Hopefully we've already turned you on to the wonders of When, the sample-happy, electronics-enabled psych pop project of Norway's Lars Pedersen. If not, you've got some other reviews to read on our website, look 'em up! Please do! Because this new album, as with its immediate predecessors, are must haves for anyone into the more eccentric side of Beatles-influenced stuff, like Olivia Tremor Control and the Dreamies. This is super sunshiney pop with an experimental twist, or make that twistedness.
We've been into When for years and years, way back to the late '80s when When made dark prog soundscapes (beloved of Nordic black metallers). But starting with all-time AQ fave album The Lobster Boys in 2001, or maybe even a bit before that, When went all colorful and catchy and kaleidoscopic, keeping the darkness in a subconscious reserve to psychologically augment the poppiness with its opposite -- the dreaminess always has nightmare lurking at its edges... And so as we expected, Trippy Happy is all about totally brilliantly crafted surreal symphonic sound collages, with Beatlesy vocals and music box melodies, pleasant guitar strum and mysterious textures, weirdness and melancholia... and so much genius POP that we don't understand why When isn't huge. Well, When's big around here anyway!!
"Whenever" is a fairly blase title for an album that we were rather excited to get! It's the latest from cult Norwegian song-writer/sound-scaper Lars Pedersen, whose solo music-making under the name When has fascinated us for some time now. His earliest work back in the '80s was full of sinister ambience, embraced by the black metal scene in his home country, as well as by avant prog heads like Chris Cutler (Henry Cow, Art Bears, etc.) who has written lyrics for When, including those found on this album. But then Lars took a left-field turn into sample-delic pop music -- total sunshiney, ethno-electronica unlike anything else. His 2001 album The Lobster Boys demonstrated his genius and was (and is) a bonafide best-selling AQ-hit. I think we've sold more copies of The Lobster Boys than any other store in the world. Follow-up album Pearl Harvest continued with The Lobster Boys sound, as does the brand new Whenever. So, of course we're happy. It's not BETTER than The Lobster Boys but that would be a tall order anyway. It IS another fab When album doing the stuff we like from Lars -- as we expected, a lot of the tracks here sound kinda like a club DJ mixing XTC or Olivia Tremor Control songs with Middle Eastern and African rhythms, recklessly, deftly, juxtaposing different exotic and electronic elements. You get soundtracky bits, world music, lilting vocals, droning layers of electronics...often all in the same song! It's whimsical and weird avant pop...or is it? Like the red egg yolk on the cover (or the black egg yolk inside) there's always something just a little "off" and odd about When's music, best illustrated here perhaps by the fourteen minute "Some Apocalypses" that interrupts the relative poppiness of the rest of the album with a descent into noisy, metallic, industrial, indeed apocalyptic madness. If this wasn't When, we'd be REALLY freaked-out. But there's always been danger lurking in When's work... and it serves to make the gentle melodies of the very next track even sweeter.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Black metal records with nature sounds are a dime a dozen, in fact it might be easier to come up with a list of black metal records that DON'T have dubbed in sounds, wolves, wind, goats, whatever grim picture the band is trying to paint, whether it's some pagan ritual with goat sacrifice, or some grim corpsepainted horde playing in the middle of a black forest communing with wolves, a sound effects record makes it all that much more impressive. Or so bands seem to think. There have been bands who supposedly went out into the snowy forest and recorded there, most notably Ulver's Nattens Madrigal, but we're pretty sure that's just a rumor, most likely spread by the band to make the record seem cooler (and probably to explain the impossibly tinny sound), and then there's the fact that even if it WAS true, you can't really -hear- it. Which brings us to When Bitter Spring Sleeps, a black metal horde who hail from the grim frosty abyss known as Cedar Rapids, Idaho, and whose whole identity, nay existence, is based on musically communing with nature. This entire record was performed and recorded in a nature preserve! So all the sounds, all the dripping water, chirping insects, rustling leaves, all of that stuff is captured along side the bands drone-y buzz. We do have to wonder how the band manage to blast and buzz without disrupting the sounds of nature, you know how a field full of frogs and crickets immediately go silent when you walk amongst them. We like to think the band set up, and then just stood there, motionless, for minutes, maybe hours, until the insects and other forest creatures decided the coast was clear, and the band slowly began to play.
The result is pretty compelling, the songs start out all minimal and hushed, usually just guitar, the sound of cicadas and dripping water, croaking frogs, practically drowning out the band, and when the band do kick in, the sound is super raw and tinny (a la Nattens Madrigal, there is a reason bands record in studios after all), the drums are a tiny pound, buried in the mix, the vocals a barely audible croak, the guitars a blurry shimmery cloud of sound. The tracks are epic too, with tons of parts and lots of interludes, where the band drops out, leaving just a single spidery guitar line, and the symphony of insects and creatures.
Super cool, the metal itself is not hugely distinctive, but in this context it works in the record's favor, as the sounds of the instruments are equally balanced by the sounds of nature, almost as if an act of supplication, a musical acknowledgment of out tenuous position here on earth.
Obviously, folks into fucked up far out black metal are gonna NEED this, but if you're into weird Jewelled Antler sort of musical / field recording hybrids, odds are this might be the only black metal record that fits the bill.
SUPER LIMITED. Gorgeous packaging, each one hand made, the printed covers, burned around the edges and scorched all over. The smell a heady mix of flowers and fire. So cool.
Apparently sharing their name with a progressive metal 'djent' band from the Isle of Wight (ha, first mention of djent on the aQ list ever!), the When Prophecy Fails responsible for THIS tape is from right here in San Francisco, and is in a fact yet another project by our pal Monte Cimino (Burial Tree/Time Spent/Dark Matter Halo). Hopefully none of the djent band's fans will accidentally get this or they'd become very confused, possibly upset. 'Cause it's all cassette-dubbed, electronically processed, wind tunnel / vacuum cleaner noise style sonics. Think, the lighter side of Merzbow, basically. It's pretty noisy, but also it's noise that's pretty, 'cause in keeping with Monte's other projects, while (often) loud, it's got a soothing side to it. New Age Noise, perhaps? Drones with dynamics, sudden lulls and stretches of quiet beauty before the volume ramps up again.
The first side of the tape consists of two songs: the 14+ minute title track, made with cello (and copious electronics we infer), sounding a lot like noise guitar in the vein of Urthona or Sunroof. That's followed by an approximately 3 minute piece called "Hiding Under The Guise Of Religion", done with organ and drums. Side two features two tracks, each about 9 minutes long, given the great title "Life May Be Fleeting, But You're An Asshole, pt. I & II". Made with contact mics and "misc. surfaces", this detailed and abrasive droning also sounds like abstract feedback drenched guitar noise.
Hmm, just the other day we got in a used copy of jazz guitarist Pat Metheny's notorious "noise" album from 1993, Zero Tolerance For Silence. After listening to this, we know just who we're gonna try to sell it to. If he doesn't already have it. Seriously, though, if you agree that "noise" can be good or can be bad, this is GOOD noise. We're not kidding, for noise stuff we like this a lot.
By the way, winning an award for most annoying packaging idea this week, the cassette case is full of loose leaf black tea. Argh!
A bit of archival noisiness from aQ pal Monte, who most of you might know as the man behind brooding twangy heavy drifters Burial Tree, as well as the more ambient projects Dark Matter Halo and Time Spent, but the sound of When Prophecy Fails is something else all together, recorded while Monte was still in graduate school, this chunk of blown out digital noise and dense black ambience was in fact inspired by a book about a cult from the fifties, their expectations of the impending apocalypse, and how they dealt with it all when the end of the world did not come to pass (sound familiar?). So if you're reading this, we can assume the most recent extinction event also didn't end up happening, so once again, a legion of doomsdayers are forced to deal with their (and everyone else's) continued existence. And what better way to represent the ever impending apocalypse and the frustration of a million mysterious and undecipherable end of world prophecies, than with clouds of grinding Merzbowian murk, screeching strings, machine gun analog stutter, heaving swirls of grit and grim and glitch, undulating tangles of sculpted hiss, fracture melodic fragments, mysterious samples, haunting stretches of muted electronic shimmer, pocked with jagged shards of digital errata, guitars and violins, doused in effects, the sounds pulled apart until they're fully removed from their sources. The sound chaotic and brutal for much of the disc, but often settling into haunting passages of serene drift, soft psychedelia blurred into crackling swells and muted smears of dense, tense buzz and howl. These brief respites are of course bookended by dizzying bursts of crunch and howl and skree, but even at it's most chaotic and freeform, there does seem to be a method to this musical madness, which comes into clearer focus on the final two tracks.
The first of which is based on recordings of a mentally ill woman (Monte works in the mental health field and captured these recordings with the woman's permission), her voice cracked and weary, the words garbled, but occasionally certain phrases stick out, "can you help me?" being the most disturbing, and they are looped and layered, subtly effected, some reversed, all tangled into a disturbing collage of pain and anguish, which is as fascinating as it is strangely compelling, and of course chilling. Which leads into the final track, which is downright lovely, albeit creepy and sinister and broodingly dark, as if this was in fact the moment of rapture, deep rumbling tones, lush layered droned, slowly shifting over an expanse of deep black nothingness, the instruments coming to the fore, what could be a bit of guitar drifts amidst this abject sprawl of groaning, moaning minimal ambient creep. The sound subtly glitchy, cavernous and dense, a dark strain of black ambient industrial shimmer, the soundtrack to a timelapse film of the end of the world, a cascade of slo-mo blackened churn, that plays out glacially as everything around it, and us, fades into oblivion.
Cool packaging too, printed cardstock inserts, in a stickered plastic sleeve, each disc accompanied by a doomsday fortune, predicting your end, and what you'll experience at the end, along with six unlucky numbers, all printed on a little fortune sized piece of vellum.
One of three new releases from UK tape label The Tapeworm, and yet another one we'd never heard of before. Where Is This, the project of one Mark Ward, is a seriously dense wall of sound, a heaving, crushing sprawl of blacknoise, power electronics, and blown out psychedelia. There's certainly an element of Merzbowian brutality, as in to the weak eared, this might come across as pure noise, but with headphones, and heck, even in places without, the sounds here are super nuanced, textured and dare we say melodic, with streaks of chordal color draped across churning expanses of white noise skree, arcs of feedback are sculpted into melodic fragments, and then woven into thick, dizzying swirls of crumbling distortion, and fried zoner drones, the whole tape is a constant squall, but once you're full immersed, the sounds surround you, and wrap you in mysteriously melodic bits of sound, a cascade of crunchy, buzzy, blistering shriek and howl, somehow tamped down and muted, and woven into some seriously mesmerizing psychedelic noise, the sort of thing, that somehow becomes more and more listenable and lovely, the longer you listen, all the while not shedding a bit of its searing sonic intensity. Noise is often a tough proposition for us, but when done right, it can be something impossibly brutal and beautiful, epic and majestic, and fantastically transcendent, and Ward really does do it just right!
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!!
There's a weirdo theory in the realm of parapsychology (yes, the ultimate land of weirdo theories) that inanimate objects can absorb the psychic energy from the living, especially during that of extreme stress. This postulation is called the Stone Tape Theory, as stone (along with wood) is the most common media for this stored energy that can be replayed in the form of ghostly ectoplasm, disembodied knockings, and just bad vibes. While the peripatetic sound-artist Simon Whetham seems far too sensible a bloke to hold the Stone Tape Theory dear to his heart, we have to wonder if he was spooked at all during the recording sessions for From The Mouths Of Clay. The source material in question was a collection of prehistoric and contemporary South American burial urns. It's unclear if these urns were actually used for the intended purpose or if the remains had been removed during his recording sessions; but it's very clear that these objects can generate quite an ethereal tone. Whetham's tactile investigation of these objects divined a slippery, rasping drone within the ebb and flow of his subtle electronic augmentation (layering, pitchshifting, EQ, etc.). So pure are the harmonics that they have the feel of a glass harmonica - you know, the parlor trick of rubbing a wine glass with a wet finger. Whetham allows these tones to waft in elegant suspension, giving the impression that if they were the sounds from ghosts, then the spirits embrace an enlightened, transcendent, and celestial aloofness, avoiding the baseness of anything physical. At various times throughout the recordings, Whetham drags a contact microphone across the surface of those urns, amplifying prickly textures that scatter with an anarchnoid irregularity. It's an unnerving counterpoint of earthly abjection to offset the innervision luminosity and holy minimalism from Whetham's drones. Think Alan Lamb, Andrew Chalk, Eliane Radigue, Phill Niblock. Yeah, it's that good! Absolutely gorgeous work, and easily the best thing we've heard from Mr. Whetham.
The globe-trotting British sound artist Simon Whetham found himself in Shreveport, Louisiana in 2011 where he was commissioned to develop a body of work based on the defunct MacNeill Street Pumping Station. This artifact of the 19th Century was the last known steampowered water plant in the United States and has been a historical site for several decades now. He was one of many acclaimed artists asked to contribute to the seemingly inactive MacNeill Street Pumping Station New Music Festival, alongside Tim Hecker, Lawrence English, Mark Fell, Eli Kezler, and about a dozen other denizens of avant-garde soundcraft. It was a great idea to have all of these artists develop compositions, installations, and performances within such an interesting space; and we can hope that the festival is merely on temporary hiatus. Needless to say, here we have the stereo mix of Whetham's multichannel installation that he presented at the festival. His source material consists of drones from the huge metal pools and the network of pipes from that space, focusing mostly on the resonant frequencies of the ghostly drones and watery tones. Overlapping, sinewy electric vibrations tumble into a pool of isolationist dank at the beginning of the album before a reverberant flute utters a solitary bellow amidst the metallic klang reverb articulating two of the techniques of Whetham's sound-hunting - that of the contact microphone on sonorous objects and the open-air recordings of those reflective surfaces. Deep, low-end rattlings gird the bulk of Hydrotasic with wind-swept thrumming, agitated found objects, and plenty of nocturnal clutter being moved around by the ghosts that lurk in the sticky humidity of a Louisiana swamp, or at least that's what it sounds like. Brilliantly akin to the processed field recording work of Jonathan Coleclough, Thomas Koner, and BJ Nilsen.
While introduces big crunchy electro grooves and rolling big-beat breaks into his second release for Miami's answer to Warp -- Chocolate Industries -- after producing one of the best IDM singles for Funkstorung's Musik Aus Strom label. While is still fraught with Autechrism (the same disease which plagues Funkstorung - even with their oddly progressive hip-hop lyricism), but is getting better at the electronica thing with the heavier breakbeats and expressive melodies.
While his brilliant debut single on Musik Aus Strom was a dark melodic take on old Autechre, While (the man) settles for atmosphere rather than melody on his first full album, sounding a lot more like Disjecta, Boards of Canada, and at times Coil.
Sorry, we don't get it. This band isn't good. Any more, anyway.
First we've heard from this trio from Portland, and if this 7" is any indication, we hope to be hearing more SOON. The Whines are led by Karianne, whose vocals come across as both so earnest, strong and sexy, imagine a young Exene Cervenka, teaming up with a ramshackle crew of garage psych players and recording in a damp and dusty attic. We really like how the Whines throw in some unexpected elements like the gritty harmonica on the B side's "Straybird." While they for sure could fit along fine on a bill with bands like Vivian Girls, Grass Widow, Dum Dum Girls, etc., there is something more emotional about these songs and the group's aesthetic in general. We can't wait to hear more!
There's a certain kind of voice that we're just sucker for. That frail, fragaile, about to crack keening sad boy, dusty, dusky, twangy croon. You know it as well as we do. Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy, Palace), Jason Molina (Songs:Ohia), Joel Phelps, Sam Beam (Iron & Wine), Chris Grigoroff (Souled American). Take any of those voices, back them up with just the barest of instrumentation and you've got a dark and devastating, soul baring smear of ultrapersonal songcraft that just breaks your heart. A few years back, we stumbled upon a group called Timesbold, who trafficked in the same sort of dark twang as the above mentioned artists and ended up becoming a huge favorite around here. One member of Timesbold was and still is moonlighting as the sole member of Whip, taking Timesbold's sound in an even more spare and ultra personal direction. Hushed acoustic guitar, banjo, jaw harp, clanking clattery Tom Waits-y junkyard percussion, delicate brushed drumming, haunting theremin, strange ambient loops, and that anguished, whiskey soaked, sweet and sorrowful drawl. If you didn't know better you could certainly be forgiven for thinking this was some lost Palace or Songs:Ohia record. Fans of those guys, as well as groups like Rex, Calexico, Sparklehorse, Red Red Meat and like minded mournful twang will have yet another perfect record for those long and lonesome nights.
11 tracks in 25 minutes, Whip's "Song Song" seams to much more an extended drawl than a collection of songs, in another slight variation of the Palace / Songs:Ohia style of plaintive alt.country guitar strum and meandering hoarse vocal whine.
Two crushing bursts of pummelling, sludgy lo-fi punky metal, with bulldozer riffs, howling snowstorm production, yelped vocals and crushing drumming. Sounds a whole lot like the late great Karp which is NOT a bad thing. And also makes sense as this recording features Scott who used to drum for Karp and who tragically passed away recently.
One of two new singles on this week's list from UK label Trensmat, one by UK psychedelic spacekraut collective Gnod, and this one, from twisted soundscapers Whirling Hall Of Knives, and as always, already sold out at the label, and thus the copies we got are most likely the only ones we'll ever see.
We actually first discovered Whirling Hall Of Knives via a split 7" on Trensmat, with Tlaotlon, and even then, we were pretty into WHOK's looped and layered slow building psychedelia, which is still present here, but wrapped around some pounding hypnotic drumming, the sound a thick, almost corrosive buzz, churning and roiling and being pulled along in the wake of the aforementioned drum pound, a sort of droned out blackened krautmetal that is some of the raddest stuff we've heard, falling somewhere between the recent JK Flesh record and Necro Deathmort, but somehow more metal, or noise rock, whatever it is, it sounds like a real band, not a guy and his laptop, and it sounds like the kind of thing that would DESTROY live, a sort of heavy heavy drum driven ur-drone that we could imagine coming from the Shit And Shine camp. The flipside strips away the drums, and adds all sorts of extra melody and textures, creating something that while still plenty buzzy, is more space and almost Eastern sounding, heady and hypnotic and seriously blissed out. So good!
Pressed on milky swirled blue grey vinyl, and includes a link to downloads of both tracks as well as a bonus track NOT on the 7" (that's easily as good as either of the proper 7" tracks, dense and blackened, droney and HEAVY)!
So far we've only heard a couple of singles from these twisted psychedelic soundscapers, both on Trensmat, one a split with Tlaotlon, and what little we've heard from these guys, pretty much knocked our socks off. A sort of layered psychedelia, droned out hypnorock space-kraut, like a lot of the other bands on Trensmat, but WAY weirder and more tripped out, and that doesn't seem about to change on their first full length, which opens with a wild squall of gristled noise before settling into a serious sprawl of droned out space rock mesmer, all churning organ (processed guitar?), tribal drumming, swirling FX, the rhythms buried in the mix, so it almost sounds like a super distorted drone-prog, that almost gets metal for a second before collapsing into full on crumbling noise, transformed into a long stretch of distorted zoner drift. That track alone, most psychedelic space combos would kill for, but we're only getting started.
The 10+ minute "Alternate Devil (Dvaita)" sounds like Gnod with a heavy dub makeover, all lurching big beats, and swirling clouds of caustic buzz, heavy and heady and super tranced out, it almost sounds a bit like the Boredoms or Shit And Shine, super churning and rhythmic, a wild tribal rhythm pelted by sheets of roiling noise, the drums eventually dropping out, leaving just the noise, but that too recedes, leaving a hazy droned out noise-psych drift, all tangled synths and swirling FX, buried voices and stretched out guitar buzz. So good.
Nothing on the rest of the record is quite that sprawling and epic, but WHOK do manage to kick up a seriously collection of kick ass sonic skree, processed guitardrones, and swirling blown out psychedelia, gives way to noisy kraut-drone lumber, rife with weird almost choral vocals, whorls of white noise, and of course some seriously dense drumming. There's also plenty of minimal druggy drift, like an even more heavily sedated Spacemen 3, as well as some super blown out guitardrone buzz, washed out and woozy, and finally, the WHOK version of techno, a grinding noisescape of noise blasted beats wreathed in droned out guitarbuzz and crumbling in-the-red distortion, pulsing and throbbing malevolently, before splintering into a total trip out free form soft noise psychedelic coda. Cool!!!
Includes a link to a digital download of the whole record, and like all Trensmat releases, EXTREMELY LIMITED!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Along with the Carlton Melton / Mugstar split 7" reviewed elsewhere on this week's list comes another new 7" from the fine folks at Trensmat, this one another split, but this one from two bands we had never heard of before, the first, Whirling Hall Of Knives, already had us kicking ourselves, their track a gorgeous droned out chunk of brooding slow building psychedelia, layered tones, looped rhythmic fragments, all manner of buzz and swirl and thrum, pulsing and throbbing, hypnotic and mesmerizingly sinister, until suddenly a beat surfaces right in the midst of all this swirling hypno-psych noisiness, a sort of squelchy acid-y groove, that transforms the sound something else entirely, a sort of spacey electro kraut-drone groove, that seems to dissipate as quickly as it was conjured, leaving just a bit of washed out drone-drift shimmer to finish things off.
A NZ band called Tlaotlon counter with their own sort of abstract psychedelia, less dense and ominous, a little more looped and rhythmic, right out of the gate the sounds swirl and beats stutter and pulse, reminding us a bit of a more electronic, slightly less noisy Our Love Will Destroy The World. As the track progresses, it becomes more Goblin/Carpenter soundtracky and synthy, woven into the band's psychedelic swirl, heady and dreamy and really great. We'll definitely be after more from both of these outfits.
And as with all Trensmat 7"s, there's a link on the sleeve to a download, which in this case includes a 30 minute tripped out live video from WHOK, as well as two extra tracks from Tlaotlon. SUPER LIMITED as always, already sold out at the label, so these are the last ones we'll ever get.
There's been a bit of a mini-explosion of bands from our neck of the woods as of late, all of whom have been specializing in their own unique take on shoegaze. There was Deafheaven's recent lp which we reviewed a couple of lists back, that masterfully collides classic shoegaze/post rock with ferocious black metal (Whirr does feature an ex-Deafheaven axeman in fact). Elsewhere on this list you'll find a review of Weekend's latest, an infectious blend of shoegaze and driving post punk. Now we can add to that list of our gazing hometown heroes a brand new ep from San Francisco's very own Whirr (formerly Whirl, naturally). Whirr deal in a bit more traditional strain of shoegaze. The songs are minimal - sparse, but also drenched in that wonderful, all encompassing reverb - and melodically quite mournful. There's certainly a wistful sorrow running through Whirr's music, at times maybe even sounding like Red House Painters run through a million effects pedals and cranked to 11. What's immediately apparent about Whirr in fact, is how heavy they can be. There are moments here that could almost pass for funeral doom - like the airy coo of a My Bloody Valentine vocal cut fluttering over the crushing heft of Asunder. This is thanks in part to an enormous cavernous drum sound as well as some seriously weighty guitar tones that thankfully set Whirr apart from some of their airier peers. Around is a dense immersive set of songs, so much so that the term ep doesn't really seem to do it justice, as that seems to imply some kind of stop gap release - something a bit disposable. But this is as crushing, consuming and satisfying as any full length you'll hear this year, and is surely essential listening for your most dreary-eyed late-night comedowns.
As Friedrich Nietzsche once famously said, the moment he finished his first spin of Loveless, "When you shoegaze too long into the abyss... The abyss also shoegazes into you!" Or something like that anyway. Well, over here at aQ HQ the shoegaze renaissance is well and truly still in full swing, and we're at no risk of tiring of that wonderful hazy abyss any time soon! And from the get-go, on the forefront of that renaissance, has been our very own hometown gaze-greats Whirr. Sway is only album number two from these bleary-eyed swayers, although they have a healthy number of EPs & non-album releases to their name (their most recent being a fantastic split 12" with Nothing which we reviewed earlier this year - whom they also share members with!). This album actually predates that split, but we're getting to it second, and as usual it's a gorgeous enveloping wash of sun-dappled guitar delay, disaffected vocal melancholy, and bittersweet melodic nostalgia. But like that aforementioned split Sway shows Whirr varying up their style a little bit. Sure, it's shoegaze through and through, but there seems to be more of a focus on hookier songwriting - as well as a little more flirtation with up tempo pacing & rhythmic grooves than before, instead of getting bogged in the constant down-tempo mire that so many bands of this style often do. We're guessing most people who've been following this scene of bands are probably already familiar with these fellas, but if not Sway is probably the best place to start - definitely the most accessible outing yet from a band who seem to be going from strength to strength, and for sure recommended for fans of more recent aQ faves like Nothing, Deafheaven (with whom they also share past members), Modern Charms, Alpine Decline and latter-day Alcest, as well as classic Creation Record shoegaze like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Swervedriver, et. al.!
At indie rock's dreamiest summit two titans of neo-shoegaze convene! One our very own hometown heroes Whirr, and the other Philadelphia's Nothing, both of whom we've raved about at great length in lists past! (In fact, Nothing's Guilty Of Everything was this particular aQer's fave album of 2014!) Seeing as these guys both deal in a pretty similar brand of hazy yet heavy, morphine-drenched shoegaze, and even share members, it seems a split was somewhat inevitable, but instead of simply phoning in some half-cooked studio outtakes or cover song fillers both bands deliver material easily amongst the best of their respective careers. Whirr especially sound revitalized here, their tracks have a newfound uptempo energy not often seen on their more downcast older material, sounding like a punched-up Slowdive aiming straight for the heart of early to mid '90s 120 Minutes, the driving rhythms at perfect odds with the bleary eyed anesthetized vocals. Nothing's contribution is a little chunkier in contrast, a little less shoegaze and a little more Hum-style soaring '90s alt-rock, but still with those breathy ghostly vocals to infuse the songs with a nameless, formless melancholic haze. And as always they masterfully bridge the gaps between hooky and spacious, heavy and melodic, bittersweet and plain rockin'. Highly recommended for baggy-teed stoned out gazers everywhere, and a great introduction to these two fantastic bands for anyone not familiar. And really a great place to start in general for anyone looking to investigate this whole new shoegaze renaissance the kids are all raving about.
Ryan Adams took a few years off from his band Whiskeytown, and made quite a splash during that time with his solo album "Heartbreaker". I wonder if it was fun dating Winona Ryder. Now he's reconvened the quintet for their fourth full-length of
An oldie but goodie! This deluxe reissue of Whiskeytown's awesome Stranger's Almanac album has renewed the love side in our love/hate relationship with the music of Mr. Ryan Adams. In fact, all the bonus tracks (alternate takes, demos, etc) that accompany their 1997 major label debut album seem superfluous (yet fan-pleasing!) when held up to the solid original baker's dozen songs. To be honest we spent far more time revisiting those thirteen tunes than all of the bonus ones! Alt-country, new Americana... label it what you will, but when the tempermental Whiskeytown were 'on' their feisty, yearning songs were picture-perfect example of the genre's finest.
WHISPERS: Pagan folk / viking metal, epic and black.
LIGHT: blistering chaotic psychedelic BM. Ferocious and introspective.
Don't know much about this UK black metal trio, other than they have a killer, and nearly illegible logo, and an amazingly ridiculous 7" cover, and that their debut 7" was recorded by none other that Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers) when you hear what these guys have cooked up, a weird hybrid of primitive, grim black buzz, and blown out chaotic noise rock skree, the label suggests Ildjarn meets Harry Pussy, or Ulver crossed with Black Dice, and we definitely hear that. It's like the sounds are black metal, but the arrangements are noise rock, or vice versa, but either way, it's a pretty heady proposition, loose and chaotic, grim and black, and pretty twisted, a stumbling, lo-fi, damaged noise drenched sonic assault, that pairs relentless caveman pound with Mick Barr like squiggle shred, the sound abruptly shifting into a churning death march dirge, the vocals following suit, transformed from blackened screech, to monstrous gurgle. The B-side opens with some soaring fast picked riffage, anchored by some stiff, robotic drumming, the guitars and drums conjuring up a seriously tense backdrop for the hellish vokills, until the sound collapses into a twisted, droned out, static black buzz, guitar skree, double kick drumming, and growled vocals, all stretched out into some sort of knuckle dragging black metal minimalism, only to eventually erupt into some loping, knuckle dragging metallic churn, only to lurch right back into that cool droned out minimal noise/skree part, that we sort of wish stretched on even longer, but instead, the band finish off with one final stretch of filthy black buzz and pound.
Killer stuff for sure. Can't wait for the full length. Pressed on blue vinyl, probably limited too, and housed in a nice thick sleeve with the aforementioned ridiculous and amazing cover art.
A while back we made a record by a Chinese duo called White+ our Record Of The Week. And folks flipped for it. So much so we could barely keep it in stock. A dizzying collection of droned out psychedelic krautrock style grooves and experimental electronic hypnorock. A drummer and a synth player with all kinds of weird FX and noisemakers. Originally described to us as sounding like Neu crossed with Yellow Magic Orchestra, to us it ended up sounding much weirder. Ever since that review, we'd been wanting to list this, an earlier record from these two, but only just now did we manage to get enough. Talking more to our friends in China, we're beginning to think this band is simply called White, and maybe that other record is titled White PLUS. But really, it hardly matters, we'll keep calling them White+, and keep digging their crazy sounds, which are even crazier here, processed vox, churning sheets of synth thrum, clouds of swirling FX, buried pulsations, shimmering strings, minimal percussion, some tracks dense and dizzyingly dark ("Space Decay"), others dreamy and almost raga-like ("Spring House"), some tribal and percussive, angular and abstract ("Conch Crunch"), some like kraut-age electro-pop ("Build A Link"), and some others minimal and rhythmic, rife with junkyard percussion, and mysterious vocals/FX ("Train Song").
Fans of the other White+ will want this for sure, and really, anyone into tripped out electronic minimalism, psychedelic krautrock, experimental ambience, and twisted rhythmic hypnorock, this will definitely be a new fave. We have a bunch, but once we run out, we have to get more from China, which can sometimes take a while, so please get one quick, or be prepared to wait patiently. We also have a few copies in stock if the other White+, you can find it elsewhere on the site, or just ask if you want one of those too...
"So it was that three hundred electric moons cancelled the ancient green queen of loves with their blinding chalk rays..."
So concludes one of the obscure, occultic pieces of text excerpted in the cd booklet of this new disc (in this case the Futurist prose poem "Uccidiamo il chiaro di luna" by Filippo Marinetti) and is to us a suitably evocative and cryptic description of the beautiful, distorted drones conjured by White/Lichens, a collaborative project staffed by Rob Lowe (aka Lichens, who records for the Kranky label in his hometown of Chicago) and Matt Clark and Jeremy Lemos of the Chicago heavy ambient guitar duo White/Light (who have a cd on Rebis).
Lichens' previous disc The Psychic Nature Of Being on Kranky (lp version on Holy Mountain) we described as "delicate" and "crystalline", constructed mainly from electronically-treated live improv loopings of his own voice, abetted with guitar and percussion. But the scary dronescapes of White/Lichens are more dense than delicate, the added weight of Clark and Lemos' guitars "heavy-ing up" the Lichens sound. You'll hear rumbling low-end and keening highs in this most satisfying set of billowing electric drone, what distantly sounds like a Morse code transmission buried beneath the destroyed residue of 1,000 doomed violins... It's like the Vibracathedral Orchestra scoring an opium induced nightmare, or the organic decay of an claustrophobic early Kluster track exposed to alien moonlight for the past 40 years. There's five tracks here, the first and last being the longest (19 and 16 minutes apiece, approximately) with the middle three around four minutes each. At its most dense and distortion-filled, as on the final track "Bael", this could be a glitchless version of the murky Merzbowian Sheer Hellish Miasma stirred up by their pal Kevin Drumm. Or KTL's most Earth-y moments tempered by the homebrewed, gentle freeform folk-psych of a Jewelled Antler recording.
We don't doubt for an instant that if this was a limited edition cd-r from some mysterious Finnish forest dweller, or lathe cut 10" by a kid in New Zealand, we'd be assured of selling fistfuls of 'em. And therefore, since the well-respected Holy Mountain label judged this to be deserving of not-so-limited cd status, that should indicate it's even MORE worth picking up, than if there were just 50 copies made, intended solely for collectors...
Last year these guys teamed up with Robert Lowe, aka Lichens, for a killer collab on Holy Mountain that left us floored. Black Acts harbors the same type of synthy, visual drones that come reeling out of White/Lichens, only this time around the White/Light boys weave their brand of bliss into more desolate territory. The Chicago duo manage to conjure an impressive brand of dark analog hypnosis, like waking up in the middle of the desert to a shimmering pyramid mirage made of sound and light. Even while parts of the record hint at the early minimalist legacies of dudes like La Monte Young and Henry Flint, there is a subtle buzzy edge to these songs that set them apart from the work of their predecessors. The record opens with creeping high end crunch that builds into a pulsing haze of all-encompassing droooone. More low-end, distorted swells of heavy bass kick in and, man, talk about headphone dreamland. These dudes really know how to rocket a listener into another dimension. As the record spins the duo cover all kinds of territory, cosmic feedback bleeps from the cockpit of a spaceship, orchestral beams of long-winded swells, single note droners that leave you dazed and entranced. A heap of bodies on the cover and a heap of guitars, pedals and amps on the back, the artwork is cryptic and elusive, perfect for a beautifully arranged record of analog dreamscapes for the mellow minded.
This week brought us a gathering of sumptuous dark pop albums from around the globe which all fit together incredibly well! Sure to keep you completely soothed and enchanted: Edison Woods' Nest Of Machines, this the fourth album by this Norwegian trio known as The White Birch as well as the as-yet-unreleased solo album Leaving Songs by Tindersticks' Stuart Staples (we got an advance listenin' copy, but rest assured it's comin' out June 6th).
Come Up For Air is filled with all things gently lulling and ethereal. In addition to drawing comparisons to Sigur Ros and Mum, The White Birch is also sort of like Tindersticks but with soft male and female vocals in place of Stuart Staples deep baritone. Lead vocalist Ola Flottum sounds like a more sullen or sleepy Stuart Murdoch of Belle And Sebastian, while guest vocalist Susanna Wallumrod provides the well-suited female vocal counterpart on two numbers. Dreamy dreaminess.
We make a LOT of things "highlights" on our list, you've doubtless noticed. So, what if we separated out a special section of MEGA-highlights? We're not gonna, but if we did, this would definitely be one of this list's MEGA-highlights, indeed. Our pal Brian from WFMU turned us on to this band a while back. So we were stoked to finally see a (vinyl-only) reissue now! Why so excited? 'Cause this oddly named band from Toledo, Ohio made one of the odder, yet enjoyable heavy metal rarities we've ever heard, this their only album, originally released in 1980. Well, it's nominally "heavy metal", though at times it's a bit like Devo doing heavy metal, with geeky sci-fi new wave inflections (as on "Sector 387"). At other times, it sounds more '60s and psychedelic, in fact psychedelic enough to get a review in that Acid Archives tome we just listed. Really White Boy and The Average Rat Band ought to appeal to anyone into the stranger side of late '70s hard rock, post-punk, proto-metal, poverty grind.
It all begins with a shimmering synth "Prelude", then... "Neon Warriors"! A tumble of drums, followed by a rapidfire, flash-rockin', fuzzed out riff onslaught, kinda like a low-budget Judas Priest. Oh yeah, that's the other thing, there's an ass-ton of FUZZ on here. Probably that's how they wound up in Acid Archives. "Maybe I'm A Fool" sounds more like Motorhead... sorta... then "The Prophet Song" harks back to Hendrix... and they even do a weird, broken down acoustic blues jam instrumental called "Blue Moon" before the record's over. Both rockin', and bizarre enough, to make both the AQ and WFMU warped hit parade for sure. Heck, they were basically making NWOFHM music (a la Steel Mammoth and Krypt Axeripper) long before those Finns came up with the idea. Or, imagine early Manilla Road meets George Brigman, maybe... Also probably for fans of Zolar-X, Todd Tamanend Clark, and the Happy Dragon-Band, amongst other eccentrics. Though this IS more metal than those. Closest perhaps to the likes of Dwarr, not that there's much like Dwarr.
This reissue on Roach is limited to 400 copies, by the way.
Twisted eighties style new wave electro industrial electronic pop from this duo, a dizzying mix of old school synth pop and industrial crunch, with a teeny bit of Chicago house swirled in. And some straight up eighties MTV style pop. But it's not the parts, it's what they do with them, and what these guys do is pretty bizarre and fantastic.
Imagine Oingo Boingo but way more minimal and druggy and psychedelic, or a way more industrial version of The Fixx, think old Ministry, Foetus, Coil, Severed Heads, even Portion Control, it's poppy, but dark, warped and electronic, new wavey but also a little witch housey here and there.
Woozy melodies are wrapped around stuttery beats, deep super dramatic vox drift over angular off kilter synths, strange sound effects swirl in the background, while the beats skitter and pound, keyboards buzz and pulse, all somehow molded into some retro dancefloor destroying electronic industrial pop weirdness, that manages to totally hit the spot, referencing all of those bands we grew up with, but also twisting that sounds into something fresh and new and gloriously tweaked and tripped out.
Pressed on super thick white vinyl, and probably pretty limited too...
We weren't really sure what we'd get from a band named "White Denim," but we're happy to report that it's not only better than we expected, but pretty damn rad. White Denim hail from Austin, TX, and they whip up a frenzied chunk of heavily grooving guitar rock with a nice psychedelic feel and some cool moments of skronky (sometime sax inflected) weirdness that come as a nice surprise. The songs on Fits are energetic and fun, and the super tight production really makes things stand out. This band must just own it live. At times they comes off a bit like the post-Karp/pre-Big Business band Tight Bros. From Way Back When, meaning pretty much that this is a group of indie rockers taking a stab at a MC5/Stooges/Grand Funk thing, we know it sounds shitty on paper, but this is actually hitting the spot quite nicely, and you probably won't even mind when the band busts out a sitar solo... everything just blends together really well, even though things are all jagged, noisy, and frequently atonal. These guys definitely rock hard and they certainly satisfy our hunger for dumb (in a good way), testosterone fueled rock. Fans of the aforementioned Tight Bros., the Estrus records roster, and Monotonix will totally dig this.
Oh, yeah! The vinyl contains a free download card, PLUS their first album as a second slab of wax!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Limited cassette from the scrappy dudes of White Fang. Got a couple of these when they were in town on tour so grab one fast cause once their gone you know.....
Here's what we said about their lp Whatever, from which ALL of these songs on this tape are taken:
Bands like White Fang really make us wanna be young again, really young, with their carefree attitude, snarky and scrappy aesthetic and all out blasts of fucked up fun! The opening track on Whatever sounds a bit like today's lo-fi garage burners covering Bad Brains, and throughout the record we also hear wonderful hints of the really raw and noisy early years of Pavement or what it might sound like if Wavves covered a song off the first Neutral Milk Hotel record, especially on the songs where WF rock some distorted trumpet.
Freewheeling, eclectic and on the verge of falling apart, White Fang really are all over the place, but in ways that make perfect sense to our warped ears. They have some of the awesome charm of those damaged early SST records by folks like Saccharine Trust and the Meat Puppets (their first record!) as well as modern day kindred sonic spirits like Eat Skull or Silver Daggers. These kids have wisely tapped into the more twisted and cracked side of punk and garage rock, we're sure they would be so rad live at some out of control house party or warehouse show.
Ha, what a (intentionally misspelled?) title! The songs are short and sweet and sound like they were recorded with a boombox covered with a towel in their practice space after smoking more than a few bongloads. What's not to love about that? Garagey-punk a la Black Flag should not sound heavily produced or overdubby, it should be raw and fucked up and a little loose. It's obvious that these guys don't take themselves very seriously (see: "Can't Find My Weed"), and therein lies the charm (think: a less skilled but more stoned Turbonegro). The title track totally rips off Elton John's "Saturday" in the most glorious way for about ten seconds. "Funny Disguises" and "Fuck Up a Fascist (I'm Down)" have maybe the only actual guitar shredding on the whole record and half the time it's so buried underneath layers of midrange skrawnk that you might stop banging your head to notice, but then again you might not.
Bands like White Fang really make us wanna be young again, really young, with their carefree attitude, snarky and scrappy aesthetic and all out blasts of fucked up fun! The opening track on Whatever sounds a bit like today's lo-fi garage burners covering Bad Brains, and throughout the record we also hear wonderful hints of the really raw and noisy early years of Pavement or what it might sound like if Wavves covered a song off the first Neutral Milk Hotel record, especially on the songs where WF rock some distorted trumpet.
Freewheeling, eclectic and on the verge of falling apart, White Fang really are all over the place, but in ways that make perfect sense to our warped ears. They have some of the awesome charm of those damaged early SST records by folks like Saccharine Trust and the Meat Puppets (their first record!) as well as modern day kindred sonic spirits like Eat Skull or Silver Daggers. These kids have wisely tapped into the more twisted and cracked side of punk and garage rock, we're sure they would be so rad live at some out of control house party or warehouse show. The record comes on really nice thick vinyl with a coupon for a digital download as well as a cool little zine filled with photos, flyers, and drawings.
NOW AVAILABLE AS A DOUBLE LP!!
Latest release from Tim Presley, aka one man lo-fi garage rock / noise pop band White Fence, a sprawling two volume collection of jams, culled from supposedly over 80 tracks, and this collection is a doozy, like past WF records, a collection of super varied pop weirdness, from super catchy indie jangle, to super fuzzy Kinks worship, from damaged zoner psych, to in the red garage punk swagger, and pretty much every stop in between. We're tempted to compare this to the Sopors, whose 7" we reviewed last list, another rad blast of weird pop from a twisted loner genius, and while the Sopors record is seriously damaged and on the verge of collapse, the sounds here are significantly more polished, but only some of the time.
The first volume is the poppier of the two, just check out the opening one-two punch, "Swagger Vets And Double Moon", with its programmed drums, psychedelic leads, reverbed vocals, fuzzed out guitar, shuffly rhythm, and then "Long White Curtain", which is total British Invasion worship, with a seriously strange lo-fi mix, the leads practically bursting from the speaker, while the rest of the sounds are dialed way back. And so it goes, wherever Presley's twisted sensibilities take him, there's the lilting dreamy fuzzy twee pop of "Do You Know Ida Know", which sounds almost like Ween, with its weird processed vox, or the fuzzy organ driven shuffle pop of "It Will Never Be", that locks into a hazy krautpsych loop and warbled and warps, while spidery guitars coil themselves around that main groove, or "Hey! Roman Nose", which is total lo-fi bedroom pop, with a little bit of that Purling Hiss style seventies power pop mixed in, and the first volume finishes off with "Daily Pique" a fuzzy psychedelic groove with weird vocals, and an even weirder production.
The second volume seems decidedly weirder, although it starts off with a dreamy bit of synth driven balladry, that sounds weirdly like the Frogs, which is most definitely not a bad thing, "She Relief" wraps some garage pop in squiggly leads and all sorts of piano pound and psychedelic freakout, before "I'd Sing" brings things back down, unfurling as a little stretch of psych guitar laced bedroom pop murk.
Things do definitely become more and more unhinged, lots of weird synths, and strange experimental song structures, noise guitar freakouts, even the poppiest jams are all twisted up, doused in effects, tangled up into weird arrangements, but somehow it suits them, and we find ourselves digging the second volume as much as the first, if not more.
Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin and John Dwyer might be getting most of the love (rightfully so), but folks who like their garage rock and indie pop a bit more fucked up and fractured, twisted and confusional, White Fence might just be your cup of spiked tea.
We were pretty blown away by the last White Fence record, a sprawling double album spread out over two lps (or one cd), which found one man band WF aka Tim Presley, spitting out a dizzying barrage of fractured jangle pop and warped garage rock, an already massive collection of songs, supposedly culled from more than 80 written for the record, which only confirmed what we sort of already knew, that White Fence was maybe the weirdest and most idiosyncratic outfit in the SF garage rock scene, which is full of genius weirdos (Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, etc.). On this new one though, Presley manages to both get even weirder, AND dip into much more traditional songsmithery. It's almost as if instead of working on songs in his garage, Presley assembled a rickety old time machine, which he used to travel back to the sixties, which is definitely where this record seems to find most of its sonic inspiration, but it's almost as if that rickety time machine only barely made it back, jumbling up all of Presley's perfect sixties garage pop songs in the process, so all the lilting melodies, fuzzy, strummy dreaminess, spidery psychedelic leads, hazy crooned vox, swirling acoustic guitars, came through the portal just a little bit fucked up, sounds that seem to melt before your ears, weird blurts of damaged effects, sounds swooping backwards, drums doused in delay, fuzz guitar cranked and jammed WAY above the mix. The mixes all over the place, raw and brittle one second, lush and lovely the next, drums loud, guitars howling, melodies muted and muddy, vocals barely there in the background, then cooing in your ear. In a way, it almost reminds us of Faxed Head, the way their caveman metal was defined by the recording, the tape drop outs, the weird varispeed pitch changes, everything woozy and crumbling and falling apart. Which is basically how Cyclops Reap sounds, BUT, all of that weirdness and fucked up damage, can barely disguise the sheer pop brilliance on display here. Total retro jangle pop garage fuzz genius. Total sixties hippie hookiness, hazy power pop shimmer, swaggery blooze garage stomp, all tangled into some of THEE best and catchiest pop songs EVER. Minus all the damage, this could have easily been some lost sixties artifact unearthed and reissued, in fact, the whole time machine thing above, could easily be swapped out for someone ACTUALLY discovering Cyclops Reap in an old dusty, moldy box, in the basement of some SF flat, the tapes warped and mildewy, that damaged translating into some of the more psychedelic sonics here.
Needless to say, we've loved every White Fence record, and this one's no different, in fact it's fast becoming our new favorite. And as hard as Presley seems to be trying to obscure his perfect jangly fuzz pop masterpieces, that sonic obfuscation only serves to make them that much more warped and wonderful.
Note: the vinyl version already sold out but is soon to be repressed, we're told.
First we've heard from these sixties psych channeling, garage pop retro rocking locals since last year's awesome Cyclops Reap (and not counting the recent equally awesome Live In SF disc). Cyclops Reap took White Fence's already twisted sound and somehow made it even more far out, while at the same time upping the ante on pretty much everything else (song craft, production, etc.), and now on For The Recently Found Innocent, WF mainman Tim Presley teams up with his buddy Ty Segall and drummer Nick Murray (Mikal Cronin even pops by to play a little piano), for a record that continues Presley's quest to craft some impossible sixties beholden, modern retro-psych masterpiece, and gets closer than he ever has. In the process, Presley and crew dial back a lot of the weirdness that defined the sound of Cyclops Reap, and come up with some of the best WF songs yet. Certainly the best sounding, the production is massive, just check out "Anger! Who Keeps You Under", which somehow sounds properly from back in the day, but modern as well, jangling guitars, soaring vocals, hooks galore, powerful drumming, all sorts of effects and textures, the sound lush and majestic, a little bit fuzzy and crunchy, and so so catchy! And it pretty much doesn't let up, every track here a fuzz pop retro garage gem, "Like That" features Presley's keening falsetto, with some fantastic harmonies, all set amidst lush jangle and some pitch perfect sixties-isms, what we really need to do is get Presley together with Matthew Melton (Warm Soda, Bare Wires)!
But until that happens, we get to revel in Presley's alternate sonic sixties, conjured up here and now, with all the musical references to might imagine, Bee Gees, the Monkees, the Zombies, some of the tracks here do genuinely sound like they were plucked from some reissue compilation, while others find WF indulging in some experimentation, but even then, they manage to make it sound totally genuine. As always, fantastic stuff, and pretty sure we probably say this every time, but might be our favorite White Fence record yet!
For those of you who didn't get enough warped garage rock / lo-fi noise pop on the recent sprawling two part collection from this local one man band, snap up one of these quick before they're gone. Originally intended to be a Record Store Day Release, these only showed up a few days ago, but fans of WF won't be disappointed, three more songs, that sound like they could have been plucked from the same 80 songs that the above mentioned collection was culled from. Fuzzy and jangly, a serious sixties pop vibe, with dreamy harmony vox, lots of fuzz and echo and reverb, hooks galore, the second track a bit more druggy hippie folk, while the sidelong title track is a pitch perfect blast of super catchy retro pop radness, just a bit warped, all the songs here held together by weird bloopy basslines, and some super distorted wild way-up-in-the-mix leads, not to mention some seriously tripped out vocals. Another gem from this SF outfit who should definitely have a place of honor on your shelf alongside The Oh Sees and the Sic Alps and the Bare Wires and Blasted Canyons and all the rest...
If you're anything like us, you can't get enough of the woozy, '60s laden sounds of White Fence. And if his latest release on Woodsist isn't enough to quench your thirst for psych-pop jangle, feast your eyes (and ears) on this hot new 7" featuring a stellar, unheard, unreleased song. Released by our friends After Life (rad clothing shop across the street from aQ), this slab of washed out psychedelic pop is exactly in line with past WF releases. Blaring fuzz guitar, catchy hooks and diluted melodies, all melted and warped into a unique brand of 'white light, white heat' drug-rock.
"The Pool" is completely new to us, a relaxed, slow burning trip into a blurred summer afternoon. Reminds us of Texas trippers Pure Ecstasy. Distant tambourine, chiming guitar and layers of tape hiss drift together into a wash of melodic goodness. Our favorite thing about WF is beneath all these layers of grit and haze are well crafted songs that only leave us wanting more. Don't miss out on this gritty pop gem!
We loved the White Fence record from last year, but nothing could have prepared us for what an amazing slice of warped '60s inspired psych pop they would conjure up on this mind blowing sophomore effort. Recorded with an analog warmth that melts and rocks and is so totally satisfying, overflowing with songs that rife with hooks and charisma galore, keeping us wanting more and more.
While influenced by the sounds of like Syd Barrett, Donovan, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, early Who, The Kinks or some track from a Nuggets compilation that would blow your mind, the secret to White Fence's greatness is that they don't just sound like a band from a different era, but they take some of those elements in creating such a warm and woozy vibe, with a set of songs that's had us under a spell we never want to get out from under. So damn good!
Live records are a strange proposition. We know folks who love live records, and just as many who don't. For some it's to commemorate a classic show they were at, and want to relive, for others, it's a chance to hear a band live, when they might not be able to ever actually see them in the flesh, and to be fair, bands generally are WAY better live. Recording is all about capturing that live energy, which any band will tell you, might be the hardest part of recording. For us, live records, are a chance to hear a band let loose, to tear it up, no worrying about the take, or certain parts, or subtleties, just rocking out, reacting to the crowd, with the best live records oozing blood and sweat, the live energy of not just the band, but the crowd as well, exciting in a way that sitting in a studio could never be.
So here we have local garage psych rockers White Fence, performing live in March of this year, right down the street from aQ at Amnesia (which used to be the Chameleon, our favorite venue from back in the day), kicking out the jams, and as described above, the sound is loose and wild, the band on fire, some of the psychedelic subtleties of the recordings lost, but in their place, one of the best performances we can remember from these guys, heavy, jangly, noisy, poppy, psychedelic, the crowd going nuts between songs, the songs we already loved supercharged, the guitars fuzzed out and crumbly, total psych garage bliss out, some of the versions here maybe even better than the recordings proper. If you've yet to hear these guys, this would be a great introduction, and hell, even if you have all the records, you probably dig them as much as we do, and are gonna likely want/need this one too...
For some reason, this 7" and the vinyl version of the most recent full length from local garage rock one man band White Fence, were both practically impossible to keep in stock. We did eventually list and review the WF Cyclops Reap full length, and now we finally have enough of these, the pre album 7" to list. And while it may seem backwards, WF fans are still probably gonna want the single, cuz 2 of the three tracks are exclusive to this 7". The A side "Pink Gorilla" is the first single from the Cyclops Reap album, and it's easy to see why it was picked, a super warped chunk of ultra psychedelic scuzzed out fuzz rock, with blown out guitar gristle wrapped around swirling jangle and breezy vocals, like some classic sixties pop gem, worked over by some modern garage rock mad scientist, which it essentially is.
The other two tracks are more of the same, but unlike "Pink Gorilla", for some reason were NOT included on Cyclops Reap proper, which hearing these tracks now, it's hard to figure out why. "Fragility" is a gorgeous chunk of hushed, moody, softly psychedelic buzz and strum, that's warm and billowy, lush and dreamily jangly, wreathed in whirring organs and tangled and fried guitar melodies, all blurred into a hazy chunk of washed out sixties garage pop bliss, albeit with some weird blurts of guitar glitch and weird whirling atmospheres. And on top of that there's the second B side, the track "Cyclops Reap", which weirdly is NOT on the Cyclops Reap record at all.
White Fence fans should nab one of these before they disappear AGAIN.
Latest release from Tim Presley, aka one man lo-fi garage rock / noise pop band White Fence, a sprawling two volume collection of jams, culled from supposedly over 80 tracks, and this collection is a doozy, like past WF records, a collection of super varied pop weirdness, from super catchy indie jangle, to super fuzzy Kinks worship, from damaged zoner psych, to in the red garage punk swagger, and pretty much every stop in between. We're tempted to compare this to the Sopors, whose 7" we reviewed last list, another rad blast of weird pop from a twisted loner genius, and while the Sopors record is seriously damaged and on the verge of collapse, the sounds here are significantly more polished, but only some of the time.
The first volume is the poppier of the two, just check out the opening one-two punch, "Swagger Vets And Double Moon", with its programmed drums, psychedelic leads, reverbed vocals, fuzzed out guitar, shuffly rhythm, and then "Long White Curtain", which is total British Invasion worship, with a seriously strange lo-fi mix, the leads practically bursting from the speaker, while the rest of the sounds are dialed way back. And so it goes, wherever Presley's twisted sensibilities take him, there's the lilting dreamy fuzzy twee pop of "Do You Know Ida Know", which sounds almost like Ween, with its weird processed vox, or the fuzzy organ driven shuffle pop of "It Will Never Be", that locks into a hazy krautpsych loop and warbled and warps, while spidery guitars coil themselves around that main groove, or "Hey! Roman Nose", which is total lo-fi bedroom pop, with a little bit of that Purling Hiss style seventies power pop mixed in, and the first volume finishes off with "Daily Pique" a fuzzy psychedelic groove with weird vocals, and an even weirder production.
The second volume seems decidedly weirder, although it starts off with a dreamy bit of synth driven balladry, that sounds weirdly like the Frogs, which is most definitely not a bad thing, "She Relief" wraps some garage pop in squiggly leads and all sorts of piano pound and psychedelic freakout, before "I'd Sing" brings things back down, unfurling as a little stretch of psych guitar laced bedroom pop murk.
Things do definitely become more and more unhinged, lots of weird synths, and strange experimental song structures, noise guitar freakouts, even the poppiest jams are all twisted up, doused in effects, tangled up into weird arrangements, but somehow it suits them, and we find ourselves digging the second volume as much as the first, if not more.
Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin and John Dwyer might be getting most of the love (rightfully so), but folks who like their garage rock and indie pop a bit more fucked up and fractured, twisted and confusional, White Fence might just be your cup of spiked tea.
FYI, along with this cd twofer version, each volume is available individually on vinyl, though we only have Vol.2 in stock at the moment.
