Verde is a Finnish one man band who also goes by the name Mika Rintala, and when Rintala is not playing with his friends in Circle or Ektroverde, he's busy inventing and building instruments and using them to assemble totally damaged, beautifully otherworldly records like this one. Vuoronumero is a gorgeously blissed out, creepy and lovely selection of mini epics, that veer dramatically from freaked out sci-fi space drone, to creepy drone-y minimalism, to weird outerspace jazz, to haunting cinematic soundscapes. Incorporating field recordings, classical guitar, shimmering feedback, alien elctronic buzz, super distorted Tom Waits-ish vocals, mutated jazz horns, wailing fuzz guitar skronk (ala Sonny Sharrock), thumping Krautrock rhythms and a motley assortment of homemade sound making machines, Rintala manages to create a weird blend of Circle-ish drone rock, twentieth century music concrete, and demented outrock. Guests include a handful of Finnish underground luminaries including most of the guys in Circle!
We've been meaning to list this record for ages, the second release from mysterious German horde Verdunkeln, a huge favorite around these parts. And while these guys are often compared to mid period Burzum, they are so much more than that.
Just take the first song, with its weird gothy into, processed Joy Division bassline, over plodding simple drum line, chanted monk like vocals, as far as we're concerned, the track could have continued on like that, a weird minimal stripped down goth doom jam, vibes of early 4AD, old militaristic industrial, but instead, the chorus offers up a thick slab of crunchy superdistorted guitar, and howled, effected shrieks, before slither back into the same gothy crawl, until it finished off with a furious freak out, all pounding drums, blown out guitars, wild leads and huge chunks of throbbing bass.
And that sort of defines their sound. It's almost like some eighties goth band, like Christian Death, the Abecedarians, or Kommunity FX, were transported to some grim black forest, where they continued to play basically the same music, but with the surroundings seeping into every note, the starlit sky, the dense canopy of trees overhead, the whipping wind, the snow capped mountains, turning them into something basically undefinable. Sure it's black metal. Sort of. And yeah, it's some kind of weird dark gothwave, but the way those two elements are incorporated transform Verdunkeln into something so bizarre, and so unique, that it's hard to really describe.
Each song begins as a lurching midtempo bass heavy crawl, the bass heavily reverbed and effected, the vocals haunting and deep, when the guitars do come in, they are massive, chugging away at one moment, soaring majestically the next.
Our favorite song might be the second track, "Im Zwiespalt", beginning with that haunting reverbed twang, the sound of rainfall, cracks of thunder, the guitars finally come in, and the song lurches into motion, some sort of lumbering downtuned blackdoom behemoth, that plods along until a sudden break, when a delay drenched guitar offers up a strummed minor key melody, and the song explodes into a weird majestic cinematic blow out, the chords and notes soaring, until that delayed guitar break comes back in briefly, and the song resumes it's dense plod, but this time the riffing following the clean guitar, a weird post rocky, mournful vibe. Bleak and harrowing, and super epic and emotional. Midway through the track, the tempo picks up and the band begins to rock seriously for the first time, replete with tangled leads, haunting melodies, still strangely melancholy and emotional, before fading out into a drifting drone-y shimmer, peppered with huge bursts of crumbling downtuned chug, beneath a washed out smear of lonely synths, only to finish with a strange mathy outro.
And even though for right now, that might be our favorite song, this is one of those discs, that whatever song you happen to be listening to is your favorite. Next song, "oh wait, THIS one is the best song". Next song. "Actually, THIS one is way better. And so it goes. The whole record is just this impossible black metal goth, downtuned post rock doom, majestic cinematic post metal, avant metallic rock, who the fuck knows, and really who cares. There are definitely some Burzumic elements, some distinctly black metal tropes, but Verdunkeln are one of the very few, incredibly rare BM bands around who absolutely and completely sound like nothing you've ever heard.
Here we have the two debut 12"s from local evil jackin' house and wormhole creating RAW AS HELL techno producer, Vereker... and they are head cracking buzzsaws both of em'.
EP 1 kicks off with the acerbic and hallucinatory side long "Rosite". A blistering modern acid track, layers of corroded noise, super blown out snare fills and white noise hi hats underpin some super twisted acid patterns, everything peaking and off kilter, some Wolf Eyes meets Phuture type of thing. Industrial strength noise house. "Disconnect" offers a little more space for the sounds to manifest, though not by much. Vereker's sound remains a mighty stack of analogue hiss and clang, rhythms grating against each other and somehow through all the chaos something pretty groovy manages to ooze through. "Falling", the last track, is probably the most dancefloor directed of the bunch, definitely meant for a pretty fucked up drug addled warehouse party rather than a pristinely sexed up nightclub. You can't hear this music before 2am... it wouldn't make sense, and that's a good thing! A pitched down and bit crushed voice intones what sounds like "I keep falling down" over a slightly more sparse and less caustic bassline, rolling and tripped out percussion phased to the max, kinda end of the night type a song where you lost yr friends and the lights are off and yr not sure how yr gonna get home type of jam. Scary stuff.
EP 2 starts off where the first one left off, with another killer side long burner, this one called "Fear Eats The Soul". An absolute seething mass of terrorizing house music. Claps that sound like they're gonna cut yr face off and a super twisted bassline bubbling under the surface, never fully breaking out. Tense and dark rave music, slowly evolving through a fog of dancefloor war! "Next" is slightly more toned down mutant groove, a jammed out feel throughout, with some seriously bent motorized drones filling out the background. "Untitled" is the final acid soaked bookend for these two PUNISHING 12"s. A simple yet effective bass line twists and turns over the machine riddims, when suddenly a beautiful forlorn, Silent Servant-esque (lo-fi Sandwellianism?) enters, emoting very darkly over the bouncing pulsations. KILLER!
Both these 12"s are on the constantly on fire as of late L.I.E.S. label run by NYC's Rob Morelli, who also put out the incredible compilation "American Noise" reviewed a couple of lists ago (which if you don't have, you need), and we only got a few copies of these sweet babies so act fast! A very impressive pair of releases from this young SF producer. Let's hope the first of many! A must have if you like yr electronic dance music murky and noisy and fucked up outta yr mind outta body high experience. TUNES!
Here we have the two debut 12"s from local evil jackin' house and wormhole creating RAW AS HELL techno producer, Vereker... and they are head cracking buzzsaws both of em'.
EP 1 kicks off with the acerbic and hallucinatory side long "Rosite". A blistering modern acid track, layers of corroded noise, super blown out snare fills and white noise hi hats underpin some super twisted acid patterns, everything peaking and off kilter, some Wolf Eyes meets Phuture type of thing. Industrial strength noise house. "Disconnect" offers a little more space for the sounds to manifest, though not by much. Vereker's sound remains a mighty stack of analogue hiss and clang, rhythms grating against each other and somehow through all the chaos something pretty groovy manages to ooze through. "Falling", the last track, is probably the most dancefloor directed of the bunch, definitely meant for a pretty fucked up drug addled warehouse party rather than a pristinely sexed up nightclub. You can't hear this music before 2am... it wouldn't make sense, and that's a good thing! A pitched down and bit crushed voice intones what sounds like "I keep falling down" over a slightly more sparse and less caustic bassline, rolling and tripped out percussion phased to the max, kinda end of the night type a song where you lost yr friends and the lights are off and yr not sure how yr gonna get home type of jam. Scary stuff.
EP 2 starts off where the first one left off, with another killer side long burner, this one called "Fear Eats The Soul". An absolute seething mass of terrorizing house music. Claps that sound like they're gonna cut yr face off and a super twisted bassline bubbling under the surface, never fully breaking out. Tense and dark rave music, slowly evolving through a fog of dancefloor war! "Next" is slightly more toned down mutant groove, a jammed out feel throughout, with some seriously bent motorized drones filling out the background. "Untitled" is the final acid soaked bookend for these two PUNISHING 12"s. A simple yet effective bass line twists and turns over the machine riddims, when suddenly a beautiful forlorn, Silent Servant-esque (lo-fi Sandwellianism?) enters, emoting very darkly over the bouncing pulsations. KILLER!
Both these 12"s are on the constantly on fire as of late L.I.E.S. label run by NYC's Rob Morelli, who also put out the incredible compilation "American Noise" reviewed a couple of lists ago (which if you don't have, you need), and we only got a few copies of these sweet babies so act fast! A very impressive pair of releases from this young SF producer. Let's hope the first of many! A must have if you like yr electronic dance music murky and noisy and fucked up outta yr mind outta body high experience. TUNES!
Some 14 years ago Television guitar-god Tom Verlaine released an unexpected low-key beautiful late night guitar instrumental record called Warm & Cool (which was reissued just a year or so ago by Thrill Jockey). Now he's back with what seems to be the follow up to that outing, and what a nice follow up it is. Slow and steady with nothing to prove, Verlaine's playing is so earnest as he makes sounds perfect for long drives on grey days, as rain splashes against the windshield and your eyes get anonymous glimpses of the surroundings. There is a simplicity in delivery and a timeless quality to his playing that could make this the perfect soundtrack for a 1950's black & white film filled with empty highways and of course the flickering neon lights of a Coca Cola sign on the front of an all-night diner. Yet there is something so meditative and assured about the songs on this record that makes it not just an exercise in nostalgia but instead totally great and engaging mood music that sucks you in and allows to wander those same rainy streets. Each time we listen we go somewhere slightly different and equally as satisfying. Highly recommended!
We still can't get enough of Tom Verlaine's latest instrumental outing Around (reviewed last list). Simultaneous to that release, he put out a new collection of sing songs (you know with vocals and all that) which we've been a bit more hesitant to warm up to initially but as we spend more time with it we've got to say it's not that bad at all. Of course don't expect Marquee Moon, as this is an older more laid-back Tom Verlaine doing a record which recalls some of Lou Reed's solo outings in the 70's. With all sorts of bands like The Strokes ripping off Verlaine's guitar and vocal stylings, it's nice to hear from the man himself. While this may not go be the best thing he's ever done, it's certainly quite nice to see one of the greats aging gracefully, and still making beautiful music.
Any one who loves rock music, and kick ass guitar playing, absolutely must dig seventies guitART rock band Television, and in particular the amazing guitar playing of Tom Verlaine. If not, there's something very very wrong. But don't expect any of that driving, propulsive NY art rock here, nope, Warm And Cool finds Verlaine in a completely different sonic space. This is slow building, smoldering slithering moody minimalism, the riffs are bluesy, but they are so langorous and drenched in reverb, they sound like they could almost be a more citified Calexico or Scenic, all rainy and cloudy and deserted city sounding, streetlights refelcted in oily puddles, the rumble of passing cars, the warm glow of all night diners, the vibe at times is similar to old Tom Waits, sort of desolate and mournful, wandering the empty streets at night, but Warm And Cold is instrumental, so it's all about Verlaine's guitar, shimmering and drifting through dark alleys and boarded up buildings, supported by subtle shuffling brushwork and warm swells of reverberating low end. It does get a little bit jaunty at moments, even slipping in to some chaotic almost free jazz here and there, but the majority of the record is a wonderfully dark and dreary wander through a mysterious twilit city. A lonely latenight soundscape. Think the aforementioned Calexico or Scenic, a slowed way down instrumental Chris Isaac, Giant Sand, Califone, Friends Of Dean Martinez, the warm swoon of Chet Baker, the Texas twang of ZZ Top (although all blissed out and dreamy) and you'll have an idea of the sort of journey you're in for.
Includes digital download, with 5 bonus tracks.
Another awesome release from Sacred Bones, this one from an all girl Italian combo called Vermillion Sands, who mix post punk pound with indie jangle, crunchy guitars, propulsive drumming, angular melody, and sassy sultry vox, all wrapped around some killer super catchy songwriting, reminding us a bit of Brilliant Colors, who in turn fit right in the current crop of retro garage poppers like Grass Widow, Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls and the like. But VS do make the sound their own, infusing their songs with plenty of classic girl group shimmer, and a sort of classic garage-y vibe a la Thee Headcoatees. Killer stuff for sure. Anyone into the above mentioned bands or any of the classic female pop combos like The Vaselines, Shop Assistants, Talulah Gosh, Black Tambourine, the Pastels, should definitely check this out.
Are not from Vermont. Give it a listen, maybe you'll guess... they're from Cologne, Germany.
And Vermont's debut release comes to us via our fave techno/electronica imprint, Cologne's Kompakt. It's the first collaborative project from experienced producers Marcus Worgull and Danilo Plessow (Motor City Drum Ensemble). This duo has also enlisted some friends to help 'em out - among them, Can's Jaki Liebezeit, who drums on two of the cuts, along with one of Jaki's bandmates in his '80s Phantom Band. So no surprise that this has got a satisfyingly, slightly krautrock-ish vibe, shades of Cluster and Kraftwerk; these moody, melodic instrumentals all arising out of the Vermont duo's relaxed jams on vintage analog synth gear, augmented on a few of the tracks by guest guitar, violin, drums, and theremin. There are 14 varied pieces, with Teutonic names like "Ruckzug" and "Ubersprung" and "Katzenjammer". Self-descriptive names too, like "Dynamik", "Majestat", and "Macchina". Some have atmospheric, "incidental" music feel, others are more active and insidious. All are constructed from a quite pleasant palette of sounds that include sundappled electronic blippery, gently chirping melodies, headnodding beats, and whooshing soothing synth textures. As befits a release on the label that brought us the "Pop Ambient" concept, there's moments here that sound like the mellowest video game theme music you could ever imagine!
It's nice stuff, very nice. We're happily transported by this music to the mountains of an imagined idyllic Vermont (that's somehow right outside of Cologne), the temporal location of which is also oddly imprecise - could be just yesterday, or deep in the '70s.
Vinyl version (tracks spread over an lp and a 7") also includes a cd of the whole album, which is what you get when you get the cd version, obviously.
Another batch of glorious fuzzy girl pop, this one from UK combo Veronica Falls, a surprisingly upbeat song about a popular suicide spot called "Beachy Head", total old school urgent post punk jangle pop, sassy female vox, backed up by deep boy background vocals, cool tendrils of psychedelic guitar melody, fuzzy summery pop for sure, rife with all that sixties reverb and echo, but with just a bit of an ominous edge, and a KILLER chorus. The B side is a sweetly sorrowful beachy ballad, boy girl vocals over Beach Boys shimmer, simple muted percussion and lovely crystalline guitar melodies, warm whirring organ, all woven into a timeless soft focus beach pop ballad. So nice. Obviously for fans of Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls, Grass Widow, Brilliant Colors, etc...
Veronica Falls' debut full length from a few months back became a runaway hit around aQ, and for some of us it still gets played constantly. So we were super excited to discover this brand new 7", which really just takes up right where the album left off, the A side a fuzzy chunk of propulsive dream pop, all hazy vox over spidery guitar jangle, a little bit of boy/girl vocal interplay, a little buzz and crunch, but all the edges smoothed away leaving a lush billowing cloud of perfect pop, the song soars and shimmers and is catchy as all get out. And as you might imagine the B side is no slouch either, a more subdued, almost ballad, organs whir, simple skeletal drums drift beneath a warm whirl of soft focus pop, the boy / girl vox again gorgeously dreamy and softly reverbed, the result a dreamily meditative dark pop gem, that has us already hankering for the next full length!
Oh, how we waited for this album! The British quartet's eponymous album from 2011 had become a staple here at aQuarius, hitting all the right sweet spots of jangly, retro indie rock with super catchy girl/boy harmonies that fit perfectly next to old favorites like Unrest, Heavenly, Beat Happening, and whatever your particular favorite C86 band might have been. There was probably a stretch of time when it would be an anomaly if that album *wasn't* being played in the middle of a Saturday afternoon at aQ.
So, Waiting For Something To Happen is an album that undoubtedly has really big shoes to fill; and admittedly, the first couple of listens found us wondering what happened to the tension between the sourpuss punk and the giggly twee, which left us with such a warm and fuzzy feeling on that the first album. Instead, the band has settled into a melancholy jangle that pushes towards those brilliant arrangements John Squire penned on the first Stone Roses record (sans the Madchester grooviness, Veronica Falls still champion the VU minimal-motorik-mono beat) or maybe those tunes Vini Reily wrote for Morrissey's first solo record, proving to be a deft replacement for Johnny Marr. Veronica Falls may have pulled the tempo down a bit, but they are filling in the gaps with a few more baroque flourishes (like something close to a guitar solo, which was entirely absent on the first album); but seriously, do yourself a favor if you loved the first record, pick this up and give it a few spins to let the songs sink into your skull. You'll be rewarded mightily!
We were so into the self titled debut from these UK indie rockers, which was actually a sort of singles collection, so it was pretty goddamn catchy and tough to top, so when record number two dropped, essentially the group's first full length, it took us a little longer to warm up to it, but once we did, it got nearly as many spins as that singles comp. So much so that even one more track from the same sessions is cause for celebration for the pop nerds around aQ. Which brings us to this new single, which features the title track from their new lp on the A side, which if you haven't heard Veronica Falls before, is the sort of track that will win you over immediately. Fuzzy, jangly, crazy catchy, warm and lush with dreamy vocals, and of course a chorus that KILLS. Listen to the sound sample and prepare to have a new favorite pop band. But for the rest of us, who've played both full lengths to death, the real reason to grab this is for the EXCLUSIVE B side, which as you might expect, is another beauty, brief but seriously cool, starting off with some super druggy backwards guitars, draped over muted jangle, we're immediately hearing some strange hybrid of the Breeders and the Swirlies, shoegazey and psychedelic, the whole track laced with those trippy backwards guitars, no drums, just a dense layered wash of softly swirling guitars, more gorgeous vox, and a subtly catchy main hook that will stick in your head like crazy!
After a handful of killer singles comes the debut from this UK indie pop four piece, and it's just as good as those singles promised. In fact, the A side from the most recent single is included here, described by us in a past review as "total old school urgent post punk jangle pop, sassy female vox, backed up by deep boy background vocals, cool tendrils of psychedelic guitar melody, fuzzy summery pop for sure, rife with all that sixties reverb and echo, but with just a bit of an ominous edge, and a KILLER chorus." And we pretty much assumed that like in most cases, said single would be the best track on the album, but somehow EVERY track here is competing for best track bragging rights. The sound very beholden to pop minimalists that came before, Beat Happening, Velvet Underground, all raw and stripped down, urgent and emotional, but still lush and layered, a little bit dark and depressive, and still shot through with sonic warmth and a hopeful melodicism that will definitely find fans of the current group of sixties girl group and post punk influenced indie poppers like Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls, Grass Widow as well as fuzzy garage rockers like Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees and the rest.
Opener "Found Love In A Graveyard" would have to be a contender for pop jam of the year, with its brooding haunting main riff, sweet vocal oooh's and boy/girl vocal interplay, a gloomy bit of pop that blossoms into something super melodic, crazy catchy, jangly and crunchy and so great, with some of THEE most perfect vox ever. So now we're convinced that THIS must be THEE jam here, but then "Right Side Of My Brain" starts up, another killer chunk of crunchy jangle, and yet another bit of dark and moody classic style indie pop with yet another killer chorus, and it's right about then that we decide, "fuck it", why bother trying to pick our favorite track, might make more sense to just proclaim this our new favorite pop record and be done with it. And by be done with it, we mean play over and over and over like crazy!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Pig fuck. Now there's a poetic way to describe the sound that a band makes. It's sort of a shame that the description had already been applied to the grit and snot of '80s NYC bands like Pussy Galore, Live Skull and even Lydia Lunch at times, as it's a perfect encapsulation of what San Francisco's Veronica Lipgloss & The Evil Eyes are doing in this day and age. That said, about half of the debut album from Veronica Lipgloss does sound an awful lot like the mid '80s Lydia Lunch album In Limbo co-written by a thoroughly drugged-out Thurston Moore doing his best Birthday Party impersonation (quite well in fact!). The other half of the album picks up the tempo considerably and addresses their death-disco fix on par with what fellow San Franciscan goth-revivalists The Vanishing did so well: spry post-punk rhythms laced with taut basslines, tortured female punk vocals (e.g. early Siouxsie, X-Mal Deutschland, The Slits, etc.), blood splattered saxophone leads (which lends to James Chance & The Contortions comparisons), and arpeggiated synths that Fisherspooner would be proud of. Imagine a dishevelled porn queen with thoroughly smeared mascara, torn fishnets, a rumbled cheap-ass platinum blonde wig, and a needle dangling pathetically from her arm, and that's Veronica Lipgloss. There's nothing pretty about her, but all of the egotistic turmoil, self-appointed abjection, and escapist transgressions can make for a compelling listen.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Versus are a NYC band who in my opinion have had a stellar track record with their contributions to compilations and who have a very very loyal following, but who have yet to bring forth a full-length truly representative of their amazing songwriting talents. Well, this their fourth just might be the one! Perhaps their most fully realised collection of songs to date. The year and a half that they spent recording this album was definitely time well spent. The lovely Fontaine Toups and ever-boyish Richard Balayut's voices weave together beautifully over the textured pop melodies and occasional noise excursions. Layers of moving sweeps, swells and lulls. If you swooned to the last couple of Yo La Tengo albums but are yearning for something a little more upbeat, songs such as "You'll Be Sorry" will surely catch your ear. Hurrah, indeed.
For a few years, we'd frequently see our pal, Versus guitarist Richard Balayut, across the street at Lost Weekend Video where he worked with his then-Whysall Lane bandmate Adam Pfahler (also of Jawbreaker). Great guy, great bands. We were super sad when he decided to move back East to New York about a year or so ago, but we were overjoyed to hear that it brought him back into the fold of this beloved NYC band. Yes, after a long long hiatus they got back together last year, and we couldn't be happier. They were one of the best purveyors of that '90s college radio classic indie rock sound because they not only nailed the driving loud/quiet/loud dynamics, but also delivered fantastic pop hooks and intelligent lyrics... not to mention many a heartstring was plucked by Ms Fontaine Toups' lovely voice.
It's been a decade since they've released an album, but On The Ones And Threes makes it feel like it was just yesterday, as their classic sound is still so vibrant and fresh sounding. The record really shows all the great sides of the band from the more rocking moments to the bittersweet melancholy they've always been able to capture so perfectly. We're reminded a bit of the Low record, The Great Destroyer as it has a similar punchy and up front feel, and there are even some moments that make us think of The Breeders doing X covers. While we tend to be a bit reticent about bands we loved from the past reforming after so many years, there is something so organic, unforced and free flowing about this new Versus record that just makes us so happy they are back!
Recorded at the White Noise Bar in K�ln in 1999, this five part piece was directly inspired by Keith Jarrett's 1975 record with the same title. Evoking Jarrett's melodies, Vert layers on looped effects, drones and other assorted blippery.
Vert's new album Some Beans & An Octopus offers something new and a bit different for the Sonig label. Vert runs the stylistic gamut much in the same way that Sparks and Momus do. So chameleon-like, they easily slip from the cabaret to the carnival to the piano parlor to the seaside to the mountaintop. In the wink of an eye the music may go from the clatterous to velvety and back again. Lots of lively variety and rambunctious fun. We were particularly charmed by the clucky chicken sound in the kooky second tune "Velocity". It gave some of us the giggles. Conversely we found songs like the shimmering "October" to be dreamily perfect for porchswing stargazing. Pretty darn great!
Some freaked out acid prog, experimental home recorded garage psych avant art rock weirdness from seventies Ohio outsider noisemaker Jim Shepard, who would go on to front the group V-3, before killing himself in 1988.
Slit And Pre-Slit is the very earliest documentation of Shepard's primordial sonic madness, falling somewhere between fellow sonic outsiders Destroy All Monsters and classic Pere Ubu, a dizzying swirl of thumping garage rock, spaced out kraut prog, and audio collages and tape experiments, a free flowing stream of consciousness jam veering wildly from crunchy Stooges style buzz to proggy classic rock, to bar band blues, all tangled up with looped answering machine messages, squalls of processed and layered psychguitar freakout, buzzing siren like analog synths, mangled cut up tape experiments, loads of primitive effects, delay and echo and reverb, little bits of classical steel string fingerpicking, short stretches of dreamy droney fuzz guitar, stumbling detuned anti-folk digressions, whistled melodies, dark brooding sort of ballads (sounding quite a bit like old home recorded Sebadoh/Sentridoh), very fragmented and ADD, barring the occasional jam, where the songs could finally sprawl, the band locked in and spaced out, unfurling multiple variations on the late night / early morning, drug addled psychedelic drift, with some of the tracks randomly truncated, others transforming into garbled sonic weirdness, and still others seeming to stretch out endlessly.
The original vanity pressing was limited to a mere 100 copies, with many of those, rumor has it, ending up in the collections of folks like Todd Rundgren, John Cale, Robert Fripp and Peter Hamill! This version is limited to 350 copies! And should most definitely end up in YOUR collection.
The depths of the ocean and the heights of the mountains. As poetic as these subject matters are for Blake Edwards, he seeks to describe the existential danger inherent in exploring such places. To ascend Mount Everest may be the most exhilarating experience in one's life, but the possibility of death is very, very real. The same can be said for plunging to the bottom of the sea. Manifesting such existential threats has been part and parcel of Edwards' project Vertonen. Recently, he's embodied a slipperiness between a tonal, electro-acoustic beauty and undercurrents of industrial violence lurking from within; and that holds true on this album as well. The coordinates of the first track refer to the location of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean; and appropriately enough, that track plummets through a series of aqueous, yet ominous electronic percolations coming to rest at a blackened pressurized hum, amounting to a great piece of bleak, industrial strength dronemuzik. A lurching heartbeat rhythm guides the first half of "HACE/26,250", whose title refers to the altitude at which the condition known as High Altitude Cerebral Adema begins to impact the human body negatively through the lack of oxygen getting to the vital organs and causing the collapse of brain activity. And thus, amidst this slow somatic rhythm, harsh sinewave electronics and squalls of tempestuous noise beckon from the nether regions behind a glacial pall of cold cold drone. Eventually, these actionist gestures dissolve alongside the heartbeat rhythm into a shimmering, snowblinding drift of minimalism, a portrait of a mountaineer gazing over the horizon from the top of the world while his or her body shuts down. Horrifyingly great.
Deteriorated Broadcast is a short-run cd-r from Chicago power-drone engineer Blake Edwards (aka Vertonen), and we can't help thinking to back to John Duncan's minimalist opus Phantom Broadcast, given that Edwards too has sourced at least some of this work from the spectral palette of shortwave radio. There are plenty of sublime moments where Edwards (like Duncan) creates an electonic bath of rarified drones, whose sustained, shimmering chorales emerge as those transmissions from another plane that Thomas Edison once thought possible through the birth of radio communication. Muffled voices and cavernous room thrumming snap into a volatile cascade of haptic vibration and sinusoidal shortwave hues, that slowly give way to a monochromatic dead-circuit tone, which is akin to a particular strain of noxious interference that runs rampant through the shortwave spectrum in urban areas. Phased static and additional sinewave tones gradually modulate through this slumped sonic field as a ghostly residue of some type of broadcast filtered through the earth's atmosphere and all of the irradiating fields that drift through our cities. Some 30 minutes into the 50 minute piece, Edwards intensifies his psychoacoustic crucible of sound with metallic slashes whose mutated and bloated abrasions gradually collapse into a chest-compressing sound-pressure wall of low-end frequencies matched with industrially charred hiss. A great album for sure for fans of Joe Colley, The Hafler Trio, and Francisco Lopez; but be warned this is limited to less than 100 copies of which we only have a handful!
A couple years back, Vertonen began a series of compositions entirely based on field recordings of heavy machinery. This was truly industrial music glommed from the rhythms of pistons, turbines, pneumatic hammers, and any other thing that goes clank in the urban jungle. This series began as an homage to the classic French industrial sounds of Le Syndicat and Vivenza, with their brute recapitulations of an unwelcome man-machine hybrid. Of course, all the titles of these albums are French too, driving home the point. But as Vertonen (aka Blake Edwards) continued to work with the material, the pieces became refined into a metal machine music of acoustic noise more akin to something by Organum or more precisely Chop Shop. While the churning and grinding of those machines are ever present, Edwards dials in particular midrange frequencies from diesel engines, hydraulic motors, and the workings of a metal scrapping facility (to name a few of his sources) into a boiling mass of white noise. The effect is more hypnotic than aggressive, with Vertonen shifting and sliding these layered recordings in and out of focus in relation to the foregrounded sounds. The accompanying cd-r is a longform, yet thoroughly menacing collage of somewhat more droned-out recordings from HVAC systems, computer farm cooling vents, and the familiar whooshing sounds of BART - the San Francisco Bay Area train that connects the city with the East Bay. Again with the French, this disc gets the title Machines Domestiques. This is a really good looking picture disc, with a couple of vertiginous photographs from rust-belt sites of heavy industry. Limited to 300 copies.
Oh, yes. Industrial music. Blake Edwards - the man behind Vertonen, not to be confused with, uh, the other Blake Edwards - ventured hither and yon throughout the great state of Illinois cataloguing the noises, rhythms, and drones from the state's wealth of industrial-strength machines, capturing half-ton presses, diesel engines, hydraulic presses, air filtration systems, hay balers, drill presses, iron works fabrication facilities, desalination facilities, etc; and he's worked these grinding rhythms, incendiary hisses, and atonal klank into a very effective set of pulse-oriented collages that harken to a classic, early '80s definition of Industrial Music, post-Throbbing Gristle. The likes of Vivenza, Esplendor Geometrico, and even Test Dept. looked to the sounds of the industrial workplace for musical inspiration, contextualizing their field recordings with a claustrophobia that alluded to a grim monotony within an increasingly dehumanized social order. Such is the framework for Vertonen's La Coeur Mecanique, recorded a few decades later with a more clinical mindset in the approach to the sounds, alternating between a rhythmic bash on one track followed by a monolithic gray wash of noise on the next. For the former strategy, Vertonen's locomotive, mechanical churnings lock into incessant patterns of hammered iron and steel, with blossoms and swarms of hum, hiss, and klang amassing in the distance. And on the latter, the compacted layers of steam ventilation and compressed air become the ashen bellowings from the belly of an ill-tempered foundry. Without the rhythmic patterns of the former, these latter works are bleak parallels to those industrially-sourced recordings by Francisco Lopez. Limited to 160 professionally duplicated cd-rs, we might add.
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Chicago's power acoustician Blake Edwards has been recording as Vertonen for years now, with plenty of caustic noise and atonal hums that draw parallels to the likes of John Duncan, CM Von Hausswolff, and Joe Colley (who has released a number of works through Edwards' own C.I.P. imprint). Yet, this album is easily the most subtle production for Edwards, and it's almost as it he's gone out of his way to burnish away almost every plausible signifier to this album, leaving behind a stately drone construction of phased vibrations and bellowing rumbles. All he provides from the outset is a statement that his source material was culled from a tape made in 1979. While he doesn't come outright and say who made the tape, if you were to ask him (we did), he would honestly say that the tape was from Jonestown; and the title itself comes from the People's Temple book of shortwave radio codes, which is code for "this is not a code." His obfuscation of the source material was intended not to shroud the material further in occluded transgression, but an attempt to remove the potent sensationalism around the Jonestown massacre all the while trying to articulate his own metaphors of horror, control, and fear through an act of negation. The slowly developing passages of flickering, long-stare drones is thick with a creeping sense of dread, even as Edwards makes plenty of compositional gestures to the likes of Eliane Radigue and Roland Kayn. It's as if Edwards has erased everything from that Jonestown tape, except for feelings of tranced-out exhaustion and sun-bleached humidity from the People's Temple members who had left everything behind in the US to embark upon a utopian project that had already turned ugly but soon was to become tragic. This is probably Vertonen's best work to date and certainly comes recommended.
For the follow-up to their 2006 debut Mourir C'est Facile, The Very Hush Hush take a bold and unexpected turn away from the Interpol moody rock territory into a less song-structured and much more varied and discordant album. In fact, the seventeen songs and noisescape interludes almost seems cut-up and randomly reassembled. For instance, at one point a solemn piano number nudges into something that resembles a dismembered M83esque shoegazerly track that builds into fuzzy prickly blasts. Definitely as dark in tone as their previous album but the dour male swagger is now tempered with non-anthropomorphic ominous presences. Cool.
Oooh, why would we wanna keep this one quiet?! Quite an impressive debut for this Boulder, CO band (now transplanted to Oakland, CA). Its title translated into English is basically "Dying Is Easy", and while that statement may spur many a lengthy late night deep discussion, we can say that the dynamic sounds contained within are mighty easy on the ears. We can certainly see this band's music easily appealing to fans of Interpol, but they're by no means a simple soundalike. Although there is a breathy angstful resemblance in the vocal department, they've definitely got a sound of their own. No, it's in their rich sense of somber mood and shadowy atmosphere where more of the similarities lie. As well, their dark, shoegazer-y and lovely guitar washes bring to mind the glistening waves of M83. If you've a penchant for the abovementioned bands and/or opulent, lush rock in general, please make haste to The Very Hush Hush!
After a handful of killer 12"s comes the debut full length from Vessel, aka 22 year old producer Sebastian Gainsborough, who sounds right at home on Tri Angle, especially after the recent release of the new record from Holy Other. But where the Holy Other record found HO taking a stab at mainstream radio pop (and failing spectacularly), creating a warped chunk of radio-proof, avant, slo-mo soul pop weirdness, Vessel uses a similar sonic palette, but to create something much more tranquil, spaced out and psychedelic. The dub vibe is huge, at times the sound reminding us of a more reverby, dub heavy Burial. "Stillborn Dub" delivers a breathy, fragmented vocal line, over a spacious sprawl of blurry sonic haze, of skeletal rhythms, of murky bass pulsations, all held together by that distinctive upstroke melody. But then "Images Of Bodies" ditches all that dubbiness for some super minimal sci-fi house music, peppered with all sorts of weird FX, some fuzzy bass warble, the sound somehow equal parts techno and some mutant strain of futuristic electro, but whatever it is, it works. Woozy and warped, total tripped out late night avant techno mesmer. The sound continues to shift throughout, making Vessel a tough one to pin down, some tracks fusing hazy Pop Ambient shimmer to dramatic Portishead like downtempo moodiness, others taking murky minimalism and burying hip hop beats and breathy processed vox, still others channeling classic nineties IDM into something bloopy and playful, but always with a certain sinister undercurrent. And throughout the record, the oddest sounds will pop up, instantly changing the feel of the song, a groovy throbbing synth here, a warped house music pulse there, hazy eighties keyboards, wild tangles of electronic melody, distorted buzz, bursts of glitch and squelch, the sound occasionally dense and propulsive, driving and hypnotic, but more often then not, much darker hued, more laid back and darkly druggy, and be sure to stick around for the brief 2+ minute closer, which might be our favorite jam here, a dubbed out hazy distorted shimmery creep, that sounds like Vessel remixed by the Caretaker!
The first full length from Vessel, aka producer Sebastian Gainsborough, 2012's Order Of Noise, was a perfect fit for the Tri Angle label, sounding very much like labelmates oOoOO, Balam Acab, Holy Other, etc. All warped and woozy, fractured slo-mo soul, dark, slithery, downtempo creeps that sounded like Portishead 12"s melted down, and then repressed into something much more alien, and otherworldly.
Punish, Honey is something else altogether, though. Gone are the pitch shifted vocals, the spare dubbed out minimal moodiness, and in their place, something much more bombastic and percussive, dense and collaged, and WAY more experimental. While that first record channeled the soulful murk of Burial, the sound here is almost more post industrial, still soulful for sure, but with hints of Throbbing Gristle, This Heat, and other much more avant influences, that you might not expect to hear woven into what is ostensibly dance music. That said, the music here is truly not designed for the dancefloor. Instead, in some ways at least, it hews closer to the sound design of folks like Ben Frost and Roly Porter. In fact, imagine some sort of Portishead / Ben Frost mash-up and you'd be getting close. From the opening intro, you know something has changed, what sounds like a solo performance on snare drum, in a big empty room, that blown out snare soon joined by processed recordings of what sounds like jackhammers, the result is some super abstract 20th century sounding weirdness, replete with skittery, stuttery rhythms, and keening siren like tones. It's not all that far out, but a lot of it comes close.
"Red Sex" sounds like Latin Playboys if the group was made up of robots, Marc Ribot like guitars wrapped around metallic buzz, and a churning looped beat, the vibe hazy and nocturnal, you can almost imagine someone like Tom Waits hearing a track like this and then recruiting Gainsborough to work on his new record. It's the moody, murky "Drowned In Water And Light" that really seals the deal, a cloud of swirling tones, gives way to a lumbering big beat, those tones bleeding and blurring into sinister shimmers, the sound almost like the score for some silent movie, wound around a lurching plod and pound, the atmosphere in constant motion, buzzing and thrumming, rich and lustrous and seriously haunting. From there on out Gainsborough continues to push the envelope, his mutant electronica harrowing at times, wistfully obtuse at others, a few tracks, like "Anima" sound almost like Amps For Christ, a sort of noise-folk psychedelia subtly infused into the otherwise mesmeric churn, or tracks like "Black Leaves And Broken Branches", that sounds like some lost Jewelled Antler campfire jam, all wheezing chords, muted percussion, lazy, languorous melodies, clouds of cymbal shimmer, distant horn bleats, albeit pocked with the occasional industrial burst. The final track is the 'danciest' of the bunch, but even there, the sound is noisy, and distorted, and dizzying, clattery and psychedelic, and it's preceded by two tracks of dreamy soft noise skitter and blurred Caretaker like ambient drift. Love it!!!
We had never heard Vessels before, a 5 piece from the UK, this record just showed up one day in the mail, so we threw it on and BAM, were totally BLOWN AWAY. We're tempted to say they don't make music like this anymore, but then we're not really sure they ever did. Like a supercharged modernized big beat-ed post rock maybe, starting out with woozy Konono like melodies over big distorted Tortoise like drums, and when the track kicks in, the sound is impossibly dense, everything wrapped in thick buzzing synths, a propulsive, almost groovy slab of super rhythmic, post-kraut hypno rock, imagine maybe if Black Moth Super Rainbow were making records for Thrill Jockey in the nineties, this is sort of what we imagine that might have sounded like.
But in some ways it's too modern, the sound impossibly lush and polished, the arrangements too, balanced delicately between progged out and intricate, and super repetitive and hypnotic, with some of THEE most kick ass drumming we've heard in ages. All woven into some seriously heavy and epic modern post rock. Just check out opener "Monorform" which we basically just described, except for the super heavy final movement which finishes things off with a totally majestic blast of blown out Godpeed worthy heaviness.
The Tortoise vibe is big too, with the band getting post rocky and jazzy all over the place, that combination of delicate instrumentation and big booming drums, what we liked so much about the early Tortoise recordings, but again here, Vessels crank it up, and make it impossibly heavy, the sound dense and layered and gloriously and melodically cacophonous, super dynamic too, the band deftly switching gears from full on bombast to hushed intricate skitter, from churning dirge to washed out drift, often in the same song. The vocals are minimal, and when they do pop up, they work perfectly, otherwise Helioscope is mostly instrumental, and Vessels are smart enough to know that sans vocals, the music is everything, and the music here is incredible, just check out the sound sample and see if you aren't as blown away as we were. Most definitely a new favorite!
Some folks may know Lisa McGee from Barn Owl side project, Higuma, or her vocal work on Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's Love Is A Stream, or perhaps even Portraits, the zen-minded supergroup of Bay Area improvisationalists. Truth is, McGee has been a muse behind a lot of great recordings in that circle so it's really nice to see her finally in the spotlight via her debut solo effort, Vestals. In some way McGee is channeling Rachel Brook from early nineties Bristol bands, Flying Saucer Attack and Movietone, in her ethereal noise-pop laden songs replete shimmering electric guitar, and featuring Trevor Montgomery's bass and partner Evan Caminiti's bowed guitarscapes. The atmosphere of desolate spaciousness and the smoldering shoegazed distortion that ripple through the Higuma recordings are certainly present; but in Vestals, McGee pushes the song-writing to the forefront with chiming hypno-drone-rock bliss akin to Roy Montgomery channelling the Velvets, which thrums and drones most prominently on the album's lengthy mantra "Of Ripples." But she can also shift into quite the chanteuse, as on the crushed-velvet noise-pop of "Forever Falling" and "In Waking Dreams" where McGee's voice carries the songs to stratospheric crescendos through a hook-laden bliss. A gorgeous debut that limited to a mere 300 copies!
Another unsurprisingly excellent release courtesy of San Francisco's very own Flenser Records (could we be a little biased??), this time a vinyl only split between Washington DC's Vestiges and Louisville's insanely prolific one-man band Panopticon - two artists operating within their own unique brands of crusty atmospheric post-rock tinged black metal.
Vestiges lead off the proceedings with two tracks, although it would be more accurate to describe them as one 18 minute long connected piece, with the first one serving as more of a 5 minute intro. And not a second of that 18 minutes is wasted. For the first two minutes or so you'd be forgiven for thinking someone might have swapped out that new black metal split you've been so excited about hearing with a dusty old Godspeed! You Black Emperor record, as we're first greeted with a serene warming drone cascading under the minimal pluck of gentle guitars. But then the peacefulness is sullied somewhat by a crackling distorted bass dirge - a real calm before the storm moment that wouldn't sound at all out of place on a latter day Neurosis album. Then a wash of cymbals, an almost martial military snare, then the hoarse cry of distant growls, some reverb drenched guitar wail... And finally everything boils over into a furious eruption of blast beats and gorgeous mournful melodies. It's easy to casually toss the word "epic" around these days, but the following 13 minutes more than warrant it. Within their remaining running time Vestiges flirt with the aforementioned post-rock and black metal influences - but also the melodic hardcore/screamo of Rites of Springs, monolithic funeral doom, and the droning hypnotic doom dirge of bands like Hyatari. But Vestiges are still black metal at their core, and when they're going full bore they invoke a stately and rousing melancholic grandeur usually reserved for bands like Winterfylleth or Vatnett Viskar.
Panopticon's contribution is an equally melodic and atmospheric affair, but altogether more unrefined and unrestrained - a welcome detail that has always set them apart from their more overly-polished post black metal peers. "A Letter" is classic Panopticon, showcasing everything that makes this project so great, and is a fantastic introduction for anyone uninitiated. Beautiful lamenting folk melodies are everywhere, but contrasted with some of the most hectic free-form off-kilter drum work you'll ever here. It's an effect not unlike Japanese screamo legends Envy at their best, but obviously much more black metal. The songs best moment comes 7 minutes in when the song explodes into a flurry of minimal tragic guitar harmonies airily floating over dizzying blastbeats and pummeling drum fills. Hypnotic and exhilarating! The following track "Eulogy" is an interesting contrast to this. Clocking in at a (comparatively) modest 6 minutes, it's more like mid-paced shoegazey dream pop filtered through a harsh black metal spectrum, its catchy head bobbing bassline fascinatingly at odds with the barked black metal vocals. Although after a few minutes of course, the drums can't resist bursting into center stage again as the frenzied blasts re-emerge, all the while with shiny tremolo harmonies fluttering atop with the echoey reverb drenched vocals adding a genuinely surreal dream like quality. Panopticon's side is closed out with a cover of a track by Arizona's short-lived late '90s crusty HC/black metal group Suicide Nation's "Collapse and Die" - a frenzy of whiplash hyper blasts and trampling double bass, but with moments of banjo and twangy acoustic guitar that harken back to Panopticon's recent heavily bluegrass influenced lp Kentucky (also essential listening if you haven't heard it!)
It's a rare instance indeed when a split can genuinely be called more satisfying and immersive than most proper lps out there, but this is certainly one of those exceptions. An absolute must for any open minded black metal aficionado!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest from the Monorail Trespassing label, who in the past have brought us killer releases from Infinite Body, Robedoor, Emaciator, Cloaked Light, Terrors, Sean McCann, Pedestrian Deposit and a bunch more. Vestigial Limb fits pretty perfectly with the above mentioned sonic sorcerers, weaving thing undulating swaths of downtuned guitar buzz, strange tinkling percussion, warbly almost mechanical sounding rhythms (like a noisier Strotter) and woozy rubber band melodies into a softly noisy, dreamy and darkly cacophonous Jeckian dronescape. Sweet stuff for sure. Very few copies...
This defunct Ukrainian black metal band was a collaborative effort between members of Lucifugum and Nokturnal Mortum, which sounds amazing, we were of course envisioning epic, folk flecked, nature obsessed buzzing blackness, but we DIDN'T at all expect something this fucked up and far out.
The first track is not too far off the mark, a plodding, midtempo black metal almost-dirge, tribal drumming, thick downtuned riffs, dramatic synths, tons of atmosphere, the vocals an incredible demonic croak, the whole thing droney and trancelike and mesmerizing.
The second track is where it gets really strange, whooshing swaths of synth, skittery drum machine, mournful minor key guitars, acoustic guitars, and then, out of nowhere, a truly out of place techno sounding electronic pulse, making it sound almost like a black metal Goblin or something, as the track progresses, it just gets darker and denser, the vocals wrapped in twisted effects, a dizzying chunk of whatthefuck electronic blackness for sure.
"Nearby Strange Forest For Everyone Wise Forest" is another dirgey, electronic flecked bit of doom-ed blackness, with whispering vox, the sound of rainfall, deep rumbling synths and folky melodies, before finally we get to the nearly 11 minute closer, "Pure Air Of Distant Horizons", with its click bleep electronic rhythm, big slow burning distorted guitars, cheesy almost new age sounding synths, slipping from drone-y electronic black folk, to almost Renaissance Faire flutter, to swirling space-y krautrock-y drift. Wow.
Even with the pedigree, this might be a bit too far out for the troo grim hordes, but we're digging Vetche's twisted nad unique swirling new age black gypsy doom folk weirdness.
For those of you who loved Vetiver's self-titled debut and/or for those of you who've yet to experience their wistful dream-folk, here's a shorter serving of five new ultra hushed and intimate live and home recordings. Between features a few new originals from the pen of Vetiver main songwriter Andy Cabic plus a casual, off the cuff cover of Fleetwood Mac's song "Save Me A Place"! New full-length upcoming too...
New 7" single from the latest covers ep by local folk rock giants, Vetiver. Features "Hey Doll Baby" a classic fifties R&B hit for both The Clovers and The Everly Brothers and the previously unreleased track "Miles Apart" from late eighties dream popsters, A. R. Kane. The B-side is the reason to get this as they turn a later-period track from these minor 4AD stars into an even better pop confection than the original. Our favorite of all their covers!!!
A teaser EP of 5 more obscure covers to hold us over before their Sub Pop debut arrives sometime next year. The same seventies country folk-rock vibe prevails here as it did on the full length covers records, Thing of The Past. The one exception being the opening track "See You Tonight", by The Wizzards, which reminds us of Guided By Voices channeling seventies power popsters The Only Ones. Songs by Gordon Bok, Nils Lofgren's Grin, Titus Turner and Vernon Claude and Jerry Organ round up the collection. Sweet!
Another breezy summer jam from local favorites, Vetiver. It's even more apparent on this second release on Sub Pop, that Vetiver is making larger strides towards a wider audience. The songs have a less introspective quality than on their last record while keeping the warm and hazy production intact.
But in the arrangements and especially the song-writing, Andy Cabic and cohorts have stepped up their game big time. We can see this as the soundtrack to many summer barbeques and friendly gatherings for the months to come. Nice!
Cover records can tread into dangerous territory. If the song choices are too obvious or well-known (for example: Patti Smith's "Twelve"), it's torture on the listener. But if all the choices are too obscure, it misses the whole point of doing a cover. You want a sense of familiarity, but with enough reinterpretation that the song is re-energized and sounds new again. Vetiver's new record treads that fine line rather gracefully, offering up tracks by familiar enough artists, even if the songs themselves are not the most well known. An avid record collector, Andy Cabic of Vetiver has selected twelve songs that have inspired his folk and roots musical leanings, with a track by Hawkwind being the most left-field. Songs by Louden Wainwright III, Garland Jeffreys, Townes Van Zandt, Biff Rose, Michael Hurley, Ian Matthews, and Norman Greenbaum, may harken back to a day when all these records used to be easily found in second hand shops, where surely most of them were purchased. But the surprises are from the most obscure tracks such as "Sleep A Million Years" by Dia Joyce (from an album by Kathy Heideman) with guest vocals by Vashti Bunyan (!), and "Houses" by Elyse Weinberg. While we would have loved to have heard more diverse genre-busting choices (The Vetiver/Neighbors 12" remix really whetted our appetites for new possibilities with Vetiver's sound), Thing of the past feels just like that, a well worn and dusty artifact that still charms after repeated playing.
Vetiver makes the major leap to Sub Pop and it's a good fit indeed! Vetiver's unique blend of airy Americana and sun-dappled country folk seems right at home with groups like Iron and Wine and Fleet Foxes. Using his last record of early seventies covers of obscure folk and country rock as a jumping off point, Andy Cabic makes a sublime record that could easily be mistaken for a lost seventies artifact. But don't expect this to be just a mere genre exercise. Warm soft breezy lullabies, perfect for early morning or late night listening, filled with gentle atmospherics and subtle flourishes of horns and cellos. A bit more introspective than the earlier records, Cabic imbibes the proceedings with plenty of well hewn songwriting heft and master musicianship, especially in the side closers, "Down From Above" and "At Forest Edge" where he performs mostly all the instrumentation himself. Here the lilting keyboard textures and treatments transport us to a different kind of cosmic place altogether. Wonderful!
Oh Man! We haven't been able to stop playing this record from local San Francisco folk heroes Vetiver since the day it arrived. We knew it would be good but we're really surprised at how amazing and fresh it sounds given the tidal wave resurgence of the neo-folk movement that Devendra Banhart and Vetiver front-man Andy Cabic have spawned in the last few years (check out the Devendra-curated Golden Apples of the Sun compilation reviewed elsewhere in this list, to see what we mean). To be honest, the neo-folk scene has become a bit over-saturated as of late. Not that we don't enjoy the music, but there are so many folk acts nowadays that it's become almost too overwhelming to keep up.
So the stakes have been raised quite a bit since Vetiver's quiet self-titled debut, as the past couple of year's have seen Cabic, out on the road touring not only with Vetiver but also as part of Devendra's touring band, starting record label Gnomonsong with Banhart (which released the debut Feathers cd), and garnering a huge amount of praise, attention and expectation. It seems the months on the road have been very good to Vetiver as recent homecoming shows at 12 Galaxies and the Great American have shown, delighting packed audiences and winning new converts who may have overlooked their fine debut. No more playing tiny intimate shows at Adobe Books, a little sad to say, but really, we are very happy for them. To Find Me Gone is more rock-oriented than its predecessor, as the band has evolved from an acoustic guitar, violin, cello trio to include a full time rhythm section (including Otto Hauser from Espers on drums, and Kevin Barker from Currituck Co. and Noah Georgeson on guitars) with spectacularly rich results. Unlike their debut, where the strong songwriting and performances were a bit overshadowed by the heavyweight guest appearances from Hope Sandoval, Colm O'Ciosoig and Joanna Newsom (It also came across in some press as a Devendra side project), Cabic comes fully into his own here, showcasing a sublime quality of world-weariness hewn from months on the road. It's exciting, after hearing their debut, which was years in the making, to not find the usual sophomore slump, but instead witness such naturally self-assured songwriting and arrangements. Opener, "Been So Long (Gb Fade)", a song first heard in a more acoustic arrangement on the Between EP, begins with a raga drone that spaciously opens up into fantastic sighing choral harmonies. In fact there is a subliminal pulsation to the whole album that really brings out Cabic's sweet vocals but also keeps them centrally present as the country tinged ambience of flutes and cellos (played with grace and restraint by Vetiver veteran, Alissa Anderson) swells and swirls around him. Country shuffler, "Won't Be Me" sounds like Yo La Tengo in a rare pop Americana moment while the sudden electric surge on "Red Lantern Girls" is pure shoegazer country-stomp acid folk. The closer "Down at El Rio" co-written with Devendra is so nostalgic and sad, a gorgeous gorgeous song. A long time record collector, and stellar DJ, Cabic mines his influences well. Less "freak-folk" than his friends and contemporaries, Cabic instead follows the compositional path of 70's singer-songwriters like J.J. Cale, Emitt Rhodes and John Phillips. It's a refreshing next step in the ever prevalent neo-folk scene. For a limited time, we have a special limited version of To Find Me Gone with two extra bonus tracks. Beautiful and so totally recommended!
Two dreamy and blissful remixes of "You May Be Blue" and "Been So Long" from the last Vetiver album. Showing frontman, Andy Cabic and collaborator/ producer Thom Monahan (aka Neighbors) successfully opening up their known folk rock imprint into warbled shuffling electronica and kosmiche dub raga drones. Not necessarily for the dance floor, but highly recommended all the same.
First record from local bliss folk heroes Vetiver, channeling the classic sound of sixties hippy rock, seventies British folk and classic songsmithery into a sweet poppy package of shimmery and folky mini-epics, cellos and violins and gently strummed acoustic guitars with dreamy wistful vocals sounding like Nick Drake or even Cat Stevens at times. Fans of the current SF avant folk scene a la Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and the like will LOVE this. In fact, both Banhart and Newsom guest on this record, as well as Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval and Warm Invention collaborator, My Bloody Valentine's Colm O'Ciosoig.
How many metal black metal bands can you name from the Faroe Islands? How many of you even know where the Faroe Islands are?
Well, the answer to the first one as far as we can tell is exactly one. The answer to the second is somewhere between Iceland and Norway. Ehich sort of makes sense when you hear Vhernen. You can almost imagine them as the perfect mix of grim frosty Norwegian black metal (Gorgoroth, Immortal, Satryricon), and Icelandic cinematic blissrock (Sigur Ros). Although Vhernen definitely lean toward the metallic....
Self described as funeral black metal, and counting among their influences, Bethlehem, Skepticism, Deinonychus and Nortt we were expecting something a lot slower and dirgier, but Vhernen definitely have some fierce fury in them, often buzzing and blasting like a band possessed. But even when they're blasting away, the riffs sometimes smear into dense clouds of mournful guitar, barely obscuring strange super epic melodies, and thick swaths of moody ambience.
A lot of that ambience comes from the use of some distinctly un-black metal instruments, namely, the electric cello, and the orchestral harp, which add a lot of haunting texture and an extra bit of low end shimmer to the fuzzed out buzz.
In addition to the odd instrumentation, there's some seriously strange arrangements and bizarre bits of production fuckery that help this ep fall squarely into the amazing fucked up black metal category. Each track tends to break down or bliss out into strange abstract soundscapes or haunting chamber pieces. The opening track, about halfway through. suddenly switches gears, almost like someone flipped a switch, and what was moments before a thick, LOUD buzzing blackness, immediately becomes a murky subterranean drone, like some weird black metal Basinski, all muted and roiling and droning and buzzing. Track three is a long slow burning rumble, thick with slowed down guitars and moaning cello melodies over the top. The final track breaks into a super intense minor key string section, sweeping and epic, before launching back into a pounding funeral black buzz trudge.
Weird and heavy and fucking awesome!
Record number two from very probably the only band you've ever heard that hails from the Faroe Islands, which as we discovered reviewing their first record, are right between Iceland and Norway. And as we mentioned in that review, stylistically, they did seem to fit somewhere between the grim buzz of Norwegian black metal, and the soaring bliss of Icelandic rock.
But neither of those really encapsulate the strange sound of Vhernen. Definitely more on the doom side of the black spectrum, Vhernen augment the typical guitar, bass and drums with electric cello and harp, which definitely adds a super haunting vibe to the proceedings. Just take the opening track, a relentless buzzing riff, a pounding blast beat, howled vocals, but over the top a moaning mournful melody, WAY louder than any of the other instruments. The harp joins in as well, sprinkling the grim buzz with pizzicato plinks and plonks, on first listen one might chalk up the weirdness to poor mixing, a 4-track experiment gone awry, but keep listening, and the record seems to blossom, the moodiness and intensity grows and grows. After all, who decided that guitar and drums are meant to be the lead instruments, or meant to be highest in the mix. After all, most of the photos we've seen of Vhernen feature someone playing the electric cello. Which might lead one to believe that the cello is in fact the instrument that defines Vhernen's sound, and quite frankly it pretty much does.
Every song has a thick swath of blackened buzz running through it, but that sounds ends up being washed out a and blurred into almost dronelike smears, while the cello weaves lush mournful melodies over the top.
Many of the tracks end up blurring the blackness so completely that they becomes hazy greyed ambience, like the second half of "Insolstice", that sounds like a Tim Hecker track, or the 15 minute closer "Lopransfjordur-Ende" which spends most of its time as a gorgeously minimal whir, before spreading out into an almost classical sounding shimmer. In fact for what is ostensibly a black metal record, Vhernen spends much of it's time drifting and whirring, glistening and glimmering, buzzing and blurring, which helps turn simple buzz and blast into a gorgeously dreamy and blissy slab of blackness.
