as usual with Utech stuff, packaged in a nice oversized sleeve. The artwork's mostly black, the only image, a half-seen Junzo holding his ghostly guitar. He's NOT wearing shades, which seems strange.
Keiji Haino, Takashi Mizutani, Munehiro Narita, Kawabata Makoto... these are (some of) the gods of Japanese psych guitar. Add Suzuki Junzo to the list, if you haven't already. He's quickly becoming one of our faves, for blacker-than-blues guitar/feedback wrangling. Back with another solo disc for the always-on-it (and out-there) experimental Utech label, Junzo, who has played guitar for such bands as Overhang Party and Miminokoto, delivers a gorgeous, darkly entrancing mixture of both noisy, heavy-duty distorto drone whoosh and quietly lovely acoustic atmospheres. Regarding the former, the epically titled (and epic otherwise as well) opener "When The Grey Skies Turns Into Blood Red" launches right into a session of wind-tunnel psych guitar grind, tumbling end-over-end with skittering percussion accompaniment to match, courtesy of Junzo's colleague Ikuro Takahasi (LSD-March, ex-Fushitsusha, etc.). That 15 minutes and 15 seconds of amp-worship improv is beautiful in its way, as is the quite contrasting next track (and title cut), Junzo shifting gears for an intimate acoustic reverie, a la James Blackshaw or Jack Rose.
Junzo is back to laying on the ghostly reverb (and some whispery hushed vocals too) with track 3, "La Notte", and the freely-textural percussion returns as well. That one's lovely enough, but then the finale, at 17 minutes even more epic than the opener (and with an even more epic title, too: "Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Invisible Tower In The Ring Of Holy Mountain") takes us a way on a tremulous trip of slow sad strum and minimalistic string buzz. Tune in, zone out.
Yeah, another very nice one from our man Junzo!! In the usual swank Utech packaging.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
*** COLLECTIBLE USED VINYL ***
Rare 1975 Avant Jazz from Japan.
Media: NM
Sleeve: VG
Sleeve has some minor seamwear and corner wear but otherwise solid.
For whatever reason, the recordings of Akio Suzuki are not easy to come by. Most of the output from this visionary Japanese instrument builder and improviser have quietly emerged and quickly disappeared. So this very subtle and very delicate 2003 improvisation with David Toop from the good folks at Sound 323 in London certainly caught our attention. One of Suzuki's most well known instruments is his collection of stone flutes, and the sounds from these instruments feature prominently in this set with David Toop. These curious objects product an eerie and ancient sound whose rasping whistles and watery trills embody an earthiness that predates the nomenclature from the history of music. Suzuki matches these sounds with delicate scrapes and textures from a couple of cymbals and a handful of small rocks. Toop does his best to articulate similar gestures within the purely acoustic improv strategies of the New London Silence school which developed in parallel Bernhard Gunter / Lowercase aesthetic of very quite electro-acoustic music and out of the late period works from AMM. For better or for worse, some of Toop's elements speak of a particular time and of a particular place (e.g. London, 2003) whereas Suzuki's offerings are beautifully non-specific in their cultural references. At other times, the two spiral metallic textures and softened drones of feedback with whirring flute glissandos, which all quietly float out of periodic silences. We've been told that during one of the quieter moments in the session, a woman next door can be heard singing in the bath. But like Suzuki's previous Kogezan Koukiji of temple improvisations recorded against a backdrop of a dramatic rainstorm, we've been thwarted in hearing these sounds by the patter of a springtime rainstorm and the constant blur of traffic sounds on Valencia Street. We're pretty sure Suzuki would be okay with those interruptions.
Daisuke Suzuki is mostly known as the proprietor of Siren Records in Japan, home to some amzing drone records from the likes of Jonathan Coleclough and Andrew Chalk (including the universally acclaimed "Sumac" album). But Daisuke has also contributed sound works on occasion to Ora (the loose collective of Chalk, Darren Tate, Colin Potter, Coleclough, and others). "D.D.D." marks
Pretty sure that most of the times we've listed a disc by our favorite Finnish post/prog/space rock band Circle we've made reference to rhythmic krautrock masters Can somewhere in our review. Circle and Can both cast similar spells of hypnosis upon the listener, and Can certainly are one of Circle's ancestral inspirations. So it was perhaps destined that members of Circle would someday, somehow collaborate with someone from Can. And it happened. In 2003, at the Jyrock Festival in Finland, former Can vocalist Damo Suzuki (the singer on such classic Can LPs as Ege Bamyasi, Tago Mago and Future Days), who has been travelling the globe for many years now, playing with various impromptu units of young, Can-lovin' musicians under the rubric of Damo Suzuki's Network, shared the stage with three from Circle: Jyrki Laiho (Circle, Hot Guitars, Stalwart, etc.) on guitar, Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Pharaoh Overlord, Ektroverde, etc.) on bass, and Mika Ratto (Circle, Ektroverde, Ratto Ja Lethisalo, etc.) on drums. Guitarist Jorge Ledezma from the Chicago based band Defender was also on hand, presumably 'cause he was touring with Damo. In a fifty one minute, continuous improvised performance these guys provide a churning, freaked out, darkly cosmic backing for Damo's echoed and energetic yet spaced-out vocal exhortations. Of course, there was no way that Circle mainman Jussi wouldn't want to document this event for posterity, so now here we have the cd on Jussi's Ektro label entitled 3 Dead People After The Performance. Hope that's not really true, though I'm sure that there are indeed people in this world that would at least die happy after seeing their heroes perfoming together!
For you proggy instro-metal freaks, last list we had the ultra Champsy Hematovore, this time 'round we've got Suzukiton: two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer, and no singer, all hailing from a metalloid stoner robot shitkicker planet called Richmond, Virginia. Their songs are kinda complex constructions of chunky bits that make me think of, not Legos, but whatever that other, more advanced toy construction set is meant for really smart kids who'll grow up to be engineers. These guys probably played with that when they were young, but then picked up guitars and grew long hair and beards and instead of becoming engineers and making big hydroelectric dams and rocket ships and super-computers and stuff they grew up to shred metallically and mathematically (but groovily too) in Suzukitron. Heck, the square root symbol is actually used in one of their song titles. And another song is called "Chugga". I guess when you're instrumental, the best two options are song titles like that that describe the music, or song titles that just make somebody grin. Anyway Suzukiton chugs along nicely thick and sometimes speedily, and should definitely appeal to fans of the likes of the aforementioned Champs, as well as Zebulon Pike and Mastodon and some old faves from nearby to Suzukiton's neck of the woods, Breadwinner and Confessor.
It's definitely way better that these guys channelled their aggression and smarts into this rather than, say, making bombs. And keeping it instrumental means that they don't have to talk about their feelings, either.
The name sure sounds like one of those Norwegian black metal bands we like so much, doesn't it? Well, Svalastog are indeed from Norway, but they're not a black metal band. Definitely not. (Though we'd love to hear what a black metal band on Rune Gramofon would be like!)
This could go under an electronica/experimental/just-a-wee-bit-folk category, we'd suppose. Svalastog (who is actually a he not a they, being one guy, Per Henrik Svalastog) has taken several traditional Norwegian folk instruments -- very old fashioned indeed, primitive even, including a ram's horn (Bukkehorn) and a cow's horn (Kuhorn, duh), and also a Norwegian zither called a Harpeleik that apparently belonged to his grandfather -- and played them into his computer, chopping and looping and processing them into glitchily rhythmic, swooping, loping electronica. The idea, to bring the sounds of the rustic Nordic past into the modern musical laboratory of bits and bytes, clicks and cuts, works pretty darn well we'd say. This is moody, mysterious, also quite lively and lovely. Given the concept behind this, we -might- have hoped for something a little -less- processed and smoothed-out, a little more obviously "outdoorsy" or ancient-sounding, than what we get here, if only this wasn't so nice and soothing the way it is!
The "Icelandic Invasion" continues, as Shadoks reissues some more crucial '60s/'70s psych-prog action from that island nation. Last time we highlighted the groovy "hairy funk" heaviness of Odmenn. This time, two more: the debut from Trubrot (1969), and this one, the sole album by Svanfridur (1972). Both bands demonstrate definite Beatles influence, and do so well, but also are quite eccentric in their own right, which perhaps can be ascribed to their Icelandic heritage?
This group was definitely musically talented, hot stuff on the live circuit in their native Iceland, though the sales of this self-released lp were disappointing. And thus it ended up being their only album. Too bad, it's a good 'un after all, considered a Nordic prog classic by many collectors today, and something we think that fans of the modern day Swedish group Dungen might totally dig, for that same sort of Scandinavian prog/pop/psych blend only this is the real deal, not a retro remake.
Svanfridur, like Odmenn, is also fairly heavy and fuzzed out, often enough, on acid blues rockers like "My Dummy", whilst being simultaneously super catchy on the pop side of things too, exemplified by opener "The Woman Of Our Day", which sounds like a hit to us. It's a diverse album though, Svandfridur happily mixing things up, getting moody with flute and strings on the title track "What's Hidden There?", and moodier still with the strange synth atmospheres of "Did You Find?"... Then there's the staccato folk violin into acid rock distorted guitar rippage of "Finido". Great stuff all over.
Like most Shadoks reissues, this includes extensive liner notes in the cd booklet (revealing, among other things, that members of Svanfridur, like SO many other bands of the day it seems, had been involved in a production of the musical Hair), along with tons of photos and graphics. The original sleeve bearing the lyrics (in English) and recording credits is reproduced, and if you look close you'll note the presence of the classic admonition that this record is "To Be Played Loud"! Indeed.
More grim-faced black metal from a crew of modern-day Vikings. We'd never heard of them before, but I don't think this disc is their debut. They rock harder than most, and boast a great cold sound (very 'Frosty', one could say...). Energetic AND majestic, good stuff for fans of the genre!
Fresh off his collaboration with Aidan Baker and Andrea Belfi as B/B/S, Norway's Erik Skodvin aka Svarte Greiner outdoes himself on this one, one of the most "miasmatic" of the releases on his own Miasmah label yet. Doomiest anyway. And while some doom or dooom or dooooOOOOOoooom relies on heavy, highly amplified guitar riffs and anguished (or Ozzyish) vokills, Svarte G has none of that, pure instrumental atmosphere instead, drones and tones and ominous percussive sounds only, stately and suspenseful, "acoustic doom" he calls it and it IS. Seriously, imagine your most bummed out session of existential "why am I here, what is life about" angst, this is the soundtrack, but one that somehow finds the radiant beauty in that mood. Mood being doom spelled backwards as we all know, and Svarte Greiner has it both ways. Two long tracks, "Black Tie" and "White Noise" (hmm, is he a Bowie fan?), each 20+ minutes, both slowly unfolding, strangely soothing, yet total void-embracing, never-to-awake-or-return sonic nihil. How does he conjure such blissful darkness, with sudden soft-edged reverberating crashing chords interspersed amidst sparse, quietly textural soundfields? Sure probably with a piano or cello, guitar, synth and effects and other mundane everyday musical gear; but the results sound like they're sourced not from within an instrument or a computer but within the inner spaces of your own mind and (damned?) soul, for good or ill, the way you might, in a isolation tank, listen to your own heartbeat or bleakest unspoken thoughts and feelings, gaining solace from the blurred continuum of self and non-self. Whatever that means, but that's the sort of thing that the music of Svarte Greiner makes us ponder, and THAT at least should mean something.
If you're already a fan, and so many are for good reason, then that this gets the eyes closed, zoned out, thumbs up from us should be enough, get it, it's another transcendent slab of Svarte Greiner's cinematic downer drone loveliness. Also recommended to anyone into other Misamah soundscapes, Deaf Center and the like, stuff on Type too. Those still on the outside looking in, take a chance on crossing over and sink into this, it will sink into you.
Another super limited vinyl only missive, broadcast as always from some dark sonic underworld, courtesy of the man known as Svarte Greiner (Erik Skodvin to his mother), following the equally haunting and mysterious Man Beard Dress lp from the end of last year.
As we've mentioned before, this is doom. But not doom as you know it. Not heavy and crushing and downtuned and distorted, instead, spectral and ghostlike, abstract and ambient, doom in vibe, intention, spirit, as much as in sound. It's not about riffs or beats, it's about mood and space and soul, and taking a cold hard look through the cracks into the crumbling wasteland that lies inside all of us.
The opening track deviates from SG's usual M.O., taking the soft blackened shimmers and distant foghorn like drones, and adding a layer of grit, a swirling skree reminiscent of Skullflower or Sunroof! Like rattling chains, or bits of rusty metal falling from decaying structures, this extra element turns acoustic doom into something far more harrowing, a soundtrack to the descent, of slick stone walls and flickering grey lights, of black clouds obscuring burning skies, everything fading to nothing as the music lowers us deeper and deeper into the abyss.
The second track is a bit less harsh, more spacious and sprawling, skeletal, soft swells of moaning minimalism drift through a wide open expanse of far away throbs, and muted pulses, ghostly voices lurk beneath the surface, the slow motion sound of decay and despair, pretty, but ominous, and sinister, and beautifully bleak.
The flipside begins with another soundscape of space and soft sound, like a super abstract ambient Wolf Eyes, bits of feedback are streaked through hushed black whispers, creaking industrial whir wraps itself around desiccated barely there melodies, the sound of wandering through an empty and dead city, smashed windows like black eyes looking down from above, splintered doors like gaping mouths, the sky unleashing a cleansing rain of soft hiss, doing very little to combat the emptiness and loneliness evoked by Svarte Greiner's delicate doomic drift.
And finally, the record fades to black with the doomiest (and weirdly enough, prettiest) track of the bunch, a soft focus smear of effected black guitar shimmer, blurred into a throbbing dronescape, rife with fragmented melody and soft edged buzz, a strange and warm, almost ebullient sonic center, glowing faintly beneath the roiling lowend, a smoldering, crumbling, shadowy,and quite lovely doomdrone coda...
Beautiful full color covers, pressed on thick vinyl, and once again, WAY LIMITED!!!
Svarte Greiner is doom. Well, sort of. Maybe acoustic doom is more like it. And this very well may be the first time we've heard a record, or an artist that perfectly captures the sound and mood of the hitherto unexplored world of acoustic doom. Svarte Greiner is the solo guise of Norwegian soundmaker Erik Skodvin, who, when he is NOT Svarte Greiner, channels his less doomy musical emotions into an outfit called Deaf Center. But the dark and doomy loveliness of Svarte Greiner is what we're most concerned with here.
And the reason for that is that the music of SG is practically perfect. It's like that sound in our heads we've been imagining for ages but had never actually heard. Until now. The sticker on the cd namedrops Earth, Angelo Badalamenti and Volcano The Bear, which sounds interesting for sure, but doesn't nearly capture how beautiful and wonderfully creepy this stuff is. Imagine the music of past AQ faves like Jasper TX, Machinefabriek, Xela, Part Timer, that crumbling, hiss drenched loveliness, but then filter it through some dreary drowsy slowcore, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore or Low, but then loop it and process it and pull it apart until it becomes even more fuzzy and hypnotic, a Basinski or Tim Hecker produced bedroom dark ambient doomfolk record from Bohren perhaps? Sounds impossible, but Knive is all that and still somehow more.
From the first track, we were totally hooked. It's like the soundtrack to some ultra abstract black and white film, unearthed and projected in all its decayed and degraded glory. Everything is shrouded in shadow, shades of black and grey, back lit and rendered soft and indistinct. The mood is minor key and ominous. Very epic and cinematic, but somehow still understated and subtle. But definitely scary. And evil. But not overtly so. The record is bathed in tape hiss and record crackle and all sorts of gorgeously textured recording inconsistencies. It's some impossible tangle of mournful slowcore, twentieth century minimalism, and creeping doomy dirge, all deconstructed into abstract and skeletal, Basinski like soundscapes. Strings scrape and squeak, in the distance drift muted percussive thumps. Each track is a droning smear of sound, peppered with bits of random sonic clatter, everything wreathed in smokey cello swells, and soft swoonsome strings. Guitars drenched in reverb offer up the slightest of melodies, riffs are unfurled and left suspended in in clouds of dreamy fuzz, allowed to slowly fade to nothingness. There are melodies, but they develop at a snail's pace, notes stretched to their breaking point, becoming miniature drones of their own, but when viewed from afar, are actually gorgeously rendered, and evoke dark feelings of despair and further define Svarte Greiner's sonic world of wonder.
Elsewhere, gristled guitar distortion is dripped onto spare expanses of late night percussion, bells and chimes reverberate over a dense sea of swirling tape hiss, ambient backdrops sometimes surface briefly, rising up through the murk, wind, footsteps, the call of crows soaring far overhead, and amidst it all, haunting female vocals that drift amidst the decayed ruins, small glimmers of light in a world of utter black, giving Knive even more of an emotional intensity. So goddamn good.
Another fantastic document of Svarte Greiner's abstract ambient acoustic doom. Not doom in the traditional sense, but more a sort of darkly mysterious, slow motion sprawl that shares a mood and sprit with doom music, although sonically it falls more in line with the free noise limited cd-r crowd.
This super limited lp captures three long tracks, that all seem to flow together into one epic (or they would if it didn't require flipping the record over), groaning strings, splattery percussion lay out a sort of free jazz / abstract folk drift, fluttery woodwinds, bits of rumble and shimmer, all billow out into a skeletal dronemusic, spare and spacious, that builds in intensity, becoming a brooding slow burning almost post rock, culminating in a thick wash of blurred buzz and textured low end whir, heavy and hypnotic, a little psychedelic and spacey.
The flipside begins with a field recording, or what sounds like one, beneath which lurks barely audible tones, shimmery strings strange vocalizations, bleating horns, all super minimal and way off in the distance, eventually all coalescing into a placed stretch of minimal ambience, deep ominous rumbles crumble beneath glassy expanses of glassy glimmer, until finally, another thick guitar heavy drone surfaces, turning he track into a near static downtuned dirge, not metallic, more dense and layered and lush, shot through with streaks of feedback and chunks of looped buzz, crumbling and roiling and slowly fading out.
So beautiful. Definitely for fans of Aidan Baker, Xela, Acre, Tunnels, Fear Falls Burning, RST, The North Sea, and other masters of dark droning ambience. Incredible packaging too, two tone printing on heavy chipboard sleeves, LIMITED TO ONLY 300 COPIES.
Latest, crazy limited release from our of our favorite modern purveyor of doom-folk. A genre that seems to have been created specifically to describe the dark, mysterious moodiness this guy creates. And Penpals Forever is no different, beginning with a flurry of percussive guitar thrum, tons of reverb and buzz, a shimmering black forest of metallic shimmer and deep rumbles, all woven into what up close is a dizzying swirl of sound, but step back and the pattern is evident, a slow sprawling minor key melody, a haunting horror movie creep. A roiling black sea of huge slabs of glacial low end, that blot out the sun, swallowing the various guitars beneath it, moving like massive deathships, the shadows only allowing brief glimpses of the melody beneath. Truly ominous and cinematic. Eyes closed, these are the kind of sounds that would give the weak hearted nightmares, while the rest of us luxuriate in its thick blackened drone drenched buzz. Glorious.�
LIMITED TO ONLY 150 COPIES. Sold out and out of print at the label. Packaged with a metallic silver and black insert, with metallic silver labels on the tape.
This long out of print cassette, from one of our favorite practitioners of gorgeous and haunting grimdrone doomfolk, finally reissued on cd and vinyl! And with a whole extra chunk of unreleased music...
Penpals Forever proper begins with a flurry of percussive guitar thrum, tons of reverb and buzz, a shimmering black forest of metallic shimmer and deep rumbles, all woven into what up close is a dizzying swirl of sound, but step back and the pattern is evident, a slow sprawling minor key melody, a haunting horror movie creep. A roiling black sea of huge slabs of glacial low end, that blot out the sun, swallowing the various guitars beneath it, moving like massive deathships, the shadows only allowing brief glimpses of the melody beneath. Truly ominous and cinematic. Eyes closed, these are the kind of sounds that would give the weak hearted nightmares, while the rest of us luxuriate in its thick blackened drone drenched buzz.
The unreleased bonus tracks, which are like a whole 'nother record tacked on, are just as good as the original tape. Three long tracks, all flowing together, the first a Philip Jeck like creepscape, all woozy and otherworldly, warbly tones, warped guitar buzz, everything stretched and smeared into languorous layers, while a fog of distant melody hovers in the distance, peppered with soft focus harmonies, drifting and reflective. Which gives way to a thick heady swirl of muted fuzz and slowed down sound, like some mysterious cityscape field recording played at 16rpm and wreathed in a haze of drone and buzz. Until finally the side finishes off with another smoldering dronescape, beginning quietly, while layers of grinding distorted guitars unfurl heaving blackened whirs and rumbles over a backdrop of streaked feedback and strange sounds buried in the murk.
- MPEG stream: A1
- MPEG stream: A2
Two more brief blasts of creepy crawly doom folk from former AQ record of the week-ers Svarte Greiner. Packaged in a plain white sleeve, with a weird cartoony ghost screen printed on the plain white label, these two tracks are just as dark and delightfully doomy as anything on the full length. Abstract low end moans, disembodied strings, a creaking abandoned sonic ship, a haunted house of sound, crumbling distortion and little bits of melody creep along through wide expanses of space. Lurching forward in slow motion doomy bursts, like Bohren with all the jazz sucked out, each song stretched out into barely discernible rhythms. It almost sounds like a recording of an orchestra tuning up, slowed waaaaaay down and stretched out into some sort of abstract acoustic classical doom. Awesome.
This long in the works vinyl project finally sees the light of day, and the results are more fantastic and striking, both sonically and visually, than we could ever have imagined. We'd been hearing about this series of boxed sets of vinyl records, each with one side of music, one side of field recordings, a sort of physical extension and manifestation of a long running podcast, both the podcast, and these lps, an experiment in the art of listening. Cool to now have the first few installments in stock (however briefly).
Each lp is limited to 300 copies, comes housed in an oversized box, with a gorgeous actual photographic print affixed to the cover, inside a metallic inked, letter pressed insert. You have to see them to believe them, well worth the price, as they are visually stunning, and the music is breathtaking.
Of the three initial volumes in the A Room Forever vinyl boxset series, The Svarte Greiner seems to be the one generating the most attention. Which makes perfect sense when you finally get to see, and hold and especially hear this amazing piece of sound and art.
Svarte Greiner handles both the music side, and the field recording side, the music darkly mysterious and quite lovely as always, but the field recording side a strange blend of both. More on that in a second.
The A side, begins all deep and glimmering, a lush hushed ambience, warm shimmers, softly moaning strings, distant streaks of whir and muted melody, the sound feels underwater, underground, lots of delay and reverb, mournful super minimal pizzicato melodies, low end rumble, deep and ominous and mysteriously beautiful.
The second half of the A side is super tranquil and spare, soft washes of sound drifting in and out, warm chords, fragments of reverbed melody, all very soft and sweetly hushed. Definitely not as doomy as past releases, but much more hushed and haunting.
The field recording side here is quite strange, but in a way that is endlessly appealing, beginning with a sea of crackle, of record static, hiss and pops, fuzz and buzz, while WAY beneath the surface, deep tones whir and rumble, later on, there appears much more distinctive clatter, thumps, and bumps and rattles, all the while, a dreamy dronemusic seems to drift and pulse beneath the layer of static and hum, it may be a field recording, but to our ears it's the sound of the A side of this disc, being played on a dusty old Victrola, in a garage or a workshop, while someone tinkers and shuffles about, the whole thing recorded on an old wax cylinder. A gloriously fuzzy and crackly expanse of field recorded dronemusic for sure. So excellent.
The cover photo is fantastic, an overexposed, washed out image of branches, in bright oranges and reds, looking like some sort of lava flow, the insert is gold ink on letter pressed textured black paper.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. We got a LOT of these, but a bunch were pre-ordered and were spoken for before we even got them in, the rest are going fast, and once the batch we got is gone, we most likely will be unable to get any more�
These two aQ faves spent several months touring together, and would finish off each show with a collaborative jam, one of which is captured here, in two parts. The first is all deep blackened shimmer, soft swells of feedback, dark rumbling pulsations, bleak and austere, laced with shards of high end melody, and softly grinding whirs. The second part is much more delicate, breathless and hushed, distant hums and keening fragmented melodies. Both sides are dark and beautiful, abstract and droney, and definitely remind us of Jasper TX and Machinefabriek. Nice stuff.
Housed in a plain black sleeve, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!
Another special limited Record Store Day release that we managed to get enough of to review and list post RSD. Aquarius faves Svarte Greiner deliver another dark gem, ominous strings woven into a sweeping cinematic soundscape, laced with plucks and scrapes, distant keening high end tones, plucked pizzicato melodies, a bit like a symphony tuning, transformed into some haunting and harrowing ambience, tense and intense, the creeping low end thrum hovering beneath clouds of cymbal shimmer and splattery percussion, all blurred and smeared into a hazy sprawl of dark sonic mesmer.
The flipside come courtesy of a band we'd never heard before, but who definitely exist in the same space as SG, which is obviously why they're sharing this 7", their sound is a lot like SG's only with much of the darkness peeled back, leaving just the hum of strings, and a minimal orchestral arrangement of plucked melodies and drifting chords, that is until the sudden surprise of a super distorted, crumbling doom riff, wrapped in a warped production, the sound is suddenly caustic and crunchy, the second 'movement' finds that riffage reigned in and transformed into a tense dronescape of rumbling metallic guitar buzz and longform Niblockian tones, all wreathed in streaks of feedback and underpinned by buried melodies and slow shimmering textures. Definitely need to hear more from these guys (this guy?).
Once again, this was a Record Store Day release, we have a tiny handful left, it's unclear whether once these are sold if we'll be able to get more, so your best bet is to act fast and grab one before they're gone!
If you were wandering around in the cold Norwegian wilderness and found a dark cave inhabited by a tribe of trollish troglodytes who just happened to have their own black metal band and were in the middle of a really good, raw and evil rehearsal session, with nasty distorted guitars (I guess they have a portable generator) and still-bloody animal bones and skulls for percussion, THAT's the Svartpest experience. Svartpest, a severely anti-Christian crew of two or three some of whom also play in bands like Gorelord and Wurdulak, says their music "is based upon the ancient hymns of the primitive cavemen that once lived on the mountains and fjords of Norway" and certainly the cavernous atmosphere and primal grunt of their third album "Ved Den Drabelige..." gives us no reason to disbelieve 'em. They really do use bones and blocks of wood for percussion, alongside more usual black/Viking metal components like rasping vocals, blasting drums, and buzzsaw guitar riffing. What makes this great is how the metal parts are made even more powerful and majestic by the band's forays into ritualistic creepiness of a more ambient, malevolent hippy nature -- it's like Mayhem crossed with that 60's ESP band Cromagnon at times. (Note to Baphomet label: next time, don't let the cavemen themselves master the cd, 'cause that's probably why there's careless little "digi-farts" left in between the tracks.)
MPEG Download: "I Skapelsen Av Det Kolde..." [/audio/svartpestiskapelsen.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "I Skapelsen Av Det Kolde..." [/audio/svartpestiskapelsen.m3u]
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
For whatever reason, we (and lots of other folks) were convinced one man black metal band Svetovid hailed from the Great White North, when in fact, Svetovid is from right here in SF, and is a member of another local BM horde we dig Lascowiec. For the latest Brotherhood Of Light missive, Svetovid return with another sprawling psychedelic epic, which again begins with a shimmery clean guitar intro, sounding sort of psych folk, before the sound is transformed into something much more black and raw, filthy, muddy and distorted, the buzzing and blasting so washed out, that it almost sounds like some softly undulating dronemusic. The vocals the only concession to proper black metal, and even then it's less a harsh vokill shriek, and more a sinister reverbed whisper, drifting over a swirling, shimmering churn, and that vibe is all over Natures Fury, everything super tranced out and hypnotic, and when the vocals fade out, the sound is downright dreamy, and mesmerizingly blissed out.
Like we mention in our review of the previous Svetovid tape, the sound here (and there) definitely sounds just like the sort of blackened shoegaze you'd find on Starlight Temple Society or Khrysanthoney!
The second track lays down another backdrop of swirling washed out soft black buzz, buried blast beats, and smeared riffage, while over the top, strident bellowed vocals, wreathed in echo and delay, dramatic and almost industrial sounding, at least the vocals, the music remains a sort of blackened tripped out ambience, woozy tangled guitar melodies, warbly synths, hazy and hypnotic, clean guitar, shimmery and crystalline, the sound seasawing between druggy softly psychedelic drift and buzz drenched black crush, the timbre shifting constantly as well, brittle and high end one second, muddy and murky the next, and still super compressed and insectoid the next, those dramatic bellowed vox again surfacing throughout, and so it goes, Svetovid unfurling landscapes of blurred black buzz and abstract space-y drift, over which he delivers his harsh, FX heavy, anguished vokills. As always, cool, weird stuff from the local Brotherhood Of Light label!
We had never heard Canadian black metal horde Svetovid before, but we got this, their debut full length, from the same place we got recent BM cassette faves from Surt, Sunchariot, Gnieu, and Lascowiec, so were pretty excited to check them out, and weren't sure what to expect from the haunting acoustic folk intro, a lilting and slightly stumbling bit of Appalachian sounding fingerpicked melancholia, which lead directly into an avalanche of crumbling blackness, a swirling, whirling wall of sound, infused with a surprising amount of melody, the drums buried in the mix, the vocals a reverbed croak, but the guitars, dense and lush and layered, and while buzzy, almost more soaring and shimmery, the blackbuzz blossoming into something almost shoegazey, that minus the vox, might be something you'd hear on Starlight Temple Society. Blissed out blackened heaviness that is as poppy as it is buzzy, whether it's intentional or not, but we're digging it a LOT. And actually, maybe not all of the record is that poppy or blissed out, once we got done listening to that first track about ten times, the sound gets darker and meaner, chugging and churning, the vocals a sinister monstrous bellow, but somehow, the sound is still melodic, almost as if someone was used to the chordal structure of pop music, and was applying it to black metal, but the result is something grim and black, but warm and fuzzy and washed out, that track, not at all blasting, instead swirling and shimmery, the guitars tranced out and cyclical, the sound nearly psychedelic. We could go on and describe all the tracks here, but the sooner this review is done, the sooner we can strap on our Walkman, get away from this computer and dig in to the rest of this tape.
LIMITED TO 320 COPIES! Each one hand numbered.
A killer slab of raw, cold grimness from this Hungarian horde, whose sound is in fact less black buzz and more noise rock, almost like a swaggering, blackened grunge. We're reminded quite a bit of aQ faves Khold, the same sort of black metal meets Nirvana vibe, with some seriously killer riffing, mid-tempo rhythms, and raw, raspy vocals. And actually, remove those vocals, and this could be some weird undiscovered grunge artifact from the nineties, some totally obscure Sub Pop or AmRep release, all crusty, swagger and snarly crush, lots of dissonance, and minor key melodies, and a whole lot of noise rock-isms that definitely outnumber blast beats or buzzing blackness big time. And while there are some bursts of full on BM, they seem to exist more in service of the riff and the groove, and we have to say we're kinda digging it like crazy!
Yet another backroom discovery, found a stash of this mysterious missive from someone calling themselves Swagger Jack, some sort of hillbilly drunken pirate, armed with a busted up old acoustic guitar, a jaw harp, a harmonica, maybe some busted up old keyboards, but very little else. A little digging is all it takes to discover that Swagger Jack is in fact long time aQ fave / pal Antony Milton, head honcho of killer cd-r label PseudoArcana as well as a member of various awesome groops (The Stumps, AM, The Nether Dawn, Mrtyu, Glory Fckn Sun, etc.), but as Swagger Jack, Milton is in full on hillbilly/folk/bluegrass mode, laying down simple lilting chunks of slo-mo Appalachia, lo-fi and hazy, druggy and minimal, simple steel string buzz augmented by jaw harp twang, harmonica wheeze, some minimal percussion, and a ramshackle backing of creaking, groaning whir and shimmer. The whole record sounds as if it was recorded on a rickety old porch, or in a forest clearing, like a more songy Avarus, or Tower Recordings with a backwoods hillbilly twist, some Velvet Underground druggy drift stripped down and recast as some sort of Fahey-esque dronefolk, bits of classic NZ soundmakers like Roy Montgomery, The Clean, Alastair Galbraith, and the like, woven into rickety backwoods twang flecked drone laced zoner country ballads. Pretty incredible stuff for sure, listening to this now, we're sort of surprised more folks didn't go crazy for this, and surprised that we somehow missed listing this completely, but better late than never, gorgeous stuff, and way recommended.
