A lot of folks discovered defunct San Diego bass heavy post rockers Three Mile Pilot retroactively, having learned about them through either Pinback (which features 3MP bassist Zach Smith) and/or the Blackheart Procession (fronted by 3MP guitarist/vocalist Pall Jenkins), and while both of those bands are definitely informed by Three Mile Pilot, that band had such a distinctive and unique brooding dark beauty, that nothing since could really compare. In the nineties, Three Mile Pilot were one of a handful of bands (along with Heavy Vegetable and a handful of others) creating a super unique scene in San Diego, and in the process evoked a slavish devotion from their fans (two of which are now aQ employees), their shows so dramatic and intense and cathartic, which the band managed surprisingly to capture on record as well.
Na Vucca Do Lupu was their debut, originally released in 1991, and is probably our favorite, just bass, drum and vocals, the sound literally unlike anything we had ever heard, sparse and spare, a sort of slowcore, but one that built to some seriously aggressive and propulsive heft, the drums mathy and intricate, the bass impossibly complex, multiple melody lines, slipping from chiming and delicate to churning and buzzy, the vocals melodic, but just raspy and again super distinctive, just check out the sample for "One Step Ladder" which might just be our favorite 3MP song ever, totally epic, super varied, catchy as hell, impossibly lush and heavy for what was essentially a two piece, even now, twenty years later, and it still sounds better, and more original, that pretty much 99% of what's out there. The rest of the record is just as good, super rhythmic, the low end creating a dark droning vibe that runs throughout, so great. An all time favorite for sure.
A lot of folks discovered defunct San Diego bass heavy post rockers Three Mile Pilot retroactively, having learned about them through either Pinback (which features 3MP bassist Zach Smith) and/or the Blackheart Procession (fronted by 3MP guitarist/vocalist Pall Jenkins), and while both of those bands are definitely informed by Three Mile Pilot, that band had such a distinctive and unique brooding dark beauty, that nothing since could really compare. In the nineties, Three Mile Pilot were one of a handful of bands (along with Heavy Vegetable and a handful of others) creating a super unique scene in San Diego, and in the process evoked a slavish devotion from their fans (two of which are now aQ employees), their shows so dramatic and intense and cathartic, which the band managed surprisingly to capture on record as well.
After the just bass and drums, stripped down sound of the band's debut Na Vucca Do Lupu, Chief Assassin To The Sinister, originally released in 1993, found the band expanding sonically a bit, with Jenkins now playing guitar, and although the guitar definitely added some color and texture, the core sound of the band remained the same, the driving intricate basslines, the propulsive drumming, the moody brooding songwriting, if anything, the sound got a bit heavier, just check out the sample for "Circumcised", which melds the band's early sound, bass heavy, dark and dramatic, with something way more rocking and driving, a pretty potent combination for sure, one that got the band noticed by the world at large, with this record eventually being picked up by Geffen who reissued this record a few years later. There are also a handful of tracks here than hint at Jenkins post 3MP outfit the Blackheart Procession, the sort of funeral piano driven balladry that would define that band.
And while that first record might be out favorite, this one is a VERY close second.
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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The Inevitable Past Is the Future Forgotten is the long-awaited new Three Mile Pilot record and it's definitely a keeper. Gone are the eight minute dirges, the post-apocalyptic imagery. In their place are concise, brilliant pop songs with sometimes intensely personal lyrics and catchy refrains. For those of you who have (somehow) never heard of Three Mile Pilot, a history lesson: San Diego in the '90s was a truly memorable place. So many genres and sub-genres of music spawned and died and were born again in some new bastardized form. One of the most influential and unique bands to emerge was Three Mile Pilot, a trio that originally relied only upon drums, vocals, exceptional bass playing and the occasional homemade horn built by Jim French. Their first two full-length records (Na Vuccu du Lupu and The Chief Assassin to the Sinister) are flat-out masterpieces: sprawling, epic landscapes that build walls of chaos and discordant harmony only to tear them down; lyrics and album art that evoke militaristic machinery and a glacial sincerity; bass melodies that seem impossible for one person with only ten fingers to play. On subsequent releases, the song structures were tightened, the band introduced guitar which gradually came up in the overall mix, and the edges were polished a bit, possibly due to the influence of the 3MP "side project" The Black Heart Procession. Like their last full-length Another Desert, Another Sea, The Inevitable Past features the piano and the guitar, for the most part, as melody-makers, though the bass takes center stage (as it should) on quite a few songs. The overall "feel" of the record is similar to Another Desert, Another Sea, though the new record adds a layer or two of subtle, sparkling synths that brighten and deepen the music. Possibly because of the influential nature of a band like Three Mile Pilot, there was a lot of anxiety floating around about how good this record was going to be. Without a doubt, though, this is an outstanding record that will not disappoint.
Hearing this re-issue of both the second and third album from The Three O'Clock combined on one disc sure took me back. A flood of high school memories. It seemed to have the same effect on a couple of customers too. One exclaimed, "Jet Fighter!" And while yes, that was an insanely infectious song by The Three O'Clock, it's not on this cd. Pssst, it can be found on their delectably sweet debut album Sixteen Tambourines. Nevertheless, these two albums really captured the buoyant, innocent sound of the paisley pop scene of the mid-'80s with its high male vocals and jingle jangle guitars.
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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While two thirds of late great post rockers A Minor Forest (featuring AQ staffer Andee) continue to pursue all things droning and heavy as TICWAR, the other third of AMF joins forces with former AMF/current 33.3 cellist Dominique Davison and AQ pinup/voicemail genius Dave Cerf as The Threnody Ensemble! A new chamber group, somewhat pretentiously claiming to combine "conventional notions of chamber music with improvisation, rock sensibilities, and elements of non-western musical traditions." Definitely complex, very well played, and beautifully recorded in an old church by Brian Paulson, but for the most part, lacking any sort of warmth or emotion, and treading perilously a path between delicate 'post-rock' and over-sentimental soundtracky new age (due in no small part to somewhat cliched and weepy string arrangements). For fans of the Gastr del Sol/David Grubbs/Jim O'Rourke artrock axis (check out the very O'Rourke-ish out of place 30 second calypso surprise in the first track). On local new music/new age label New Albion.
Nope. It's not actually a choir, but rather the solo project of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson, the enigmatic musician whose electronic sleights of hand steered the course for Throbbing Gristle and Coil as the charismatic frontmen for both ensembles proclaimed all things transgressive. Now that Sleazy has stepped into the spotlight on his own, it is apparent that his vocabularies for twisted nursery rhyme melodies, cross-pollinated electronic algorithms, and sinister soundscapes were as absolutely crucial to the development of Industrial Culture at large, with or without the presence of Genesis P-Orridge or Jhonn Balance. Nowadays, Christopherson resides in Thailand, far from his birthplace in Britain; but the sounds he crafts in Southeast Asia have all of the trappings of the English esoterica he's authored for nearly 30 years now. Christopherson digs into his bag of magical tricks for another fantastic album, which seamlessly follows from where Coil left off on their posthumous album The Ape Of Naples as well as The Remote Viewer and Black Antlers. Constantly ascending melodies mutate and fold on top of each other, fluid basslines counterpoint stochastic stabs of monotone arpeggiations, and the castrati boys who wailed at the conclusion of The Ape Of Naples return with their beatific innocence and darkly charged sexuality with their voices crooning over music box melodies playing just slightly faster than they are supposed to and thus appearing sharply atonal. While Christopherson has proven himself a deft engineer with all sorts of audio software, he intentionally gravitates towards the much simpler patterns generated by the Fairlight sampler, the machine which dominated so much of the early Coil records. These structurally evolving patterns and overlaid melodic repetitions result in a creeping hypnosis and seductively powerful atmosphere. It's no surprise that his Threshold Houseboys Choir successfully conjures the ghosts of Horse Rotovator, the masterful Coil album from 1986.
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Girl-sung garage punk pop from back in the day -- yeah, we're talkin' late seventies/early eighties trashy fun! Nothing fancy, just straight-up, low-slung three chord rockers with raw electric guitars, primal drumming and rudimentary bass. The vocals sound like the Thrills' singer Barb Kitson muscled Joey Ramone off the mic, and we'd guess the two bands of miscreants probably crossed paths at some point. No frills Thrills on the always stellar garage rawk haven Dionysus Records!
The cover for Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats is a marvelous piece of subversive design. The four members of Throbbing Gristle look quite dapper, Genesis dolled up in a tailored white suit jacket, Cosey smiling happily in her pert miniskirt, and Chris & Sleazy both wearing rather conservative sweaters, but they had situated themselves on the cliffs of Beachy Head (a notorious suicide spot on the south coast of England) with a rented Range Rover in the distance and in a variation of this scene, a nude male body lies at their feet in the grass, presumably dead. This design (executed by Sleazy through his day job at Hipgnosis Design) was a sneering act of contempt for British society that failed to see the horrors and injustice which boiled just under the surfaces of congeniality and civility.
Both Second Annual Report and D.o.A. were ostensibly compilations of recontextualized material both from the studio and extracts from live recordings, but 20 Jazz Funk Greats - the third proper album from Throbbing Gristle - feels like a conceived album from beginning to end, even with all of its dead-ends and contradictions. The album opens with the title track, where a slow-motion drum machine and synthesized bass tones strut with a mechanical swagger with Cosey's discordant cornet blurts in the distance and predatorily whispered vocal extracts of what could be some smooth jazz DJ trying to set the mood - with that mood being a sickening, menacing threat. Such is also the case, with the lugubrious "Tanith" whose atonal rolling basslines churn against strange electronic blorp and tinkling chimes, which leads into "Convincing People" - whose metronomic synth sequencing became the signature for nearly every 'industrial' band that claimed TG as an influence. The detuned and distorted guitar from Cosey smears the mechanical edges while Genesis wailed through the lyrical repetitiveness which articulated to the effect that if you say it enough, people will start believing you. A hammer might help too. The minimalist club hit "Hot On The Heels Of Love" is one of the most memorable TG songs, and for very good reason as TG offered a much-imitated disco frugality through their insistent drum machine, squiggling sequencing, and Cosey's whispered vocals. Immediately following this is a nightmarish narration of the aftermath of a night of partying too much in "Persuasion", as disembodied female yelps of sexualized horror sporadically punctuate a slithering Genesis donning the role of a low-rent pornographer. "What A Day" is another 'industrial' template with a corrosive loop of cybernetic thumps forming the only backdrop to Genesis barking as loud as he can in a diabolical take on a footballer's chant. The finale "Six Six Sixties" finds Cosey's monochord guitar awfully prescient of Sonic Youth and Bailter Space in the drone intensity through distortion and rhythm, with Genesis reciting a suitably bleak monologue above, rounding out what is arguably the best of the Throbbing Gristle albums.
The cd version contains a bonus disc with live material extracted from the numerous live cassettes (and some of these versions apparently appear on the 24cd boxset of live TG material, although we've not cross referenced these facts yet). The two versions of "Discipline" (which were released as a 12" on Fetish Records in 1981) suitably conclude this disc, as that was the track that TG also performed at the end of their sets, with the heavy drum machines whipping the crowd into a frenzy and Genesis barking hysterically for some order. Such were the wonderful contradictions of Throbbing Gristle. About as a high a recommendation as we can give.
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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Neither the third nor the final album from Throbbing Gristle, D.o.A. marked the decided progression of a band that earlier produced the cauldron of sinister noise found on Second Annual Report and would lead to the subversive disco of "Hot On The Heels Of Love" on 20 Jazz Funk Greats. TG frames this album almost entirely upon the William S. Burroughs strategy of the cut-up, with found sounds being the inspiration for, counterpoint, or inclusion in the musical program. For both Burroughs and Genesis P-Orridge, the chance operation of overlapping seemingly unconnected elements offered the possibility of hidden, unconscious meanings in those 'texts' which could be pushed further through aesthetic means. What P-Orridge and the rest of Throbbing Gristle found in their aleatory combinations was a foreboding, societal malevolence, to which their sounds could be read as both response and antagonist.
The sounds which introduce the first track - "I.B.M" - might have been familiar to anyone with an early '70s era computer that used tapes for data storage, especially if that data-cassette found its way into an audio tape player. The blurting, flanged lurches of electronic noises speak a de-humanized language of the machine, one which TG augments with their own synthesized noise and atonal fragments as a seance attempting to make contact with the ghosts that may or may not live in those machines. The most infamous appropriated text found on D.o.A. is "Hamburger Lady" - a thoroughly creepy piece based on a letter written to the band about a woman who was suffering under the extreme pain from half of her skin being burnt off of her body. TG grinds a low-frequency VCO pulse upon a very slow throb, whilst an unsettled melody blurts through a fence of tremolo patterns, with P-Orridge reciting the text of that letter in the distance. Sickening doesn't even begin to describe how effective this track is even three decades after the fact. The track "Dead on Arrival" parallels what Conrad Schnitzler was producing at the same time on his darkened electronic album Ballet Statique with its mid-tempo drum machine, unsettled percolations, and angular jabs of dissonance. But the bulk of D.o.A. is filled with found-sound excepts including the self-evident found tape of "Death Threats" and the recording of mumbling children on "Hometime."
The cd version of this remastered reissue contains a bonus disc, mostly of live material ending with a single. Here, the live tracks cover much of what's found on the Live Volume 2 compilation, and the single in question is "Five Knuckle Shuffle / We Have You (Little Girls)", the former of which reprises the mechanical sequencing from "Dead on Arrival" with much vicious bass and guitar noise slashing throughout, and the latter being a screaming exorcism of vocals and electronics that must have planted the seed in William Bennett to make a whole career out of screaming at his audience above a painful squalor of noise.
For reasons unknown to us all, 1975's "First Annual Report" from Throbbing Gristle was deliberately held back by the band, thus positioning "Second Annual Report" as the first documentation from the legendary parents of Industrial Culture. This record has
Throbbing Gristle could hardly be confused for a hit-making machine; but in their repertoire of ghastly noise cohabitating with mechanoid rhythms, there are certainly some tracks which stand out more than others. Subtitled "Entertainment Through Pain," Throbbing Gristle's Greatest Hits delivers everything that it sets out to, and it also compiled some of the singles which had never appeared on one of TG's proper records. The most obvious 'hit' would be the minimalist yet sultry disco number "Hot On The Heels Of Love," with all of the other tracks being much more obvious in their subversion of the song through transgressive lyrics, subliminal horrors, corrosive electronics, and / or aleatoric appropriation. The sickening, psychoacoustic track "Hamburger Lady" opens this album of hits, with the lumbering electronic oscillations setting the stage for a gross-out spoken text from a letter about a woman languishing in a hospital burn unit. Of the singles featured on Greatest Hits, you'll find the blood-curdling scream of a track in "Subhuman" and the angular perkiness of the Kraftwerkish tracks "United" and "Adrenalin." But everything else comes from the earlier records, including the stellar churned cybernetics on "Six Six Sixties" and "What A Day," the woozy blurt of "20 Jazz Funk Greats" as well as a 'backwards' rendition of one the many recordings of "Slug Bait" recast as "Tiab Guls."
The bonus disc of Greatest Hits doesn't follow suit with the other four cd reissues; as the program does not include live material, but a continuing program of 'greatest hits,' including the B side stunning synth burble on "Distant Dreams (Part Two)" which is one of the high-points for the Chris Carter facade from TG's production. There's also a studio version of "The Old Man Smiled" found on Heathen Earth - a track that uses the same arrangement from "Six Six Sixties" with different lyrics, and an alternate mix of the revved-up step sequencing on "AB/7A." But aside from those, the other 'greatest hits' include "Persuasion," "Five Knuckle Shuffle," "Dead On Arrival," and a few more.
And like the other TG reissues, the lp does not include the bonus disc, and is limited to 1000 copies.
Finally, the long rumored Gristleism soundbox from Throbbing Gristle is here, and it's just about as cool as we hoped. Regardless of your feelings on Throbbing Gristle as a band, Gristleism is another must have for music obsessives and weird gadget freaks, like FM3's Buddha Machine, Gristleism is a small compact battery powered soundbox that plays loops, it has a volume and a pitch control, and a button to switch between loops, but UNlike the Buddha Machine, which until recently came in the generic Asian packaging that all similar machines came packaged in (originally these boxes contained prayers and were used for mediation), and finally got a minimal but stylish upgrade, the Gristleism box is all about the packaging, in fact, we balked at the price before we saw these, but now that we've seen one and held one, WOW. Totally worth it.
The outside sleeve is gorgeously printed shiny on matte on one side, elaborately diecut on the other, that immediately recognizable TG pattern, the bottom is printed in metallic silver ink. But that's just the outer slipcover. Once that is removed, the inside cover is revealed, again, shiny ink on matte paper, some of the details in shiny metallic silver, the credits, the tracklisting, then inside that is a small printed insert, on thick reflective paper, and then finally the soundbox itself, which even has the Throbbing Gristle logo pressed into the plastic. As an object, this thing is breathtaking, totally striking and even if you never listened to it, would look smashing on your shelf. But you WILL want to listen to it.
Thirteen TG loops, the bulk of which seem to harken from the classic late '70s period of Throbbing Gristle, before the project split into Psychic TV, Chris & Cosey, and Coil.
The low synthetic dirge of "Persuasion" (from 20 Jazz Funk Greats) is the first loop on the box, complete with those unsettling female vocalisations which may be screams of fear, ecstacy, horror, or somewhere in between. The seasick distorted swells and atonal melodica trilled with tremolo come next, culled from the TG classic "Hamburger Lady" (from D.o.A. The Third and Final Report), all that's needed is for you to fill in Genesis' vocals about encountering a charred human body still alive in a hospital ward. Similarly effective is the alien slow-motion grooviess of the title track from 20 Jazz Funk Greats, with Cosey's bleating trumpet hanging in the distance. The windswept eeriness and foghorn blurts on "Thank You Brian" seem to be a loop that's unique to the box, or at least we're not sure where it might have come from. But the proto-acid squiggliness and disembodied vocals of "Maggot Death" reprise a particularly great snippet from TG's Second Annual Report. The "Wimpy Bar" loop doesn't seem to come from one of TG's records either but is one that sounds really familiar with Cosey's knife-on-the-guitar-strings scraping and squiggled electronics, perhaps from one of the many live cassettes? The tenth loop reprises the darkly hallucinatory echoes and atonal blurts from "Heathen Earth". The shepherd tone crustiness of the "Industrial Intro" could have been an experiment that Chris and Sleazey worked out for Second Annual Report. Everything actually sounds pretty awesomely crappy through the little speaker, apparently the band worked quite hard to enhance the sound of these little boxes, according to their website, Gristleism has almost twice the frequency range of the original Buddha Machines, but it's definitely a pretty perfect encapsulation of the TG aesthetic. Low brow high art. We would have liked to have seen a chunk from United or the rhythm from Discipline added into the box, but hey save those for the next one. Please?
The one bummer is that there's no output / headphone jack, so there's really no way to hook this up to an amp or your stereo. Unless... you go to the band's website, where they provide specs for certain mods, insert a jack, do a little circuit bending, so you can add your own twist to TG's Gristleism box.
Needless to say, odds are you're probably gonna want one of these. Or two. If you loved the Buddha Machine, or the recent Black Box variation, then this one's gonna blow your mind. Available in black, red, and chrome (although, as of this moment, the chrome version is not available yet, it should be in a couple weeks). And be warned, these are super limited, we have a bunch, but we may not be able to get more, or if we can, it might not be all that many...
First black, then red, now CHROME (ok, chrome colored plastic)! Ooh, shiny!
Finally, the long rumored Gristleism soundbox from Throbbing Gristle is here, and it's just about as cool as we hoped. Regardless of your feelings on Throbbing Gristle as a band, Gristleism is another must have for music obsessives and weird gadget freaks, like FM3's Buddha Machine, Gristleism is a small compact battery powered soundbox that plays loops, it has a volume and a pitch control, and a button to switch between loops, but UNlike the Buddha Machine, which until recently came in the generic Asian packaging that all similar machines came packaged in (originally these boxes contained prayers and were used for mediation), and finally got a minimal but stylish upgrade, the Gristleism box is all about the packaging, in fact, we balked at the price before we saw these, but now that we've seen one and held one, WOW. Totally worth it.
The outside sleeve is shiny chrome, gorgeously embossed, or debossed, on one side, elaborately diecut on the other, that immediately recognizable TG pattern, the bottom lettering is debossed into the silver, with the word Gristleism printed in black. But that's just the outer slipcover. Once that is removed, the inside cover is revealed, again, shiny chrome, the credits, the tracklisting, debossed into the silver then inside that is a small printed insert, black ink on thick black paper, and then finally the soundbox itself, which even has the Throbbing Gristle logo pressed into the shiny reflective chrome finished plastic. As an object, this thing is breathtaking, totally striking and even if you never listened to it, would look smashing on your shelf. But you WILL want to listen to it.
Thirteen TG loops, the bulk of which seem to harken from the classic late '70s period of Throbbing Gristle, before the project split into Psychic TV, Chris & Cosey, and Coil.
The low synthetic dirge of "Persuasion" (from 20 Jazz Funk Greats) is the first loop on the box, complete with those unsettling female vocalisations which may be screams of fear, ecstasy, horror, or somewhere in between. The seasick distorted swells and atonal melodica trilled with tremolo come next, culled from the TG classic "Hamburger Lady" (from D.o.A. The Third and Final Report), all that's needed is for you to fill in Genesis' vocals about encountering a charred human body still alive in a hospital ward. Similarly effective is the alien slow-motion grooviess of the title track from 20 Jazz Funk Greats, with Cosey's bleating trumpet hanging in the distance. The windswept eeriness and foghorn blurts on "Thank You Brian" seem to be a loop that's unique to the box, or at least we're not sure where it might have come from. But the proto-acid squiggliness and disembodied vocals of "Maggot Death" reprise a particularly great snippet from TG's Second Annual Report. The "Wimpy Bar" loop doesn't seem to come from one of TG's records either but is one that sounds really familiar with Cosey's knife-on-the-guitar-strings scraping and squiggled electronics, perhaps from one of the many live cassettes? The tenth loop reprises the darkly hallucinatory echoes and atonal blurts from "Heathen Earth". The shepherd tone crustiness of the "Industrial Intro" could have been an experiment that Chris and Sleazey worked out for Second Annual Report. Everything actually sounds pretty awesomely crappy through the little speaker, apparently the band worked quite hard to enhance the sound of these little boxes, according to their website, Gristleism has almost twice the frequency range of the original Buddha Machines, but it's definitely a pretty perfect encapsulation of the TG aesthetic. Low brow high art. We would have liked to have seen a chunk from United or the rhythm from Discipline added into the box, but hey save those for the next one. Please?
The one bummer is that there's no output / headphone jack, so there's really no way to hook this up to an amp or your stereo. Unless... you go to the band's website, where they provide specs for certain mods, insert a jack, do a little circuit bending, so you can add your own twist to TG's Gristleism box.
Needless to say, odds are you're probably gonna want one of these. Or two. If you loved the Buddha Machine, or the recent Black Box variation, then this one's gonna blow your mind. Available in black, red, and now chrome. And be warned, these are super limited, we have a bunch, but we may not be able to get more, or if we can, it might not be all that many...
Finally, the long rumored Gristleism soundbox from Throbbing Gristle is here, and it's just about as cool as we hoped. Regardless of your feelings on Throbbing Gristle as a band, Gristleism is another must have for music obsessives and weird gadget freaks, like FM3's Buddha Machine, Gristleism is a small compact battery powered soundbox that plays loops, it has a volume and a pitch control, and a button to switch between loops, but UNlike the Buddha Machine, which until recently came in the generic Asian packaging that all similar machines came packaged in (originally these boxes contained prayers and were used for mediation), and finally got a minimal but stylish upgrade, the Gristleism box is all about the packaging, in fact, we balked at the price before we saw these, but now that we've seen one and held one, WOW. Totally worth it.
The outside sleeve is gorgeously printed shiny on matte on one side, elaborately diecut on the other, that immediately recognizable TG pattern, the bottom is printed in shiny black ink. But that's just the outer slipcover. Once that is removed, the inside cover is revealed, again, shiny ink on matte paper, some of the details in shiny black ink, the credits, the tracklisting, then inside that is a small printed insert, on thick reflective paper, and then finally the soundbox itself, which even has the Throbbing Gristle logo pressed into the plastic. As an object, this thing is breathtaking, totally striking and even if you never listened to it, would look smashing on your shelf. But you WILL want to listen to it.
Thirteen TG loops, the bulk of which seem to harken from the classic late '70s period of Throbbing Gristle, before the project split into Psychic TV, Chris & Cosey, and Coil.
The low synthetic dirge of "Persuasion" (from 20 Jazz Funk Greats) is the first loop on the box, complete with those unsettling female vocalisations which may be screams of fear, ecstasy, horror, or somewhere in between. The seasick distorted swells and atonal melodica trilled with tremolo come next, culled from the TG classic "Hamburger Lady" (from D.o.A. The Third and Final Report), all that's needed is for you to fill in Genesis' vocals about encountering a charred human body still alive in a hospital ward. Similarly effective is the alien slow-motion grooviess of the title track from 20 Jazz Funk Greats, with Cosey's bleating trumpet hanging in the distance. The windswept eeriness and foghorn blurts on "Thank You Brian" seem to be a loop that's unique to the box, or at least we're not sure where it might have come from. But the proto-acid squiggliness and disembodied vocals of "Maggot Death" reprise a particularly great snippet from TG's Second Annual Report. The "Wimpy Bar" loop doesn't seem to come from one of TG's records either but is one that sounds really familiar with Cosey's knife-on-the-guitar-strings scraping and squiggled electronics, perhaps from one of the many live cassettes? The tenth loop reprises the darkly hallucinatory echoes and atonal blurts from "Heathen Earth". The shepherd tone crustiness of the "Industrial Intro" could have been an experiment that Chris and Sleazey worked out for Second Annual Report. Everything actually sounds pretty awesomely crappy through the little speaker, apparently the band worked quite hard to enhance the sound of these little boxes, according to their website, Gristleism has almost twice the frequency range of the original Buddha Machines, but it's definitely a pretty perfect encapsulation of the TG aesthetic. Low brow high art. We would have liked to have seen a chunk from United or the rhythm from Discipline added into the box, but hey save those for the next one. Please?
The one bummer is that there's no output / headphone jack, so there's really no way to hook this up to an amp or your stereo. Unless... you go to the band's website, where they provide specs for certain mods, insert a jack, do a little circuit bending, so you can add your own twist to TG's Gristleism box.
Needless to say, odds are you're probably gonna want one of these. Or two. If you loved the Buddha Machine, or the recent Black Box variation, then this one's gonna blow your mind. Available in black, red, and chrome (although, as of this moment, the chrome version is not available yet). And be warned, these are super limited, we have a bunch, but we may not be able to get more, or if we can, it might not be all that many...
While cataloged as the 'fourth and final' studio recording of Throbbing Gristle, Heathen Earth documents TG in a live context, as TG invited a couple dozen friends and hangers-on into the Industrial Records studio to witness the band in an intimate setting, while recording the proceedings to 8-track tape. Much of the slashing noise, atonal cornet blurts, and discordant oscillations from TG's live persona is front and center, but such brute noises are thrust against the clarity of sound from TG's step sequencing and electronic rhythms. Throbbing Gristle rework some tracks from the back catalogue, as the apocalyptic guitar drone of "Six Six Sixties" becomes all the more distorted and menacing in its new guise "The Old Man Smiled;" and some of that self same sequencing that went into the Schniztler-esque track "Dead On Arrival" re-emerges on "The Worlds Is A War Film." Presumably, a version of "After Cease to Exist" surfaces in the morass of murky noise that TG delves into, but it's hard to tell where that emerges as this track was such a gnarled abstraction to begin with. The cold electronic rhythms of "Don't Do As Your Told, Do As You Think" mirrors the jackbooted intensity that TG produced in their live-only cut "Discipline."
As with all of the other remastered versions of the cd, Heathen Earth comes with a bonus disc of live materials with a single at the end. Strangely enough, a track entitled "Heathen Earth" is featured in the live material, but was not included in the "live-in-the-studio" album. It's quite an incendiary number with pounding heartbeat drum machine grounding Genesis' tortured vocals and piercing feedback tones. A subterranean creepiness befits the track "Auschwitz" with bellowing cornet and distant drone sound design, prescient of pretty much every dark ambient / death industrial act to follow over the next three decades. The live material follows this trend up to the finale in the utterly haunting "We Said No," rounding out what is probably the best live material that TG has presented in this series of reissues. The finale seven inch is "Subhuman / Adrenalin" - the former being a throat-burning tirade from Genesis above a smoldering backdrop of electric noise, while the latter centers on the mechanoid sequencing of Sleazy and Chris Carter.
The vinyl version comes sans bonus disc, and is limited to 2000 copies!
I guess it was only a matter of time before something like this happened: a Throbbing Gristle remix album. Of course, the focal point of this remix album is "Hot On The Heels Of Love" which out of context of the whole TG oeuvre falls very close to the spartan contingent of contemporary techno and house. Carl Craig, Ratcliffe, and Carter Tutti (i.e. half of the original TG) take their turns jacking up the beats to dancefloor fodder. Hedonastik, Two Lone Swordsmen, and Motor also take their turns applying club-friendly trax to Genesis P-Orridge's inimitable voice.
After twenty plus years since they terminated their mission, Throbbing Gristle have reformed. This collaborative reunion originally was to be just a one off live gig; then it became a second weekend long festival that had to be canceled; and it's quite probable that these four pioneers of Industrial Culture just shrugged their collective shoulders and decided, "what the hell, let's record an album!" So, here it is Part Two The Endless Not; and while no one is ever going to mistake this album for the follow-up to the primitive electronic constructions of DOA or Second Annual Report, this is a truly compelling album that successfully reintegrates the divergent aesthetics that evolved out of Throbbing Gristle. The erotically charged pulse streams of Chris & Cosey and the polyglot electric psychedelia of Coil combine perfectly as the shattered mirror sonic arrangements for Genesis P-Orridge's half-sung sermons, which continue along the same Burroughsian cut-up principles that have been his signature sound throughout the herky-jerky career of Psychic TV. It's still somewhat amusing that Genesis has chosen not to learn to sing, but his warbled slurring vocals still have a peculiar charisma that no one else could ever pull off. Musically, Part Two The Endless Not seems to have much more in common with the posthumous Coil releases, with melancholy marimba and slickly polished synthesized structures harboring funereal melodies and whirling data-crunched rhythms; and it causes one to ask if Sleazy Christopherson was in fact the man behind most of the brilliance of Throbbing Gristle's earlier work. Admittedly, Part Two The Endless Not exhibits a considerable cleanliness and palatability which couldn't have been a part of the early TG sound; but this is nonetheless a great record from four great musicians.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
As if a twenty five cd box set wasn't enough, here's box number two, the cryptically titled TG+. from seminal industrialists Throbbing Gristle. Where the first box was a digital reissue of the 24 hours of Throbbing Gristle cassettes, TG+ features TG's final 10 performances. All remastered and gussied up. The first box came packaged with buttons and patches and wax seals and all that, but this box really takes the packaging cake. Five credit card sized metallic rectangles, with various TG symbols stamped out, and all set in a velvet lined cover, hiding the cds beneath. All packaged just like the first set in a grey, fabric covered box. NICE!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A five knuckle shuffle on my throbbing gristle! Yup, it's a crass reference to masturbation uttered by one of the associates of Coum Transmissions, the mid-'70s, British transgressive performance art ensemble whose happenings involved extreme rituals of sex, vomit, and blood, causing quiet a stir in the press, art world, and beyond. By 1976, the principle members of Coum - Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter, and Peter Christopherson - rechristened themselves Throbbing Gristle, as a musical outfit creating a confounding, bleak electronic parallel to the trajectory of punk. Over the next four years, TG released a handful of albums and toured constantly, always attuned to a coy semantic juxtaposition of gruesome, pornographic, or morbid imagery next to that which was cheeky and absurdly comical. Monte Cazazza's catch phrase "industrial music for industrial people" spoke not only the mechanical, de-humanizing mirror that TG was holding up to western culture, but also to the band's downright British industriousness. As such, the band's in-house label, Industrial Records, addressed all of this and more.
The Second Annual Report was actually the first release for Throbbing Gristle and Industrial Records in 1976, with the deliberately confusing title and catalogue number (IR 0002) alluding to then non-existent First Annual Report (which was recorded in 1975, although shelved by the band at the time and released as semi-official and un-official bootlegs from the '80s onward). The album is a collection of live recordings, showing the variations on two tracks - "Slug Bait" and "Maggot Death." The former is an unsettled, murky, barely formed set of lumbering tones with grim guitar drones and spluttering electronics, with Genesis caterwauling as he has done for close to four decades now. Sampled interviews with a child molester and a murderer dot the charred soundscape from the recording made in Brighton, marking a common application of appropriated 'true crime' objects which litter so much of the Industrial Culture which came after TG. "Maggot Death" is just as amorphous as "Slug Bait" with a morass of monochromatic bass-distortion and blurting electronics. The side-long "After Cease To Exist" rounded out the B-side of the original LP, and was a suitably disfigured soundscape of scraping violin, atonal guitar bursts, and dark electronic excursions. While each of these tracks is rudimentary in form and function, they lay the foundation for what would come next in TG's career.
The cd version contains a bonus disc with live material extracted from the numerous live cassettes (and some of these versions do appear on the 24cd boxset of live TG material), as well as the deliciously counterpointing single "United / Zyklon B Zombie." Aside from the perky Kraftwerkian percolation of "United", the second disc is overloaded with cacophonic dive-bomb squalls of noise with slashed vibrations of electronics, madman barked vocals, flanging guitar distortion, and decentered Burroughs-inspired collages of spoken texts, fitting with the cruel delirium of what's found on The Second Annual Report proper. Difficult listening for sure, but after all, "Entertainment Through Pain" was Throbbing Gristle's motto!
We may indulge in some hyperbole now and then, but it's usually just because we're so excited by some new record. That's why there can be so many 'best ever's and 'greatest of all time's. But we're serious now. This is, without a doubt, and with nary a trace of hyperbole, the greatest and weirdest packaging we have ever seen. Really.
So before we get to the music (whatever... music... pshhh) let's talk about the case this disc is housed in. It was at one time, a regular old DVD case, but it has been coated in molded rubber, looking like the Necronomicon from Evil Dead, only the cover is a unicorn, all molded in 3-D complete with an actual glass eye, with various vines and flowers molded in along side the unicorn head and EYE!!! The back has the band name and more vines molded in. It smells like old tires and feels all soft and rubbery. It's got a little Gwar to it. But holy shit!!! It's so amazing to look at and to hold and to smell. Inside is an oversized screen printed booklet, with glittery eye animals, typewriter style liner notes affixed to the inside. Wow! It almost wouldn't matter what the music sounded like but the music is just as amazing. A freaked out furious grinding metallic onslaught, most songs clocking in around 30 seconds with one or two coming in around 9 minutes. 32 songs in 38 minutes. Buzzing guitars, blasting drum splatter and some seriously awesome fucked up vocals, squealing impossibly high, doused in FX, it sounds like a woman, or a guy with an impossibly high falsetto, it's almost like a grind metal Melt Banana, but with super fuzzy lo-fi fucked up production and some seriously damaged sounding guitars. Actually the vocals sort of sound like the little girl from Kiss' "God Of Thunder" all grown up and seriously hysterical. But that's not all, there's the album, a series of fucked up blasts of brilliant black metal grind fury, then a a few noise tracks, a live set, and then THE WHOLE RECORD IN REVERSE, as in backwards, fucking awesome! Everything sounds better backwards and Throne Of Blood is no exception. Then there's a few more noise tracks, then the second to last track, the record's nine minute epic, one riff repeated over and over and over and over and over. Minimal math metal genius. And then the final four minute number which sounds like it could be a whole 'nother record, with about a million tracks compressed into one 4 minute chunk, with more outrageously over the top insane vocals. Actually, it's a whole live set!!!
What more to say? The record is completely nuts, the packaging even more so. It's just too bad it's so limited. This cloud has a distinctly black lining.
LIMITED TO 125 COPIES!!! We tried to order lots more than we got, which ended up being about 20 copies, and once these are gone, this is gone for good...
Right from the opening blast of "Funeral Moonlight", even before the droning loping dirge of this album's lead-off track really surges forth, you know you're in for some true church-burning darkness from this Norwegian black metal duo. You'll also know that already if you've got their Unholy Holocaust Winds demo, which was released as a limited edition cd on the Paradigms label last year and got a rave review from us. Two of the three tracks ("Funeral Moonlight" and "Symbols of Winter") from that demo appear again here in re-recorded form, plus a three newer compositions ("Under Guds Hud", "Nattaander", and the title track), for a nearly an hour of grim, eerie black metal majesty. The expected frosty blurr of drums and guitars, and accompanying necromantical screams, is enhanced by Throne Of Katarsis' effective and somewhat unusual use of acoustic guitars, like some unholy mix of Darkthrone and Dissection.
We first heard from Norwegian black metallers via their Paradigms release Unholy Holocaust, way back in 2006, at the time, we had had no idea who these guys were, so we weren't sure what to expect, but what we got was a frosty blast of classic old school Scandinavian style grimness. A sound that fit perfectly amidst the elite, Immortal, Satyricon, Darkthrone, Enslaved, Emperor, yet Throne Of Katarsis definitely added their own twist, incorporating bits of fluttery folky acoustic guitar, and bit of druggy doom, even some super catchy Dissection / Iron Maiden like guitar melodies. Since then they've released one other record, An Eternal Dark Horizon, which found the band dialing back the melody and upping the grim frost, while keeping the acoustic guitars, to appropriately black and brutal effect.
So now here we are, 2 years later, and if anything (and if it were even possible), things seem to have gotten even frostier and grimmer in the Katarsis camp, there are still acoustic guitars here and there, but their appearances are brief, mere flourishes, mostly intros and outros, while the band seem more intent on thrashing and blasting coldly and blackly. The guitars here roooooaaar and the vocals howl, and the drums are boomy and crash and pound, the melodies are epic and majestic, the sound is super hot, super loud, everything doused in distortion and reverb, plenty of buzz obviously, but the sound is immediate and raw and furious and frenzied, almost like a classic nineties demo, cranked and re-energized, these guys sound fierce as fuck, tempering their cold Nordic steel with -just- enough melody and texture to keep it interesting, but no more, keeping the proceedings here, as mentioned above, repeatedly, cold and wintery, and frosty and grim, and heavy and so very black.
The third release in Paradigms' series of super limited cd obscurities, this time from mysterious Norwegian black metal horde Throne Of Katarsis. On first listen, this sounds like some lost slab of classic nineties Scandanavian darkness, ultra grim, super lo-fi black fuzz recorded on a 4-track, whirling drone drenched icy buzz, but the Throne manage to add their own little slant to the proceedings. The first hint that this is not just some typical BM group, is the warm church organ intro that manages to be totally misleading, unless you envision the ToK horder bursting in on a mass in progress and defiling everyone and thing in sight. Then there's the haunting acoustic guitar halfway through the eleven minute opening track, that quickly segues into some loping dirge-y doom, sounding sort of like a slowed down Xasthur. The acoustic guitar returns again closer to the end, and transforms that gloriously droning dirge into a strangely melodic, epic sweeping sway, sort of like Dissection or even Iron Maiden, albeit doused in muffled black grit and slathered with satanic skree. The second track is more straight ahead Norwegian black metal, bringing to mind Emperor, Mayhem mixed with newer black souls like Leviathan and Xasthur, especially with its weird sorrowful lilting Burzumish acoustic guitar melody buried beneath the fuzz. The final track is the real oddball (and maybe our favorite track here), partially recorded in the Liarlund forest, the sounds of footsteps crunching through the snow, the call of faraway birds, whirling whispering wind, all beneath a warm creepy blanket of muted synth and gargled demonic mutterings. Eerie and lovely, but still strangely black and grim...
Limited to 750 copies, packaged in a mini lp style sleeve wrapped in a hand stamped brown paper outer sleeve.
We've definitely mentioned it before, but it's worth reiterating, as much as we love all strains of twisted blackness, of damaged and demented whatthefuck black metal, of warped outsider grim stumble and blur, the weirder and the more baffling the better, we still love and treasure TROO GRIM BLACKNESS done in the old style - Burzum, and Emperor, and Immortal, and Mayhem, and Satyricon, the Norwegian elite, and while there are tons of black metal bands these days, few capture the same sort of black energy, the same sort of grim chaos, the furious buzzing blackness, none of this 4 track lo-fi whine and buzz piddle, we're talking massive squalls of black buzz that sound like a black plague swallowing you whole, drums like the thundering hooves of the four horsemen, vokills straight from the pits of hell, all blurred into a soul shearing black fury, no experiments, no ambience, no twisted gnarled whatever, just grim black buzz. Which brings us to Norway's Throne Of Katarsis, who for 9 years have kept the black flame burning, and even now on full length number three show no sign of letting up, or fo changing their formula, which we essentially outlined above. This is classic Norwegian black metal, modern maybe, but as far as we're concerned these guys could have released this back in 1994 and been included in that ultimate black metal pantheon, where they so obviously belong. Hell, they're in our pantheon for sure, every new record another batch of grim black bliss. They do offer up a bit of clean singing, but it's more of a Viking croon, and it somehow suits the sound, whether ToK are frantically buzzing and blasting, or unfurling lumbering doomic slabs of trudging black crush. These guys rule, this record rules, and if you're after some modern true Norwegian black metal (and why wouldn't you be?!), you could NOT do better than this.
Timed almost perfectly with the release of the third Thrones cd Day Late, Dollar Short (one of our Records of the Week last week, for those with short memories), we also just got a few copies of Thrones' 1996 debut disc Alraune back in stock. Sheer luck, 'cause it's out of print -- but one of our distributors managed to find a box of 'em lurking in the depths of their warehouse, so we grabbed 'em all while the grabbing was good. As you too should do, if you don't have this already and are a fan of all that is heavy! A quick background briefing: Thrones is Joe Preston, who has done time in both seminal dirge-masters Earth and the Melvins (he's also played in The Whip and SUNNO))) and is current the bassist for High On Fire). You probably know all that already, and this too: back when Joe was in the Melvins, each member put out a solo album (inspired by the same stunt KISS pulled way back when). Joe's was perhaps the best. Carrying on from that, he "formed" Thrones and set out to prove to the world that a one-man-band could be as heavy as any "normal" band (not that the Melvins are all that normal, ahem). Not only did he offer that proof with this Thrones debut, but also took it to the stage. A drum machine, double necked guitar bass, vocal effects and samples were (and still are) put to shudderingly heavy use by Joe in kicking out his weirdly prog and sometimes oddly pop Thrones drone anthems. The tracks on Alarune range from aggro Melvinsy metal to underwater drone to drifting New Age synth melody...a sinister combustion of sound that bridges Earth with Goblin! So, we're happy to have these again (for however long they last), allowing us to review it for the very first time (back in '96 we just weren't as on the ball as we are now I guess)! So, if you've still got an empty space on your cd shelf next to Sperm Whale and Day Late, Dollar Short now's the time to fill it.
We're big ol' Thrones fans here, and so the arrival of a third Thrones opus the other day was pretty darn exciting! It's been five years since the magnificent Sperm Whale, after all! And we're happy to report that Day Late, Dollar Short, despite its title, does not disappoint in any way (though, it's not exactly an entirely new album, more on that in a sec). Now, you know that the double necked guitart/bass wielding Joe Preston -- for he is Thrones and Thrones is he -- has quite the heaviness pedigree. He's played in the unholy heavy trinity of Earth, the Melvins, and SUNNO))), and he's currently the bassist for stoner metal lords High On Fire. Thus, from his one-man-band project Thrones you'd expect nothing less than H-E-A-V-Y, and you'd be right. But it's more than merely heavy. Thrones ain't just rubbery, head-caving bass, lotsa feedback nastiness, machine beats, and throat-rasped vox. Thrones is also really, really weird. As you'd expect from Joe, who used to be in the Melvins after all. There's certainly plenty of Melvins style fuckery going on here!
I mean, after the sheer noxious pummel (we like!) of track one, "The Suckling", you'll wonder what's going on with track two, "Young Savage". Punky and uptempo, with a gang-vocal chorus, it threw us for a bit of a loop until we figured out it was an Ultravox cover. That's then followed by the disarmingly gentle (but disturbingly child-voiced) "Algol". What's going on? Whatever the heck Joe wants, basically. And that's okay 'cause what he wants is to unleash a torrent of creativity that encompasses such things as utter sludge drone dirge, Buttholes Surfers-ish mania, indie rock pop (with some non-effected, clean singing even), drum machines kickin' old school hip hop beats, crazy prog structures, all-out rawk, thrashy riffs, electronic filtering, etc... almost all of which you'll hear in, say, track fifteen, "Obolus", which starts off doing the Melvinsy doom thing but with Bruce Haack/Electric Lucifer robot singing before segueing into a soundscape of bird twitters, bells and chimes, and waves of white noise (this from the "soundtrack" to La Foresta Della Norte). Then there's all the crazy covers that Joe tries his hand at: along with the Ultravox, this includes a Residents cover, a Blue Oyster Cult cover, and yes, unreleased track "A Quick One" is indeed a cover of a portion of the Who's "A Quick One While He's Away". Wow. Not afraid of a challenge, this guy.
And we do mean "unleash a torrent" -- there's 19 tracks here, almost 80 minutes of Thrones insanity, much of it compiled from rare, out-of-print singles, cassettes and comps, with some previously unreleased tracks as well, spanning the years 1994-2001. The lovely, bunny-adorned packaging (Mr. Stephen O'Malley, take a bow) also features personal notes on each track by Joe hizzelf. Here's hoping that he'll find time away from his regular gig in High On Fire to do a real *brand new* Thrones album... but in the meantime we're happy to have this "incomplete collection of smaller projects" all on one handy cd.
The long-awaited new Thrones album has finally sailed into port. Former Melvins & Earth member Joe Preston's fully weird solo project is a one-man-band (you've gotta see him live! He even pulls off a cover of Rush's "The Trees", sadly not found on this record) thud-metal art-rock backwoods behemoth. A direct influence on The Need, an inspiration to The Champs, and a joy to all who can enjoy thunderously loud, heavy, fucked up sounds: weird drum programming, electronically-altered pitch-flux vocals, incongrous keyboards and samples, devastating twin-neck guitar/bass riffage, chaotic song structures, more. The cd version includes the tracks from Thrones' previous 12" only release on KRS (which actually makes this less an album than a compilation of two 12"s). Oh, and as if he knew exactly what really floats our boat here at AQ, the cd also includes a lengthy hidden track of nighttime forest noises! Recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The heaviest one-man band in the land, starring Joe Preston (ex-Melvins, ex-Earth, etc.). Joe churns up a cloud of low-end bludgeoning sludge. Vinyl only.
Managed to get a handful of these split tour 12"s when Thrones, aka Joe Preston, was in town recently. This two song 45rpm12" matches up Preston's Thrones with the new-to-us Sedan, who we had never even heard of before, but whose track here kills, a moody broody rhythmic chunk of kick ass post rock, plenty mathy, with big drums, lush thick guitars, definitely sounds like it could be a new record by some nineties Thrill Jockey band, BUT, the group pepper their math/post rockisms with cool stretches of haunting cinematic chamber music, all layered drones and swoonsome shimmer. Pretty great, and unexpected, and has us definitely wanting to hear more.
The Thrones side offers up a different side of the Thrones we're used to, unfurling a dark, droney super minimal low end creep, all slithery and gurgly, a rumbling drone that soon reveals itself as being pitched down processed vox, the sound blur into a sort of post industrial black ambience, until the song blossoms into cool melody, but again, those synthy sounding melodies are in fact Preston's processed voice, it's total avant a cappella prog, or something, whatever it is, it's awesomely dirgey and droney and a little bit sci-fi, a tripped out minimal ambient soundtrack that might have some Thrones obsessives on the haunt for heavy scratching their chins, the rest of us can revel in Preston's mysterious dark soundscapery.
Probably crazy limited, so not sure if we can get more. Nice cover art too!
Another mid-'90s college rock classic gets its deserved reissuing thanks to the reissue label Wounded Bird Records (they've re-released an amazingly broad range of old faves such as Sparks, Wendy & Lisa, Chic, Jean-Luc Ponty, Blood Sweat & Tears and... EBN-OZN!). University was Throwing Muses fifth full length, their second following the departure of co-founding member Tanya Donnelly. While her absence was definitely felt on its predecessor Red Heaven, University found Hersh and co. at their most concise and crafty, ready to take on any doubters. Her unmistakable voice, wonderfully obtuse lyrics and angular guitar lines are all in top form. Irresistibly punfully stated, Hersh graduates with honors! All the pieces snap perfectly in place, making this one of the band's best albums. Listening to this reissue is like slipping into a well worn, yet crispy ironed favorite shirt. A fresh and comfy pleasure!
Psst... expect a new solo album from Ms Kirsten Hersh shortly!
Yay, the welcome return of the Throwing Muses! It's been over five years since they disbanded shortly after the release of their eighth full length, Limbo. We're happy to report that from the sounds of this, they're back up and running without skipping a beat. There's something so warm and comforting about the fuzzy crunch of their guitars and Hersh's distinct lilting voice. This album is no exception. In fact, it even recalls the vim and vigor of early Throwing Muses, but with more refined songcraft. For a counterbalance to this TM electric guitar pep and simply more of Ms Hersh in general, check out her beautiful acoustic solo album which was concurrently released with this group effort.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Sometime in the early '80s, a bunch of young Dutchmen formed a couple of post-punk bands that nobody remembers anymore; but on one Thursday that happened to be the 20th of some month, one of those bands abandoned their rhythms entirely and splattered out a drone-tape and synth-noise set that had the audience freaking out. The punk structures were scrapped entirely and THU20 was stuck onto this project as the new name. Get it? The Dutchmen of THU20 included Jac Van Bussel, Peter Duimelinks, Roel Meelkop, Jos Smolders, and Guido Doesborg (later replaced by the ubiquitous Frans De Waard). The mid to late '80s proved to be a highly prolific time for THU20, although the project continues on to this day at a much more restrained pace. The ideas that went into THU20 transitioned from Joy Division into Cabaret Voltaire & Throbbing Gristle quickly arriving at a DIY punk form of musique concrete and electro-acoustic experimentation. Such was a similar trajectory for the German ensemble P16.D4, albeit towards even more unconventional goals. In the studio, THU20's work could be austere and brutalist in the obfuscated collages and disjointed slabs of noise; but the live version of THU20 proved to be far more shambolic, dynamically expressive, and rewardingly chaotic. Vroeg Werk is a diverse collection that spans both of these modes of operation, with the second of these two discs being entirely live recordings and the first culling from the dustbin of the cassette culture. The studio material found on disc one has some semblances of the more abstracted tape work found on Einsturzende Neubauten's Drawings Of O.T sans Blixa, with the opening track "5720" being particularly choice. But, the live material is really where THU20 shine, grafting gritty electro-acoustic noise sourced from voice, tape, synth, feedback, pedals, shortwave, power tools, scrap metal, and who knows what else onto thin rhythmic spines of morse code blips, overblown tape loops, and primitive drum machinations. Effectively, THU20 would land somewhere between the panzer bleakness of MB and the viral shredding of Nocturnal Emissions. Not a bad place to be...
A happenin' EP from the Mission's own Thug Emporium, this is underground hip hop done really well, like kitchen sink Cannibal Ox, with catchy yet sinister melodies forming a backdrop to the several guest MCs. No nonsense, no silly skits, no mistakes, nothing
Thuja, beautiful Thuja. While around here (San Francisco) this group of quiet, psychedelic improvisors doesn't get quite the attention we feel they deserve, they do have a devoted, international following of fans. Fans who will be thrilled with these two new releases: a new full-length cd (their third for the Emperor Jones label after one on tUMULt) and a cute lil' 3" cd-r installment in their own Jewelled Antler "Library Series".
All Strange Beasts Of The Past, the full-length, is also a record that should make Thuja some new fans if only folks get exposed to it. It's certainly their most acoustic instrument based, melodic, and folky sounding record to date, veering close to the territory explored by Thuja member Steven R. Smith on his Hala Strana releases. Not that they've abandoned their sticks and stones and drone, in fact you'll find that the last track -- they're all untitled as usual -- is entirely full of ambient grit and rattle and clank and the abstract drone sounds of undisclosed detritus found in the woods. This mellow, maybe menacing, dark forest epic takes up almost half of the disc's running time, and could easily have stood as a fine 3" release on its own. But it makes a great finale, after the shorter, more musically 'conventional' (by Thuja standards) instrumentals that preceeded it. It's as if they finally reached the dragon's lair suggested by the album's title (and wonderful cover photo and other graphics). They're creeping about, exploring a hopefully uninhabited cave, littered with strange glittering treasures and terrible old bones.
Meanwhile, Thuja have also released a new 3" cd-r as we mentioned above: Fable. It's #10 in the series of twelve, getting close to the end, about time for these guys to finally make an appearance (unless you count the almost-Thuja Tomes entry). 20 or so minutes, 2 tracks. Again, the Thujans (Loren Chasse, Rob Reger, Steven R. Smith, and Glenn Donaldson) make some of the most beautiful and mysterious abstract instrumental improv we've heard. All we're told is that Fable was "recorded at night in the Garden of Kains, August 30, 2003". There could have been weird old hippies sitting in, or magical woodland beasts (of the past), or academic dronologists gone a bit strange on natural pharmacueticals...but probably it was just Thuja, and their music is conjuring these imaginary visitors not the other way around. Get this one.
We're super-happy to herald the arrival of "Ghost Plants", the brand-new second album from San Francisco's Thuja! (That's pronounced "thoo-zhuh," by the way, and it's the genus name of the North American cedar tree.) We loved their debut cd "The Deer Lay Down Their Bones" (released on our own Andee's tUMULt label, in fact) and try not to miss their rare live performances, which in addition to their transcendental music also often incorporate video projections of trees, piles of branches, and other atmospheric, extra-musical additions. With "Ghost Plants", the four members of Thuja -- AQ-fave experimental sound artist Loren Chasse, pianist Rob Reger, and former members of ambient-psych rockers Mirza Stephen R. Smith and Glenn Donaldson -- have crafted another utterly lovely, improv instrumental masterpiece! In comparision to their first album, this disc seems darker and heavier, somehow more "rock" production-wise although Thuja are hardly a rock band. Thuja's music is very organic and "natural" sounding, with their quietly meandering, melodic guitar and piano explorations seeming set amidst wood, wind and water -- you can imagine a Thuja concert taking place on a darkened forest floor, with Chasse's crackling branches and stone rubbings.
At their most "rock" Thuja goes "kraut" with Chasse's drum-kit rhythms, and at their most "experimental ambient" the tinklings of percussion blend with ominous (yet pleasant) humming dronesc(r)apes of organ and bass and other things quite blissfully.
Whilst not exactly 'folky' you can still draw a connection between the woodland vistas of Thuja and the fractured folkpsych of Tower Recordings, or Finland's Kemialliset Ystavat (Thuja being more abstract than KY, who are more abstract than TR). We'd also cite the likes of Labradford, Richard Youngs/Simon Wickham-Smith, the
No Neck Blues Band, the Taj Mahal Travellers, Popol Vuh, Gunter Schickert, and :Zoviet*France: as fellow travellers in the psychedelic realms that Thuja carefully tread. This disc offers 13 untitled tracks in just under 40 minutes -- a very nice length indeed for an afternoon's reverie, perhaps one of the few improv-drone discs you'll find yourself hitting the "repeat" button on frequently. If you enjoy the solo work of Stephen R. Smith or L. Chasse (also of id battery and Coelacanth), or liked Mirza's drifting atmospheres, and haven't listened to Thuja yet, what are you waiting for? Everyone else, check ALL these guys stuff out, starting with this disc! So beautiful.
A far cry from the elaborate packaging of their previous releases, such as the charming homebrewed "Thuja Museum" treasure-boxes produced by their own Jewelled Antler label, Thuja's third full-length album suffers from the dodgy packaging aesthetic of Last Visible Dog, who've rendered the cover art as a high contrast black-and-white photocopy. Fortunately, Thuja's music redeems the packaging, with another fantastic album of their signature organically evolving improvizations haunted with the ghosts of folk and psychedelia.
This quartet -- whose Rob Reger, Loren Chasse, and Glenn Donaldson reside in San Francisco while Steven R. Smith calls Los Angeles his home -- strives to evoke the emotional tenor of an environment. Cramming themselves and their instruments amidst exotic plants, ready made constructions of urban refuse, seascape dioramas, and Reger's collection of thrift store 'bad art,' Thuja often steps away from the traditional instrumentation of drums, guitar, etc. to tinker with a rusted bicycle wheel, to slash a pile of sticks with a violin bow, or to rummage through a trough of gravel (which Chasse later discovered was cat litter). Such textural details beautifully illuminate their sustained organ drones, spluttering duets for dulcimer and oud, tinkling of bells 'n' chimes, and impressionistic piano plinkings, opening the psychedelic window into an abstracted, imaginary space. As Thuja's cyclical fluidity of sounds and deep plunking reverberations offer possible readings of ancient seafaring tales, "Hills" isn't so much a description of the place, but a vantage point from which the ocean can be seen. All of Thuja's recordings come highly recommended, and "Hills" is no exception!
Ah, Thuja, the mothership if you will of the Jewelled Antler armada. Featuring names that by now should be quite familiar to AQ customers: Loren Chasse, Steven R. Smith, Glenn Donaldson and Rob Reger.
Between them, these four are responsible for fifty records at least, under twenty or more different monickers. All of them great, and all of them loosely based in one way or another on nature, or natural sounds, or the way music and found sounds interact with the spaces they are performed in. There are instruments like guitars, drums, bass, but more often than not, you'll find sticks and stones, found objects, junk, all sorts of industrial and natural detritus, recorded, re-broadcast, and recorded again. Utilizing natural reverb, the sounds of certain spaces, ambient sounds as well as making the act of making music, music in itself. Wow. So what does Pine Cone Temples sound like?
It's wide open and expansive. Ambient perhaps, but there's too much going on for it to be strictly ambient. It's more a sort of abstract soundscape, the sort of soundscape the requires close listening, active listening, in order to understand, and feel the sounds, not just hear them. The rustle of leaves, crickets maybe, running water, or are those sounds manufactured by the band in an attempt to pay homage to the music of nature? Does it matter. Maybe its both, the sound of running water accompanied by Thuja emulating the sound of running water. Clicks and creaks, and little bits of clatter, a simple melody played on a recorder, warm organ warble, whipsering wind, toy xylophone notes released and left to drift in the slowly shifting breeze, distant bird calls, reverbed piano, dark cavernous rumbles, shimmering single notes stretched perilously across a sound field dotted with the echo of dripping water and the buzz of vibrating guitar strings. This isn't so much music as it is simply sound, sound that has been lovingly shaped and guided, observed and interacted with, recorded in its element. As if Thuja were just recordists, who use their own sounds to lure the sounds of nature to come just a little closer, in order to capture them raw and natural, and incorporate them into the sun dappled cloak of their jewelled nature-folk. The sounds of music can be smooth and soothing, or raw and primitive, as can the music of sound, and thus Thuja, whose music of sound is pure, and organic, lush and lustrous, and breathtakingly beautiful.
While a plethora of bands have emerged from San Francisco's so-called Jewelled Antler Collective (e.g. Thuja, Blithe Sons, Knit Separates, The Birdtree, Skygreen Leopards, etc.), the number of individuals in this gaggle of Californian psychedelic improvisers is actually rather small, with the majority of 'em participating in Jewelled Antler's flagship project Thuja. Comprised of Rob Reger, Loren Chasse, and former Mirza members Glenn Donaldson and Steven R. Smith, Thuja base all of their recordings on extended improv sessions recorded in Reger's expansive warehouse space. They then edit these to extract specific atmospheres and musical quotations. Like all of their releases, "Suns" implies that these improvised actions are rituals that not only mimic the rustlings of arboreal environments but also attempt to magically invoke the forest to crack through the concrete walls of Reger's warehouse. Such metaphors of urban reclamation through natural means are far from fruity idealism, for Thuja's atmospheres speak with unspecified sadness and beauty, as anyone who has heard their previous Emperor Jones cd "Ghost Plants" knows (...or their tUMULt debut, or any of their limited edition cd-r releases on their own Jewelled Antler label, or the recent Last Visible Dog cd-r "Hills"...).
While their closest musical neighbors may be such farflung (in time and space) bands as the Taj Mahal Travellers, No Neck Blues Band, and Kemialliset Ystavat, Thuja has developed an aesthetic that is wholly unique, by adding tons of natural textural details (i.e. contact microphones scraping over rusted surfaces, shells banging against chunks of metal, twigs quietly snapping, etc.) on top of traditional instruments (guitars, harmonium, organ, and drums) in their non-traditional pursuit of the almighty drone. As yet another essential document of this pursuit, "Suns" shines brightly through the trees of Thuja's metaphorical forest. Quite amazing.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The newest release on our Andee's tUMULt label takes a trip to the sonic opium den of San Francisco's Thuja, a new band that consists of two former members of the hazy psychedelic outfit Mirza (Stephen R. Smith and Glenn Donaldson), pianist Rob Reger, and noted sound artist Loren Chasse (of Id Battery). Their debut release, "The Deer Lay Down Their Bones," drifts through passages of improvisations for washed out guitars, tinkling piano, drums, and a pile of stones & branches. Thuja's lovely sound embraces the same freely meandering lack of structure as the No Neck Blues Band but with the dark shimmering colors of Eyeless in Gaza or Dif Juz, harking back also to gentle krautrock a la Popul Vuh or something. As beautiful as the piece of marbled wood veneer that serves as the cover to this unique and gorgeous package. By the way, please don't suspect (if you do) that a form of nepotism or favoritism has anything to do with us selecting yet another tUMULt release for Album of the Week honors--honestly, it's rather the case that Andee's taste mirrors that of the store enough that we don't think he would release something on his label that wouldn't at least be considered for the AQ-List top spot! Really.
In an interview for The Wire not long ago, Thuja's Loren Chasse joked that he wanted the upcoming Thuja album to just be a log with some lichen on it. Well... Chasse's wish almost comes true with this, the first volume of what they call "Thuja Museum", as the band has enclosed a small lichen encrusted stick in the cardboard box with each of these incredibly limited 3" CD-Rs. While all of the rest of the Jewelled Antler catalogue is available as made-to-order CD-Rs, "Thuja Museum #1" is strictly limited to 50 numbered copies. In addition to the disc and the twig, each tiny "Thuja Museum #1" box also includes a woodcut print by Thuja's Steven R. Smith, a leaf rubbing by Chasse, and a small square of wood. Thus, each of these boxes is a unique item of artwork.
As for the actual music found on the 20 minute long, green spraypainted cd-r, it's a sprawling piece of psychedelic drone improvisation, their least structured recording to date. The quartet of Chasse, Glenn Donaldson, Stephen R. Smith, and Rob Reger playfully meanders through scraped violin passages, melancholic organ drones, mandolin pluckery, sustained oud bowing, and non-specific textural clatter that could just be a pile of metal and branches dragged across the floor. Hazy and beautiful, this is a very nice mini-album both in its wonderful packaging and in its sound.
The second (and possibly final?) of the "Thuja Museum" releases is strictly limited to 50 copies, and is well on its way to being sold out like the first. While that initial Thuja Museum was a forest themed production, this one is centered on oceanic themes. Again packaged in a little jewelry box (get it?), Thuja Museum #2, in addition to the 3" cd-r itself, comes with an assortment of artwork from all of the members: Steven R. Smith offers a woodcut, Rob Reger an etching, Glenn Donaldson a collage, and Loren Chasse some found objects from the beach (crab claws, shells, bits of coral, etc.). So each one is unique and suitably aquatic.
Musically, this finds these local experimental psychedelic nature boys at their best as an improv ensemble focusing their collective attention upon the construction of an imaginary soundtrack for the ocean. These twenty minutes represent a mere fraction of the extended sessions they recorded for this project, coaxing resonant drones and quiet, nonspecific hums from their instruments and beachcombed objects. Occasionally, percussive items are scraped, a piano is gently stroked, and stringed instruments are plucked, to punctuate the magical spell of their drones. Nice -- get it while you can, and go for a swim in the sea of Thuja.
