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Dillingham is the long in the works solo debut from Blaine Todd, guitarist from local psychedelic pagan drone folk outfit Common Eider, King Eider. It's named for a small town in Alaska, where Todd shares a cabin with his Common Eider bandmate. It's an especially isolated part of the world, extremely remote, and not at all easily accessible. That isolation is evident throughout Dillingham, the songs strangely distant, not always geographically, as much as emotionally, or even simply out of time, but at the same time, often painfully intimate, equal parts ultra-personal sonic narratives, and oblique transmissions from another era. Todd's modern reinterpretation of classic folk and blues is reminiscent of another aQ fave, Eric Chenaux, whose aching solo records, and mysterious outings in Reveries, revel in a similarly worn and faded sonic aesthetic.
Beds of creaking warble, introduce the record, almost like the sound of some primitive playback device, it's not difficult to imagine a dusty old gramophone, or even a wax cylinder, spinning lazily in a rickety old cabin, the sun glinting off dust motes, drifting lazily in still afternoon air, Todd's delicate guitar playing is the perfect mix of aching, old folk strum, and measured minimalist experimentation, but that experimentation becomes less and less overt as Dillingham unwinds, with the vibe getting properly old timey, the first we hear of Todd's vocals, they're a nasally, almost hillbilly whine, drifting atop a lazy tangle of droney buzz and campfire twang. But from that point on, the record begins to resemble a proper blues record, the vocals get more wasted and worn, draped over a slippery slide guitar here, or a rumbling, layered whir there. The modern moments fade into the background, more little moments here and there, the only thing that belies the records modern provenance.
The vocals shift again into an wistful falsetto, the guitar seemingly following suit, only to transform again, becoming a reverb drenched croon, wound around rugged back porch blues.
The production is as much a part of the sound as the music itself, another subtle element that keeps Dillingham from sounding like some lost Folkways 78, lending some tracks a worn patina of faded haze, and others with a brittle immediacy, in both cases, the music glows warmly, a weary yet hauntingly hopeful modern blues balladry grounded in the storied history of the folk and folks that came before.
LIMITED TO FIFTY COPIES!!! Likely the only ones we'll be able to get.
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With her latest full length, the earthy, elegant Manzanita, Mia Doi Todd may easily be seated alongside the formidable chanteuse likes of Anne Briggs, the Cowboy Junkies' Margo Timmins and more recently Lhasa (particularly the eighth and ninth songs on this album). Each woman's voice is a richly nuanced force unto itself -- quite possibly supplying enough electricity (in the form of atmosphere, mood and emotion) to power a small village. Ever so moving, Todd's soaring vocals and piano needs very little other adornment. Manzanita is her fifth album, and her first on the Plug Research label. Her previous four were released on four different labels which has made her music a bit difficult to track down in its entirety, but even still each one has marked a sizable growth in her devoted cult following. Hopefully Manzanita will bring her admirers overflowing to above ground heights. Beautiful!
Another new I, Voidhanger treat. Although this is the first thing we've reviewed by 'em, some of us here have long been seriously obsessive fans of weirdo, avant/experimental black metal outfit Todesstoss (which means Deathblow), and pretty much everything about this band screams "what the fuck?", and thus essentially also screams AQUARIUS! There's the name, which is of course spelled with the German Eszett (way more kvlt than a dumb old umlaut). There's the cover, which features an anthropomorphic penguin, in a cosmic robe, standing above a human brain on a plinth, all within some sort of ruins. Oh and that's just the slipcover, the actual cover art is some sort of double polar bear, with one of it's head a crazy, human toothed iron skull, and a weird tenatacled brain emerging from a bloody hole in the middle of its back, oh and there are doggy dishes for both heads, and this is all taking place in some sort of stalactite-d cave. The artwork and band photos inside the booklet get even weirder. And hell we haven't even gotten to the music yet, which appropriately enough begins with some weird spate of tappy percussion, and creepy dripping sounds, then harmonica (!!), before exploding into a furious blast of blizzard blur, but within seconds, any semblance of traditional black buzz disappears in a cloud of dramatic over the top vocals, strange industrial thrum, the production blurry and abstract, the harmonica returns, and hell, we can't really do it justice, considering the first song alone is nearly 30 minutes long, and thus goes through about a million sonic permutations, all of them ridiculous and amazing, and while there are stretches of proper black metal, they are definitely in the minority, with the rest of the track careening wildly from Devil Doll like drama, to gnarled rhythmic psychedelia, to woozy, metallic shred, to jazzy, proggy freak out. Needless to say, it's totally fucked, and completely next level bonkers.
We'd love to dig into the second song too, but that one's THIRTY FOUR minutes long, and goes through about the same number of sonic shifts, albeit, leaning a bit toward the dirtier side of the equation, but again, it's a bafflingly wild ride, and one that we imagine would have most traditional metalheads diving for the eject button. But we're guessing since you're reading the aQ list, and have made it this far in this over-long review, you might be just the sort of weirdo that this stuff is made for. The final track, super short in comparison (12 minutes) gets all sultry and slithery, a little bit electronic, and about as far removed from black metal as you could imagine, a sort of creepy cabaret, replete with woozy fretless bass, anguished Scott Walker with a lobotomy crooning, and ends up sounding like some demented Lynchian doom jazz. Needless to say, totally and unequivocally recommended.
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With both Doug McCombs of Tortoise and guitarist Jeff Parker of Isotope 217 in this Chicago band, you can guess as to what Toe 2000 (terrible name!) sound like--from jazzy, Tortoise-y instrumentals to subtle almost new age-y grooves...
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1st album.
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It's sad to say, but it's gotten to the point that a new Acid Mothers Temple release or AMT-related record is met with a yawn instead of a shiver of excitement. Hard to avoid when releasing a record every month or two. But there is one Acid Mothers Temple related project that always has everyone here at AQ all a quiver in anticipation, and that's Toho Sara, the experimental shamanistic musical ritual of AMT's Makoto Kawabata and High Rise / Musica Transonic / Mainliner's Asahito Nanjo. This is exactly the sort of stuff we here at AQ can never get enough of: buzzing reverberating drones over muted tribal drumming and simple spare scraping and rattling percussive ambience. Totally transcendental, dreamy and mesmerising. Sunroof!, Skullflower, Lamonte Young, John Cale, Tony Conrad, No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man sort of otherworldly, higher conciousness, rambling, primal tribal free form abstract divine drone. So goddamn good!
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2nd album. [/cat/japan33.html]
We've been digging this band for a while, but weirdly enough this is the first record of theirs we've reviewed. When we first heard about Toil, they were described to us as a band that sounded "exactly like the Cure, only with harsh black metal vocals," which sounded pretty good to us, gloomy gothic, new wave indie rock with black metal vocals? Awesome. And it was!
Things have changed a bit on Lullabies For Insects, the Cure vibe is still there (they do a Cure cover after all, more on that in a second), but the sound is more metal, more rocking, and if anything, Toil sound quite a bit like Lifelover, the same sort of strange juxtaposition of howling harsh vox and melodic almost indie sounding black metal. In fact, opener "Moth With Fractured Wings" is a dead ringer for Lifelover, which is not at all a bad thing, c'mon, there are a million bands who sound like Darkthrone, and more keep popping up every day, we're pretty psyched on all these bands exploring their poppier side.
After a cool 5 minute noisdrone piece, the band launch into a depressive dirge, that musically reminds us of Urfaust, or Hypothermia, lilting, loping, the vocals still frayed and maniacal, but the music, so warm and melodic, with some cool breaks with clean guitar and drums. And then finally, the Cure cover, a pretty straight version of "Love Song", except for the vocals, which are insanely over the top, a shrieky demonic falsetto, totally at odds with the music, which is what makes it so ridiculous and so awesome!
Cool packaging, one of those 3" cd's embedded in a normal cd sized plastic disc, with the artwork printed over the whole thing!
Been trying to list this for AGES, but our distributors were constantly out of stock, it's been out for a while, but we only just now actually got enough to review and list. Tokimonsta is a female beatmaker from Los Angeles, who was the first female to join Flying Lotus' crew, and whose sound is a warm and scratchy, sorta laid back, sweet and soulful electronica, she mixes old records, live instruments, plenty of effects and loops, and weaves them into swoonsome grooves that shift freely from pop ambient shimmer, to murky late night funk, to big beat crunch, often all together in different measures.
And while we tend to lean toward the dark and the ominous, there's something about Midnight Menu that's totally captivating, sure she occasionally dips into wicked dubstep, making it obvious that if she was so inclined she could rule the dubstep scene, all spiralling minor key synths over burbling synth buzz and a killer stuttery beat, or unfurls woozy washes of muted slo-mo soul that's moody and mysterious, but for the most part, her sound is sun dappled Sunday afternoons, and warm washed out expanses of hazy crackle drenched records spinning slowly over stripped down rhythms, there are a couple tracks with vocals, and sound like hip-hop/pop radio jams, but a little bit warped and twisted, eventually settling back into Tokimonsta's abstract dreamlike electronic sound world. We've all been digging this like crazy, and are psyched to finally get it listed.
Fans of Flying Lotus, Blue Daisy, Zomby, Mount Kimbie, J Dilla and others of a similar sonic stripe will dig this lots...
Shugo Tokumaru crafts some of the most endearing, clever and catchy pop we've heard in a long time! Carrying on a great tradition of Japanese pop that is nuanced yet so damn playful and impossible not to fall in love with. What makes him and this record so special is how easy and effortless he makes it all seem. Whether using toy instruments to joyous perfection or using his soothing voice to swing the melody of a song back and forth, this is someone who is both a skilled songsmith and a wide eyed daydreamer. The songs and spirit of Exit make us think of some amazing creative pop combination of Haruomi Hosono, Rob Crow, Gruff Rhyss, Cornelius and Vetiver. The range on Exit is astounding, from short caffeine fueled recess anthems to more introspective daydream blissed out gems. That's why the more we listen we really keep thinking of how Shugo Tokumaru seems so much like a Japanese version of Rob Crow, as so many songs on this record could totally fit in sound and style on Heavy Vegetable, Thingy or Pinback records. It's rare that someone is able to be both so playful and thoughtful with the songs they create, but Tokumaru proves with this batch of playful delights that he's in that upper class of truly great pop songsmiths, every song a hook filled gem with an undeniable heart of pop gold. Highly recommended!
A grey area reissue of the impossible to find Tolerance debut, which emerged to a befuddled and baffled Japanese audience in 1979 on the now highly collectible avant-synth-noise imprint Vanity Records. The dedication on the album was made "to the quiet men from a tiny girl" - which in 1980 was cribbed by Nurse With Wound as an album title of their own. Tolerance is certainly less well known than Nurse With Wound, but it shouldn't surprise anybody that this album falls not too far from the early experiments with freeform noise, devolved structures, and stark productions of Stapleton and co. Tolerance presented a thoroughly cryptic album that managed to channel the nocturnal blurt of Mars and the lysergic transcendental musique concrete of Taj Mahal Travellers through these strange anti-songs of Japanese monologues and spluttered guitar, electronics, and very-proto proto-techno, while being VERY prescient of the freak-flag esoterica of No Neck Blues Band, Kemialliset Ystavat, etc. Anomym was the first and much better of the two Tolerance albums, with neither known members of Tolerance doing anything since 1981 - if anyone knows more about them, the Internet would appreciate some information. This re-issue doesn't help at all, with only a pasted print of the artwork on a generic white sleeve, without any tracklistings or liner notes whatsoever.
Long lost legendary slab of classic British industrial music, originally released in 1986 on the amazing Broken Flag label. The most noteworthy thing about Toll, besides it being a killer record, is the fact that it just so happens to feature a pre-Stereolab Tim Gane (!) as well as Paul Lemos from Controlled Bleeding. But Stereolab fans won't necessarily dig this, Toll is grim stuff. Cold and harsh, lots of metallic percussion, looped rhythms, skipping records, bits of shortwave radio, disembodied voices, plenty of metal on metal clang, thick distorted drones, all held together by huge lurching basslines, that give the whole thing a definite depressive miserablist vibe, like a seriously industrial Joy Division.
At their most musical, like on the loping mantra like "Broken Frame", they do sound quite a bit like the darkest of Factory bands, with simple plodding percussion, and hypnotic low end throbs, all beneath a dramatically crooned vocal line. Imagine any of the current crop of new wave revivalists, Interpol for example, slowed waaaaaaaaaaaaay down and wrapped in plenty of rumble and clang, and you'll get an idea of the sound of Toll.
But that's only one element of their sound, the other being much more abstract, epic, wide open expanses of industrial crunch and shimmering drone, mournful melodies drifting in and out of machinelike rhythms, and crumbling landscapes of sound, wheezing hisses and keening feedback, jagged shards of buzzing electronics, all sorts of strange vocals, dripping with reverb and delay, grinding whirs and thick moaning low end, very dark and dreary and very prescient of the whole modern Wolf Eyes and friends noise scene.
In addition to the entire Christ Knows LP, the cd includes 3 bonus tracks, two that sound like they could be lost Wire jams, all blown out and relentlessly throbbing, with wild squalls of feedback and buzzing guitars over bouncy bass lines and simple propulsive rhythms, while the other is an epic drone-y crawl, thick with layered voices, pulsing bass lines, muted percussive thumps and shuffles and tangled guitar scribbles, all swirled into a dense cloud of slow shifting sound. So awesome.
Fans of old school industrial (Throbbing Gristle, Suicide, Nurse With Wound), classic post punk / new wave (Wire, Joy Division, the recently reviewed Arkansaw Man, etc) as well as mode modern outfits like Skullflower, Wolf Eyes, Dead C and the like, will seriously dig!
It never ceases to amaze us how we continue to get turned on to all kinds of lost musical gems. Records we can't believe we'd gone our whole lives without hearing before. Kim Tolliver should have been one of soul's diva superstars in the 1970's but as it sometimes happens, many of the great ones are often overlooked the first time around.
This 1973 album which originally came out on Chess and flopped commercially is such a forceful set of soulful songs with Kim's commanding and sweeping vocals on top of a rich, lush and full orchestration, a sound that was ubiquitous in the great soul sounds of the day. Come And Get Me, I'm Ready feels very ahead of its time in that there are many moments that demonstrate an insight into the more uptempo, dancefloor disco vibe that much of the soul world would be heading toward in the years to follow. But it also stays grounded in a truly deep soul sound that's reminiscent of some of the amazing stuff that came out of the Philly scene of that era, as well as being a perfect in between blend of Candi Staton's early '70s sad and stunning sounds and her later '70s more full on disco moments. We're so happy Reel Music is digging into the vaults to find some total gems, as Kim Tolliver is now a name to add to our favorite soul singers list. So great!
Presumably, lawyers representing the actual Tom Cruise and / or Katie Holmes have not yet rapped their collective knuckles on the door of this Shanghai outfit. If they did, they would probably be quite baffled to discover a shambolic, thoroughly impassioned shoegazing indie-rock quartet, propelling through their ebullient songs of explosive register with jangle-blur guitars and a brilliantly reckless approach to the Manchester sound of the early '90s. Think Chapterhouse. Think Sleater Kinney. Think Alpine Decline (perhaps their closest neighbor we've heard in the vigorous Chinese indie-rock scene). Think you should check it out.
Bay Area label Three Ring Records expand their roster by a third with four impressive new releases by Rykarda Parasol, Frankel, Scattered Pages and these New Englanders who call themselves Tom Thumb & The Latter Day Saints. Three Ring has already got fine releases by the indie rock/pop likes of Elephone, Soltero, Ebb & Flow and D.W. Holiday and Scrabbel, but with this recent outpouring they bolster their country'n'folk branches.
What a great introduction Kindermusik is! Their withery vocals are much like those of The Weakerthans with some Thom Yorke-ian inflections. They're set atop music that brings together the rustic twang of Calexico and the pop rocks of Sloan.
Very warm and engaging. Also ripe for the picking if you like M. Ward and My Morning Jacket!
Somehow this mag is already up to issue number lucky thirteen, and yet it's the first one we've carried, it's definitely a good place to start though, with the METAL issue! Tom Tom is a magazine about female drummers, and is super varied, focusing not just on drumming, but on touring and recording, featuring lots of reviews, of records, books and gear, not to mention some cool articles on different drumming techniques, suggestions for teaching drumming, advice columns, recipes, pieces on various cities and scenes, and loads more, plus of course, lots of features on tons of bad ass female metal (and some non metal) drummers, featuring plenty of names we knew, Cheshire Agusta from doom-jazz aQ faves Stinking Lizaveta, Becky Hawk from Amber Asylum and Laudanum, Chiyo Nukaga from Noothgrush, Sarah Sutter from funeral witch-doom quartet shEver, but a whole bunch we didn't, female drummers from all over the world, from bands big and small, all of the articles super interesting, most had us hunting down music by the bands and drummers featured. There's also the cover article, which is super cool and begins with a breakdown of the various metal sub genres of, as well as a handful of inspiring female metal drummers, including Risa The Reaper from Gallhammer, Denise Dufort from Girlschool, Sandrine from French death metallers Gorod, Mercedes Lander from Kittie, Ellen Mieczkowski from 13, phew, we could go on and on, there's so much more crammed into the pages of Tom Tom, but needless to say it's a kick ass read, whether you're a drummer or not. Now we're gonna be on the hunt for the dozen issues we missed...
Hell yes! A magazine totally devoted to the world of female drummers! This issue features articles and interviews with Cindy Blackman, Tabla master Suphala Patankar, Yuko Araki, Valerie George, Pikachu, and Zildjian cymbals (the company that some may not know,has been run by a woman for the last 11 years). Plus interesting stories and featurettes from The Runaways, Merrill Garbus from Tuneyards, Laura Fares from Disco Damage, Valerie Agnew from 7 year bitch, Yael cohen from The Witches, Purple Rhinestone Eagle, and of course lots of favorite drumming techniques, gear guides, and practice tips including our favorite tidbit of info: how to buy a steel-pan drum!
Mike Patton has so many darn concept supergroup projects (Fantomas, Maldoror, Lovage, Peeping Tom...) but Tomahawk seems to be the one which is the most steadfastly rock and yet also quite unpredictable and open to thematic whims. On this their third album, Patton along with Tomahawk band mates Duane Denison (Jesus Lizard) and John Stanier (Battles, Helmet) set about exploring and reinterpreting the early music of the North American indigenous peoples. Needless to say, the trio combines awesome musicianship and craft which is both reverential and yes, quite rocking. Fierce, passionate and darkly captivating.
"Mit Gas" is the second album from these heavy friends, not so different from their first self-titled one. Fans won't be disappointed, it's good. Thus, perhaps it will suffice to print here our review of their debut disc, translated via Babblefish into German and back again...
Do a type of "supergroup" not have to tell itself release on the Ipecac label of microphone Patton, Patton even (marking we that you not are it the voice of gentleman of bad work, belief no longer and Fantomas, true?) as well as the always astonishing guitar of the Jesus lizard Duane Denison, formerly cows/presently Melvins bass Kevin Rutmanis, and percussion John Stainer of the helmet. The results are no surprise, but perhaps type of a disappointment: this lizard sounds actually like a cross between belief no longer and the Jesus! That is not bad, but enthuses not either. Patton/lizard follower it should obviously inspection from, although.
MPEG Download: "Birdsong" [/audio/tomahawkbird.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Birdsong" [/audio/tomahawkbird.m3u]
A kind of "supergroup" release on Mike Patton's Ipecac label, featuring Patton himself (we don't have to tell you he's the voice of Mr. Bungle, Faith No More and Fantomas, do we?) as well as the always amazing guitar of the Jesus Lizard's Duane Denison,
Allan has long claimed that Miguel from Reynols sounds a lot like Brak from Space Ghost Coast To Coast (also the star of the cd "Brak Presents: The Brak Album Starring Brak"). Of course, Allan does not in any way mean for this to be an insult as he loves
Of all the weird black metal tapes we've gotten recently, this just may be our absolute favorite. So much so, that Andee was thinking about getting in touch with the band to see if they wanted to do a record for tUMULt.
The best way we can think of to describe Tomb Of... is maybe something like a black metal George Winston. Or Nortt making a record for Windham Hill. That's right. This is ambient funeral doom music, death, depression, misery, sorrow, but the instrumentation is mostly just piano and vocals! Seriously. And it still manages to sound bleak and miserable. Ominous and a little bit scary. Mournful minor key piano melodies beneath harsh hellish black metal vocals and rumbling guttural growls. Way in the distance soft swirls of faux strings or thick swells of sound, occasional guitar leads. It almost sounds like a mash up, the sound is at first so incongruous. But the more you listen, the more it sounds perfect. It makes all other singer songwriters, perched at their piano, seem totally pointless and inconsequential. This is so bleak and black and emotional. A super personal miserable missive from some dark lonely place.
Fucking awesome.
SUPER LIMITED! ONLY 300 COPIES!!!
We went absolutely nuts for the last record by this UK via Greece ambient doom one man band, a baffling mix of Windham Hill like piano, and harsh hateful demonic growls. As if George Winston were possessed by the spirit of Satan. Simultaneously soothing and dreamy, ominous and so very black. The combination of piano and vocals was so simple, yet so intense and emotional, a bastardized take on the singer songwriter, a lonely soul expressing sadness and misery through music, but placing it in a black ambient context. We sold tons and it even compelled Andee to get in touch with the band to see about releasing a record on tUMULt.
So here is the follow up to ...The Rotting Break, and while in some ways it is sonically similar, it is different enough to be exciting and new. This time instead of piano, it's huge expanses of sweeping synths, delicate crystalline chimes, huge swells of rumbling low end, very epic and dramatic, with an almost loped hypnotic quality, it's like the super dramatic denouement of some horror movie, but looped into some slowly evolving mantra, the whole thing wreathed in dense swirls of reverb and echo, the vocals, sometimes a deathly growl, other times a strange alien grumble, way down in the mix, guitars wail and scream, but they too are buried beneath the thick tendrils of warm whirring chords and buzzy blown out ambience. It's almost like entering some crumbling old church in a dream, everything foggy and indistinct, the sky is visible through the roof, the windows are all broken, you can see hills and trees outside, lost and wandering in a dreamlike daze, slowly taking in all of the destruction, the mystery and the misery. It doesn't even have to be a church, just some old ruined building, as long as it has history, and is imbued with the life force of lost spirits and lonely souls. ...Those Dismal Moments is actually quite true to its title, if anything it just may be more sad, and miserable, more mournful and dismal than ...The Rotting Break. And we're not sure whether it's intentional or not, but there is so much distortion and tape hiss, so much fuzz and buzz, it almost sounds like a Tomb Of... record recorded by Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, all blown out and blurry, indistinct and shot through with warm streaks of dusty sunlight... So completely amazing!!
Total '60s style groovy, moody, fuzzy psychedelic garage rock action is conjured here by this time-lost trio from down in Monterey, California, making their debut with a limited edition single on Burger records. No frills (like the cover art), but two great, authentically '60s sounding songs for those into the likes of The Jefferson Airplane, Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Lollipop Shoppe, Sproton Layer, Cold Sun...
The guitarwork is sinuous and searing, the vocals sensitive and sincere, the songwriting full of some tight twists and turns as each of these two 3-minute-or-so numbers unfold. When we saw 'em play here in town a few months ago, they had a psychedelic liquid light show projection going on behind them, and the music fits that perfectly. Great stuff, we can't wait to hear more.
Oh, wanna know a little secret? Well this band's guitarist and vocalist, one Tom B. Weaver, also happens to go by the name Angelo Tringali, under which guise he plays guitar in local heavy metal cult faves The Lord Weird Slough Feg. So you know his leads here smoke, even though the style is a bit different! While Slough Feg's weird metal harks back to the '70s and '80s, here Angelo takes things all the way back to the '60s, and we're impressed.
Tombi may be no more, or at the very least, he's keeping a crazy low profile. We carried a Tombi tape years ago that we absolutely loved, and Black HumidMist is more of the same, thick glacial drones constructed from electronics and old synths, a heady mix of soft shimmery and corrosive crunch. The first track here is a brief four minutes of glistening sympathetic tones, beneath a strange oscillating low end whir, quite tranquil and spaced out, before slipping into the 29 minute second track, which begins with a super hushed distant tone, soft focus and warmly woozy, before the low end surfaces, and the track is dramatically transformed into a thick wall of corrosive crumbling synth damage... The cool thing though is that beneath the blackened smoldering surface, major key melodies spiral out, long tones overlapping and intertwining into warm rich chordal shimmer, turning white noise into a thick wash of prismatic noise drenched mystery. Partway through, the noise component falls away, leaving a warm, rich rumble, but gradually, the edges begin to fray, and the sound explodes once again, going through various stages eventually arriving at a state of total grinding black bliss. Definitely noisy, but really quite pretty, worht getting lost in Tombi's corrosive din, to discover the blackened gem lurking inside.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, loooong out of print, we have barely ten of these, so once these are gone, they are gone forever...
Mysterious purveyors of grungy sludgy subterranean murk, take a slow motion creepy crawl through slime encrusted caves, and black pits filled with bones and rotting flesh. Huge static walls of guitar fuzz smear into Sunroof! like ambience, melodies drift and shimmer, pinned to the moist ground by the oppressive cloak of suffocating guitars and dense swirls of subterranean sound. The finest moment comes when Tombi channel that one break, in "Shoot Me A Deer" by Bastro, where the guitar sort of distorts, blows out, a sort of rhythmic riffing that just goes haywire, it's like THAT part timestretched into infinity and then roughed up a bit. before blissing out into more guitar buzz serene drift. Awesome.
2ND EDITION, LIMITED TO 25 COPIES!!!
Writhing forth once more from the most shadowy cracked wastelands of forsaken Brooklyn, Tombs returns with their third full length of glistening, gleaming extreme metal. And indeed extreme metal is the only genre tag that really works for this band, since they've made it their crusade to cherry pick the absolute best traits from a myriad of metal subgenres to mathematically create some of the most monolithic, ferocious and enormous metal being recorded today. A brief vaguely funereal dirge ushers in a flurry of pummeling helicopter double bass, wild eyed doom-laden heaving guitars, and a hurricane of rolling snare drum and hammering blast beats. There are hints of Souls At Zero-era Neurosis or even Deathspell Omega in the dissonant hypno-riffing. The circling, maddening guitar work and sickening Lovecraftian grooves sometimes recall early Morbid Angel. While elsewhere you might hear hints of the wasted urban scrawl of vintage Godflesh or the slithering futuro-insectoid crawl of latter day Celtic Frost / Triptykon. But there is not one moment of Savage Gold that sounds like homage. Instead, these influences are blended together seamlessly, creating a sound all encompassing, familiar and unique all at once. The vocals are a cold emotionless howl, which lends otherwise innocent lyrics like "life is a dream" a twisted rotten air. It's an extremely dense record. Guitars seem to avalanche upon one another, building a higher and higher wall of black glistening sludge, ready to collapse in on itself again at any moment. There are melodic moments as well. The regal grind of "Portraits" especially brings to mind Ludicra or Wolves In The Throne Room, but with a more obsidian metallic sheen. Compared to their insanely critically-acclaimed last album Path Of Totality, Savage Gold feels much more streamlined, smooth and clean (mostly thanks to a production job from Hate Eternal's Erik Rutan), but it's not at all a detriment to this record. Instead it gives the band the sound of some well oiled calculated killing machine. The spaciousness of the production really lends an extra sprawling quality to the band's more epic moments, while somehow magnifying the menace of the darker passages. And while there's still plenty of doom, sludge, groove and twisted death metal, Savage Gold has really upped the black metal influence. Labyrinthine tremolo whirlwind guitars seem to spiral upward like some Escher staircase, leading to realms shadowy, alien and obscured! A shining black monolith that shows metal can be forward-thinking, modern and unique without sacrificing any of the heaviness, ferocity or... well... metalness! Absolutely recommended, and sure to make more than a few metal best of the year lists come January 1st.
Volume two in the planned monthly twelve volume Jewelled Antler "Library" series of 3" cd-rs (a format for which we are suckers -- they're just so cute, darn it) is the debut recording from a group called Tomes, who are, as it turns out, basically Jewelled Antler flagship group Thuja (Rob Reger, Loren Chasse, Glenn Donaldson, absent Steven R. Smith), letting themselves get a little bit louder and noiser than they usually do in Thuja, harking back a bit to precursor band Mirza in fact. Probably the main reason this wasn't put out as a Thuja release is because Tomes' title and artwork are in fact the Jewelled Antler collective's knowing nod to a black metal aesthetic (which has fascinated Glenn particularily of late). But while intended as a tribute of sorts to black metal, the psychedelic drone music found here only holds subtle echoes of dark Nordic woodlands and burning churches. The twenty minutes of abstract heavy improv of "The Dreadful Gift (parts 1 and 2)" is darn good stuff regardless of the tangential conceptual framework. With noisy phantoms clanking chains, groaning drones, tell-tale heartbeats and and distorted freeform guitar feedback, this does achieve a dark n' dirgey but beautiful atmosphere. Too beautiful perhaps to leave the black metal hordes quaking in their corpsepaint, it still could be a Jewelled Antler Halloween soundtrack of sorts -- I wonder why didn't they wait 'til the October Library installment for this? Definitely recommended.
MPEG Download: "Dreadful Gift 1" [/audio/tomesdreadful1.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Dreadful Gift 1" [/audio/tomesdreadful1.m3u]
Not to be confused with the Canadian Tomhet, this Tomhet hails from Italy and features members of two of our favorite depressive black metal hordes, Leaden and Anwech. Leaden's awesomely titled Monotonous Foghorns of Molesting Department is still one of our all time favorite chunks of blackened stumbling doom-ed weirdo depressive blackness. And Leaden, well, their sound was even weirder, some sort of droney doomy black metal gloom pop insanity. Needless to say, ever since, we have been on the lookout for ANYTHING from those guys. So we discovered this cd-r, not at all new, in fact, it's from way back in 2001, it's their only demo, they're apparently still a band, but these three songs are all they've released. But fuck it, we'll take what we can get.
Not as weird or as gloomy or dementedly depressive as Leaden Or Anwech, this is feral and raw, more black and buzzy, furious and fast, totally relentless, the sound super saturated and in the red. The guitars are thick and distorted, crumbling and massive, the vocals harsh and drenched in reverb, the drums chaotic and furious, some seriously killer riffing, the songs occasionally slipping into something slightly slower and groovier, but even then the sound is corrosive and blistering, and eventually those grooves splinter as the song explodes back into more blown out buzzing black fury. Frenzied and intense, brutal and black, heavy as fuck and most definitely grim and raw. Well worth your six bucks...
Now, if you read our list regularly, or look at the tags on the cds in the store, you know that we at AQ tend to use the word "ridiculous" (in a good way) quite a lot. And we're also partial to the, again positively-meant, term "fucked". We use these words
Yann Tomita's "An Adventure Of Inevitable Chance" is either a genius work of audio pastiche or a complete put on (or both). To begin with, the album opens with an academic-sounding lecture telling us that Tomita's music is a completely synthetic re-creation of a number of established genres. Yet the musical examples illustrating these genres do not match up. For example, their idea of "Acid Rock" is a banal karaoke lounge tune, and "Country" is represented by what seems to be an excerpt from Sun Ra's "Space Is The Place"! Also, this is supposed to be a live concert from 1993 (with no overdubs, we're told), but...is it? Certainly it would be an amazing, disorienting one, as this disc moves track-by-track through propulsive early-Kraftwerk electronics, simple violin plucking augmented by analog delays, Carl Stalling / Martin Denny exotica, Cornelius-esque whimsy-rock, Barney Miller / Night Court TV show theme style jazzfunk, radio tunings and sputterings, and late '80s cheesy electric dub! Oh, two of the tracks are John Cage pieces, including a not-quite silent version of 4'33"... It's all so unexpected and unfathomable, while often being amazingly quirky and catchy. Tomita claims that his work has influenced countless musicians, DJs, journalists, and fans alike. Some of you may recognize his name from his remix on the Boredoms' Super Roots 8! For those of us who have just encounted his work for the first time here, he claims that he has "influenced you subliminally as well." In the booklets (there's two) you'll find much more to puzzle over (like the catalog of other Tomita releases, including a 7" record with a doughnut on top of it, and a 12" with an ashtray in the shape of a miniature steel drum...there are photos). Oh, in possibly the most brilliantly ridiculously fucked move EVER, this disc is actually packaged as a double cd -- but one of the discs (entitled "Heart Beat") is made of cardboard! (Thus making it unplayable for those of us with *normal* cd players). Odd is an understatement. We're thinking now that if we've judged our customers right, odds are we'll have to try and order more of these pronto...
You might recognize Tomo if you're in the Bay Area and have seen the dance party Hey Willpower. He's their boogie woogie trackmeister. Prior to that, he was in the angstful post-punk SF band The Boy Explodes. It might be said that both of those groups brought out the wild side of this quiet, unassuming fellow. His solo work on the other hand strikes quite a different chord. Whereas his other projects are right at home cutting loose in a bar or basement rec room, this seems like it'd be more at home in a science lab (perhaps inspired by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop?). Definitely much more controlled, methodical and brainy, For Many Birthdays is his second glitchy electronica album. Whereas his self-titled debut was a light effervescent affair, this is still quite woozy and bloopy, but darker and occasionally more abrasive -- revealing yet another facet of Tomo! Very cool!
This reserved young Japanese fellow can also be seen and heard in a number of local bands (two that spring to mind are the raucous postpunkish The Boy Explodes and Willpower, the new wave-y side project of Imperial Teen's vocalist Will Schwartz). This is his first solo release, and it sounds like neither of the above. No, it's a playful array of electronic, sample-laden tracks -- sometimes light and ticklish, sometimes stuttery drum'n'bass-y, sometimes downright funky, sometimes chiming and musicbox-y. The latter forms the basis for one of the album's brightest points, the giddy fifth track "Ritual Of Bubble" which incorporates some very Cornelius-esque chopped up vocal samples. Tomo's music bears a striking resemblance to a slumber party / wrestling match between a bunch of tipsy arcade games. Absolutely delightful!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Comp of new and old material from Japanese dramatic folk troubadour Kazuki Tomokawa. Very intense and beautiful stuff, some of it previously unreleased. A good place to start.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another amazing album from Japanese avant-folk troubadour and sometime film star (he looks the part!) Kazuki Tomokawa, veteran of many previous PSF releases. Perhaps you saw the DVD we reviewed last year, entitled Pistol - Shibuya Apia Live...like that, this is emotionalyl and musically dazzling.
This is a tough one...it's hard to imagine that we're gonna convince anyone who isn't already a fan of Japanese avant-folk troubadour Tomokawa Kazuki to purchase this live DVD of his. Yet, it just might be the best way to get into his music. Wish we could include streaming *video* samples on our website! Rarely would I freak out about a live DVD... but this one's really great. It features 18 songs drawn from four 2003 performances recorded at Tokyo's Apia folk club, Tomokawa's stomping grounds for the past three decades.
Tomokawa (who has the looks of a Japanese movie star, and apparently has been on the big screen) strums rhythmic acoustic guitar and belts out his angst in emotive Japanese, backed by a drummer and a piano/mandolin/accordion player. The drummer, who really is incredible, plays in a free jazz, yet discernably rhythmic style, and serves to underscore Tomokawa's outbursts. The two of them share a certain wild energy. Meanwhile, the trio's third, multi-instrumental musician fills in the more melodic side of the music, which (in large part due to his contributions) has a sort of European chamber music or cafe vibe. The combination of the beautiful music, intense emotion, and dazzling musicianship makes this an essential live document for fans and other curious, adventurous music lovers (who don't mind *feeling* the songs without actually understanding the lyrics, assuming you don't speak Japanese).
One of my former housemates and I watched it over and over, skipping back to watch certain portions repeatedly. That's how much we liked it. We were obsessed.
This actually came out at the beginning of the year, and I've been meaning to review it forever, but it seemed difficult to do it justice and it sorta fell by the wayside... but then while making my year-end "best of" list, I realized that this was truly one of 2005's best music-dvds and had to be in our catalog!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Whenever we think about what massively obsessive record nerds we are, we think of the guys who run Trunk Records in the UK (Dawn Of The Dead, multiple Basil Kirchin releases, Desmond Leslie, Psychomania) and we feel just a little bit better. These guys are nuts. But oh how grateful we are for whatever imbalance cause them to obsessively hunt down insanely obscure soundtracks and mysterious long lost recordings. The latest is this disc or rare and previously unreleased incidental music from the UK television show the Tomorrow People. Don't know too much about it, other than the fact that the Tomorrow People are teenagers who can communicate to each other using telepathy and who can transport themselves through time and space. Oh, and they have a talking computer called Tim. Who better to supply the appropriate theme music and musical cues than the BBC Radiophonic Workshop! Several of the Workshop's legends are here strangely performing under pseudonyms, Li De La Russe is none other than Delia Derbyshire and Nikki St. George is in fact Brian Hodgson. Along with Australian Dudley Simpson and American David Vorhaus (Vorhaus, Derbyshire and Hodgson also recorded as White Noise!) created a haunting and psychedelic world of electronic sound and creepy freaked out ambience. There are lots of Dr. Who-isms which makes sense as these are the same folks responsible for that music as well. "The Tomorrow People Theme" is the only proper 'song' here, a jaunty slab of groovy sixties James Bond soundtrack music replete with all manner of unlikely instruments, synths and theremins, tribal drums and all sorts of electronic bloops and bleeps. A killer melody quite a bit reminiscent of the Dr. Who Theme! The rest of the record is a series of musical cues and background music, and as such is more about sound, and texture and atmosphere, but it's all completely weird and wonderful. Plenty of shimmering synthesizer drone, rumbling percussion, creepy crawly ambience, spaced out bleeps and bloops, analog synth weirdness, primitive drum machines, and lots and lots of bizarre sounds and mysterious sonic textures. This stuff is so amazing! We're dying to see the show now (available on DVD from Amazon UK) but for now this disc will for sure tickle your lost soundtrack / strange sound fancy in very much the same way the Psychomania soundtrack or the Desmond Leslie did, both of which are fantastic and still available!
Your parents like Windham Hill, you like Kranky.
Volume six in the Darla "Bliss Out" ambient pop series. This band is now signed to Kranky, and that should tell you something; if that doesn't, maybe these song titles will: "Sea Of Serenity" and "Kepler Planet Harmonies." For fans of Labradford and Magnog.
Another reissue from Finland's Tomutonttu, the solo guise of Jan Anderzen, better know as a member of Avarus, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat and about a million others.
Tomutonto (notice the slight difference) as originally released as a super limited lp on Ultra Eczema back in 2006, and is now available on cd for the first time. Anderzen explores all sorts of sonic space as Tomutonttu, on the recently listed self titled cd, another reissue, the sounds was a kaleidoscopic tripped out primitivism, a stumbling forest folk, ritualistic and abstract, and while this disc offers up some similar sounding jams, it's much more out there, much more unhinged and experimental.
What songs there are, end up fragmented and all tangled up in a squirming heap, droned out organ tones, squeaks and creaks and thumps and clangs, muted percussion, processed vocals, hiccupping loops, bursts of distorted voices, damaged effects, malfunctioning electronics, fractured loops, swirling filed of spaced out buzz and birdcall like flitter, chant like vocals over Spanish sounding guitars, all wrapped in weird murk, reverb drenched operatic howls and moans, over distant creaking, and warm riffy humming, sped up strings, rhythmic clickings, all twisted and tweaked and warped and warbly.
Definitely on the TRIPPY end of the Finnish free rock underground foresty freak folk spectrum, but anyone into the rest of the Fonal catalog, and other Finnish weirdness should for sure check it out, give the sound samples a listen, that should decide it or you lickety split.
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