Tomutonttu is Jan Anderzen, member of Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus, Anaksimandros, and who knows how many other Finnish free folk outfits. He's one of the kings of that scene. His hand (and gnarled guitar, and wheezing keyboard...) have been in tons of our favorite records and projects. This however is the first chance we've had to hear Anderzen on his own as Tomutonttu, seeing as the first Tomutonttu was so limited it disappeared before we were able to get even a single copy.
Needless to say, fans of all things folky and Finnish will love this, it fits perfectly amidst the Avarus and Kemialliset releases, but it stands on it's own too, strange in its own right, personal, and lovely, but also spacey and kind of freaked out. But then why would we expect anything else?
The record begins with the calls of whippoorwills, soon joined by the calls of yet more birds, all whipping wildly above a thrumming drone made up of buzzing kazoo vocals, moaning muted strings, and some mysterious pulsing minimal throb. Sounding almost like a super lo-fi "Symphony Of The Birds" all tangled up with some chunk of freaky forest folk. Ends up those aren't real birds, as their calls slow down and get all twisted up, it becomes evident it's a record of birds being slowly manipulated, becoming more and more abstract, the bird calls transforming into weird rumbles and flurries of high pitched squiggles, all over the growing buzz of a shimmery space guitar and more of that strange buzzy kazoo like moaning, peppered with deep rich sonic swells, very dreamy and alien, like some sort of otherworldly nature recording.
The next track hews closer to the Finnish folk sound, sort of medieval sounding with drifting high end keyboard melodies draped over muted rhythmic clang and sweet swoonsome swirls of soft sound. The last track on side A sounds like some strange Bollywood Western, minor key and very Eastern sounding, processed guitar and blown out keyboards all tangled up into a gorgeously lilting melody, dreamy and sparkly and super playful.
Side B begins with more playfulness, this time the percussion, all drenched in reverb and echo, like some sort of wind chime garden, muted into strange melodies, droning keyboards beneath, very haunting and otherworldly, it almost sounds African, like likembes, sometimes there are hints of gamelan too, at least in the timbre and the melodies, but all warm and distorted and dreamily blown out. The next track is a brief snatch of what sounds like some unearthed old time recording, all fuzzy warble and a softly keening melancholy melody. And finally, the lengthy final track is a reprise of the opener, all tinkling chimes, distant moaned vocals, and soft clouds of constantly shifting and swirling bird calls, dizzying but also strangely soothing. Definitely one of the nicest records we've heard from the Avarus/Anaksimandros/Kemialliset Finnish freakfolk axis...
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! Pressed on 220 gram vinyl, packaged in amazing jackets with eye popping artwork and printed full color inner sleeves. These are gonna go fast and once these are gone they are GONE.
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Tone Language is the collaboration between Lee Norris, Ichiro Taniguchi, and Kenji Taniguchi. Norris has made a number of electronica genre-jumping albums as Metamatics and as Nacht Plank, while the Taniguchis have recorded as the drum & bass duo Reflection. With a trio of laptops streaming a blurred clatter of warm glitchpopmuzik, Tone Language exactly replicates the sound of Oval from the seductive ambient salves to the nebula bass pulses. Pretty shocking how much this sounds like "Szenariodisc."
Tone Rec (a band that's been called "electronica's This Heat") now present a remix album, mostly abstracted rhythmic patterns which often have their origins in tense live percussions. Tone Rec remixes four of their own tracks, with To Rococo Rot, DAT Politics (Tone Rec alter-ego), and Fennesz contributing to the fun.
With roots going all the way back to the Japanese Fluxus movement in the early '60s, Yasunao Tone remains one of Japan's more adventurous new music composers. Beginning in the early '80s when commercially available digital technology was hitting the market, Tone began experimenting with overriding the error-correction systems on consumer CD players in order to generate complex streams of digital errata. Tone furthers the process with a self-decribed method of 'wounding' the discs themselves with transparent tape, physical abrastions, and pinhole punctures. Despite his numerous grants, fellowships, installations, and awards, Tone has only a handful of recordings, including this new eponymous release through Asphodel. The resultant album of skipping CDs and noxious digital skittering certainly recalls the work of Oval, Disc, and most things on Mego.
MPEG Download: "Track 02" [/audio/yasunaotone02.mp3]
With all the Cold Wave and Minimal Synth reissues from the late seventies and early eighties coming back in vogue, we knew it wouldn't be long before we'd see some goth, industrial and deathrock bands from that period being re-issued too. Tones On Tail weren't all that obscure, coming out of the ashes of Bauhaus who disbanded in 1983, but they were very short-lived, only lasting about a year before Daniel Ash and Kevin Haskins reunitied with Bauhaus bandmate, David J to become Love and Rockets in 1984. However, Tones On Tail produced an exceptional amount of material over one lp and numerous eps and singles. While best remembered for their club hit, "Go!", their output covered a range of gothic styles from gloomy pop to dark jazz, but always with an ear towards strong songwriting and evocative atmospherics. We always liked them a bit better than Bauhaus. Everything compiles pretty much everything you will ever need. So good!
With all the Cold Wave and Minimal Synth reissues from the late seventies and early eighties coming back into fashion, we knew it wouldn't be long before we'd see some goth, industrial and deathrock bands from that period being re-issued as well. Tones On Tail weren't all that obscure, coming out of the ashes of Bauhaus who disbanded in 1983, but they were very short-lived, only lasting about a year before Daniel Ash and Kevin Haskins reunited with Bauhaus bandmate, David J to become Love and Rockets in 1984. However, Tones On Tail produced an exceptional amount of material over one lp and numerous eps and singles. While best remembered for their club hit, "Go!", their output covered a range of gothic styles from gloomy pop to dark jazz, but always with an ear towards strong songwriting and evocative atmospherics. And we always liked them a bit more than Bauhaus anyway!
Weird Pop is a new double vinyl collection that covers most of the same ground as the older 2cd collection, Everything, with a few previously unreleased alternate versions of songs like the full original version of "Performance", the studio version of "Heartbreak Hotel", the single edit of "Go!" and the extended version of "Twist". But unless you want these tracks on vinyl, or you are a completist collector, you might not need this if you already have the Everything collection (which is also available to order from our website) as that features more tracks (24 tracks vs. 19 tracks on the vinyl). Nonetheless, it's always great to see one of our favorite bands get some more much-deserved attention!
Wow, is this record ever bizarre, not at all what you might expect from the same label that released the record of Pajo Misfits covers or Paz Lenchatin's gorgeous country drone folk record, but like those records, Tonetta's 777 is truly unique and weird and to some ears perhaps also wonderful. Incredibly strange music for sure...
Some folks might recognize the name Tonetta (or Tonetta 777) from his various videos on YouTube, and no doubt some of you were probably forwarded them as they are truly truly odd and were becoming a sort of sensation. So we were trying to find a simple succinct way of describing Tonetta, and decided to turn to the online source for all things freaky, Freakipedia (oddly enough there was no entry for Tonetta on Wikipedia) where Tonetta's entry described him as "an incredibly gay older man on YouTube who dances half naked to songs he pre-recorded. While most of the music sounds the same in his videos, his lyrics largely differ dealing with sexual fetishes such as pissing and pooping, larger women and men, and ass to mouth." Which does pretty much sum it up. Tonetta dresses in strange ripped Flashdance style outfits, g-strings, torn sweatshirts, bustiers, weird masks, sometimes pantyhose over his head, wigs, dresses, whatever, sometimes he's practically nude, he shimmies and shakes, in a diamond shaped frame surrounded by trippy colors, in front of a backdrop that looks like it's probably in his basement, white curtains, a black sheet hung on the wall, a bunch of balloons, and we haven't even gotten to the music yet, simple primitive drum machines, looped disco basslines, blown out guitars, everything in the red and blown out and distorted, the vocals either a deep croon, or a weird almost falsetto trill, the sound warped and warbly alternatingly funky, groovy, and/or psychedelic, sometimes the music sounds like some underground post punk lo-fi disco, other times it sounds almost like Ariel Pink or John Maus, and then there's the song tiles and lyrics, which as the Freakipedia entry alludes to, are subversive and sexual and bizarre and problematic and pretty goddamn funny: "My Bro", "Still A Slave", "A Really Big Cock", "Toronto Is Starting To Stink", "Metal Man", "Peeping Tom", "Drugs Drugs Drugs", "God Treats You Right", "I'm Gonna Marry A Prostitute", and on and on. Fucked up and freaky, but weirdly addictive, and as skeptical as we may have been about a whole album of this stuff, after seeing a bunch of his videos, we find ourselves digging this a whole lot, and listening to it more than we ever thought we would, which pretty much says it all!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, pressed on 140 gram vinyl, housed in a super nice thick cover, adorned with a 2 color serigraph, and comes with a cd version of the record as well.
Some of us are shocked that there's a volume two, collecting still more of the cracked electronic soul pop lo-fi disco of mysterious YouTube phenom Tonetta, but then, there are plenty of folks, like most of us here, that have been waiting for another volume. Why you might ask? Why indeed. Not sure we can describe Tonetta better than we did in the review of the first volume, so probably better to just revisit:
"We were trying to find a simple succinct way of describing Tonetta, and decided to turn to the online source for all things freaky, Freakipedia (oddly enough there was no entry for Tonetta on Wikipedia) where Tonetta's entry described him as "an incredibly gay older man on YouTube who dances half naked to songs he pre-recorded. While most of the music sounds the same in his videos, his lyrics largely differ dealing with sexual fetishes such as pissing and pooping, larger women and men, and ass to mouth." Which does pretty much sum it up. Tonetta dresses in strange ripped Flashdance style outfits, g-strings, torn sweatshirts, bustiers, weird masks, sometimes pantyhose over his head, wigs, dresses, whatever, sometimes he's practically nude, he shimmies and shakes, in a diamond shaped frame surrounded by trippy colors, in front of a backdrop that looks like it's probably in his basement, white curtains, a black sheet hung on the wall and/or a bunch of balloons."
Wow huh? It's definitely weird stuff, but it's engendered a bit of a crazy obsession among all sorts of music lovers, ourselves included. And you'll know how you feel the second you hear it. The songs are super simple, usually, just one or two parts, drum machines, looped samples, disco basslines, all lo-fi and distorted, alternatingly groovy, psychedelic, stumbling and damaged, tripped out and funky, sometimes a head spinning collision of all of those. The song titles, like on the first volume, speak, well, volumes: "Hot Little Fuck, "G+B Showers", "Rape Victim", "Doin A Dyke Tonight", "Picking On Lennon", "Ultimate Whore", "Daddys Little Boy", "Big Rig", "Death Sentence", you get the drift.
It's warped, and bizarre, demented, and weird as all get out, but it's also surprisingly catchy, and a bit irresistible, and while you may scoff now, once you get an earful you might find yourself as obsessed as the rest of us. Don't believe us? Check out the sound samples, or better yet, go watch a few Tonetta vids on YouTube, and then come back for this (and volume one!) when you're ready!
Super fancy packaging, thick silkscreeened jacket, each one hand numbered, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, printed full color inner sleeve, pressed on nice heavy vinyl, and includes a cd that features all the tracks on the lp PLUS two bonus tracks.
Our favorite funky sleaze merchant is back with a whopping double lp (plus 2cds of the same material included!), and while we were shocked enough to think that there could be more than one volume of Tonetta's inflammatory outsider dance rock, we're practically, um... gagging on the abundance of grooves this time around. And it's not only the revelling in sexual deviance that make up the subject matter here (though there's plenty of it: assplay, scat play, gloryholes, four-ways, prostitution, bare-backing, basically, the works!), there is a lot of skewed political diatribes ("Obama's Prize", "Saddam", "This Old World"), and a questionably racist song using the N-word (though it could be viewed as anti-skin-head too maybe). But the most shocking of all perhaps, are the love songs which are some of the sweetest and most heartfelt tracks on here. Not sure if some of these tracks are old recordings or just shittily recorded, but this collection overall has the most range musically, with Tonetta's vocal style sounding at times like a crooning Roy Orbison, a bleating Captain Beefheart, or a seductive Leonard Cohen with lots of distorted circular guitar rhythms, lo-fi pans, tweeked-out synths and relentless predatory dungeon sex beats. Freaky!
The second of two new mysterious sonic missives from UK tape label The Tapeworm, this one comes from the strangely monikered Tongues Of Mount Meru, who might be more familiar to people by their given names, noisemaker Lasse Marhaug (of Jazzkamer), and Jon Wesseltoft, a member of black metal legends Thorns. Seems like a strange combination for sure. And the strangeness is further heightened by the fact that you won't find any crunchy noise, Merzbowian blur or blackened blasts here, instead, we're treated to extended mantra-like Niblockian drones, layered and hypnotic, pulsing and ever shifting, fuzzy and buzzy and dense, recorded live, the sound is rich and intense, the edges rough and prickly, within the core drone, drift all sorts of buried melodies, and prismatic overtones, strange little electronic shimmers seems to surface here and there, occasionally, the layers blend perfectly into haunting harmonies, only to slowly drift apart once again. Hard to tell what the sound sources are, but at one point it sounds like an accordion or harmonium, that lush, rich, organic wheeze, all warm and ever-changing.
Two sidelong drones, the first side is more aggressive, more intense and almost abrasive, the second much more swirly and moody, but both similarly dreamy and mesmeric. Total longform hypnodrift drone bliss.
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Giancarlo Toniutti has certainly increased his activity around the turn of 2009, having released two new compositions after going almost a decade between records; and now, he's authorized a hefty overview of his early work, with a forthcoming boxset on Vinyl-On-Demand and this cd reissue of La Mutazione, originally released on Broken Flag back in 1985. Toniutti is earnestly long-winded in his academic defense of his work, speaking in highly technical terms and with willfully obscure references (i.e. the semio-cosmologist Rene Thom and the idiosyncrasies of the Athabascan dialect, seriously); and cd booklet of La Mutazione comes with a signature essay from the man on how this work came to be and what theoretical ideas revolve around these sounds.
The three tracks on this disc (the two original cuts on the LP and a unreleased bonus track) harken to
the early '80s as Toniutti darkened of cosmic electronics from the likes of Cluster, Tangerine Dream, and Conrad Schnitzler through the lens of Whitehouse, Nurse With Wound, and Throbbing Gristle. At the time, Toniutti had just matriculated from the Conservatory of Venice with a heady amount of education in Stockhausen, Schaefer, etc. These three musical poles come together in this dark, dark, dark construction of layered static, analog synth explorations, and even some field recording. The totemically named track "The Tree" situates upon an oppressive drone of low frequencies scraped by waves of radio static, which parallels the early work of John Duncan in many ways. Throughout "The Tree," Toniutti injects a lugubrious bubbling of synthetic notes with similarities to the untrained atonalism that Maurizio Bianchi had grafted to the cancerous power electronics of Regel and Das Testament from the early '80s. Those same synth notes snap into a morose two note melody on the aptly named "Nekrose," which is even darker in atmosphere and creepy intensity than the first. The bonus track "Apoplettica" is a darkened delay exploration with clanking loops and unsettled harmonic drones that foreshadows the guttural psychedelic blackening that Mark McGuire alludes to in Emeralds.
A triumph back then, and a triumph now.
Well, it's about fucking time! During the past two and half decades, this uncompromising Italian sound artist released only two solo records and a handful of noteworthy collaborations, all of which had earned him a reputation for incredible compositions nestled within an intellectual framework dealing with semiotics, esoteric languages, psychogeography, cosmology, and plenty of other topics that are way above the heads of 99% of everybody else. For all of Toniutti's high-falutin' ideas, his sound design isn't nearly as obtuse as you might think. There is an expressionism to Toniutti's work that you might also find in Xenakis' electronic works or Chris Watson's high quality field recordings, although Toniutti's idiosyncrasies make it difficult to draw apt comparisons. So with the release of Qwalsamtimutkw?italuc'ik, Toniutti has finally issued something new. Almost 19 years after the last proper full length album, and 11 years since the last major collaborative project. There have been entire careers that have risen and then fallen during that span of time, and Giancarlo quietly toiled away with his research into dying languages and an occasional flurry of recording which only now has been resolved. The title itself translates from Nuxalk, an indigenous Canadian language, if you must know.
As for music, Toniutti built an instrument which he calls a 'rattle-harp' out of a large piece of found metal, several long thin pieces of wire, and some bones. The sounds that emanate from this instrument are haunted drones and rattles which create an unsettled ground of activity that is anything but static. Sure, the surfaces of these shadowy subharmonic thumbs and oceanic tone bursts could fall into the darkened ambient catageory that we love so much; but as Toniutti slips the layers against each other, unnerving ruptures in frequency provide a woozy feel to these occluded drones. Even at low volumes, these tectonic rumblings can be very potent.
At the time of this writing, Toniutti has announced a slew of archival recordings including his bleak electronic album La Mutazione which Broken Flag released back in 1985, as well as a 3lp set for Vinyl On Demand; and yes, there might even be another new record. So, Giancarlo Toniutti does not appear to be the Kevin Shields of noise culture, rather just a highly exceptional composer with a pretty sizeable time gap in his discography.
No one will ever accuse Giancarlo Toniutti of releasing too much music into the world. It has literally been ten years since Toniutti has released any recordings outside of a very rare compilation track here or there. That said, Toniutti is an undeniably intriguing sound artist, who has deeply immersed himself into obscure forms of ethnomusicology and linguistic study, all the while keeping a finely tuned ear to the habits of vangarde composition. His earliest recordings emerged out of the Italian power electronics community of the early '80s whose most well known practitioner was Maurizio Bianchi. Like Bianchi, Toniutti put out a handful of recordings on the seminal British noise label Broken Flag. While bracing, complex, and adventurous in its crunched tape manipulations and sinister synthesis, Toniutti's work stood apart from the signature Broken Flag arc of transgressive noise, due to Toniutti's intellectual rigor. It was this rigor that brought Toniutti to pursue his collaborations with Andrew Chalk and Conrad Schnitzler, and it was probably this rigor that caused the prolonged length between recordings over the past decade.
So, the 20 minute composition that Toniutti produced for Ferns impressive series of 3" discs has been granted a Hopi Indian title based on an ancient song dealing with cunnilingus and bedbugs. I'm sure that Giancarlo has a very particular reason for placing such a text alongside this warbling set of mutated field recordings; but as of yet, it remains something of a mystery. This composition does enjoy a hermetic quality, in spite of Toniutti's explanation that he derived all of the sounds from a field recording he made in Italy involving a mountain, a 10ft tall cross, a metal pylon, and a temple bell. Out of that environment and those objects, Toniutti arrives at a record that might appear somewhat meditative at first, with its constant wash of low frequencies; but upon deeper investigations into the piece, he reveals queasy, off-kilter tonalities which gently vibrate against each other, bristling with quiet textures. His is a pretty unique sound, somewhat like the early electronic work of Xenakis with the diminutive sensibilities of early Bernhard Gunter. Highly recommended!
BACK IN STOCK! We had this very rare record many moons ago; and we've managed to get a handful back in stock. Here's what we had to say about it way back when...
The specialization of language offers the ability for those acquainted with certain phrases, words, and even verbal inflections to communicate with a greater efficiency. Here at Aquarius, we've coined such neologisms as "dronology" and "fuckery," simply because we hope that such words offer enough connotation even without a lot of context. Sure, we make references to obscure movies, books nobody read, and composers that never really got heard outside of some tiny state-funded electronic music institution, but hopefully we explain things in a language that can be understood. On the other hand, Italian composer / musicologist Giancarlo Toniutti communicates in nothing even close to a common vernacular; instead, his writings are a confounding display of specialized academic language and are composed within extended run-on sentences that make Aquarius look like the saints of brevity in comparison. There may have been a time when I had the patience to read Derrida, but not anymore.
Given that ridiculous prologue, I have to say that the collaboration between Toniutti and Andrew Chalk (who in contrast to Toniuitti has always been painfully quiet about his work) is truly fantastic. As the language in the massive liner notes is too convoluted to decipher with any certainty, I'm guessing that the two artists collaborated upon long thin wires which they set up in natural settings. They then took these recordings of windswept scrapes, amplified creeks, and bowed metals to ICR Studios where Colin Potter helped them mix their recordings into that eerily angelic drone which emanates from all Andrew Chalk recordings. As Chalk doesn't entirely dominate the proceedings, Toniutti's penchant for gritty textural striations does add an important aural characteristic to the recordings. In spite of the difficult-to-impossible liner notes, the music which it attempts to describe is transcendentally beautiful.
The only straightforward statement found on Counterchronology's densely worded liner notes is downright blunt: "Tiziano is dead." Aside from that one somber fact, the archeological ruminations of this recording are laboriously complex; but here's what we can gather. In September of 1993, the Italian vanguardist Giancarlo Toniutti came across two cassettes that contained material dating as far back as 1979, marking some of his earliest recording then in concert with a character named Tiziano Dominighini. He shelved them once again for another decade when he rediscovered the material to hold a number of open-ended / freeform recordings of Giancarlo and Tiziano clamoring about the glassworks shop run by Dominghini's father along with various environmental recordings, sparse yet maltreated guitar splutter, automatic writings, art brut actions, and long-form chord organ drones. In repurposing the musical interludes and provisional collages from those tapes, Toniutti sought to aggregate the sounds in such a manner as to maintain the something of an integrity from the originals while configuring the more naive gestures with the hand of a mature electroacoustic composer. On the near 34-minute first track, Toniutti weaves haptic events in varying degrees of density upon a bed of those long-form organ chords, with unhinged filter sweeps diving deep into cascading deep low-end rumblings. There's an extemporaneous psychedelic quality to much of the percussive burblings that hold aesthetic similarities to Angus MacLise, AMM, Z'ev, certain facets to the early Nurse With Wound continuum, and the most shambolic / abstract participants of the global freakfolk explosion from a couple years back. The shorter 10-minute second piece slowly blossoms from a deep bellowing thrum with desolated sibilance into a frenzied clamor on junked metal accompanied by distant flutes and strange utterances, both detouring from and complementing the first piece quite nicely. As rewarding as he is challenging, Giancarlo Toniutti continues to impress.
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Everybody went crazy for Tonstartssbandht band's recent cassette, titled Parson Sounds, which was in fact covers of legendary Swedish psychfolk jams from Parson Sounds, Harvester and International Harvester, it was the first we had heard from these guys, but it's tough to go wrong, covering stone cold classics like that. Of course when we got this 7" in, we realized that because that first tape was all covers, and pretty faithful ones at that, we didn't actually know what these guys sounded like. And the weird thing was, we didn't actually imagine they'd sound like THIS, but we're digging it anyway, big time.
A bit of that Swedish psychfolk from the tape makes its way onto this here 7", but it's woven into a sort of heavy blown out psych pop, big booming drums, echo drenched vocals, thick, muddy, murky riffs, super catchy and still pretty psychedelic, totally ramshackle, super distorted, fuzzy, warped and lysergic, big hooky choruses, a little bit Animal Collective, a little bit Japandroids, a little bit Lightning Bolt (especially in the frantic tangled bass harmony breakdowns) all tangled up into a heavy, hooky freaked out blast of in-the-red mini noise pop gems, the sort of stuff that sounds like it would be amazing live, a heaving sweaty crowd spilling onto the stage, the band loose and on the edge of collapse, loud as fuck and totally on fire. And the 7" does a pretty great job of capturing that normally-quite-difficult-to-capture rock energy!
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How could we resist? This Canadian two piece (recently relocated to New York), two psych rock obsessed brothers, covering their favorite Swedish psychedelic folk drone jams of the geniuses known variously as Parson Sound, Harvester and International Harvester. Perfect timing too, as we've all been RE-obsessed with Parson Sound, after the deluxe triple lp reissue of their self titled masterpiece we made Record Of The Week last list. And while we're often skeptical of modern day folks covering CLASSICS, sure it's fun, but does everyone need to hear it, well, in this case the answer is hell yeah! These guys totally nail it, channeling not just the spirit, but the sound as well, from the lilting folky vocals, to the acid fried in-the-red guitars, to the pounding motorik drumming, right down to the recording, which sounds all murky and muddy and OLD, like it was itself some unearthed recording from the seventies. The duo lock into those incredible grooves, so thick and dense but lush and expansive and HEAVY, trancelike and mesmerizing, the sort of jams that should go on forever, slipping from fuzz drenched proto-metal, to dreamy, acid folk, to haunting acoustic laments, vocals doused in reverb, careening over roiling swells of super saturated fuzz and wild chaotic drumming.
If these guys can do this sort of justice to stone cold Swedish classics like these, we've definitely got to hear more. In the meantime, grab one of these before they're gone, whether you're a Swedish psych obsessive like us, or just dig on the sort of space psych drone dirge of bands like Heavy Winged, Eternal Tapestry and the like, this will hit the spot either way!
One of our favorite analog electronic prog-hippie jazz-psych records from the magic year of 1971 has finally been given the reissue treatment, and it's a doozy! TONTO stands for "The Original New Timbral Orchestra", the first, and still the largest, multitimbral polyphonic analog synthesizer in the world. Created by Malcom Cecil and Robert Margouleff, the duo's first outing with their new creation was originally released on jazz flautist, Herbie Mann's Atlantic Records sub-label, Embryo.
The album was so influential that Stevie Wonder collaborated with the duo on several of his most essential recordings of the seventies including Talking Book, Innervisions and Fulfillingness' First Finale. It was also the instrument featured on screen and used by Paul Williams character in Brian DePalma's Phantom of the Paradise! The machine later became a key player in lots of eighties RnB, seemingly miles away from the soundscapery on this first record.
While Zero-Time acted largely as a showcase for what the TONTO could do, it's still a pretty killer record of synthetic cinematic prog groove, subterranean alien library funk and spacey folk electronic ambience. Over six tracks, there are several varying moods from sexy (there's a song called "Jetsex" after all), to blissfully solemn. The opener "Cybernaut" sounds like a movie theme for a sci-fi crime thriller, all foreboding and mysterious, while our favorite track is the floating space raga, "Riversong" which has strange treated vocal modulations that are completely sublime. Recommended!
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The cd reissue on Shadoks of this that we used to stock has, sadly, gone out of print, but here's a new VINYL reissue of this great album! Here's more-or-less what we said back in 2002 about the Shadoks cd version:
The amazing, beautiful, anarchic, DIY psych-folk-pop of Tony, Caro & John's terribly rare All On The First Day lp (originally privately released in an edition of just 100 copies) has now been revived for, hopefully, a larger audience! This comes to us from the label that's been responsible for bringing us those fab "Love, Peace & Poetry" psychedelic rock compilations (y'know, the Latin American one, the Asian one, the Japanese one, etc.). Among the most recent installments in that series was a disc devoted to British psychedelic obscurities. One of that comp's highlights, we all agreed, was a cut by this trio. That track, the amazingly Neutral Milk Hotel-ish "There Are No Greater Heroes" appears here as well, on Shadoks' reissue of Tony, Caro & John's entire sole album, from 1972. Now, we know that a lot of the time it's true that a great track selected for a compilation doesn't a great album make from whence it came...after all, the compilers are likely to pick the BEST song off an album for their comp. So we were wary - but curious - when we heard this whole album was being reissued. Happily, there's actually a lot of other great songs on here besides "There Are No Greater Heroes", although that one still reminds us the most of Jeff Mangum's stuff. "Eclipse Of The Moon", "Apocalypso", "Don't Sing This Song", and others, all fantastic... Taken together, Tony, Caro & John's songs manage to strike a balance between creepy melancholy and kaleidoscopic psych silliness. Not only that, but they have more than just a nostalgic vibe going for them - they are good songwriters/performers with some delightful, weird ideas. Fans of the Incredible String Band and other British hippie folk psych of the period definitely need to hear this.
In the realm of doom metal, what could be more weird and cult and underground than Voci Dal Passato, the brilliantly bizarre DIY Goblin-meets-Vitus album by one-man-band Tony Tears that we made a Record Of The Week a few years ago?? Well the answer is obvious: Tony Tears' demos!! We we're pretty excited when we heard about this new release (dampened only by the fact that this turned out to be a cd-r, not a cd, though it's nicely done, pro-printed and everything) and we think everyone who became obsessed, like us, with Voci Dal Passato - which was quite popular - will want to check this out. Likewise with those who missed out on Tony Tears before 'cause that cd so sadly went out of print.
So, this is first official release of TT's debut demo from 2000, Fears And Sensations In The Claustrophobic Mirror, consisting of six tracks (the last an extended, 4 part suite lasting 15 minutes). Just like the Tony Tears album we made ROTW, it's a lo-fi morass of mesmeric doomed-out psychedelia, inspired by Paul Chain, Goblin, Black Hole, and other esoteric Italians, with wobbly keyboards, crude drum programming, chant-like and sometimes extremely distorted Italian-language vox, and of course heavy fuzzed out doom guitar riffage, the whole thing giving off uniquely eerie, eccentric vibes galore as each track slowly plods forth through a haze of hiss and murk.
We mentioned Umberto with Striborg-level production and performance in our review of Voci Dal Passato, and guess what, these earlier recordings are even MORE like that. It's a beautiful thing. Tracks like "The Return To The Underground Temple", mostly echo effected keyboards and weeping guitars over simple steady rhythms, have so much weird psychedelic atmosphere that Tony Tears should not be limited to a 'cult doom metal only' audience. Devoted dronologists should hear the quietly ominous "Forze Invisibli Bussano Al Cuore", the aforementioned four-part suite - it's pulsating electronic cosmic mystery that could be from some lost '70s krautrock lp or sinister soundtrack, at least until the super slowed down sludge part kicks in, with vocals and guitar sounding like they're recorded at quarter-speed or something, as if you're listening to it on a device with dying batteries.
Again, too bad this is just a limited cd-r, these are probably the only copies we'll be getting, and we have just under a dozen.
Finally got enough of these to list, the latest metamorphosis of an aQ beloved doomlord, the Italian eccentric Tony Tears. From lonely, outsider one-man DIY doomdrone to this: a full band effort, Tony gone "pro", playing weepy, gothic cathedral sized doom metal compositions overloaded with thundering church organ, heavy riff-chug, soaring vocal choruses, dreary guitar solos, and sinister synthscape segues. Quite 'busy' in comparison with the spooky, mesmeric minimalism of Tony's classic Voci Dal Passato (an aQ Record Of The Week), but OF COURSE still extremely weird and moody, for all its metallic rock band bluster. For fans of Paul Chain and Black Hole (and maybe even King Diamond) for sure.
Tony Tears, you've come a long way, baby. When we first discovered psychedelic doom outsider Tony Tears a few years ago, he was an eerie, despondent Italian fellow with very few friends/fans, judging by his MySpace page (see below). Nowadays, he still is eerie and despondent (and Italian) but he's got some fans now, maybe even a cult. Cult enough to now have a handsome lil' box set release, containing three cds, collecting all of his significant public recordings to date, including Voci Dal Passato, the weird Goblinesque DIY doom masterpiece that we made an aQuarius Record Of The Week when we first got it on cd back in 2009. That cd quickly sold out, but fortunately there then was a cassette version released, which also soon went out of print, but then after that, it was released on vinyl. So it wasn't just us that had become obsessed with Tony Tears, it seems. We know some of you are too, and this box of music from Tony's Astral Worlds is for you!
We'd managed to track down only one other Tony Tears release, a cd-r we listed two years ago, and which is also long gone too of course. But, having begun his career as Tony Tears back in 1988, the man has got a bunch of other releases, all of them incredibly hard to find, most of 'em limited run cd-rs and even more obscure demo tapes. Fans should be very thankful, then, for this box set put together by, naturally Minotauro Records (what with that label being home to another cult Italian psychedelic doom genius, Paul Chain). Besides Voci Dal Passato, the box includes Fears And Sensations In The Claustrophobic Mirror from the year 2000 (the cd-r we did get before), along with The Reality Before All (a cd-r from 2004), Tony's half of a split 7" with Abysmal Grief from 2004, the All My Black ep from 2007, and perhaps best of all, the more of less brand new 2014 Tony Tears full-length album, Vortice, previously issued on cd-r and very difficult to obtain. Vortice is pretty great, something we'd have considered making a Record Of The Week by itself, though definitely different from Voci Dal Passato, being rather more spacey and spooky than heavy, though parts are quite heavy too. On it, Tony is no longer alone, he has recruited a new member into what's now we guess the Tony Tears band, a vocalist, named David Krieg, who also must be Italian though. At first we we apprehensive, 'cause we like Tony's semi-spoken vocals. But this new singer has a haunting, almost operatic style that gives Vortice's heavily synthesizer laden, abstract ambient drone doom sound a touch of Early Music or 20th century classical avantgarde. 'Nuff said, perhaps, 'cause we're about to tack on our original reviews of Voci Dal Passato and Fears And Sensations, so this is gonna get loooong. We figure if you read about those and don't have 'em already, you can figure out if you want this box; if you DO have 'em, you probably already know you want this box for everything else, anyway.
The final two sound samples below are from Vortice, though, fyi.
And a word about the box itself - in addition to the three cds in cardboard sleeves with credits and tracklistings, there's also a separate set of cards with the original cover art for each release on 'em, and a fold-out insert with photos and liner notes from Tony himself, in both Italian and English. In a nice touch, the inside surfaces of the box feature full-color occult artwork by Tony, too.
So, here are the two Tony Tears reviews we've previously published, for those who need to find out more...
Voci Dal Passato:
We first got a couple of these in a few weeks back ('cause we were curious) and it didn't take long before we realized we had a Record Of The Week on our hands. It was obvious, really, since some of us here ending up getting so obsessed with this that it was just about ALL they'd listen to, for days, getting home after work and throwing it on, listening to it going to sleep at night, and when they'd get up in the morning, playing it at the store too... At first, though, we thought well heck maybe that's just us, maybe we're weird to like Tony Tears that much. But of course, we ARE weird, and so are a lot of AQ customers, and that's why this is definitely a good choice for Record Of The Week. Anything this hypnotic and dirgey and doomy and last but not least weird, has got AQ (and possibly you) written all over it.
We had to go to some trouble to acquire enough of these to list, contacting Tony Tears via MySpace, importing copies from Italy, getting all the cds we could lay our hands on. Which means we may or may not be able to get more when we run out, and if we can, it will certainly take a while, so be forewarned...
Tony Tears? So what IS that, you ask? Actually when we first saw the name, we thought it said Ebony Tears, which is the name of another band. But no, it's Tony Tears, as in a guy named Tony, last name Tears. And the "band" is indeed just the work of one man, whose (we presume) stage name gives this its monicker. How perfect is that, a mournful Italian doom metaller named Tony Tears? Already you feel sorry for him. Awww, Tony Tears...
Tony Tears' MySpace page is also perfect for this sort of depressed, lonely sounding music. It's really stark and plain, with a sort of electric purple/pink background color. He's got, like, only 66 friends (one of 'em us), and in his "top friends" listing he still has Tom. You know, Tom the founder of MySpace, who is automatically your first and only friend when you first sign up, but then of course you remove Tom 'cause he's not actually someone you know or care about... But lonely Tony, grateful for Tom's friendship, keeps him around.
So, anyway, to answer your question, this is some sort of underground doom metal, but also Italian in that spooky proggy soundtracky way, so it's kind of like Goblin crossed with St. Vitus, or Umberto teamed up with Trollman Av Ildtoppberg. Or, our early '70s proto-doom prog faves Jacula, channelled through someone's (Striborg's?) basement 4-track today.
Tony wrote the lyrics and the music, sings, and plays all the instruments... there's layers of fuzzy, foggy bass, gorgeously melancholic psychedelic electric guitar leads, eerie Goblin-y synths tinkling and droning, and a rhythmic foundation of slightly stumbling drum machine programming. Along with enough echo effects to give parts of this a bit of a dubby, or druggy, vibe.
Perhaps most crucial to our enjoyment of this are the vocals, which are spoken rather more than sung, and are all in Italian. Which works great, it's a language which even when simply spoken still sounds rather musical, we LOVE hearing Italian in this manner (we're reminded of old fave "Ordine Pubblico" by Starfuckers, especially by the track "Antichi Messagi" here), and we feel Tony's echoing, emotional chant-like recitations further enhance the hypnotic aspect of this lugubrious music. We can imagine Om fans zoning out to this quite easily!
Speaking of hypnotic, one of the times recently we had this playing in the store, a customer asked if it was some sort of new Circle side project... we can see why he thought it might be.
The overall atmosphere of this record is sooooooooo sad, yet somehow comforting. Even though we don't understand the Italian, this comes across as being very intimate & personal, and not just because of a certain sparseness to the mix that speaks to this being a one-man effort.
Tony Tears' repetitive lumbering heavy riffs and dark keyboard coloration, punctuated with mechanical, but not entirely predictable drum beats, awash with flangey, spacey effects and further embellished with his poetically mannered, incantatory Italian, has had quite an effect on the psyches of those here who can't help but keep this in heavy rotation. While rather raw and ragged in a charming DIY home-recorded way, the results are sheer beauty, weird weeping dreamlike beauty.
Definitely in the tradition of such strange Italian dark underground metal/prog/psych as Death S.S., Paul Chain, and Black Hole. But quite something else besides, with no prior interest in that tradition being necessary for appreciation of this. Being into doom metal isn't a prerequisite, as long as you like unusual music. Being into Goblin though might help.
Fears And Sensations In The Claustrophobic Mirror:
This is first official release of TT's debut demo from 2000, Fears And Sensations In The Claustrophobic Mirror, consisting of six tracks (the last an extended, 4 part suite lasting 15 minutes). Just like the Tony Tears album we made ROTW, it's a lo-fi morass of mesmeric doomed-out psychedelia, inspired by Paul Chain, Goblin, Black Hole, and other esoteric Italians, with wobbly keyboards, crude drum programming, chant-like and sometimes extremely distorted Italian-language vox, and of course heavy fuzzed out doom guitar riffage, the whole thing giving off uniquely eerie, eccentric vibes galore as each track slowly plods forth through a haze of hiss and murk.
We mentioned Umberto with Striborg-level production and performance in our review of Voci Dal Passato, and guess what, these earlier recordings are even MORE like that. It's a beautiful thing. Tracks like "The Return To The Underground Temple", mostly echo effected keyboards and weeping guitars over simple steady rhythms, have so much weird psychedelic atmosphere that Tony Tears should not be limited to a 'cult doom metal only' audience. Devoted dronologists should hear the quietly ominous "Forze Invisibli Bussano Al Cuore", the aforementioned four-part suite - it's pulsating electronic cosmic mystery that could be from some lost '70s krautrock lp or sinister soundtrack, at least until the super slowed down sludge part kicks in, with vocals and guitar sounding like they're recorded at quarter-speed or something, as if you're listening to it on a device with dying batteries.
We first got a couple of these in a few weeks back ('cause we were curious) and it didn't take long before we realized we had a Record Of The Week on our hands. It was obvious, really, since some of us here ending up getting so obsessed with this that it was just about ALL they'd listen to, for days, getting home after work and throwing it on, listening to it going to sleep at night, and when they'd get up in the morning, playing it at the store too... At first, though, we thought well heck maybe that's just us, maybe we're weird to like Tony Tears that much. But of course, we ARE weird, and so are a lot of AQ customers, and that's why this is definitely a good choice for Record Of The Week. Anything this hypnotic and dirgey and doomy and last but not least weird, has got AQ (and possibly you) written all over it.
We had to go to some trouble to acquire enough of these to list, contacting Tony Tears via MySpace, importing copies from Italy, getting all the cds we could lay our hands on. Which means we may or may not be able to get more when we run out, and if we can, it will certainly take a while, so be forewarned...
Tony Tears? So what IS that, you ask? Actually when we first saw the name, we thought it said Ebony Tears, which is the name of another band. But no, it's Tony Tears, as in a guy named Tony, last name Tears. And the "band" is indeed just the work of one man, whose (we presume) stage name gives this its monicker. How perfect is that, a mournful Italian doom metaller named Tony Tears? Already you feel sorry for him. Awww, Tony Tears...
Tony Tears' MySpace page is also perfect for this sort of depressed, lonely sounding music. It's really stark and plain, with a sort of electric purple/pink background color. He's got, like, only 66 friends (one of 'em us), and in his "top friends" listing he still has Tom. You know, Tom the founder of MySpace, who is automatically your first and only friend when you first sign up, but then of course you remove Tom 'cause he's not actually someone you know or care about... But lonely Tony, grateful for Tom's friendship, keeps him around.
So, anyway, to answer your question, this is some sort of underground doom metal, but also Italian in that spooky proggy soundtracky way, so it's kind of like Goblin crossed with St. Vitus, or Umberto teamed up with Trollman Av Ildtoppberg. Or, our early '70s proto-doom prog faves Jacula, channelled through someone's (Striborg's?) basement 4-track today.
Tony wrote the lyrics and the music, sings, and plays all the instruments... there's layers of fuzzy, foggy bass, gorgeously melancholic psychedelic electric guitar leads, eerie Goblin-y synths tinkling and droning, and a rhythmic foundation of slightly stumbling drum machine programming. Along with enough echo effects to give parts of this a bit of a dubby, or druggy, vibe.
Perhaps most crucial to our enjoyment of this are the vocals, which are spoken rather more than sung, and are all in Italian. Which works great, it's a language which even when simply spoken still sounds rather musical, we LOVE hearing Italian in this manner (we're reminded of old fave "Ordine Pubblico" by Starfuckers, especially by the track "Antichi Messagi" here), and we feel Tony's echoing, emotional chant-like recitations further enhance the hypnotic aspect of this lugubrious music. We can imagine Om fans zoning out to this quite easily!
Speaking of hypnotic, one of the times recently we had this playing in the store, a customer asked if it was some sort of new Circle side project... we can see why he thought it might be.
The overall atmosphere of this record is sooooooooo sad, yet somehow comforting. Even though we don't understand the Italian, this comes across as being very intimate & personal, and not just because of a certain sparseness to the mix that speaks to this being a one-man effort.
Tony Tears' repetitive lumbering heavy riffs and dark keyboard coloration, punctuated with mechanical, but not entirely predictable drum beats, awash with flangey, spacey effects and further embellished with his poetically mannered, incantatory Italian, has had quite an effect on the psyches of those here who can't help but keep this in heavy rotation. While rather raw and ragged in a charming DIY home-recorded way, the results are sheer beauty, weird weeping dreamlike beauty.
Definitely in the tradition of such strange Italian dark underground metal/prog/psych as Death S.S., Paul Chain, and Black Hole. But quite something else besides, with no prior interest in that tradition being necessary for appreciation of this. Even moreso maybe than The Puritan album we ROTW'd last time, being into doom metal isn't a prerequisite, as long as you like unusual music. Being into Goblin though might help.
If we can persuade a ton of folks to buy this, hopefully that won't make Tony Tears any -less- unhappy, because we're looking forward to more from this miserable, mesmerizing, and altogether unique act... stay doomed Mr. Tears!
The amazing, beautiful, anarchic, DIY psych-folk-pop of Tony, Caro & John's terribly rare "All On The First Day" LP (originally privately released in an edition of just 100 copies) has now been revived on CD for, hopefully, a larger audience! This comes to us from the label that's been responsible for bringing us those fab "Love, Peace & Poetry" psychedelic rock compilations (y'know, the Latin American one, the Asian one, the Japanese one, etc.). Among the most recent installments in that series was a disc devoted to British psychedelic obscurities. One of that comp's highlights, we all agreed, was a cut by this trio. That track, the amazingly Neutral Milk Hotel-ish "There Are No Greater Heroes" appears here as well, on Shadoks' reissue of Tony, Caro & John's entire sole album, from 1972. Now, we know that a lot of the time it's true that a great track selected for a compilation doesn't a great album make from whence it came...after all, the compilers are likely to pick the BEST song off an album for their comp. So we were wary -- but curious -- when we heard this whole album was being reissued. Happily, there's actually a lot of other great songs on here besides "There Are No Greater Heroes", although that one still reminds us the most of Jeff Mangum's stuff. Taken together, Tony, Caro & John's songs manage to strike a balance between creepy melancholy and kaleidoscopic pysch silliness. Not only that, but they have more than just a nostaglic vibe going for them -- they are good songwriters/performers with some delightful, weird ideas. Fans of the Incredible String Band and other British hippie folk psych of the period definitely need to hear this. Kudos to Shadoks for digging this up, and doing such a nice job of it too. The booklet has some charming color photos of Tony, Caro and John in their garden, modeling the latest in hippy fashions circa '72. There's also complete lyrics and liner notes from the band, who are still active making music together! AND, five bonus tracks appended to the album make this an even nicer find, consisting of stuff from the period that didn't make it on to the original LP, but *should have* (unlike the general run of bonus tracks!).
Who or what is TOOG? The answer is simply the alter ego of Gilles Weinzaepflen. A gent from Paris. Warm vocals swoon over a keyboard-y electronic pop backdrop. Is it any surprise that this release finds its home on a label that also boasts Momus? Quirky sound effects, strange lyrical twists, a frail bare chest, not to mention song titles such as "Cyclope Haine" (Cyclopean-Hate), and "L'Amour Dentaire" (Dental Love)... you can tell they are frequent Momus musical co-conspirators.
Shagrat was a British psychedelic "mystic-rock" group formed by Steve Peregrine Took after he parted ways with Marc Bolan and Tyrannosaurus Rex. This is apparently Shagrat's complete output, compiled from scratchy acetates and so forth dating from 1970 and
We just looked back on past Tool reviews, and it seems like we're always defending them, or defending ourselves for loving them so much, but the more we've thought about it, the more it's become obvious that there's no need. Not at all. Not only does Tool not need us to defend them, they have tons of fans, sell millions of records, but they hardly qualify as a guilty pleasure at this point, other than for the fact that a bunch of dicks with backwards baseball caps and jacked up trucks love them. But those same dicks love Slayer too, but you don't see people embarrassed to love Slayer. And what's not to love here, lengthy epics, sludgy crunchy guitars, impossibly complex drumming, lurching and grooving, moody and so intense, creepy crawly vocals, this is some seriously dark and heavy shit. Maybe more so than a lot of 'heavy underground' bands. Plus Tool just seem super cool. They refuse to sell their tracks on iTunes, they spend years crafting epic sort-of-concept records, totally elaborate and complex, right down to the packaging. And holy shit, the packaging this time around is mind blowing. And mind you Tool have long championed the ultra deluxe packaging for their records, but this one is definitely the most outrageous. In fact it just might be the most amazing packaging we've ever see. When we cracked open the box we all gathered around and ooh'ed and aah'ed like kids on Christmas. What it is, is a super thick black plastic folder type sleeve, with two lenses embedded in the flap. When you open the sleeve, and check out the full color booklet each photo is split in two, two images side by side, and then you realize that it's a stereoscope and as you look through the lenses at the photos, they become strange 3-D tableau's, band photos are rife with tiny little details, ghosts in the background, strange items on the desk in the foreground, fire and smoke, other images are strange surreal juxtapositions and creepy Eastern psychedelic images, even the song titles are in 3-D!Ô
It's funny, but Tool are one of the few bands that almost everyone we know loves, customers, band members, folks who run labels, over the last week or two, lots of our 'underground music' pals have emailed or called to opine on the new Tool, as if that made perfect sense, and it kind of does. it's a little bit like somehow one of our own managed to crack the code and miraculously made it to the big time, and in their own way are subverting from within. When Opiate came out years back, we never would have thought that a band that dark and that weird would one day be mentioned in the same breath as Coldplay or U2. But it's gotta happen once in a while. And it's pretty great that if anything, Tool have not softened or mainstreamed at all, but maybe gotten more strange and more obstinate with age. Just like us.Ô
Unfortunately, we can't really discuss how fucking unbelievable this record is (and it is!) without first addressing the skeptics and the naysayers. I have long been a champion of Tool and urged people to check them out, regardless of their preconceived
Lateralus is dark and brooding, rhythmic and atonal. Beautifully complex, with insane time signatures, bizarre tunings and huge riffs. A doom rock epic, skillfully forced into some completely alien prog/metal/ambient shape. Tense and droning tribal workouts, pummelling double bass, chugging power chords, whispered feathery stretches of ambience, and great fucking songs. Misanthropic lyrics and amazing (sometimes shrieked, but more often sung) vocals. Ultra dynamic and staggeringly technical. Great parts are stretched to their breaking point, where they cease to be just great parts, and instead become torturously tense. And so satisfying.
Obviously, you already know whether you -think- you like or dislike Tool. But if you think you dislike Tool, maybe it's time to think again.
Tool is easily the best of all the so called "nu-metal" bands and like the Deftones seem to have been unfairly lumped in with the Korns and the Limp Bizkits. Tool have always had a pretty well developed aesthetic, in their music, their (lack of) image, and especially their videos. This DVD (or vhs tape if you're so inclined) collects all of their videos, and they are amazing. Futuristic surreal vignettes played out by tiny depressed sexless figures, traversing a dangerous and lonely world of living flesh and rotting appendages. Owing much to Svankmeyer and the Quay brothers, these videos are absolutely mesmerising, and Tool's weird syncopated depressia-rock underpins the dour goings on perfectly. There's also a whole disc of rarities, which is really great as well, but it's all about the videos.
After a long absence from the indie scene this former Tsunami and Simple Machines Records gal returns with a double cd. And seems like she's leaving the indie pop realm behind in favor of a decidedly more mature, accessible sound. Her low voice affects a world
Subtitled "Music for Mondophrenetic". Writer/musician Toop (you know him from The Wire and the various books and cd compilations he's done, as well as his own music) presents his latest piece of obtuse ambient / electronica. It begins with a series of inquisitive little sounds that could easily appear as the sonic punctuations in a drug commercial in the '80s -- Heartburn? (ping) Gastro-intestinal failure? (pling) Sweaty-palms? (plong) Try Xylatol! Not the most exciting way to start an album; but after this brief introduction, Toop's "37th Floor at Sunset" really gets interesting with long passages of sterile drones, topped with various communication tones (fax machine protocol announcements, data streaming, and assorted digital clicks) that ends up sounding like a more benevolent John Duncan or Hazard.
If you've ever taken an anthropology course in college, you should be familiar with the indigenous Yamomami people of the Amazon. A primitive stone-age tribe dwelling deep in the rainforest that has persisted into the modern day. They're fascinating to academic researchers and curious lay people alike, the subject of various books and documentaries, noted for such traits as their supposed propensity for violence, their communal living arrangements, consumption of the ashes of the bones of their dead, and hallucinogenic drug abetted shamanism.
Back in 1978, British musician/writer/theorist/recordist David Toop (you've likely read his pieces in The Wire or listened to one of his many carefully curated compilations) had the opportunity to travel to Venezuela to visit the Yanomami, which resulted in a privately-pressed lp of some of the ethnographic sound recordings he made on the expedition, released in a small edition in 1980 and never repressed. This double cd release expands upon that original lp, presenting a fuller selection, two discs' worth, of Toop's Yamomami recordings, wherein mostly unaccompanied human voices (that can sound far from human) chant and sing, imitating animals and speaking with spirits, alongside the jungle sounds of insects, birds, and moths. These healing rituals are certainly interesting from an anthropological point of view... but that's not really why we're listing this. The real reason we recommend it is just 'cause, anthropology aside, the tracks on here are some of the CRAZIEST SOUNDING SHIT we've ever heard. Utter insane gobbledy gook, to put it in perhaps less-than-PC terms. Seriously, just listen to the sound samples below, have you ever been that messed up? Grunts, growls, weird warble, bizarre babble, sudden screaming outbursts, mysterious mutter, squeals and whoops. So if you like fucked up sounds, you need some Yamomamis in your collection. Eye from the Boredoms has NOTHING on these guys. Played loud, these tracks would be perfect for anyone who wants to drive their unsuspecting spouse or housemates mad. And boy would they make good outgoing answering machine fodder. Ok, we know people don't have answering machines anymore, but this might be a good reason to sign up for a landline and go find one!!
Reason enough to buy this. That said, there's also much more to it than that, and of course you could get in deep, listening to this, reading along in the thick booklet of liner notes that Toop provides, putting you in the moment, there in the jungle, via his 1978 expedition diary, also referencing various surrealists, philosophers, Butoh dancers and avant-garde composers as he shares his thoughts and observations, pondering the meaning and wonder of it all... OR, like we said, just be astounded and amused and amazed by the freaky sounds of these shamans!!!
We've long been fans of Dale Flattum, as have you we're guessing, his musical resume is pretty impressive, even just considering it features late great SF noise rockers Steel Pole Bathtub, but then there's his various other groups, as well as solo and semi-solo projects, Milk Cult, Agent Nova, CC Nova, Novex as well as his most recent band The Nein, and that's just musically, all that time he's been creating some of the coolest visual art too. Art you've no doubt been exposed to, whether you realized it or not. Posters, flyers, record covers; his style raw and primitive, very DIY, black and white, photocopied clip art, all created under the alias Tooth. And much of his finest graphic art is collected here in this massive book, and holy cow is this a feast for the eyes, some of it's surreal, some super simple and striking, collages, original illustrations, purloined and recontextualized images, and our favorite, his illustrations made from super simple geometric shapes, deftly cut and arranged into figures and characters, a few images here that will immediately make you realize all the different places you've been exposed to Tooth's visual propaganda. We've been poring over this book, and every time we crack it open we see something new, or discover some hidden details, the art managing to be totally visually arresting, sometimes ridiculously simple, but always with more going in that immediately meets the eye, the magic of Tooth we presume. Most record nerds like us will definitely dig this stuff, as much of it you've scene, and the stuff you haven't will push the same buttons as the stuff you already know and love. Heck, there's even a flyer Tooth made for aQ when we hosted a Milk Cult / Agent Nova instore way back in 1997! And as if that weren't enough (and it is, believe us!) the book also comes with a cd compilation, featuring tracks from Flattum's various musical projects, all of the above mentioned outfits, from the sample laced, surprisingly poppy noise rock of Steel Pole Bath Tub (8 tracks!), to the quirky home brewed pop of Novex, all acoustic guitars, programmed beats, crooned vox and random crackle and hiss, the weird cinematic lo-fi experiments of CC Nova, the dreamy sunshiney fuzz pop of Novex, the glitch electro gloom pop of Agent Nova, and finally the electronic laced weirdo pop of The Nein, reminds us how great pretty much all of Flattum's bands were, and has us definitely wanting to hear more of The Nein.
Needless to say, WAY recommended, visually AND sonically, a retro flashback for old folks like us, but a good way for a new generation to hear and see what they may have missed, and realize, that all this stuff looks and sounds as good as it ever did!
Unloading The Sun is both the premier release on new SF label Grand Gallop Music and the first solo cd by Luke Top. Perhaps you're already familiar with this gent as he has also been known to play in The Cave-Ins (plural) and Ceramic Isles, and perform on the road with Cass McCombs. For his debut he keeps things all breezy and easy-going. Unloading The Sun is filled with eight nicely crafted mid-tempo pop tunes featuring muted horns and drowsy lilting vocals quite akin to those of Rufus Wainwright. A well timed, mellow, wind-down-your-summer kind of album. Limited edition of 300 packaged in a cool 3-color screenprinted cardboard case.
Don't know too much about these guys, they've had a bunch of records out, but somehow this is the first one we've heard, and it didn't take long for us to realize we had really missing out. Haunting, creepy, dirge-y psychedelia, thick undulating bass buzz, effects drenched guitar shimmer, spidery sitar like melodies, abstract bits of drum skitter and sizzle, processed ghostlike vox, all wrapped in a muddy murky production, blurred into a swirling cloud of dronepsych bliss out. The flipside is even dirgier, with the bass run through a wah wah pedal, the spectral voices wilder and more witchy, a lurching, lumbering dirge, a washed out and woozy soft noise lysergic drift, the guitars jagged and fragmented, notes and bits of melody draped over that grinding buzzing groove, totally dark and ominous and hypnotic.
LIMITED TO 345 COPIES!!!
This tireless veteran DJ is certainly no stranger to SF party-goers or regulars to his weekly Red Wine Social. The omnipresent DJ TophOne (psst, not to be confused with the other Bay Area Toph aka Gold Chains!) has released a mix cd-r so that you can take the good times home with you! How 'bout a peek at what he's spinning? It really runs the good time gamut from current locals such as Lyrics Born and Paradise Boys to classic rock Steely Dan, John Cougar Stevie Winwood, Eddie Money and Queen to a multitude of other tracks by other DJs such as DJ Zeph, DJ Shadow, DJ Marz, DJ Smash and Z-Trip. 33 tracks total.
