A fantastic archival slice of early nineties Lousiville post rock / post punk, from this amazing, but virtually unknown outfit, who over the course of their brief existence, created a body of work easily on par with their Lousiville brethren, not falling that far outside of the sonic world inhabited by the likes of Slint, Rodan and the rest. But for whatever reason, these guys slipped through the cracks, with virtually none of their music seeing widespread release, and what little did make it out into the world, didn't make it much further than the merch booth at local shows. So this long overdue compendium is a godsend for fans of that era, and another supreme sonic feather in TRL's reissue cap (Bitch Magnet, Moss Icon).
Thirty seconds into the first track, "Automatic Pilot" and fans of that brooding, tense, strain of nineties style minor key math/post/noise rock will be wondering how the fuck they missed these guys. Spidery melodies, woozy angular guitars, loping rhythms, lush, and moody, darkly textured and super dynamic, the vocals a hushed crooned, nestled in dark shadowy sprawls of minimal strum and barely there drum skitter, bookended by dense mathy tangles of low slung bassline and jagged guitar crunch, and let's not forget the Slint-like spoken word, or the wild squalls of super distorted psychedelic guitar, or even the final shift into a killer off kilter mathy breakdown, set to plaintive sad boy emo vox. So good!
And it stays that good throughout, every song a haunting slow build soundscape of blurry chordal shifts, and muted rhythmic mesmer, super hooky, keening melodic sort-of choruses and long stretches of tense angular thrum, wild frenzied near metallic freakouts, and darkly lilting slow core mumble.
Some tracks like "Douglass Boulevard" get fully rocking right out of the gate, with soaring buzzing guitars, throbbing bass and wild intricate drumming, but inevitably slip into another chunk of woozy slo-mo post rock creep, before gradually working its way back up to another math/noise/post punk blow out. "Kelly" is a wild churning, chugging, grinding, metallic mathy workout that should definitely please fans of Don Cab and some of the heavier outfits along the post rock spectrum. The band unfurl awesome stretches of cyclical hypno-rock mesmer, locking into tranced out grooves that could/should never end. They also have an emo streak a mile wide, the wailing about-to-crack vox, the soaring majestic melodic epic-ness. At some points the resemblance to the post/math rock big boys is downright uncanny, which makes it even more curious why they weren't more popular, but these guys definitely infuse their own subtle twists and tweaks into the sound, and it's a sound some of us can't ever get enough of, and wish that more modern bands were still able to pull off. So goddamn great, even all these years later. Here's a list of bands, and if it reads at all like your collection you definitely need this: Slint, Rodan, Polvo, Bitch Magnet, Don Caballero, Drive Like Jehu, Giant's Chair, A Minor Forest, Sweep The Leg Johnny, Breadwinner, June Of 44, The For Carnation, Honor Role, Shipping News, Butterglove, Crain...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We made the first compilation of Telescopes singles a Record Of The Week late last year, so it would make sense, that the second volume might receive the same honors. As we mentioned back then, we've been pretty obsessed with that particular era in druggy space rock, be it the Telescopes, or Spacemen 3, or Loop, or Swervedriver. There seems to be a resurgence in interest, as more and more young bands discover that sound and attempt to make it their own.
We're not complaining of course, we love that blown out, druggy drone rock, looped riffage, and simple pounding krautrock rhythms, effects and drones, swirling and shimmering, and the recent spate of reissues drove that home, both Loop and Swervedriver getting the deluxe reissue treatment, and reminding us why they STILL rule, and why few bands could ever hope to create the same sort of druggy sonic space magick.
That said, this Telescopes singles collection offers up another side of the band, some of that old sound is still present, the pounding droning churning riffage, the swirling spaced out effects, the buried vox, the trancelike arrangements, but if anything the band have taken their sound even further out, ditching any semblance of proper rock arrangement, sometimes playing the same riff for 6 minutes, other times crafting a slow hushed drone-y crawl, dabbling in abstract slowcore, space-drone, and various other abstractions in sound we don't really have proper names for yet, and you know what? We love it. It's like everything we love about space rock and krautrock and slowcore but just smeared and blurred and pulled apart and reimagined as something way more psychedelic, way more minimal, and so much more compelling and arresting than another disc of fuzzy space-y rock jams (not that we wouldn't love that too), instead, these are explorations, experiments, but only to the degree that they digress from various space rock tropes, offering instead, something wholly other, a sound that is avant and challenging, but at the same time warm and enveloping and inviting. This is timeless trance music, even at it's heaviest, The Telescopes have created some sort of ur-rock, loosed from all the usual rock and roll strictures and allowed to ooze and sprawl and billow and shimmer and explode into ever expanding clouds of blinding glimmer and prismatic tonal shift, and it's ever so divine.
Even though this is technically a singles collection, none of these tracks sound like proper singles, instead, as mentioned above, they barely retain any rock or pop, instead existing as slow shifting fields of looped mysterious sound, infused with elements of the rock and pop that came before.
The opener "Winter #7" is absolutely stunning, a hushed bassy crawl, with ethereal barely audible boy girl vocals, distant horns, plenty of crumbling ambience and buzzing crackle, wheezing keyboards, fans of Crescent and Flying Saucer Attack and similarly abstract space rock will be smitten. Which leads directly and seamlessly into "The Perfect Needle #4" (a title that smacks of Spacemen 3, as does the track itself), a slow smoldering drift, all muted drones, mumbled vox, buried percussive thumps, a sort shimmering patina of glitch and crackle, totally space-y and meditative, which leads directly into the first 'rock' song, "Another Sky" which takes a woozy warbly Loop-ish riff, and then, yep, loops it, creating a totally mesmerizing riffdrone, while all around it effects swirl, voices hover, shards of squiggly guitar streak past sheets of blurred psychedelic supernovas, utterly entrancing and irresistible.
And so it goes, a trajectory set for the outer reaches of the galaxy, but it's not where we're headed, it's how we get there, and the soundtrack to the ride, from the murky muted jangle laced shimmer of "Household Objective #2", the pounding flute flecked effects drenched space garage groove of "Dsm-1v Axis", which gets almost industrial at one point, to the strange muted whirring dronescape of "Another Whip", to the buzzing guitar stasis of "The Blue Shroud Of Alkatraz", with its static charged sheets of crumbling high end, wrapped in tendrils of skree and softened crunch, underpinned by a deep moaning tangle of droneguitar, finally discharging in a warped burst of glitched out effects and fractured buzz. And there's still more to discover, with every listen. Headphones, while not required, will allow you to delve even deeper, allow you to escape your earthly bonds and get lost in the Telescopes world of bleary eyed fuzz, hushed minimal mystery, greyed out guitar grime, and looped outer space shimmer.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
If you follow the AQ list at all, you know we love all things space-y and druggy and psychedelic, especially when it's of the dirgey fuzzy grungy variety. Spacemen 3, Hawkwind, F/i, Monster Magnet, the Heads, Loop, and all that stuff. And now you can add the Telescopes to the list. And pretty damn close to the top if you ask us. Not because they're a new discovery, but because their gorgeously massive slabs of blissed out drug fuzz are finally getting reissued. Altered Perception is a compilation of sorts, collecting a handful of previously unreleased tracks as well as a few vinyl-only rarities. Part of the early nineties shoegazer scene, but only peripherally, the Telescopes took the dreamy bliss of My Bloody Valentine and dipped it in thick tarpits of distorted guitar, howled feedback, laconic vocals, landing them sonically much closer to Loop or Spacemen 3. In fact sometimes the similarities are uncanny. Which is not a bad thing. This is supreme drug/head music. Definitely music to take drugs to make music by. One of Andee's most listened to records of the last few weeks.
We've long been fans of the Telescopes, a veritable UK institution. A long running blissed out space rock outfit as adept at crafting dreamy billowy drone rock epics as they are spewing huge gobs of caustic guitarnoise and wild psychedelic freakouts. This ultra limited 7", in Trensmat's ongoing series of eps, finds the band dabbling in the latter. Two tracks of crumbling slowly decaying space rock ambience, washed out guitars, streaks of glittering feedback, rumbling drones, coruscating white noise guitar buzz, blurred disembodied chordal bliss and crunch slabs of fuzzy distortion, all stretched out into mesmerizing sprawls of dreamlike psychedelic space drone. Heavy and dense, noisy and divine!
Includes a cd-r with the same tracks as the 7", but also with a 40 minute cd-rom film. A gorgeous and super abstract black and white video and live performance recorded in 2006, all stripes and striations, static and video white noise, shifting and slowly moving and changing shape, crumbling beauty, abstract decay and distortion, the visual analogue to the Telescopes blown out ambient skree.
Pressed on opaque cloudy blue vinyl. Packaged in a cool full color sleeve with a half cutaway on the back revealing the single and the cd. LIMITED!!! Of course. Less than 100 copies worldwide...
One of two new 7"s on the Trensmat label this week, the other, the most recent from NYC bliss poppers Cheval Sombre, is reviewed elsewhere on the list, and then there's this, a record from psychedelic space rock legends The Telescopes. And as we no doubt have mentioned before, folks into the current crop of psych/space rock, who dig folks like White Hills, Carlton Melton, Wooden Shjips, etc., who somehow haven't heard the Telescopes, well, shit, it's never too late, and odds are you're have another new favorite band, and loads of records to track down. And this 7" is as good a place to start as any, although it definitely offers up a less rocking side of the band, the A side, a brooding cover of the Nick Drake track "Black Eyed Dog", here rendered in shades of black and grey, thick blurred swells of smoldering guitar, laced with delicate skeletal spidery melodies, and soft shimmery clouds of barely there FX, the vocals a hushed croon, the original was dark, but this is seriously haunting and ominous, a gorgeous bit of moody minimal mesmer. The B side starts with a strange sort of intro, a minimal bit of banjo laid over a churning swirl of buzzing FX, with spoken word by John Sinclair (founder of the White Panther Party, and one time manager of the MC5), while the second song on the B side, continues on in a similarly abstract direction, a strange soundscape of lazer effects and buzzing guitar drone, of blurred feedback, and jagged shard of truncated melody, bits of percussion and recordings of random conversations drift along this tripped out stream of smeared psychedelic minimalism.
The record includes a download code, which not only gets you the 7"s tracks proper, but also includes a killer live track, that finds the band sounding more like Birchville Cat Motel or Sunroof!, with another sprawl of abstract guitardrone and ambient experimentalism, as well as an instrumental version of "Black Eyed Dog", featuring Bridget Hayden, and which cranks up the 7" version, adding more noise, more guitars, and turns it into something much more blown out and heady!
Super limited, with Trensmat releases we generally only get one shot, and once the batch we get runs out, that's it, which means, of course, you should grab one of these before they're all gone for good.
One of those bands to emerge from the Creation Records class of 1992 that brought forth My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver, and Slowdive, The Telescopes hardly resemble a shoegazing Brit-pop band these days. Their slow-burning, hypnogogic engagement with psychedelia has blown out the final vestiges of the song which even by the time of their previous single on Trensmat had become a smeared deconstruction of Nick Drake's "Black Eyed Dog" through a smoldering space-rock mandala of hashish-laced guitardrone. Harm takes things even further, by tuning all of the instruments to a reference pitch of 444hz and letting everything drift towards oblivion. Yes, that is the vibrational frequency of the human body, often described as the 'healing' frequency; but no, this isn't some exercise in holistic wellness through sound. Sure, we have been getting more 'inner mind music' these days; but The Telescopes blast these frequencies through cranked distortion boxes which give these holy minimalist tendencies a serious White Hills / Bardo Pond crunch. With the multiple guitars swarming on this tone through sheets of buzz, fuzz, glisten, and grime, the drummer mostly glides across the cymbals and only sets up a thoroughly buried motorik kick-drum pattern on the second side. Similarly, the bass is handled as more of a sympathetic rumble than anything remotely structural. Supposedly, the only remaining original member Stephen Lawrie is present behind the microphone; but there's very little evidence amidst these gaping, drooling, totally drugged out ur-drones. Limited? Yeah, probably. The download code on this album also comes with an 8 minute video to boot!
We've long been fans of the Telescopes, who have been travelling a sonic path similar to Spacemen 3, Hawkwind, F/i, Monster Magnet, the Heads, Loop and assorted other psychedelic outer space drone rockers. This new 7" though has the band exploring new territory, and we must admit we are pretty dang pleased. If this was some weird Finnish cd-r limited to 50 copies people would be freaking out. But just because it's a new record from a band we know and love, don't let that keep you from picking this up. Might even be the best 7" we've heard all year.
The A side is a droning, buzzing raga-like dreamscape, flitting bird-like flutes that swirl and float over a blackened drift of guitar rumble and pulled apart riffs, until the drums kick in, and then it's like you've been launched into space, a full on drug drenched, FX heavy psychedelic space rock jam, with a thick bassy organ groove, wild flutes and effects EVERYWHERE. Dirge-y and groovy and dreamlike.
The B side is even more far out. A dense tangle of garbled guitars, slowly shifting, little squalls of layered distortion, muted blurry melodies, another sort of raga, this time reminiscent of SUNNO))) or Sunroof!, super blissy and abstract, but still heavy and dense and dark. WOW! Has us dying for a new record. Packaged in cool creepy skull cover art.
We won't go into too much detail with this as we only got 10 copies and we're pretty sure we won't be able to get more. A super limited (less than 100) lathe cut 7" from UK space rock institution The Telescopes. But don't be expecting any Loop like grooves (Loop the band, not loop the... um.. loop) or Hawkwind heart of the sun psychrock blow outs, or even any introspective shoe gazing, instead, this is the Telescopes at their most abstract and minimal, emitting a gorgeous multi-layered high end squall, very much like Sunroof! or Vibracathedral Orchestra. Sheets of wail and skree, keening streaks of feedback and wavering shimmering washes of glimmer and glisten. Two tracks, both barely shifting high end drones, and both quite lovely.�
The cool thing about this single is, that it comes with a cd-r containing the same tracks that are on the 7", so since it's a lathe cut, and lathe cuts lose a little on every play, you can play it like crazy, letting it degrade slightly with each listen, enjoying the every changing sound quality, allowing for more crackle and hiss and distortion, probably getting more and more beautiful, without sacrificing the original tunes. Plus the cd-r also includes a QuickTime movie of the band performing in 2006 in Ireland...
Awesome.
Here's an easy one, anyone who bought those Loop reissues we made Records Of The Week back on list 307, should probably pick this up too. If you dig Loop and Spacemen 3 and Jesus And Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine, then the Telescopes druggy dirgey spaced out garage rock will definitely find an honored spot alongside those aforementioned outfits.
Formed in 1987, the Telescopes first release was a split with Loop oddly enough, a flexi disc released with a fanzine, pretty auspicious beginning for sure, yet ever since, they have constantly and continually been overshadowed by their drone rock brothers in arms Spacemen 3 and Loop. Which is weird considering how similar their sounds are.
Similar they may have been, but the Telescopes always seemed much more rocking and heavy and WAY more noisy that either, but were definitely not averse to the occasional blissed out Spacemen style druggy drift, or some metallic Loop-ed pound. But those moments were scattered amidst a minefield of amp destroying ear drum splitting spaced out noise rock, with a definite grunge element. Re-listening to these tracks now, it definitely sounds like the seeds that spawned Mudhoney and some of the more raw and rocking early Sub Pop bands.
Pretty much every Telescopes record is worth owning, but this singles collection is especially transcendent, gathering up some of their earliest singles, which means raw and lo-fi, and fuzz drenched, and noisy as fuck and gloriously poppy, and HEAVY, always on the verge of total collapse. Killer hooks doused in distortion, verse chorus verse imploding into a squall of psychguitar freakout and total off-kilter drum damage. Every space filled up with wild streaks of lightning bold feedback, drums and guitar locked into killer stop start grooves, the vocals drenched in distortion, yowling and growling, some serious Stooges infused space rock garage mayhem.
But the band did mellow a bit as time went on, so the second half of the disc offers up another side of the band, groovy tripped out almost paisley sounding sixties jangle drift, pretty strummed soft pop, blissy shoegazey shuffle, lush Beatlesesque shimmer, but still plenty of warbly organ, some surprising banjo, fuzzy reverb, everything in a softly druggy haze.
We reviewed the Telescopes Altered Perception record a while back, another collection of sorts, and while the first two tracks are indeed the same, those are the only two tracks to be found on both. Which means not only is THIS essential, but odds are you're probably gonna want that one too. Cuz as far as we're concerned you can never have too much blurry and buzzy and druggy spaced out noisy garage-y psychedelic drone rock in your life. EVER.
In the past we've taken every opportunity to rave like crazy about this band of British noise/space/psych/drone rockers, and with the current lust for all sounds psychedelic and spaced out, and the popularity of a new wave of psychedelic space rockers: The Heads, White Hills, Carlton Melton, Spyrals, Wooden Shjips, etc, it seems like the perfect time for folks who somehow missed out on the Telescopes to figure out just what it is they've been missing. And what better way than with this, a reissue of their very first full length, originally released way back in 1989, a year after their debut 7", a split with aQ beloved dronerockers Loop, and just the fact that they shared a split with Loop should tell you most of what you need to know. With a sound that veers from hushed, droney, druggy drift, to full on heavy, noisy, distorted dronepsychspace crunch, the Telescopes were like a super charged version of Spacemen 3, injecting some swaggery Stooges-y stomp into their hazy psychedelic mesmer. Think the classics, Hawkwind, Loop of course, Monster Magnet, Spacemen 3, F/i, but then mix in some My Bloody Valentine, and some Jesus And Mary Chain, a little Swervedriver, and the aforementioned Stooges, and what you're left with is a big beautiful noisy chunk of blissed out hypno-heaviness.
The record opens up with the very Spacemen 3 beholden "And Let Me Drift Away", with it's chiming melodies and simple acoustic strum, all hushed croon and sun dappled glimmer, laced with elegiac piano, violin and even French horn, a definite Velvets vibe happening too, but before you lay back and prepare for a warm whirling druggy drift off as the title implies, DO strap yourself in for the next track, "I Fall, She Screams", a pounding noise rock freak out, wild raspy vocals howled over wild squalls of tangled psych guitar, pounding drums and tons of FX, occasionally locking into some droned out repetition, but then veering right back into wah wah drenched sonic chaos. But then the sound shifts gears again, "Oil Seed Rape" wraps gauzy clouds of distortion around a strummy acoustic lament, all woozy and washed out, but of course peppered with brief blasts of full on noise rock crunch.
And so it goes, the record deftly juggling those two disparate sides of the Telescopes' schizophrenic personality, managing to fuse the two into something simultaneously heavy and heady, dense and dreamy, noisy and hypnotic, offering up some of THEE best droned out psych rock ever: the very Spacemen 3-like "The Perfect Needle" (a nod to Spacemen 3's "The Perfect Prescription?) alongside some of the hookiest heaviness of the era: "Please, Before You Go" which seems to foreshadow the punked out pop of Nirvana or the sludge pop of Torche, alongside full on extended amp destroying psychedelic space rock workouts that rival the masters: the 8 minute chaotic freak out "Suicide".
This reissues trades in the live tracks that were included as bonus material on the last reissue of Taste for the three tracks from The Perfect Needle ep, the band's 1989 ep, and it's a doozy, and is essentially cut from the same sonic cloth, "Sadness Pale" is a brief blast of slipper slide guitar laced Stoogesy stomp, while "S.H.C. Burn" opens with a wild blast of psychnoise before settling into something a bit more droney and hypnotic, but really never getting any less noisy, and finally, "You Can Not Be Sure" a twisted soundscape of wildly sawed violin over a woozy slithery bassline, wrapped in a haze of washed out shimmer, and pelted by a barrage of strange noises and shards of grind and crunch. Awesome.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In the past we've taken every opportunity to rave like crazy about this band of British noise/space/psych/drone rockers, and with the current lust for all sounds psychedelic and spaced out, and the popularity of a new wave of psychedelic space rockers: The Heads, White Hills, Carlton Melton, Spyrals, Wooden Shjips, etc, it seems like the perfect time for folks who somehow missed out on the Telescopes to figure out just what it is they've been missing. And what better way than with this, a reissue of their very first full length, originally released way back in 1989, a year after their debut 7", a split with aQ beloved dronerockers Loop, and just the fact that they shared a split with Loop should tell you most of what you need to know. With a sound that veers from hushed, droney, druggy drift, to full on heavy, noisy, distorted dronepsychspace crunch, the Telescopes were like a super charged version of Spacemen 3, injecting some swaggery Stooges-y stomp into their hazy psychedelic mesmer. Think the classics, Hawkwind, Loop of course, Monster Magnet, Spacemen 3, F/i, but then mix in some My Bloody Valentine, and some Jesus And Mary Chain, a little Swervedriver, and the aforementioned Stooges, and what you're left with is a big beautiful noisy chunk of blissed out hypno-heaviness.
The record opens up with the very Spacemen 3 beholden "And Let Me Drift Away", with it's chiming melodies and simple acoustic strum, all hushed croon and sun dappled glimmer, laced with elegiac piano, violin and even French horn, a definite Velvets vibe happening too, but before you lay back and prepare for a warm whirling druggy drift off as the title implies, DO strap yourself in for the next track, "I Fall, She Screams", a pounding noise rock freak out, wild raspy vocals howled over wild squalls of tangled psych guitar, pounding drums and tons of FX, occasionally locking into some droned out repetition, but then veering right back into wah wah drenched sonic chaos. But then the sound shifts gears again, "Oil Seed Rape" wraps gauzy clouds of distortion around a strummy acoustic lament, all woozy and washed out, but of course peppered with brief blasts of full on noise rock crunch.
And so it goes, the record deftly juggling those two disparate sides of the Telescopes' schizophrenic personality, managing to fuse the two into something simultaneously heavy and heady, dense and dreamy, noisy and hypnotic, offering up some of THEE best droned out psych rock ever: the very Spacemen 3-like "The Perfect Needle" (a nod to Spacemen 3's "The Perfect Prescription?) alongside some of the hookiest heaviness of the era: "Please, Before You Go" which seems to foreshadow the punked out pop of Nirvana or the sludge pop of Torche, alongside full on extended amp destroying psychedelic space rock workouts that rival the masters: the 8 minute chaotic freak out "Suicide".
This reissues trades in the live tracks that were included as bonus material on the last reissue of Taste for the three tracks from The Perfect Needle ep, the band's 1989 ep, and it's a doozy, and is essentially cut from the same sonic cloth, "Sadness Pale" is a brief blast of slipper slide guitar laced Stoogesy stomp, while "S.H.C. Burn" opens with a wild blast of psychnoise before settling into something a bit more droney and hypnotic, but really never getting any less noisy, and finally, "You Can Not Be Sure" a twisted soundscape of wildly sawed violin over a woozy slithery bassline, wrapped in a haze of washed out shimmer, and pelted by a barrage of strange noises and shards of grind and crunch. Awesome.
Killer split single teaming heavy shoegaze faves The Telescopes from the UK with Industrial death disco outfit Deadly Cradle Death from China, whose track is a weird combination of dubstep, minimal wave and NIN ferocity. Meanwhile, The Telescopes as usual crank it to 11.
Whether you're young or old, into rock or not, male or female, you gotta hear Marquee Moon. If you already know it, then you can skip down to the description of the bonus tracks below, but if you haven't heard it before, then know that Marquee Moon is simply perfection from beginning to end, and is here reissued with 5 bonus tracks. Television's masterpiece came out in 1977 and is inarguably one of the best albums to come out of the New York punk scene (which also included the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, Heartbreakers, etc). Tom Verlaine's sinewy vocals are half-sung, half-spit out over his and Richard Lloyd's interweaving guitars, the solid bass of Fred Smith, and equally solid drumming of Billy Ficca. Richard Hell (later of the Heartbreakers and Voivoids) was also a founding member of the band who stuck around long enough to record their demo but got kicked out before the album, although his influence is definitely heard.
There's so much on this album to love: there's the rollicking guitar party of "See No Evil", the tender piano and epic melodic guitar solo in "Guiding Light", the stark, stunningly lovely twin guitar interplay of the album's 10 minute selftitled centerpiece, etc etc... dammit, this album is BRILLIANT and PERFECT.
As for the bonus tracks, there's the out-there "Little Johnny Jewel" from the band's debut selfreleased 7", alternate versions of "See No Evil" (amazing! -- Richard Lloyd playing quite different stuff from what ended up on the released take), "Friction", and "Marquee Moon" (again, fascinatingly different guitar solos -- and not terrible, thank goodness), and a sprightly, fun instrumental. If you already own this album and love it, I'd advise you to check out the alternate tracks -- they actually are worthy of trading in yer old copy (at least I, Windy, am going to!)
Long-awaited comeback record from British post punk psych jokers Television Personalities.
Believed to have either disappeared in a fog of mental illness or died mysteriously, frontman Dan Treacy has recently re-emerged after a long stint on a prison barge. Their sound is a hodge podge of noisy psych garage in the vein of Syd Barret, and the Pastels, The Manchester pop of the Charlatans, as well as the arch humor of Toy Dolls and Ian Drury and the Blockheads, that people seem to either really love or really hate. You decide.
First full length from these Swedish metalheads, after a 7" we reviewed a few lists back that kicked our asses, and like that 7" Tellusian, featuring members of late great grinders Crowpath, while still plenty grindy, are way more melodic metal, and it totally suits them. The songs heavy and furious and fast, but crazy catchy, epically hooky.
A long time ago, we reviewed a grind comp, and on it, a seriously sick grind band did a cover of an old track by pop punks Propaghandi, a it was the best, an impossible fix of incredible poppiness, and frantic heaviness, and we remarked, how come bands don't just SOUND like that, it's only when a band is doing a cover of another band, but that's the first thing we thought of when we heard these guys, and this record especially, it's exactly THAT, a super heavy grind metal band, not at all afraid of melody, who manage to merge those two elements seamlessly, without taking away from either. Check out opener "Rivalry", a sub two minute blast of everything that makes these guys so great, frenzied lightning fast riffing, impossibly chaotic mathed out drumming, loads of metallic chug, but killer harmonized guitars, crazy catchy melodies, a little churning downtuned doom, and heck even an extremely brief bit of (very) surprising almost funk bass, literally a second or two, before it's right back into the chug and churn. And it continues like that, dizzyingly flitting from tangled math metal, to churning metallic grind, to soaring melodic epicry, and usually some killer mix of all of those. But for a metal/grind band, the melodies and arrangements are pretty goddamn stunning, and the sound not as grind or metal as you might expect, instead, almost like a metallized noise rock band, or a super heavy, slightly grindy math rock band, so much so, that with a slight tweak, even with a proper clean singer, it would be a whole different kind of band, but as it is, Tellusian deliver some seriously addictive, and ultra catchy pop flecked, melodic grind metal, that KILLS, and that we've been listening to pretty much nonstop since we got this in. WAY recommended!
First we've heard from these Swedish grinders, who were born of the late great Crowpath, and who traffic in a similarly punishing sound, albeit a bit more melodic. The A side opens quite misleadingly with a brief bit of shimmery strum, bleary slowcore soft focus math rocky riffage, which quickly explodes into some churning, downtuned melodic grind-prog, chugging and blasting, with some wild little mathed out sonic curlicues, not to mention some crazy catchiness that had us thinking of all the classic Swedish death metal that came before. The sound flits from more metallic chug to the sort of post/math rock heaviness we can't ever get enough of. The B side is more of the same, dizzyingly agile math metal, prog grind, rife with blasts and chugging riffs, but shot through with still more crazy catchiness. Definitely dying to hear more from these guys...
We've been getting all riled up over some hot Afro-rock releases lately, first from those killer Nigerian comps put out by the Strut and Soundway labels and then The Peace's Black Power reissue. But the lo-fi fuzz that's really rocking our world is this gem from Chrissy Zebby Tembo & Ngozi family, 1974's My Ancestors. Though included on the Love Peace and Poetry African psych compilation, Chrissy Zebby Tembo may not be so memorable from that because their track was the one instrumental track from My Ancestors, and though it's great, it's not as good as the tracks where Tembo sings. Like an odd hybrid of Malcolm Mooney from Can and Sabbath-era Ozzy Osbourne, Tembo's English delivery over these fuzzed-out groovers is the reason to take notice. Hailing from Zambia, same as The Peace and The Witch (another Afro-rock group we'd like to see get more affordably reissued), Tembo wails over these rhythmically charged but largely western-style rock structures. The best being the Sabbath gone to South Africa "Trouble Maker". In constant rotation, since this first arrived a few weeks ago, we've finally managed to get enough to share with our customers. Don't hesitate, this whole record kills!
On The Steps Of The Temple is the debut from this Arizona duo, who offer up a killer slab of instrumental post-black metal, their sound thick and downtuned, the guitars MASSIVE, slipping easily from buzzing blast, to something more churning and mathy, the songs laced with soaring melodies, subtle swirling synths, grinding and metallic one second, with lots of stop/starts and tangled almost progged out arrangements, soaring and majestic the next, with a serious post rock vibe running throughout, at times sounding a bit like a blackened, more metallic Godspeed, and at others, ditching the metal completely, and unfurling some fantastically brooding musical moodiness that manages to be tense and intense without ever exploding into actual metal. That said, the bulk of the record IS spent in metal mode, somewhere between the doomy bombast of Neurosis, the epic slow build of Isis, mixed with some serious metallic mathiness and some furious blackened blasting, with much of the record mixing being a dizzying mix of all of those, the end result something melancholy and mesmerizing, moody and metallic, atmospheric and HEAVY.
Three new sonic missives from the ether, from whatever mysterious alternate sonic universe the NOTHingness label exists in. A world of bleak emptiness, massive expanses of barren rumbling tundras, of glassy black surface sonic pools... Every disc dark and lovely, creepy and ominous, haunting and super intense. And of course outrageously limited...
Through Fire is the first collaboration between these two relatively unknown (at least to us) US industrial ambient drone outfits, Temperature Within and Lovepowerexperiment, and together, they weave a suitably rumbling whirring shimmery series of slow burning dronescapes, that subtly shift and swell and morph over the course of eight Roman numeral-ed tracks. The opener is a prime slab of mysterious melodic dark ambience, imagine Lustmord if the sound was as pretty as it was scary, buried melodies tangled up in gritty crumbling swells of thick low end thrum. But by the end of the track, it has transformed into some sort of epic cinematic swirl, sweeping melodies, simple propulsive rhythms, a lost soundtrack to some dark drama. The rest of the disc unfolds in a similar fashion, tracks wander abstractly through shadowy stretches of haunting tension, barely there soft melodic shimmers, caustic corrosive walls of crumbling drone, and muted neoclassical flares tucked amidst deep blackened swells and slow swirling expanses of slow motion sprawl.�
LIMITED TO ONLY 111 COPIES!! Packaged in a slimline dvd style case with full color cover.
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3 krautrock albums (from groups you may want to first sample on the "Unknown Deutschland" comps, see below) that were supposedly issued in the 70s in tiny editions of, like, 50 copies or something. The Pyramid album sole track is a mysterious 35-minutes of spacy drone with mellotron, moogs, and Tibetan bells. The Nazgul cd, our favorite of the three, is from 1975 and features 4 long tracks of droning ambience that's easily as good as any current space rock outfit could put together; i.e. Magnog, Labradford or anything else on Kranky. Bonus weirdness: the bandmembers are named Frodo, Gandalf, and Pippin.
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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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 last we heard from industrial black ambient terrorist Temple Of Not, was on a split with black metallers Nightbringer, which makes perfect sense as the man behind ToN, Alcameth, also fronts Nightbringer. But in ToN, Alcameth crafts gorgeously grim expanses of heaving blackened drones, and decaying industrial crumble, the tracks on the split with Nightbringer definitely bucked the black ambient trend by adding all manner of fucked up sound, noise and texture and samples, and on this new one, the method seems to be similar. In fact we were sort of expecting some shimmery black drift, but ToN offers up a sound much more corrosive and aggressive and creepy than typical black ambience, with thick streaks of howling horror, or crumbling distortion, alien voices, inhuman howls, pounded atonal piano, industrial creaks and groans, sounding more like the orchestral black doom weirdness of Gnaw Their Tongues. Sure there are stretches of hushed shimmer, and creeping black sprawl, but those are just brief respites between squalls of sonic crunch, stretches of undulating black terror, clouds of haunting ghostly voices and heaving slabs of blown out buzz.
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Temple of Tiermes is a side project of the Finnish noise/drone ensemble Tiermes (whose Jussi Saivo figures on old Circle and recent Ovalki material, but is not featured on this album). Far from sounding like the arctic hypno-rock of Circle, Temple of Tiermes generates a haunted swarm of overdriven guitar feedback and blustery noise crescendos that are filtered into statospheric shimmers. In the realm of "ambient industrial", not nearly as death obsessed as Brighter Death Now, but more malevolent than Maeror Tri.
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Kinda like a Mr. Show sketch! This cd reissue of an LP from the sixties features then-contemporary pop hits (like the Beatles) done in the old fashioned style of the 1920s. Fun. Another weird one from Japan's always-odd EM Records.
Nice title! And, oooh. It's a very nice recording too. This debut album by electro-acoustic glitchtronica artist Mark Templeton should appeal to fans of Paul Wirkus, Mitchell Akiyama, Guiseppi Ielasi and others working in the experimental-but-beautiful, lowercase field of painterly abstraction, processed instruments, delicate drone, and (last but not least) ambient melodies. Mark Templeton's use of guitar, accordion, vibraphone, cymbals and especially banjo have us most closely comparing this to Geoff Mullen's wonderful thrtysxtrllnmnfstns, as Templeton is similarly submersing the notes played acoustically into a warm, electric bath of creaking staticky stuff, accompanied by murmuring field recordings and chirping digital glitch, like the pleasant but disintegrated soundtrack to some grainy super 8 footage, barely heard beneath the whirr of the film projector itself. Sweet swells of sound throb and drift, fracture and coalesce. It's all very lovely and mysterious, gentle caresses for curious ears.
We'd been hearing lots about this energetic San Francisco band but our ears had yet to be graced by them until now, and we like what we hear! Angular and melodic post-punk that's reminding us a lot of the crisp energy of the 90's D.C./Dischord scene (Jawbox, Q & Not U, Faraquet) as well as having some of the spunk and relentless uptempo demeanor as folks like Les Savy Fav, Black Eyes, or a less spazzy Mae Shi. We bet these guys are super fun to see live. The LP comes on clear vinyl with a coupon for a free digital download.
Another amazing release from Spectrum Spools, the Editions Mego sublabel, who over the last few months has given us records from Mist, Bee Mask, Fabric and Forma, all of them fantastic, and this one is no different. A killer collection of hypnokraut synth psych, that purports to be vintage recordings from back in the day, but we're guessing is more likely the work of a modern music maker raised on a steady diet of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze.
The record slips back and forth between propulsive almost chaotic krautrock grooves, and more blissed out percolating kosmische synthscapes. Warped loops and swirling effects wrap around a motorik pulse, glistening electro grooves throb hypnotically amidst swirling streaks of blooping and bleeping effects, soft billowing swirls of arpeggiated synths blur into gauzy soundtacky stretches, sometimes splintering into dirgey IDM skitter, or still more noisy electronic pulses. Much of this actually sounds like Astral Social Club at their most electronic.
Every song here is a warm glowing chunk of kosmische bliss out, whether it be a murky sprawl of synth burble and skeletal skitter wreathed in squiggles and chirps, or percolating melodies doused in bleary eared shimmer, all like the work of some sonic mad scientist, whose cauldron is a burbling concoction of classic krautrock, abstract electronica, and dreamy ambient minimalism. So good!
Here's what you gotta do. You have to ignore the legion of frat boys that bang their heads wildly to Tenacious D songs, and try to forget the overproduced debut album, and just clear your mind and succumb to the D. This shit is GODLIKE. Originally a sort of spinoff from the equally godlike Mr. Show, Tenacious D concerned the exploits of the greatest band in the world, and their continuing struggles at various open mic nights. As well as the occasional run ins with Sasquatch, Satan, cults, and crazed fans. All of you who only discovered Jack Black from his recent School Of Rock or hosting Saturday Night Live, NEED to see this, and understand why people knew he was destined to rock our fucking socks off. Disc one is titles 'For Fans' and features an entire live performance in London and is amazing, complete with JB battling a giant inflatable dragon with his mighty sword a la Dio, and plenty of onstage tantrums and bickering. Disc one also contains all 6 episodes which until now had been only available as nth generation dubs, and are so good, they'd be worth $20 all on their own. The episodes are a brilliant and hilarious mix of sketch comedy a la Mr. Show and live acoustic performances, and that's how these songs sound best, just two acoustic guitars, two amazing voices, and some of the best songs ever! If you haven't seen these you are in for a treat. Disc two is titled 'For Psycho Fans' and is pretty much just that. Features three very peurile and disgusting short films like Butt Baby and JB's BJ. You just have to see them. There's also some behind the scens in the studio footage and television appearances on MadTV, Crank Yankers and Late Night. But disc two also has their videos which are amazing. The Spike Jonez directed "Wonderboy", a Lord of the Rings style epic (as well as the making of), "Tribute" (as well as the making of) and the totally amazing "FHG (Fuck Her Gently)" animated video directed by the same guy who did Ren And Stimpy! Finally there's a documentary about life on the road with the D. Worth it for the episodes alone, but even more worth it with all that extra crap!!
For those you who have somehow managed to not become completely obsessed with the 'D', let us bring you up to speed. A few years back there was an amazing sketch comedy show on HBO called Mr. Show. Completely hilarious and more importantly, unfettered by the
So a few things have changed. Most noticeably, the D are no longer an acoustic duo. They are a full on rock band, with drums (courtesy of Dave Grohl of course) electric guitars and even strings! On first listen, it was kind of a bummer, since part of what made it so funny was that these two dorky fat guys were playing classic rock/metal on two acoustic guitars. But the flipside is that the D's unabashed love of seventies cheese metal and FM rock can be fully realised and becomes even more of a brilliant parody. Allan keeps telling us that if we lived in the dorms, we would hate this record. Probably true. It's stupid and silly and the songs are all about fucking and smoking and swearing. But we don't live in the dorms and hopefully we can appreciate this on a different level. Lots of the songs from the series are redone and revamped, and there's a handful of new songs as well as a lot of arguing and discussions about stuff like cock pushups. And the songs sound great. Super rocking, big riffs, stupidly catchy hooks, really heavy, great production, and the vocal harmonies are still intact and still perfect.
So of course you should buy the record, but if you get hooked, you can find the tapes of the HBO series on EBAY and definitely go check out their video for 'Fuck Her Gently'. It's offensive enough to guarantee you won't be seeing it on MTV anytime soon. It's by John K. (of Ren and Stimpy infamy) and it's pretty amazing. You can watch it at http://www.spumco.com.
Tender oozed out of, naturally, SF's Tenderloin 'hood (all the way up to a studio in Petaluma) to record this lp, a nasty platter of ugly, metallic punk rock n' roll, with wild psych-shred soloing, rubbery basslines, and gruff, in-your-face, high-in-the-mix vocals. Gnarly & nasty, but also not un-groovy, Tender dwell in the same freaky, filthy gutter with such misanthropic bands as Pissed Jeans and Cuntz, to name a few. Vocally, we're reminded of Killdozer, or maybe even Rob Zombie from White Zombie. With a lot of psycho-sexual issues. You can get an idea of Tender's general sick attitude from the song titles: "Ugly People Fucking", "God Likes To Watch", "Jesus Rides The UFO"... just yr basic blasphemous sexually deviant drug-fueled good times. Classic boogying rock gone to a very dark place. Or as the cover sticker sez: "A non-stop string of obscenities coupling feverishly with skull and bones aliens and new age conspiracy pastiche". Yes, they have problems. But secretly seem to be having a lot of fun. Tender's lineup features such veteran musical miscreants as Ed the Creep from The FuckEmos and Whitey Sims from SST's The Leaving Trains, by the way.
(Note to any preexisting Tender fans to avoid confusion: all of these songs previously appeared on a cd-r from couple years ago but now, in advance of a new album soon to be recorded, they've released their faves from that disc on vinyl.)
So very "K Records"! One gal band Tender Forever is such a perfect fit on this Olympia, WA indie pop label. Melanie Valera makes her low-key sweet Casio-festooned pop on an assortment of keyboards, drum machines, a tattered acoustic guitar and drumkit and a bunch of other noisemakers from the kitchen cupboard (chopsticks, wooden spoon, rice, saucepan). Her softly emotive multilayered vocals meet at the crossroads of Sinead O'Connor, Mirah and Tegan & Sara. Folks around hear were reminded of The Blow and Mates Of State too!!
Another honey pie melodious incarnation from Amelia Fletcher and crew. She's already strewn a bountiful sugar coated pop blossoms for many years in Marine Research, Heavenly and Talulah Gosh, but now along with her fellow MR bandmates John Stanley and Rob Pursey, she's veering away from the twee pop path that has been her trademark. They started this group last year with some self-imposed rules: 2-minute songs only, no touring. These rules were soon tossed in the trash. The first rule was broken when they were asked to play with Magnetic Fields in Dublin. Plus, they've got some songs that *gasp* are longer than 120 seconds. Nonetheless, things do sound a bit different this time around. For instance, they've added some electronics into the usual jangly guitar mix and recorded it all digitally. From one song to the next, the trio dons different musical jackets. Stylistically this is all over the damn place. There's a traditional Fletcher perky pop song ("Oh Katrina"), a thumpin' dance track that's right at home next to Stephin Merritt's Future Bible Heroes ("Face Of 73" - complete with Duran Duran "Girls On Film" camera shutter intro!), a raucous, crunchy guitar number ("Dyspraxic"), a slow romantic lovely ("Brown Eyes") and nine more. Nevertheless, at the heart of all of this is really delightful pop, and did we really expect anything less from Ms Amelia? I think not!
Wayne Magruder's avant-rock resume includes current membership in Calla and previous work with Main as the touring drummer in 1996 and as the drummer for Bowery Electric's exceptional "Beat" album. His Tenecke solo project is considerably more angular than any of those aforementioned projects, but does share the over-arching methods of bridging midi-synchronized electronics to rock structures. With a swaggering drum machine crunch guiding the way for swampy guitar stabs and oblong basslines, Magruder crafts a stiff electro-funk somewhere in between '80s Tackhead and the beloved recombination found on Milk Cult's "Project M-13."
Just a few bars into the first song of Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells, we were struck with one of those "this sounds exactly like a band I remember from the '80s" feelings. But unlike most of the recent times we've felt that same decade's tingle in the back of our neck, Tenement Halls don't recall new wave synthesizers, arpeggiated basslines and moussed-up hairdo's. No, with their robust saloon-style piano playin' and mainman Chris Lopez's withery vocals, they're coming from an altogether different musical zone seemingly channelling the weather-beaten ghosts of The Waterboys. You almost expect them to break into "Whole Of The Moon". Quite a change of sound and direction for Lopez whom you might recognize from his days in the awesome Rock*A*Teens. Of course this earthy style of music can be tracked further back than the '80s, but The Waterboys just happen to be the most clear-cut point of reference. That said, we'd also guess that they might include XTC and David Bowie in their list o' influences.
The always in depth, well researched and executed Smithsonian Folkways brings us the first in what will be a series of releases focusing on the music of Central Asia. Tengr-Too is a new ensemble that plays traditional music with remarkable skill and versatility. In fact, one might think this is a compilation of different artists with the extraordinary range Tengir-Too exhibit. From jew's harp jams to vocal fronted folk songs and beyond using unique instruments intregal to Central Asia (Chopo Choor, Komuz, Sybygz, Kyl Kiyak). Don't worry if you don't know what those are, as always Smithsonian Folkways goes the extra mile with extensive liner notes and even an instrument glossary with pictures so you can actually see what some of those amazing instruments look like.
