Finally, a remastered vinyl reissue of the Blade Runner score sees the light of day. It's funny that most people know the music of Chariots Of Fire far more than they know the actual movie, but with Vangelis's other big soundtrack, for an undoubtedly more famous film, the original score has been somewhat difficult to secure. It did not get an official release until 1994, 12 years after the film debuted, and over the years multiple versions have become available that either added to or subtracted from the original material. The movie itself has multiple versions, and with the 1992 Director's Cut arguably becoming the definitive version of the film, the Vangelis score finally became available as well, a version so intertwined with the film that it also includes snippets of dialogue from this futuristic noir masterpiece. The score, a mix of mystical exotica, dark electronic minimalism and sadly romantic themes, is marked by heavy electronic treatments and classical instrumentation evoking a hazy twilight dreaminess and melancholic longing that serves the film exquisitely. Easily a touchstone for a lot of modern day synth-worshippers, get this score on vinyl while you can, as it is already out of print awaiting a repress apparently. Like all limited things, eventually "all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain" (sorry, we had to fit that line in here somewhere!).
The long unavailable solo soundtrack debut of Greek composer Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (aka Vangelis) finally gets an official reissue. The soundtrack to this obscure 1970 French film directed by Henry Chapier (so obscure that the only info IMDB has on it is this eight minute opening sequence found here: http://www.ina.fr/video/VDD08000001/sex-power-video.html), has only seen previous release as a bootleg cd-r and it has been rumored that Vangelis himself has suppressed many attempts to reissue it. Sex-Power, starring a young Jane Birkin, is similar to Zabriskie Point in that it seems to be a desert quest for meaning by young beautiful intellectuals giving up on society for more earthly concerns like walking in the desert naked, and apparently having lots of sex... But regardless of the arty tone of the film, in our book, you can't go wrong with the music of early seventies Vangelis. Early Vangelis recordings are often marked by exotic instrumentation (tribal percussion, water gongs, flutes, and ethnic string instruments) as well as piano, early synthesizer and ethereal female vocal choruses. Like Morricone's majestic early soundtrack work, Sex-Power has a strange free-folk mystery of lilting passages and beguiling pensive mystical soundscapes. It was recorded the same year Vangelis's prog band Aphrodite's Child released their final album, the legendary 666.
Recommended for fans of the soundtrack work of Jean-Claude Vannier, Lubos Fiser, and Alain Goraguer, and of course very limited!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another missive from the Wooden Wand Universe, a dizzying world so filled with hokum and smoke, character changes and rotating pseudonyms that it's really hard to keep things straight. We may be only half-right on the details, so bear with us. Vanishing Voice, (the choral and instrumental Body of the Wooden Wand Mind) taking advantage of Wooden Wand's momentary dalliance with spiritual advisor Satya Sai and the Sky High Band in California, has retreated into the dark woods of Norway (or perhaps Vermont?) to imbibe in some dirty pagan Ur-folk jams. Kicking up a whirring dust devil vortex of clatter and murk, the title track is a side-long excursion and sounds fresh off the Gypsy Freedom sessions except minus the free jazz horns and howling vocals. The three ghostly tracks on side B, offer up some haunted banjo picking, subdued chanting, wolf howls and something we can only describe as "baby skree", which sounds like the mewling of a lost baby animal whose cries are unraveling like thread through the branches. Remember that scene in the Blair Witch Project, where the lost campers wander into that grove of trees with all those creepy hanging stick sculptures and strangely wet piles of rocks?
Well, this record sounds like it was recorded there. Truly Fucking Spooky!
On their debut outing for Important, Vanishing Voice (sans Wooden Wand) give us another heaping spoonful of freaked out forest psyche madness. Composed of two tracks (with a mysteriously extra song title but no song), the first is the epic 40 minute title track (or it could be called "Peace Symbols", -we're very confused on the song listing), which takes on a long whirling vortex of clattering percussion (provided by Magik Marker's Pete Nolan) and damaged electronic passages before propelling momentously forward with a Krautrock-like acid jam. The second song (we think it's called "The Last Evil") begins with a twisted sing-a-long that reminds us of "On Top of Old Smokey" but perhaps sung by the mutant children from the recent remake of The Hills Have Eyes, before developing into further mutated lo-fi weirdness.
San Francisco's The Vanishing proves that a Goth band with a female lead vocalist doesn't have to sound like Siouxsie & The Banshees (but it's not necessarily a bad thing if they do since several other AQ goth novices think this does indeed sound quite a bit like Siouxsie!). Not that I don't find Siouxsie's records quite good (especially "Juju" and "Kaleidoscope"), but the small Gothic resurgence that's paralleling the New Wave revival has mostly been mimicking the aloof theatrics of Joy Division, Bauhaus, Sisters Of Mercy, or Siouxsie, without really saying anything beyond their heroes. Fortunately, the trio of Jessie Trashed (formerly of the Subtonix), Brian Hock, and AQ's own Sadie Shaw (also of The Lies, The Husbands and the co-director of the 8mm indie-gore film "Charm") have developed a pretty unique (or referentially obscure) signature sound. The Vanishing builds an intense, dissonant gloom through monotonous, distorted basslines and Carnival of Souls' organs twisted into sinister melodies, all without any guitars. Jessie's haunted vocals have been treated with an eerie tremolo warble as a well-executed complement to The Vanishing's throbbing music. As Sadie has admitted to having never heard X-Mal Deutschland before, I can safely say that The Vanishing has unintentionally arrived at a Goth sound previously carved out by that oft-forgotten 4AD band. And that's fine by me!
Born from the grim, death disco of the Subtonix and the oppressive gloom rock of The Lies, The Vanishing are no strangers to the Goth aesthetic and manage to pull off the typically stilted genre with a considerable amount of panache. "Songs For Psychotic Children" is the debut album for The Vanishing, who at the time of this recording included the SF's reigning Goth queen Jesse Trashed, Brian Hock, and Aquarius' dearly departed (not dead, just moved on to a new job) sweetie-pie Sadie Shaw who recently left the band to pursue her garage band The Husbands. Rather than turn to portentous swan songs and plodding atmospherics like the kind often produced for Projekt or Cleopatra records, The Vanishing finds success almost entirely through the theatrical wailings and panicky screams of vocalist / bassist Jesse Trashed, who has developed a vocal style that's clearly in keeping with the traditions of Goth culture, but separate from icons like Siouxsie Sioux, Nina Hagen, and Danielle Dax. Driven by her expressive, intense voice and sinewy basslines, The Vanishing furthers their black clad references with Sadie's haunted carnvival organs which would not be out of place on the seminal "Carnival Of Souls" soundtrack and with Brian exhuming the propulsive rhythm sections of the forgotten Batcave bands: Sex Gang Children, Specimen, and The March Violets. "Songs For Psychotic Children" comes together flawlessly, and marks a very good start for this local band.
From the electro-schtick of Soft Pink Truth's rewiring of punk to the DFA's revisitation of the 99 Records catalogue with a artful sense of irony, we are living in an age that has glorified certain stylistic conceits of the '80s. In looking at these revisionist histories, you could get the impression that the '80s were in fact very cool and had none of the banal dreck of disposable major label pop that persists today. Where most of the '80s retro fascination has its tongue firmly planted in cheek, The Vanishing exhumes the whole bloated corpse of the '80s Goth community. There's not just a bunch of black clothes, clove cigarettes, and blood-red wine to go with The Vanishing's Goth revivalism; there's also Nik Fiend's pasty white make-up, smeared black eyeliner, and ripped fishnet stockings and Daniel Ash's insistence on throwing sax solos into Bauhaus songs. Yeah, the Vanishing do a great job of reclaiming this particular Goth sound from the '80s; but that's also their undoing, as the Vanishing aren't really interested in attempting to update this sound. If they are attempting to do on Still Lifes Are Failing, well then they haven't done a very good job. But if it's The Cure's Pornography and Xmal Deutschland's Fetisch that their going for, well that's another story. The Vanishing's spry death disco grooves and primitive synth lines builds a seering claustrophobia which in most instance is the evil little sister of the DFA cocaine beats. So The Vanishing can only really be recommended if you've got that streak of Goth that tickles you from time to time. But if Adult. and The Rapture aren't dark enough for you, then boy do we have a record for you!
The batcave meets the blues rock on the dancefloor for this split by two Bay Area hotties!
Jean-Claude Vannier is best known for his amazing work as an arranger and producer for some of French pop's greatest stars like Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin, Francoise Hardy, and Brigitte Fontaine. We also got a taste of his singular, warped and mind melting musical vision when Finders Keepers unearthed his fucked up masterpiece from 1972, L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches.
Now they've dug deep into his vaults for this short but sweet (under half an hour) collection of rare, unreleased archival recordings from 1968-1973, that demonstrate what a master of mood and sound Vannier is. With tracks that range from tribal and trance inducing ("L'ours Paresseux 1969") to the perfect soundtrack for an absurdist cartoon ("Claquez Klaxons") to a chant filled show stopper that sounds like an Ella Jenkins record doused in acid ("Le Ballet Des Accouchesuses"). You can imagine how folks in the Stones Throw crew, or the late J Dilla, would be drooling over the chance to sample so many of these tracks. Vannier's music is like an amazing crossbreed of David Axelrod, Raymond Scott, and Joe Meek, but with such a pronounced French sensibility.
Some reissues of long-lost gems arrive here with little fanfare and turn out to be great nonetheless. This one though, came our way emblazed with blurbs proclaiming its immense awesomeness quoting the likes of Jim O'Rourke, Tim Gane, Jarvis Cocker and David Holmes. And guess what? Those guys do indeed know what they're talking about! This IS pretty fantastic. Here we have an action-packed instrumental concept album whose title translates into English as The Child Killer Of The Flies, which musically narrates a simple but creepy story by Serge Gainsbourg (written *after* he heard the album, not before, and included the liner notes, explaining each track title) about the horrific revenge of flies on a child who had tortured them. This musical story-telling is by way of schizoid arrangements of tracks that range in sound from groovy pop to jazz to avant-garde tape music to fuzz guitar rock! Sounds good, eh? Good n' weird for sure.
L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches is a "Fellini-esque psychedelic symphony" originally released (but poorly distributed and relegated to general obscurity) in 1972, credited to a unknown group called Isolitudes. The man behind Insolitudes, though, was one Jean-Claude Vannier, a musician and producer from the happening '60s French pop ("Ye Ye music") scene who had scored film soundtracks and collaborated with Serge Gainsbourg, most famously providing the arrangements for Gainsbourg's highly-rated L'Histoire De Melody Nelson album (the reissue of which we wish we had in stock also, but haven't been able to get a hold of lately). This record is thereby cited as the follow-up to that one-of-a-kind conceptual classic. Itself it's pretty much one-of-a-kind too. Funky and groovy, as well as deliriously, disorientingly hallucinogenic, this will hit you with lush string arrangements one moment, sound effects of sheer terror the next... it's psych, it's prog, it's funk, it's musique concrete. There's even a chorus of car horns put to good use here! It's the freakiest 'sploitation soundtrack that never was. This reissue includes two bonus tracks from a rare 7" single entitled Point D'Interrogation, and also boasts extensive and informative (and quite laudatory) liner notes by DJ Andy Votel. Very recommended!
The name might not seem immediately familiar to you, but avid readers of the aQ list might remember Vantzou from her membership in aQ faves The Dead Texan, a Stars Of The Lid offshoot fronted by the Adam Wiltzie half of SOTL, and whose self titled (and now sadly out of print) full length on Kranky from a few years back, was a huge favorite around here. Vantzou provided the stunning visuals on the accompanying dvd, and also provided vocals, but here demonstrates quite a Stars Of The Lid like flair for dramatic cinematic soundscapery. The tracks here dark and dreamily brooding, all lush strings draped over distant mysterious drones, subtle smears of echo and reverb add just the right amount of mystery, layered swirls of sound billow around hazy washed out melodies, slow glacial swells of sound which give way to more traditional chamber music, only to quickly slip back into warm whirls of hauntingly majestic drift, notes and tones left to float and gently decay, sinking gradually through layers of reverberent shimmer, blurred and gently smeared into something that sounds more more akin to Indignant Senility or The Caretaker, and at times, like on record closer "Joggers", indeed like an even darker and more abstract Stars Of The Lid.
The making of this record is almost as fascinating as the record itself. Vantzou, a member of the Dead Texan (along with one of the Stars Of The Lid guys), delivers her second solo record, which was conceived of and composed over a four year period, while she was an SAT exam mathematics tutor. She wrote the whole record using synthesizers and mutated samples, and only then went about notating the music for a proper ensemble, strings, woodwinds, brass, piano, etc. And the results are stunning. The opening track sounds like it could be a Stars Of The Lid track, big swirling clouds of sounds, flecked with starlit piano, lush and lovely and layered, far too short at just two minutes, could easily have listened to a record length version of just this song, but Vantzou and her ensemble have much more to offer, whether it's the haunting, contemplative cinematic drift of track two "Going Backwards To Recover That Which Was Left Behind", a moody balladic dream-dirge, that wreaths pointillist piano in swaths of swoonsome strings and dramatic horns, or the ominously orchestral "Brain Fog" which sounds like Bernard Hermann composing a 20th century classical version of a John Carpenter score, at least until it settles back into something again more Stars Of The Lids-ish. The whole record is darkly dramatic, and VERY soundtracky, alternately achingly lovely, hushed and harrowing, droned out and drowsy, softly psychedelic, with a few tracks introducing a very Arvo Part like choral element, while others sprawl languorously, all dusky and firelit, and a few, get downright epic and bombastic. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff.
A list or two back we reviewed the debut record on Kranky from Christina Vantzou, a gorgeously drifty and dreamy collection of washed out soundscapery, that had us all smitten, which made perfect sense once you realized she was also a member of Stars Of The Lid offshoot The Dead Texan, contributing both vocals AND visuals. That Dead Texan record was hugely popular around here, and Vantzou's record explored similar territory, but definitely with it's own subtle twist. Laying lush strings over ethereal chamber music, weaving delicate tinkling piano into lush majestic chordal swells, the vibe new agey and tranquil for sure, but also soundtracky, and dreamily dramatic, and so here, on this newly released companion, Vantzou presents that record again, this time accompanied by her visuals, which are and striking and sweetly surreal as the sounds themselves. From gorgeous shots of forests and rolling hills, overlaid with some sort of black sigil that seems to be burning into the film, to strange almost old school video game looking 8 bit interference, and from flickering old films colorized and druggily warped, to gorgeous abstract swirls an stripes of soft focus color, bleary and smeared and utterly dreamlike, often melding two or more of those techniques into even more striking hybrids. And thankfully, unlike most groups who think that any cool old films or abstract visuals will make their unexciting band a bit more exciting to watch, Vantzou's films seem impossibly linked to the sounds, as if that record we reviewed was actually a score, and now we're finally seeing/hearing everything as she originally intended. And the sound themselves, reimagined WITH visuals, conveys the sense that these are some mysterious set of old nature films, or archival footage from another world, definitely another time, dusty old filmstrips dug out of an old trunk, the images warm and familiar, but just slightly warped, as if they were glimpses into another world.
And while the visuals are quite varied for sure, to systematically describe each one would definitely ruin some of the joy of discovery that comes with viewing this for the first time, needless to say, they are all interconnected, woven into one grand sweeping, ever-shifting visual feast, replete with old filmstrip style chapter (song) titles, which only make it feel even more like some recently rediscovered, long lost archival footage, from another time, and perhaps another world.
Included is a bonus disc, which finds the whole record remixed / reimagined / reinterpreted by a handful of folks, many of whom should be familiar to long time readers of the aQ list: Koen Holtkamp, Loscil, White Rainbow, Ernest Gibson (from aQ faves Net Shaker), Rober Lippock, Ben Vida, Dustin O'Halloran, Isan, and Montgomery Knott. The new versions range from the washed out ethereal shimmer of Koen Holtkamp, to the hazy pulsing atmospherics of Loscil, and from the murky, post industrial blur of Ernest Gibson, to the rhythmic kosmische synthwave of White Rainbow, and obviously a handful of other sonic stops in between. And as if that weren't already enough, also included on the bonus disc is a brand new song from the Dead Texan, which could very well have come from Vantzou's record as well, a lush, soft focus landscape of thick, softly undulating strings, swirling chordal layers, some delicate piano, and what could be disembodied vox, all laced with strange, heavily reverbed samples, as well as clouds of softly swirling hiss and muted static, all blurred into a gorgeous bit of melancholic cinematic ambience, which most definitely has us hankering for the new Dead Texan record as well...
To those bleak metal heathens whom dwelleth upon the white and wintry mountaintops, take heed!!! Vanum is a brand new ongoing project from K. Morgen and M. Rekevics (of highly acclaimed black metallers Ash Borer and Fell Voices / Vorde respectively) and rather than specializing in the sort of hypnotic, minimal modern black metal that you might suspect from their other ventures, Realm Of Sacrifice is instead a hugely impressive slab of melodic, melancholic and INCREDIBLY epic BM, drawing equally on the soaring windswept tremolo of such Norwegian forefathers as mid 1990s Ulver and Darkthrone, the glorious melodic sensibility of Swedish luminaries like Dawn and Naglfar, and the hateful regalism of Finnish royalty Sargeist and Horna. In short it's classic, rousing stuff, that actually sets itself apart from its more gimmick-oriented contemporaries by simply letting the massive, stirring melodies and furiously pummeling performances take center stage. The result is simple and unpretentious, yet entirely engrossing and timeless, and in our humble opinions the best album either member has been involved in thus far. If classic, no frills BM is your cup of tea (or indeed hornful of mead!) then this is essential listening.
Yet another Bardo Pond offshoot/side project, this time it's Bardo brothers John & Michael Gibbons, who manage to strike out for musical worlds beyond the reach of past Bardo missions, while retaining a tenuous sonic link to the Bardo Pond universe they helped create. Vapour Theories seem to be exploring their own world of drifting lilting spaced out Neo-Appalachia, simple strummed steel string guitars form the basis of the seven minute opener, and the twenty plus minute closer, while the two tracks in between are more of the abstract drone drift variety. The first track takes the buzzing steel strings and positions them above a distant psychedelic swirl of abstract psych guitar and droning saxophone, while the epic final track lets the guitars meander lazily, a gorgeously laid back soundscape of twang and strum, old time melodies wrapped in steel string buzz, lovely late afternoon dreaminess, minor key, but not really mournful, more sort of reflective and contemplative. And so lovely. The two tracks between, lean much more toward the brothers' Bardo Pond soundworld, the first, a buzzing high end drone, warm and fuzzy and super slow shifting, over a dense tangle of tablas, the second a truly blissful drift through a landscape of lazily unfurling reverb guitar, their notes suspended for ages before drifting off, melodies lazy and slowly intertwining, harmonics chiming and ringing out, a sonic pond full of delicately intersecting ripples.
For fans of Bardo Pond, the new wave of Appalachian guitar (Rose, Blackshaw, etc.) and all things dreamy and psychedelic.
Solo effort from Deanna Varagona of Lambchop. Country songs with bluesy vocal lines with throaty vocal growls - a lot like a No Depression version of Cat Power.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Apparently this came out last year, but it's new to us, and when we saw it, we had to get a few, just 'cause of WHO plays in Vardlokk. Check out the lineup: Grutle from Enslaved on growly vocals (in English, with Norwegian for the choruses), Tim Lehi of Draugar on guitar (and excellent cover art as well), Dave Sweetapple of Witch on bass, Terri Christopher of 27 and Dusty Skull on drums, and Iver Sandoy of Enslaved and Jazkamer contributing electronic effects and Moog playin'. Wow/weird. Together, this unlikely underground supergroup kick out a couple heavy cuts of Viking-themed blackened doomic crush, with lots of fuzz, and lyrics about the Vikings arriving in North America circa 1000AD. How can that not be cool? We really wonder just how these particular peeps got together to do this - and if there will be more from Vardlokk or if this is just a one-off...
White vinyl, limited.
There seems to be a whole 'nother world of black metal lurking below the underground. An under-underground. A world that seems to exist only on the seemingly antiquated medium of the cassette tape. There seems to be a serious resurgence lately in people's interest in tapes, as if cd-r's are now too mainstream... but we kinda dig it, not only does releasing a tape require a bit more effort (only a bit) but if it sucks, you can tape over it! And you can get a tape walkman on Mission Street for $10!!
Out latest discovery comes courtesy of SF black metal tape label the Funeral Agency, and is a mysterious band called Varghkoghargasmal. Printed in big letters on the tape sleeve are the words WOODEN METAL! Weird. But we were still unprepared for just how completely wacked and weird this record is.
It's basically black metal with no distortion. Maybe Wooden Metal means 'acoustic' metal. But the guitars here are electric, although recorded through what sounds like a practice amp with no distortion. And the drums, HOLY SHIT, don't even get us started. A stumbling struggling drum beat that wavers away from the actual beat more often than not. And it's recorded in some impossibly reverby way that gives it a really haunting otherworldly sound. The first track here is rapidly becoming one of our favorite 'black metal' tracks ever. A very simple spare, un-distorted riff, almost like a slowed down Dick Dale or Link Wray, with a strangely motorik drum beat, that is just off enough to sound like some weird Kompakt style techno beat. In fact, this could totally be some weird black metal surf rock techno track. Eventually, some strange minor key melody joins the fray, and a warbly fuzzed our keyboard, which only serve to make the sound more confusional.
The rest of the record is just as great. And bizarre. Stumbling reverbed clean guitar picking out blackened surf rock riffs, weird keyboard drones. The fast songs are the strangest, with the clean guitar blurring into swaths of damaged melody and the drums a chaotic blasting rumbling murky throb way down in the mix.
Hard to explain the damaged magic of Varghkoghargasmal other than to say you have NEVER heard anything like this. Fucking amazing!!!!
Wooden Metal!!!
While we patiently await the forthcoming full length on tUMULt, here's a little super limited two song teaser from our favorite (and only) practitioners of Wooden Metal. Which is in fact, not really metal at all, instead it's a sort of folky surfy krautrock, that's maybe a bit blackened around the edges, but for the most part is more loping and stumbling than it is blasting and buzzing. And we love it.
So the A side begins like a classic Varghkoghargasmal track, a clean guitar, some strange off kilter drumming, not distorted or heavy, more sort of hypnotic, the surprise here is the band introduces a weirdly math rock element to their sound, with an arpeggiated main riff and some more complex than usual drumming. There's also some slow creep interludes and some awesomely fucked up rhythms. It's almost like blackened surf rock or a drunken Scenic performing an alternate score for Endless Summer. Only here it's Endless Winter.
If the A side was only -sort of- surf rock, the B side quickly takes care of that sort of business, with a blast of full on grin and frosty surf rock, a relentless Dick Dale style riff, some Wipeout drumming, even a weirdly playful super melodic lead over the top. Still all fuzzy and lo-fi with still more strange struggling drumming, but a total surf vibe that is impossible to deny. So what-the-fuck, but so goddamn awesome, this just might be seven inch of the year!
SUPER LIMITED TO ONLY 200 COPIES. Packaged in super swank hand screened two colored sleeves, each hand numbered.
Varghkoghargasmal. When we first discovered this German one man band, it was via a cassette, with a black and white photocopied cover, a washed out image of some wintry forest landscape, accompanied by the legend 'wooden metal'. Needless to say we were totally intrigued, only to discover, that there wasn't anything really that metal about it, or wooden even. Not sure if 'wooden' referred to the trees, or to acoustic guitars, but none of that mattered once we head the music inside. A twisted confusional mix of slowed down Dick Dale style surf riffage, stumbling drums, haunting melodies, warbly organs, all wrapped around a simple motorik almost krautrock groove. We had no idea what to call it, or really even what to think, other than being totally smitten, transfixed and ensorcelled. Definitely ensorcelled.
So here we have the brand new album from Avenger, the man solely responsible for Varghkoghargasmal, and if anything, it's even more haunting and mysterious, more creepy and strange, and somehow way more beautiful.
It's a difficult sound to explain, the guitars are clean, but are often still playing in a black metal style, frantic riffing or rapid picking, but just as often the guitars are spidery and minor key, unfurling lugubrious tendrils of creepy twang, or reverbed shimmer. The vocals are minimal, a hushed whisper here and there, a Viking style chant during one song, but it's mostly left to the music, which is incredibly evocative, it's like some sort of acoustic black metal, mixed with slowed down surf rock, dark languorous krautrock, and a distinct Morricone vibe as well. And then there are the drums, which by design or by happenstance, are a definite sonic focal point, as they are WAY up in the mix, and they are all over the place, the fills are chaotic, the rhythms stumble and stutter, but in their imperfections lie a truly unique sort of emotion and feeling not found in most music. The drums anchor everything, locking into foresty krautrock grooves, sputtering into dense little tumbling squalls, the prefect framework for Avenger's rickety moonlit jams.
Most of the songs creep and crawl, sometimes behind a curtain of rainfall, the sound of the forest spirits, flickering firelight, fireflies lighting up the canopy overhead, pianos pick out mournful melodies, the drums, lurching along, a perfectly imperfect accompaniment, organs wheeze, synths whir, steel strings twang, the whole thing so impossibly transcendent, effortlessly evoking ancient atmospheres and deep emotions. When the band lock into a more rocking groove, and the rhythm builds into something propulsive, the guitars stretch out into long streaks of buzzing melodies, the organ plays along like some old time music box, and the sound transforms before your ears and transports you to some truly mysterious otherworld.
There are some black metal references for sure, mostly the ambient bits of Burzum, and some of the riffing recalls suicidal black metal, albeit played with no distortion and more melancholy really than miserable, some of the more frenzied parts even sound like Iron Maiden played on acoustic guitars, and sometimes the guitars manage to sound like banjos, but still the creepiest and prettiest moments occur when the sound winds down into something much more minimal and muted, letting the keyboards weave fluttery melodies, over whirring drones and spare guitar melodies, only occasionally flecked with little flurries of haphazard drumming.
One of the few records that we can unequivocally describe as being utterly unlike anything else you will ever hear! Hauntingly beautiful, beautifully bizarre, and WAY WAY recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
While we wait patiently for the long overdue reissue of the amazing 'wooden metal' masterpiece Call Of The Raven from German black metal weirdos Varghkoghargasmal, we have this split tape to tide us over, a single track from Varghkoghargasmal, and one from the even more damaged and demented H418ov21.C, who we surmise might just be the same band.
The Varghkoghargasmal is another stumbling chaotic chunk of clean guitar surf licks, bizarre, off kilter drumming, all very spare and skeletal and shuffly, lo-fi, and only black metal in spirit, as the sound is more akin to some early nineties post rock outfit, but so much more confusional and fractured. The melodies are epic and majestic, the arrangements are progressive and complex, the execution is all over the map, the drums and guitars locked tight for a stretch, only for the drums to go careening off course, while the guitar slips from muted crunch, to shimmery jangle, to weird warped off key twang and chime. Like a black metal Shaggs, or an even more loose Hypothermia, Varghkoghargasmal have easily created one of the most unique sounds in modern music. All hail WOODEN METAL.
So what's the story with H418ov21.C, other than they're named after a record by Beherit? And a Beherit record that most metal fans hated, seeing as it was all ritualistic ambient and electronic music. But that makes sense that H418ov21.C would look to those Finns for inspiration, as this is also some kind of sonic ritual. Thick throbbing downtuned bass, rumbling, grinding, droning, all beneath a cacophony of old drum machines, heavily effected, spaced out and splattery, not really playing beats so much as creating rhythmic melodies, the effect is pretty stunning, a weird almost krautrocky bit of superdistorted lowslung crunch, the closest comparison we can think of is French sonic alchemists Aluk Todolo, and odds are if you dig their throbbing stripped down rhythms, you'll dig this too. Weird and wonderful, heavy and distorted and weirdly melodic. Definitely need to hear more from these guys (this guy?). And speaking of hearing more, there's also a split 7" elsewhere on this list, featuring another chunk of fractured blackened kraut crawl...
LIMITED TO 70 COPIES (or thereabout), packaged in a super deluxe, multi panel, elaborately folded sleeve.
One final teaser before the tUMULt release of Varghkoghargasmal's Drowned In Lakes full length. Another glorious slab of "wooden metal" from this German one man band, that as always, is not particularly metal, or wooden. In fact, it's more like some strange off kilter krautrock, warbly organs, stumbling drums, lurching grooves, off kilter tempos, simple downtuned clean guitar strum, haunting keyboard melodies, all tangled up into a gorgeous creepy forest jam. The track begins all doomy and droney, the keyboard wavering over the deliberate drumming and the muted riffing, very spare and space-y, eventually locking into a more propulsive groove, the drums impossibly off, in an amazing way, totally in their own dimension, the guitar a mere mumble, except for the spidery melody that holds the whole thing together, the keyboard louder than anything else. Imagine a cross between Avarus and Benighted Leams and you might get something close to Varghkoghargasmal. Awesome as always.
Splitting the disc with V. is October Falls, another one man band, this one from Finland, who specializes in dark ambient folk, and here, it's just that, all mournful minor key acoustic guitar, lilting and sorrowful, moody and meandering, so darkly pretty.
Super thick sleeves and jackets, a handful are on colored vinyl, so you might get lucky, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
More "True Black Nekronoise Metal" from our man Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk! Vargr is HNB's one-man black metal outfit in the grand tradition (from Burzum through Xasthur), bringing grim guitar buzz to the fore, although it often sounds as if his raspy vocals ("nokturnally recorded in Swedish Swedish forests"!) are accompanied by vacuum cleaners or industrial grinders instead. Grim and buzzing NEKRONOISE it is regardless. No surprise since Vargr's HNB aka Lord Nordvargr was known to us originally as an experimental drone artist, a member of such dark ambient industrial outfits as Folkstorm and MZ.412 and a collaborator with the likes of Merzbow. He made his first foray into "true" black metal realms with the Vargr disc Wehrmacht Satanas reviewed here just a couple weeks ago, and this new one, released by the ever-reliable 20 Buck Spin label, is in much the same vein of extremely-noisy-even-for-the-genre black metal, a noise album in black metal guise. Or should we say, in wolf's clothing? That's what Vargr means, Wolf. The logo was done by Jazkamer's "Count" Marhaug, and there are guest guitars on track (excuse me, "hymn") eight from HNB's old collaborator, Drakh.
It's hard to say if all the Christ-hating conceits of this album are sincere, or included simply as signifiers of the black metal concept being celebrated and/or subverted... but since when was that really an issue? It certainly seems serious. Howling distortion is a language spoken in both the genres of metal and noise, and with all the the eerie isolationist ambient elements -- disembodied voices, electronic drones, echoing bootsteps -- this certainly sounds like it could come from the most dark and demented depths of the black metal's caverns of chaos, wherein dwell the likes of Abruptum, Striborg, and Wold.
The Dark Lord Nordvargr has been threatening us with it for ages, but as the sky blackens, and the thunder rolls in, the air grows thick, the ground rumbles and cracks beneath our feet, it is finally here, the debut from Nordvargr's grim black kvlt alter ego Vargr. And just like it says in the liner notes "Vargr plays True Black Nekronoise Metal exclusively."
We sure don't need to tell you how much we love Black Nekronoise Metal (at least now that we know such a thing exists) and there really is no better way to describe this caustic chaotic brutality here, but we'll give it a try�
Wehrmacht Satanas begins with soft swirls of sound and cold winter winds, dark and drifting and very much like much of the stuff we love from Nordvargr, but then super harsh vocals surface from within the muted drone-y backdrop and are promptly swallowed up by a massive wall of some of the harshest, heaviest, crustiest, most distorted and buzz drenched noise metal chaos we have ever heard.
Riffs are more sort of big prickly downtuned smears, drums (are there actually drums in there?) blast like a hailstorm of hiss and buzz, the vocals hissing and howling, all crumbled into a serious ear shredding rrrooooaaaar�.
It actually sounds bit like a Darkthrone record on DHR, imagine Alec Empire, had he grown up on Venom And Bathory� Primitive, grim black buzz, but completely blown out and in the red. The riffs are looped and cyclical, totally hypnotic, definitely for fans of the ultra raw BM like Bone Awl, Ash Pool, Beherit, Ancestors� "The Crushing Weight Of Sin" is about as hooky as it gets, with an actual melody, and plenty of space, in the context of the rest of the record it's practically a pop song. But it's quickly followed up by "Svavelsjalar" a gorgeously thick washed out blast of blackness, everything so blurred and buzzy that it almost sounds like a black metal Fennesz, until about halfway through when the sound lurches suddenly and transforms into what sounds like a radio station between stations, bits of some super lo-fi live Beherit rehearsal coming through between the jagged shards of static and white noise.
And most of the record sort of straddles that line between blasting black metal and buzzing ambience, much of this disc actually, reminds us of weirdo Canadian black metallers Wold, a twisted convoluted blurred black metal warped and wrapped in layer after layer of distortion, but where Wold was all smeared and soft focus, Vargr sharpens the edges, everything black and glinting, sharp and harsh�
Later in the record, "Total Cryptic Darkness" is everything the title would lead you to believe. Gorgeously thick and viscous black bottomless sonic pit, a near static sea of low end whir and deeeeeeeeeeeeep dark drones. A bunch of the tracks are super intense, almost techno-like looped shards of hissy crunch, almost like black gabber, while others bliss out big time, like a blackened Total, with epic ur-drones, huge swaths of metallic reverberations and warm washed out skree.
The disc finishes off with a Burzum cover, and weirdly enough it's an ambient number, one that Nordvargr, deftly tweaks into something slightly grittier and more bleak, a gorgeous slab of groaning ambient drift� very tidal and hypnotic, the perfect aural balm after the skin flaying sonic assault you've just endured�
Noisy, crushing, harsh, grim, nekro, black, brutal and fucked up. Hail the True Black Nekronoise Metal!!!
By now, we know exactly what to expect from a new Echospace record. Total soft focus Pop Ambient bliss out. Abstract, ethereal, gauzy, murky, meditative, Variant is the perfect addition to the Echospace stable, exploring similar sonics, but adding a definite darkness, wreathing the shimmer and drift in a surf like crackle and hum, the buried melodies, more like pulses, distant throbs, the heroin house of classic Chain Reaction rendered even more indistinct, the beats, skeletal and glitchy, just as often slipping into the background, to lurk rhythmically below the constantly shifting layers of bristly texture. And it's that texture that defines The Setting Sun, where plenty of electronica is wispy and shadowy and otherworldly and effervescent, Variant is most definitely a much more grim, and foreboding proposition, the dubbed out elements floating in a morass of processed record crackle, of blurred white noise, the hiss of electronic rainfall. The best moments in fact are when the texture and ambience swell and swallow up all the other elements, leaving a dark shimmery cloud of sound particles to drift and glimmer and glisten before the beat, or melody finally struggles back to the surface.
The 23 minute closing track is a gorgeous (and surprisingly) crystalline chunk of slow burning shimmer, pulled apart into a sort of ultra abstract slowcore, all the above mentioned buzz and crackle relegated to the background, a sibilance WAY off in the distance, the sound warm, and melancholy, sun dappled and delicate, a pretty and sunshiney coda to an otherwise dark and dense disc of dubbed out electronic ambient hiss and pulse. Easily our new favorite late night drifting off disc...
Last list we featured Docdail and Triangle, now here's more rare Francais Metal de Proto for y'all, this time from Les Variations! That's right, another French band from the late '60s/early '70s playing an unexpected blend of hard rockin' proto-metal, psychedelic freakiness, Moorish exotica, and groovy pop. This double disc set includes Variations' first two albums -- Nador (1970) and Take It Or Leave It (1973) -- plus 13 bonus tracks.
Nador is the primary reason to get this, as Take It Or Leave It more-or-less lives up to its title. But Nador is a seriously smokin' album, with the exception perhaps of one cheesy commercial pop tune and a detour into oldies rock n' roll territory (the Jerry Lee Lewis piano-pounding of "Mississippi Woman"). At its best though, which is most of the time, Nador is the high-energy, heavy-duty French answer to the likes of Led Zep, the Rolling Stones, and the MC5! Zut alors! Pounding stormers like "Generations" and "What A Mess Again" are gonna please anyone into long-haired, bell-bottomed riff-rock. Meanwhile, Variations mix it up with segues into mysterious Moroccan hippie-raga, as on the acoustic instrumental title track. Basically imagine Leaf Hound with some North African ancestry. We've read that Nador was the heaviest album from a French band ever when it was originally released, and we believe it.
The bonus tracks following Nador are also equally badass, with lots of wild psych guitar and headbangin' rhythm action goin' on. "Come Along" sounds pretty much *exactly* like something by local San Francisco retro-stoner power trio Genghis Khan, actually. There's also the excellent psych-pop ballad "Down The Road" as well.
Disc two's Take It Or Leave It certainly rocks and rolls too, but starts to suffer from some of the fashion faux pas the '70s were known for, shall we say. Way too much honky tonk piano this time around, and overproduced arrangements. The psych side of things is long gone. But it has got its moments though. And several of the bonus tracks found on this disc most definitely live up to the killer standards of disc one ("I Was Down" and "The Jam Factory" ferinstance). So while Nador's great by itself, we're happy to have these two discs worth of Variations! Vive la Francais Metal de Proto!!
You know some smart ass had to do it... call his project 'Various Artists' to confuse retail clerks who wouldn't be called the shiniest tools in the shed. Well, Various Artists is just one guy who has a number of releases for Chain Reaction - the hypermininal techno collective from Berlin which spawned Porter Ricks, Vainquer, Pole, Monolake, etc. The remixing artists for this single are Autechre and Funkstorung on one side doing their vertiginous electronica breaks, while the flip features Chain Reaction's Pole and Monolake who extend the granular synth pulse of Various Artists into thunderous dub and shifting techno. Pretty damn cool.
"American Songs 1770-1998."
From whatever gnarly realm they inhabit, Vasaeleth have crawled forth (or maybe they've learnt to walk, but they ought to crawl - to make an H.P. Lovecraft reference we're sure they'd appreciate), to bring us this insalubrious ep, following up their 2010 debut full-length Crypt Born And Tethered To Ruin. While we had expected another full-length, this is actually just as effective at providing a sonic gateway to festering, sick cosmic scenes (a la the cover art, once again by Antichrist Kramer). With just five songs here, about 18 minutes, Vasaeleth don't hold back, taking a crushing, chaotic approach to their blackened, doomed-out metal of death. All uproarious darkness, indeed! Rolling and rumbling, strangely energetic and even almost upbeat a lot of the time, this sounds like the Cookie Monster getting a good workout - we can see him doing jumping jacks to this, grunting along as the drums beat and blast, and guitars howl and harmonically squeal. Often slashing for the throat, but sometimes slowing into sludgy torpor, the riffage here is perfectly putrid, as are the vokills. Once again, Vasaeleth prove themselves to be one of the most potent and original of the many would-be modern incarnations of old Incantation vying for today's underground doomdeath throne.
We know not what "Vasaeleth" means, it sounds sinister, vaguely itchy, certainly evil and obscure enough to be a good name for this new band on Profound Lore (an adventurous metal label that manages to be both deeply cult, and fairly diverse). Although metal fans revel in the distinctions between subgenres impervious to outsiders, Vasaeleth is one of those bands that seems to cross over betwixt death and doom and black metal. If we had to choose, we'd catagorize 'em as death metal, yeah, definitely, but creepy old occultic death metal, that shares a lot of the raw Satanic spirit of the most cvlt-ish black metal. The likes of Portal and Impetuous Ritual, also with recently raved about cds on Profound Lore, come to mind (and also the disc of Cremation demos listed last time) as being the the sort of primal death that appeals to the black metal aesthetic too. Vasaeleth is further evidence that it's coming back (from the grave), that filthy festering old school death metal, the sort that possesses a sludgey doomic vibe as well, harking back to early Obituary, Autopsy, Incantation and that sort of thing.
Shrouded in excellent, arcane cover art (by the same artist, Antichrist Kramer, who did covers for black metal band Inquisition's Magnificent Glorification Of Lucifer and Nefarious Dismal Orations albums) this duo's debut oozes with ancient atmosphere, each song barely emerging from the thick soupy murk, the entire album to be regarded as one crushing ritual from the bowels of hell. Oh, how we love the morbid miasmic tones of the guitar and bass, their congealed riffs shuddering over drumming that sounds like the tramping boots of the legions below! The vokills are continuous, vomitous heavings of guttural grimnity, as if another abstract instrument adding to the dirge-droneiness of this metal of death, which is also embellished by eerie synth as well. Heavy, hypnotic, haunted, so ugly that it becomes beautiful.
Recently, we've been stocking some killer old school death metal on the Razorback label, bands like Skeletal Spectre and Decrepitaph, and this fits with those, though there's a "fun factor" to those Razorback acts that Vasaeleth are just too grim to share, their brand of blackened death being so much more seemingly serious, spiritual, and dare we say it, artistic. And that's awesome as well. Wretchedly recommended!
Pedestrian Deposit and Emaciator are two projects that the Los Angeles noise artist Jon Borges steered toward the electro-acoustic, the drone, and even the beautiful. This was especially true for the last two Pedestrian Deposit albums Kithless and East Fork North Fork, which found Borges' emphathic electronics dialed into the chilling violin from Borges' partner Shannon Kennedy. But with Vasculae's Cultural Primitivism, Borges is all violence, all punishment, all noise. Fifty minutes of glass-gargling distortion, headrinsing overload, and downright sonic obliteration that harkens to the pre-digital era of Merzbow and the feral noise of Matthew Bower's Total. While Borges posits this album as "full circle" to his beginnings, he doesn't slump back into wall-of-noise ethos of his teen years, as he's clearly learned a thing or two about the dynamics of noise and is very much attuned to the textures that bristle and crackle through his torrents of sound. It's great to hear Borges return to the noise, somewhat like hearing those blistering noise records that Kevin Drumm cranked out after his isolationist albums Imperial Distortion and Imperial Horizon. That said, certainly not for the faint of heart, or sensitive of ear!
Our definition of pure pop perfection would have to be Scotland's Vaselines! They embody everything a perfect pop band should be. They are charming and clever, dirty and sweet, sensitive and sassy. They have the ability to rock out or get all dreamy with equal potency. Coinciding with their reunion tour that will find them playing San Francisco in just a few days, Sub Pop has compiled pretty much all of their material onto this 2 disc collection. The first disc includes all of their studio recordings (the Son Of A Gun EP, the Dying For It EP, and the full length Dum Dum). The bonus disc includes three demo versions and two live shows from '86 and '88. Fair warning to fans, the first disc is identical to the Vaselines collection that came out a few years back, so if you have that, you'll be getting this for the demos and live stuff on disc two. Or cause you want it on vinyl, if you opt for that format. And if you have no Vaselines, well, needless to say this is ESSENTIAL.
Now that we have all that out of the way we can go back to gushing about why The Vaselines are the perfect pop band and how they pretty much influenced all the rad underground (and overground) pop stuff we've loved in the decades since they first hit the scene. Nirvana, Belle And Sebastian, Yo La Tengo, Hole, Vivian Girls, Beck, Dum Dum Girls, The Breeders and so many more owe so much of their sound, style and aesthetic to the Vaselines and everything they created during their short existence from 1986-1990. They predated the era when indie bands began to experience more widespread success and appreciation, but their songs and style pretty much set the blueprint for the alternative nation that would explode in the years following their breakup.
Listening to these songs is like hearing some crazy greatest hits collection as every single song is so totally classic and memorable, hard to believe that it's actually just their complete discography. Every song was truly unique and so goddamn catchy. Some of their songs were popularized when Kurt Cobain declared his undying love of the Vaselines and had Nirvana cover "Son Of A Gun", "Molly's Lips" and "Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam". The Vaselines had a charisma that makes their songs appeal to such a wide cross section of music fans. They are the band K records wish they could have had, and have been trying to sign ever since. The Vaselines had the wit and smarts so many of their Glasgow followers try a little too hard to emulate, but most of all they had SONGS, songs that are so damn endearing and so completely timeless!
First new music from these Scottish indie pop legends in 20 years, and it sounds like they never left. Well, almost. Some of us got to see the reactivated Vaselines play at the Sub Pop 20th anniversary celebration in Seattle, and they sounded incredible, the core two piece of Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee augmented by members of Belle And Sebastian, a lineup that lent some serious heft to their sound, that heft is well represented here on this 2 song teaser for their upcoming full length, only their second proper album in 2+ decades, and the first new music since 1990's full length Dum Dum.
And right out of the gate, "Sex With An X" sounds like it could have been beamed here straight from the early nineties, sure a little more full and lush, not nearly as ramshackle, but still playful and coy, jangly and simple, the lyrics mantra like, sweet boy / girl harmonies, a killer main melody, a little crunch, hand claps, summery pop perfection for sure. The flipside, "Roaster" though, which is exclusive to this single, is maybe even better (reason enough to buy this, since the A side will be on the full length), darker, and fuzzier, a little grungy and low slung, minor key, still laced with sweet harmonies, but much more reminiscent of Kelly's post Vaselines band Eugenius, Vaselines style jangly indie pop infused with a some spaced out shoegazey crunch. Both songs are really good, but we're so digging the B side, it kind of has us hoping for more of the same on the full length. We'll just have to wait and see...
Includes a download code as well.
First new music from these Scottish indie pop legends in 20 years, and it sounds like they never left. Well, almost. Some of us got to see the reactivated Vaselines play at the Sub Pop 20th anniversary celebration in Seattle, and they sounded incredible, the core two piece of Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee augmented by members of Belle And Sebastian, a lineup that lent some serious heft to their sound, that heft is well represented here on this 2 song teaser for their upcoming full length, only their second proper album in 2+ decades, and the first new music since 1990's full length Dum Dum.
And right out of the gate, "Sex With An X" sounds like it could have been beamed here straight from the early nineties, sure a little more full and lush, not nearly as ramshackle, but still playful and coy, jangly and simple, the lyrics mantra like, sweet boy / girl harmonies, a killer main melody, a little crunch, hand claps, summery pop perfection for sure. The flipside, "Roaster" though, which is exclusive to this single, is maybe even better (reason enough to buy this, since the A side will be on the full length), darker, and fuzzier, a little grungy and low slung, minor key, still laced with sweet harmonies, but much more reminiscent of Kelly's post Vaselines band Eugenius, Vaselines style jangly indie pop infused with a some spaced out shoegazey crunch. Both songs are really good, but we're so digging the B side, it kind of has us hoping for more of the same on the full length. We'll just have to wait and see...
Includes a download code as well.
Akin to William Bennett's Cut Hands or perhaps to the acoustic-leaning facets of Muslimgauze or to the slightly more obscure British project O Yuki Conjugate, Vasilisk were a well-regarded Japanese outfit of ritual-industrial musicians who released a handful of albums in the late '80s. Now, they've undergone a necessary reissue campaign thanks to the Austrian imprint Steinklang. Acqua (1989) was the third and final album from the band's first incarnation. And while they's since reformed, with a couple of albums that's we've not yet heard including one with the nihilist industrial project Dissecting Table, Vasilisk have long been lumped into the continuum of industrial culture (mostly since two members of Vasilisk started out in the brutalist punk-noise trio White Hospital with Jun Konagaya later christening himself Grim), but the music of Vasilisk falls more on the hypnogogic, dreamy side of tribal esoterica. Synths, organs, flutes, and guitars float through Acqua's processional tracks. This is especially true for the lengthy title cut which has much more of the kosmische atmospherics of a Popul Vuh or even a Motion Sickness Of Time Travel, before an ominous clamor from hand-drums turns the vibe in a completely different but wholly cinematic direction. The shorter tracks follow Vasilisk's mantra-based hypnosis through acoustic rhythms, moody flute drone, and suspended ambience; but the longest piece marks one of the earliest appearances from long-standing aQ-favorite Tatsuya Yoshida, aka the ringleader of the Ruins. This is a live session recorded with Yoshida behind a drum-kit and pushing the velocity at a considerably greater speed than what Vasilisk had typically performed. Around Yoshida's Charles Hayward / Jaki Leibezeit timekeeping, the rest of Vasilisk punctuates with tumbled percussion, time-warp electric drones and more of those ghostly flutes. Limited to just 300 copies...
Probably the most fully realized of the Vasilisk records, Mkwaju was originally released via Eskimo Records in 1988 with a xerox of a xerox of a xerox of a Diane Arbus print as the cover. This portrait of patients in a mental hospital, masked in their Halloween garb from what they could gather from the dustbins and forgotten closets is a potent metaphor for the autodidactic / outsider temple music that Vasilisk began creating in the mid-'80s. Unfortunately, the cd reissue campaign neglected to reproduce the original liner notes for Mkwaju, which stated: "Vasilisk's musick, as an expression of human consciousness and will, is an attempt to break through the cycle of determinacy and establish an independent existence for man... Ritual, based on the principle of gradual intensification, with ecstatic, cathartic climax, promotes the solidarity of life. Man acts as the responsible center of the rite." These rituals for Vasilisk are hypnotic in nature, with fundamental architectural drones, throat singing harmonics, and blurred miasmas of synths, tape loops, & guitars woven throughout Vasilisk's signature tribal percussive patterns. The somber, arcane atmospherics of Mkwaju align Vasilisk most closely with the ritual industrial practitioners that spawned from the early '80s metal bashing of Einsturzende Neubauten, Test Dept., and Dissecting Table, with all of that aggression tempered in favor of a ritualized solemnity cloaked in buzzing mesmer and transcendent aspirations. Like all three releases in the Vasilisk reissue campaign, this disc is limited to 300 copies.
An eccentric proposition, Vasilisk's Whirling Dervishes (1987) was the group's first album after Tomo Kuwahara and Jun Konagaya dissolved their politically charged noise/punk unit White Hospital. Konagaya kept screaming against the sky with his aptly named industrial project Grim; and Kuyahara turned inward with the ritual-industrial outfit Vasilisk. Through the connections back to White Hospital, Vasilisk had often been associated with the Japanese noise community even as their aesthetic steered clear of the aktionist bloodletting, dada nihilism, and junkyard brutalism found in every other Japanese noise outfit. Swaddled in lush reverberation and acoustic drones, Vasilisk's hypnotic, tribal percussion and occasional psych-folk jams offer a direct link to the holy minimalism of the Taj Mahal Travellers, Angus Maclise, and John Cale through the magickal liturgies of the British industrial practitioners (e.g. PTV's Themes, 23 Skidoo, Masstishaddhu, etc.) and looking forward to the pine-cone drones of the more shambolic artists from the Y2K freak-folkers (e.g. Avarus, Sunroof!, Toho Sara, etc.). The album's title track is a 22 minute excursion built up from a fundamental drone with interlocking hand-drummed rhythms punctuated by lysergically bellowed Kecak-like vocalizations, low-key Kosmische guitar work, and circular breathing chants. The shorter program pieces which flesh out the album operate mostly along those lines with the power-tool blur and militant staccato of "Bricks" and the cagey, whispered rendition of Suzanne Vega's "Cracking" (sounding more like Current 93, mind you) as the furthest axis points for Vasilisk's sensibility for miasma drone and opiated psychedelia. This reissue on Steinklang is completed with Vasilisk's contribution to RRRecord's Noise And Junk Omnibus overview of late '80s / early '90s Japanese noise - a track called "The Ritual Mask." Only 300 copies pressed...
Brutally funny first issue of this comic by the creator of Johnny The Homicidal Maniac - Mr. Jhonen Vasquez. Simultaneously super-cute and super-bummer. Quite simply the being known as Filler Bunny exists to fill up space... yep, 15 pages worth. And it
Finally, for all the hip hop headz who were bummed by the end of the mighty Cannibal Ox, there's something to soothe the pain: The debut full length from Cannibal Ox's Vast Aire. We have to admit that we were a bit worried that the Def Jux beat makers (El-P, etc...) were a big part of Cannibal Ox's dark and damaged hip hop. Fear not. Madlib, RJD2, the Beatminerz and a handful of other folks have stepped in to keep things funky and fucked, just the way we like it. Bizarre loops and samples are cut and chopped into a bouncing, head nodding rhythms, stacked high with weird synth sounds, fuzzed out guitars, crackly record static, and all sorts of sonic randomness. Vast's flow is smooth with just a little rasp, spitting all sorts of dense and clever and way out rhymes. His smooth delivery is balanced out by a handful of guests including Aesop Rock, Sadat X, MF Doom, S.A. Smash and even his former CanOx partner Vordul.
Death metal can be a tough sell. It's not as grim and kvlt as black metal, not as melodic and catchy as true metal, not as creepy and emotive as doom metal, and as metal goes, it often seems like death metal caters to the lowest common denominator metalhead. Don't believe us? Go to a Cannibal Corpse show and then talk to us.
But c'mon, there's been some incredible death metal, Carcass, Death, Morbid Angel, Grave, Autopsy, Deicide, Suffocation, Immolation, Sinister, we could go on, but most metalheads we know, definitely have a soft spot for death metal. But like anything else, we do tend toward the weirder end of the DM spectrum, whether it's the ridiculous ultra tech silliness of Braindrill, the noodly fusion of Psyopus, or the murky noise drenched filth that is Wold or Mitochondrian, but that said, we always love us a little death metal, it's a 'sound' we love, and while there are WAY too many DM bands, you can count on a label like 20 Buck Spin to sift the wheat from the chaff.
Thus we have Vastum, who hail from right here in SF (another one of those instances where this band is popular enough to get signed to 20BS, yet some metalheads here had never even heard of them!), but they're a pretty seriously meancing death metal beast, who seem to have traded in furious speed for something much more murky and atmospheric, the guitars thick as tar, the vocals a beastly rroooooaaaar, the riffs muddy and blackened, laced with fast picked soaring epic melodies, the sound a hellish blackened miasma, churning and roiling, chugging and pounding, the band seeming to prefer the plod over the blast, which suits us just fine, giving the sound a doomy, creepy vibe, and when the band do occasionally crank up the tempo, it's only to midtempo, a weirdly galloping anti-groove, which adds another even stranger dimension to the proceedings.
Fans of all that modern death metal murk will most likely dig, as will all of you who still worship before the altar of classic DM, and heck this is plenty doomy enough that it might just tempt some of you doomlords as well...
Dragging themselves upward from the moist earth of San Francisco's most dilapidated graveyard, local filth merchants Vastum have returned to expel upon the world another pungent platter of churning decrepit death metal. There's no technical wankery to be found herein. There's no prog fusion guitar virtuosity. The approach here is strictly no frills, strictly barbaric. Snaking nauseous guitar harmonies coil around Cro-Magnon drum plods and guttural vomitous vocals. The mood is doomy and grotesque. The guitars are such a thick nebulous mass that even the album's faster moments seem mired in swamp, like an intense dreadful vertigo or the inevitable swallowing horror of sinking into quicksand. But what sets this apart from the myriad other old school death metal bands who seem to have writhed out from the woodwork these past few years is the quality of playing and the quality of the sound. As primitive as this style of pummeling death metal may be, the playing here is tight and deadly, while the production is the perfect balance between cavernous and clean - all of the atmosphere of an empty forgotten mausoleum, but with none of the details lost. If at the altars of the old gods you still worship (translation: Autopsy, Incantation, etc. etc.) then this is an absolute must have.
