Highlighted last list, we had A Semblance Of Something Appertaining To Destruction, the most recent disc from Dublin, Ireland's To Blacken The Pages. Now we've got their prior release, None, released just a month or two earlier in 2008, which is essentially the part I to A Semblance's part II. Don't get 'em confused (and we'll try not to, too), 'cause they do look virtually identical, the same almost-black-on-black no-color scheme for the cover photo and logo. The black-on-black music is similar too, of course, but different and equally essential for anyone who loved the minimal doomdrone instrumental ambience of that other disc. And again, there's three tracks. 13:45, 16:10, and 8:06. Each stately, somnolent, fuzzed out and, this time, drumless... heavy in a restrained, spacey, spacious way.
Track one, "Alien", tiptoes in, super slow, individually suspended guitar notes one at a time connecting the dots of melancholic melody over a void of silence. Then, suddenly, the needle jumps. DISTORTION. An electric crackle and buzz. The song is still super sloooooow and sparse, but each note is now planetarily weighted with rumbling vibratory effect, surely speaker shredding if it all happened at once, and at volume. An underlying howling hum begins, buried beneath but gradually filling all that empty space with its own not so silent emptiness. The next piece, "None", starts with an eerie electric wind, and some sparse Earth-style guitar strum over it, reverberant and lonely, before sheer fuzzdrone kicks in, fuzzdrone nirvana to our ears, that continues in like manner on final track of the disc, "As If Forever"... Ah, yes, so glacially good. For fans of Earth, SUNNO))), Expo '70, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Slomo, Boris, Skullflower, Nadja, etc. All at their darkest yet dreamiest.
To Blacken The Pages is actually a solo project, the work of one guitar wielding, amp abusing man, Paul McAree. We're told he has a non-solo side project coming up, a band called Slaves Of War Orphan Farm (!) that is supposed to be a worthy offering of Les Rallizes Denudes worship! Can't wait to check it out...
The third part in an ongoing series of blackened drone guitar missives from Irish one man slow and low wrecking crew To Blacken The Pages. Fans of the first two TBTP records (None and A Semblance Of Something Appertaining To Destruction) are already well versed in the bleak abstract soundworld this guy can conjure, fusing the low end explorations of groups like SUNNO))), Expo '70, Bohren, Slomo and the like, with something a bit more psychedelic and space-y. Sure, TBTP is capable of unfurling some planet crushing black hole heaviness, but also of tossing handfulls of notes into crystalline expanses of murky reverb, letting the various notes flutter and fall, before tossing out another handful. The first two tracks on North are perfect examples, "Crossing" and "I Am Screes On Her Escarpments", the first begins as a swirling almost static field of slow shifting reverb and delay, peppered with percussive thumps and creaks, sent careening into the ether, while shards of clean guitar, sounding a bit like super mellow Keiji Haino, unfurl like clouds of grey smoke, while underneath, a guitar rumbles and whirs, gradually becoming more and more rifflike, ringing out a bit chaotic and noisy, before slipping into the second which begins with the same sort of reverbed stretch of echoey thumps and creaks, before the guitar thickens into a crumbling corrosive wall of swirling chordal hum and keening feedback, a roiling blackened bit of guitar ambience, infused with melody and moodiness and shot through with strange high end streaks and swoops that are probably effected guitars, but almost sound like children's voices here and there. Quite haunting.
The next few tracks take TBTP's sound in a different direction, the root again being shimmering guitars, but this time the focus is on the voice, a lazy drawled croon nestled down in the mix, that drifts along side the increasingly caustic guitar buzz resulting in a sound not unlike some strange Dead C / Roy Montgomery hybrid, a sort of sun baked noise drenched dronedirge slowcore. Dark and woozy and melancholy and way druggy and drowsy sounding. Later, "To Be Dead" introduces actual drums, and gets all propulsive, a lurching noise rock take on spaced out krautrock, but with the guitars in full on overdrive, a constantly swirling squall of feedback and psychrock freakout. And then the last two tracks are massive billowing clouds of coruscating buzz and skree, blurred into gorgeous multi hued smears of blown out guitar and a gorgeous hazy shoegazey drift, in fact the nearly 15 minute "Night Drive" might be one of the prettiest heavy guitar tracks we've heard in ages, anyone into Nadja or Jesu, will love it, it's like the slow motion metalgaze of those two outfits but stripped of drums and allowed to just sort of hover. So nice.
Needless to say, the drone and dirge and doom obsessed out there probably already added this to their shopping cart (or if they didn't yet, probably should now), anyone who bought the other two records definitely NEED this too, and folks not necessarily into metal, but who still dig on dark drifty hazy heaviness might be pretty into To Blacken The Pages, North in particular...
It's been close to a year since we've heard from Irish one man doomdronedirge guitarrorist To Blacken The Pages, we've been pretty obsessed with every record we've heard so far, this being number FIVE, which is also notable for being a collaboration with Korperschwache, an Austin based Skullflower style guitar noise juggernaut, long time faves of some of us here, who somehow has never made it onto the aQ list, even with a ton of strange and limited releases over the last decade, but we'll solve that problem right... Now.
Regardless of the collaboration, a new To Blacken The Pages is always cause for celebration around here, TBTP continually manages to conjure up all sorts of low end fury, from blown out shoegazey drift, to crushing SUNNO)))-like dirgery, to harrowing black ambience, to spaced out kraut drone, more often than not some dizzying mix of all of those. Korperschwache is similarly versatile, leaning toward the noisy and heavy, dipping into extreme harsh noise, but also gorgeous guitardrone ambience, UK industrial style skree, and rhythmic hypnorock riffery. So what this collaboration would actually sound like was pretty much a total mystery.
What we did know, was that this would be some mysterious, dark and heavy shit, which we're happy to report is indeed the case, but there's much more to the gorgeous blackened soundworld these two sonic soundscapers have conjured up here...
Thick swaths or rumbling low end fog underpin delicate fragmented shards of softly reverbed guitar, almost like some sort of SUNNO))) / Scenic mash up, a little Earth twang, a lush, ominous churning driftscape that builds to a full on doomic crush, all hazey and blown out and in the red, before drifting into more slowcore territory, a simple motorik drum machine laced stretch of hypnotic post rock, with swirling melodies and buried in the mix deep vocal croon. Big billowy sheets of black crush splinter into feedback drenched noise rock, the drum machine cranked way up, the guitars corrosive and caustic, like an ultra heavy Loop track gone haywire. The first disc finishes off with two extended tracks of guitar drone, "A New Seat In Hell", and "Shallow", the first muted and murky and minimal, the second exactly the opposite, like recent Skullflower, a speaker shredding onslaught of full on psychedelic guitargrind freakout.
The second disc begins all dreamy and washed out, the drum machine set to lope and lumber, the guitars warm and gauzy, infused with tendril like melodies, the Jesu comparison is certainly apt here, hazy shoegazey and druggy, the perfect lead in to the "Inside The Mariana Trench", an even more spaced out bit of reverb drenched psychedelia, guitars spitting out blinding gouts of keening high end tones, laid over skeletal programmed drums, and a bleary eared swirl of delay and echo and smeared effects, so nice.
"Absent Friends" is a haunting post industrial bit of minimal dronemusic, again peppered with bits of guitar melody, and streaks of mysterious effects, hushed vocals, simple strums, the root sound a lush layered metallic whir, which leads to the final track, the nearly 40 minute "Stranded In The Hertzsprung Crater", a sprawling spacious, abstract epic, which beings thick and distorted, but soon evolves into something much more spare, effected guitars careening over a bleak landscape of hiss and whir and hum, soft arcs of feedback, a haunting barren world of drift and shimmer, a pretty perfect way to end such an epic sonic journey.
Needless to say, totally and utterly recommended, for fans of minimal guitar music, dirges and drones, dark ambience, doom, outsider metal, shoegaze, whatever, this stuff is dark and blissed out, ominous and abstract, dense and heavy and gorgeous.
Will do our best to get more Korperschwache to list, and we'll of course wait patiently for the next To Blacken The Pages, but in the meantime, we'll just stay gloriously lost in the epic and sprawling soundworld of A Way Dark.
We haven't ever heard any of the other records by this strangely monickered duo, and in some ways it's probably that name that kept us from exploring their music in the past. We know, book, cover, band name, check. But with so much stuff to listen to, it's inevitable that something like album cover or band name or label, will influence what you listen to first, or maybe even at all. But heck, it's Kranky, and the album cover is pretty cool, so two out of three ain't bad. And we have to say we're glad we did finally decide to take the plunge, cuz the world of TKAPB is a gorgeously gloomy one, a haunting and otherworldly late night drift through a world dark and ominous, and occasionally downright frightening. Think Grouper, Mazzy Star, Kuupuu, Valet, that sort of gauzy dreaminess, murky and muddy, spacey and druggy, with ethereal female vocals, barely there drum skitter, warm languid bass, the instruments less recognizable as instruments, and more as sound generating devices, each emitting long tones, or soft rhythms, the result is a slow burning jazzy drone-y drift, but TKAPB seems a bit more sinister than the rest of those bands, imbuing their hazy midnight drift, with some deep drones, some jagged shards of distorted crunch. A creepy dreamy slowcore, with hints of something darker, heavier, and noisier. Just check out "The Needle", a loping slow groove, minor key and tense, the vocals sultry and smoky, creeping and crawling, until suddenly something hellish surfaces, a squall of demonic buzz and noise, only a second or two, but it adds such menace to the track, as does a swirling sea of cymbal sizzle and what sounds like a moaning string section. Almost like some sort of doom torch song.
The rest of the record is maybe not nearly so intense, but it is a very dark record, think Portishead, Grouper, Skepticism, and Bohren all wound up in a sprawling songsuite of drummachined black ballads, harrowing love songs, grim ambience and blackened downtempo electronica, with a sound so gauzy and washed out and murky and psychedelic, and yeah, occasionally menacing, that it's impossible for us not to give this our highest recommendation.
Electronic minimalists with connections to similarly-lauded Kreidler.
German outfit, To Rococo Rot, bring us silky smooth electronica with their latest release, Hotel Morgen. Beautifully produced, lulling though chillingly distant, this album doesn't ask or answer any questions. It's just a pleasant and driftworthy sonic experience.
To Rococo Rot composed this album to cohabitate with the architectural forms found within the "Kolner Brett" building designed by the Cologne architectural firm b&k+. As the building held the grander notions of blending living and working in each of its single
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To Rococo Rot composed this album to cohabitate with the architectural forms found within the "Kolner Brett" building designed by the Cologne architectural firm b&k+. As the building held the grander notions of blending living and working in each of its single units (or so we've been told, but the pictures of the building indicate that it's as advanced as anything in Wallpaper), To Rococo Rot has configured each of the twelve tracks in this album to fit within an architectural grid (each track is exactly three minutes long) and a distinctly architectural discourse of merging form and function within a sleek but utilitarian style. With such a condensed timeframe, To Rococo Rot offers uniform techno pulses behind pleasant electronic percolations, occasional glitch whimsy, and Fridge-like guitar strum, sounding like "Future Days" era Can playing the MicroHouse of Andreas Tilliander.
We've always thought there was something special about To Rococo Rot, we've heard moments on their records that really show they can reach next level brilliance in their ability to merge such a pronounced feeling and mood with their deep grooves and beats. Before dubstep and any of the other new electronic subcategories, To Roccoco Roc were already making super rich, moody and nuanced sounds that didn't conform to one single style. Speculation is their first album in many years and it finds the Berlin trio in top form. The album opens with Cluster-like pulsations and as it organically moves forward with a post-kraut-rock sensibility, the sounds shift and sway, going back and forth from a tense and haunting sensation to something more free and exploratory. There are moments where they tap into the kind of sound we imagine Tortoise and Mouse On Mars might create if they collaborated, yet there is something a bit more sinister and seething just under the surface of To Rococo Rot's sound. Their sonic versatility really sets them apart from so many of their peers. So nice to have them back!
It's been so cold here lately (well you know cold for us California types) and there is something about To Rococo Rot's warm electronic sounds that hits the spot right about now. While so much of the melodic electronica that has come out since they burst onto the scene has gotten quite stale and predictable there is something always so consistent and perfect about what To Rococo Rot produce.
The kind of record that's so nice to have on while you linger in thoughts, half awake and in your pajamas not really wanting to leave the comfort of your bedroom or face the cold outside.
Lovely, unassuming, appealing electronica along the lines of a quieter Mouse On Mars. Fans of Tortoise, Fridge, and Boards of Canada will like it too. You may recall that Schneider TM of To Rococo Rot was responsible for one of the prettiest, most artistically successful remixes on the recent High Llamas remix album.
More wonderful burbling electronica from the lauded German quartet To Rococo Rot, of whom solo artist Robert Lippok is a member. Undercurrents of throbbing yet very gentle bass rhythms augmented with chattery percussion and serene melodies. Fans of Boards of
More entrancing downtempo mellow electronica from Dusseldorf's wonderful To Rococo Rot, who boast solo artists Robert Lippok and Schneider TM as members. There are 5 tracks, here -- 2 previously unreleased, and 3 that are reworked, very different versions
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The UK's "D" (Darryl Moore, Soul Static Sound producer) collaborates on this ep with German dub/electronica/modern krautrocking band To Rococo Rot, resulting in a mix of their "electronics, samples, and live instrumentation" with his minimalist techno "grit".
Why does anyone bother with the current crop of "stoner rock" when there's so much better stuff made back in the original stoner age (the '70s) now being reissued?? If you're into the Man's Ruin roster, and prone to buying albums by the latest Swedish Kyuss
Nasty ugly feedback filled sludge metal in the tradition of Eyehategod and Grief (or more obscurely, Negative Reaction and Soul Preacher). Apparently this disc reissues vinyl-only tracks from back in 1994 and other rarities by this rather obscure doomcore band. We don't even know where they're from, but we're glad they're not our neighbors. The vocals might just be toooo anguished for some (I personally liked 'em -- until I realized the sound I was digging was supposed to be singing, not some sort of distorted horn). Anyway if you're into the ugly n' heavy then this Southern Lord release has yer number. Dark psychedelic thud from a black hole space, with weird touches like keyboards (I think, though maybe it's the vocals again??) and let's not forget their cover of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" sure to please everyone who loved Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
MPEG Download: "Also Sprach Zarathustra" [/audio/toadliquoralsosprach.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Also Sprach Zarathustra" [/audio/toadliquoralsosprach.m3u]
Tobacco would definitely be a strange name for a group. But it's an even stranger name for a -person-, except when you realize, that person is in fact the twisted mastermind behind the cracked electro pop of aQ faves Black Moth Super Rainbow. In our review of the most recent BMSR record, we compared their sound to Air covering Daft Punk, but with a bunch of junky old equipment, busted up amps and rickety swap meet synths. What's not to love?!?!
For Mr. Tobacco's first solo foray, he actually sticks pretty close to the Black Moth template he created, but does manage to give that sound a little twist. The instantly recognizable fuzzed out gritty synths, the stuttery crunchy crumbling beats, the chopped up vocodered vocals, the blissy eighties sheen, all in full effect, but up the hip hop vibe a bit, mix in some ethereal female vocals, some borderline cheesy (but still kick ass) cop show theme song groove, handclaps, fluttering flutes, soaring cinematic faux strings, even some rapping at one point (courtesy of Aesop Rock, who took BMSR on tour earlier this year), and we're slipping into Fucked Up Friends territory. A few of the tracks are instant classics, sounding sometimes like a more sunshine-y hip-hop flecked Goblin, other times like a more lo-fi synth heavy Boards Of Canada, and once in a while like an LSD dosed Daft Punk doing the soundtrack for a nature special on Yo MTV Raps all about jellyfish or mountain goats or those weird fish that glow in the dark. WTF?! But par for the course with Tobacco and his Black Moth Super Rainbow. And while there does seem to be a bit more hip hop happening here, it's essentially another gloriously fractured and fucked up BMSR record, which is just fine with us!
Brand new remix ep (featuring a clutch of new jams as well) from Tobacco, the weirdo psychedelic synth electro hip hop side project of long time aQ faves Black Moth Super Rainbow, on which a handful of past Tobacco jams get reworked and revved up, and handed over to some of the world's weirdest and most warped MC's: Anti-Pop Consortium, Doseone, Rob Sonic, not to mention some rappers we've never heard of: Serengeti, Height, Icicle Frog, Zackey Force Funk.
The new tracks kill, the old tracks sound new, a dizzying, over the top, twisted avant hip hop blowout, synths buzz and twist and get all tangled up, the beats skitter and stutter, guitars crunch and shimmer, samples are chopped up and looped and layered, sounds buzz and crunch and whir, a swirling ever shifting backdrop for some seriously out there flows.
"TV All Greasy" buzzes and warbles while Anti-Pop go nuts over the top, the vocals riding on the undulating synths, "The Injury" sounds like an eighties educational film soundtrack wedded to crunchy fuzzguitar, the beats primitive, Doseone's whiny flow perfectly balancing Tobacco's shimmery vocodered croon, "Lick The Witch" is classic old school hip hop slathered in synth buzz and swirling effects, and Rob Sonic's bad ass versery, "2 Thick Scoops" is a dirgey almost metallic bit of shoegaze doompop hip hop freakiness, with some slithery flow and some woozy synth filigree, and so it goes, the rest of the record playing out in similarly blown out, synth heavy fuzz guitar drenched stumbly outsider hiphop radness.
Makes us think how cool it would be if all the boring radio rappers who shell out thousands of dollars for boring beats, got Tobacco to whip up some of his weirdness instead. We can't help but imagine Jay-Z or Eminem spitting rhymes over some of this stuff. If only!
Features some disturbing Tobacco style basketball headed milky cereal garish colored eye popping artwork on a 12" picture disc!
Yay! Put on your favorite monster mask and pour a big bowl of sugary breakfast cereal, Black Moth Super Rainbow's possibly groovier, more "hip-hop" alterego is back! Tobacco in the house!! And when we say possibly groovier, what we mean is that this is VERY groovy, about as groovy as it is distorted, and 'delic. Thick, fuzzy, flangey synths colorfully pulsate everywhere, amidst handclap-laced "Unholy Demon Rhythms" (as one song title here puts it)... and it seemingly never ends, hypnotic, head nodding, foot tapping, one track after the next, grooving out with laidback sunshiney good vibes and DayGlo exploding weird noize-energy, all at the same time. A lot of it's instrumental, and when vocals do appear, they're dreamily delivered, heavily treated with spacey electronic effects, the stoned flow far more like blissed out chant than regular "rap", although Tobacco's debut Fucked Up Friends did feature a cameo from rapper Aesop Rock, and this new one boasts guest rhyming on a couple cuts by none other than Beck, who is the godfather of druggy indie-tronic hiphop, right?
The lyrics, when there are lyrics, are usually brief (if not to-the-point), containing cryptic poetry and good advice (?), for instance from "Constellation Dirtbike Head", the lead-off track: "Feel the day, the hottest day / Don't eat the berries around you / Don't eat the berries around you / Burn all your things". Them's all the words. Tobacco returns to the themes of burning and eating later in the disc, but you'll grok just as much sense from the song titles (several of which sound like they'd fit nicely on a NWOFHM album by Steel Mammoth or somebody, e.g. "Lick The Witch", "Motorlicker", "Nuclear Waste Aerobics", etc.).
Basically, if you liked Fucked Up Friends (and why wouldn't you?), you'll like Tobacco's sophomore effort too, it's cut from the same cloth, another sixteen tracks of his friendly, freaky soundz. And same thing goes, if you like BMSR, Tobacco's for you too, but we explained that already when we reviewed the first one (which we made a Record Of The Week by the way, and maybe shoulda done the same this time too). Compared to BMSR, this is pretty similar, Tobacco just steps a little harder, funkier, totally rockin' the bells, with the ever-present, almost skweee-ish synths being even woozier and soooooo wonderfully distorted! Along w/ BMSR, this makes us think of what it might sound like if Fuck Buttons got Daft Punk'd...
One last thing to say, obvious, but we're on a deadline: Tobacco IS addictive! But that's ok, while this might get a Surgeon General's warning, it gets our recommendation!
And fyi, for the next two weeks, we've got this on a special $2 off sale deal, so it's $11.98 instead of the regular $13.98, until 7/4/10!
Smoke 'em if you got 'em. It's the return of Tobacco, the vaguely-hiphop-ish electro-weirdo alter ego/side project of the quite similar really Black Moth Super Rainbow. We're big fans of both, though Tobacco tends to take things to even more of a bizarre extreme even than BMSR, and Ultima II Massage pushes all the buttons, flips all the switches, turns all the knobs, etc., we were hoping for this time out. Totally trippy, effects-damaged synth shuffle, overdosed on DayGlo distortion, some tracks with processed pop vocal hooks, others all about the glitchy grooves, like we said before, its like Fuck Buttons got Daft Punk'd, or M83 going all skweee.
Tobacco brings the noise here, but also doesn't neglect the melodic side of things either, in kicking out these fuzzy, funky jams, perverse party pleasers for sure - at a party we'd imagine features strobe lights, LSD spiked punch, and a sweaty, shambolic dancefloor. Well, there's tracks here for the dancers, and others for the partygoers passed out on the carpet. Good stuff!
Perhaps this could be seen as a response to all of the haunted ballroom and sunken ship metaphors that The Caretaker has been producing through his reverb-soaked appropriations of old '78s, as Ocean Drama creaks and crawls with tactile, crusty sounds that give this album a waterlogged mustiness. In fact The Tobacconists' Scott Foust collected numerous recordings from a boat, which Foust and fellow Tobacconist Frans De Waard manipulated into a poetic excursion of overlapping creaks, groaning tension put upon the wooden hull, gentile lapping of the water upon the underbelly of the boat, and various clatterings of unknown origin. Upon this stream of activity, the two build a slow-moving melodic excursion, which could have originated from a particular vibration from that ship's guy-wire to the mast, or then again it could be from a guitar (as the sound does have a lovely resonant vibrato about it that isn't too far from a low-slung Morricone guitar swagger). As the guitar / tension-wire melody dissolves after about 25 minutes, the various creaks and groans move to the foreground above a glassine drone which fragments into a series of precious synth-tone melodies, only to sink into the depths of the ocean below.
Both Scott Foust and Frans De Waard have been around forever, with too many projects to even begin to list (even for us!); but the two will be releasing an album as The Tobacconists through Hanson sometime in the future. The material on Ocean Drama is pretty damn amazing, and stands as some of the best work that either has done throughout their career.
This is an ep with but one new non-album track and a couple remix versions each of '4 Ton Mantis' and 'Saboteur' from his "Supermodified" album. Hip hoppier than the full length. Coolness. Still one of the best sampler technicians in electronica (and by far the most interesting for drum & bass), Amon Tobin brings a few more big beat breaks to the rich collages of filmic orchestral tension, Brazilian jazz grooviness, and monstrous drum & bass rhythmic diversity. Never, ever boringly repetitive or predictable, Tobin weaves in his source material with a masterful sophistication that heavy-handed Moby only wishes he could do so smoothly.
First album by Amon Tobin after shedding the Cujo moniker. Excellent drum & bass with hand-lifted beats from jazz to old bachelor pad lps to soundtracks. All impeccably reworked, recomposed and produced by Mr Tobin. Everything this guy has released is crucial. Very highly recommended!
Always keeping things fresh, mysterious and yet unmistakably his own, AQ fave Amon Tobin has one-up'd himself again. Following his Chaos Theory excursion into the videogame soundtrack realm (for Splinter Cell 3), Tobin returns to our welcoming ears and eyes with the cd/dvd extravaganza Foley Room. With a samplin' palette drawn from found sounds and field recordings, the huge aural assaults he unleashes are at once imposingly dense and oh so intricately beautiful. Despite the different source material, sonically and stylistically this initially recalls the foreboding drum'n'bass electronic architecture of his early releases Bricolage and Permutations. However, at track 10 'Always" he shifts gears momentarily, kicking into a more hip hop inflected grooviness like that of his later works Supermodified and Out From Out Where. Fucking wizardly.
Through no fault of his own, some of weren't all that excited when we saw a new Amon Tobin release had arrived (some of us have remained HUGE fans, of EVERY record, but we digress). Not sure why, but maybe in our minds we just kind of associated him so much with the sound of Ninja Tune in the '90s. But damn that lack of excitement was thrown out the fucking window once we put this on the stereo. We were reminded right quick that Amon Tobin is for real. Not just a relic of some bygone electronica era, but instead someone who continues to explore, experiment, and soar with new ways of approaching sonic velocity. This is without a doubt the most intense and harrowing release of his career. In fact a few of us thought this was the new Ben Frost when this was first playing. A record that is made to be played LOUD. It's like watching some awesome nature documentary in 3D with a soundtrack by Pan Sonic blasting out of the THX speakers. In an age when so much electronic music is so specific in its genre focus (dubstep, micro-house, witch house, etc) it's so nice to be reminded that electronics can be used for something on a much larger scale. Tobin is like an experimental composer using electronics to create massive blasts of sonic glory. The album is frightening, compelling and awe inspiring all at once. Tobin demonstrates that IDM is not dead, it just got bigger, badder and better!
Brand new, fifth full length album (including the one he did as Cujo) from Amon Tobin. I recently raved about the pre-release cd single Verbal (that fucking great song appears here too), so I'll papraphrase a bit: Tobin's music, as typified by his two most recent albums Supermodified and Permutations, which are deeply beloved by just about everyone who works here at AQ, not to mention many many AQ customers such as yourself, takes samples of the most wildly diverse material -- no programmed beats for this Brazilian-turned-Briton -- and recombines them into a style utterly his own. That might not sound like much of a feat, and yeah sure everyone's doing it, but like fellow vinyl sampler DJ Shadow, Tobin really does make irrelevant the fact that the source material is sampled, so seamlessly and proficiently does he distill his own style. In fact, when Cup heard this record, even though the *elements* of the "Verbal" track -- cartoonish speed rapping courtesy MC Decimal R, flamenco-ish guitar -- weren't typically Tobin fodder, she correctly pointed out that the *sound* of the music made it nonetheless totally recognizable as his own. There's film noir-ish tension, thundering big beats, tumbling tomtoms, itchy chatterings and menacing flutterings amidst the jungly energy. So interesting, never repetitive or predictable.
If you're already into him, you know you need to get this now, and if you're new to Amon Tobin, start right here. You won't be disappointed, promise!
Mr. Tobin continues to meticulously develop his sounds beyond his previous releases into this great album. Really sophisticated and an absolute joy to listen to. Here he fuses lounge with his usual jazz-infested drum'n'bass. Everytime we play this album in the store, someone buys it. Highly recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Slowly building through some strong batacuda beats fixed with the archetypic amen break, Amon Tobin hits the monstrous intensity found on his epic "Bricolage" album and "Mission" 12". The disc has one more track than the vinyl.
"Supermodified" is the fourth album from Amon Tobin (including the one album recorded as Cujo). Still one of the best sampler technicians in electronica (and by far the most interesting for drum & bass), Amon Tobin brings a few more big beat breaks to the rich collages of filmic orchestral tension, Brazilian jazz grooviness, and monstrous drum & bass rhythmic diversity. Never, ever boringly repetitive or predictable, Tobin weaves in his source material with a masterful sophistication that heavy-handed Moby only wishes he could do so smoothly. Fans of Tobin already know the high musical standards he sets himself, and won't be disappointed, but may we also recommend this album to people who haven't yet found anything appealing in electronica. You can't do much better than starting with what so far seems like Electronica Record of the Year.
Yes!! The long awaited new Amon Tobin cd ep / 12" is totally killer. Tobin's music, as typified by his two most recent album Supermodified and Permutations, which is deeply beloved by just about everyone who works here at AQ, not to mention many many AQ customers such as yourself, is to take samples of the most wildly diverse material -- no programmed beats for this Brazilian-turned-Briton -- and recombine them into a style utterly his own. That might not sound like much of a feat, and yeah sure everyone's doing it, but like fellow vinyl sampler DJ Shadow, Tobin really does make irrelevant the fact that the source material is sampled, so seamlessly and proficiently does he elicit his own style. In fact, when Kup heard this record, even though the *elements* of "Verbal" -- cartoonish speed rapping courtesy MC Decimal R, flamenco-ish guitar -- weren't typically Tobin fodder, she correctly pointed out that the *sound* of the music made it nonetheless totally recognizable as his own. There's film noir-ish tension, thundering big beats, tumbling tomtoms, itchy chatterings and menacing flutterings amidst the jungly energy. So interesting, never repetitive or predictable.
If you're already into him, you know you need to get this now, and if you're new to Amon Tobin, start right here. You won't be disappointed. Note: The 12" has just the "Verbal" track, plus an a capella and an instrumental version. The cdep has 3 other non-album tracks that are very worth picking this up in addition to the upcoming album.
When this AQ-fave electronica artist makes music, he rarely disappoints, having released four stellar albums of music -- never boring, always innovative and instantly recognizable as his own. So it stands to reason that the same care and no-filler attitude would follow for any remixes or collaborations. And that's mostly true here, thank goodness.
Five brand new collaborative tracks (with Steinski, Kid Koala, Doubleclick, Bonobo, and P-Love) although with the exception of Kid Koala's, where plucked strings make one woozy with Koala's trademark seasick style of turntablism, none sound all that remarkably different from your normal high-quality Tobin tracks.
The four "Verbal" remixes fare a lot better ("Verbal" being the stellar, manic hip hop flavored second track on Tobin's recent full length Out From Out Where), each participant enhancing the track with their own sound. Prefuse 73 turns in an even more cut up, yet somehow surprisingly smoothed out, lounge-ified version -- very good. The Bay Area's own Kid606 exhibits great love for dancehall. And Philly producer Boom Bip somehow makes the track serene with the use of floaty Aphex-ambient-y chords.
Definitely worth your money if you're a big fan. But if you don't at least have a couple of Tobin's other full lengths, get those first.
Steve Austin and his revolving door cast of psychologically damaged noise-mongers returns for album number 10 (!) and it's another twisted slab of warped dirges, tortured wails, off kilter guitar stabs and nauseating whispered menace. Animal Mother once again features an all new line up (save for founder and head torture artist Steve Austin of course), this time enlisting members of Enabler, Trap Them and Sidra into his straight jacket entourage, and they're more than able to manifest Austin's slanted noise-rock meets doom meets hardcore vision into this quivering unprepared shambling mass we refer to as "reality". From its most somber acoustic passages through to its most frenzied blastbeats, it's an unnerving and heavy affair (and also the perfect compliment to new Wizard Rifle record we've reviewed elsewhere on this list!).
"Blue Blood" is the second live album from the twisted math-metal band Today Is The Day. Recorded while on tour in support of their Relapse debut "Temple Of The Morning Star" at Okay's Corral in Madison, Wisconsin in 1998, this set featured Today Is The Day mastermind Steve Austin on guitar, voice, samples, and bass, backed by Chris Reeser on keyboards and Brad Elrod on drums. Always an amazing live band, Today Is The Day cranks out an impressive set, colliding methamphetamine laced metalcore riffs with complex rhythmic onslaughts. Most of the tracks come from the aforementioned "Temple" album with a couple older tracks from their AmRep days, but nevertheless finds Today Is The Day in their more recent demonic / Satanic persona. While the sound quality is pretty good, "Blue Blood" appears to be a board mix as the vocals are pretty loud, while the guitars a bit soft. A minor criticism, though.
I bet somebody could write a pretty solid dissertation on the self-proclamation of the pop ego as being trapped within a metaphoric insanitarium. While the wimp/non-threatening boy pop of the Backstreet Boys have appropriated this imagery, the majority of this discourse would be within metal. Iron Maiden's Eddie, Quiet Riot, Alice Cooper, and Scorpions being the first to come to mind within the visual use of straightjackets and padded cells. Similarly, Steve Austin's deranged lyricism (which shares time with his heavily distorted bark) seems to harken from the creepy mental hospitals which lurk in the backwoods around Nashville (a place Today Is The Day used to call home). These off-kilter banshee wails add a 'pretty' if sublime quality to the otherwise incendiary pummel of Today Is The Day's muscular heavy riffs and complex blast beats. This, their second album for Relapse (fifth overall, they did three for AmRep dontcha know), hones their weird noise-aggression into its most effective and metallic form yet, due in part to a new and perhaps better lineup.
Ready for another sound beating from this misanthropic and rather artsy metalcore outfit, who're always an AQ fave? Their last album, Sadness Will Prevail, was a sprawling, sometimes flawed masterpiece of moody, metallic experimentation. With Kiss The Pig, the Steve Austin Trio offer up a more concentrated dose of blasting, misanthropic ugliness and art, with song titles like "This Machine Kills Fascists" and "Bees Wax And Star Wars". Emotionally and musically extreme, it's a dissonant, mathy drubbing for the ears, fast and fierce, influenced by hardcore and black metal. The vocal effect used on Austin's vocals makes him sound like a troop of evil, witchy munchkins storming the gates of some tiny castle...like the music, distorted, insane!
A live album from an amazing live band. Guitarist / vocalist / producer / mastermind Steve Austin's fucked up super heavy and twisted "metal" band is at its most intense on stage, and this is the (paradoxically?) recorded proof. Math-metal, hardcore, sampling, keyboards, anti-social anger and frustration: all these elements and more collide in Today Is The Day's energetic, ugly, complex, like-none-other sound. Some humor too, as there's unlikely cover versions of "Wicked Game", "Why Don't We Do It In The Road", and "Feel Like Makin' Love" on here alongside a slew of their own psycho-negative metallic toons (mostly drawn from Today Is The Day's more recent, more Satanic albums rather than from their earlier, pre-Relapse AmRep days).
Praise be! Steve Austin and co. are back, delivering another dose of their unique brand of Satanic math-metallic noise. Sprawling over two discs (labelled X and Y), these tracks are less like songs proper than sonic symptoms of Today Is The Day's aesthetic and philosophical ideas -- and, especially, their darkest emotions.
With wretched rasping vokills, crushing doom riffs, maniac outbursts, and scary, atmospheric sample-littered soundscapes (normally we frown on samples we can recognize, but it *was* neat to hear the bit from Coven, y'know, from American Movie), Today Is The Day convey some dark feelings indeed. The metal parts are quite devastating, but it's perhaps the moodier elements that make this album so striking and creepy. Bass rumble and glitchy electronic synth noise are paired with sad piano tinklings, acoustic guitars are strummed in a backwoods night-time ritual, and there's even some honest-to-god melodic singing (as on the deathly-piano-ballad "Death Requiem" or the great Alice Cooper/Devil Doll styled track "Invincible", reprised from TITD's split cd with 16).
Several of us here at AQ have been TITD fans for a long time, all the way back to their sadly out-of-print "Supernova" debut on the Amphetamine Reptile label. Their rebirth on Relapse (three albums ago) moved them in a decidedly heavier, brutal direction, but, as made plain on "Sadness Will Prevail", their experimental, artistic impulses remain strong.
In some ways, the closest thing we can compare this to is the mighty Oxbow, colliding with the likes of Coalesce and Old Man Gloom perhaps. Easily a contender for "metal" (but not at all entirely metal) record of the year. There's certainly a lot here to like. Some of the production is more lo-fi than we'd expect from Mr. Austin (a well-known producer outside of this TITD career) but still manages to dangle us dangerously at the gaping mouth of hell! And wait for the hidden track at the end of disc two, wherein Austin fucks with some brutal black metal, which just happens to be from the upcoming Leviathan album on Andee's tUMULt label!
Been meaning to get to this one for a while, it's something we absolutely *had* to highlight eventually, the long-overdue reissue of the crucial first album by this now veteran, always visionary noise rock/metal outfit. Mainman Steve Austin (vocals/guitars) has led a vast variety of TITD lineups over the years, having made eight studio albums to date, and Supernova is where it all started. When this first came out back in 1993 on the now-defunct Amphetamine Reptile label, we were immediately entranced and in fact almost frightened by this band's (at the time) fairly unique blend of atmospheric/ambient weirdness (via surreal sampling), melody, and heavy/hard rock action. Surely the most Satanic thing AmRep ever released, next to the God Bullies. Also, at the time, we'd have compared it to the likes of Steel Pole Bathtub, Oxbow, Engine Kid, Neurosis, Pain Teens... more recently, Old Man Gloom maybe.
Supernova's dozen tracks are full of both sheer beauty and terror; cruel, cryptic, compelling. It's a genius avant-metal mutation, ultimately more metallic than we knew back then (perhaps pioneering the "noisecore" genre), the band's violent hardcore/postrock riffage and distorted, angry vokills being moodily morphed with all manner of psychedelic sound FX fuckery and chaotic layers of vocal mumble and chatter, buried in the mix like crossed wires or intercepted transmissions... there's also stretches of proggily Frippish guitar, synth bleep, unidentifiable field recordings, including even some barnyard animal noises heard on one track. Today Is The Day keeps all this under control though, these are truly *songs*, mysterious and mayhemic but never too messy. The line between dreaminess, and nightmarishness, is often erased... they were definitely on to something here, as later output proved, Today Is The Day getting more overtly metal in later incarnations, maybe even more experimentally extreme, but never any more uniquely "Today Is The Day" than on Supernova.
This digitally remastered reissue now comes in a digipack, and the artwork is slightly altered from the original, and there's two bonus tracks too (from the '93 AmRep 7" single, "I Bent Scared"), but otherwise it's the same Supernova we know and love. In a word: Recommended!
Ok, now that that's finally out of the way (hey, it's always hardest to review the albums that you like the most, anxiously wanting to do 'em justice) we'll hopefully get to the *new* TITD album, Axis of Eden, soon. And also the same label's reissue of another TDID AmRep classic, Willpower, the ultra-intense follow-up to Supernova...
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AmRep refugees resurface on Relapse with a new rhythm section but the same pulverizing, distorted, sample-and-keyboard laden, throat-ripping, math-grind, ugly-beauty sound.
In spite of sporting a designwork very much like the recent output from Kozik, this split between stalwart prognosticators of the apocalypse Today Is The Day and Kentucky's bass heavy grind core group Metatron is not on Man's Ruin (who did in fact go out of
You would most definitely be forgiven for not expecting big things from a band called Todd. And you sure as shit would probably wouldn't expect something this fierce and heavy and fucked up. But once you realize these guys are on Riot Season, and that they count as members (or did at one time) guys from long time aQ faves Shit And Shine, then it all begins to make a bit more sense. Right down to the taking-the-piss monicker.
And Todd most definitely have plenty in common with their way more tweaked and druggy countrymen S+S, but where S+S do their multiple drummered post Buttholes freak out thing, Todd are a bit more riffy and raw, still rhythmic and heavy and blown out and in the red, but more pounding and relentless, maybe more akin to Brainbombs and Rusted Shut and Twin Stumps and White Mice and the Mayyors, you get the drift, howled marble mouthed vox, riffs crumbling with distortion, so much so that half the time they just sound like a wall of fuzz, the bass a wash of bowel rattling rumble, the drums pounding and frantic, the band swing from unhinged Scratch Acid / Jesus Lizard noise rock, to seasick post rock groove, to lurching sludge-y doom, to full on filthy space rock trip outs, to repetitive, looped sounding dirge-y drug rock, there's even some warped twang flecked almost slowcore sounding drift, but even then, the vocals are unhinged, and the amps sound like they're gradually turning to some sort of black goo, and the band eventually stumble back into a filthy field of sonic broken glass and ear shredding pound and howl.
Needless to say, if you dig Shit And Shine, Brainbombs, No Balls, Twin Stumps, Butthole Surfers, Rusted Shut, Oxbow, Hey Colossus, the Anals, Billy Bao, any of that sort of crusty, metallic, noise drenched filth, then these guys will definitely hit the spot.
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"The hardcore sludge of Todd's Purity Pledge combines forceful vocals and volcanic instrumentation in a whirlwind attempt to re-create the band's murky, gutteral live sound on disc. The power chords merge with lyrics about what society would rather slide under the rug. "Little Dipper to Squirrel" is reminiscent of Mot�rhead, while the crunchy "Sedan" features feedback and nearly six minutes of layers and layers of gritty chaos. Drummer Francis Axe Handel, keyboardist Fifi, singer Emmylou Sunshine, guitarist John Webb, and vocalist/guitarist Craig Clouse join forces to create the subversive quintet on Purity Pledge. The title track is saved until track seven, and its power and unfiltered anger serve as the peak of the band's rage-filled collection. Overall, the disc is an assortment of basement metal jams sure to confuse some, but arouse many."
