Not one, but TWO brand new records, brand new BANDS in fact, from the man behind avant black metal weirdos Pyramids, Sailors With Wax Wings and White Moth, both heavy and weird in their own way, and both featuring incredible ensemble casts, not so much guests and collaborators. In some ways it does both of these records/groups a bit of a disservice to lump them together, as most reviewers (including this one) do, but it's sort of unavoidable, for as different as these two records may sound, there are quite a few similarities conceptually and even sonically.
For those unfamiliar with Pyramids, we've been pretty smitten with these guys ever since we first heard their double disc debut on Hydra Head, a dizzying sonic concoction that infused black metal blasts with washed out shoegaze glimmer, swirling dreamy ambience, blurred slowcore drift, actually it might be more accurate to describe Pyramids as some sort of blissed out shoegaze slowcore outfit that flecked their dreamy sound with bits of black metal buzz, but either way, the sound these guys cooked up was heady and psychedelic and pushed our buttons BIG TIME. Everything we could want in a weird heavy band seemed to be all smeared into this gorgeously indistinct entity called Pyramids. And the interesting thing about that debut, is that it already sort of foreshadowed the genesis of these two new projects, by including a discs of remixes/reworkings featuring Swans drummer Ted Parsons, Toby Driver of Kay Dot, Colin Marston of Behold the Arctopus, James Plotkin of OLD and Khanate, Justin Broadrick of Jesu / Godflesh and French industrial black metal crushers Blut Aus Nord. And the recent 5 cassette box seemed to be another sign pointing at Pyramids' mainman R Loren's restlessness, and need to keep creating and collaborating, featuring hours and hours of interpretations and reimaginings. Which brings us to Loren's latest projects, a simultaneous release of two different record, by two different groups, each sonically disparate, yet inexorably linked, Sailors With Wax Wings, whose sound is like a more abstracted shoegazey Pyramids, and White Moth, whose sound has been described by Loren as "digital hardcore", but also infuses its drill and bass and industrial crunch with plenty of Pyramidal blissed out black metalisms (including vocals from John Gossard of Weakling and Asunder!).
White Moth is just as awesomely tripped out and confusional as Pyramids, with a lineup of collaborators as similarly expansive and eclectic as Sailors With Wax Wings: Alec Empire (Atari Teenage Riot), Shelby Cinca of Frodus (!), Lydia Lunch, Ashley Scott Jones (Treasure Fingers, Evol Intent), Sam Hillmer (the Zs), Jacob Kirkegaard, Christoph Heeman (H.N.A.S.), Colin Marston (Krallice, Behold�The Arctopus), Dalek and of course John Gossard (Weakling, Asunder)...
White Moth splits its focus between textures/atmospheres/ambience, and beats, BIG gnarled drill and bass beats, mean hard heavy, self described 'digital hardcore' beats, but the opening track is surprisingly lovely, with its shimmery dreamy droney intro, its lush cascading guitars, a blissed out beat-heavy chunk of electronic pop, which is pretty much how the next few tracks play out, and to a certain extent the whole record, for all its purported black metal and digital hardcore elements, the resulting sound is electronic, and shoegazey, lots of buzzing guitars, but the buzz is muted and dreamy, giving the songs a more sort of washed out hazy glow, a surface of prismatic shimmer under which, beats and riffs churn and roil. It's not until the third track, that things get HEAVY, and even then, it sounds less like digital hardcore, and more like some sort of electronic flecked noise rock, howled almost emo vocals, soaring guitars, all on a bed of relentlessly stuttering squalls of sputter and crunch, occasionally slowing down to a doomy lumber, before smoothing out into a thick stretch of droned out guitars, and then finally some hushed ambient shimmer. "Shoot The Clock" features Dalek, and is a thick noisy swirl of guitar heavy hip hop skitter, that's definitely a perfect match, but then after all, it's the guy from Pyramids making this record, so he throws in some blown out saxophone, and layer after layer of throbbing psychedelic guitar buzz. The next three tracks are all cut from the same cloth, soaring swirling squalls of epic black metal guitar, over frantic frenetic beats, hovering somewhere right between blissed out prettiness and blown out electronic chaos, definitely leaning toward the former, even at its most extreme and punishing, it's like Loren has some pop gene, that no matter how hard he tries to subvert it, manages to worm its way into everything he does, but hell we're not complaining, it's precisely what makes this stuff so compelling, and listenable. We're all for a blackened wall of grinding beats and buzzing guitars, but when they're deftly assembled into something laced with melody and texture, even better!
The final track "To The Cathedral" is the one that features something you probably never thought you'd hear, the vocalist from Weakling, shrieking and howling over a bed of spastic electronic beats, all wrapped in gauzy streaks of blurred melody. and laced with dreamy crooned clean vocals, all tangled and chaotic and wonderfully blown out, the guitars here again are sort of black metal, but the buzz is more dreamy than grim, and you gotta listen close, cuz Gossard's vocals are buried WAY down in the mix, almost just another layer of buzz, and then it's all over in 3 minutes, a gorgeous blown out blast of hazy blackened metallic bliss pop electronica, which dissipates leaving a softly shimmering cloud of soft whirring ambient dronemusic to finish things off.
On first listen, White Moth sounds like a huge departure from Pyramids, and well removed from sister project Sailors With Wax Wings, but it only takes a few more plays to reveal that perhaps the differences are not as great as they seem, both White Moth and SWWW are buzzy and blissy, freaky and far out, psychedelic and atmospheric, brutal and beautiful, and while like Pyramids, both are probably WAY too far out to appeal to the true grim hordes, for everyone else, this is some bafflingly brilliant and abstract heaviness.
Still have a few of this Record Store Day 2014 release in the racks. Did peeps not know who White Mystery was? Maybe. But this is already the Chicago-based band's 4th studio album - or at least half of this is, the other lp in the set being a recording of a live show.
So, they're a brother-and-sister duo, kinda like the White Stripes (well, but they're siblings for real, we're pretty sure - they have the same frizzy ginger hair, and lots of it) playing hard hitting, high energy garagey rock'n'roll, the girl on guitar and vocals, the guy on drums. They kick out stripped down, anthemic songs about (to judge from the song titles) some fairly ridiculous/fantastical subjects. It's raucous good times for sure, simple and fun, for when you find yourself standing there with a PBR in your hand.
Ltd. to 1000 copies, colored vinyl. RSD release, so we don't think we'll be seeing any more than the handful we have.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
White Noise's first album has long been one of the holy grails for kosmische / space rock collectors. Kinda strange, actually, because it's actually more on the "exotica" Moog side of things, as opposed to a Klaus Schulze or Conrad Schnitzler production... Released in 1968 on Island in a total vacuum, An Electric Storm could be a Perrey & Kingsley soundtrack to a Radley Metzger soft-core porn film with twee psych-pop vocal melodies (a la Beach Boys, Free Design, Monkees) topped off with lots of bizarre electronic squiggles that originated in the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop (home of the Dr. Who title track). White Noise's mastermind David Vorhaus keeps things pretty surreal with a track based around the recordings made at a orgy and with a precursor to the John Balance vocal mumbles about how "darkness was enshrouded by darkness and the darkness was deadeningly dark."
Everyone into Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo, Spacemen 3, Loop, A Place To Bury Strangers, Swervedriver, Black Angels, The Heads, White Hills, Lumerians, Mugstar, Monster Magnet, Serena-Maneesh, Telescopes and similarly drugged out, psychedelic hypnorock, best make some space in your music collection for this, the latest addition to your blissed out space-psych drug rock section (what? doesn't everyone have one of those?), the debut from Welsh space rockers White Noise Sound, who pretty much sound exactly like a heavier, modernized Spacemen 3, all it'll take is a couple minutes of record opener "August", with its motorik drum machine, sung/spoken vox, looped psych guitar mesmer, and then when the band kicks in proper, heavy guitars and propulsive drumming, explosive and hypnotic and if you're anything like us, which we're guessing you probably are, you're done for, just let yourself be pulled under, and dragged along through thick billowing clouds of psychedelic effects, of gloriously bleary drugged out churn and chug, surprising female harmony vocals, wild squalls of psychedelic leads, buzzing sitars, whirring synths, heck there's even some glockenspiel! To be honest it took us a while to get further into the record, as we found ourselves playing that first jam over and over and over.
But it's worth the effort, the whole record is gorgeously lysergic, slipping from propulsive drone rockers like the opener, to tripped out blissy drifts like the follow up "It Is There For You", with its tinkling chimes, clouds of cymbal shimmer, skeletal guitar strum, and motorik pulse, spaced out and spacious. But even those mellow ones build to serious freak outs, the guitars exploding in shards of prismatic shimmer, coruscating sheets of feedback drenched melody, Hawkwinded heart of the sun jams that could (and should) go on forever and ever. In fact, the record for all its explosive moments, definitely spends more time in hazy, druggy, dreamy bliss out mode, letting the synths and sitars weave gloriously gauzy expanses of weightless sonic shimmer and softly pulsing kosmische drift, which only makes the heavier parts that much more dramatic and kick ass.
Reissued on cassette for a limited time!
White Noise's first album has long been one of the holy grails for kosmische / space rock collectors. Kinda strange, actually, because it's actually more on the "exotica" Moog side of things, as opposed to a Klaus Schulze or Conrad Schnitzler production... Released in 1968 on Island in a total vacuum, An Electric Storm could be a Perrey & Kingsley soundtrack to a Radley Metzger soft-core porn film with twee psych-pop vocal melodies (a la Beach Boys, Free Design, Monkees) topped off with lots of bizarre electronic squiggles that originated in the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop (care of Delia Derbyshire!). White Noise's mastermind David Vorhaus keeps things pretty surreal with a track based around the recordings made at a orgy (as well as a Satanic mass!) and with a precursor to the John Balance vocal mumbles about how "darkness was enshrouded by darkness and the darkness was deadeningly dark." A sonic touchstone for Broadcast, The Focus Group and the Ghostbox label. Limited to 100 copies.
Well it's got Jim O'Rourke on it, and that's really all that matters, right? But if you need to know more, this is the second album from improv group White Out, consisting of downtown NYC avant-musicians Lin Culbertson (analog synth, etc.) and Tom Surgal (drums/percussion). For this disc, they've invited maestro O'Rourke to sit in with his guitar and Powerbook. The result ranges from the spacey to the noisy, the crazed to the kinda quite lovely. Recorded in one take with no overdubs or studio effects, so there. For fans of experimental free non-jazz non-rock stuff...
The latest from this local psychedelic / experimental / drone / noise collective (featuring members of psychedelic space rockers 3 Leafs) comes in the form of an old school VHS tape, no cd, no download code, just that super familiar big square shaped tape, so all you cutting edge, latest gadget having, iPod/iPad toting digi-nerds, unless you have a dusty VCR tucked away in your pad, you're shit out of luck, which would be a shame, cuz this 35 minute slow burn psych-noise epic is a doozy. It captures these guys live on the radio, at KZSU, for their annual Day Of Noise, and while it's most definitely noisy, it's not necessarily 'noise'. It's a thick morass of synthy squelch, of churning droned out rumbles, of long tones tangled into knotty sprawls of feedback drenched undulations, buried beneath are strange staticky rhythms, fractured and free form, there's lots of space too, long stretches of hushed shimmer, of super abstract drift, with distant moans, and keening melodies, of sputtering machine sounds, eventually smoothing out into a weird muted murk, a sea of chordal swells and blackened shimmer, eventually splintering into some seriously caustic crunch, shards of feedback, blurts of white noise static, but draped over a creepy detuned melody, giving the whole thing a sort of lumbering, druggy vibe, that melody nearly obliterated by squeaky balloon melodies, and spaced out synth pulsations.
The track settles into dark brooding drifts throughout, at one point, a long stretch midsong, sounding almost like a field recording of some deep swamp or bayou, the insects represented by fluttering FX, and glitchy sonic fragments, haunting and mysterious, a creeping sonic fog, that is soon joined by woozy synth melodies and sheets of gristly static, disappearing in clouds of malfunctioning interference, weird Conet Project like sputter, smears of shortwave fuzz that almost coalesce into some weird almost-rhythm, before a final squall of psychedelic heaviness, gives way to a slowly unwinding, creepy, crumbling coda.
The accompanying visuals are pretty freaky as well, super blown out, oversaturated super 8 images of jellyfish, bizarre film snippets, tripped out static, swirling psychedelic patterns, blinking seizure inducing flashing lights, groovy textures, old couples dancing, some shots of the band performing live spliced in here and there, glowing orbs, UFO's, uncalibrated video, goofy video loops, horror movies, fountains of blood, birds at birdfeeders, haircuts, hippy home movies, primitive video effects, pink clad people freaking out and screaming hysterically, women being hypnotized, old guys playing the harp, dive bombing seabirds, smoking evil fountains, squirrels, exotic fish, glowing faces, warriors, all of these images flitting one to the next, like it's a recording of someone's seriously fucked up subconsciousness, but it works surprisingly well with the accompanying sounds!
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!! (And psst, actually, somewhere in the packaging is actually hidden a dvd-r version of the VHS, so you out there sans VCRs, it's your lucky day!)...
The only thing we've heard from local psychedelic noise collective White Pee, was a split they recorded with psychedelic space rockers, White Hills, but as that was a collaboration, it was sort of difficult to parse just what these guys sounded like. But finally, the band have released their first proper record, and it's a doozy, featuring at least one member of local psych rockers 3 Leafs, along with a bunch of other SF noisemakers, White Pee reveal themselves as less 'noisy', like we imagined, and definitely more psychedelic, the opening track gets right into it, with some dense gnarled riffage, draped over a simple motorik rhythm, it's still noisy, but here that noise is employed in swirling clouds around that main riff/groove, swirling FX, all manner of buzz and thrum and skree, in a constant swirl. It's downright doomy actually, a dirgey doomkraut groove, laced with what sounds like some bizarre strain of vokills, the sound is most definitely psychedelic, and very trancey, the whole first track essentially a single part looped and locked, the band pounding and grinding away, the sort of heavy psych bliss out that induces deep sonic mesmer in the listener. After a brief bit of actual noise, a freeform drift of warped samples, drum splatter, horn bleat, and effects overload, the group bring it all back together for another kraut-flecked psychedelic jam, after some swirling ambience and mysterious samples, the band lock into a killer groove, the drums simple and propulsive, plenty of piano, lots of squiggly synth, and still more effects, it's a bit like a way more active, much noisier Necks, there's a Circle vibe too, that same sort of endless circular hypno-rock, wrapped in a thick squall of wild synth swirl, and while the band wind it up after about 6 minutes, it easily could have stretched out for another 6 (or sixty!). Finally, there's the epic 11+ minute closer, which begins all twangy and dolorous, woozy and washed out, buried drums, scraggly acoustic guitar, burbling sound effects, the first eight minutes or so spent drifting dreamily, the sounds hazy and blurred and softly psychedelic, before the guitar grows more urgent, horns surface from the murk, the piano gets pounded, the guitar grows angular, only to quickly settle back down into a gorgeously murky slow burn fade out.
Way recommended for fans of 3 Leafs, Circle, the Necks, Carlton Melton, and other cosmic psychedelic explorers...
Collaboration number two from this oddball pairing, NY psychedelic space rock duo White Hills, and local avant noiseniks White Pee. Even though we're guessing it was maybe the shared 'White' in their monikers that got them together, they do make a pretty good team. This set, recorded live, starts out as a warped, sprawl of turntablism, sounding not unlike the work of White Pee member DJ Female Convict Scorpion, but soon, the space rock drops, and we're off, swirling FX, slow motorik drumming, blurred distorted riffage, White Hills locked into a seriously druggy, hypnotic groove, while it's presumably White Pee providing all the sonic filigree, whether that's dense swirls of garbled thrum, buried voices, disembodied samples, layered textures, all in constant flux, swirling in a lysergic cloud around the psychedelic mesmer at its core.
The set goes through all sorts of metamorphoses, from ambient drift, to near metallic chug, to Hawkwindy trip out, to hazy, cosmic drift, and finally to blown out psychedelic freakout fused with warped sound collage, a heady combination, that makes it sound at times like there's some free jazz going on, and at others, like the instruments are slowing down and gradually melting.
Killer stuff for sure. And WAY recommended for fans of the further out realms of psych and space rock. Fantastic packaging too, a beautiful letter pressed sleeve, with a glued on full color insert, LIMITED TO 150 COPIES, each one hand numbered. Our only complaint, why is it a cd-r?!? The music is so good, the packaging so swank, would have been worth it to make proper cds. Oh well. Still totally and absolutely worth it!
White Poppy's gaze down the Pacific Coast requires quite a powerful telescope to get through all the fog, rain, mist, and redwood trees that are situated between her native Vancouver and the fun-fun-fun-in-sun hamlets of Santa Barbara, Laguna Beach, and of course Los Angeles. But, White Poppy's Crystal Dorval is an artist entertaining all of those warm and fuzzy thoughts of California dreaming from her Canadian perch without any of the malaise attributable to Hollywood overload, traffic congestion, Helter Skelter bad vibes, and ongoing draught conditions. Yes, things can look so much better at such a wide distance. These wistful tunes of bliss-pop imperfection make for a luminous continuation of her previous, eponymous album on Not Not Fun released at the summer's end, 2013. Natural Phenomena was granted a midsummer release in 2015; it would just seem wrong to listen to this stuff in the heart of winter. Ringing guitar lines free-float amongst optiganally sounding drum programming, cotton-mouthed synth warbling, and Dorval's breezy, drifting vocalizations. There is even more of a shot of Ducktails' elixir of tropical intoxication to this, to match White Poppy's sunkissed 'n' stoned productions of buoyantly cherry-colored psychedelia. Get it while it's hot (out).
There must be fluorescent paintings of ladybugs, dancing mushrooms, and the beaming smile of an anthropomorphized sun adorning the walls of Crystal Dorval's bedroom, where she's been dashing off charmingly, disheveled bliss-pop tunes as White Poppy, which eventually caught the sympathetic ears at Not Not Fun. If not, her bright psychedelia oozes with acid-kissed warmth would be well served by such confines. It's definitely a vivid, touchy-feely and eye-dilating psychotropic drug that is Dorval's choice and not really the opiated stupor her moniker alludes to. The swirling spaced-out pop songs that drift through her eponymous album are graced with titles like "Skygaze," "Dizzy," and "Joyride" all of which are nearly onomatopoetic in describing what you'll hear. Although it does have to be said, she pens a track called "Existential Angst" which is anything but. Oh well. On some of her tracks, she adopts the drugged out, loop-station hypnosis that wouldn't stray far from the orbit of Motion Sickness Of Time Travel's electronic miasma; but Dorval is at her best when she deconstructs the bittersweetness of girl-group, fuzztone pop into a deliriously catchy and happily acid-damaged version of the Cocteau Twins. Yup, hypnogogic pop at its finest, right up there with Peaking Lights, if you ask us.
Whoo hoo! Kranky cranks out another colorful psychedelic dose of nu new age dream-hop from Portland's Adam Forkner, aka White Rainbow.� Considering Mr. Forkner has been at the forefront of the pysch-pop new agey dream drone thing for awhile now, its no wonder he's perfected his trance dance, acid bathed tribal ambient shtick into a polished slab of catchy tunes, that fit somewhere between Cluster, Cocteau Twins and the golden gate park drum circle. Wavering angelic vocals soar across space and time, trails of colors fall to the ground as sprawling nebulous rhythms come in one ear and out the other. Definitely one of those records where listening on headphones uncovers all kinds of details and special secrets. Dreamy, fuzzed-out rainbow riffs gazing over pitter-patter percussion and waves of ambient wash, the doors of infinity are open, are your chakras aligned??
Where past White Rainbow releases might have been more guitar and vocal driven, New Clouds seems to offer much more awesome synthesizer wizardry, which we dig. But compared to Prism of Eternal Now, it seems New Clouds offers less variation and is more one dimensional, maintaining a steady sonic thickness that may be very satisfying to some, but a bit monotonous for others. Any way you look at it, New Clouds is a fantastic edition to the Kranky catalogue and a perfect soundtrack for your next out of body experience!
If there's any justice in this world, it should be anytime now that Adam Forkner becomes a household name, well at least in houses that care about awesome underground music. His past bands, Yume Bitsu, Surface Of Eceyon and the ambitious project [[[[VVRSSNN]]]] all had amazing moments that swept us away, but we think it's in his newest incarnation as White Rainbow that he's truly tapped into some serious musical magic.
Much like his recent collaboration with Honey Owens for the limited cd-r by their duo World, Forkner has found a way to stretch out his sounds and tap into something transcendent. With it's Dr. Brommers inspired manic packaging, and it's equally metaphysical title, this is a record whose sounds are well able to back up the mysterious belief system its entire aura points at. Channeling the living spirit of folks like Terry Riley and LaMonte Young, Prism Of Eternal Now is not merely just a tribute to those icons but living proof of how their influence has touched and inspired a younger generation of musicians aiming to create dense, enchanting, and alive sounds.
The album reveals many different shades of Forkner's musical explorations. From the dreamy, subdued and shoegazey side to the active, relentless and spacious. This is music to get lost in, lost to and lost with. The kind of record you put on and that immediately has you drifting off in a million different directions. Forkner has made his own brilliant Rainbow In Curved Air for a new generation. Highly recommended!
More mysterious crude noise murk coming out of rural Georgia. There's virtually no information provided by esoteric noise imprint Vaald beyond a return address that lands well outside the urban city center of Atlanta; but that's not to say that everything coming from Vaald is spawned from the soil of the south. White Resin is a suitably anonymous project that captures the blank-stare, vaguely rhymthmicist, mostly rumbling churn of scabbed-over power electronics that pays homage (intentionally or otherwise) to some of the more obscure practitioners of early '80s noise construction, somewhere between the unheard-yet-valorized catalogue of Vanity Records (e.g. Tolerance, Normal Brain, Sympathy Nervous, etc.) and the doom-laden Italians who recorded at one time or another for Broken Flag (e.g. Mauthausen Orchestra, MB, Giancarlo Toniutti, etc.). Tone-generated signals amass into phase patterns, spiked with acidic grit and dislocating corrosives on the A-side, with occasional twitching detours that epileptically twist away from the linear march towards the guttural noise dirge. The B-side is a more dynamic piece as White Resin drags disembodied rhythms through a sea of gravel, where whatever vehicle of use is perpetually sinking and spinning its wheels through a quicksand morass of tiny pieces of rock that gradually overtake said vehicle and bury it in black sand. An erratic pulsar detonation of synth tones concludes the piece with plenty of overdriven distortions and super lo-fi grittiness. Ain't no wall of noise here. Limited to just 20 copies! Seriously, just 20.
White Ring are another witch house outfit who manage to gain a serious amount of notoriety, with very few proper releases, relying more on YouTube videos and limited cd-r's, as well as downloads and filesharing, but of the many groups of that ilk, they were definitely one of our favorites, so it's not that big a surprise that they would end up on Handmade Birds, even less so once you get an earful of their amazing cover of Neil Young's "Hey Hey My My", which transforms the original into a hazy ethereal bliss out, that is until the drop, when the drums come in, and the buzzing synths, very reminiscent of Salem obviously, but it's a sound we're still not tired of, Southern crunk style hip hop skitter, over fuzzed out low end, everything wreathed in a dense cloud of dreampop haze, the vocals an almost wordless croon, which soar skyward along with the synths/beats, only to bliss out once again in between. We've listened to that track so many times it was ages before we even made it to the flipside, but it's a good one too, much more downtempo and dark, woozy and wondrously warped, the track building to epic soaring Salem like crescendos, reminding us of the blissed out shoegaze of M83, but then retuning to the murky skitter that is so much a hallmark of witch house / drag. Fans of Salem, and all the other witch house we've reviewed are probably gonna want this, and everyone into shoegaze and dream pop, who have yet to check out anything like this, White Ring might just be your gateway... Sorry if we run out though; couldn't get very many of this limited release.
We've had this here for ages, but somehow, with all of records we have to review every couple weeks we only got around to listening to this a few days ago, and now that we have, we're really not sure how it slipped by us, being as we, like a lot of you, certainly do enjoy our daily dose of NWOUSFD. For those of you who don't know what that is, which would most likely be ALL of you since I just made it up, NWOUSFD stands for New Wave Of U.S. Free Drone and counts among it's main practitioners the Double Leopards, Skaters, Davenport, GHQ, Yellow Swans, Mouthus and the like. White Rock just so happen to be 2 parts Double Leopards and 2 parts Mouthus, the result being what you might imagine would be the perfect mix of the two. And truth be told, it's one of the best drone records we've heard in ages. But this isn't that sort of clinical ultra minimal drone, or even that organic slow moving pristine drone, no this is a ramshackle late night druggy abstract sort of drone, the kind of drone that could only come from your favorite Skullflower tape or Vibracathedral Orchestra tape or that very special tenth generation Hototogisu cassette you've had forever, left on the dash of your car in the hot sun for weeks and weeks, then left in the back pocket of your pants or in your bag or in the pocket of your jacket for the entirety of a three week road trip, during which time it gets wet, wrinkled and covered in sand only to be discoverd on your return home, where as you immediately throw it into your beat up old hand me down boombox, the one with the dying batteries and the blown speakers, you push play, using a piece of duct tape to hold down the button, and the sound that comes out is a gloriously gurgling murky morass of fuzzy, rumbling sludgy, crumbling drone. Two twenty plus minute tracks of instrumental ambience, with guitar grime spread like a thick paste over a rickety background of swirls and squalls, a foggy grey haze draped over streaks of subterranean gloom, bits of percussion surface, but it's as if they have corroded or melted to the point of being dull and worn and rounded smooth, a series of thumps and mumbles, angular but with all the jagged edges rubbed away, each beat and shuffle held under water, the rhythm bubbling up as a barely audible muted thrum, clang and clatter as heard through ears full of wet cotton. So delicate and beautiful but so ominous and creepy. There's a harsh grinding industrial edge, but it's being brodcast from a mile away, heard as echoes and reflections, each sound beginning to fray and distort as it travels over hills and through trees, obscured by clouds and falling ever so gradually earthward, each more and more indistinct, the sound dissipating into a late night soporific throb and whir, a sweetly suffocating stretch of thick nebulous sound that lays atop you like a warm wet blanket. So so nice.
While it's been noted that White Stains began in the mid-'80s as a garage band out of Sweden, the earliest known recordings of the group were inextricably linked to Genesis P-Orridge, as a couple of the White Stains members had founded a Swedish chapter of P-Orridge's Temple of Psychick Youth. By 1994, White Stains had decided to call it quits, leaving behind a series of dark electronic eccentricities over the course of 5 albums, including one album in the legendary Anckarstrom series which included exceptional releases from The Hafler Trio, John Duncan, Arcane Device, Zbigniew Karkowski, Phauss, and the Sons of God. Exploratorium is a collection of their more esoteric and abstract recordings, many of which had originated as soundtracks to experimental films and a couple of tracks from that Anckarstrom album. White Stains infuse an absurdly darkened glee to their synthesizer driven tunes, resembling the clunky fumble of Hans Edler or Keuhkot with plenty of Teutonic militant Der Blutharsch-esque overtones.
You would think Justin Broadrick had enough going on, playing in Jesu, Pale Sketcher, Final, Grey Machine, Blood Of Heroes, running his Avalanche label, but apparently there's always time for more, not that we're complaining, we're always up for more of Broadrick's noise, and noise is precisely what we get from his White Static Demon, a power electronics powerhouse, that tempers full bore white heat hiss with crumbling textures and dark melodic drones.
Two 20+ minute tracks, the first, a warped dronescape of processed electronic whirs and shimmers, pulsing and throbbing, a looped blur of gradually intensifying buzz drenched howl, underpinned by deep glitchy dubbed out thrums, before finally exploding into a super nova of Merzbowian white noise, a cascading wall of blinding skree and blown out crunch, but thankfully, this is no one dimensional noise record, instead, over the course of the rest of the track, the sound slips from superdistorted in-the-red buzz, to woozy weirdly melodic feedback drenched drift, to muted smoldering glitched out pulse, to tangled murky minimal click and shimmer, to corrosive hazy dronedirge crumble. And that's just the first track.
Number two also begins hushed and textural, a swirling muted convergence of various strands of glitch and crunch and rumble and whir, gradually building, the sound getting filthier and crustier, a wave of blackened grinding noise, underpinned by strange almost sci-fi sounding synth melodies, and unlike the first track, this one doesn't let up, it definitely cycles through various permutations of blown out buzz and caustic white noise, but it's pretty dense and intense, flitting from burnished and blackened to spectral and effulgent, total head splitting blasts of in-the-red upper register skree, colliding with avalanches of damaged low end, all wrapped in sheets of sinister hiss and sent careening into the heart of the sun, the sound a flash of deafening and blinding white light and sound, laced with barely there bits of melody, but for the most part, a serious planet busting, magnitude 10 burst of sheer electronic power.
Phew! Brutal, intense, heavy and noisy, and pretty fucking awesome, just maybe not for Broadrick dabblers, this one's most definitely for the iron eared, the stern of sonic constitution, and the power electronic elite!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
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White Stripes = Mr. Jack White (of The Go on vocals, guitar, piano) and Ms Meg (percussion). Although the sleeve design and photos stylistically suggest a more mod candy-striped music direction, this is bare-bones blues with riffin' and slidin' swerve around wheezing harmonica, spartan piano and violin. Quite good, indeed.
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Ahhh the new long awaited White Stripes major label debut! At first listen I was scared that this was gonna be too slick 'n' radio friendly but I thought it would grow on me, and it did. It's really great. I can appreciate the tough position the band must have been in what with all the hype and expectations, and really they did a good job of keeping their charming qualities yet moving forward and doing new stuff, ya know 'evolving'. My (Sadie's) favorite record is still De Stijl for the stripped down bluesiness of it, but I am listening to this one over and over cuz it's new, and damn good too. The songs range from stadium rockesque guitar wankyness to simple simple stripped down rawness. The lyrics are clever and sweet yet mean as always. One song is sung by a girl whom I assume is Meg. Then there's this really funny track with both Meg and Jack White and guest Holly Golightly doing this lil' conversational piece. Kinda silly but I still eat it up. And a Bacharach cover, "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself". There's not much more to say really, if you are a White Stripes fan, and there are so many of us you probably are one, you won't be disappointed!
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Yay! The new album from Meg and Jack. Well of course this bad boy's gonna sell gadzillions of copies without any help from us, so this review is more of a cursory first impression kinda thing, more of a formality than anything else. But in case you care, the consensus here is that this is indeed pretty dang great! Get Behind Me Satan sure enough sounds like the White Stripes we all know and love. Not sure if it beats out their last one Elephant in any way, but it doesn't disappoint either. Andee thinks that it sounds like the 'Stripes are really channelling Led Zep 3 here... it's kinda acousticky, and Jack's doin' some Robert Plant for sure. Standout tracks (at first listen or three) include "Take Take Take" (which we all keep singing) and riffy opener/single "Blue Orchid".
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It's hard to hate on a band as awesome as the White Stripes. So why bother?! If you're in the market for some slithery fuzzed out Zep infused garage rock stomp, can't do much better than the WS. Plus the title track is SO FUCKING GOOD, killer riff, crazy squiggly guitars, fractured synths, all wound up into a hook filled jam that DESTROYS. Dig it... their latest, and greatest, as far as Andee is concerned.
Jack 'n' Meg fans, here's a lil' something to stuff in a stocking of someone near and dear (or of your very own)! Not sure why they chose to do so, but the duo have covered Canadian twin sisters Tegan and Sara's tune "Walking With A Ghost" and made it the title track of their latest release... and it's quite a different, strange and gnarly rendition if we do say so ourselves... but then again that might be a good or not so good thing depending on your particular palate. Also included are live versions of "Same Boy You've Always Known", "As Ugly As I Seem", "The Denial Twist" and "Screwdriver". Sure to please diehard fans, but it might not be the best place to start for someone who has yet to be White Striped.
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Following the growing trend of recent albums being reissued with bonus material (dvds, videos, extra tracks, etc), V2 offers up a new run of the White Stripes' third album with a bonus dvd. Why? Because V2 are nice, generous folks? To extend the life of a popular album a little longer? Hmmm. Regardless, fans of Meg and Jack, here for you is the White Blood Cells cd with a dvd containing two "previously unreleased" extra tracks (actually they should instead be called "rare" 'cuz one of the songs "Lafayette Blues" was actually previously released and re-released on a 7", while the other "Hand Springs" was also formerly available on 7" and a compilation - I guess V2 didn't consider those to be officially "released") and four videos ("Hotel Yorba", "Fell In Love With A Girl", Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground", and "We're Going To Be Friends"). As for the album itself here's what we had to say about it last year when it was initially released:
People love 'em and Jack White's certainly got a great voice, and he's a lot less annoying and attitudinal than his contemporary-in-sound Jon Spencer, but I think I'm missing something here. Or maybe not. Upon listening to "White Blood Cells" (their hotly awaited third album) I put aside any preconceived opinion of how I thought I was supposed to react to the music and realized that it isn't the songwriting (good, garagey Detroit-style stomp) so much as it is the Iggy-tastic enthusiasm and love of making music that makes the White Stripes incredible. And I think it shows, just listen to the music -- it's not bad, but not the second coming either, but it definitely rocks. It makes you want to drink beer and fuck shit up. Just like rock n' roll should.
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Meg and Jack's debut!
The White Stripes live and rocking and while it's not bad, it's not great either, and sort of feels like one of those contract obligation fillers...
Recently, through several friends of aQ, we've been introduced to a bunch of really cool indie rock from China, Boyz & Girl (reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), Pairs, Snapline, Mr. Graceless, Carsick Cars, Duck Fight Goose, but the one that really grabbed us the most was this one right here, the oddly monikered White+, which is in fact not really indie rock at all, but is in fact an experimental offshoot of the Chinese indie rock group Carsick Cars. This duo describe themselves as being a "hardware electronica band", although the friend who turned us on to these guys, described them as sounding like Neu! crossed with Yellow Magic Orchestra, which thankfully is pretty dang accurate. Utilizing a set up of customized keyboards, pedals, samplers, loops and live drums (and the occasional bit of spare ethereal vocals), White+ lay down some droned out, super mesmerizing, darkly motorik krautrock influenced electronic hypnorock, that sounds like a weird hybrid of Circle, the Boredoms and Fabulous Diamonds, or something like that, just check out the opening track here. A cascade of skittering programmed beats, looped and layered, chopped and collaged voices, live tribal drums, swirling electronics, dizzying FX, the sounds warped and constantly shifting speed, the vocals processed into strange streaks of psychedelic melody, the various other loops slipping from crunchy chug, to spaced out shimmer, the whole track churning and propulsive and utterly hypnotic. The second track is where the Neu! first pops up and shines through big time, the band locked into a serious psych-kraut groove, a sound that positions these guys squarely in the current movement of kraut-psych space rock revisionists, but their sound is definitely more electronic, and much more beholden to classic krautrock, albeit here wreathed in psychedelic effects and layered with warm washes of keyboard melody, not to mention clouds of swirling FX.
And here's where we'd usually say something like "and that's how it goes from there on out", but these guys aren't so simple to peg. The next track takes seriously driving drums, and adds some electronic bagpipe sounding synths, the result some twisted Amps For Christ / Maserati hybrid, with brief bursts of twisted FX heavy warpage, where the sound slips into near Aphex Twin territory.
From there on out, all bets are off, bloopy and bleepy, skittery and playful one moment, all lilting melodies, and hazy dreamlike kraut-age shimmer, brooding buzz drifting atop wild dense drum damage the next, all supporting soaring echo drenched vocals, the vibe ritualistic and trance-like, definitely a sound that fits perfectly alongside modern day Boredoms. The live drums are really what make the band, even the most ethereal sprawl of soft focus electronic ambience, takes on a whole new vibe when anchored by some pounding rhythms, and the mix of programmed beats and real drums makes for a heady rhythmic concoction, with the surrounding sounds just as compelling, equal parts melodic pulsation, kosmische cascade, and tripped out sonic swirl, some tracks sounding like a full on, heavy as hell hypnorock band, others like ultra abstract avant kraut experiments, the vocals transforming some of the tracks into near popsongs, but more often than not, the vocals splinter and are transformed into something more textural or rhythmic, the song following suit, taking that pop element and wedding it to something much more abstract and psychedelic.
A unanimous new aQ favorite, and literally every time we play this in the store, we sell a copy! We have a whole bunch, but when we sell out, we'll have to get more from China, so might take a couple weeks. Needless to say, grab one NOW! Super deluxe packaging too, sweet design, massive booklet, obi, etc.
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Born in Mississippi in 1906, Booker T. Washington White - "Bukka" as he came to be known against his wishes thanks to a misspelling - got his start in the music business in 1930, with records for Victor and Vocalion. Following a stint in Mississippi's notorious Parchman Farm prison, White made his way to Chicago where he recorded for OKeh in 1940. Years later, White's songs would be covered by everyone from Bob Dylan to Spacemen 3, but to the record buying public at this time, the Mississippi style of hard hitting country blues was out of fashion, and his work met with little commercial success. It's strange to think of music like this being viewed as outdated, because the sheer power of White's guitar work and his intense vocals are timeless. Fortunately, one of the people who found inspiration in White's music was none other than John Fahey, who in the early '60s figured he'd attempt to locate White in the town the bluesman sang about two decades earlier in "Aberdeen Mississippi Blues". Addressing a postcard to "Booker T. Washington White (Old Blues Singer), c/o General Delivery, Aberdeen, Mississippi", Fahey lucked out when White's relatives obtained the note and forwarded it to the singer, now living in Memphis. In 1963, Fahey and ED Denson went to meet and record White, resulting in this lp. Unlike some of the other original bluesmen to be "rediscovered", White sounds as strong as ever. His resonator guitar playing seems to defy logic with its thunderous, heavily percussive attack and a piano-like slapping technique. White's expert slide playing is frantic yet precise, and everything is topped off by a huge, booming voice that could only belong to someone who had been through a lot. The sound quality here is no frills and upfront, but nice and clear and perfect for capturing the raw power of White doing what he did best. Highly recommended.
For some strange reason this is the first record we've reviewed by Emily Jane White, but Ode To Sentience most definitely has us smitten, and also has us wondering how it is we're only discovering her now. The sound here is a gorgeous sonic concoction, equal parts classic Americana, brooding torch song and dark psychedelick folk, her voice mesmerizing and magical, a lush and velvety croon, powerful and throaty, with a tone that's rich and lustrous, presented way up in the mix, wreathed in just a smattering of reverb, the kind of voice that has you realizing the music is really only secondary, that old 'singing the phonebook' adage comes to mind, and when her vox are multitracked and she harmonizes with herself, it's downright divine.
We've seen White compared to Chan Marshall from Cat Power, and Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star. Kate Bush of course, but we also hear less obvious comparisons, one that really struck us was David Eugene Edwards of Sixteen Horsepower and Woven Hand, they have a similar phrasing, and seem drawn to the same sort of melodies and progressions. But unlike Edwards' music, which tends to be harrowing and apocalyptic, White's songs are definitely shot through with a little sunshine, whether it's a playful bit of slippery slide guitar or some surfy twang, that said, ode is definitely a dark record, sonically and lyrically. Just check out the opener, "Oh Katherine", which we find ourselves playing over and over, a lush bit of Appalachia, wreathed in moaning mournful cellos and soaring lyrical violin, one of the prettiest songs we've heard in ages. And while "The Cliff" is a little bit jaunty, it's also about someone leaping to their death (literally or metaphorically it's hard to say), a strange country folk love song, appropriately doomed, but musically hopeful, that maybe just, something else waits at the end of that interminable fall. "Black Silk" is another gorgeous lush brooder, dense tangles of steel string buzz, wreathed in clouds of cymbal shimmer, a darkly dirgey ballad that manages to be impossibly catchy without being the least bit cloying.
And so it goes, each and every song a dark softly psychedelic folk gem, lush twang flecked balladry that manages to fuse classic country/bluegrass tradition with a more modern doomfolk songsmithery, into something we can't seem to stop listening to. Lovely stuff for sure. And we'll definitely be tracking down the two records we missed as well...
Never has a record's title more accurately described its contents, cuz we really had no idea what to expect from Hartley C. White's This Is Not What You Expect. Based on the cover, we thought this would be some sort of blues rock, but this is WAY further out. Some serious outsider, next level avant-blues-dub-reggae-funk weirdness, that careens wildly from echo-drenched, looped and layered a cappella rounds, to fractured lo-fi funk, to dirgey, groovy, doomy, psychedelia, to hard rocking, angular, buzzing, sung/spoken WTF? trippiness. White, who was living in Queens when he recorded these jams (between 1984 and 2009), was raised in Jamaica during the turbulent sixties. He conceived of his sound, which he describes as 'Whopazootic', as a musical reimagining of Bruce Lee's martial arts, White's 'broken rhythms' meant to be both offensive and defensive. Wow. But this stuff actually does kind of conjure that vibe, lots of overdubbed vocal workouts, but just as many Funkadelic style freakouts, all wound around classic Jamaican dub styles, some swirling sampled strings, some seriously confusional avant pop, dreamy psychedelic balladry, singsongy almost lullaby like sweetness, all crafted from funky basslines, fluttery flutes, skronking horns, shimmering kalimba melodies, primitive drum machines and FX heavy guitar strum, White's vocals alternately sweetly crooning, chanting hypnotically, or toasting boisterously. The label sez recommended for fans of 10CC, Sly & The Family Stone, Willis Earl Beal and Ariel Pink, and while we'd usually scoff at such disparate comparisons, in this case, that's really not that far off.
