Thrill Jockey seem to be snapping up lots of underground faves, Barn Owl, Eternal Tapestry, Wooden Shjips, Sun Araw, and now Tunnels. We have to say we were a bit surprised, as Tunnels seemed WAY underground, but it makes sense as Tunnels, aka Nicholas Bindeman, is also a member of Eternal Tapestry (as well as a sometime member of Jackie-O Motherfucker). And we were also surprised when we threw this on, cuz the sound here is nothing like the Tunnels of old. All of the various cd-r's we'd reviewed in the past from Bindeman had been super minimal dronemusic, or occasionally tripped out dritfy psychedelia, but The Blackout threw us for a loop. Not sure if there's an element of bandwagoning going on, but the NEW Tunnels sound is strangely similar to the NOW sound, a sort of retro gloomy gothy electro wave, or cold wave, or synth wave, or whatever you want to call it. Apparently Tunnels' new sound began a while back, as a sort of primitive lo-fi Suicide live experiment, but eventually evolved into this, a sound we dig for sure, and one that seems like it would have been right at home on Sacred Bones or Captured Tracks. And to be fair, for all of its similarities to other modern retrowave outfits, Tunnels influences seem to go back further, the sound more machine like, more classic industrial. The label mentions Throbbing Gristle, and we definitely hear some of that, we also hear a little Gary Numan on opener "Crystal Arms", and a little Devo on "Volt 1979", but all via some lost eighties new wave. And really once our initial shock faded (we were expecting some dreamy psychedelic dronemusic after all), this record really began to grow on us, twisted and Teutonic, gloomy and gothy, and pretty dang catchy and poppy. And poppy is the key for us. For all the industrial crunch and old school electronic bleep and bloop, the icy sung/spoken vox, it's the low slung basslines and the crazy catchy hooks that go with them that transform this from some vanity experiment into a seriously killer chunk of retro industrial electro pop!
We got super into Portland one man drone outfit Tunnels a while back, and have tried to carry everything we could get our hands on, check out all the rave reviews on the aQ site, so we went ahead and ordered a bunch of copies of three new releases, all put out by the band, all hand made, the covers glued and taped, all fantastic and beautiful, dark and droney, mysterious and murky. But before we could review them and list them, we started selling them like crazy, in the store, and to eagle eyed mailorder customers who spied them on the in stock not yet reviewed list (always check there!), so much so that we were soon down to a number too few to review on the new arrivals list.
Unfortunately, now, all three of them are out of print, and we have the last remaining 8 or so copies of each. So fair warning, judging from how quick they went in the store, odds are these will be gone in a flash. And we can absolutely NOT get more once we run out, as they were limited to 50 or 70 or some crazy small amount.
And for those of you new to the sound of Tunnels, well, the name is your first clue, it's dark and mysterious, but shot through with a warm distant glow, part abstract ambience, part minimal drone, part drifty krautrock, dreamy and washed out and hypnotic, sometimes building into huge swells of low end, other times shimmering ghostlike. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. It's high time somebody released a proper record. But for now, these cd-r's will have to hold us over.
And again, out of print, last copies ever, act fast, and all that...
We got super into Portland one man drone outfit Tunnels a while back, and have tried to carry everything we could get our hands on, check out all the rave reviews on the aQ site, so we went ahead and ordered a bunch of copies of three new releases, all put out by the band, all hand made, the covers glued and taped, all fantastic and beautiful, dark and droney, mysterious and murky. But before we could review them and list them, we started selling them like crazy, in the store, and to eagle eyed mailorder customers who spied them on the in stock not yet reviewed list (always check there!), so much so that we were soon down to a number too few to review on the new arrivals list.
Unfortunately, now, all three of them are out of print, and we have the last remaining 8 or so copies of each. So fair warning, judging from how quick they went in the store, odds are these will be gone in a flash. And we can absolutely NOT get more once we run out, as they were limited to 50 or 70 or some crazy small amount.
And for those of you new to the sound of Tunnels, well, the name is your first clue, it's dark and mysterious, but shot through with a warm distant glow, part abstract ambience, part minimal drone, part drifty krautrock, dreamy and washed out and hypnotic, sometimes building into huge swells of low end, other times shimmering ghostlike. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. It's high time somebody released a proper record. But for now, these cd-r's will have to hold us over.
And again, out of print, last copies ever, act fast, and all that...
Another dreamy drone document from the burgeoning "Portland Psychedelic-Drone underground", this time from one of the�Jackie O Motherfuckers,�Nicholas Samuel Bindeman, who touches on lots of droney sounds we love: the spacey krautrock drift of Expo '70, the shimmering high end ur-drone of Sunroof!, the ultra minimal murmur of Coleclough and Chalk, the muted melodic smear of Fear Falls Burning, but give it all his own personal twist, rendering all of his influences in soft focus hues and indistinct blurs.
The opening track is all�long slow slithery swells of gently pulsing ghost like shimmer, wrapped in a twinkling cloud of glistening FX sparkles and soft breathy whir, underneath it all, haunting minor key melodies drift and twist, almost entirely obscured by the foreground's static beauty. Track two is more thick and gritty, channeling some Stars Of The Lid, with deep mournful sonic drifts, minor key laments stretched into longform soundscapes, dense and lush, a burnished pulsing almost glowing super dramatic slow build.�
Track three begins almost inaudibly with barely there subsonic vibrations, that gradually grow into sprawling black tendrils, over which glistening high end scrapes and creaks are blurred into wispy clouds of bowed metal and struck bells, metallic and delicate. Finally, the closer,� a warm billowy barely moving swirl of deep, soft tones, delicate crepuscular curlicues, floating weightless in some clouded landscape, gauzy and dreamlike, a disembodied journey through some�vaporous soundworld. So lovely.�
Released on Yarnlazer, one of our new favorite labels, home of Acre, Ghosting, Bonecloud, Valet, Dark Yoga and more...
Packaged in cool hand screened sleeves, with photocopied insert.�
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
Released last year on Static Caravan in the UK, and only now re-issued stateside on cd by Ace Fu, we've been wanting to review this for a while, but only recently were we able to finally get enough to list.
Imagine if the Beta Band, instead of following in Beck's funky folk footsteps, were born of the current underground cd-r culture, their electronica tinged folk more a product of New Weird America and musical compatriots like Devendra Banhart than MTV ot the NME. Thus, Tunng. Rich and lush strummed acoustic guitars, gorgeous harmony vocals, droney and drifting, a crackling campfire intimacy, glitchy skittery beats, strange found sounds, hiccuping loops, skipping cds, an unlikely combination, but the result is totally amazing. Like a Boards Of Canada produced Vetiver record, or the Feathers Family recording for Warp, this is classic sounding seventies British folk, filtered through a damaged off kilter electronica kaleidoscope. Banjos collide with shuffling muted drum machines, soft tonal chimes drift over sweetly fingerpicked guitars, soft hushed vocals emote over a smattering of glitches and squelches, a gorgeous guitar figure will begin to skip, faster and faster, smearing into an ambient soundscape that underpins a whispery sadboy croon and delicate shimmering chimes. So totally lovely. This has been one of our most listened to records lately, check out the sound samples and you'll immediately understand why.
Another new release brought to us by Finland's Ektro, the label run by our pal Jussi of Circle. Ektro's releases are always graphically quite nice and musically quite adventurous and unpredictable, although Jussi's interest in prog and psych usually is evident. In this case, we have a percussion extravaganza from one Janne Tuomi (currently, a member of Circle and various underground Finnish improv ensembles). It's mostly percussion, anyway -- the list of instruments in the cd booklet reads thusly: "drumset, cymbals, percussion, tam-tams, opera gongs, changgo, pandiero, raagini-pro, pocket trumpet, voice". With these implements, and "no overdubs, no editing", Tuomi has created five instrumental pieces (not conventional songs, we mean), bridging free jazz and Finnish free-folk. Carefully constructed, rising and falling, with hazy drone and dramatic clatter, soothing bells and rattling sticks...not a noisy racket at all, but a personal sound-world quite listenable for something that falls into the 'solo percussion' category.
This is the second half of legendary Norwegian pop-metal-sleaze merchants Turbonegro's denim and leather, head banging, fist pounding (pun indeed intended) one two reissue punch, the first half being their brilliant breakthrough full-length Ass Cobra. Apocalypse Dudes, recorded in '97 was the maybe-even-better follow-up. Like a Tom Of Finland drawing come to life, Turbonegro channel the spirit of Kiss and Judas Priest, mix in some Alice Cooper and stadium COCK rock, and top it all off with some big moustaches, assless chaps, tight denim pants, sailor outfits and wickedly funny songs: 'Rock Against Ass', 'Don't Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker!', 'Rendezvous With Anus'. Fucking funny and brilliant and totally rocking! Genius!
Desperately needed re-issue of one of the more amazing discs from Norway's kings of gay-sailor-leather-pants-moustache-rides-metallic-punk-rock-sleaze, 1996's "Ass Cobra". How can this band not be your favorite band?!?! They are everything Kiss should have been, and pretended to be (or not to be in terms of sexuality). Big and noisy and glammy and catchy and so fucking funny. C'mon...Ass Cobra? Best album title ever maybe? And how about these song titles: The Midnight Nambla, Denim Demon, I Got Erection, Hobbit Motherfuckers! But don't think for a minute they're some kind of joke band, although the jokes do flow freely. Turbonegro totally have the chops and they completely shred. Heavy metal meets poppy punk, all wrapped up in tight denim and sweaty, studded leather, and ready to rough you up and spank you silly.
Speaking of Ass Cobra, one of Cup's fondest (!?) live show spectacles was seeing Turbonegro at the old Chameleon bar here on Valencia Street back in '97. They pummelled the eyes and eardrums of all in attendance with their unique stage presence. The bizarre pinnacle of the eve came when we heard the crowd gasp (yes, it was audible above the din of the band). We looked up at the stage just in time to see the lead singer turn around, bare ass to the audience, with a bundle (not just one or two) of lit roman candles... er... in there. Jaw-dropping and absolutely unforgettable.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In the eternal quest of the best stoner/cock rock lyric, Turbonegro's neanderthal lyricism may actually match that of Monster Magnet: "I gotta headache in my pants" vs. "it takes a fistful of medication just to keep it in my pants"... I don't know, you be the judge. Yet beyond their wordsmithery, Turbonegro's cock rock is cock rock made by men who love cock. The Scandinavian Village People of Hard Rock drive through heavy heavy heavy Sabbath riffs and stoner grooves that Man's Ruin would kill for, plus song titles like "Midnight NAMBLA", "Rendezvous With Anus", "I Got Erection", and "Sailor Man".
Norway, home to so much damn fine music that we love love love... from the blissful pop lads in Kings Of Convenience to the bleak experimental dronings of Deathprod to the blackest metal of Enslaved, Immortal and Satyricon to the self-proclaimed deathpunk of Turbonegro.
Darkness Forever is one of the five new reissues from that mighty band. It's their live album from 1999. The other reissues we have are Apocalypse Dudes, Ass Cobra, Hot Cars & Spent Contraceptives, Never Forever. While 1998's Apocalypse Dudes and 1996's Ass Cobra are definitely our faves, this one sure captures the band's trademark live lewd looseness.
Here's what we said the first time around: In the eternal quest of the best stoner/cock rock lyric, Turbonegro's Neanderthal lyricism may actually match that of Monster Magnet: "I gotta headache in my pants" vs. "it takes a fistful of medication just to keep it in my pants"... I don't know, you be the judge. Yet beyond their wordsmithery, Turbonegro's cock rock is cock rock made by men who love cock. The Scandinavian Village People of Hard Rock drive through heavy heavy heavy Sabbath riffs and stoner grooves that Man's Ruin would kill for.
Psst, the other reissues we have are Ass Cobra, Apocalypse Dudes, Hot Cars & Spent Contraceptives, and Never Is Forever.
Along with our two favorites, we've got a couple more Turbonegro reissues for you to get down with!
This one's their 1992 debut album. It shows these Norwegian death punk hellions in their infancy. So much looser and more grunge-y than what they would eventually become. 'Though it is their first album, it isn't where we'd recommend you start your Turbonegro schooling if you've never heard them before. Hop on their jet-fueled rawk(et) launch pad with Apocalypse Dudes or Ass Cobra first! This reissue includes four bonus tracks.
Psst, the other reissues we have are Ass Cobra, Apocalypse Dudes, Darkness Forever: Between The Lines In Hamburg And Oslo, and Never Is Forever.
More turbo! More negro! The reissues of this wild band's albums keep on coming! This is 1994's Never Is Forever. On the opening track they try to trick us with the sensitive guy ploy (heh heh, like any self-respecting badboys), but then they punch the rock button, and awaaay we go... Aaaiiieeeee! isn't it funny when a song by one band will stir fond familiar fuzzies in your heart for another band, but that's what happened with the third song on this Turbonegro album... it made us yearn for Rocket From The Crypt! Y'all know that our penchant for all things Norwegian and blistering yet catchy rock bands is pretty darn strong, and if you whip 'em all together with a twisted sense of humor like that, well, that pretty much seals the deal. If you're a Turbonegro neophyte, we'd recommmend checking out Apocalypse Dudes and Ass Cobra albums first. Then once you've been indoctrinated, head over this-a-way!
This reissue includes three bonus tracks (one alternate mix and two studio outtakes).
Psst, the other reissues we have are Ass Cobra, Apocalypse Dudes, Darkness Forever: Between The Lines In Hamburg And Oslo, and Hot Cars & Spent Contraceptives.
If you've been itchin' for a little Scandanavian action, this might be your time to splurge. Happy to see that their wardrobe's still the same, their fucked-up Village People macho-femme blend of fashion 'touchstones' including a corpse painted metal dude, leather daddy, sailor... and tons of lipgloss, but over the past few albums their sound has simmered down from an unpredictable raging cock-rock tirade terrorizing the neighborhood into a decidedly classic (still cock-) rock party. Now, we've got nothing against the good times -- if we had our choice of who we'd want spearheading the festivities it'd be these guys for sure! -- but we sure do miss the badass Turbonegro of old. Apart from the swear words (and copious amount of lip gloss), there's really not much else that's gonna offend your parents. Damn! Nevertheless, the dozen tracks (including "Intro: The Party Zone") more than prove that this band are fully entitled to their all-access pass to the album's title. Oh yeah, and if there was any lingering doubt about these guys' deep appreciation for pop music, consider it toast. They flew Redd Kross' Steve McDonald overseas to co-produce, no less! This domestic release comes with a bonus DVD, which seems to be a Hank Von Helvete, workout video, we kid you not. It doesn't even really seem like a joke, which is maybe what makes it so funny.
These Norwegian bad boys are back, after a several year hiatus, with a new album (and a tour with Queens Of The Stone Age!). We love Turbonegro -- doesn't everyone? -- but we have heard some negative comments about this new album. And we have to agree to some degree, that "Scandinavian Leather" is just not nearly as dark as we've come to expect from these denim demons. Some of it could pass for MTV pop-punk until you pay attention to the deviant/innuendo-filled lyrics -- actually, maybe this *will* get on MTV, in which case it's wonderfully subversive. Now, Turbonegro's never been a metal band, but their Alice Cooper influence has led them down some darker alleys in the past than what you get here. But, dammit, it IS damn catchy and (of course) campy and also boasts excellent cover art from ex-Plastic Ono Band drummer Klaus Voormann... And what they really sound like is KISS. So, no complaints. And more power to 'em that they apparently got a Levi's sponsorship -- that denim cape the singer's wearing is sweet!
MPEG Download: "Sell Your Body (To The Night)" [/audio/turbonegrosell.mp3]
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This one is for all the folks who bought the Botanist 2cd on tUMULt, who have been hankering for another record of botany themed black metal. This one comes from the oddly monikered Turdus Merula (which is the taxonomic term for a kind of bird, the Common Blackbird), who are a Swedish one WOMAN black metal band, a rarity in black metal for sure, and what makes it even more rare is that this record is all about hallucinogenic and poisonous plants, which makes sense as the title, Herbarium, is of course, a collection of dried plants and flowers, and sonically, well, that's where the comparisons to Botanist end, although the opening track all old timey piano, wreathed in echo and washed out, is to these ears, quite evocative of some old botanist in his greenhouse, but that image soon fades about 2 minutes in when the guitars swoop in, a mournful downtuned buzz, depressive and dark, we were prepared for some plodding miserablism, when all of sudden, POW, the song explodes in a frenzy of super blown out in-the-red chug and churn and pound, the sound so heavy and loud and thick, the vocals a raspy wail buried beneath the furious sonic assault, the sound is pretty incredible, really powerful and thick, there's definitely a Burzum vibe, but TM's sound is so much more dense, and almost noisy, the riffing shifts occasionally to something more melancholy, but quickly returns to the black buzz crush.
The Burzum (and Xasthur to a degree) comparisons become a bit more noticeable as the record progresses, the second track is a pounding midtempo buzzscape, all minor key, with lush layered guitars, and moaning distant melodies, the guitar drenched in cool effects, that sound a little like the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" but only in the way they pulse, creating a weird rhythmic effect, and as the record progresses, in some weird way it gets prettier and less heavy, with the second to last track, an epic nearly 14 minute sprawl sounding more like a sort of blackened buzz pop, with a bit of jangle and melody mixed into the swirly buzz, and that's not to mention the cool cinematic chamber music interlude about halfway through. The track before too is a droned out bit of mostly solo guitar, that only picks up drums about 4 minutes in, and continues on as a sort of moody downer pop dirge until finally the vocals surface, and the track becomes much more blackened, although without ever completely ditching the moodiness that came before. And after a final brief bit of blast and buzz, the record finishes off with another stretch of creepy, cinematic echo drenched, darkly distorted piano, a perfect finish, to a killer chunk of atmospheric depressive blackness that we've been digging way more than we expected to...
Second record from this nature obsessed one woman black metal band from Sweden, whose last record, the flora focused Herbarium, paralleled another record we were freaking out about at the time, a double disc from one man, drums and dulcimer black metal weirdo Botanist (released on Andee's tUMULt label), the two 'groups' both with unique sounds, and both with a fixation on plantlife, nature, and man and womankind's perilous place in the the ever evolving ecosystem, one in which it seemed both groups were convinced plants would eventually, and perhaps rightfully take over.
While the first Turdus Merula record was most definitely beholden to Burzum and Xasthur and the like, it definitely infused a sound we already dug with all sorts of cool sonic weirdness, whether it was blown out drones, or weird almost poppy jangle, it all resulted in a record that managed to be both grim and black, but also plenty tripped out and damaged sounding. On Mentem Recipere, while some of the elements from the first record are still present, the vibe overall is much darker, more doomy and dismal, the atmospheres more bleak and harrowing, there's a dedication in the booklet, to a lost loved one, and it doesn't seem like it's reading to much into the sound here to realize it must have been influenced by that loss. Opening with a dark balladic creep, all reverbed piano and hushed ethereal vox, it's not until the second track that the metal kicks in, and even then it doesn't so much kick in as slowly ooze and drift, the guitars woozy and washed out, the melodies minor key, the vocals tortured, the buzz blurred into smears of black thrum, eventually the song does actually begin to blast and buzz, but even then, while the drums and vox intensify, the guitars seem to continue on all haunting and soft focus, which makes the sound less black, and more sort of grey, almost in a strange way, warm and soothing, tranced out and mesmeric. Which is pretty much how the whole record plays out. The sound shifting from doomic plod, to loping crush, to blasting blackness, but all the while, the sound, the mood, the vibe, remains haunting and melancholic, that's not to say that it's not heavy, or buzzy or black, it most definitely is. But it seems that the underlying emotion give the sound a mournful quality that makes it not only darkly personal, but also keeps it from sounding like every other black metal record out there, which it absolutely does not.
Fans of the first record will want this too, but anyone into gorgeous depressive buzz and heavy psychedelic blackness will definitely dig big time.
Guys (girls?) here's your fantasy '70s Swedish hippy folksinging girlfriend! The I Retur cd collects the best, we presume, of Turid Lundqvist's three elpees: Vittras Visor from 1971, Bilder from '73, and 1975's Tredje Dagen. Singing mostly in Swedish, sometimes in English, her sweet, high voice graces 21 tracks in total here, which feature a variety of instrumental backing from acoustic guitar, mandolin, tabla, contrabass, trumpet, and more, played by Turid and fellow musicians who I think were members of the psych-rock-folk band Kebnekajse, with whom she also sang. But it's really her voice that's the drawing card here, infusing these dreamy compositions with the beauty of birdsong. There's no freaky electronics like on that Linda Perhacs record, or super old-timey stuff like Shirley Collins. Just straight up singer-songwriter folk music with that mystical '70s vibe.
Have you perchance seen the quite excellent Swedish film Together, the one from a few years back that was set in a '70s commune? Well there's a lot of great music on the soundtrack, and in one scene the characters listen to a Turid LP. We've got friends who've been looking for her stuff ever since! Also on the soundtrack was some International Harvester (same band as Trad Gras Och Stenar), and a while ago I asked one of the Trad Gras Och Stenar guys if he'd seen the film and what he thought of it. He said he liked it, but said that for him those days were (even) more experimental and radical, that the film didn't capture all the "dangerous and dark things going on" at the time. Certainly there's not much dangerous and dark (though sometimes extremely emotional) about Turid's beautiful music! It's the flowers and sunshine of the era you'll hear here.
The song "The Ancient Forest Of Elves" is this album's claim to fame, at least in our bizarre personal realm of metallic ridiculousness. Background: Luca Turilli is the guitarist for Italian pomp-metal band Rhapsody (who play a frilly, keyboard dominated brand of Euro-fantasy speed metal that they refer to as "Epic Hollywood Metal", the Hollywood part I guess because of the resemblance to overblown fantasy film scores). This is his solo album, and it's of a similar bent (with better vocals than that of Rhapsody, actually). Swords, magic, dragons, that sort of thing. And of course elves, and their ancient forest. I have several friends, who, after encountering this track on free promotional tape found at a metal record shop (Hellion) in Germany, became obsessed with it. The sheer silliness of the title and music (the latter centering on a catchy and absurd keyboard motif) caused much merriment--and still does. Meanwhile, we've discovered that "The Ancient Forest of Elves" is a also a favorite with our friends at the always-wonderful and oh-so-avant garde WFMU radio station in New Jersey. So, now we've tracked the cd down and proudly offer it to our customers, who we're sure will soon be humming along triumphantly to "The Ancient Forest of Elves" at home.
Latest blast of symphonic power metal pomp from the man behind one of our favorite power metal tunes ever "Ancient Forest Of Elves". Turilli fronts the Hollywood cinematic power metal troop Rhapsody, but here, he's embraced some scarily new age cheesiness to go with the epic chugga chugga. Heavy on the synths, a bit of crooning, and dolphins swimming in space artwork. It has it's moments for sure, but it's definitely no "Ancient Forest Of Elves"!
Vocals? Who needs 'em? Not Turing Machine. This exceptional instrumental mathrock band with members of Pitchblende and Vineland gives nods to Shellac, Phil Manley (Trans Am, Golden) and Unwound. A big store favorite. Don't miss it.
If you go way back in the aQuarius list archive, you'll find us raving about Turing Machine years and years ago, and while that was before our reviews got to be so long, it didn't take a huge review to explain that they were one of our favorite instrumental post rock bands. We compared them to Polvo and Drive Like Jehu, Pitchblende, Shellac, Unwound, their sound was mathy and propulsive, driving and complex, a modern day kraut / prog combo that made it all seem effortless, from darkly hypnotic minimal grooves, to wildly dense almost metallic heaviness. Much of their magic was the incredible drumming of Jerry Fuchs, who tragically passed away a few years ago.
This album, recorded prior to Fuch's death, is the first Turing Machine release since their Zwei record in 2004, that long hiatus in no small part due to Fuchs' extracurricular drumming activity, which included a whole bunch of dance outfits, !!!, the Juan Maclean, LCD Soundsystem, even Massive Attack, and all that dance music drumming definitely had a huge effect on Turing Machine, who were no longer just a nineties style math/post rock outfit, but instead had become something much more. Fear not though, there's plenty of awesomely motorik post rock jamming, it's just that a lot of the time, there are also pulsing synths, or electronics. But just check out album opener, "Yeah, C'mon", which starts out like some strangely percolating new wave jam, the drums almost disco-y, the driving synths, but as the guitars come in, and coalesce into riffs, the song begins to take on rock form, until finally, exploding into some seriously fierce and driving post rock, wrapped in wild guitar squiggles and all sorts of random electronics, and the drumming, fucking KICK ASS.
"Lazy Afternoon Of The Jaguar" is equal parts laid back dance groove and motorik krautfunk, the guitars looped in woozy psychedelic swirls around the super tight bass/drums foundation. "Slave To The Algorithm" is total electro kraut-funk, Fuchs doing his best robo-beat accompanied by all manner of pulsing synths and weirdly processed guitars. The title track sounds like "Legs" by ZZ Top, stripped down and given a cosmic psychedelic space rock makeover, the synths again in full effect, but the drums locked tight, and the guitars loose and spidery and wildly psychedelic. "If It's Gone (It's On)" adds vocals to the mix, and lays down a serious slab of crunchy, fuzzy, guitar driven post-punk electro-funk, and record closer "Bovina 2/23/08" finds the band in full on heart of the sun mode, effortlessly channeling the sort of FX drenched space rock psychedelic freakout that should most definitely endear them to fans of White Hills, the Heads and the like.
The return of one of our favorite instrumental post rock bands! Made up of ex-members of Pitchblende and Vineland you can pretty much guess what this is all about. But you might not guess just how goddamn great this band is. Super rhythmically complex and surprisingly catchy, and darn proggy to boot. Turing Machine take simple catchy riffs and melodic motifs and then twist them all up and turn them into totally fascinating, but completely convoluted musical journeys, full of surprising melodic detours and propulsive hypnotic rhythmic workouts. Like a modern day, super kick ass krautrock band. Fans of Polvo, Drive Like Jehu, Pitchblende and all things post and prog and rock should definitely check these guys out!
Beyond Painting displays another facet of the enigmatic Robert Turman. Way back in the late '70s, he founded the seminal noise project NON with Boyd Rice, who soon adopted the name for his own work, with Turman seemingly disappearing from the public realm for well over three decades. There were just a smattering of self-released cassettes which emerged in the '80s, but it wasn't until John Elliott unearthed the beautifully hypnotic patter of Turman's 1981 cassette Flux on Spectrum Spools, that people began to really pay attention to Turman's work. Then the slew of Turman 'reissues' began to emerge, although it's really hard to call them reissues as the original editions were utterly minuscule. Beyond Painting dates back to 1990, but wasn't released for another 20 years as a self-released cd-r in an edition of just 100 copies; and thankfully gets a proper 2lp reissue via Fabrica. While Turman is often associated with noise culture, all of the work we've been able to hear (outside the early Non recordings) has steered clear of an aggressive tone with Flux adopting an introspective minimalism and with Beyond Painting taking a somber approach to ambient music with a distinctly postindustrial touch (e.g. Zoviet France, Cranioclast, etc.).
Spectral hues and back-masked synth notes interlock for the introductory "Soft Self Portrait" which ends up being austere, bleak, and self-negating if in fact it is a self portrait. A slow-motion, post-punk dubby bass line girds the stalker atmosphere of "Al Qa'ida" with its buzzing, harmonic synth lines. The name of this track in 1990 wouldn't have had the cultural weight that it does now, but there is a desperation and abjection to the desolate melodies that pushes through the lens of 9/11 right on through today. Another masterfully done piece is found in "Relux" whose eerily sci-fi / narcoleptic melodies predating what Aphex did on Selected Ambient Works II, but way creepier, or even what Burzum did on the ambient half of Filosofem. Yeah, it's that good! The second LP holds more of a Zeit era Tangerine Dream vibe with deep cosmic swells and hypnotic patterning through resonant tones and melancholy coloring. Who knows what other hidden recordings may emerge from the vaults of Robert Turman? Please keep 'em coming!
Robert Turman may be more well known in early industrial noise circles as a part of Boyd Rice's NON project (contributing to the seminal conceptual noise single "Knife Ladder" with its additional holes drilled into the vinyl) as well as other obscure noise groups such as Z.O. Voider and Comfort Control, but this recording shows a completely different side of this multi-instrumentalist composer's sound.
Flux, recorded in 1981 and originally released on cassette, is a series of long form compositions of lo-fi meditative minimalist grandeur, a home-brewed study of new-age avant-classical aspirations made through a distinct DIY sensibility. Reminding us a lot of the spacious dreaminess of Anton Batagov, Turman uses piano, kalimba, a rudimentary drum machine and tape loops to make slow-paced tones and textural phrases that eventually repeat, and form drifting mesmerizing patterns. Eventually the looping aspects of the various compositional components begin to gently overlap, causing the sounds to shift subtly and collapse on each other. A mysterious vibrational resonance flows throughout, created both through the hypnotic longevities of the pieces but also through the low fidelity manipulation of overtones. Rough button clicks and other sonic debris of the recording process occasionally cause crackles and distortions, emphasizing their home recorded origins. The choice of instrumentation and their processional pacing give off an Eastern influenced quality, but it also shows a deliberate effort to push the boundaries of minimalism within a challenging limitation of sonic palette and available technology. It's this restraint that makes this incredibly beautiful. Hats off to Spectrum Spools for allowing this to see the light of day again!
And for all of you non-vinyl folks, a cd version will be available soon!
The conception for Spirals Of Everlasting Change began in 1982 for Robert Turman - best known as the founder of NON with Boyd Rice and to a lesser extent within the obscurant noise project Z.O. Voider. He envisioned two separate cassettes to be played simultaneously on two decks with the languid ambient tones of one cassette lashed across the harsher industrial-klank rhythms of the other. By 1987, he reworked all of the material into a single mix again sprawled across two cassettes, with the dreamy, zoner tracks corralled onto one tape and the more dissonant pieces on the other. He released Spirals Of Everlasting Change in two formats in the late '80s, once as a cassette inside a 5" reel-to-reel tape box and again as part of the Chapter Eleven anthology comprised of eight cassettes that documented all of the recorded output up to 1988. So far, only the seminal Flux album (which got reissued on Spectrum Spools a couple years ago) and Spirals Of Everlasting Change have been resuscitated from the dustbin of terminal obscurity, as Chapter Eleven is downright impossible to find. We can hope that a reissue campaign of all of those recordings will eventually materialize; but until that happens, we'll definitely jump at the chance for another archival Turman recording.
The titular tracks are the more abrasive pieces, with the ready-made loops sounding very similar to what Boyd Rice delivered on his infamous Black Album of delirious repetitions for tape-gyrating dervishes and maddeningly insistent phrases that may have been culled from thrift store belly-dancing records. "Lonesome Echo" and "Lower World" are eerily prescient of the work that William Basinski became famous for - lilting melodic passages generated from simple overlapping loops that have a ghostly recollection of a forgotten past, smudged in a kirlian glow of distressed chromium oxide and industrial dub debris. This double lp set of Spirals Of Everlasting Change is super limited, coming out of Luxembourg in an edition of 289 copies, of which we only have a few!
Electric freaks, indeed! New Bay Area trio Turn Me On Dead Man sure do crank out the searing, overdriven, space rawk on this, their debut album. Things really kick in by the sixth song "Apocalypse Rock". Heavy and tripped-out! The band's played plenty around town since they got together in 2003, and this album successfully captures their gritty live energy. Word has it that since the release of this record, they've fleshed out their lineup and sound with a fourth member on keyboards. Rad!
These Bay Area guys have followed up their 2003 debut, God Bless The Electric Freak, with another wigged-out heavy ass-kicker. They were plenty beefy last time around when they were a three piece, and now Technicolourmother launches their recorded existence as an even beefier quartet. Ready to get yer speakers drenched with equal parts stoner rock, metallic pop and space rock?
Quiet and soundtrackish instrumentals with painterly guitars, wheezing organ distortion, and chillingly unconventional harmonica. From the guitarist of the Dirty Three, who may turn out to be the Ry Cooder of indie-rock. More beautiful than his first album; fans of Dirty Three will not be disappointed.
Without the melodic center provided by Warren Ellis or the nuanced drumming of Jim White in Dirty Three, guitarist Mick Turner explores gentle textures, weaving in and out of structured song form. On his third solo album, accents from piano or harmonica pop up here and there, but the primary tool is the guitar, building a sense of place through layering and very subtle reverberation and manipulation. Icy spaciousness gives way to airy warmth as "Moth" soothes with its quietly gorgeous tones.
Mick is the guitarist from Australia's brilliant instrumental trio the Dirty Three, and this cd sounds exactly as you'd think it would: lovely, meditative, layered strumming which lacks the intense bombast of D3 but has just as much emotional depth, if you listen closely.
We have always loved The Dirty Three, and Dirty Three guitarist Mick Turner has another little outfit we love just as much, The Tren Brothers. Problem was it was always pretty hard to get a hold of Tren Brothers records as they were usually only released as limited edition 7"s, But it was well worth the effort as the Tren Brothers' songs are just as gorgeous and breathtaking. Luckily Turner and Jim White (the amazing drummer for both outfits) have decided to make a proper full length together and we're so glad they did! Take the melancholy of Dirty Three, subtract the violins, add some more pastoral elements and thus you have the gorgeous world of Mick Turner / Tren Brothers. Turner music has always been so intense and emotional. And the music here transports us everytime we hear it. Blue Trees is such the perfect weekend record, pretty enough to keep you reminiscing and filled with enough longing and sadness to remind you how much you don't want Monday to come. Beautiful!
'Mystical goat dancer' is an apt describer of Otha Turner, an ageless creation of the Mississippi earth whose musical mastery is over a simple fife carved out of a bamboo cane fishing pole. Together with his Rising Star Fife & Drum band, Turner has for years fashioned shrill whistles around the militant snare march of the drum core, reconstituting the rhythmic hypnotism of lost slave songs. This album is a much more sedate outing for Turner as he has been joined by a handful of Senegalese musicians, beautifully linking the two divergant African sounds. Turner's domineering presence is neccessary for the success of these fusions, but at times, he seems to wander off (to feed the chickens? after all this was recorded at his farm) on two tracks which snap back to traditional Senegalese rhythms. Regardless, an excellent document.
Here's some more "outsider art" sounds...ancient trance music outta Tate County, Mississippi. Marches and blues and lotsa feeling. Wonderful.
Actor turned musician Simon Fisher Turner has had a long and illustrious career, TV and film, from punk rock to extreme avant sound making, this latest releases comes in the form of a super limited cassette on the Tapeworm label, number 4 for those of you keeping track, with previous installments from Philip Jeck, Stephen O'Malley, and a recording from a text by Baudrillard. Turner's contribution to the series is an odd one. The A side is a super cool field recording from Spain, the procession of the Virgen Del Carmen, you can hear people talking, laughing, footsteps, various ambient sounds, until the music starts, a swirling festive gypsy big band, horns, snares, strings, peppered with huge booms (fireworks?) and of course the voices of people lining the procession route, wheels on the dirt road, what sounds like distant thunder. Really really nice.
The other side features two solo piano improvisations, recorded in 2003 as a film score, very haunting and atonal, strange angular melodies, lots of space, little flurries of notes, looped and hypnotic sounding, slipping from dark and almost balladic, to more jagged and manic and back again. Cool stuff for sure, not sure how the two sides tie together, but each on its own is a super satisfying listen.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!! And if this one is anything like the other installments in the series, these won't last long at all.
You've loved him for years in Mudhoney and Monkeywrench (among numerous other extracurricular musical jaunts). Heck, where Seattle grunge crushes were concerned, you could keep your Mark Arm 'cuz this fellow was totally the prize in Mudhoney, although in Monkeywrench Tom Price gave him a run for the money... but we digress. Now doncha just love him all by his lonesome? We sure do! Actually dandy guitarist Steve Turner has been goin' solo sans trumpeting fanfare for a few years now. Despite the album's title, his sound is neither new wave (there's not a synth in sight!) nor punk (tho' he's prolly got a pretty big punk heart inside), and we wouldn't think of him as an asshole neither. So, we assume the name is not self-referential. Instead New Wave Punk Asshole is for the most part retro bluesy rawk that drifts occasionally into countrified terrain. IF comparisons are to be drawn, we'd say that vocally on this album he sounds quite a bit like Mike Peters of The Alarm... which is a good thing in our opinion. Oh yeah, and as far as his chosen backing band moniker goes, we looked real hard and couldn't find a real stinker lurkin' anywhere.
We know almost nothing about Turnquist, other than he's a guitarist from New York, we even missed this when it first came out a little while back, but we're kicking ourselves now, cuz it's a thing of absolute hypnotic beauty. A gorgeous extended songsuite of looped 12 string guitar, vibraphone, glockenspiel, piano, violin, cello and harmonics, hovering somewhere between 20th century classical, and avant free folk, it's blissy and sun dappled, meditative, utterly lovely, each track a breathtaking expanse of washed out dreamlike drone folk minimalism, dramatic and cinematic but never overwrought.
The first track begins all delicate and crystalline, before the acoustic guitars begins to unfurl soft clouds of shimmery thrum, a small tangle of melody that constantly shifts, slowly changing shape, but retaining a trancelike core, occasionally being supported by tinkling chime, and a gorgeous counter point piano melody, that adds so much emotion and pathos. About midway through the nearly 20 minute track, everything fades out, leaving just the guitar, to spin a glimmering web of looped and layered soft focus guitar harmonics, hazy and gauzy and hushed, only to slip into a warm languid, slow build, like an extra minimal, spacious and spare Godspeed, note loosed one at a time, over a backdrop of soft sonic swells, and blurred pop ambience. So incredibly gorgeous.
The second track is another smeared field of abstract looped Appalachia, almost like a guitar version of Lubomyr Melnyk, a constantly shifting field of rapidly picked steel strings, melancholy melodies, again, anchored by a maudlin piano melody way in the background, softly frenzied and almost dizzying, the hypnotic drone folk give way to something more serene and tranquil, a string swept folk lope, the violin singing sorrowfully over a gorgeously looped steel string figure, evoking loss and memory, and places visited but forgotten.
The final track is the shortest of the bunch, but by no means the least powerful, with Turnquist again setting up the foundation by spinning reflective swirls of steel string guitar, this time the piano much more present, the guitar more a background thrum, the two instruments, dancing and interwoven, subtle but melodically complex, the melodies and overtones and subtly rhythms interacting, this track especially is super cinematic, not at all schmaltzy, just intense, and emotionally resonant, reminding us quite a bit of aQ fave Erik Enocksson, sweetly sorrowful, epic and so dreamlike and lovely.
So recommended, one of our new favorites for sure.
The last record from Alexander Turnquist, the lovely and exquisite As The Twilight Crane Dreams In Color, was a fantastic surprise from this fairly new to us (but quite prolific) composer/guitarist. That record was a lush landscape of glimmering harmonics, and crystalline ambience, all woven around Turnquist's strange and inventive guitar playing. This new record seems to follow suit, with Turnquist again setting the foundation with impossibly dense little soft squalls of steel string tangle, lush with overtones and unlikely harmonics, it's like some avant Appalachia, a sound we wish would go on much longer than its way too brief 2 minutes. But then that feeling is washed away by the equally lovely title track which follows, a swirling, sweetly melodic guitarscape, again, a looped set of steel string tangles providing the anchor, creating a billowing cloud of washed out melody, not unlike pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, a rapid succession of notes somehow transformed into something tranquil and serene, the tangled melodies further tangled by vibes and violin, those two elements providing the melodic counterpoint, and some extra sonic pathos, adding a dark bit of tension, and a sweet melancholia. The sound is dense, while remaining ethereal and dreamlike, the repetition adding a drone element, that makes everything hypnotic and totally mesmerizing.
On "Spherical Aberrations" the trio apply the same methodology to chamber music, the vibes almost jazzy, the violin achingly melodic, all the while the guitar spinning impossible webs of melody and texture underneath.
The record's centerpiece would have to be the sprawling "Waiting At The Departure Gate", which take Turnquist's Reich/Riley compositional style and lets it spread out into a gorgeous layered epic, the guitars impossibly intricate and dense, eventually sounding nothing like guitars at all, instead like some sort of sound generator, while the vibes and violin weave magical melodies over the top, the sound stately and darkly romantic, Turnquist's guitarscapes constantly slipping from background texture to main melody and back again, before finishing off with a bit of minimal Appalachian folk drift. The record is bookended with another brief bit of harmonics heavy steel string tangle, that sounds like a way more avant experimental Michael Hedges. So fantastic. Turnquist is fast becoming one of our favorite modern composers/guitarists!
Unlike the last few Alexander Turnquist records (As The Twilight Crane Dreams In Color, Hallway Of Mirrors) this new one eschews much of the sonic lushness in favor of something much more simple, but no less lovely. While those first two found Turnquist weaving expansive sonic landscapes of piano, violin, glockenspiel, vibraphone and more, all around his lovely 12 string guitar, the combination pushing the sound further from a drone folk minimalism into something more akin to a hybrid of classic Appalachia and a more modern chamber pop, strings sweeping over looped guitar figures, pointillist piano over rich, slow shifting backgrounds of thrum and shimmer, lots of counterpoint, lots of harmonies and overtones, and slow builds. All quite lovely.
Which is not to say that this new (or newish, it came out a few months ago) one isn't, it most definitely is, it just strips away the extra instrumentation, and allows Turnquist to explore the possibilities of the guitar itself, the colors he's able to coax from it, the various overtones, and while on the surface it might seem to be Turnquist's take on a Fahey or Kottke style record, it has more in common with those other records of his, as if even on just a guitar, he's composing for an ensemble, just here he's forced to figure out how to fill out the sound on his own. And fill it out he does, notes chime, and figures loop and cycle, the air is filled with the ringing of steel string buzz, and the chiming of crystalline harmonics, rhythmic and textural, some tracks smooth and lush and tranquil, others assembled from buzz, and strange jumbles of notes, the chords and notes' decay as important to the sound as the notes and chords themselves, lots of space, the vibe minimal for sure, but the playing most definitely maximal, often unfurling flurries of notes, even making the guitar sound like a gamelan at one point, and like the guitar equivalent to a prepared piano throughout, the sound shifting from pulsing and hypnotic to more free and abstract and back again. So gorgeous. A fantastic modern guitar soli record, but with Turnquist's own more modern, and yet somehow still seemingly timeless spin. WAY recommended. Like everything else he's done!
Pressed on blue and white swirl vinyl, and meant to spin at 45, but as you might imagine, at 33 it's a bit darker, and murkier! Either way, beautiful!!
We managed to get a tiny handful of these from a distributor, they're priced super cheap, as the label has since folded, so these are the very last copies we'll ever be able to get, and we have just THREE of them...
With Enso, composer / soundscaper Luigi Turra has conjured up an organic and contemplative three-track epic, that resonates on subsequent listenings. Infused with Japanese sonic architectures and rigorous reductionist principles, this is a deeply meditative world of gently plucked instruments, and faded atmospherics, peppered with closely focused tinklings and crystalline shards adding all manner of texture to the proceedings. In some ways this sounds like a more minimal / academic Taj Mahal Travellers, the flute especially giving much of this a Japanese folk ritual vibe. There's a warm ambience, and a super intense intimate production, which helps Turra fuse a delicate substrata of drifting tones with elegantly plucked and struck instrumentation, that is never overdriven, and devoid of unessentials. Gorgeous and sublime. And super recommended. Sad we have so few...
Best appreciated in a solitary environment, these restful pieces will bring calm to an engaged listener.
Here's some exceptionally tense n' rhythmic post/prog/psych rock from France, loaded with spacey synths in the tradition of their '70s forefathers Heldon, these thirteen tracks seething with skittering pulsations, distorted drone crescendos, and whispery vocal incantations. The dramatic, nervous mantras of Turzi are like a noirish version of the Circle/Salvatore neo-krautrock thing, or like a suspense film soundtrack scored by Suicide. For some reason, this album's called A and every track starts with that letter: "Animal Signal", "Are You Thinking About Jesus?", "Afghanistan", "Amadeus", "Axis Of Good", etc. All right. But we kinda wish they'd done the lyrics in French, rather than English... or maybe remained totally instrumental. Not because there's anything terrible about their English singing/lyrics, but just 'cause the instrumental aspects of this band -- the percussive propulsiveness, the electronic textures -- are quite powerful, compared to the French-accented vocals...
Turzi actually would appear to be one individual, Romain Turzi, credited with "synthesized guitars, vocals, keys & drones". But he's got a band helping him out, called Reich IV. The four members of Reich IV all sport slightly goofy stage names: Sky Over, Judah Warsky, Arthur Rambo, and our favorite, Hard Rock Gunther. For more weird names, turn to the "virtual" bonus disc -- this comes with a coupon for the free download of an mp3 compilation of Turzi's faves from the current underground French psych scene, none of whom we'd ever heard of before: Aqua Nebula Oscillator, Kill For Total Peace, Mogadishow, Juan Trip, Butch McCoy, and nine more...cool stuff too!
