While Teenage Filmstars would go on to rival the legendary My Bloody Valentine, in crafting some of the most intense, next level, tripped out shoegaze (in fact some aQ-ers believe TF are way better than MBV, hate mail welcome!), in the early days, they were essentially an extension of Filmstars mastermind Ed Ball's other outfits, the Times, O Level and Teenage Filmstars, belting out crazy catchy sixties influenced new wave jangle pop. This lp was originally released as a super limited Record Store Day release, and gathers up the group's first three singles, reissued on vinyl for the first time ever. All the tracks here are super catchy, but their 'classic' track "I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape" is definitely the gem here, replete with a goofy mid song breakdown with the group reciting classic lines from The Prisoner, not to mention a chorus so catchy, it's hard to believe it's not actually a classic jam from the sixties. The other singles are great too, "(There's A) Cloud Over Liverpool" is another impossibly catchy sixties pop jam, but "Odd Man Out" might be the weirdest, a horn flecked ska-pop groover, reminiscent of the Specials and Madness.
A whole different beast than later Teenage Filmstars, but for fans of retro sixties style pop, it doesn't get better than this (or the -other- Record Store Day lp included elsewhere on this list, a vinyl collection of early singles from Ed Ball's O Level!)...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The Creation bands My Bloody Valentine, Oasis, Primal Scream, Ride, Slowdive, St.Etienne, etc. have been championed by fans around the globe, and have unfortunately overshadowed the brilliant trickery of the mysterious Teenage Filmstars. Working from the same influences of 60's British psychedelia as their fellow Creationists, the Teenage Filmstars succeed where others fail, in sending psychedelia to its most damaged and most hallucinatory end. With an innate understanding of how to write a near perfect pop song, Teenage Filmstars do their best to undermine the structures by creating them out of guitar lines and vocals literally _played backwards_ on top of the punchy rhythm section, to totally kick ass effect. From here, square wave generators, overdosed phase shifting, and explosive feedback enact the aural equivalent to an extremely excessive dose of acid. But that's only half of each Teenage Filmstar album; as they're filled out by odd kaleidoscopes of pseudo electronica, waivering sitars, and sedative-laiden drones resembling Can's trippy collages like 'Aumgn' from 'Tago Mago'. We've had some difficulty getting their material, and for now this album is all we have. Nevertheless, everything the Teenage Filmstars has released comes with Aquarius' highest recommendations!
Finally. Finally. FINALLY! If ever there was a more anticipated (around here at least) or a more criminally overdue reissue, it's this one right here. A mind blowing three-fer from should-have-been-massive blissed out fractured psych pop masters Teenage Filmstars, fronted by the inimitable Ed Ball, whom as we mentioned in our review of Star, TF's genius debut, was once described by My Bloody Valentine mainman Kevin Shields as "A sensitive soul from another planet. A modernist musical alchemist". Shield also had this to say about Ball: "Where other people struggle, Ed Ball plays what we're thinking." Which coming from the man behind My Bloody Valentine means a lot. Especially when considering Teenage Filmstars, who employ a sonic palette not all that far removed from MBV's. BUT, and a very big but at that, minus the explosive bursts of caustic noise, MBV hewed more to a traditional pop sensibility than Teenage Filmstars. Where as Loveless, even for all its amazing wall of guitar heaviness, and effects drenched dreaminess, was still anchored to a verse chorus verse framework, with Teenage Filmstars, those conventions are tossed aside, or at the very least, flipped over, doused in effects, chopped up and played backwards. Which is why once again, we must proclaim, that in the landscape of (not so) popular music, TEENAGE FILMSTARS ARE BETTER THAN MY BLOODY VALENTINE. And don't get us wrong, we LOVE LOVE LOVE My Bloody Valentine, but imagine an alternate universe MBV, where for some reason, Shields' guitars played backwards, effects boxes grew sentient and demanded as much space as the instruments and voices, imagine viewing all of those sounds, already twisted and skewed, through a fractured funhouse mirror, and then, if you can, imagine some musical wizard, who is able to reign in all of those sounds, and somehow shape them into some of the most perfect UNpop you've ever heard.
Which brings us to Rocket Charms, record number two from Teenage Filmstars, which finds all the sounds on Star, pushed even farther out, the backwards sounds are more backwards (and there are more of them), the guitars are crunchier and more crumbly, the melodies are more catchy, the murk and shimmer are both murkier and shimmerier, and the production, is even more hazy and spaced out and lysergic and psychedelic and fucking head spinning. And yet somehow, Rocket Charms is a pop record, hooky and catchy, lilting and melodic. Opener "Pressure" is an immediate 'hit' if there ever was one, processed falsetto vox over swooping backwards rhythms and washed out guitar haze, a sort of druggy backwards Beach Boys pop ambience. And it just goes on from there, every song, a gorgeous slab of outsider twisted pop, on the surface a whirling sonic dervish, but within drift all manner of classic pop tropes, in the able hands of Ed Ball, subverted and turned inside out, wreathed in hiss and sparkle, and rendered, well, Teenage.
But then amidst all this deconstructed shoegazey noise pop (or pop noise), comes the track "Alone", quite possible our favorite jam on Rocket Charms, a slow brooding dirge, all skittery Stone Roses-y drums, thick distorted bass, disembodied voices, swirling ominous dark ambience, and a main melody that just might be the catchiest bit on the record, sounding like a slowed down twisted take on the Cure's "Close To You", but via Pop Will Eat Itself or some other warped UK grebo combo.
The crazy thing is, Rocket Charms for being as fantastic and over the top and incredible, isn't even our favorite Teenage Filmstars record. That honor belongs to the awesomely titled Buy Our Record Support Our Sickness, which takes all of the songs and sounds from Rocket Charms and Star, and makes them WAY HEAVIER, WAY MORE FUCKED UP, the processed guitars and backwards guitars and vocals have gone haywire, the songs are less songs here and more fucked up fragmented pop experiments, but again, Ball has such a deft hand that he manages to take all these totally freaked out elements, and gets them to work, and sound like pop songs, albeit, totally dizzying and abstract, psychedelic and almost metallic at times. The record's defining moment is the opener "Physical Graffiti", not a Zeppelin cover, but hell, it sounds like it could be some sort of insane My Bloody Valentine / Led Zeppelin mash up maybe, but one that had been totally tweaked, chopped and screwed, then sped up and flipped reverse again, listening to it, it's hard to imagine how anyone could envision music like this, let alone actually make it. The guitars swoop all over the stereo field, stuttering, blurring into huge backwards swells, the drums are chaotic, the vocals sound backwards too, but not overtly, the melodies so memorable and catchy, at one point the whole track begins to stutter, almost as if your cd player is skipping, but it soon swoops back into the dreamlike psychedelic swirl.
Not all of Support Our Sickness is as heavy and crunchy, many of the tracks begin as classic sixties sounding pop, but as they progress, the effects seem to slowly take over, often one or more of the instruments flipping backwards and erupting into a squall of psychedelic freakout, but just as often, sprawling into a woozy almost balladic bit of slithery backwards slowcore. But even at its prettiest, the sounds are slightly tweaked, the vibe is subtly menacing, laced with bits of sunshiney jangle for sure, but this is some seriously drugged out dream pop damage, and remains to this day, one of the most amazing, and unlikely genius pop records EVER.
The first disc features 5 bonus tracks, two from the Support Our Sickness sessions, as well as three other unreleased jams, none quite as twisted, but still awesome, and in fact, they almost sound like they were rough drafts, just waiting to get the Ed Ball mad scientist backwards fucked up FX makeover. So that's it, BUY IT, you won't be sorry, this is easily some of the most forward thinking pop music ever, heavy and psychedelic, druggy and delirious, catchy and crazy and bafflingly brilliant.
But wait, what's this, a THIRD record? Teenage Filmstars final missive, and a pretty bizarre sonic sea change, in fact, it sounds like a totally different band. To be honest, we're not into it at all, Bring Back The Cartel found the band doing some sort of skittery smooth jazz electronic mood music, it makes very little sense that this one would get tacked on with the other two, when we first ordered this we actually thought it WAS just those other two, but maybe some folks will dig Bring Back The Cartel, there are some moments, here and there, but it doesn't at all approach the sheer brilliance of Rocket Charms or Buy Our Record Support Our Sickness, so our advice would be probably to just give it a spin, and if you dig it, cool, if not, just ignore it, pretend it's not there, and immerse yourself in those first two, let the sounds twist you inside out and carry you off, play it over and over and over and over, forever and ever and ever and ever. Totally fucking incredible, and not just worthy of Record Of The Week honors, definitely something more, like how about Record of FOREVER!?!?
By now, pretty much everyone knows who Kevin Shields is. He of shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine. Who over the course of the last 20 years or so have released all of THREE records. But what about Ed Ball. A musical contemporary of Shields. A man Shields described as "A sensitive soul from another planet. A modernist musical alchemist", going on to say "Where other people struggle, Ed Ball plays what we're thinking." Ball, over the last 20 years, has released close to 40 records, a whole mess of amazing discs with UK mod popsters The Times, a handful under his own name, and a bunch with power poppers the Boo Radleys, among others. But what Ball is most famous for, at least around these parts, is releasing three of the most perfect, and perfectly fractured genius shoegaze blisspop records EVER, as Teenage Filmstars: Star, Rocket Charms and Buy our Record Support Our Sickness. Each a kaleidoscopic blurred and blown out avant pop fantasia of sound, mixing in gorgeous melodies, with all manner of found sounds, backwards loops, ethereal vocals, studio fuckery, with very little regard for form or function, for the rules of pop. Instead, seemingly feeling their way through a totally tactile world of sound, everything bristly or buzzy or fuzzy, smeared or blurred, wah guitars wrapped around roaring motorcycles, Spectorish wall of guitars spread over, skittery almost Stone Roses-y rhythms. The most obvious reference is My Bloody Valentine. And at the risk of receiving an avalanche of hate mail, Teenage Filmstars are better. They may not have invented the sound, and they definitely didn't perfect it, instead, they fucked it all up, twisted it and chopped it and doused it in FX, and flipped it backwards, and let it sprawl and spin out of control, wrapped tightly into perfect pop gems one second, then let loose in unhinged squalls of sonic whatthefuck meltdowns the next. Each of the three records growing continually more abrasive, more intense, heavier, more backwards, more fractured and freaked out, and somehow only getting better and better and better.
Star is the first proper release from Teenage Filmstars, and was released a year or two after MBV's epochal Loveless. Opener "Kiss Me" is TOTALLY cribbed from Loveless, but it sounds like it was recorded on a busted 4-track, the rhythm track supplied by a fluttery backwards loop, the guitars super distorted but also brittle, woozy and wavery, all wrapped round the main hook, a guitar / vocal harmony that is just incredible, soaring and wistful but sort of super rocking, the whole thing dripping in effects, Loveless filtered through DIY bedroom pop, and then filtered through the twisted musical mind of visionary sonic alchemist Ball. The track crumbles near the end, the guitars disappear, motorcycles zoom by, the drums all distorted, snippets of classical piano, the twitter of birds, disembodied voices, one intoning "this just might be the finest composition I ever wrote", which it might have been, if it weren't for the follow up "Loving", which follows a similar template as "Kiss Me", with the main hook, a hushed wordless vocals crooning along to a slithery guitar line, all over a looped tribal rhythm, and tripped out wah guitar all over the place. If this was just a single, "Kiss Me" / "Loving", A side B side, it would be hands down one of the greatest singles ever! But we've barely just begun. And it only gets weirder and weirder.
"Inner Space" predates the fuzzy gauzy drift of Fennesz and Jeck and Tim Hecker by 20 years, unfurling sweeping vistas of sound, intertwined with buried melancholy vocals, muted rhythmic skitter, and deep whirring strings. "Apple" is all sixties strum and whirling effects laden swoosh, simple pop stretched out and blurred and distorted into something slightly alien, a warm dreamlike missive from beyond the stars. "Flashes" is a strange sort of electronic calypso, with a subtle techno throb beneath divine female vocals, propulsive krauty drums, and of course loads of FX. "Kaleidoscope" returns to the more MBV style rocking of the openers, and does indeed sound like a shoegazing fuzzrock kaleidoscope, a swirling dizzying space pop jam, the sounds slipping from speaker to speaker, the drums relentless and hypnotic, the vocals buried, but the main guitar melody soaring over the wavery sonic swirl beneath.
Then comes a three song suite of tripped out avant weirdness, drifting fuzzy almost melodies, strange intercepted radio broadcasts, a super deconstructed version of "Kiss Me", looped and flipped backwards and transformed into something else entirely, deep whirling drones, weird voices, samples, deep black ambience, shot though with streaks of glimmering buzz, the sounds of engines, choir like vocals, damaged effects laden rhythmscapes, flange and chorus and delay and reverb all wrapped around little sonic events, laced into a delicate framework of tripped out sound. Until the closer, "Moon", a gorgeous explosion of distorted pop effulgence, thick warbly organs, epic melodies, the guitar so distorted they almost sound like white noise, almost proggy keyboards, the whole thing fracturing into a brief falling apart coda of drum freakout, and skipping lurching guitars. Holy Shit.
So maybe it's not that Teenage Filmstars are -better- than My Bloody Valentine. Just weirder, more fucked up, more spaced out, more fractured, more challenging, more out there, less like ANYTHING you've ever heard, more... oh fuck it, okay... BETTER!!! Bring on the hate mail!!
This reissue tacks on three bonus tracks, all good enough to have been on the record proper, but with way more of the backwards production that would come to define their sound on future records, blissed out fuzzy shoegazey power pop, but crumbling and often in reverse, and thus fantastic. Also included lengthy liner notes, as confusing and obfuscated as the music itself.
The other two Filmstars discs are getting reissued soon, and will definitely also be Records Of The Week, so immerse yourself in Star while you can, cuz it only gets better and weirder from here on out...
NOW ON VINYL!
Love her or hate her, Lydia Lunch will make an impression on you. Given her venomous poems, constant invectives, and perpetual bad attitude, it's pretty obvious that Lydia wants you to hate her. While she's not an artist without her charms, she'll probably hate you for loving her. She began a career of transgression and teeth-gnashing in the mid-'70s when she was a runaway teenager slumming around the crappiest parts of NYC and pissing off more people than not. Yet, she managed to sequester enough people to support her in Teenage Jesus and The Jerks - one of the seminal bands who defined No Wave. They were also one of the four bands who appeared on the highly influential No New York compilation, alongside James Chance & The Contortionists, Mars, and DNA. Teenage Jesus only lasted for three years, probably due to the fact that no one could tolerate the musical dictator that was Lydia Lunch. But the music itself probably did a fair share of damage upon the participants as Teenage Jesus produced hyper-abrasive, hyper-condensed songs through militant rhythmic stomps, screechingly atonal slide guitars, and Lydia's sharply barked vocals. James Chance was in fact one of the early members of the band, offering his blood-splattering sax as a suitable duet for Lydia's caterwauling.
While Teenage Jesus never managed a full album (well, they barely managed to clock in a 20 minute live set!), there have been a number of collections of Teenage Jesus tracks. This compilation, Shut Up And Bleed, pretty much has all of the tracks from the band that were recorded to tape. It should be noted that the cd version of the same name contained tracks from Beirut Slump, another early Lydia Lunch project; but none of those cuts appear on this Cherry Red vinyl reish.
Love her or hate her, Lydia Lunch will make an impression on you. Given her venomous poems, constant invectives, and perpetual bad attitude, it's pretty obvious that Lydia wants you to hate her. While she's not an artist without her charms, she'll probably hate you for loving her. She began a career of transgression and teeth-gnashing in the mid-'70s when she was a runaway teenager slumming around the crappiest parts of NYC and pissing off more people than not. Yet, she managed to sequester enough people to support her in Teenage Jesus and The Jerks - one of the seminal bands who defined No Wave. They were also one of the four bands who appeared on the highly influential No New York compilation, alongside James Chance & The Contortionists, Mars, and DNA. Teenage Jesus only lasted for three years, probably due to the fact that no one could tolerate the musical dictator that was Lydia Lunch. But the music itself probably did a fair share of damage upon the participants as Teenage Jesus produced hyper-abrasive, hyper-condensed songs through militant rhythmic stomps, screechingly atonal slide guitars, and Lydia's sharply barked vocals. James Chance was in fact one of the early members of the band, offering his blood-splattering sax as a suitable duet for Lydia's caterwauling.
While Teenage Jesus never managed a full-album (well, they barely managed to clock in a 20 minute live set!), there have been a number of collections of Teenage Jesus tracks. The 2008 compilation, Shut Up And Bleed, is unique by including tunes from Lydia Lunch's other band at the time Beirut Slump. Some of these tracks had appeared on another Lunch compendium, Hysterie, released way back in 1988, but they've never been on cd. In Beirut Slump, Lydia played the part of the lead guitarist, leaving the vocal rants to Bobby Berkowitz, whose growling and grunts were uncannily similar to those of Michael Gira on the early Swans records. With the dissonant organ stabs, scraped guitar noise, and jackbooted stomping, Beirut Slump must have been one of the unsung templates for Gira and Swans. Even 30 years later, this stuff is damn impressive.
Always nice to see a new DIY 'zine pop up, this one no great shakes graphic-wise, with a pretty plain layout, but lots of cool, enthused, well-informed CONTENT for those into '60s and '70s and '80s power pop, garage and new wave punk. And it's up to date too, with a piece on King Tuff and an open letter to Lana Del Rey.
Some of the interviewees: Todd Rundgren, Jason Falkner (Jellyfish), Bun E. Carlos (Cheap Trick), Kim Fowley, Sylvain Sylvain (NY Dolls), Dave Faulkner (Hoodoo Gurus), Andrew Loog Oldham, and Cherry Vanilla. Wow, and this is just issue number one!
There's other good 'ziney stuff as well, like reviews, and a short piece all about the best instances of coughs found in recorded rock music. Yes "Sweet Leaf" makes the list.
Issue 2 of this 'zine dedicated to punk, pop goodness from both now and then. Editor/publisher Gus Bernadicou and likeminded friends have packed this ish with 88 pages of interviews and other features, including chats with Dave Davies of the Kinks, John Doe of X (tagline for that piece: "The Hardest Man to Google"), The Mutants, aQ faves Jaill, Cherie Currie of The Runaways, Tommy James from The Shondells, and more� including an article about new wave weirdo Klaus Nomi, guide to '90s power pop gems, and a whole section of various VIP's "desert island discs".
Latest blast of nihilistic Teutonic post punk from this Jewelled Antler offshoot, and while much of the TPK sound we've come to love is still present, in some ways the sound here is a whole different beast. Surprisingly poppy, lo-fi, and jangly, a little gloomy, yep, sounds right at home on a label that features Blank Dogs and Gary War. The music is all low slung and murky, not nearly as angular as other TPK records, instead, these guys whip up their own brand of lo-fi new wave pop, the main thing that still screams TPK are the vocals, an echo drenched Teutonic almost-shout, intense and booming, heavily accented, and in German as far as we can tell, a strange juxtaposition to the woozy bass heavy grooves underneath. The guitars are minor key and melodic, sometimes chiming and almost Cure-like, the combination makes this sound like it could be some last rarity reissued on Vinyl On Demand.
The side long B side is musically all washed out and dreamy, with a killer main riff, all fuzzy and doomy, the whole track laced with warbly organs, a sort of off kilter cold wave vibe, until those vocals swoop in and twist it all up. Awesome!
Pink Skulls is a new cd-r label run by Glenn Donaldson of Jewelled Antler, for stuff that's too "punk" for Jewelled Antler to put out. A recent list's Record of the Week, Leaf Yard, was one of Pink Skulls' first releases (if you've heard that, you know that what Glenn means by "punk" sure ain't Green Day). Now comes the Teenage PanzerKorps, a band which actually features Glenn himself (under the name Edmund Xavier) in its ranks. This lil' 3" cdr looks a lot like the stuff in the on-going Jewelled Antler "Library" series, but sure doesn't sound like Thuja or Tomes or even Dead Raven Choir. It's raucous, droney, arty rawk with a German singer (a 40-year old punker going by the name Bunker Wolf here). Bunker and Xavier and joined by drummer "Catholic Pat" Toves and Boy True on bass (quite possibly actually Jason Honea, who's a member of the Knit Separates with Glenn). Loud (or at least distorted), not too fast, and Teutonically snotty: nine songs in as many minutes, with titles like "Burma Crawl", "Chinese Machine Gun parts 1 and 2", and "Get Out Of My Shadow!". It references '80s downer artpunk (The Fall, Factory Records stuff I guess or maybe some of Savage Republic's tracks), '60s garage with fuzz organ, and the hardcore bands Boy True and Catholic Pat used to play in. Noisy breaks, abrupt edits, and poppy grooves are all important to Teenage Panzerkorps' sound, but it's Bunker Wolf's accent and delivery that stands out the most. No fake German here like Zeigenbock Kopf! Then there's Glenn. He proved in his old band Mirza's more loud, scree-filled moments that he can do the aggro guitar thing, yet his sensitive side is still in evidence here, so his 6 & 12 string guitar parts here betray an indie-pop influence as pretty as what he's come up with in such outfits as The Birdtree, The Knit Separates, Blithe Sons and even Thuja (with whom Teenage Panzerkorp at least share a partly improvised approach). An interesting blend of inspirations/expertise to be sure. These guys recorded this for fun a couple years ago, and have finally found a proper outlet for it, which is cool 'cause it's pretty great.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Bunker Wolf, Catholic Pat, Edmund Xavier and Boy True are back with some more of the aggro lo-fi Teutonic art punk attack that only they are capable in this day, age, and state. And leave it to the Teenage Panzerkorps to come up with an automatically classic title like Nations Are Insane. Doesn't that sound like the title of some critically-lauded, obscuro punk rarity? Y'know, a seminal album cited by bands years later? Well anyway I think it's a great title. And the tracks on here are great too! If you liked TPK's Gleich Heilt Gleich 3" cd-r previously issued by Jewelled Antler punk offshoot Pink Skulls, you'll slaver over this. Total '80s DIY worship, sounding like something that coulda been on one of those Hyped2Death comps. Arty, punky noise rock that's equally into the Germs and the Germans (like Neu! and Neubauten). And singer Bunker Wolf *is* German so it's very authentic in that regard. Eighteen tracks that clock in at under a half-hour of murky, shambolic, distorted, somewhat-poppy urgh-splurge. Featuring members of Grim Reality, The Nazi Dogs, Thuja, The Knit Separates, The Birdtree, Blithe Sons, Skygreen Leopards, etc...
Ah, Teenage Panzerkorps. This confounding, transcontinental quartet has quite a punk / avant-rock pedigree. Edmund Xavier was born Glenn Donaldson, whose work within the forest-dwelling psychedelic collective Jewelled Antler spawned such projects as Thuja and the Blithe Sons, not to mention the paisley-pop project the Skygreen Leopards and Art Museums; and Boy True is the pseudonym for Jason Honea, who joined the leftist-punk band Social Unrest in the late '80s and Ten Bright Spikes in the '90s, before accompanying Donaldson and company on some of the more outre projects of Jewelled Antler. From the perspective of Jewelled Antler, the iconography of Teenage Panzerkorps makes a lot more sense, as a re-imagining of the childhood games playing with toy soldiers, where political and moral implications are lost within the wonder of play, all the while these childish ideals are smashed into the epiphany of hearing punk for the first time, with all of the social and political ramifications very much on the line. The Teutonic bark of vocalist Bunker Wolf and all of the militant iconography might give the impression of these guys being Nazi sympathizers, but this is hardly the case, as Der TPK's folding of symbols and metaphors is far more nuanced in its appropriation, pastiche, and parody.
German Reggae is album number four for Der TPK, and it exhibits some variation beyond the drone-punk propulsion which dominated their Games For Slaves and Nations Are Insane albums. Honea's basslines look back to the first couple of PiL records and Jah Wobble's thick punk-dub, and Bunker Wolf's delivery is a bit more understated, to which some have compared now to a Germanic Mark E. Smith. Even with these differences, Der TPK puts their collective head down for these propulsive, grimy post-punk numbers with plenty of references to the pre-Joy Division Warsaw recordings, Savage Republic, and Wire, not to mention contemporaries like The Soft Moon and Cult Of Youth.
Kauf Nicht Von TPK is a collection of oddities from the Deutsche-Americanische punk outfit Teenage Panzerkorps. Spearheaded by San Franciscan out-rocker Glenn Donaldson, Der TPK sports a German giant of a vocalist in Bunker Wolf, plus grizzled American punks Jason Honea and Catholic Pat Toves. Their sound is one of a forgotten bleak punk as if belted from some shitty squat in the shadows of the Berlin Wall circa 1981. Not the Neue Deutsche Welle sound of synth-based crooners nor of the Geniale Dilletanten crowd of Neubauten, Sprung Aus Den Wolken, etc; but the very dirty and very pissed-off punk sound of a group that wouldn't ever consider recording on anything with higher quality than a second hand 4-track. Even knowing this about Der TPK, we were caught offguard by the trainwreck pace of the first few tracks, which crash through 4/4 rhythms as the jangling guitars and throbbing basslines struggle to keep pace. Even Bunker Wolf sounds like he's pitched up his baritone barking just a bit. These couple of numbers sound as if the turntable was set to 45 rpm when the record's supposed to spin at 33. The tracks tend to return to a more manageable pace throughout the rest of the album which is still quite brisk mind you, with cuts rarely exceeding the three minute mark. These dark-gritty punk numbers drone through guitar, bass, and drums with Bunker Wolf chanting his way through each of the tracks, rounded out by the aptly named "Degenerate Disco." A few of the tracks are different versions of tracks found on the Harmful Emotions lp and the Nations Are Insane cd-r, both of which are way out of print, with plenty of unreleased tracks to boot. Limited to 300 copies, Italian import.
Long in the works debut from this Oakland co-ed doomdronedirge duo. And we pretty much already knew we were in for something good. C'mon, they're called Teeth Engraved With The Names Of The Dead, the record's called Kosmiche Death Worship, it comes in a cool silver stamped envelope, with a silver ink printed insert, the song titles and label info are physically carved into the cassette itself, and apparently the first few copies included an actual deer tooth. How bad ass is that? Suitably bad ass for the dark sonic rituals housed within, long sprawling droned out landscapes, bleak and barren, guitars, synths and electronics, woven into churning pulsing expanses of black ambient shimmer and droning industrial drift, think Wolf Eyes, Brighter Death Now, Wicked King Wicker, MZ412, this is some serious black ambient terrorism.
Fields of static cloak smoldering low end murk, jagged shards of feedback drift atop filthy pitch black sonic swells, fractured electronics are wrapped around minimal synth thrum and smeared into hazy dirgescapes, that creep and drift and ooze, the melodies buried and tangled in each tracks muted and muddy sonic morass, but definitely present, and infusing these songs with some sort of melodic core, which definitely makes these haunting sonic rituals actually musical, instead of just textural, the various sounds coalescing here and there into ghostly almost rhythms, but just as often slipping into a sort of blurred shimmer. The final track is the most majestic of the bunch, jettisoning most of the noise, and letting the synths and electronics carry the sound, resulting in a sound both epic and majestic, like the coolest black metal intro ever, stretched out into a cinematic creepscape, the sound growing more and more dense and chaotic, before slipping into a weird pulsing almost sci-fi sounding synthdrone outro. Definitely down to hear more from these two...
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!!! And as mentioned above, housed in silver ink screened envelopes, with silver ink screened inserts.
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This one was a long time coming. We reviewed a tape ages ago by a boy/girl duo from Oakland who made a gloriously grim, dense blackened ambience that pushed all our buttons. That tape sold out super quick, and thus we began the wait for more. A wait that kept stretching out longer and longer. The two became disillusioned with the East Bay, and made their way northward, landing in Portland, and still we waited. Until finally, we received word, that there was indeed more, and it comes by way of the mighty Malignant Records, home to much fantastic blackened noisiness and ambient miserablism, a perfect home for these two, and for their Teeth Engraved With The Names Of The Dead. And you think that sort of move would temper their abject grimnity, a new friendlier neighborhood, a new home, might lighten up their shadowy sonics, but if anything, they've dragged some bad Oakland energy with them up North, cast their very own musical pall over this new land, and molded it into this fierce sprawl of hateful, harrowing blackness.
A guttural rumbling haloed in distant feedback opens the proceedings, a sonic representation of a scorched earth, swirling hiss, and dense tectonic low need vibrations, the sky full of strange electronics and muted FX, a sonic calm before the blacknoise storm as it were, the sound slowly mutating into a stretch of undulating grey thrum, over mysterious transmissions and disembodied voices, until helicopter like pulsations, choppy waves of rhythmic throb, churn and chug, blurred into a cascade of gristled, crumbling distortion, under which, mournful melodies drift drowsily, a strangely effective juxtaposition of harsh noise, and tranquil ambience, that builds to a furious hissing frenzy, before fracturing into a finale of sonic shards and decaying sonics. From there on out, sheets of noise wash over chiming tones, and stretched out drones, keening high end filigree buried beneath squalls of chaotic howl, the slow builds strangely mesmeric and almost melodic, processed vocals smeared into the roiling noise, thick gassy swells underpinning skies streaked with soft noise shimmer, and more haunting, buried melodies, the sound epic and majestic and mournful, aching melancholy wreathed in jagged crunch and grinding buzz, eventually erupting into what is essentially black metal, with all the metal sucked out, a heaving throb of grim black fury, the vokills monstrous and harsh as fuck, all tangled up in dense black swirls of sound, tripped out and impossibly psychedelic to boot.
The record culminates in the epic 25+ minute "When Storms Come", which is a bit like their version of Burzum's "Rundtgaing", a sprawling ambient epic, but in this case, Teeth Engraved's ambience is a churning morass of brown noise, blurred and soft focus, heavy and blown out, but muted and murky and blunted, the result more mesmerizing and hypnotic than brutal, a tough feat with what is essentially a half hour of noise, but here, it manages to soothe and entrance, and is the perfect black noise comedown bliss out finale for sure.
Housed in a DVD style case, with a printed insert.
A doom metal super-group (or, to borrow a pun from Julian Cope, a stupor-group) featuring members of Sunn O))), Goatsnake, Khanate, Iron Monkey, Cathedral, Burning Witch, etc... (that is, Stephen O'Malley, Lee Dorian, Greg Anderson, and Justin Greaves).
What began life as a straight up heavy psychedelic space rock band quickly evolved into something much more and much different, as UK psychedelic experimentalists Teeth Of The Sea began to push their sound in all sorts of uniquely directions, mixing eighties style soundtrackery with cosmic kraut grooves and loops and drones and all sorts of other weirdness. On the awesomely titled Highly Deadly Black Tarantula, the imaginary seventies giallo that the title evokes is made manifest in the distinctly soundtrack vibe, on the first track alone, with mariachi brass, twangy almost Morricone-esque guitar figures, pulsing synths, rumbling drones - by the end those sounds are doused in grit and distortion and augmented with wild programmed rhythms, not to mention almost black metal vokills. Confusing? Maybe, but also strangely thrilling. As is the rest of the record, the band truly coming into their own as they ditch all musical convention, for something that sounds fresh and original and pretty goddamn strange. The second track is all Throbbing Gristle style industrial crunch, replete with those distorted vox, and some frenzied drum machine, as well as swoonsome strings, and the brass returns, sounding at once totally out of place, like it's being piped in from a different record, but also impossibly perfect. And again the sound, at first amorphous, gradually coalesces into what sounds like it could be the soundtrack for the weirdest, coolest movie EVER.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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The first two records from this UK psychedelic space rock combo were primo examples of the current space/psych sound that we can't seem to get enough of - huge lumbering Hawkwind beholden sprawls of epic kosmische heaviness and tranced out kraut jams and blissful FX drenched atmospheric drifts. The band seemed to align themselves with the usual suspects: Carlton Melton, the Heads, White Hills, Mugstar, the Hills, etc. Those earlier Teeth Of The Sea records took that spaced out psychedelic sound and twisted it all up, adding near metallic heft in places, cheesy eighties soundtrack music, sci-fi electronics, swirling synths, raga like drones, heck even horns, so this new one came with lots of high expectations, but somehow, even as weird as those other records were, we weren't prepared for this.
After a weird bit of garbled vocals, the first proper track kicks in, with a pulsing, eighties sounding electro drum machine, then some percolating synths, reverbed percussion, weird electronics, processed horns, tinkling chime-like melodies, deep chordal drones, the band definitely dipping into the whole John Carpenter / Goblin sound, but making it totally their own. Immediately sounding like a WAY heavier version of our recent Record Of The Week from The Slasher Film Festival Strategy, and we were totally prepared for the whole record to unwind like some lost eighties soundtrack, but still in the first track, in come big, bombastic drums, some almost funky bass, the synths pulsing, a lumbering, loping cosmic soundtracky groove that's so good! All before the song EXPLODES into a wild, synth heavy, distorto guitar psych-prog blowout. Already worth the price of admission right there, and we're barely seven minutes in. Thankfully, it only gets cooler and weirder and WAY more far out.
Echo drenched horns are looped into a strange melodic cycle, sampled spoken vocals drift in and out, all over a skeletal electro groove, before the sound blossoms into some ultra creepy cinematic synthscapery, the synths buzzy and gristly, the vibe sinister and ominous, those looped, effected horns giving it a strange sort of almost Morricone gone Goblin vibe! From there, the sound devolves into a weird loose, super abstract almost-dub, reminding us of some old Adrian Sherwood record, via Muslimgauze or African Headcharge, but give a sort of heavy psych reworking, before in swoop swirling dizzying prog synth tangles and more spidery Morricone like guitars, the horns too, laying down a droned out brass backdrop, heady and hypnotic and really amazingly strange and original sounding. Pushing lots of our musical buttons, but turning those familiar sounds we love on their head.
At this point we're only halfway through, with the second part not letting up for a second, creepy atmospheric ambience, giving way to buzzing metallic crush, and blurred out slo-mo dooooom, laced with subtle synth and guitar filigree, shimmery outer space drift, ethereal and celestial that floats weightlessly, before some mariachi horns (!) bring it back to earth, gristly, grinding grey noise, and disembodied vocals, draped over a field of static, driven by buried pulsations, making for perhaps the most harrowing 2 minutes on the record, before launching into another psychedelic electro-dub excursion, all synth squelch and reverbed rhythms, which build to some seriously caustic crunch, before the record settles into the epic nearly 11 minute closer, a total eighties, soundtracky electro synth masterpiece, the perfect score for some lost horror art film, tribal rhythms, wheezing synths, tripped out vocodered vox, electronic beeps and trills, shimmery psych guitar, some driving propulsive grooves, and those horns, nearly driving the song at one point, and when matched to the grinding synth buzz, the swirling atmospheres, the fuzz guitar crunch, and the psych-kraut groove, make for something twisted and fantastically fucking far out. Masterful!
This came out last year, but somehow it managed to slip right by us, which is a shame cuz holy smokes is this right up our alley, and yours we're guessing. The first proper release (we think) from this UK instrumental space psych combo, who craft sprawling, smoldering epics, total kosmische psychedelic bliss out, not heavy and heady like the Heads or White Hills (at least most of the time), instead, TOTS let their songs brew and steep, like on the opening track here, the band unfurling a long stretch of warm washed out guitar buzz, haunting mariachi like trumpet, deep bass thrum, swirling sci fi FX, all woven into a super cinematic stretch of ritualistic psychedelic ambience. The second track offers up more of the same, but pushing the sound in a more Godspeedy, slow build direction, a minimal muted shimmerscape, wound around spidery guitars and a thick gloomy basslines, tribal drumming drives things forward, brooding and hauntingly intense, it's not until the final minute that the song explodes in a glorious burst of psych noise chaos.
The rest of the record offers up a series of miniature epics, haunting soundtracky ambience, mariachi flecked spaghetti western style psychedelia, occultic space rock infused krautrock, and just full on psychedelic space rock, all in varying measures, from the creepy soundtracky sci fi electronics of "Coraniaid", to the deserty drone rock of "Swear Blind The Alsatian's Melting", that transforms into a sort of mathy space rock part way through, rife with haunting twang, and metallic buzz, eventually blasting off, for the heart of the sun, all pounding dynamic chug and churn, and soaring psychguitar freakout. "Dreadnaught" is another one that's all cinematic and sweeping, that trumpet adding a little mariachi vibe to every track it touches, this one a hazy slow burn, the horn adding layer of buzz and thrum, before a brief bit of shimmery glitched out jangle, before the final jam, "Sentimental Journey", which is all wheezing electronics, and minimal tribal drumming, harmonica, gauzy washed out melodies, a droning dirgey drift, that builds to a pulsing hypnorock dronekraut groove, all murky and motorik, and the sort of thing you wish would go on for ages longer, but instead here finishes off in decaying swirl of hazy harmonica flecked shimmer.
The perfect mix of spaced out psych and slow burning post rock epic, which means you can probably figure out if this is for you (it probably is!)...
This is the second lp from UK psychedelic instrumental space rockers Teeth Of The Sea, their third record over all, and another twisted batch of heavy twisted psych, it makes sense that it would be on Rocket, home to other aQ fave space rock heavies like The Heads and Gnod, and these guys traffic in a similar sound, but one that is most definitely all their own, just check out opener "The Ambassador", one of THEE heaviest, trippiest slabs of space psych we've ever heard, thick low slung bassline, weird burbling electronics, tripped out processed vox, all hazy and buzzy and gristly, it sounds like a spaced out dirge rock Butthole Surfers almost, the guitars thick and distorted, the song a lugubrious crawl, until a second guitar swoops in, playing a slithery stoner riff, and the horns, the HORNS, bleating out a dark funereal drone, those freaky voices making everything way more druggy and demented, the drums come pounding in, it's not until about halfway through, that the guitars unwind wild peals of psychedelic leads, the drums grow more tribal, and yet, it never full explodes into conventional space rock, this is something else entirely, the song blisses out part way through, weird sci-fi squelches and more horns drifting in an expanse of distant guitar shimmer, and muted rhythms, everything gradually fading out leaving just tabla like drumming, subtle organs and swirls of electronic bloops and bleeps, and hell if that's not the way to start a record...
And the rest of the record, defies convention still by never quite settling down into anything even resembling proper space rock or psych rock, even compared to their last record we reviewed, this is as about far out as it gets. The next track is all drum machine, weird industrial electronics, processed voices, swirling synths, almost like some heavier take on Goblin / Carpenter soundtrack stuff. The title is all horn flecked slow burn drift, a gradual build to a more post rock crunch, building to a sort of Godspeed climax, but one that's all super high end guitar tangles draped over the otherwise seemingly sedate sonic background, dramatic and tense and surprisingly cinematic. The rest of the record continues to take the concept of psychedelic space rock and twist it all up, from pulsing kosmische synths, to almost cheesy, eighties sounding soundtrack music, like a more metal Beverly Hills Cop or Miami Vice (!), to murky hazy washed out ambience, all muted processed guitars and blurred gauzy melodies, to a weird final track that's a hazy shoegazey soundscape of minimal drumming, chiming guitars, and lots and lots of horns, again very haunting and cinematic, and really quite gorgeous.
Weird these guys seems to still lurk so beneath the radar, might be cuz they're just to far out and freaky for the psych/space rock crowd, which is a shame really, cuz this is some of the coolest stuff we've heard in ages.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The Canadian twins' sixth full length! With each album they've gotten progressively sleeker and more styled. As a result, not surprisingly their music has definitely lost some of the gals' defining quirky personality, but they still have a knack for writing smart pop songs with catchy hooks and feisty vocal interplay. So, if you don't mind your punk-pop being a bit over-glossy, Sainthood may still hit the spot...
First things first, we're sure he won't mind us tellin' ya that this album comes with a hearty thumbs up from our pal Adam Pfahler (Jawbreaker, Lost Weekend Video) and our Ms Cup concurs. In a better world, these gals would be the ones sitting atop the Canadian teen pop throne currently occupied by Avril. Tegan and Sara have always exuded a remarkable level of confidence, composure and songcraft (particularly in their vocal arrangements) for their age, but now on their third full length, it's matched by more fully fleshed out instrumentation and production. Overall, So Jealous is quite a striking departure from their past earthier folk-focused releases. At times it's downright sleek, punchy pop -- imagine if Gwen Stefani had twin younger sisters... well, sorta! Co-produced by Tegan, Sara, New Pornographer John Collins and his JC/DC Studio partner Dave Carswell.
Girl power! Sister power! Twin power! Yay for the Quins! They've kept both the fans and fires stoked from their last album So Jealous with their fifth full length, the super confident and composed The Con. Their dynamic dual vocals are in top form, drawing comparisons to a young Stevie Nicks or those punchy '90s college rock gals Veruca Salt ("Volcano Girls"). And they've proven themselves to be no slouches in the heartstring-plucking lyric and songwriting department too. So many tunes here are irresistibly hummable and singalongable. Strangely appealing to all walks of life -- pop kids, hipsters. tough metal dudes, moms and pops.
FYI: This time around they chose to record outside of their homeland, travelling to the distant climes of Portland, OR where they were assisted in their mission by The Rentals' Matt Sharp, Hunter from AFI, and Death Cab's Jason McGerr and Chris Walla.
France's Norma Evangelium Diaboli has always been one of the labels to turn to for some of the best black metal the world has to offer. Since pretty much forever, we have championed the pure evil promoted by Deathspell Omega, Katharsis, Watain, and Funeral Mist, but somehow Teitanblood managed to slip under the radar, and it wasn't until the dudes in YOB strolled in and told us to check this stuff out that we realized it was time to get on track. Based in Spain, but featuring the talents of a couple of Swedes, one of whom spent some time in Ofermod, Teitanblood plays a super punked out style of blackened death metal that few other bands could pull off with such perfection. Just looking at Seven Chalices' artwork, which brings to mind a crusty Xeroxed punk approach crossed with medieval woodcuts, will give you a pretty good indication of what's in store. From the band's logo to the face of the cd itself - complete with that "compact disc" icon - Teitanblood deliver the goods with a decidedly late '80s/early '90s bent, but thankfully without any trace of retro fetishism. The guitars are thick and downtuned, recalling the tone captured on Entombed's Left Hand Path - you know, some of the greatest sounding death metal guitars EVER - the drums pound out ferocious, heavy as fuck D-Beats, and the vocals growl out hateful bile as they fly all over the mix. There are moments that bring to mind the early Earache roster with insane Greg Ginn inspired solos made up of equal parts pure chaos and total noise, and somehow the band manages to hit a psychedelic stride with its cosmic heaviness. Like other NED bands, they expertly utilize creepy samples of angelic choir voices that make the metal moments even more disconcerting and intense. There are plenty of sludged out dirges that make you think of thick black tar, but the band also understands the importance of a good thrashy groove. The only moments of rest seem to come with the interludes spaced throughout the album, but even these will make your skin crawl with their throbbing tension.
Basically, Teitanblood takes what you love about heavy music and makes good - real good - on it. With all the metal coming out these days, it's easy for this stuff to start sounding tired, but it makes all the difference in the world in the capable hands of some masters who know what's up. What you get is a dizzying blur of hate filled fury that is so heavy it sounds like it may collapse on itself. In other words, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!
Brand new cd ep from this Spanish black metal duo, which pairs the single track from their one sided Purging Tongues 12" (which was so limited we only got 1 copy), along with a new unreleased track, just two songs, but they're long ones, the shorter just shy of 12 minutes, the longer 15+. And these guys waste no time, after a few seconds of creepy intro music, the band EXPLODE into a dense wall of pulverizing blacknoize, the riffs so frenzied and distorted they blur into thick streaks of filthy buzz, the drumming fast and furious, but also weirdly recorded, with the toms sounding like a drum machine, drifting to the surface amidst the group's blackened squalls, sounding like some weird eighties programmed rhythms, everything tangled up into a churning, roiling black hole of sound, dense and noisy and chaotic, freeform and seriously psychedelic. Without headphones, this might almost sound like some blackened Merzbow, or more metallic Masonna, but close listening reveals all sorts of crazy stuff going on beneath the surface, intricate arrangements, bellowed vokills, tripped out FX, the aforementioned drumming, it's not until nearly 5 minutes into the first track, that the blown out blacknoise abates, and the band switch gears, launching into a doomy, but equally noisy, death dirge, a chugging blast of doomnoise heaviness, that soon erupts right back into the frantic blackened noisiness of the first few minutes. And then the leads come in, it just adds a whole 'nother layer of psychedelic chaos to the proceedings.
The second track lets its intro stretch out a bit more, strange Spanish voices over haunting ominous cinematic drones, and when the band kicks in, they seem to just play over the intro, the result a super tripped out swirl of collaged noisiness, until the song coalesces into some of the densest black buzz we've heard in ages, the sort of furious blasting, that seems constantly on the verge of total collapse, a barely restrained chaos, channeled into fierce black energy, and somehow, midway through, the band crank it up even more, the sound growing MORE psychedelic, MORE noisy, almost like multiple songs playing at once, a swirling tangle of black buzz that devolves into another sprawl of chugging dirgey heaviness, accompanied by that mysterious voice from the beginning of the song, resulting in what sounds like the scariest, noisiest obscure horror movie soundtrack EVER, right down to the tolling bells and grimly cinematic outro.
Tectonic, Teutonic, yeah Tekhton is a good name for this heavy dirge/doom metal plus post rock (?) band from the Netherlands. This is their second opus, and it's a doozy of FUZZ laden riffage slamming repeatedly into your head, alternating now and again with much quieter, prettier parts, even acoustic strum and spacey synth. There's gruff, emotive singing, sometimes verging on melody, that works with both sides of the loud/soft equation. Tekhton make some allusions to geologic processes, and while a lot of this is subterreanean and slow-mo (and thus massively heavy) they speed up too for the occasional earthquake... their songwriting full of interesting complexities that keep the listener's ear engaged, along with one's emotions, that are already probably firmly in the grip of this intensely doomful music.
We mentioned pretty parts, well the prettiest here might be the indeed glorious "All Is Glory", that track being a mostly gentle, sorta spaced out psychedelic ramble, that's mesmerically mathy too, repetitive in a nicely Circle-ular way. Didn't Om and Six Organs do a record together? Did it sound like this song? Probably not but maybe it should have! (Oh, right, that was a split not a collaboration.)
Call it post-rock or not (maybe doom-prog would work as well?) this does remind us of post-rock stuff, but keeps it doooooooooom too, old school even, with any tendencies towards fancypants artsy-fartsiness utterly bludgeoned by the likes of, ferinstance, the crushing creepycrawl that is the appropriately titled "Tectonic Mass".
Super recommended, in particular to fans of a specific variety of AQ-beloved bands from Harvey Milk to Khanate to Pharoah Overlord to The Body to Boris. And we're detecting a definite Melvins influence on tracks like "Tooth And Nail", also a good thing.
Tele:funken's second full-length is a follow-up to his collaboration with flying Saucer Attack a few years ago. This record reflects its title in that it seems roughly based on twinkly children's tunes with intermittent space-invaders sprinkles.
After watching this movie starring Charles Bronson and Lee Remick, you'll never think of Robert Frost's famous poem "Stopping By Woods on A Snowy Evening" in the same way. Putting a new twist on a plot device borrowed from the Manchurian Candidate, Telefon (1977) is a unique take on the Cold War spy thriller. Donald Pleasance, playing a mad Russian spy, recites the last stanza of Frost's poem ("The woods are lovely, dark and deep / But I have promises to keep / And miles to go before I sleep / And miles to go before I sleep.") via telephone as a hypnotic trigger to wake up long dormant sleeper agents embedded in the US to commit violent suicidal sabotage. Charles Bronson is the KGB agent sent to intercept him before all the Telefon agents are activated, sparking the next World War, and Remick is the double agent who loves him but is ordered to betray him once the mission is complete. Don Siegel (Charley Varrick, Dirty Harry, The Beguiled) directs this with enough sharp hard-boiled pulpiness to make it a great b-movie thriller, as we used to see it get played a lot on independent television in the seventies (Those were the days!). Its far-fetched plot, spoofed in the Naked Gun movies, was believable enough for aQ-staffer Scott to fear telephonic hypnosis for a brief time when he was very young.
Lalo Schifrin's brooding score makes great use of the cimbalom, a Hungarian dulcimer used in a lot of Eastern European folk music, and other harp and string based instruments as a means to convey a pensive uncanny dread. Matching the harboring terror lurking beneath seemingly normal American citizens, the music at first exudes a dreamy facade that quickly becomes tense and hair-raising. Since this is one of the first American movies to have a KGB agent protagonist, the music also borrows from Eastern European musical idioms for the more sensitive character based plot lines.
Added onto this release is Leonard Rosenbaum's score for Hide In Plain Sight, the 1980 directorial debut of James Caan. Caan also stars in this film about a man searching to reunite with his kids after his ex-wife and new husband enter a witness protection program. Rosenbaum's score is typical of most Hollywood thrillers of the time, but it is short with only a few cues and a couple of longer pieces that probably wouldn't warrant its own release. Like with all Film Score Monthly releases, the booklet is chock full of information about both film's history and cultural context and the score's particular cinematic power in exemplifying each scene. Hypnotic!
Just electric guitar and amplified cello making lush 'indie chamber math rock' or 'classical post rock' or...well, were not sure what to call it, but it sure is cool. Highly recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Full length number three from these guys (this guy?), and like the first two, we've been totally obsessed, and have basically wanted to listen to nothing else. Longtime readers of the aQ list are no doubt familiar with Telekinesis! (yep, the exclamation point is part of the name), whose sound is plucked right out of 1995, sounding like every indie rock and college rock band you loved back then, or maybe more accurately, like you WISHED every band back then sounded like. Huge hooks, crazy catchy melodies, the sound bombastic and fuzzy, jangly and totally rocking. The opening one two punch is tough to beat, "Power Lines" with its acoustic intro, which leads right into some seriously kick ass crunch, there's chiming synth melodies, and fuzzed out power pop indie rock jangle galore, perfect vocals that slip effortlessly into a falsetto, big drums, and again it's the sort of crazy catchy pop songs few folks can pull off, let alone this consistently. Then there's the follow up "Empathetic People", which is just as catchy, but has a whole different sound, pounding drums, chugging distorto guitars, heck, even the verse is insanely catchy, and when the chorus hits, it somehow manages to be even catchier.
Like 12 Desperate Straight Lines, Telekinesis continue to dabble with electronics and different sounds, never more effectively on "Ghosts And Creatures" which sounds like some lost eighties MTV pop hit, a little bit new wavey, drum machine, buzzing synths, minor key melodies, at least until the chorus which sounds like buzzy electro pop a la M83, but a bit more wistful. And then it's right back into it. More fuzz, crunch and jangle, and more hooks, more songs that will get stuck in your head forEVER. We should mention "Lean On Me" if only for its E.L.O like chorus, sooooooo crazy good. In some ways this record, and it's catchiness is almost self defeating, we'll pick a favorite, play it to death, and then move on to the next song, play that one, which supplants the one before, and the cycle continues, records with only one or two great songs definitely don't suffer from that problem, but then, as far as problems go, it's a pretty good one to have. And if you're like us, when you get to the end, you can just start over at the beginning. Like the other Telekinesis! records, all it should takes is a listen to the samples below, and odds are you'll be as obsessed as we are.
Why the heck aren't these guys (this guy?) huge? Their debut record, released on Merge a while back, was a practically perfect slab of nineties style indie pop jangle, lush and hooky and rife with glorious Elephant 6isms, and this follow up ep is more of the same. These tracks were mostly recorded lo-fi bedroom style, straight into a laptop, and somehow, even though it's noticeably more lo-fi, it still sounds surprisingly lush, and still catchy like crazy.
And how about that title? Sound tongue twistingly familiar, at least stylistically? It's cause this record is sort of an homage to Guided By Voices, the band having become newly obsessed with GBV's Alien Lanes, and to further that point they offer up a fantastic take on "Game Of Pricks" from that very same record. And it definitely speaks to the pop genius of Telekinesis that the originals barely even pale in comparison. There's also a killer cover of "The Drawback" by the pre-Joy Division outfit, and somehow here, even that chunk of dour buzzsaw punkiness comes out all fuzzy and crunchy and jangly and sounding like a Telekinesis original. So great!
If you're not already crazy obsessed with Telekinesis! (and yeah, the exclamation mark is part of the name), listen to maybe a minute of "Dirty Thing", and we're guessing you're gonna be totally smitten. Totally perfect, hooky classic indie pop, lush, and hooky, and so goddamn good. If these guys happened 15 years ago, folks would probably be talking about them the same way they talk about Superchunk and Guided By Voices today. High praise for sure, but well deserved we think. Their debut from last year was easily one of our favorite records, the song "Coast Of Carolina" still on heavy rotation, the perfect mix of Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples In Stereo, Death Cab... just the perfect fuzzy summery pop jam, and the thing was, the record was overflowing with similar jams, as was the cdep that followed, which brings us to this one, and guess what? Yep, another record filled to the brim with still more perfect indie pop, hooky and fuzzy and jangly, but there have definitely been some changes, it's a bit less sunshiney, a little more moody, a subtle darkness wrapped around what on the surface seems like similarly sunny sounds, some more electronics, a little bit glossier, some cool weird studio tricks, but all woven into that Telekinesis! sound we so love. And if "Dirty Thing" isn't enough to convince you, try "Please Ask For Help", which infuses jangle pop with a little bit of new wavey gloom, or "50 Ways" that pairs bug crunchy distorted guitars, with hushed delicate heartfelt vocals, lilting melodies, and super emotional vocals, or "I Cannot Love You" which sounds like some sort of Pavement / Sebadoh hybrid, all bouncy bass, start stop arrangements, and another hook to die for, not to mention some proggy distorto guitars and weird effects, we could probably go track by track through the whole record, which speaks to how great ALL these songs are. Total mixtape manna, indie rock bliss, made for both soothing bitter breakups and for soundtracking hand holding dreamdates, like all the best indie rock. A new favorite for sure!
They sure don't make pop music like this anymore. Or so we thought. A few months back, we heard just a tiny part of a single song from this record, and ever since, we'd been dying for this to finally come out. It was "Coast Of Carolina", first sound sample below, check it out, we'll wait....
If after hearing that, you're not totally in love with Telekinesis! (exclamation point part of the name!) then your pop heart is truly black and shrivelled.
That song is pretty much the ultimate fuzz pop super catchy summer jam of the year. These guys (or actually this guy!) oozes fuzzy Elephant Six style pop genius. Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples In Stereo, that sort of thing, crunchy and jangly guitars, slightly distorted drumming that pounds and swings, the songs soaring through fields of sizzling cymbals and sheets of ebullient pop glimmer and shimmer, the vocals heartfelt and boyish and swoonsome and just a little bit Death Cab, and the sound, a perfect mix of classic power pop, sad boy lo-fi bedroom strum and nineties style jangly indie rock. And every song here is catchy as all get out, hooks everywhere, if we were a bit younger and were going a courting, you know about half of these songs would end up on mix tapes for that special someone. Actually fuck it, we're gonna go make a mix tape right now. Courting or not, this is that rare sort of record that pretty much demands its songs wind up on a crushtape...
This is exactly what we were hoping the new Yeah Yeah Yeah's record would sound like when we first heard rumors that it was going to be a more synth based, dance oriented record, but sadly that YYY disc felt a bit flat to our ears.
But Telepathe do it right, tapping into hazy and silky dancefloor pop with enough interesting nuances and influences to make their songs stick! And to hold up so nicely on repeated listens. Makes perfect sense that TV On The Radio's Dave Stiek produced this as it's infused with the same kind of genre blending and avant meets pure pop aesthetic that he's perfected with his own band. You might be familiar with one half of this female duo, Melissa Livaudais who has been in tripped out and witchy outfits like First Nation, who put out a record on Animal Collective's label Paw Tracks.
It's definitely cool as of late for folks with very experimental backgrounds to embrace a more song based and catchy dancefloor aesthetic, as such, this reminds us a bit of the latest Gang Gang Dance outing, albeit with more sparkle and sleekness. We could totally see folks who dig on Italians Do It Better releases finding much to love on Dancemother. The high in the sky feeling of these songs makes for such a satisfying and captivating listen, just dripping with enticing pleasure.
Telepherique's slow grinding industrial repetitions (industrial defined more as relating to factories churning enormous machines rather than Nine Inch Nails) culled from a variety of field recordings where voices slip in an out of the macabre atmospheres and shifting rhythmic elements. Thematically based as a tour of a grimy horrific underside to an undisclosed German metropolis.
